Mass Work Under Conditions of Reaction

In the years of reaction the Bolsheviks had to learn how to use each and every opportunity for legal mass work. A key area was that of the trade unions. The Mensheviks, with their opportunistic tendency to adapt to the most backward layers of the class, were always stronger in the unions than the Bolsheviks. Echoing the positions of the Economists, they held that the unions should be politically ‘neutral’, something that completely flies in the face of elementary Marxist principles. As the basic units of working class organisation, it is true that the unions must strive to embrace the broadest layers of the proletariat. Only the fascists must be excluded, as the direct enemies of the working class who seek to destroy not only the unions but all other democratic rights conquered by the workers, and thereby liquidate the germs of a new society which are maturing within the old.

However, while the unions should strive to organise all layers of the class, even politically backward layers, that does not at all mean that Marxists must not fight to win over a majority in the unions, and still less that the unions must be politically ‘neutral’. The struggle for workers’ rights cannot be limited to a purely economic struggle, but inevitably passes over into politics. To demand that the unions abstain from political activity (a demand which, ironically, unites the reactionaries and the anarcho-syndicalists) is to play into the hands of the bourgeois parties. Non-political trade unionism, as Lenin explained many times, is yellow trade unionism, bourgeois trade unionism. This was so obvious that even the Stuttgart Congress of the Second International stated that the Social Democrats should strive for leadership of the trade unions. Yet Martov opposed this, on the grounds that it was not appropriate for Russian conditions.

The combination of legal and illegal work meant that for the Bolsheviks participation in the mass labour organisations was obligatory under all circumstances. The socialist revolution would be unthinkable without a lengthy period of patient work to establish a firm base of support in the unions, making use of skilful and flexible tactics in order to combat, not only the police and the state, but the bureaucratic ‘policemen’ who strive to make the unions safe for the ruling class by purging them of revolutionary elements. Proletary no. 21, which came out in February 1908, published the resolution of the CC of the RSDLP on trade unions. Party members were instructed to set up Party groups within trade union organisations and to work in them under the direction of the local Party centres. Where police persecution made it impossible to organise trade unions or to recreate those that had been broken up, the CC proposed that trade union nuclei and trade unions should be organised illegally. As regards such legal organisations as benefit societies, temperance societies, and others, the resolution of the CC instructed the local Party organisations to form within them “well-knit groups of Social Democrats to conduct Party work among the broadest possible masses of the proletariat”. To thwart any attempt on the part of the Mensheviks to interpret this part of the resolution in an opportunist manner, the resolution pointed out the need for making it clear that “the organised activity of the proletariat cannot be limited to such societies alone” and that the legal existence of trade unions “should not belittle the militant tasks of organising the proletariat in trade unions”. (LCW, vol. 13, pp. 532-33, note.)

Although the Mensheviks maintained their advantageous position in the majority of unions right up to 1917, the Bolsheviks made steady progress. In November 1907, in Petersburg there were 12 clubs and trade union societies for workers, but by 1909 the number had increased to 19. These friendly societies often had to function under different names which camouflaged their real nature. For example, the Bolsheviks in St. Petersburg ran one called ‘The Source of Enlightenment and Knowledge’; another was called ‘Enlightenment’; yet another, in Vyborg, ‘Education’, and so on. Often these societies and clubs played the role of union organisations in the absence of real trade unions.

The systematic penetration of even the most bureaucratic and right-wing unions is a duty of every serious revolutionary current which is fighting for influence over the masses. The Bolsheviks conducted such work in the most difficult conditions of reaction. So successful were they in capturing positions in the legal unions that the authorities were increasingly concerned, as reflected in police reports, such as the following dated May 1907, which emerged from the archives of the Okhrana after the revolution: “The trade unions have already taken on the definite appearance of completely Social Democratic organisations, and are therefore extremely dangerous for the ruling stratum.” Alarmed police chiefs demanded stern measures against the unions before these “nests of revolutionary conspiracy” could once again give rise to armed uprisings. (Quoted in Istoriya KPSS, vol. 2, p. 319.)

Work in legal organisations was not confined to the unions. The Bolsheviks made use of every legal conference called by the government or the liberals, like the All-Russian Conference of popular universities in Petersburg in January 1908, where the Bolsheviks proposed a motion based on class demands, such as the right of workers’ organisations to representation on the boards of universities with the right to take part in the arranging of the curricula, choosing suitable lecturers on social sciences, and recognition of every nationality to education in its own language. The resolution was, not unsurprisingly, rejected, whereupon the workers’ representatives walked out. Not all such events ended so well. Another field of activity were the cooperatives. This had an important practical side, since, under the harsh conditions of reaction, workers resorted to the co-ops for all kinds of purposes (insurance, etc.). At the First All-Russian Congress of Representatives of Cooperative Societies, held in Moscow in April 1908, the Bolsheviks formed a group – against the wishes of the Mensheviks – to lead the fight of the trade union and workers’ cooperatives against the bourgeois cooperators who were in the majority. After a number of Bolsheviks had spoken the police imposed a ban on all speeches that referred to the class struggle, the trade unions, aid to workers during strikes and lockouts and any other potentially subversive matters (including the election of a congress bureau) on pain of arrest. As a protest against this, the congress was closed.

