Trade unions in the Soviet Union

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A membership card of the All-Union Central Council of Trade Unions of the USSR. The slogan was that "the trade unions are a school of communism."

Trade unions in the Soviet Union, headed by the All-Union Central Council of Trade Unions (VTsSPS or ACCTU in English), had a complex relationship with industrial management, the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, and the Soviet government, given that the Soviet Union was ideologically supposed to be a state in which the members of the working class ruled the country and managed themselves.

During the Russian Revolution and the Russian Civil War that immediately followed, there were all sorts of ideas about how to organize and manage industries, and many people thought that the trade unions would be the vehicle of workers' control of industries. By the Stalinist era of the 1930s, it was clear that the party and government made the rules and that the trade unions were not permitted to challenge them in any substantial way[citation needed]. In the decades after Stalin, the worst of the powerlessness of the unions was past, but Soviet trade unions remained something closer to company unions, answering to the party and government, than to truly independent organizations.[1] They did, however, challenge aspects of mismanagement more successfully than they had under Stalin, and they played important parts in the fabric of daily life, such as using a sports club, obtaining theatre tickets, booking vacation stays, and more.

소련이 해체될 무렵까지 노동조합 체제는 직업 분부별로 조직된 30개 노조로 구성되었다. 1984년 약 73만2천명의 현지인과 1억3천5백만명의 회원을 포함하여, 조합은 약 4백만에서 5백만명의 콜호즈니크를 제외하고 거의 모든 소련 직원을 포괄했다. 전노련 중앙노동조합협의회는 30개 지부 노조의 하부조직으로 활동했으며, 단연 소련에서 가장 큰 공공단체였다.

연대기

수십 년 초

Soviet trade unions, headed by the All-Union Central Council of Trade Unions (Всесоюзный Центральный Совет Профессиональных Союзов, ВЦСПС [VTsSPS]), traced their history back to the 1905 Russian Revolution, roughly 15 years before the Soviet Union was founded. 당시 러시아 제국에는 노동자의 산업 지배를 추구하는 사회주의자들(신디컬리즘, 노조 민주주의 등)뿐만 아니라 단순히 더 나은 교육, 근로 조건, 보수를 원하며 기꺼이 조직하려는 사회 보수적인 노동자 사이에서도 노동자의 권리를 향한 움직임이 번창하고 있었다.그들을 데려오라고 제. 그러나 동시에 이 시기에 러시아 제국의 노동조합 설립은 옥헤라나의 영향으로 소금에 절여져 있었는데, 옥헤라나는 이 운동을 통제하기 위해 처음부터 이 운동을 공동 선택하려 했다.[2] 소련의 역사학이 혁명 이전의 어떤 역사적 흔적도 대부분 덮어씌웠기 때문에 경찰이 싹트고 있는 민중운동을 통제하는 데 얼마나 큰 영향을 미쳤는지 오늘날 알기는 쉽지 않다.

제1차 세계대전 전야와 그 전쟁 중에 많은 노동조합이 폐쇄되거나 제한되었다가 1917년 2월 혁명 이후 부활했고, 그 다음 달에 그들의 지도자들이 민주적으로 선출되었다. 그해 말 10월 혁명 이후 일부 무정부주의자와 볼셰비키 노조원들은 노조가 산업을 경영(참여경영)하기를 희망했다. 노동자들이 공장을 점거하거나 정부가 더 이상 지켜주지 않자 상사에게 요구를 들어주도록 강요하는 등 강력한 공장위원회 운동이 생겨났다. 그러나 볼셰비키족이 권력을 장악하고 통합하면서 이 운동은 산업의 국유화로 막을 내렸다.

