The difficult birth of a workers' movement
THE growing prominence of the question of power in the Soviet economy, as well as the accelerated decline in the general economic situation, have had a direct Impact on the labour movement. Labour conflicts in the first years of perestroika generally centred around issues of wages and conditions, with demands addressed to the enterprise management and sometimes to the ministry. Although these remain important, a new type of conflict has emerged over the past year. Rather than putting forth economic demands and pressuring management to meet them, workers are themselves seeking an active role in the management of their enterprises. The following article is the second part of a long study on the struggle for power in the Soviet economy, the first part of which appeared In 200. The third part, on the Soviet self-management movement, follows on page 21. DAVID SEPPO
HESE conflicts, which are more
T offensive in nature and pose directly the issue of power in the enterprise, have been especially prominent in the crucial machineconstruction industry, which, unlike coalmining, has not seen any coordinated, inter-enterprise strike movement.
At the start of 1990, Moscow's AZLK auto factory, which makes the vich", seemed to even the handful of activists an unlikely place for an "uprising".
Like many of Moscow's factories with large semi-skilled and unskilled labour forces, about two-thirds of the workers here are limitchiki, workers from the provinces with temporary Moscow residence permits that can be revoked upon dismissal from the factory. They are therefore especially vulnerable and generally quiescent. But even the
Muscovites felt the pressure and corrupting influence of the internal distribution system, which expanded shortages in the state shops
True, the year before, something unheard of had occurred at the factory's trade union plained about the purchase of
Europe. Some speakers blamed this on management's decision to send the director's son (travel to the West being a coveted privilege) rather than workers and engineers who had firsthand knowledge of the specifications. AZLK's workers also remembered how the previous year the director had ignored the decision of the work-collective (self- management) council and adopted a
120,000-car plan target. He went so far as to dismiss his popular assistant director, who had insisted that the plant's capacity was only 80,000. In fact, only 74,000 cars
1989, but the workers received their bonuses anyway, since the director is well-connected and was able to persuade the ministry to "correct" the
Foolish decision to consult workers
The adoption of the original plan had allowed him to obtain additional funds, some of which went to buy the machinery that was lying about uninstalled. 1989 saw the workers reject managealso ment's proposed schedule of fifteen
"black" (working) Saturdays, when the director, in a nod to the current fashion
(since then abandoned, as we shall see), foolishly decided to consult the workers.
But otherwise, the workers looked on in their usual gloomy silence at manage ment's inability to rationally organize provide normal work conditions as well at its deepening cor ruption (the huge sums involved in the shadow economy and the great demand for the attractive new Moskvich have opened up new vistas in this area. Then came an article in Komsomol' skaya pravda, written on information provided by activists, describing management at the enterprise. If in 1985, 17,500 workers produced 175,000 cars, in 1989 16,900 workers made less than half as many. This was followed by a television report that the factory was being fined one and a half million convertible rubles for non-fulfillment of a contract to build a sports car for a West German firm. The final piece of tinder was the news that the retail price of the Moskvich would be raised 50% to 13,500 rubles, although no substantial improvements had been made. The factory would be allowed to keep 1,000 extra rubles for its
In January 1990, the work-collective council of the assembly shop, led by a group of activist workers (who are also party members), called a shop meeting to discuss the situation. To the surprise of the initiators, workers streamed in from all over the factory and filled up the 800seat hall and adjacent corridors to overflowing. The following demands were put forward: dismissal of the director and election of a new one; reinstatement of dismissed assistant director; new collective council, since the present one was subservient to the administration; no price rises (speakers explained that it might permit the factory to raise wages, but if all enterprises made unjustified price rises, wage gains would soon be wiped out); equalization of the rights of the limitchiki with those of permanent
USSR residents; a regular work process, without
"storming" and violation of internal supply schedules; real accounting; and wages paid according to labour (large wage differentials exist from shop to shop for the same kind of work). Some speakers demanded that supervisory and technical personnel be cut and the savings be used to raise the salaries of the remainder in accordance with results.
