Oleh Semenovych Pidhainy, The Formation of the Ukrainian Republic, Toronto New York: New Review Books, 1966. 685 pp., $11.95 (original) (raw)
Related papers
Cadernos Sociedade e Trabalho • XXI, 2021
The aim of our article is to describe and analyze the enquiry on Soviet Russia published by the International Labour Office in 1920. Created in 1919 for promoting social justice and improving labor conditions, the institution, as stipulated in its Constitution (Part XIII of the Peace Treaty), had notably the mission to collect information and to “conduct [...] special investigations” on labor issues. The mysteries and legends surrounding the Soviet system and, among other things, its new labor organization in its first years repre- sented an ideal opportunity for the ILO to put science into action. Knowing and understand- ing this new economic and social organization, which was seen variously as innovative, incomprehensible, distant, or outrageous, rapidly became an important issue for both its supporters and its opponents. But, as this paper will demonstrate, analyzing something newly emerging, totally different from existing systems, and still in a dynamic process of development has proven difficult. Our article will first present the aims of the enquiry. Then, it will turn on how ILO collaborators tried to grasp this emerging alternative form of labor organization through the analysis of the ad hoc classification system and categories they developed. We shall focus in particular on the difficulties the institution had to achieve its universalist ambitions, even in science making and knowledge production.
Journal of Modern History, 2020
Drawing on the records of the Kirov PPO, this article provides a view of the Soviet industrialisation process placing the party at the centre of analysis. The account begins from the winding down of the New Economic Policy (NEP) in the late 1920s and follows the process of industrialisation through the 1930s and up to the German invasion of the USSR in 1941. It will be shown that throughout this tumultuous period, the PPO provided the political space within which the many conflicts of the Soviet factory were played out and contained. Alongside the social-contractual accounts of Soviet industrialisation, this article argues that Soviet workers did indeed operate in relative autonomy from the state. However, this was predicated on active support for the state and the taking on of specific tasks in its service via party membership. Rather than stressing structural factors or forms of resistance as sources of workers’ power, this account highlights the extent to which active engagement with the Soviet system on its own terms was entirely consistent with workers’ pursuit of their immediate interests. This was not therefore the autonomy that is gained by carving out a niche, but that inherent in the delegation of certain powers from an authority to its functionaries. By institutionalising activism at the very heart of industrial relations the communist party ensured that, to borrow a phrase from Thompson, the Soviet working class would be present at its own making. The centrality of industrialisation to Stalin’s revolution from above lends this fact significance exceeding the bounds of labour history, prompting us to consider the mutual constitution of the workers’ state and the society it governed.
The Petrograd Workers in the Russian Revolution
2018
The February Revolution in the Factories 102 The Eight-Hour Day 103 Wages 107 The Press Campaign against 'Worker Egoism' 112 Worker-Management Relations: 'Democratisation of Factory Life' 115 Purge of the Factory Administrations 117 The Factory Committees 121 5 From the April to the July Days 133 The April Days 133 The First Coalition Government 145 The Break with Census Society 148 The Underlying Causes of the Shift to Soviet Power 155 The Spectre of Counterrevolution 155 The 18 June Military Offensive 162 Economic Regulation 165 6 The Struggle for Power in the Factories in April-June 182 7 The July Days 193 The Workers and the Menshevik-sr Soviet Majority 193 The July Days 197 Reaction Unleashed 204 8 Rethinking the Revolution: Revolutionary Democracy or Proletarian Dictatorship? 217 Census Society on the Offensive 217 Final Rejection of 'Conciliationism' 226 The Question of 'Revolutionary Democracy' 239 9 From the Kornilov Uprising to the Eve of October 254 The Kornilov Uprising 254 The Democratic Conference 265 Setting Course for Soviet Power 274 10 Class Struggle in the Factories-September-October 279 The Factory Committees under Attack 279 The Struggle for Production-Workers' Control Checked 281 From Workers' Control towards Workers' Management 290 contents ix Factory Committees under Pressure 'from Below' 293 The Struggle for Production and the Question of State Power 300 Quiet on the Wage Front 303 11 On the Eve 307 12 The October Revolution and the End of 'Revolutionary Democracy' 331 Workers' Attitudes towards the Insurrection 334 The Question of a 'Homogeneous Socialist Government' 348 Unity from Below 365 13 The Constituent Assembly and the Emergence of a Worker Opposition 371 The Elections 371 Dissolution of the Constituent Assembly 380 The Chernorabochie and the Upsurge of Anarchist Influence 388 The Lines Harden 393 14 The October Revolution in the Factories 398 'Active' or 'Passive' Control? 398 Towards Nationalisation 412 Management in Nationalised Enterprises 420 15 Summon Up Every Last Ounce of Strength or Accept Defeat! 428 Dispersal of Petrograd's Working Class 428 The 'Obscene Peace' 434 The Rise and Failure of the Opposition 440 Conclusion 474 Bibliography 485 Index of Names and Subjects 494 Map 2.1 The districts of Petrograd in 1917 60 Glossary census society-the propertied classes (landed aristocracy and bourgeoisie) defencists-socialists who argued that as a result of the February Revolution the war on Russia's part had ceased to be imperialist and that the people had a duty to support the military efforts of the Provisional Government against German imperialism internationalists-socialists who argued that the war being waged by the Provisional Government remained imperialist and should be opposed; included Bolsheviks, Menshevik-Internationalists and Left srs Kadet party-Constitutional Democrats, liberal party psfmo-Petrograd Society of Factory and Mill Owners revolutionary democracy (or democracy)-the workers, peasants and soldiers, as well as the members of the intelligentsia who identified with them; for all practical purposes, the constituency of the socialist parties srs-Social Revolutionaries-Russia's peasant party, successor to the nineteenthcentury populists; in the autumn of 1917 the Left srs (internationalists) officially broke off to form a separate party Sovnarkhoz-regional Council of National Economy, established by a decree of 23 December 1917 Sovnarkom-Council of People's Commissars, the Soviet government elected by the Second Congress of Soviets in October, responsible to the TsIK and ultimately the Congress of Soviets State Duma-Russia's parliament, established in 1906 as a result of the 1905 revolution with extremely limited powers and an unequal franchise strongly biased in favour of the propertied classes