러시아 내전과 볼셰비키 전쟁 공산주의 정책으로 노동조합은 정부, 당, 군 장기에 직원을 잃었다. 경제위기로 많은 노동자를 잃은 산업을 지휘하는 데는 러시아 경제전담위원회(VSNKh)와 같은 정부 경제기관이 1차적 역할을 점점 더 많이 담당했다. 볼셰비키의 공산당인 러시아사회민주노동당(볼셰비키)은 노동조합에 대한 지배력을 높여 행사했는데, 이 과정에서 많은 공산 노조 간부들조차 반발했다. 남북전쟁이 끝날 무렵에는 러시아 공산당(볼셰비키)이 되었고 곧 소련 공산당이 될 당 내부에서 노동조합의 역할에 대한 분쟁이 일어났다.

레온 트로츠키, 니콜라이 크레스틴스키 등 몇몇 사람들은 노동조합의 군국화와 정부 기구의 일부로 만들 것을 주장했다. 노동자 반대파(알렉산더 슐랴프니코프, 알렉산드라 콜론타이)는 노동조합이 '생산자 전원회의'를 통해 경제를 관리하고 노동자가 공산당원과 지도자의 과반수를 차지할 것을 요구했다. 다른 여러 파벌들이 있었다. 결국 제10차 러시아공산당(볼셰비키) 총회에서 레닌이 이끄는 이른바 '10인의 플랫폼'에 의해 모두 패배해 노동조합을 국가기관으로 만들지 않고 노동자를 '공산주의 학교'로 교육해야 한다는 주장이 나왔다. 그 이후 블라디미르 레닌의 "노동조합은 공산주의의 학교"라는 말은 논쟁의 여지가 없는 구호가 되었다.

공산당과 마찬가지로 노동조합은 민주적 중앙집권주의 원칙에 따라 운영되었으며, 중앙 집권층부터 공장 및 지방 위원회까지 선출된 기관의 계층 구조로 구성되었다.

볼셰비키족이 다른 사회주의 모델을 격파하면서 결정된 과정 때문에 소련 노동조합은 사실상 노동자를 대변하는 것이 아니라 경영, 정부, CPSU의 목표를 더 발전시키고 생산 이익을 주로 증진시키는 것이 주된 목표였던 정부 조직으로 귀결되었다.[3] 이런 점에서 독립노조 대 회사노조의 이분법적 시각의 서구적 렌즈를 통해 '서구의 노조와 달리 소련 다양성은 노동자의 경제적 이익을 위해 싸우지 않는다'는 점에서 회사노조에 더 정확하게 비교가 되었다. 그들은 산업 및 집단 농장 근로자들에게 벌과 보상을 운반하는 당 지시를 위한 컨베이어 벨트다. 소련 노동조합은 고용주, 정부와 함께 일하고, 그것에 반대하지 않는다."[1] 1940년대 후반에서 1980년대 후반 사이에 소련 위성인 동부권 주들의 노동조합도 마찬가지였다(폴란드의 연대가 1980년대 동안 총체적 종속에서 탈피한 것은 제외). 중국 내 노조도 당과 경제기획에 종속돼 있다.

스탈린 시대

레닌의 통치 기간 동안 '당 통합에 대하여'라는 제목의 결의안은 당내 논의가 "실제적인 실질적인 문제 해결"을 방해한다는 명분 아래 당 내부의 어떤 파벌도 해체하고 금지시켰다. 이 결의안은 '민주주의 중심주의'라는 개념의 균형을 '민주주의'에서 '중심주의'로 획기적으로 전환시켰고, 조셉 스탈린이 앞으로 중앙에서 계획한 경제 정책의 토대를 마련하는 데 도움을 주었다.

