# Trade Unions in Soviet Russia/The All Russia Metal Workers Union

The All-Russia Metal Workers Union.
By ALEXANDER GUREVITCH,
Secretary of the Central Committee of the All Russia Metal Workers' Union
I.
THE FORMATION OF THE UNION.
The formation of the first metal workers' union is connected with the period of the first Russian Revolution of 1905–1906. All attempts to create a Metal Workers' Trade Union previous to that time failed, every time falling- foul of the Tsarist police regime. Only here and there in isolated towns embryos of trade union organisations existed in the form of mutual aid societies with very limited militant tasks. Such societies existed in Kharkoff, Moscow and Petrograd.
The "Mechanical Workers' Society" in Moscow and the "Russian Factory Workers' Association" in Petrograd proved to be places where agents of the Tsarist government attempted to degrade the class consciousness of the metal workers by concentrating their attention on. questions of mutual aid and diverting them from the political struggle. The development of the labour movement, however, soon led to different results. The firing on the labour demonstrators marching to the Winter Palace on January 9th, 1905, gave a strong impetus to the labour movement.
The revolutionary struggle in 1905 of course embraced wide masses of the metal workers, and the most active elements of them were engaged in the political struggle. For that reason the metal workers' union arose later than the unions in other industries. Only in the spring of 1906 did the first Metal Workers' Union arise in Petrograd and Moscow.
In February, 1907, the first conference of metal workers' unions in the Moscow industrial area took place, in which representatives of the Petersburg, Baku, Lougansk and Vitebsk metal workers' unions participated. This conference elected an organisation committee to convene an All-Russian conference of metal workers. The organisation committee succeeded in convening in September, 1907, the second conference which also took place in Moscow. But the wave of reaction put an end not only to all attempts to create an All-Russian metal workers' union, but also to the existence of separate ​unions in industrial centres. At the beginning of 1907 there were in the whole of Russia 81 unions of workers working in metals and machine construction, with a total membership of 54,173. These unions were not constructed on a strictly industrial principle. In many localities the unions were narrow craft organisations of moulders, turners, smiths, etc.
New growths of the trade union movement among metal workers became evident in Petersburg during 1912 and 1914. This period, in which the metal workers marched hand in hand with the left wing of the social democrats, is important for the fact that it witnessed the development of groups of active workers in our movement who played an important part in the creation of our union after the revolution of February, 1917.
The war involved the practical dissolution of the scattered metal workers' organisations, so that the metal workers entered the epoch of our great revolution with hardly any trade union organisation. The most powerful weapon of their organisation was that highly developed class consciousness which they were able to forge in the process of the revolutionary struggle.
The Revolution of February, 1917, gave a tremendous impetus to the development of trade union organisations among the metal workers. At the third All-Russian Conference of Trade Unions which took place 20th–28th June, 1917, 400,000 workers organised in metal workers' unions were represented. At that time also a conference of metal workers' delegates was held at which a Provisional Executive Committee of the All-Russia Metal Workers' Union was elected and in this manner the foundation of our national organisation was laid down.
The first inaugural conference of the union took place in Petrograd in January, 1918, at which more than 600,000 workers were represented. This Conference laid down the rules of the All-Russian Union and elected a Central Committee. The organisation was constructed on a democratic centralism in the sphere of management of all the unions' activities, responsibility to constituents, and subordination to the higher organs of the unions. This same conference outlined the functions of the union in the period when the proletariat has taken power; of this we shall speak later.
The ensuing year was not favourable for organising work. The German imperialist offensive and the counter-revolution which took place with the assistance of the latter in the Ukraine and the Don Basin, as well as the Russian counter-revolutionary offensive from Siberia backed by the Czecho-Slovak troops and the Entente, drew all the attention of our union to the defence of the fundamental gains of the revolution. The Ural and the Don Basin were cut off from Central Russia, the metal industry in Petrograd was reduced to a considerable extent, as a consequence of its being dismantled and evacuated to other districts.
All this explains the fact that at our second conference which took place in January, 1919, only 400,000 organised members of the union were represented.
The third conference which took place recently (April 6th, 1920) again had the possibility of gathering representatives from all parts of Russia, and at this conference more than 550,000 were represented.
II.
THE CONSTRUCTION OF THE UNION AND THE RELATIONS BETWEEN THE VARIOUS ORGANS.
