What was significant was the development of embryonic Soviets. In fact, in his speech, Vyacheslav Revuzov explains that he is “Chairman of the City Soviet of Workers, Specialists and State Servants. The Soviet includes the representatives of the nine largest enterprises of Tula. Now we incorporate in our soviet regional representatives as well. Mainly, these are strike committees.”
As the above quote from Vyacheslav Revuzov shows, the phenomenon of factory occupations was becoming widespread. The workers were taking over the factories and running them through their own democratically elected committees. For example, in Vyborg, historically the stronghold of the Bolsheviks during the 1917 Revolution, the workers in a paper factory took over the management. They turned out the owners and after a struggle with the OMON, the special police, the workers were de facto running the factory.
Very rapidly the strike movement began to put forward political slogans. Central to the miners’ demands was the resignation of the government. At a joint protest meeting of coalminers and power engineering workers in Vladivostok, dismissal of the cabinet was demanded. The meeting was attended by delegates of all enterprises affiliated to the regional Primorskugol and Dalenergo joint stock companies that ran the mining and power operations in the Far Eastern Russian territory.
Spontaneously-organised workers’ councils… are taking over local government functions and posing a direct challenge to regional authorities and trade union leaders alike. The ‘salvation committees’ are essentially the same idea as the ‘soviets’ of workers and soldiers that spread throughout Russia during the revolutions of 1905 and 1917. [They] have spread to every major community of the Kuzbass region … and are growing increasingly confident. (Hindustan Times 4/12/96)
The miners of the Neryungri open-pit mine in Southern Yakutia, which was considered the largest mining enterprise in Russia’s Far East, stopped supplying coal to their consumers but were taking care of their own town’s needs. In this decision, we had potentially the elements of workers’ control. The workers concluded that they had to begin to take over the running of distribution. This was a very important development which in some areas led logically to the setting up of elected strike committees – in effect embryonic soviets.
A report in The Guardian (18/12/96) stated that:
In a move reminiscent of the creation of workers’ and soldiers’ soviets, which preceded the 1917 Revolution, they have set up a ‘salvation committee’ to co-ordinate protests and take the initiative from the ineffectual local authorities.
“It’s like Lenin said: if the authorities can’t govern in a new way, and the masses do not want to live in the old way, a third force appears,” said Valery Zuyev, aged 42, a mine electrician who heads the salvation committee.
The committee movement, which began in September, has spread to other towns in the Kuzbass region. There have been calls to buy weapons and Moscow is worried. Unlike the strikes by unpaid miners and teachers, the committees unite workers from all sectors. “If they drive you into a corner, if your children are hungry, if the constitution isn’t respected, the only thing is to demand the government be changed,” said Mr Zuyev. “If you can’t achieve that peacefully, you do it by force”.
The workers did not call them soviets, but that is what they were. This fact was of the first order of importance. It showed that the traditions of the revolutionary past, despite everything, were still alive in the hearts and minds of the Russian proletariat, which was actively seeking a way out, relying on its own strength and its own methods. However, the victory of the working class requires something more than just favourable objective conditions, numerical strength or even the willingness of the masses to fight for a change of society. The subjective factor is also indispensable. Without the leadership of Lenin and Trotsky, the October Revolution would never have taken place.
The problem facing the Russian working class could therefore be summed up in one word – leadership. There were big strikes and protests of the workers. But they lacked organization and leadership and their aims were confused and contradictory. With no lead from the Communist Party, from the unions, or from anyone else, they set up democratically elected committees in Kuzbass and other areas. But in the absence of leadership and no programme or perspective, this proved to be an ephemeral phenomenon.