대숙청 기간 동안 노동자들의 직접적인 보상과 안전보다는 국가 생산 이익을 위해 투쟁한 이익 왜곡은 당과 국가가 희생을 감수해야 한다고 결정하면 노동자들의 안전하지 않은 근로조건이나 낮은 급여는 노조에 대항할 수 없기 때문에 불합리한 지경에 이르렀다.ade. 1920년대 노조위원장인 미하일 톰스키가 먼저 물러났고, 몇 년 후 청주의 거짓 박해를 피하기 위해 자살했다. 그는 몇 십 년 후에 탈스탈린화로 재활했다.[citation needed]

이 시대에는 모든 것이 동정심이 없는 것은 아니었다. 많은 사람들이 가난하지만 낙천적이고 비교적 개선된 생활을 하며 노동자를 위한 야학, 무역학교(테크니쿰, 학원) 등 다양한 형태의 학교에 열심히 다녔다.[4] 노동조합은 문맹인 어른들이 읽고 쓰는 법을 배울 수 있도록 교정 독서 프로그램을 구성했다.[5] 문맹은 그 당시에 흔한 문제였다. 농노가 종식된 것은 단 한 생애 안에 있었고, 인구의 상당수는 최소한의 교육을 수반하는 전통적인 농민 배경과 생활 방식에서 막 나오고 있었다. 내전으로 많은 숙련된 사람들이 옛 제국의 영토에서 도망쳤다. 미숙련 노동자는 넘쳐났지만 대부분의 숙련 노동자는 부족했고,[4] 당과 정부, 산업 공장 행정, 노동조합은 모두 교육과 훈련 프로그램을 통해 보충하기 위해 노력했다.[4] 이 시대는 많은 민중들이 여전히 레닌주의 사회주의의 잠재력을 낙관하고 있는 시대였다. 관료제도에 열성적으로 신봉하는 극소수가 남아 있던 1980년대와는 달리, 대중들 사이에서는 여전히 교육의 수준과 생활수준을 지속적으로 발전시킬 수 있는 사회를 건설하기 위해 열심히 일하고 고난을 견디는 에스프리 드 군단이 있었다.[4] 따라서 예를 들어 1930년대 마그니토고르스크에서 의사들의 일생은 존 스콧의 회고록에서 다음과 같이 기술되었다: "소비에트의 의사들은 4~5시간의 합법적인 근무시간을 가졌다. 이보다 더 일하면 초과근무수당을 받았다. 마그니토고르스크에서는 의사들이 턱없이 부족하기 때문에 대부분 1시간 반에서 2시간 반, 때로는 2시간 반에서 3시간 정도 일하기도 했는데, 그 시간은 최대 15시간이었다. 이는 엄연히 불법이었지만 의사가 부족해 보건원은 의료노조로부터 법정근로일보다 더 많은 일을 할 수 있도록 허용했다고 밝혔다.[6]

Robert W. Thurston showed that state control of trade unions does not always, or even usually, mean that union members are entirely powerless "victims" of the state.[7] It does not mean that they never criticize anything and have no power to effect changes in working conditions; rather, what it means is that there are strong limits on criticism of senior levels of the system and, as a counterpart to that, even greater tendency to criticize the lower levels. In general, citizens in an authoritarian society are not all "victims" of the system; many are active participants and even advocates. This is further explored below.

After Stalin

Before the worst of the Terror and in the decades after Stalin, Soviet trade unions did have some input regarding production plans, capital improvements in factories, local housing construction, and remuneration agreements with management. After Stalin, unions also were empowered to protect workers against bureaucratic and managerial arbitrariness, to ensure that management adhered to collective agreements, and to protest unsafe working conditions. However, strikes were still more or less restricted, representing an element of Stalinism that persisted even during the Khrushchev Thaw.[8] Unions remained partners of management in attempting to promote labor discipline, worker morale, and productivity. Unions organized socialist emulation "competitions" and awarded prizes for fulfilling quotas. They also distributed welfare benefits, operated cultural and sports facilities (Palaces of Culture), issued passes to health centers (such as spa towns and seaside resorts) for subsidized vacations [9] (a popular idea conceived in the 1920s, which even the Nazi regime had coopted, although mostly unrealized for Soviets until after the war), oversaw factory and local housing construction, provided catering services, and awarded bonus payments. The newspaper Trud and the magazine Soviet Trade Unions (Советские профсоюзы) were major media of the Soviet trade union system.

