Page:Trade Unions in Soviet Russia - I.L.P. (1920).djvu/82



The All-Russia Union of Agricultural Workers as present constituted is of recent origin and growth. It was not until after the revolution of October, 1917, that they saw the necessity of allying themselves with the city workers; the Land workers were also carried away with the general revolutionary enthusiasm prevailing at that time. Until the revolution of 1917 the agricultural workers of Russia had no union of their own, neither during the time of the old Russian feudal system nor during the period of the growth of the capitalist regime. Some attempts to organise the Agricultural workers were made during the revolutionary movement of 1904–5; the union of the workers of Boutirsky Farm, in Moscow, can be quoted as example, but these were of a scattered improvised character without any general plan or aim; they had no serious influence upon the development of the Agricultural workers' organisation. But those attempts were soon given up owing to the reaction, which suppressed the revolutionary movement.

Only after the February revolution of 1917 were small unions of agricultural workers started, chiefly in the neighbourhood of the capital and near industrial centre. This fact can only be explained by the influence of the industrial proletarians of the Trade Unions who were constantly increasing in numbers, and acquiring a strong revolutionary spirit. But all these unions were of a very primitive character both in their form of organisation and in the aims they pursued. In the first place their lack of experience in organisation was very marked, and secondly there was the influence of the compromising leaders, who were mostly of the socialist revolutionary party with narrow bourgeois ideals and an agrarian programme full of contradictions and omissions.

These unions in the period of their development during the February revolution aimed mainly at protecting their craft interests, and did not realise that the problem confronting agricultural workers was the ownership and organisation of production.