Another important field was work among women. Legal women’s organisations existed and held conferences where the Bolsheviks also intervened systematically. At the First All-Russian Women’s Congress, held in December in Petersburg, there were many women workers among the delegates. On the agenda was the fight against alcoholism, labour protection for women and children, equal rights for Jews, and the political and legal status of women. The women workers moved a resolution demanding universal, direct, and equal suffrage by secret ballot, without distinction of sex, race, and religion. The presiding commission refused to read out the resolution, and replaced it with another drafted on bourgeois-liberal lines, upon which the women workers walked out. A similar fate lay in store for the First All-Russian Congress of Factory Medical Officers and Representatives of Manufacturing Industry, which met in Moscow in April 1909 under the grandiose slogan of a ‘festival of reconciliation’. But when the workers present began to take the floor to denounce the appalling safety and hygiene conditions in their workplaces, the light of reconciliation soon dimmed. After the police demanded that no questions “liable to excite class struggle” be touched on in the debates, all the workers and some of the doctors walked out, in view of which regrettable setback, the presidium decided to close the congress. (LCW, vol. 15, pp. 510-11, note.)

These legal organisations often included backward and non-political layers, yet even here, in the most apparently unpromising territory, the Bolsheviks conducted political work, and used them to build and strengthen their links with the masses. Like a mountain climber doggedly searching out every nook and cranny to grasp and haul himself up, they looked for each and every legal opening and exploited it to the full. They even intervened in an Anti-Alcoholic Conference convened by the Temperance Society in December 1909. Slowly, painfully, the Bolsheviks regrouped and rebuilt the links with the masses, which had been brutally severed by the victorious counter-revolution. Nevertheless, it was still an uphill struggle. The revolutionaries were still swimming against the stream. The general situation of the class remained depressed. The Bolsheviks discouraged adventurist actions which would lay the workers open to repression. The basic need was to conserve what forces remained, advance slowly, inch by inch, and await a change in the situation. Only in 1911, with the Lena massacre, did the tide begin to turn. The recovery, as predicted by Trotsky, was linked to an economic revival. Up to that time, the graph of the strike movement, which provides a rough and ready index of the state of the movement, registered a steady and persistent decline, as demonstrated in table 4.1.

Then in 1910-13 a boom announced the end of the long depression that dominated the early years of the 20th century. The production of cast iron – not unrelated to the war preparations of the tsarist regime – increased in the period 1909-13 from 175m to 283m poods. In the same period coal production went up from 1.591 billion to 2.214 billion tonnes. The economic upswing gave a powerful impetus to a revival of the class struggle. The workers flexed their muscles and felt their new-found economic power. In the second half of 1910 there was already a rise in the number of strikes, coinciding with the economic recovery. Increased production and full order books transformed the climate on the shop floor, increasing the confidence of the working class. By mid-1910, the working class once more passed onto the offensive. 10,000 Moscow textile workers struck in the summer. Later the strike wave spread to Riga, Vladimir, Kazan, Saratov, Warsaw, Odessa, Kostroma, and other industrial centres. The immediate causes of the strikes were low wages, bad conditions, and the old problem of factory fines. But these were only the immediate expression of a far more deep-seated and widespread feeling of disaffection. Now, feeling a new sense of power, they moved to take their revenge. The workers were smarting from the results of the defeat of the 1905 Revolution, from the years of oppression, sackings, wage cuts, and a thousand and one humiliations and injustices, and even strikes in protest against the use of the familiar form of address (‘ty’, which is the equivalent of the French ‘tu’, used by adults when talking to little children) by management when talking to workers.

Increased production went hand in hand with the concentration of capital, with mergers creating bigger and bigger factories. By 1914 factories of more than 500 workers represented 56.5 per cent of the total. Tsarist Russia was now one of the major world powers in terms of concentration of capital. Russia remained an extremely backward, semi-feudal economy but with an enormous concentration of industry and banking capital – more, in fact, than most other advanced capitalist countries. This was a graphic manifestation of the Marxist law of combined and uneven development. The process of monopolisation is shown by the fact that by 1913 nine big companies accounted for 53.1 per cent of the production of cast iron: seven watch factories produced 90 per cent of watches, six Baku firms produced 65 per cent of oil, and so on. The total number of monopolies in Russia was not less than 150-200 monopolies. The predominance of gigantic factories, concentrating large numbers of workers in appalling conditions, especially in the metal industry, was a powerful factor giving an impressive sweep to the strike movement that preceded the First World War and investing it with a clearly revolutionary character. (See AG Rashin, Formirovaniye Rabochego Klassa Rossiy, p. 98.)

Significantly, many of these strikes were successful. Out of 265, 140 (52.8 per cent) were won. Even more significant was the number of political strikes. In 1909, according to official figures, 7.7 per cent of strikes were political; in 1910, the figure was 8.1 per cent, but by 1912, the figure was an astonishing 75.8 per cent. These figures provide an unerring barometer of the mood of the masses. Nor did the movement limit itself to strikes. The wave of radicalisation also affected the intelligentsia, especially the youth. The student movement was revived, and soon fell under the influence of the revolutionary Social Democracy. In January – March 1911, the Bolsheviks were already in a position to call student strikes in St. Petersburg, Moscow, Kiev, Kharkov, Tomsk, and Warsaw. There were also mass demonstrations, some of them of an overtly political character, like the extraordinary mass demonstrations which took place at Tolstoy’s funeral in November 1910. The great Russian novelist had earned the hatred of the reactionaries by his progressive views, and had even been excommunicated by the Holy Synod of the Orthodox Church. But despite official disapproval, it was impossible to prevent the masses from taking advantage of his funeral, not just to say a last farewell to the great man, but above all to express their hatred of the system and the autocratic regime.