In a letter to Pravda, Sergei Novopol'skii, chairman of the assembly shop's work collective council and head of a brigade of mechanic assemblers, explained the underlying impulse behind the explosion: "The main thing is that we are convinced that perestroika does silent workers of the kind the present management would like to see but workers who think, who understand, and who know how to work in a way that is useful for the country." But the director, on his part, attributed it all to the "intrigues abusing the new democracy and glasnost. agreed to hold a referendum on administration, won.3 The main results of the meeting were new elections to the work-collective council and a halving of the price rise. Explosions of discontent expected The workers were obviously not prepared for sustained activism. In part, this can be attributeconomic crisis and the internal the latter's arbitrary and corrupting nature, while effective in the short run, is particularly degrading to the workers and eventually adds fuel to the explosions when they finally occur. And most Soviet observers expect these to occur soon. More importantly, perhaps, the autoworkers' demands were addressed to the enterprise management, but may of their problems could be resolved only at higher, essentially political, levels. Any new movement will have to link up with workers in other enterprises if it is to be effective and take on stable, organized forms.
Only a few weeks after the AZLK meet1. See D. Mandel: "Revolutionary reform in Soviet factories: Restructuring relations between Workers and Management", Socialist Register, 1989, London: Merlin Press, 1989, pp. 102-29. On the miners' movement, see T. Friedgut and L. Siegelbaum, "Perestroika from below: The miners' strike and its aftermath", New Left Review, 1990, pp. 5-32; D. Mandel, "Rebirth of the Soviet Labour Movement: The coalminers' strike of July 1989", Politics and Society, vol. 18, Sept. 1990, pp. 381-404. 2. Pravda, February 8, 1990. This account is mainly based on interviews and a recording of the January 3, a soverlayu malirazhka (Moscow), February 5, 1 7 meeting March 4, 1991 • #201 International Viewpoint
USSR ing, a similar gathering took place several thousand kilometers away at the Sibelektrotyazhmash plant in Novosibirsk which makes large electric generators. Here too workers had never shown much concern for the economic fate of the enterprise. their complaints were traditionally about the cafeteria's food, bad ventilation and heating, the periodic absence of hot water.
short, it was a typical machineconstruction enterprise, except perhaps for the shiny new Toyotas parked in front of the administration building, though these too were becoming a familiar scene in the fifth year of perestroika.
Producing less, with more labour
The initiative for the meeting here too came from a group of activists. A few days before, the head of a brigade of turners, himself a member of the factory's party committee, sounded out the shops and met with an enthusiastic response from the workers. The main issue at the meeting was poor management. The director had been elected a year ago but had not carried out his programme: no new forms of work organization had been introduced. Output was half of what it had been twenty years ago, but the work force was the same size. The assembly brigade stood idle for weeks, while workers in the adjacent shop put in two hour shifts for the same wage.
Copper wire worth thousands of rubles was cut up because there were no reels. technical and production discipline had declined catastrophically. While the director blamed all this on the middle levels of management, which he accused of sabotaging his initiatives, the workers complained that they rarely saw him in the factory and never on the shop floor. While the collective was seething and with the conference already in preparation, he took off to Moscow to attend a branch conference of directors. The chief engineer's assertion that things were not so bad since profits had risen 400% over 1976-88 made no impression of the workers.
But the most insistent accusation against management concerned the cooperatives. These had been created to help the enterprise fulfill the state's directive to increase its production of consumer goods. "Where are these goods?" asked the workers. "We don't see any more [on the market] than before. Who are we fooling? The managers are coddling the cooperatives, and the cooperatives are robbing the enterprise blind. Transformer copper is going to the cooperatives, but who signs it out? We produce no copper waste."
"The superintendent of the first department received 1500 rubles from one of the fifteen cooperatives organized at the factory to produce consumer goods....In 18 the shop — ler's tell things as they really essence, this is payment for having ruined International Viewpoint #201 • March 4, 1991 are. The shop is now working to meet the needs of the cooperative, not the factory. Forty welders left the shop for the cooperative, forcing other shops to send their people to help it out. One of the assistants to the chief engineer received 2700 rubles for the construction of a trestle table in his spare time. Where does he get it, if he doesn't have a fixed workday? The party organizer has also dirtied his hands in the cooperatives. He has passed all his work to his assistant and himself is nowhere to be seen. People are sick of all this. It angers us to the bottom of our souls. What is going on around us? We have to change our life, we cannot go on living like this. The meeting elected a workers' committee (representing only the blue-collar workers) to take power in the factory and decided to hold elections to the workcollective committee (which represents all employees: workers, office employees, engineering and technical personnel as well as management, which has been doing little more than distributing defitsit [Soviet term for scarce goods].
