The Russian Revolution/Chapter 6
VI.
THE TRADE UNIONS.
Of all the lies told about Russia none is more unjustifiable or has been circulated more persistently than the assertion that under the Soviet system the trade unions have been robbed of their importance and are now negligible in power and influence. This falsehood is constantly repeated by American labor leaders. Now the fact is just the contrary: the trade unions are of prime consequence in Russia, and are so recognized by everybody there. Lossoysky, President of the All-Russian Council of Trade Unions has declared that there have been no major policies of any kind entered upon in Soviet Russia without the consent of the trade union movement being first secured. He has also said: "Without the trade unions the Soviet Government could not exist: the unions are the foundation and main working apparatus of the Soviets."
The Russian trade unions are throbbing with life. This was strikingly evident at their recent fourth national congress, which I had the good fortune to attend. The gathering occupied itself with the most weighty social, industrial, and political problems now confronting Russia. So important were its sessions considered that many of the country’s greatest men, including Lenin, Gorky, Rykov, Bukharin, etc., attended them and participated in the debates. The congress was held in a great theatre. Public interest was intense. It was almost impossible to get a ticket of admission. The place was constantly jammed with spectators and delegates, there were 3,105 of the latter representing 7,000,000 organized workers. In front of the building was stretched a cordon of Red Army soldiers to hold back the crowds seeking entry. The demand for tickets was so great that some of the delegates began bunching their cards and sending them out so that their friends could come in. To stop this packing process the chair announced that all persons in the delegate section of
- “British Delegates in Petrograd,” P. 11,
44 the hall would have to show their cards upon leaving, and that those who had none would be arrested.
Compare this surging Russian trade union congress, handling the nation's most vital problems and spectators braving jail to attend it; with our American Federation of Labor lack-lustre affairs, mustering only a baker's dozen or two of visitors, and wasting their time squabbling over ridiculous jurisdictional quarrels and passing resolutions which the powers-that-be do not care a snap about, and one gets a fair idea of the vitality of the two movements and their comparative importance in their respective countries. Of the world's labor leaders, those in America have least right to throw mud at the Russian trade union movement.
Although the Russian trade unions have a record of experience and achievement without a parallel in labor history they are for the most part of very recent origin; in fact the movement is hardly more than four years old. It dates back only to the February, 1917, revolution. It is true that there were unions before that date, but they had by then almost all disappeared.
The first traces of unionism in Russia began to develop toward the end of the Nineteenth Century. A few workers' benefit societies sneaked into life and led an unostentatious and precarious existence. Occasionally these primitive organizations ventured into strikes, but in such events the Czar's agents inflicted frightful persecutions upon them, often shooting the strikers and exiling their leaders wholesale. Under such hard conditions the movement naturally made little headway. It struggled along more dead than alive until the great revolutionary attempt of 1905. This uprising produced a tremendous development of trade union sentiment. Labor organizations sprang up like mushrooms all over Russia. But the revolution failed, and its failure brought with it bitter hardships for the workers. The Government outlawed their unions, and waged such war against them that within a couple of years the movement had practically disappeared. During the industrial boom of 1912–13 a trade union revival took place. Considerable headway was being made, but the world war came on and wiped out the organizations again.
All through the war the workers remained almost entirely destitute of organization and at the mercy of the exploiters—it is said that at the beginning of 1917 there were in all Russia but three trade unions, with a combined membership of only 1385. But with the downfall of the Czar’s Government in February of that year a remarkable trade union rennaissance took place at once. Millions of workers streamed into the organizations. The modern Russian trade union movement was born. The following table shows its progress up till now, when it encompasses practically the entire industrial working class:
| January, 1917 | 1,385 |
| June, 1917 | 1,475,429 |
| January, 1918 | 2,532,000 |
| January, 1919 | 3,638,812 |
| April, 1920 | 4,262,000 |
| May, 1921 | 7,000,000 |
At present the Communists are in overwhelming control of the trade unions. But it was not always so. When the movement first took shape after the February revolution it was manned throughout by Menshevik elements, and it was only with great difficulty that the Bolsheviks broke their power and came to the head of the organizations. Before the October revolution they had won control in most industries, although there are still one or two of them in the hands of the Mensheviks.
