The Workers’ Opposition

A group of anarcho-syndicalists in the Russian Communist Party (Bolshevik). Their leaders were A. G. Shlyapnikov, S. P. Medvedev, A. M. Kollontai, and others.

The Workers' Opposition, as a factional organization, was formed in the ideological dispute on the role of trade unions during 1920-1921, but their name first appeared at the Ninth Congress of the Russian Communist Party (Bolshevik) in September 1920. The programmatic ideas of the Workers' Opposition began to take shape as early as 1919. At the Ninth Congress of the Russian Communist Party (Bolshevik) held from March to April 1920, Shlyapnikov presented a programme on the relations between the Russian Communist Party, the Soviets and trade unions, advocating that the Party and the Soviets should have managed politics and the trade union should have managed economy. At the joint meeting of delegates of the Russian Communist Party, the members of the Central Council of All-Russian Trade Unions and the members of the Moscow Trade Union Council at the Eighth All-Russian Congress of Soviets on December 30, 1920, Shlyapnikov demanded that the management of the national economy be handed over to the trade unions. The best expression of this and general views of the Workers' Opposition was given by Kollontai’s pamphlet “The Workers’ Opposition”, which was published before the Tenth Congress of the Russian Communist Party (B). She advocated the trade unionization of the state, advocated that all the power to manage the economy should have been handed over to the trade unions, and thereby demanded that the management of the whole national economy should be handed over to All-Russia Congress of Producers who are united in the trade and industrial unions which should have elected the central body directing the whole economic life of the Republic; each national economic management organ should also have been respectively elected by the corresponding trade unions, and the party and government organs were not able to reject the candidates proposed by the trade unions. The Workers' Opposition was once supported by some workers. In November 1920, at the meeting of the delegates of the Moscow District (Gubernia) of the Russian Communist Party (Bolshevik), its programmatic demands won 21% of the votes. At the beginning of 1921, they received 30% of the votes at the Second Congress of the All-Russian Miners' Communist Group. But after a great deal of explanatory work by the Russian Communist Party (B), the numbers of Workers' Opposition had been greatly reduced by the time of the Tenth Congress of the Russian Communist Party (B) held in March 1921, and its programme won less than 6% of the votes at the Congress. The Tenth Congress of the Russian Communist Party (B) criticized the views of the Workers' Opposition and others, and decided to dissolved all factional organizations immediately. Lenin was unsparing in his criticism of Kollontai, a representative of the Workers' Opposition, and also others: “You have admitted that you are in opposition. You have come to the Party Congress with Comrade Kollontai’s pamphlet which is entitled ‘The Workers’ Opposition’. When you sent in the final proofs, you knew about the Kronstadt events and the rising petty-bourgeois counter-revolution. And it is at a time like this that you come here, calling yourselves a Workers’ Opposition.” Lenin called for an end to the debate on trade union issues: “Comrades, this is no time to have an opposition. Either you’re on this side, or on the other, but then your weapon must be a gun, and not an opposition.” Lenin's conclusion was: "The Party must be united and any opposition prevented.” However, Shlyapnikov, Medvedev and others retained their group as an illegal organization after the Congress, and in February 1922, they delivered a document entitled The Letter of the Twenty-Two to the Executive Committee of the Communist International. From March 27 to April 2, 1922, the Eleventh Congress of the Russian Communist Party (B) smashed the organizational structure of the Workers' Opposition.