Page:Trade Unions in Soviet Russia - I.L.P. (1920).djvu/80

 Equally close contact is established between the union and what is known as the "Proletcult," i.e., an organisation engaged in the development of the elements of proletarian art and science. Many factory committees have an educational committee attached to them working with the close co-operation of the "Proletcult." These committees organise clubs, theatres, local libraries, etc., in connection with the factories.

Concluding its work in the beginning of April of the year the third All-Russian conference of the metal workers' union worked out a plan of work covering all the spheres of the union's activity. This conference has considerable importance for the union as it formulated problems for the current year. The union decided to take up the work of reviving the metal industry with the same energy that it has hitherto shown in assisting the proletarian State on the military fronts.

The preceding years were the most difficult in the life of our union. The basic spheres of the metal industry, the Don Basin and the Ural were outside the sphere of influence of the union and lay under the brutal heel of the Russian and international counter-revolution. The blockade and the isolation from the largest sources of fuel, raw material and food created a particularly critical situation in the metal industry. More than once the difficult situation drove the pusillanimous to desperation and befogged the minds of those who had less class consciousness. At times even hunger with its vice-like grip paralysed the muscles of the warriors. But on each occasion the union appealed to proletarian discipline and rallied the workers to each struggle for the triumph of the dictatorship of the proletariat. Such was the position at the beginning of 1918 during the advance of German imperialism, when the central committee of the union placed itself and the whole apparatus of the union completely at the disposal of the Council of Peoples' Commissaries. Such was also the position in the summer of the same year during the Czecho-Slovak revolt when the central Committee mobilised new forces. The Koltchak offensive and later the advance of Denikin compelled us to throw new forces on the front. The workers of the Ural factories almost entirely left the factories for the front. The union mobilised tens of thousands of its members in Central Russia. Many responsible leaders of the union entered the ranks of the Red Army. Many of these are no more. This tremendous concentration of effort naturally reflected itself upon the state of production, but the results of it made it possible for a third conference of the union with tremendous energy to take up the work of reconstruction. Even in these difficult years the metal workers' union acquired considerable experience in organising socialist economic life, and this experience as well as the experience of comrades returning from the front is of decisive importance.

The union follows with particular attention and interest the development of the Labour Movement in Western Europe and America and particularly the work of the metal workers' unions related to it.