Abstract
The communist view, as enunciated by Lenin and his successors, of the nature of trade unions and their relation to the state changes radically once a communist regime comes into power. Prior to a take-over, communists inside the trade union movement strive unceasingly and by all means available to generate hostility to the capitalist state. Once in power, with the state now supposedly on the side of the workers, the relationship is totally changed. This apparently signifies the trade unions’ almost total surrender of their position as independent institutions to promote and defend the workers’ interests and welfare.
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Notes
Paul Barton, ‘Trade Unions in the U.S.S.R.’, AFL-CIO Free Trade Union News, 26 September 1979, p. 3.
Mary McAuley, Labour Disputes in Soviet Russia, 1957–1965 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969).
Blair A. Ruble, ‘The Changes in Soviet Trade Unions’, The New Leader, 23 April 1979.
Blair A. Ruble, Soviet Trade Unions (Cambridge University Press, 1981).
A. Pankratov, Trud, 12 December 1973.
Blair A. Ruble, ‘Full Employment Legislation in the U.S.S.R.’, Comparative Labor Law, vol. 2, No. 3 (1977).
Robert Conquest, Industrial Workers in the U.S.S.R. (London: Bodley Head, 1967).
Miklos Haraszti, A Worker in a Worker’s State (trans. M. Wright) (Penguin Books, Ltd., 1977) p. 40.
Isaac Deutscher, Soviet Trade Unions (London: Oxford University Press, 1950) p. 127.
Viktor Haynes and Olga Semyonova, Workers Against the Gulag (London, 1979) p. 13.
Quoted in M. Costello, Workers’ Participation in the Soviet Union (Moscow: Novosti Press Agency, 1977) p. 17.
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© 1984 Leonard Schapiro and Joseph Godson
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Godson, J. (1984). The Role of the Trade Unions. In: Schapiro, L., Godson, J. (eds) The Soviet Worker. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-17577-2_5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-17577-2_5
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
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