Page:Emile Vandervelde - Three Aspects of the Russian Revolution - tr. Jean Elmslie Henderson Findlay (1918).djvu/90

 time they have no longer been legally forbidden, and we find them springing up like mushrooms after a night of rain, in all industrial centres. Soon persecution followed, with the counter-revolutionary reaction. In the course of the last twelve years the Trade Unions have been dissolved in large numbers every time that Russia has traversed a reactionary crisis, and we know that these have been sufficiently numerous. In the intervals they have been submitted to a system of police interference that rendered their activity practically nominal. Such an association, duly "authorized," for instance, found itself forbidden for whole years to hold a general assembly. On the other hand, one that numbered ten thousand members would be granted permission to hold an assembly on condition that all the members were convoked individually, thus creating almost unsurmountable practical difficulties. They were not authorized to elect a body of delegates for the administration of common interests.

The metallurgists' Trade Union at Petrograd had during the last decade ten presidents and ten committees, its leaders being