If a trades-union did not please the higher Soviet it was fined and suppressed and a new union was formed in its place by the Bolsheviks themselves. Entry to this new union was only open to members of the old union who signed a form declaring themselves entirely in agreement with, and prepared completely to support in every detail, the policy of the Soviet Government.
Refusal to join on these terms meant the loss of the work and the salary, together with exclusion from both the first and second categories.[49] It will readily be understood how serious a matter it was to oppose any coercive measure.
[49] I.e., the food categories entitling one to the highest and next highest food rations.
Every incentive was held out to the poorer people to spy and report on the others. A workman or a girl who gave information that any member of the trades-union was opposed in any way to the Soviet system was specially rewarded. He or she would be given extra food and promoted as soon as possible to a seat upon the executive of the union or a place on the factory committee.
Soon after the first Congress of the Railroad Workers’ Unions, in February, 1918, the unions of railway workers were “merged with the state”—that is, they were forbidden to strike or to function as defensive or offensive organizations of the workers, and were compelled to accept the direction of the officials appointed by the central government and to carry out their orders. At the second Congress of the Railroad Workers’ Unions, February, 1919, according to Economicheskaya Zhizn (No. 42), this policy was “sharply and categorically opposed” by Platonov, himself a Bolshevik and one of the most influential of the leaders of the railway men’s unions. At the Moscow Conference of Shop Committees and Trades-Unions, March, 1919, it was reported, according to Economicheskaya Zhizn (No. 51), the unions “having given up their neutrality and independence, completely merged their lot with that of the Soviet Government.... Their work came to be closely interwoven with the state activities of the Soviet Government.... Only practical utilitarian considerations prevent us from completely merging the trades-unions with the administrative apparatus of the state.”
At the ninth Congress of the Communist Party, held in Moscow, Bucharin proposed the adoption of certain “basic principles” governing the status of trades-unions and these were accepted by the Congress: “In the Soviet state economic and political issues are indivisible, therefore the economic organs of the Labor movement—the unions—have to be completely merged with the political—the Soviets—and not to continue as independent organizations as is the case in a capitalistic state. Being more limited in their scope, they have to be subordinate to the Soviets, which are more universal institutions. But merging with the Soviet apparatus the unions by no means become organs of the state power; they only take upon themselves the economic functions of this power.” In his speech Bucharin contended that “such an intimate connection of the trades-unions with the Soviet power will present an ideal network of economic administrative organization covering the whole of Russia.” It is quite clear that the unions must cease to exist as fighting organizations in the Bolshevist state, and become merely subordinate agencies carrying out the will of the central power.
Even if this testimony, official and otherwise, were lacking, it would be evident from the numerous strikes of a serious character among the best organized workers, and from their violence, that Bolshevism at this stage of its development found itself in opposition to the trades-unions. And if the evidence upon that point were not overwhelming and conclusive, it would only be necessary to read carefully the numerous laws and decrees of the Bolshevist Government, and to observe the development of its industrial policy, in order to understand that trades-unions, as independent and militant working-class organizations, fighting always to advance the interests of their class, could not exist under such a system.
The direct and immediate reason for the policy that was adopted toward the unions was, of course, the state of the industries, which made it impossible to meet the ever-growing demands made by the unions. There was, however, a far deeper and profounder reason, namely, the character of the unions themselves. The Bolsheviki had been forced to recognize the fundamental weakness of every form of Syndicalism, including Sovietism. They had found that the Soviets were not qualified to carry on industry efficiently; that narrow group interests were permitted to dominate, instead of the larger interests of society as a whole. The same thing was true of the trades-unions. By its very nature the trades-union movement is limited to a critical purpose and attitude; it makes demands and evades responsibilities. The trades-union does not and cannot, as a trades-union, possess the capacity for constructive functioning that a co-operative society possesses, for instance.
This fact was very clearly and frankly stated in March, 1919, by L. B. Krassin, in a criticism which was published in the Economicheskaya Zhizn (No. 52). He pointed out that, apart from the struggle for higher wages, “the labor control on the part of the trades-unions confined itself the whole time to perfunctory supervision of the activities of the plants, and completely ignored the general work of production. A scientific technical control, the only kind that is indispensable, is altogether beyond the capacities of the trades-unions.” The same issue of this authoritative Bolshevist organ stated that at the Conference of Electrical Workers it was reported that “In the course of last year everybody admitted the failure of workers’ control,” and that the conference had adopted a resolution “to replace the working-men’s control by one of inspection—i.e., by the engineers of the Council of National Economy.”
Instead of the expected idyllic peace and satisfaction, there was profound unrest in the Utopia of the Bolsheviki. There was not even the inspiration of enthusiastic struggle and sacrifice to attain the goal. The organized workers were disillusioned. They found that the Bolshevist state, in its relations to them as employer, differed from the capitalist employers they had known mainly in the fact that it had all the coercive forces of the state at its command, and a will to use them without any hesitation or any mercy. One view of the social and industrial unrest of the period is set forth in the following extract from the Severnaya Communa, March 30, 1919:
At the present moment a tremendous struggle is going on within the ranks of the proletariat between two diametrically opposed currents. Part of the proletariat, numerically in the great majority, still tied to the village, both in a material as well as an ideological respect, is in an economic sense inclined to anarchism. It is not connected in production and in interest in its development. The other part is the industrial, highly skilled mechanics, who fight for new methods of production.
By the equalization of pay, and by the introduction of majority rule in the management of the factories, supposed to be a policy of democracy, we are only sawing off the limb on which we are sitting, for the flower of our proletariat, the most efficient workers, prefer to go to the villages, or to engage in home trades, or to do anything else but to remain within those demolished and dusty fortresses we call factories. Why, this means in its truest sense a dictatorship of unskilled laborers!