The Communists' method is that of working from the inside. They know the power of the militant among the mass and realize that if he is properly organized and of a determined spirit nothing can stop his march to control. They have no patience with those who advocate, as so often is done in America, that the revolutionaries quit the old unions and start new unions. Says Lossovsky, who voices the general Russian opinion on the subject:
"The tactic of quitting the trade unions, which is preached by certain of our ultra-revolutionary left-wing comrades, is a tactic of getting the revolutionary elements out of the labor movement in general. It is most dangerous and reactionary and should be rejected categorically"[1]
In the days of 1906–7, as a measure to fight the real labor movement, the Czar's police started fake unions. The Bolsheviks entered these, captured them, and made them into genuine fighting bodies. During the struggles many years later with the Menshevik labor leaders the same general methods were followed, with the same results. In one case, that of the Treasury Workers, the Communist minority, impatient at its lack of success working within the old union, split off and tried to form a new organization. Although the Communists were in complete control of the All-Russian Council of Trade Unions, not to speak of the Government itself, they refused to recognize the rival union and forced the seceders to go back to the old organization. On the industrial field they are bitter foes of all forms of dualism. The success of their tactics is evidenced by the following table, indicating their strength at the various general assemblies of the All-Russian unions:
| Total No. of Delgates. | Bolsheviks and Sympathizers | Per Cent. | |
| III Conference, 1917 | 22 | 8 | 36.4 |
| I Congress, 1918 | 416 | 273 | 65.0 |
| II Congress, 1921 | 748 | 494 | 60.0 |
| III Congress, 1920 | 1229 | 940 | 78.1 |
The Russian labor movement is based upon industrial unionism. All the workers engaged in a given enterprise, from the highest officials to the unskilled laborers, belong to one organization. There are no craft unions. For example, the steam engineers working in the iron and steel mills, instead of belonging to a craft union of engineers, as with us, would be part of the industrial union of metal workers. Likewise, the electrical workers employed in the textile industry would not belong to an electrical workers' union, but to the industrial union of textile workers. The same principle obtains throughout the entire trade union structure. Craft unionism, which American labor leaders cherish so much, is regarded by the Russians, and rightly, as an antediluvian type of organization unfitted for modern industrial conditions.
At present the Russian movement consists of twenty-three industrial unions, as follows: Transport Workers, Miners, Wood Workers, Agricultural and Forest Workers, Theatrical Employees, Provisioning and Housing Workers, Leather Workers, Metal Workers, Municipal Employees, Educational Workers, Telegraph, Telephone & Postal Workers; Food Workers, Building Trades, Sugar Workers, Printing Trades, Paper Makers, Employees of Soviet Stores & Co-operatives, Tobacco Workers, Textile Workers, Chemical Workers, Clothing Trades, Treasury Workers, Medical & Sanitary Workers. The structural backwardness of our trade union movement, as compared with the Russian, may be seen from the fact that the American Federation of Labor, with only half as many members as the All-Russian Council of Trade Unions has them divided into five times as many separate national unions.
The industrial structure of the Russian trade union movement was not brought about by the sudden realization of a beautiful scheme worked out in the seclusion of some intellectual's study chamber—as American industrial unionists hope to accomplish the job here. It is the fruit of a gradual evolution, of a constant changing of the organizations to conform to the everyday needs and experiences of the workers. In the beginning the Russian movement developed the usual craft union types and weaknesses, although, of course, they were not so marked as in western countries. But the militants, working within the primitive unions, soon cleaned up the situation. They swept aside the reactionary officialdom and hammered the many craft union fragments into industrial unions, even as it is being done elsewhere in Europe at the present time. During the congress of 1920 a whole series of amalgamations were ordered, and the number of national industrial unions reduced from thirty-two to twenty-three. Nor is the evolution yet complete. It is planned to bring about still further amalgamations, to cut the number of unions to eighteen or fifteen, so that the workers can develop the greatest possible unity.
The organic bases of Russian trade unionism are the shop organizations. There are no local unions as we understand the term. The workers of each shop simply meet and transact what business they have, picking out a committee to represent them with the management and to carry on the union’s continuous activities. These are the famous shop committees, which have played such a prominent part in the revolution. From them come the delegates that make up the various local, district, state, and national committees and congresses of the trade unions.
The advantage of the shop organizations, with their elaborate shop committees, over the old-fashioned local unions comes from the fact that they are composed of the workers of only one plant and function right on the job, while the latter are usually outside miscellaneous groupings. All over Europe the trade unions are tending in the direction of shop organizations and shop committees. In this country the highest developed union in this respect is the Amalgamated Clothing Workers. With it the local unions have become greatly atrophied in function, and the shop organizations and chairmen have taken on corresponding importance. In Russia the local unions have been abolished altogether.
