Workers Opposition

an antiparty faction in the RCP(B) from 1920 to 1922 that exemplified an anarchosyndi-calist trend in the party at the end of the Civil War of 1918–20 and during the period immediately after, a period of transition to peace and economic dislocation. The faction was headed by A. G. Shliapnikov, S. P. Medvedev, and A. M. Kollontai.

In 1921 the Tenth Congress of the RCP(B) noted that the an-archosyndicalist trend had been caused “partly by the entry into the party of individuals who had not yet completely mastered the communist attitude but primarily by the impact of petit bourgeois elements on the proletariat and on the RCP” [Desiatyi s”ezd RKP(b): Stenografich. otchet, 1963, p. 574].

The platform of the Workers’ Opposition took shape as early as 1919. At the Ninth Congress of the RCP(B), held in March and April, 1920, Shliapnikov read the paper “On the Question of the Interrelationships Between the RCP, the Soviets, and Industrial Unions,” which proposed that the party and Soviet state should concern itself with politics and that trade unions should be concerned with the economy. The congress rejected this proposal as anarchosyndicalist.

The Workers’ Opposition group first appeared under this name in September 1920 at the Ninth All-Russian Conference of the RCP(B), where its position was again rejected. In November 1920 the Workers’ Opposition embarked on a path of factional struggle and organized a conference of its supporters during the Moscow Province Party Conference. On Dec. 30, 1920, at a joint session of Communist delegates to the Eighth All-Russian Congress of Soviets, the All-Russian Central Council of Trade Unions, and the Moscow City Council of Trade Unions, Shliapnikov read the Workers’ Opposition paper “The Organization of the National Economy and the Tasks of the Unions,” which vilified the economic system of management that had emerged in the country and demanded that the management of the national economy be transferred to trade unions.

The Workers’ Opposition became a definite antiparty faction during the trade union controversy of 1921. Its ideological and political program was fully expounded in Kollontai’s pamphlet The Workers’ Opposition, which was issued on the eve of the Tenth Congress of the RCP(B). In this pamphlet the Workers’ Opposition proposed that the management of the national economy be transferred to “all-Russian congresses of industrialists,” which would be organized as trade unions and would elect a central management body. The opposition also demanded that all management bodies of the national economy be elected only by corresponding trade unions and that the union candidacy should not be subject to cancellation by party or Soviet bodies. This would in fact have led to the negation of the leadership role of the party and the dictatorship of the proletariat as the main instruments in the building of socialism. The Workers’ Opposition set the trade unions off from the Soviet state and the Communist Party and regarded the trade unions, and not the party, as the highest form of working-class organization. It slanderously accused the party leadership of “having lost contact with the party masses,” of “having underestimated the creative forces of the proletariat,” and of “having degenerated.”

The members of the Workers’ Opposition continued to advocate their opportunist views at the Tenth Congress of the RCP(B), held in 1921. The congress resolutely condemned the Workers’ Opposition, whose attitude was totally contrary to Marxism. In the resolution On the Syndicalist and Anarchist Trend in Our Party, proposed by V. I. Lenin, the congress stated that the propagandistic ideas of the Workers’ Opposition were incompatible with membership in the RCP(B) and ruled that all groups and factions were to be immediately disbanded. After the congress, most members of the Workers’ Opposition broke with the group. However, the leaders of the opposition maintained an antiparty organization and continued their schismatic activity.

In February 1922 the Workers’ Opposition sent the Declaration of the 22 to the Executive Committee of the Communist International; this document contained slanderous attacks on the party. After considering the declaration, the Executive Committee of the Communist International condemned the group’s actions.

In 1922 the Eleventh Congress of the RCP(B) adopted a resolution in which it branded the antiparty behavior of the Workers’ Opposition, expelled several members of the opposition from the party, and issued a final warning to Shliapnikov, Med-vedev, and Kollontai. The Workers’ Opposition ceased to exist after the congress.