The Metal Workers' Union at the present moment is a national organisation which embraces all those engaged in the metal and metal working industry. All workers, engaged in obtaining metal from the mines and working this metal in any form, from smelting to the making of machines and metal implements, are included in our Union. Besides this it includes all occupations in a metallurgical or metal working undertaking irrespective of category or trade. Thus, our members include skilled and unskilled workers, the office staff, technicians and engineers; workers engaged on different crafts in the metal works, as the wood mould makers for instance, are all included in our union.
This principle of industrial organisation was accepted by the union in 1917, and to a considerable degree constituted our strength in the revolutionary class struggle. At the present moment it is an essential condition of the work of the union in organising the metal industry on socialist foundations.
The extraordinary growth of interest of the workers in the industrial organisation even in the middle of 1917 resulted in more than 50 per cent, of all the metal workers becoming members of the union. This gave the opportunity for many local organisations on their own initiative to raise the question, at general labour meetings, of compulsory membership in the unions for all metal workers. The result of this movement, which was supported by the second All-Russian Conference, is that now practically all workers and employees in the metal industry are members of the Union. This to a considerable degree lightens our task in working out rates of wages.
The scheme of organisation of the metal workers' union is based on the following: the primary organisation is the factory committee. This is elected every six months at a general meeting of workers and employees and generally consists of from 5 to 11 members. The main task of the Committee is to carry out all the trade union regulations in the Factory; it deals with the protection of labour, trade union agitation and propaganda, supplies the workers with necessaries, clothes as well as articles of general consumption, and maintains the fundamental basis of trade union and industrial discipline among the members of the union. The Conference of Factory Committees of a given industrial area, usually a territorial area a little smaller than a "government" (gubernia), is the higher directing organ within that area. This conference elects the regional committee which manages these regional branches of the All-Russia Union of Metal Workers.
Usually these committees are in the industrial centres of the regions. As subsidiary machinery the regional Committee may have its agents in the various towns embraced by it, but these are not obligatory; such agents are usually elected at local meetings of the members and carry out the instructions of the higher organ.
​The congress of the union is held once a year; the representatives at this conference are elected at regional conference on the basis of strict proportion of one delegate to every 2,000 members. The Conference elects the central committee of the union. The regulations of the Congress and, in the interval between congresses, the regulations of the Central Committee are obligatory upon all the organs of the union and upon the members.
The union also allows the organisation of sections for those categories of labour the working conditions of which are to some extent peculiar, or to those who have comparatively recently entered into the organisation. These sections are organised in the form of elected subsidiary organs attached to the general trade union but they have not the right to carry out any independent resolutions without the sanction of the union, nor can they have separate funds. In the whole national union there is only one engineers' section; in some local organisations there are sections of workers working in gold, silver and platinum, or there are also sections of workers working in electrical undertakings. There are no other sections at the present moment. The metal workers' union is in this manner one complete organisation, strongly welded by the common interests of the metal working industry.
This structure of the metal workers' union was developed in the process of prolonged organisation work, and found it expression in the rules of the union organs accepted at the second Congress of the Union.
There are three questions which are of the greatest interest in the development of the organisation; these are: (1) the relations between the factory committees and the union, (2) the regional organisations, (3) the inclusion of engineers in the unions. (Note: the engineers referred to here are the higher engineers and not the mechanics).
The first question stood out very sharply in the period directly after the October Revolution when the factory committees and the unions were faced with the same problem in the sphere of organising production, namely, to replace the overthrown governing authority of capital by a new directing order.
The conditions were too new; there had been no previous experience; therefore hesitation and experimenting were inevitable. But the new problems before the trade unions—problems compelling them to shift the centre of gravity of their labours to the sphere of economic construction—made it essential for all the economic institutions of the proletariat to fuse into a single organisation; a form of organisation was found which fused all the organising forces into one; the factory committees were converted into the embryo of the union, the unit of its organisation. The experience of more than two years' work has sufficiently justified this form.
The second question in the sphere of organisation had both a practical and theoretical significance. Its practical significance lay in the fact that in such a tremendous territory as Russia it was difficult to construct rapidly a centralised union.
​The regional organisations were necessary in the transitional stages toward a centralised union, but they became an obstacle in the path of the creation of such a union after the preliminary organising work had been carried out. The second All-Russian Conference of the Metal Workers' Union therefore dissolved all the regional organisations.
