Page:Through Bolshevik Russia - Snowden - 1920.djvu/149

, I am placing on record what I consider to be a good and wise thing.

In Russia Trade Unionism is of very recent birth. In February, 1917, there were three Trade Unions in Russia with a membership of less than one thousand five hundred persons. When the revolution broke out, some of the workmen thought it part of the plan to smash the machinery in the workshops, so ignorant were they of the source of their woes and of the remedy for these. The want of Trade Union training, the lack of discipline, the absence of co-ordination, both in industry and in their organisations, helped still further to increase the sufferings of the people, by delaying the work of rebuilding. The fear of bourgeois technical and scientific experts, who were accused freely of sabotage, caused their necessary skill and labour for a long period to be refused; this still further aggravated the situation. And it appears to be entirely creditable that, in those matters where the special training and specialised mind are essential, the Communist rulers have seen proper to change their method.

But it is too dangerous a step on the road to complete centralisation of power to have made of the Trade Unions, as is practically the case, a Government department working under the control of the Supreme Economic Council.