Russia

Women fighters in the days of the great October Revolution - Alexandra Kollontai

Submitted by Ed on Sep 4 2007 17:26

In this article, written in 1927 (well after the Bolshevik consolidation of power), Alexandra Kollontai describes the leading role in which women played in Russian Revolution of 1917. Though heavily Bolshevik in focus, it describes well the activity of working class women in the revolution.

The women who took part in the Great October Revolution – who were they? Isolated individuals? No, there were hosts of them; tens, hundreds of thousands of nameless heroines who, marching side by side with the workers and peasants behind the Red Flag and the slogan of the Soviets, passed over the ruins of tsarist theocracy into a new future...

The Workers' Opposition - Alexandra Kollontai

Submitted by Ed on Sep 4 2007 13:48

Alexandra Kollontai at the International Women's Conference, 1921

Kollontai's pamphlet was one of the central theoretical works of the Workers' Opposition movement within the Bolshevik Party, arguing for increased union control of the economy and the debureaucratisation of the party hierarchy.

First published in Pravda, January 25, 1921 this text was banned in Soviet Russia in March of 1921, by resolution of the 10th Congress of the Communist Party. It was then printed in the Workers ' Dreadnought (by Sylvia Pankhurst), April 22 - August 19, 1921.

On the History of the Movement of Women Workers in Russia - Alexandra Kollontai

Submitted by Ed on Sep 4 2007 13:31

Written in 1919, Alexandra Kollontai's essay looks at the role of working class women in the history of Russian radicalism with particular focus on the 1905 revolution.

What year could be said to mark the beginning of the working women's movement in Russia?

Shliapnikov, Alexander, 1885-1937

Submitted by Ed on Sep 4 2007 13:07

Biography of working class Bolshevik, Alexander Shliapnikov, active in the Workers' Opposition movement who was eventually purged from the party and executed for his activities.

Alexander Shliapnikov was born in 1885 in Murom, Russia, into a Russian family belonging to the urban estate (meshchanstvo) and professing the Old Belief (a religious sect that split from the Russian Orthodox Church in the seventeenth century). His father died when he was three, leaving his mother to support four children by taking in washing.

Appeal of the 22 - Alexander Shliapnikov

Submitted by Ed on Sep 3 2007 13:26

Lenin and Trotsky with troops in Petrograd, 1921

Appeal by members of the Workers' Opposition group for support against Bolshevik forces trying to silence their dissent within the party. Distributed at the Eleventh Russian Communist Party Congress in 1922.

Dear comrades!

From our newspapers we have learned that the Executive Committee of the Communist International is discussing the “united workers’ front,” and we consider it our communist duty to inform you that in our country the “united front” is in bad shape not only in the broad sense of this term, but even in its application toward the ranks of our party.

Theses of the Workers Opposition - Alexander Shliapnikov

Submitted by Ed on Sep 3 2007 13:06

All Russian Central Council of Trade Unions members

Original thesis of the Workers' Opposition group within the Bolshevik Party, arguing for greater trade union control of the economy. Written in 1919, it was published in Pravda on January 25, 1921.

General Tenets

On the relations between the Russian Communist Party, the soviets and production unions - Alexander Shliapnikov

Submitted by Ed on Sep 3 2007 12:50

Thesis of Workers' Opposition member, Alexander Shliapnikov, given at the ninth Bolshevik Party congress in March 1920.

In it he argues for increased democracy within the party and for more control of the economy to be handed over to the unions.

1. The three-year experience of the Russian Revolution shows that the single force consciously fighting for the organization of society on communist foundations is the Proletariat.

The Truth about Kronstadt

Submitted by Mike Harman on Sep 3 2007 05:44

A translation of Pravda o Kronshtadte, produced by SRs shortly after the event in 1921.

This version is taken from: http://www-personal.umich.edu/~mhuey/HOME.html Copyright © 1992, 1998 by Scott Zenkatsu Parker.
The author permits the unlimited duplication, transmission, and distribution of this text with the proper citations for academic, educational, and non-commercial use only.