This question was a question of principle in those regions where national peculiarities created special conditions of work. Thus the question of the Ukrainian regional organisations was bound up with the Ukrainian national question. But the long years of joint struggle and identity of economic interests established such unbreakable ties between the Ukrainian metal workers and those of Central Russia, that the inclusion of the Ukrainian metal Workers in the All-Russian Union, after their liberation from Skoropadsky, and later 'from Denikin, was absolutely painless. There was never any tendency among the metal workers in the Ukraine or in the Don basin which necessitated the establishment of the federal principle in the trade union organisation. The Ukraine, like the whole of Russia is divided up into districts, all of which enter into a single centralised metal workers' union.
Finally, the third question of admittance of engineers to membership of the union was of considerable importance to our union as it was for all other unions in Russia.
Under the capitalist regime engineers in the main were outside the working class, and certain sections of them were even hostile. The engineers did not understand the constructive aims of the October Revolution; they only saw in the class which had just come to power, the ability to destroy the forces of production. The inevitable tension of relations in the factories helped to increase the estrangement, but the process of reconstructing the economic life of the country which is now going on, as well as the historical lessons in the Ural and the Ukraine, where capital assumed the most repulsive form of speculation, and plundered the productive wealth of the country, were an impetus to a change in the attitude on the part of the engineers toward the workers. The workers and the engineers first found common ground and one might say a common language in the metal workers' union.
The All-Russian Conference of Metal Engineers which took place in August, 1919, was the first conference in the world where the organised proletariat and the engineers met for the discussion of general questions of the economic revival of the country. Here we have the first step towards the co-operation between the physical and mental workers, and in this connection the Conference has an historical significance. As we have already stated, all engineers are included in the union, form separate sections and participate in the solution of all questions affecting the union.
These are the main features in the present organisation of the All-Russia Metal Workers' Union. Its main work was always determined by the more fundamental problems facing the proletariat as a class.
III.
THE UNION, THE SOVIET GOVERNMENT AND THE COMMUNIST PARTY.
As in the years of Tsarism, so in the months of Kerensky and during the past years of the Soviet Government the Metal workers' union invariably and uninterruptedly associated its work with the general revolutionary struggle of the working class. Although formally independent of the Party, the Union in fact submitted itself to the directions of the left wing of the Social-Democrats—i.e., the Bolshevik Party, and subsequently the Communist Party. During the reign of the Tsar and right up to the beginning of the war, the Petrograd Metal Workers' Union carried on an inseparably connected economic and political struggle. Every economic strike was converted into a blow against the existing political system. The masses of the members of the union were brought up in a spirit of revolutionary social democracy.
After the February Revolution the Petrograd and Moscow unions, and subsequently the provisional Central Committee from the first days of its existence, took up a revolutionary position. The cry "all power to the Soviets" was the more easily acceptable to the union from the fact that the direct acquaintance with the life in the factory, the lockouts of factory workers, the rise in the cost of living after every increase in wages, all showed that the struggle for the improvement of the economic conditions of life of the proletariat must be conducted as a struggle for the conquest of the means of production. For that reason, when the sixth conference of the Bolshevik Party gathered in Petrograd at the period of the Korniloff offensive, the metal workers' union was the first to welcome it. For the same reason the Moscow metal workers' union called an extremely well-organised one-day general strike of protest on the 25th of August, 1917 (new style), when the State convention of all the bourgeois and compromising socialist parties opened in Moscow. During the October Revolution the metal workers' union took a most energetic part and handed over its machinery for the purpose of assisting the establishment of the Soviet Government.
At its inaugural conference in January, 1918, the union formulated its fundamental tasks under the new social system. The Conference decided to subordinate all the work of the Union to the task of strengthening the Soviet system and organising national economic and social life. This two-fold task remains up to the present moment the fundamental task of the union, and the subsequent conferences which have taken place since then have endeavoured to seek means of developing this work.
IV.
THE ORGANISATION OF THE METAL WORKING INDUSTRY.
One of the greatest tasks of the union which have been carried out during the two? and a half years of existence of Soviet Russia has been the creation of new economic organs in the metal industry.
All the existing organs from the highest to the lowest have been created with the closest and direct participation of the union. All factory managements, the directorates of socialist trusts as well as the collegiate of the supreme economic organisation in the metal industry of the republic—the Metal Department of the Supreme Council of Public Economy, are appointed by agreement between the respective trade union organs and State institutions, usually from candidates put forward by the union. Thus during the past year the Central Committee of the Union confirmed the appointment of 134 factory (managements consisting of 64 per cent. workers, 8.5 per cent. employees and 27.5 per cent. engineers.
