Workers Against Lenin: Labour Protest and the Bolshevik Dictatorship

by Jonathan Aves

This work challenges the view, widely held among historians of the Bolshevik revolution, that the upsurge of labour unrest of 1920-22 was the result of the appalling living conditions caused by the Civil War, had little significant content and was largely a sideshow to the huge conflict between the Bolsheviks and the peasants.

Based on a wide reading of the contemporary Soviet press, archive sources and first-hand accounts by Bolsheviks and non-Bolsheviks, this work shows how rank and file opposition to the leadership in the Bolshevik-dominated trade unions grew, and how support for non-Bolshevik trade unions and political parties developed fast.

256 pages, Hardcover

First published May 15, 1996

Reviews

[Marko · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book analysis the working resistance from 1920 to 1921, especially focusing on the strike movement of February/March 1921 (so called volynka). It demonstrates the divisions among the working class (bakers VS printing press workers, textile workers and light industry workers in general VS metal workers and heavy industry workers) and explains why such divisions impeded the movement to generalize. Following the unrest, the author explains how several opposition groups from without and within the Communist party emerged and how they related to the basis (mostly workers, less so peasants).

I liked the book for its richness of language (not very dry and easy to read), the abundancy of concrete examples as well as telling citations from other books and its structure.