Page:Trade Unions in Soviet Russia - I.L.P. (1920).djvu/45

 On the report presented by Lenin the congress resolved: "to increase efforts to attract the labour masses to the work of communist construction through the trade unions under the guidance of the communist party, the only party which expresses the true interests of the working class and all workers in Soviet Russia."

The resolution on organisation states:

"Organisation is not an end, but a means to an end; the aim of the industrially organised proletariat is communism and the road leading to this aim is the social revolution and the dictatorship of the proletariat."

The third trade union congress went even further; it not only formally proclaimed its organised connection with the communist party, but in a special resolution approved the economic policy of the ninth congress of the Russian Communist Party, assuming that the realisation of the resolutions of the party congress will "finally consolidate the victory of the proletariat over capitalism." To this must be added the greetings sent by the congress to the fighters for communism, to the German Sparticists and Left Independents, and the invitation to the Russian Young Communist League to conduct political education among the youth, and to the women's department of the Russian Communist Party for political work among women. This gives us a picture of unity of the political and trade union movement in Russia.

The resolutions of the third trade union congress as well as the resolutions of previous congresses will become intelligible to us if we observe the uninterrupted growth of Bolshevik influence in the trade union movement. Here are some figures in this connection:

In order that the growth of revolutionary marxism within the labour movement may be >made more clear it is necessary to mention that in December, 1919, the Socialist Internationalist Labour Party affiliated to the Communist Party. The former had a rather considerable influence in the trade union movement. At the second Congress it had 50 delegates. The party had particular influence in the leather workers' and railwaymen's unions.

This overwhelming influence of the Russian Communist Party in the trade union movement explains our revolutionary theory and practice. This comes from the fact that the Russian proletariat never separated economics from politics and has never suffered from that childish disease "neutrality" and that we, the leaders of the Russian trade union movement are in perfect