The union in conjunction with the Metal Department of the Supreme Council of Public Economy has carried out important work in organising the socialist trusts in the metal industry, which are constructed on purely industrial lines. Usually conferences were called of factory committees and factory managements, embracing several factories, at which questions of trustification and production programmes were discussed and at which the election of the head director of the trust took place. Thus at the present time the following large trusts exist in the metal industry.
1. The State Machine Construction Works is a trust embracing the largest locomotive and Railway Car construction works like the Sormova, Kolomensk, Briansk and Kharkoff Works as well as a group consisting of the Koulebaksk, Tashinsk and Wickson Works. The number of workers employed at these works amounts to 45,000. At the head of the directorate are comrades who formerly worked in the union and who were elected to the head management by the works conference.
2. The Central Management of the Heavy Industry (which embraces the largest metal works in the Don Basin like the Dnieprowsk, Briansk and Mourievsk, altogether 27 works with 42,000 workers) is composed of comrades enjoying the complete confidence of the Union, one of whom is a former member of the Central Committee of the Union.
3. At the head of the Central Directorate of Artillery Works (which embrace all metal works producing war material) there are comrades who were elected at the conferences and confirmed by the union.
4. In the Ural, five district managements were organised embracing all the metal works in the Urals, and organised in <the same manner as those above.
​5. The Collegiate of the Metal Department of the Supreme Council of Public Economy is organised by the Central Committee of the Union in agreement with the Presidium of the Supreme Council of Public Economy. Of the five members of the Collegiate two are members of the Central Committee.
6. There has also been established a Collegiate of the- Electrical Department of the Supreme Council of Public Economy and a Head Management of electrical undertakings which embraces all electrical works like the late "Central Electrical Company," the late Siemens, Shuckert, etc.
All other metal factories are organised on similar lines; they are united into trusts or subordinated to local government metal departments. Once a year conferences take place in every trust composed of representatives of factory committees and factory managements, to which the management of the trust reports. The union takes a very active part in guiding the work of these conferences.
V.
THE UNION AND COMPULSORY LABOUR.
Having accepted the organisation of industry as its fundamental task, the Metal Workers' Union was one of the first to put forward the idea of introducing general compulsory labour, of attaching the workers to the factories, and the obligatory transfer of labour power from one undertaking to another; in a word the idea of what is now called the militarisation of labour. The resolution carried at the second conference of the Union Which took place in January, 1919, dealing with the participation of the unions in the organisation and management of industry among other things says:
"For the purpose of maintaining a sufficient staff of workers in the factory, and for the proper utilisation of the labour power of the staff, the conference considers it necessary to introduce general obligatory labour based on the compulsory census and distribution of labour power by the industrial unions in conformity with the requirements of national economy. It is necessary also to prevent the departure and transfer of workers from important undertakings to others without the consent of the industrial union."
In this manner the supreme organ of the union, the Conference, on its own initiative put forward a measure which in capitalist countries would lead to the practical dissolution of the labour unions. The experience of the metal workers' union on this question goes to show that this measure has had a useful effect in the organisation of industry, particularly in the armament factories, and the function and importance of the union has not only not decreased but, on the contrary, they were to a considerable degree strengthened and enlarged. The Metal Workers' Union is proud in the consciousness of the fact that, thanks to these measures, it has succeeded in increasing the defensive powers of the country and has helped in the defeat of the forces of the counter-revolution.
VI.
THE FIXING OF WAGE RATES.
The largest sphere of work of the union lies in the introduction of wage rates for persons employed in the metal industry. The union has worked out a uniform scale which embraces all workers, office staff, technicians, engineers employed in metal working and metallurgical undertakings.
The wage rates define the legal position of the worker in production and cover all aspects of the productivity and the valuation of labour.
The scale establishes the standard of output of separate workers, of gangs, and whole factories, and connects the standard of wages with the quantity of output.
The union was guided in its task of working out wage rates by the resolution on the regularisation of wages carried at the second conference in January, 1919. We quote this resolution almost in full as it lays down the theoretical basis and practical policy of the Union in connection with wages.
"Having heard the report on the system of wages the Second All-Russian Conference of Metal Workers recognises:
1. In the period of capitalist economy the workers' struggle with the employers for the improvement of their material conditions, which compelled the further technical development of capitalist production, inevitably expressed itself in the demand for monetary guarantee of the minimum standard of living.
2. Under such conditions, the only system of money payment for labour was daily or monthly wages, the raising of which, while improving the condition of the, workers, compelled the employers in their capitalist interest to perfect the methods of management and to introduce new and more suitable means of production as well as to unite isolated economic units in large trustified undertakings.
