Page:Trade Unions in Soviet Russia - I.L.P. (1920).djvu/43



In order to understand the Russian trade union movement it is necessary to bear in mind: (1) that there are no yellow unions in Russia, (2) that there are no unions standing outside of the general trade union centre. All unions in Russia enter into the All-Russia Central Trade Union Council and only those organisations who are in the All-Russia centre have the right to call themselves a trade or industrial union, (3) there are no separate unions for intellectuals, doctors, engineers, etc., all enter the respective trade union, mechanical engineers in the metal workers' union, engineers working in textile factories into the textile workers' union. All these categories of labour may, if it is so desired, form scientific and technical associations, but these associations do not enjoy the rights and privileges of a union, and, (4) there are no craft guilds in Russia.

The creation of such wide industrial unions each ot which embraces hundreds of categories of mental and physical workers certainly met with some opposition with the craft traditions and particularly owing to the pride and narrowmindedness of the intellectuals—engineers, doctors and artists. But many fetishes and traditions were consumed in the fire of the revolution among which are those of the guild and narrow corporation.

The trade union includes masses of workers and employees without distinction of their political and religious convictions. The trade unions are not party organisations, but in no case are they "neutral" or non-political: a trade union which behaves equally to a socialist or to a bourgeois party, who would advocate voting for bourgeois candidates at elections, as has often happened in England and America, has never existed in Russia. The labour unions have always been socialistic. The social democratic party was always the midwife at the birth of a trade union. The party stood at its cradle and reared it and therefore there can be with us no question of any liberal labour unions; the trade unions in Russia never had to choose between liberalism and socialism—such a problem never confronted us —but between opportunistic socialism and revolutionary socialism, i.e., between menshevism and bolshevism.

The choice, as we saw above, was made even before the October revolution; the Russian trade unions united their fate with that of the October revolution, with the Soviet government: this meant that the Russian trade union movement as a wh9le marched under the banner and acted according to the directions of the Russian communist party. This seems to be rather contradictory: a non-party trade union movement which nevertheless acts under the directions of a definite