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 agreement with the postulate laid down at the end of March, 1920, by the 9th Congress of the Russian Communist Party: "Politics are the most concentrated expression of economics, being its generalisation and final accomplishment. … Only to the extent that a trade union while formally remaining non-party becomes communistic in reality and carries out the policy of the Communist Party is the dictatorship of the proletariat and socialist construction assured."

The problems confronting the Russian trade union movement extend beyond national limits. Socialism cannot be victorious while capitalism and old capitalist relations exist. The victory of socialism can only be international; this presupposes, therefore, a militant international proletarian organisation.

The necessity for international solidarity was doubted in the trade unions of some countries (America), but for the majority of organised workers in all countries, this question had been decided long before the war. The following three forms of international connection existed on the eve of the war: (1) trade unions entered the international socialist bureau and participated in the Congresses of the Second International. (2) International labour organisations by trades and industries, (commencing from 1900), (3) in 1905 an international trade union secretariat was established whose functions were rather statistical and informatory than political. All these three forms of connection were broken by the war. All the trade unions of all countries with a few exceptions became supporters of the war. The labour organisations of the whole world broke up into two hostile coalitions and with the collapse of the Second International the international trade union organisations broke down also. The executive committees of these organisations, occupied a position dependent on the particular territory and particular coalition they were in. In 1916 the general trade union centre of the Allied countries in the persons of Jouhaux, Appleton and Gompers attempted to set up their Allied international trade union, but nothing came of it and only after the conclusion of the war were attempts made to establish the broken connections. First at Berne, and later in Amsterdam representatives of trade unions of Allied countries gathered and created an international federation of trade unions and this apparently was to act as the guide of the international trade union movement. Simultaneously with this international federation of trade unions, on the initiative of these same trade unionists, a Labour Bureau in connection with the League of Nations, on which official representatives of the general trade union centres of the largest countries were represented, was set up whose object it was to draw up international labour legislation. It would seem, therefore, that there is yet another international centre to supplement the efforts of the trade unions. The Second International to which the majority of the trade unions were affiliated prior to the war ceased to exist from the day on which it threw all the moral authority of the Second International in defence of Allied imperialism. The Second International is dead and those trade unions which feel an