Late Soviet period

The trade union system in the late Soviet Union consisted of thirty unions organized by occupational branch. Including about 732,000 locals and 135 million members in 1984, unions encompassed almost all Soviet employees with the exception of some 4 to 5 million kolkhozniks. Enterprises employing twenty-five or more people had locals, and membership was compulsory. Dues were about 1% of a person's salary. The All-Union Central Council of Trade Unions served as an umbrella organization for the thirty branch unions and was by far the largest public organization in the Soviet Union.

Union membership influenced union operations only at the local level, where an average of 60% of a union's central committee members were rank-and-file workers.

In the early 1980s, the new political power achieved by the Polish trade union movement, Solidarity, aroused great interest and emotion in the Soviet Union, from excitement and optimism in many to revulsion and disgust in others, depending on sympathies with Soviet orthodoxy (or lack thereof). The substantial amount of the former is respectably logical; there were many people in the USSR and the Eastern Bloc who were willing to accept the flaws of the system as long as they were fairly secure in their position within its pecking order—especially given that for half a century the only real alternative had been second-class citizen status (real albeit not nominal) or the gulag. They were not amenable to upstart, independent-of-the-party political power by trade unions. But many others were long since ready for reform of stagnation and bottomless subordination, and these others were willing to try asserting some impetus for reform. Soviet trade unions became a bit more vocal in protecting workers' interests.

Role in the Soviet class system, chekism, and party rule

David K. Willis analyzed the de facto Soviet class system, including the trade unions' important role in it, in a 1985 monograph.[10] Soviet ideology recognized social class in Soviet society but recognized only an idealized version of it, not the de facto reality. The ideal was twofold: in the long term, once communism began, which in Soviet ideological terms meant the advent of the true communist society after the socialist society, Soviet culture would be classless in the sense that everyone would belong to a single class of workers within which there would be diversity of types/specializations but no strata of privilege; in the short to medium term, in preparation for that development, the Union was supposed to have a Marxist–Leninist class system in which two classes, workers and peasants, had (through both violence and paternalism) vanquished, by class conflict, all other (nonsocialist) classes (such as bourgeois merchants and tradesmen, kulaks, industrialist/financier capitalists, nobles, and royals) and in which the intelligentsia and indeed the Party itself were subsets of the workers (specifically, vanguard subsets). However, the reality of class that emerged by the 1940s and persisted through the 1980s was quite different in that there were many nuanced social strata, anthropologically with more in common with imperial, aristocratic cultures (such as that of the Russian Empire) than could ever be officially admitted. The Soviet version was shaped by the side effects of central planning—material scarcity and interpersonal connections trading on systemic corruption—rather than by money. The goal of gaming the system was to acquire social prestige, and visible tokens or badges thereof,[10] that showed that one's talent for the gameplay surpassed others' talent. The trade unions and creative unions had an important role in this system of klass by being the forum in which many of the interpersonal connections trading on corruption were operated, with enforced exclusion for people who did not play by the unwritten rules.[11] People who wished to contend in the widespread competitive social climbing between the strata needed their trade union membership as one of the leverage tools. For example, one needed to be seen attending good theatre performances, owning desirable foreign-built appliances, and eating good cuts of meat, but tickets for the good performances and the opportunities to buy the covetable goods were scarce, with distribution controlled by such social networks.[11] Chekism and single-party rule were both firmly established in, and protected by, this system, because one's good standing in one's trade union depended on staying on the right side of the unions' KGB liaisons/agents and of its party organization.[11]

