Ep 8: Unions and the Russian Revolution

How did trade unionists, and the trade union movement, respond to the revolutions of 1917 in Russia? Edd The Brain takes us through a few examples, and we discuss what implications they have for contemporary working-class solidarity.

As promised in the episode, here's Labour Days' Great (But Not Exhaustive) Russian Revolution Reading List:

General histories of the Russian Revolution

Leon Trotsky, The History of the Russian Revolution (1930) - https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1930/hrr/
John Reed, 10 Days That Shook The World (1919) - https://www.marxists.org/archive/reed/1919/10days/10days/
Paul Vernadsky, Russian Revolution: When Workers Took Power (2017) - http://www.workersliberty.org/story/2017-09-21/russian-revolution-when-workers-took-power
Alexander Rabinowitch, The Bolsheviks Come To Power (2009) - https://www.haymarketbooks.org/books/879-the-bolsheviks-come-to-power

People should also check out the work of Katy Turton on the role of women in the Revolution, and Dan Healy's work on LGBT people's struggles within the Revolution.

On the role of trade unions in the Revolution itself

Steve Smith, Red Petrograd: revolution in the factories 1917-1918 (reprint 2008) -
https://libcom.org/library/red-petrograd-revolution-factories-1917-1918-sa-smith
David Mandel, "The Factory Committee Movement in the Russian Revolution", in Immanuel Ness and Dario Azzellini, Ours to Master and to Own, (2011) - https://www.haymarketbooks.org/books/366-ours-to-master-and-to-own
Daniel H. Kaiser, The Workers' Revolution in Russia, 1917: The View from Below (1989) - https://www.abebooks.co.uk/Workers-Revolution-Russia-1917-View-Below/18667199435/bd

If you have access to JSTOR, the online archive of academic journals, you should also check out "Skilled Workers and the Strike Movement in Revolutionary Russia" by Diane Koenker and William G. Rosenberg, from Journal of Social History, Vol. 19, No. 4 (Summer, 1986), pp. 605-629. It's online here: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3787980

On international trade union solidarity with the Revolution:
Colm Bryce, "Ireland and the Russian Revolution", Irish Marxist Review Vol. 17 No. 6 (2017)
Ralph Darlington, Syndicalism and the Transition to Communism (2008)
P J O Farrell, "The Russian Revolution and the Labour Movements of Australia and New Zealand 1917-1922"

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