The factory's newspaper was removed from the control of the administration, the and trade-union committees and made responsible to the workers' conference. Managerial, engineering and technical personnel were to be cut in half, and a new director elected. (The workers' committee later decided to give him six more months, after which he would report back to the workers, who would take a final
Characterizing as one-sided the enterprise's relations with the ministry, regional and union governments (it paid them 70% of its income, leaving little for the collective's social development), meeting decided to negotiate a reduction in its payments. The workers' committee was instructed to study, with the aid of economists, the question of gradually leaving the ministry (the workers were aware that they might be worse off without the ministry playing its redistributive role within the branch).
Cooperatives viewed as parasites
The cooperatives, accused of "pillaging the enterprise's resources and fostering the moral decay of the collective", were ordered off the enterprise's territory, and administrative personnel as well as employees in the financial and accounting departments forbidden from working in them. Full reports on their activities and finances were ordered from the cooperative chairpersons.
The meeting also turned its attention to the nefarious effect on the collective of the internal distribution system and decided that henceforth, the sale of scarce consumer goods, food, cars and so on, would take place after this had been approved by a workers' conference. Finally, on the issue of Toyotas, a report was demanded of the superintendent of the transport department on the cost of maintaining the enterprise's fleet of cars and vans and on his budget in 1989.
The election of a workers' committee is characteristic of many of these conflicts As one observer put it: "in the majority of cases the work-collective committees [elected by the entire collective] fail to show any independence vis-à-vis manage-
Hostility between blue and white-collar workers
The work collective committees were basically created on orders from above [until the government issued a special instruction, they were often headed by the director]. The workers' committees [rep resenting only the blue-collar workers], on the other hand, are not obligated to anyone at their birth, that is, they are not the result of initiative from above, but of the realization that we are all responsible for changing things and that if we do not, who will?"s The formation of workers committees reflects in part the deepening blouses" in the enterprises — the reduction of administrative and technical personnel is a very popular demand.
But it is also a response to the fact that technical, like administrative personnel, have no right of appeal against dismissals and are therefore more dependent on the director. One of the workers' explained: "The shop engineers are our brothers; they work in the same dirt and same difficulties...We aren't against them. They should be with us. Our level of knowledge does not allow us to really spread our wings, especially when it comes to economic questions. But for the time being, we have decided to create a workers' committee with representatives only from the working class....we have a good lever — the strike. Management has to consider that possibility and take the proletariat into account....But we do include the engineering and technical personnel in the work collective commit-
Another interesting aspect of these conflicts is the initiating role often played by worker party activists. This occurs against the general background of the party's unpopularity among workers, who are leaving it in significant numbers.
At a Vilnius trucking enterprise, whose 4. "Demokratisatsiya na proivodstve: vlast' dela i vlast'...ch'ya?" EKO (Novosibirsk), no. 8, 1990, pp 85-102 5. Rabochaya tribuna, June 15, 1990. 6. The view is widespread among workers that "those people" do not work. Another contributing factor is the wage reform that began in 1987 and under which the salaries of technical and administerative personnel have risen significantly faster than aveage wages. V. Pavlov and I. Yurchikova, "Novye usloviya oplaty truda," Sotsialisticheskii trud, no. 8, 1990, p. 89. 7. "Demokratizatsiya na proizvodstve" (op cit) p. 96. 8. Rabochaya tribuna, August 15, 1990.
existence was threatened in the spring of 1990 by Moscow's oil embargo and the republican government's proposed economic reforms, the workers dissolved the work collective committee and elected a workers' committee, assuming full control of the enterprise.
