Page:Trade Unions in Soviet Russia - I.L.P. (1920).djvu/22

 ment. The overwhelming majority of the trade unions were forthe October revolution, only an insignificant section being against it. All the unions uniting factory workers like the metal workers, textile workers and leather workers were for the October revolution, while the commercial and bank employees' unions were against it. In those unions which united higher and lower employees like railwaymen and post and telegraph workers, the lower grade employees were for the October revolution, while the office staff and the higher officials were against it. The only exception of a purely proletarian union being against the October revolution were the printers, who came out actively in defence of the Provisional Government and the "freedom of the Press," understanding by, that the freedom of the bourgeoisie and government press to continue at the most acute moment of armed conflict to pervert the consciousness of the masses.

The struggle between the workers and the employees assumed an extremely sharp form particularly when the notorious sabotage of the officials began which expressed itself in stopping work in all government institutions and the deliberate disorganisation of the State and administrative technical machinery. Here the struggle went on not merely between unions, but within the government and commercial employees' unions, where the workers and the lower staff concentrated all their efforts to restart work in the departments. The word sabotage became the most shameful word among the Russian proletariat, because the strike of the officials was practically directed against the working class and its frantic efforts to extricate itself from the political and economic cul-de-sac. The unions were confronted with the question whether strikes were permissible in a period when power was passing into the hands of the working class, and the unions through their largest organisations answered—no. The Moscow Council of Trade Unions at the beginning of November, 1917, carried a resolution which says "the unions consider that while a proletarian government is in power a political strike is to be considered as sabotage against which the most determined measures must be taken. To take the place of workers refusing to work, for that reason is not blacklegging, but a means of fighting sabotage and counter revolution." The trade union movement as a whole adopted the same point of view that no strike directed against the socialist revolution and its upholders, the working class, could be permitted. A strike of employees and officials usually began when a commissary of the new Soviet government appeared. The strikes, morally and materially supported by the partisans of the overthrown Kerensky government, rendered the relations between the technical intellectuals or employees and the workers so strained that even at the present moment there are traces of estrangement between the workers and the employees, the latter being distrusted. Thus, from the first days of the October revolution, the trade unions had to submit the question of the right to strike for reconsideration. The experience of the struggle led the Russian trade unions to the following practical conclusion:—to strike against the bourgeoisie is the sacred