vision by the workers. It was hoped that by this arrangement the actual producers should acquire the technical skill of management indispensible for them when the industries should be taken over by the state later on.
But the employers upset this program. They were careful to see to it that the workers learned none of the precious industrial knowledge from them. They redoubled their efforts to sabotage the industries and to paralyze the economic life of the nation. In this course they were seconded by the intellectuals, office workers, and other "white-collar" elements generally. This forced the workers into still more drastic action. First, the militant shop committees began to drive away the employers and to take charge of their plants. Then, the Government took a hand in the work of confiscation. To begin with it nationalized the banks and other credit institutions, as the heart of capitalism. After that the big basic industries followed in rapid succession, until, finally; about 90 per cent of the modernized industrial mechanism had become the property of the workers' state. The rule of the capitalists was broken in Russian industry.
Driven out of political and industrial control, the capitalists and other reactionaries promptly appealed to armed force. Immediately after the October revolution a series of bitter civil wars began which lasted over three years. The first counter-revolutionary attempt was by Kerensky just after his downfall, but the Red Guard had little trouble in breaking it up. Then began a whole group of uprisings, mostly in the border countries of Siberia, Ukraine, etc., and led by Alexeyev, Kornilov, Krassnov, Doutov and others. These lasted through the Fall and Winter of 1917. Most of them were furthered by the deposed Mensheviki and Social Revolutionists At one time 50 per cent of the trade union leaders were under arms. The factory workers, the famous Red Guard, rallied and beat them all down.
In the Spring of 1918 the counter-revolutionary forces returned to the struggle with renewed vigor, this time supported by international capitalism. The German troops captured the Ukraine, the English invaded the North, Krassnov and Doutov raged in the Cossack
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