suaded" to institute tribunals in order to increase production for the Soviet Government and punish "labor desertion." (See the previous chapter.)
Of course, the "trade union" revolt could not amount to much under the Bolshevist rule. Two factions, however, offered a very vigorous resistance and under the Soviet tyranny it is significant that they did manage, after all, to obtain a certain number of votes. This opposition is divided between the faction which proposed to restore the Soviet rule and a so-called Syndicalist faction. Neither of them suggests any concession whatever to the peasant majority of Russia, but both seem fairly strongly opposed to a continuation of the present Communist Party rule. The New Statesman correctly sums up the opposition of these factions as follows:
If we consider Trotzky's militarist-bureaucratic proposals as the extreme left, then the extreme right is taken up by the group of the "Labor Opposition," headed by Shliapnikov—chairman of the Metal Workers' Union—the strongest Russian union.
The "Labor Opposition" demands that the entire economy of the Republic should be taken over by a congress of producers, organized in producers' unions. This is a consistent syndicalist conception, based on the belief that economic matters should be left entirely to labor organizations.
Bitterly criticizing the bureaucratic tutelage over the unions by the Communist party, the "Labor Opposition" advocates complete self-government in the factories.
Another faction, headed by Ossinsky and Sapronov, calls itself the group of "Democratic Centralism." This group is one with the "Labor Opposition" in demanding democratic reforms and active participation of the