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their own red guards. Thus when the conflict between the Leather Workers' Union and the Leather Manufacturers' Association dragged on in many factories, the employers were driven away and the factories seized by the factory committees. On the 5th of October, 1917, the Moscow Regional Metal Workers' Conference, at which 138,000 workers were represented demanded "an energetic campaign for a radical change in the basis of economic policy, the nationalisation of the larger syndicated petroleum, coal, sugar and metal industries, also of the Banks and of the means of transport." The Conference further recommended to carry out and to "encourage the initiative in the localities for the speediest realisation of workers' control of industry." Everyone can understand what to "encourage initiative for workers' control" meant in this sharp class struggle. Affairs reached the stage of violent and immediate introduction of workers' control. On the 9th of October 1,000 delegates, representing 200,000 textile workers in the Moscow region, promised support to the Soviets and called them to determined action in fighting against the sabotage of the employers and the treacherous conduct of the provisional government. The situation became more complicated. Here and there local strikes broke out which led to nothing. The excellently organised employers deliberately provoked the workers to local strikes in order to defeat them separately.
In the factories a fight was proceeding for the right to control the economic resources of the country. The working class of Russia, by the logic of the class struggle, had come right up to the conquest of government power. The social tangle could not be unravelled, it could only be cut, and this was done by the October revolution.
The October Revolution.
The furious contest between the trade unions and the employers, as we saw, proceeded in every factory and works long before the October revolution. The trade unions and their organs, the factory committees, convinced themselves by practice and experience of the necessity of a violent overthrow of the bourgeoisie. It was for that reason that they were in the front ranks of the battle in the October revolution against the provisional government and the coalition.
The unions and the factory committees, formed a red guard. They posted armed detachments for fighting against the government as well as for the protection of the factories. The unions and the Councils of Trade Unions had their representatives in the military revolutionary committees, their premises were used by the staffs of revolutionary troops, (the staff of the Moscow revolutionary troops were for some time situated on the premises of the Moscow Metal Workers' Union); they formed red cross detachments and were the first to place their technical staff and machinery at the disposal of the new Soviet government for the management of the State.
In those great days of severe and sharp fighting the trade unions had to fight not only against cossacks, junkers and the bourgeoisie, but even against several trade unions which at that decisive moment stood on the side of the Provisional Govern-