Although the trade union movement works in close co-operation with the Soviets, the Supreme Economic Council, the Labor Department, etc., it is not an organic part of the Government. It preserves its independence, electing its own officers, mapping out its own policies, etc. Membership in the organizations is not compulsory; but they have such a strong grip on the economic and social life of the country that a worker would find it about impossible to work, eat, or find a place to live in, unless he belonged to a union. In Soviet offices all workers are discharged who are not members of their respective unions. Asa rule the dues are collected by a sort of check-off on the workers' pay, arranged between the unions and the management of the various industries and other enterprises.
The Russian trade unions perform a great variety of functions. They participate immediately in the Government through direct representation in the Soviets. They dominate the Department of Labor, and carry on all sorts of health, welfare, educational, and disciplinary work in the mines, mills and factories. They also have an important share in the management of industry. There are no policies of weight settled in Russia but what the trade unions have an active say in the matter.
With respect to the regulation of wages, hours, and working conditions they are supreme. Utterly unlike the labor organizations of other countries, those of Russia do not have to submit their demands to the employers. They submit them to themselves as the responsible controllers of this phase of industry. That is to say, they constantly survey the industrial situation and see to it that the workers enjoy the best conditions possible under the circumstances. What they decide upon is rubber-stamped by the Department of Labor and goes into effect at once. The following is an extract from a Governmental decree of December 12, 1918:
"The scales of the All-Russian unions, approved by the Central Council of those organizations, and the Department of Labor, are universally obligatory in all parts of the Russian Socialist Federated Soviet Republic."
In the official report on the procedings of the III congress of the All-Russian Trade Unions occurs the following passage, page 15:
"Russia is the only country in the world where the wages are fixed exclusively by the trade unions. The decision of the All-Russian Council of Trade Unions with regard to the fixing of wages is automatically confirmed by the Department of Labor. No institution in Soviet Russia can fix or change the rate of pay without the sanction of the unions. THE STATE REGULATION OF WAGES IS THE MONOPOLY OF THE RUSSIAN TRADE UNIONS."
These are large powers, and in view of them it seems ridiculous for American labor leaders, with their own organizations fighting desperately against injunctions, open shop campaigns, organized wholesale scabbery, etc., and fruitlessly demanding even the slightest legislative consideration from a hostile Government, to sneer at the alleged weakness of the Russian trade unions.
The trade unions' part in the technical side of industry, is of two general kinds, (1) development of the organization, skill and discipline of labor; (2) participation in the actual management of industry. In both spheres the unions play an important role. We shall consider them separately:
With respect to the first: The revolution and the civil wars and blockade that attended it absolutely shattered the old-time industrial system, together with all its social and political backgrounds. The whole thing has been reduced to ruins. An altogether new and different economic system must be built from the ground up and infused with the spirit of Communism. This involves the most prodigious task of education that any nation was ever confronted with, especially in view of the fact that the old slave-driving methods in industry have been abolished and the only way to get the new industries and discipline created is to convince the great masses of their necessity and to induce them to put them into effect. Upon the trade unions falls the burden of this enormous work of education. They are the only mass organizations of the workers actually functioning in industry, and the Government is entirely dependent upon them to popularize its revolutionary industrial policies and to see to it that they are applied.
A goodly part of trade union effort is put into this work of education and industrial reorganization. In an official history of their union the officials of the Telegraph, Telephone & Postal Workers’ organization say: "During three years we have organized three institutes of communication (high schools), 184 professional technical schools, created 240 libraries, opened 20 clubs and several sanatariums. Illiteracy is almost wiped out from our ranks. Besides these institutions, the union is in possession of a number of other enterprises, of which ten are agricultural, covering 300,000 acres and all worked by the organization." All the national unions are divided into departments to carry on the various phases of their educational and organizational work.
Not only do the unions turn out thousands of educated, skilled workers, but they also take part in the re-organization of industry. An official report of the Clothing Workers’ Union, shows what that organization is accomplishing. It says:
"As a result of the two years' revolutionary creative work of the working masses, we have secured 270 factories with a total of about 40,000 workers. In the new factories, which are worked by electric motors, there is a highly developed system of the division of labor. About 75 per cent of unskilled workers are employed, Thus, for instance, an overcoat, a coat, a pair of trousers, a hunting coat, formerly would be made by one man, whilst now the work is divided in 109 parts for an overcoat, 94 for a coat, 43 for a pair of trousers, 90 for a hunting coat, etc. The concentration of the clothing industry has also been brought about to a great extent. In certain towns from 50 to 100 per cent of the total production is centralized in factories. Instead of the 5000 small shops that worked in Petrograd before the revolution we now have ten large state factories with electric motors and a system of work distributio which embraces the whole clothing industry."
