Page:Emile Vandervelde - Three Aspects of the Russian Revolution - tr. Jean Elmslie Henderson Findlay (1918).djvu/89

 the Trade Union favours the progress of the working class, while avoiding useless agitations. It does not certainly prevent the struggle between the classes in question, but it carries it along new lines, more orderly and decisive. We have no intention of writing the history of Russian Trade Unions. It has been dealt with very completely by several authors—as early as 1907 by Sbiatlevskié. Unfortunately it is impossible to-day to procure most of the publications concerning the heroic age of professional associations. On the other hand, no one seems to think (outside of the working classes occupied to-day with other work) of re-editing them, or at least selecting the important facts and publishing them in a new volume. We could wish all the same that the educated classes took more interest in a question which vitally concerns the country.

We shall only remind the reader that these professional Unions have had a former secret history that goes back a good way, and thereafter a public or semi-public history that begins with the Manifesto of October 17, 1905 (Old Style). From that