Encyclopedia of Russian History

In August, September, and October 1917, workers seized some factories, and more were taken over after the Bolsheviks came to power. But faced with shortages of basic supplies, chaotic markets, labor absenteeism, and inadequate technical and managerial know-how, proletarian owners had little success in getting factories back into production. Lenin soon soured on the practice of workers’ control, and beginning in early 1918 he started centralizing economic decision-making. He also called for unitary or one-man management (edi-nonachalie) in industries and individual enterprises as well as use of bourgeois specialists-former engineers, technicians, and managers-to help operate the factories and reenergize the economy. Although workers’ control was largely dropped, a faction within the Bolshevik party known as the Workers’ Opposition campaigned unsuccessfully during 1919 and 1920 for trade unions to have a greater role in running the Soviet economy. See also: EDINONACHALIE; FEBRUARY REVOLUTION; WORKERS’ OPPOSITION

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Smith, Stephen A. (1983). Red Petrograd: Revolution in the Factories, 1917-1918. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Wade, Rex. (2000). The Russian Revolution, 1917. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

JOHN M. THOMPSON

ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RUSSIAN HISTORY

WORLD REVOLUTION

WORKERS’ OPPOSITION

The Workers’ Opposition (Rabochaya oppozitsia) was a group of trade union leaders and industrial administrators within the Russian Communist Party who opposed party leaders’ policy on workers and industry from 1919 to 1921. The group formed in the fall of 1919, when its leader, Alexander Shlyapnikov, called for trade unions to assume leadership of the highest party and state organs. Leading members of the Metalworkers’ Union supported Shlyapnikov, who criticized the growing bureaucratization of the Communist Party and Soviet government, which he feared would stifle worker initiative. The Workers’ Opposition advocated management of the economy by a hierarchy of elected worker assemblies, organized according to branches of the economy (metalworking, textiles, mining, etc.).

Shlyapnikov, the chairman of the All-Russian Metalworkers’ Union, was the most prominent leader of the Workers’ Opposition. Thirty-eight individuals signed the theses of the Workers’ Opposition in December 1920. Most of them had been metalworkers; they represented the Metalworkers’ Union, Mners’ Union, and the leading organs of heavy industry. Alexandra Kollontai advised the Workers’ Opposition and was a spokesperson for it. She wrote a pamphlet about the group (Rabochaya oppozitsia), which circulated among delegates to the Tenth Communist Party Congress in 1921.

Leaders of the Opposition used the resources and organizations of major trade unions (metalworkers, miners, textile workers) to mobilize support. Many meetings were arranged by personal letter or word of mouth. Metalworkers or former metalworkers composed the membership, all of whom were also Communists.

The Workers’ Opposition drew attention to a divide between Soviet industrial workers and the Communist Party, which claimed to rule in the name of the working class. Party leaders feared that the Workers’ Opposition would inspire opponents of the regime. At the Tenth Party Congress in March 1921, the party banned the Workers’ Opposition. See also: CIVIL WAR OF 1917-1922; KOLLONTAI, ALEXANDRA MIKHAILOVNA; SHLYAPNIKOV, ALEXANDER GAV-RILOVICH

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Holmes, Larry E. (1990). For the Revolution Redeemed: The Workers Opposition in the Bolshevik Party, 1919-1921 (Carl Beck Papers in Russian and East European Studies, no. 802). Pittsburgh, PA : University of Pittsburgh Center for Russian and East European Studies. Kollontai, Alexandra. (1971). The Workers Opposition in Russia.. London: Solidarity.

BARBARA ALLEN

WORKERS’ AND PEASANTS’ INSPECTORATE

See RABKRIN.

WORLD REVOLUTION

When Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels implored workers of the world to unite, they announced a new vision of international politics: world socialist revolution. Although central to Marxist thought, the importance of world revolution evoked little debate until World War I. It was Vladimir Lenin who revitalized it, made it central to Bolshevik political theory, and provided an institutional base for it. Although other Marxists, such as Nikolai Bukharin and Rosa Luxemburg, devoted serious attention to it, Lenin’s ideas had the most profound impact because they persuasively linked an analysis of imperialism with the struggle for world socialist revolution.