The Building Trades Union, in a similar official history, says:
"The chief attention of the union is devoted to the questions relating to the organization of production. Following the trustification of industry by the Soviet Government, the union put forward a scheme for the organization within the Supreme Economic Council of special sections devoted to the organization of the building industry, which was in a chaotic state under capitalism. Such an organ was formed in May, 1918, under the name of the Committee of Public Construction of the Supreme Economic Council, with corresponding local and provincial sections. Their task consists in re-organizing the whole building industry in all its branches. The union gives its best members to these committees."
In Russia the workers have no parasitic class to support. They get the full product of their labor. Hence, their eagerness to take advantage of every scientific means of saving labor, such as the specialization of labor, concentration of the industries, etc. That their participation in the working out of such measures is fully appreciated may be judged by the following statement from the Chemical Workers:
"We may say without exaggeration that not one branch of our industry, including the Chemical Section of the Supreme Economic Council, has been organized without being acknowledged and approved by the Central Committee of the National Union of Chemical Workers."[2]
The local activities of the trade unions' industrial educational work is carried on by the shop committees. These bodies, besides seeing to it that all labor laws and agreed upon conditions are lived up to, operate a whole series of educational and welfare institutions such as the trade unions in other countries hardly dream of yet. Every large factory has its technical school, library, art and music school, theatre, etc.
With regard to the second general phase of the unions' share in the technical side of of industry; viz., participation in the actual management of the plants, a long and interesting evolution has taken place. In the fierce industrial struggles during the Kerensky regime the principal weapons of the workers were the shop committees. They sprang up everywhere in the heat of the battle. Most of them were independent organizations, as the national trade unions developed somewhat later. Being extremely militant, the shop committees became the cutting edge of the industrial revolution. Even before the October uprising they had wrested from the employers a large share of control over the labor and business side of industry, and as that upheaval proceeded they became a potent means for the workers to confiscate the factories. Often they simply drove off the capitalists (who were busily doing their best to sabotage and ruin the industries) and took charge themselves.
Naturally enough the shop committees, once in control of the industries, tried to operate them. But in this they failed. Although they were good fighting organizations they could not manage industry. One of their principal faults was that they were essentially local in character while the industries, considering their markets, sources of supply for raw materials, etc., were distinctly national and international. Much confusion resulted from the industrial efforts of the shop committees, so the national trade unions, then rapidly coming to the front, had to step in and take charge of the situation to prevent entire industrial demoralization. They amalgamated the shop committees into their own official machinery and restricted their activities to the control over local labor which they now exercise.
But the national trade unions were only a degree better in managing industry than the shop committees had been. Quite evidently what was necessary was a purely technical organization, and thus, the Supreme Economic Council, came into existence. Its given function was to supervise and organize the operation of industry generally. The workers, however, full of revolutionary militancy, were not inclined to yield their industrial control altogether to the doubtful engineers and specialists of the Supreme Economic Council; hence they insisted upon the rights of nominating all the heads of that body, and, also of sending their representatives directly in all factory managements. This developed the "collegium" system, under which the committees heading the different sections of the Supreme Economic Council and individual industries were composed partly of industrial experts and partly of representatives of the national unions.
This system is still largely in effect, but there is a strong tendency toward the development of one-man management. The Communist Party, the Government, and the unions have gone on record in favor of it. The idea is to center the responsibility upon single individuals, who must be experts, and then hold them responsible for results. Too much friction and too much scattering of authority are produced by the collegium system. The one-man management program, now being gradually introduced, is for efficiency's sake.
Upon this proposition, however, there is not unanimity in the workers' ranks. There is a well-developed minority, called "The Workers' Opposition" and of which Mme. Kollontai is a leader, that flatly opposes any curtailing of the unions' participation in actual industrial management. Preserving the fighting traditions of the movement, this faction look with undisguised suspicion upon the experts of the Supreme Economic Council and believe that to grant them authority will result in their erecting themselves into a privileged class. The advocates of one-man management, besides their efficiency argument, urge that with the workers controlling all the state apparatus they need have no fear of such a caste springing up, especially in view of the fact that the trade union schools are turning out thousands of experts who, along with their industrial education, have absorbed the principles of Communism. They declare that these revolutionary engineers may be depended upon to break any monopoly that the present class, who have not yet overcome their bourgeois training, may attempt to create even as the Communist Commissars in the Red Army broke the monopoly that the ex-czarist officers had on military knowledge.
To decide just exactly what share of industrial management shall rest with the technical organizations and what with the trade unions is one of the big problems of the Russian revolutionary forces. But there is one thing everybody is agreed upon, and that is that the trade unions are destined to play an increasingly important role in the national life, in accordance as the rising intellectual level of their members fits them for greater and greater tasks.