### Workers committee negotiates independently
The committee was instructed to take "all measures to organize the enterprise's complete, normal functioning, which has been undermined of late." Among other things, it independently concluded a contract with the Ministry of Transport of Byelorussia (just across the border from Lithuania) which agreed to supply the enterprise with fuel and parts. never have believed it" commented a member of the administration. "I always thought that the main thing for them was their 19 rubles a day, and to hell with the
At a Voronezh machine-construction factory, the director was misappropriating the factory's equipment and materials for his personal benefit. A small, poorly organized enterprise that was in bad economic shape, it nevertheless maintained seven well-paid assistant directors. Spurred on by the party committee, a bare majority of the work collective committee called workers' conference. It elected a workers' committee which it mandated to investigate and restore order in the factory. The director was replaced through competitive election and affairs began quickly to improve.
At a Novosibirsk machine construction factory, the workers shut down a cooperative that management had entrusted with the enterprise's supply and transport serafter a group workers forced open the assistant managa contract showing him to be an employee of the cooperative which had been selling the factory's raw materials on the side at two or three times the state price. 1°
At the VAZ auto factory, the workers first learnt from an interview with the assistant general director in the enterprise newspaper that, as one worker put it, "our clever managers had already prepared a package of documents for the conversion of VAZ into a concern." In response, the work collective committee declared VAZ and all its production the property of the work collective.!1
Conflicts over power in the enterprises, that is over workers' self- management, are destined to grow as the economic political disintegration of the country contintions, behind the backs of the workers, who typically suspect the worst, transform enterprises into joint stock companies,
"concerns", joint ventures and commercial banks with enterprise resources and funds.
Until recently, however, one could not speak of a ment in the Soviet Union.
There were only isolated conflicts over power and committee activity in the enterprises. The organized labour movement, which strike of July 1989, has been characterized by a basically, though by no means exclusively, trade unionist orientation. After the 1989 strike, the miners transformed their strike committees into workers' committees, which united on a regional basis. Their main function was to monitor fulfillment of the accord with the govern-
USSR Resolution 608, that ended strike. The miners have also held two national congresses, in June and October 1990. These resulted in the founding of an independent trade union. Unlike the offiemployees of the Ministry of the Coal Industry, the new union limits its memberemployed directly by the coal mines or the coal-enrichment factories. The Fifth Conference of Workers Committees of the Kuzbass, which (along with the much smaller Pechora basin) had been the most militant and politicized region, in September 1990 also set as its central goal the formovement.12
For a movement that arose out of nothing after almost 60 years of very effective repression, these are impressive organizational gains. Nevertheless, this movement is today in crisis. It has not really succeeded in spreading outside of the mines and mining regions. The unions of workers' that have arisen in other regions consist mainly of small groups of activists, who emerge out of their isolation only when serious conflict arises in
Independent unions lack mass base
None of the organizations from outside the coalmining areas that attended the Congress of Independent Workers Organizations and Movements in May 1990 in Novokuznetsk (which founded the Confederation of Labour) has anything resembling a mass base.' In the mining areas themselves, rank-and-file activism has declined, and the ties between the unions of workers' committees and the rank-and-file have declined.14 Many delegates to the Second Congress of Coalminers in Donetsk at the end of October 1990 were not at all certain that the congress's decision to found a new trade union would meet with an active or enthusiastic response back home in the mines. 15 9. Rabochaya tribuna, June 15, 1990. 10. A. N. Shkulov, "Na potustoronnei traektorii", EKO, no. 8, 1980 pp. 108-9. 11. Rabochaya tribuna, December 8, 1990. 12. Nasha gazeta (Novokuznetsk), no. 33, October 2, 1990. 13. P. Funder Larsen, "Workers of the USSR unite!" International Viewpoint, 187, June 18, 1990 and B. Ikhlov, "Neklassovyi vrag," Rabochii vestnik (Per'), no. 5, May 1990, pp. 4-7. 14. This was noted, for example, by V. Golikov, chairman of the Kuzbass Union of Workers Committees, in his report to the fifth conference on September 29-30, 1990. See Nasha gazeta, no. 33, October 2, 1990. 15. This is based upon conversations and on the unpublished proceedings. 16. Kazanskii rabochii (Kazan') no. 2, July 1990. 17. People close to the (official) Union of Workers in the Coal Industry claimed that the minister favoured the creation of a new trade union in order to split the workers. While there is probably some truth in this, most of the delegates to the Miners' Congress that founded the new union were of the opinion that any further attempts to reform the old union would be 19
USSR
This is essentially a crisis of political orientation against the background of the deepening economic crisis. The attempt through strictly trade-unionist activity to protect living standards and labour conditions in a collapsing economy has reached its limits. The miners themselves have recognized that the government lacked the means to carry out certain parts of Resolution 608 and that many of those economic gains realized were soon lost to inflation.