3. In the period of socialist revolution which Russia is now experiencing, payment of labour by time loses its character as a means of protecting the interests of labour, for the reason that to the extent to which the State authorities succeed in acquiring the economic apparatus of the country, the economic apparatus is concentrated on the task of satisfying the essential requirements of the working class.
4. At the same time, as a result of the transition of the whole economic apparatus into the hands of the proletarian State, payment of wages on a time rate can no longer fulfil its former function of compelling technical developments in undertakings, leading to the industrial development of the country, for the reason that the economic class struggle between the proletariat and employers has become a historical anachronism in a period of proletarian dictatorship.
5. In the transitional period of development of national economy, in the struggle of the working class for the acquirement of the economic apparatus, the most powerful means of reviving Russian industry is the administrative-technical reconstruction of undertakings with complicated organs of ​management, and the technical reorganisation of factories, on the principle of the fullest subdivision of labour of the managing staff as well as of separate, workers.
6. Thus as a condition precedent to the organisation which should accustom Russian industry to the spirit, hitherto foreign to her, of modern, large, Western European industry, in the conditions which we are experiencing at the present moment, it is to a considerable degree important to standardise labour by a definite system of wages based on the principle of the responsibility of the workers for the productivity of their labour.
The Conference therefore resolves:
1. As the improvement of the condition of the working class in the period of the political dictatorship of the proletariat wholly depends on the success of its efforts to revive the productive forces of the country, the All-Russia Union of Metal Workers must construct its system of wages as a system which regulates productivity with the aim of reviving national economic life.
2. The piecework system of remuneration applied during the last six months played an important historical part in the process of reviving Russian industry, and must be practised the future in so far as the possibilities of changing over to more perfect method of remuneration are still technically unrealisable.
3. The Congress recognises as the fundamental principle of remuneration of labour, the collective responsibility of the working class of a given undertaking or group of undertaking (trusts) for the general output. The Congress proposes to the Central Committee to exert its efforts to widely extend this System of wages."
All the leading work as well as the work of carrying out the wage rates is done by the union, for which a special part of the union apparatus is adapted. In the factories the evaluation and standardisation of labour is carried out by a special trade union so-called "Wages Committee." This Committee is elected under the guidance of the union by the Workers and employees of a given undertaking, and is guided in its work by the regulations of the regional branch of the union. Attached to this Committee there is a standardisation bureau which ascertains the standard of output of the workers, groups of workers and the factory. Persons representing the higher technical staff also participate in the work of the committee and the bureau. The absence of opposing class interests in the factory renders the work of the wages committee and the factory management to a considerable extent harmonious. All conflicts which may arise from a misinterpretation of the guiding instructions of the union or simply from insubordination are submitted for decision to the regional branch of the union. The latter organises a special wages department which supervises all the work of establishing wage rates in the metal works of the region. The highest authority in the matter of wages in the metal industry is the central committee of the union, which has a special wages-standardisation department.
​The central committee examines and confirms all systems of wages operating in metal works and keeps control over the carrying out of the standards valuation. The orders and instructions, within the limits of particular wage rates decrees issued by the central State authority, are obligatory upon the directorates of the trusts, works' managements and other economic organs in the metal industry. Thus, the metal workers' union bears full responsibility for the correct regulation of wages in the metal industry.
The fundamental principle guiding the union in this work has been explained in the resolution of the second conference quoted above. This principle was confirmed at the third conference, which supplemented it with a number of instructions of a practical character. The experience of the metal workers' union during this time also to a considerable degree confirmed the fundamental wages policy. The only guiding line of the union in the sphere of wages from the time of the October revolution has been to raise the productivity of labour, to develop a rational organisation of labour, and to arouse a healthy competition among the workers to raise the productive forces of the country. The metal workers' union was the first to put forward such an understanding of the wages question under the new conditions, and it succeeded in proving the correctness of its attitude to all the other labour unions in Russia. Connected with the question of wages are the questions of supplying the workers with working clothes and the protection of labour. The union works out the form of costume necessary for a given work, defines the standard on which special articles and requirements such as mittens, soap, leather jackets should be issued, and controls the manner in which this plan is carried out by the supply department.
Protection of Labour.
In the work of protection of labour the union takes it upon itself to co-operate with the authorities (factory inspectors who are elected by the union) [in the working out and execution of measures connected with the improvements of technical and sanitary conditions of labour. In the factories the factory committees organise special committees for the protection of labour. Such committees are also attached to the regional branches of the union and the central committee. Unfortunately the extremely difficult material and productive conditions under which the republic has lived up to now has rendered it impossible for this great work to be properly developed.
