Page:Trade Unions in Soviet Russia - I.L.P. (1920).djvu/40

 connected with the peaceful and organic development of capitalism. Our unions are not only free from the dead-weight of tradition because they are young but principally because they are the children of the Revolution. They grew and developed with the Revolution and they withered and fell during the period of victory of the counter-revolution. These peculiar features of the Russian Trade Unions are reflected in all their activities, but this is particularly clear and evident in their constructive work and in their political orientation. In constructing their organisation the Russian trade unions took advantage of the negative and positive experiences of Western Europe, and, in the first days of their birth in 1905, they began to organise, not according to trades but according to industry. In the first period of the Revolution this was only observed to the extent that the growth of the unions was limited by tsarism. But after the February Revolution all the work of organisation was conducted on the principle of building the union according to industry. The 3rd Conference already advocated the "unification within the frame of a common organisation and a common leadership or as large a mass of workers as possible engaged in similar factories and allied trades."

The 1st Congress confirmed the necessity for creating unions according to industry, but did not further explain what an industrial union meant. This was done by the 2nd Congress which laid it down that "an industrial union is a union having the following characteristics:

(1) uniting all workers and employees of a given industry, independently of the particular functions they perform; (2) having a central fund; (3) having an administration based on democratic centralism; (4) working out wage rates and conditions for all categories of labour through a single central body; (5) a uniform construction from top to bottom; (6) sections within the union having a technical auxiliary function only; (7) representation through a single body of the interests of the organised workers and employees of a given industry before the outside world; (8) persons not producing, but assisting the producers, as well as all temporary and casual workers, remain members of their industrial union."

It is evident from this definition that the fundamental principle of the Russian trade union movement is: in one factory, one union; and this means that all workers from unskilled labourers to hired engineers working in a metal factory including also the wood workers are members of the metal workers' union. Wood workers, mechanics, etc., working in a textile factory, join the Textile Workers' Union and electricians and stokers working in a soap factory join the Chemical Workers' Union. Thus, the peculiarity of our Trade Union movement lies in its concentration. In England there are 200 national unions, in France about 60 and in Germany 48, in Russia, in January, 1920, there were 32 national centralised unions and after the, 3rd Congress there remained only 23 unions embracing all categories of workers and employees, all