page_title: Alexander Shliapnikov
section_title: After the revolution
hierarchical_section_title: Alexander Shliapnikov / Biography / After the revolution
caption_attribution_description: Русский: Слева направо: С.П. Медведев, М.И. Челышев, А.Г. Шляпников в дни 3-й сессии ВЦИК 12-го созыва. Ноябрь 1926 г.
context_page_description: Alexander Gavrilovich Shliapnikov was a Russian communist revolutionary, metalworker, and trade union leader. He is best remembered as a memoirist of the October Revolution of 1917 and as the leader of one of the primary opposition movements inside the Russian Communist Party during the 1920s.
context_section_description: Following the October Revolution and the Bolshevik seizure of power, Shliapnikov was appointed Commissar of Labor. Shliapnikov supported a coalition government composed of left socialist parties, which never came to fruition, with the parties clashing over priorities. He played an important role in evacuating industry from Petrograd, as the Germans approached in 1918.  As Commissar of Labor, he helped draft important directives on workers' control of industry and nationalization of industry and he staffed government bureaucracies with staff from trade unions. In the summer of 1918, he went to the south of Russia on a mission to gather food for the population of the Bolshevik-controlled cities of central Russia.
  In December 1918 Shliapnikov was replaced as Commissar of Labor by Vasili Schmidt and then served as Chairman of the Revolutionary Military Council of the Caspian-Caucasian Front in the Russian Civil War.  He also served in the Revolutionary Military Council of the Western Front during the Civil War.  During the Civil War, Shliapnikov began to criticize the increasing tendency of the Russian Communist Party and Soviet government to rely on authoritarian measures to enforce policies towards industry and industrial workers. To Shliapnikov, denial of workers' right to participate in economic decision-making was a step away from the goals of the 1917 revolution.
caption: Right to left: Shliapnikov, M.I. Chelyshev, and Sergei Medvedev (1926)