The Trade Union Movement

All-Russian Conference of Trade Unions and the Soviets of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies. June 27, 1917

 

The First Conference of the Petrograd Factory Committees, which was opened in the Tauride Palace on June 12, 1917 (May 30th old style) was one of the most important stages in the struggle of the Petrograd workers which led to the October victory.

Original Source: Izvestiia, 27 June 1917, p. 12.

A few days before the close of the All-Russian Congress of Soviets of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies, the All-Russian Conference of Trade Unions began its work … The Conference summed up the enormous creative work of unifying the proletariat into trade unions, and the results of this work deserve the scrutiny of all those who value the revolution: a new social force has been created, imbued with the consciousness of its responsibility to the revolution and to the future of the proletariat.

For the first time since the beginning of the revolution, the vanguard of the Russian proletariat, organized in trade unions, took a stand on an questions of Russian life. Its position is to be found in the resolutions of the All-Russian Conference …

… And after the All-Russian Conference of Trade Unions we can confidently say:

A spirit of courage added to realism reigns in our trade unions in the same way as it reigns in the Soviets of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies.

It was not without cause that the Conference recognized that the trade unions of Russia will only be able to achieve their aims if, while preserving the unity of the workers’ movement, they wholeheartedly and in every way support the actions of the Soviets of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies, which are directed at consolidating and expanding the gains of the revolutionary democracy!

It was not accidentally and not without a struggle that this formula was adopted by the Conference.

Opponents of the tactics of the Soviets of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies objected energetically to this formula. But in vain they proposed a conditional form of support-“in so far as.” The Conference did not follow them and rejected their proposal.

The Conference recognized that the trade unions and the Soviets of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies must have one single common banner. And the great merit of the Conference lies in this recognition Henceforth the falsity of the accusations, initiated by the enemies of the Soviets of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies -that the Soviets have allegedly broken away from the proletariat, have deviated from the aims of a workers’ class policy, and are pursuing a petty bourgeois conciliation policy-is evident to everybody

Thus the All-Russian Conference corrected the harm that was inflicted on the unity of the workers’ movement and the unity of the revolutionary forces by the thoughtless, adventitious decisions that recently have often been carried out by individual groups of workers.

Along with solving their immediate problems, the Conference did everything possible toward the resolution of the fundamental, common problem that faces all the democratic organizations-toward [achieving] solidarity and unification of the forces of democracy in the name of the ultimate triumph of the revolution.

Source: Robert Paul Browder and Alexander F. Kerensky, eds., The Russian Provisional Government, 1917: Documents (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1961), Vol. II, pp. 746-747.

Comments are closed.