Page:Trade Unions in Soviet Russia - I.L.P. (1920).djvu/69



I.

THE FORMATION OF THE UNION.

The formation of the first metal workers' union is connected with the period of the first Russian Revolution of 1905–1906. All attempts to create a Metal Workers' Trade Union previous to that time failed, every time falling- foul of the Tsarist police regime. Only here and there in isolated towns embryos of trade union organisations existed in the form of mutual aid societies with very limited militant tasks. Such societies existed in Kharkoff, Moscow and Petrograd.

The "Mechanical Workers' Society" in Moscow and the "Russian Factory Workers' Association" in Petrograd proved to be places where agents of the Tsarist government attempted to degrade the class consciousness of the metal workers by concentrating their attention on. questions of mutual aid and diverting them from the political struggle. The development of the labour movement, however, soon led to different results. The firing on the labour demonstrators marching to the Winter Palace on January 9th, 1905, gave a strong impetus to the labour movement.

The revolutionary struggle in 1905 of course embraced wide masses of the metal workers, and the most active elements of them were engaged in the political struggle. For that reason the metal workers' union arose later than the unions in other industries. Only in the spring of 1906 did the first Metal Workers' Union arise in Petrograd and Moscow.

In February, 1907, the first conference of metal workers' unions in the Moscow industrial area took place, in which representatives of the Petersburg, Baku, Lougansk and Vitebsk metal workers' unions participated. This conference elected an organisation committee to convene an All-Russian conference of metal workers. The organisation committee succeeded in convening in September, 1907, the second conference which also took place in Moscow. But the wave of reaction put an end not only to all attempts to create an All-Russian metal workers' union, but also to the existence of separate