Regarding Moscow State University during the Soviet era, Willis described parents calling in klass favors with the "triangular power structure of the University: the local Party branch, the Young Communist League [local branch], and the trade union committee".[12] On the surface, it might seem that this contradicts a statement by Willis elsewhere that "Soviet labor unions have little power" and that "they are merely conveyor belts on which Party discipline and rewards reach the work force, and which carry back reports on workers' mood and complaints."[13] But the consistency is found by understanding that the original purpose of trade unions—to fight for workers' interests in better compensation and safety—was no longer what Soviet trade unions were for, de facto, from the 1930s onward, although it remained their de jure identity. Instead, they were instruments of party rule, influencing members' personal choices and decisions with carrots and sticks. Statements of their "little power" refer implicitly to the assumption that fighting for workers' interests was their purpose, which it was on paper but not in reality. In fact they had ample power for their real purpose, which was enforcing conformity with carrots and sticks. This is also why dismissive statements that "trade unions were only for perks" are misleading. It was precisely by controlling the comfort of members, or lack thereof, that the unions helped the party and government to rule, and this constituted a real, and thoroughly political, socioeconomic force, not merely an apolitical doling out of treats. As Willis pointed out, the Soviet economic system was unlike Western ones in that organizations—party, state, government, unions—controlled whether it was even possible to obtain the tools and materials to do one's vocation or avocation.[14] In many cases there was no "shopping at another store if you don't like this one," so to speak, as there would be in the West. Thus, withholding of privileges by a trade union could effectively shut down one's self-expression. Rather than an apolitical act, it (much to the contrary) represented political power, and was part of the Soviet censorship apparatus.[14] The trade unions' role as an analogue of company unions helped enforced party rule of the Soviet economy's central planning by exerting pressure on members to fulfill the plan (meet quotas), inform on dissent, and uphold hegemony. The history of RABIS (the Trade Union of Art Workers), AKhRR (Association of Artists of Revolutionary Russia), and the Artists' Union of the USSR is illustrative.

The security organs (e.g., OGPU, NKVD, NKGB, MGB, KGB) often used VTsSPS job titles and duties as non-official cover for their officers visiting other countries or escorting foreign visitors on (carefully staged) tours of the USSR and its enterprises. This police cover aspect continued throughout the life span of the USSR.

Thurston[7] showed how a complete understanding of trade unions in an authoritarian system includes understanding that not everyone in such a society is a "victim" of it. Many are active participants and even advocates of it. Many Soviet people actively participated in the trade union system and were able to criticize up to certain levels in certain safe ways, except during the heights of purges, such as during 1937 itself.[7] Willis's study,[10] discussed above, confirms this aspect, showing that the people who "won" in the effort to achieve Klass were by no means the "victims" of the system: quite the opposite, they were its active supporters. However, this also does not mean that the system was not authoritarian. Rather, what it shows is that many people will support an authoritarian system with the strong ingroup-outgroup ("us versus them") aspect of tribalism, in which they belong to the tribe that supports the system. In this schema, both foreign and domestic opposition are crushed politically as opposing tribes/outgroups, and the definition of loyal opposition is limited to opposition that is loyal not only to the state but also to the senior levels of the politically dominating party.

See also

References

  1. ^ a b Willis 1985, p. 303.
  2. ^ Solovyov & Klepikova 1983.
  3. ^ Gordon 1941.
  4. ^ a b c d Scott 1989.
  5. ^ Scott 1989, p. 217.
  6. ^ Scott 1989, p. 221.
  7. ^ a b c Thurston, Robert W. (1992), White, Stephen (ed.), "Reassessing the history of Soviet workers: opportunities to criticize and participate in decision-making, 1935-1941", New Directions in Soviet History, Cambridge University Press, pp. 160–188.
  8. ^ Volkogonov 1998, pp. 213–215.
  9. ^ Koenker 2008.
  10. ^ a b c Willis 1985
  11. ^ a b c Willis 1985, pp. 69–90.
  12. ^ 윌리스 1985, 페이지 146.
  13. ^ 윌리스 1985, 페이지 172.
  14. ^ a b 윌리스 1985, 페이지 87.

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