VII.
EDUCATIONAL ACTIVITY.
Educational work also occupies one of the foremost places in the general work of the union. The union occupies itself particularly with the questions of professional and technical education of the young and the spreading of technical knowledge among adult workers. In this sphere the union works in the closest contact with the State educational organs.
​Equally close contact is established between the union and what is known as the "Proletcult," i.e., an organisation engaged in the development of the elements of proletarian art and science. Many factory committees have an educational committee attached to them working with the close co-operation of the "Proletcult." These committees organise clubs, theatres, local libraries, etc., in connection with the factories.
Concluding its work in the beginning of April of the year the third All-Russian conference of the metal workers' union worked out a plan of work covering all the spheres of the union's activity. This conference has considerable importance for the union as it formulated problems for the current year. The union decided to take up the work of reviving the metal industry with the same energy that it has hitherto shown in assisting the proletarian State on the military fronts.
The Struggle Against Counter-Revolution.
The preceding years were the most difficult in the life of our union. The basic spheres of the metal industry, the Don Basin and the Ural were outside the sphere of influence of the union and lay under the brutal heel of the Russian and international counter-revolution. The blockade and the isolation from the largest sources of fuel, raw material and food created a particularly critical situation in the metal industry. More than once the difficult situation drove the pusillanimous to desperation and befogged the minds of those who had less class consciousness. At times even hunger with its vice-like grip paralysed the muscles of the warriors. But on each occasion the union appealed to proletarian discipline and rallied the workers to each struggle for the triumph of the dictatorship of the proletariat. Such was the position at the beginning of 1918 during the advance of German imperialism, when the central committee of the union placed itself and the whole apparatus of the union completely at the disposal of the Council of Peoples' Commissaries. Such was also the position in the summer of the same year during the Czecho-Slovak revolt when the central Committee mobilised new forces. The Koltchak offensive and later the advance of Denikin compelled us to throw new forces on the front. The workers of the Ural factories almost entirely left the factories for the front. The union mobilised tens of thousands of its members in Central Russia. Many responsible leaders of the union entered the ranks of the Red Army. Many of these are no more. This tremendous concentration of effort naturally reflected itself upon the state of production, but the results of it made it possible for a third conference of the union with tremendous energy to take up the work of reconstruction. Even in these difficult years the metal workers' union acquired considerable experience in organising socialist economic life, and this experience as well as the experience of comrades returning from the front is of decisive importance.
VIII.
INTERNATIONAL STRUGGLE FOR SOCIALISM.
The union follows with particular attention and interest the development of the Labour Movement in Western Europe and America and particularly the work of the metal workers' unions related to it.
​In spite of the great obstacles separating us at the present moment from other countries and the struggle of our foreign comrades, we are pleased above all with the fact that they too are raising the same questions of production that we raised previous to the October revolution. The greatest desire of our union is to share our experiences with our comrades and to relate to them the story of our struggle.
The Central Committee of the union in January of this year sent out an invitation by radio to all the metal workers' unions in other countries to our third congress. We received a number of replies and greetings from metal workers' unions of Switzerland, Germany, Holland, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, and Finland, from whom we learned of the forthcoming international congress of Metal Workers. Our union pictures an international federation of metal unions based only on a revolutionary struggle for the demands of the Third International. The opportunist international bureau of metal workers' unions, headed by Alexander Schlick, sufficiently exposed during the war the vapid schemes of the old trade unionists, who were unable to throw off their craft ideas and raise themselves to the level of the great class problem of the revolutionary international.
The revolutionary struggle is unfolding in all countries, and the metal workers as the section of the proletariat with the greatest class training is everywhere at the head of the revolutionary struggle. Our union is therefore confident of the early possibility of the revolutionary international organisation of metal workers. The third conference of the union instructed the Central Committee to take steps towards the establishment of such a union.
The Russian Metal Workers' Union is awaiting with eager attention the news of the onward march of their foreign comrades. On the basis of its historical experience it is convinced that the only path to the revival of humanity is the dictatorship of the proletariat. The Russian Metal Workers' Union says to its foreign comrades—"see, we experienced the rule of the bourgeoisie, the rule of a coalition, we thought to improve our position by fighting for higher wages, but our experiences compelled us to take the path of socialist revolution. The first years were indescribably difficult, but we are winning and will conquer and with our own hands will establish the reign of labour, and we look forward with full confidence to the victory of the workers of Western Europe."