Page:Emile Vandervelde - Three Aspects of the Russian Revolution - tr. Jean Elmslie Henderson Findlay (1918).djvu/88

 of their comrades in all industrial countries. If it had not been for the constant persecution of the advocates of trade unionism by the former government, doubtless the Unions of Petrograd, of Moscow, and Donetz would have had a greater development, and would have formed a policy very similar to the Trade Unions in England, Germany, or the United States.

This is important. If it be true indeed that only the arbitrary intervention of the police of Tsardom prevented the development of the Trade Unions, and that the working classes acting freely might have created here, as well as elsewhere these great organs for the regulation of economic conflicts, that it might have followed in this matter, as it has done in the matter of co-operation, the tradition of the modern proletariat, we can hope now that having acquired their liberty of action the Russian working classes will again follow the path from which they were drastically and artificially turned aside and will proceed rapidly. There is no serious student of labour problems, no matter to what school he may belong, who does not rejoice because