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The Workers and Peasants :: of Russia ::
How They Live
By Augustine Souchy
PRICE 30 CENTS
Translated and Published by
INDUSTRIAL WORKERS OF THE WORLD
tOOl W. MADISON ST. CHICAGO. ILL.. U. S. A.
The Workers and Peasants of °£ °£ Russia and Ukraine
How Do They
By Augustine Souchy it
:RNATIONAL RELATIONS
jity of California
Translated and Published by
Educational Bureau of the Industrial Workers of the World 1001 W. Madison St. Chicago, 111., U. S. A.
CONTENTS
Introduction 3
Author's Preface 11
•Chart of Socialist and Anarchist movements
J an Russia and Ukraine 16
'THE, SOCIALIST MOVEMENT IN RUSSIA.... 17
• The*. Marxists (Social Democrats) 17
[fragment illegible in the scan of the first edition]
1 Social Revolutionaries of the Right 19
Social Revolutionaries of the Left 19
The Maximalists 22
The Anarchists 24
The Syndicalists 25
The Nabat Anarchists 29
The economic position of the Peasants 34
The political position of the Peasants 42
The Development of the Trade Unions 47
The organization of the Trade Unions 56
The opposition in the Trade Unions 62
Rationalization or Socialization? 65
Trust Building or Trustification 68
The Home Workers and their Co-Operative
Societies or Artels 72
The Life of the Workers in the Cities 82
Workers' Insurance 86
The Soviets or Councils 92
THE REVOLUTION IN UKRAINE .. 107
Machno Ill
The Socialist Movement in Ukraine 129
Communism and the Peasantry 133
The Economic Situation in Ukraine .. ..137
Introduction
RUSSIA of the days of 1917, the inspiration of the world's proletariat: What is transpiring behind its endless boundaries? What forces are shaping themselves on its millions of square miles? Those 180 millions of people; peasants and workers, what of them? How have they fared since the November days of 1917? Are the programs and slogans of those thrilling November days being carried out or is it true that,the.initiative and revolutionary ardor of the workers in RiissteJ nave bqen stifled by the iron-rule of a party dictatorship?. How do the workers and peasants, the great lower layer.-, oj: the- -Eu«si^r. masses, look upon their present government? Is it true that the Russian Soviet Government is a party government and that the workers have no voice in choosing or electing their delegates to the Soviets?
Such questions as the above, were they asked a year or two ago by any radical, would have been howled down as heresy. But at the present day and on the eve of Russian recognition by the capitalist powers, the questions above suddenly assume great importance and demand an answer one way or another. And they are being answered as all such questions are, in various ways, depending on what influence prompts the reply. Formerly the capitalist press carried its daily quota of polished news depicting conditions in Russia. But generally these tales were concerned only with the misfortune of the bourgeois class, and lately there is noted from that source a sudden stillness about Russian atrocities and in its place appear conciliatory articles that portend — what?