Page:Karl Kautsky - Georgia - tr. Henry James Stenning (1921).pdf/36

 returned Social-Democratic deputies to the Duma. Only after the March Revolution of 1917 was it possible for Trade Unions to be formed again in Georgia.

The printers were the first to make use of this opportunity. They were followed by the commercial employees. Forty-one Trade Unions, with 29,000 members, were represented at the first Trade Union Congress in Tiflis at the end of December 1917. At the next Congress in April 1919 there were 85 Trade Unions, and at the end of 1920 there were 113, with 64,000 members.

The great majority of the wage workers of Georgia, numbering about 100,000, of whom 73,000 are employed in large undertakings, are consequently organised in Trade Unions. The Trade Unions are neutral, but 95 per cent, of their members belong to the Social-Democratic Party. This party itself has a higher membership (80,000) than the Trade Unions, an unusual circumstance, as, in addition to the Trade Unionists, peasants and intellectuals are represented. The Party controlled four daily papers, five weekly papers and two monthly reviews; the Trade Unions controlled two general Trade Union organs, and the railwaymen had also two special papers. Most of them appeared in both the Georgian and the Russian languages.

The Trade Unions are organised on an industrial basis, and not on vocational lines. Yet this principle is not rigidly applied. In Tiflis they own their own premises, and a theatre and meeting place, the Plechanoff House, which the workers have lately built for themselves, at great sacrifice. The railwaymen own a special building for their union. The tendencies and institutions of the Trade Unions are quite those of Western Europe, but they seemed to me to> suffer somewhat from divisions. But a movement which is only three years old would not be perfect. It is perhaps due to the youth of the organisation that the spirit which prevails in it is in no way narrow and professional, but is concerned with the interests of the whole, not merely of the workers, but of society.