Ministry finances miners' conference
Moreover, in existing Soviet conditions, a trade unionist orientation often leads to administration, often at the expense of the rest of the population that ends up with a bill it can ill afford to pay. For example, the one-day mail carriers strike on June 15, 1990 was organized by the Ministry of Communications itself. 16 And the Second Congress of Miners was financed by the Coal Industry Ministry, which had its representatives on the organizing committee. This surely must raise questions about the interests being pursued by the various clans in supporting these movements. 17
The miners' movement did, of course, put forth important relating the democratization of the state. But the basic question remained unanswered: what to do with this democracy if and when it was won? The most politicized elements (often those most strongly under liberal influence) have tended to advocate a trade-unionist orientation for the labour movement and, to the extent that they put forward a positive economic programme, a market reform borrowed from the liberals. But this is running up against the same reality that the liberals are now being forced to confront.
Representatives of the Kuzbass Union of Workers' Committees, which under the presidency of Vyacheslav Golikov has had the strongest pro-liberal orientation, participated in the work of the ShatalinYavlinskii commission that drew up the 500-Day Plan. This is a programme for the wholesale privatization of the economy and the establishment of a market system in which state regulation plays a subordinate role. 18 The Kuzbass union has been a strong supporter of Boris Yeltsin and the Russian parliament, with whom it concluded a social peace accord exchange for the parliament's support in creating a "zone of joint entrepreneurship" (free-trade zone) in the Kuzbass.
But Golikov, in his report to the union's fifth conference at the end of September 1990, was forced to recognize the "deformations" (as described in my article in the previous issue of IV that were already occurring in the Kuzbass with the expansion of the private sector and market rela20 leans these process. He themestd not to tions in the region. He appealed "not to International Viewpoint #201 • March 4, 1991 out the participation of the toilers. While defending market relations in the economy, we do not intend to allow it to be bought by existing structures and their functionaries". Yet he offered no practical proposals for preventing this.
Similarly, the conference's "Appeal to the Toilers of the Kuzbass" observed that "The programme of transition to marker relations and, in the Kuzbass, also the creation of a zone of joint entrepreneurship, are on the whole seen positively by the toilers of the region. But at the same time, the shift of the enterprises to costaccounting and self-financing is already causing job cuts and the unprofitable factories. market relations will intensify this process by many times." question the wisdom of this reform, the document merely calls for the creation of "genuine trade unions" to defend the
Kuzbass miners may benefit from market
The liberal orientation of the Kuzbass leaders is to a large extent premised upon their understanding that the region is well-situated to benefit from the market.
The cost of extracting coal in the Kuzbass is relatively low, since the industry here is comparatively new and the coal close to the surface, often allowing openpit mining. Export contracts have already been signed with Japan. (Some economists, however, argue that Kuzbass optimism will be short-lived. The region is
6000 kilometres from a port, and the exports are being subsidized by cheap
Soviet freight rates. If these rates were raised to the same world levels at which the coal is being sold, there would be no foreign contracts. How long will the railagree to subsidize the foreigncurrency earnings of the Kuzbass coal industry?).
The future, however, does not look too rosy for the Donbass coalminers. The mines are old, deep — many are virtually mined out - and their production costs are high. The transition to the market here threatens the region with mass unemployment and the extinction entire towns and villages.
It is not surprising, then, that outside of (which has export contracts with Sweden 18. A summary of this programme appeared in Komsomol'skaya pravda, September 29, 1990. For an analysis of this programme and a comparison with the USSR govemment's "Basic orientations for the stabilization of the economy and the transition to a market kapitalizm!", Dialog, no. 17, November 1990, pp. 4119. Nasha gazeta, no. 33, October 2, 1990. 20. The editors of the popular weekly Argumenty i fakry rejected, without any explanation, an article by one of their writers about these telegrams. This perhaps has something to do with the fact that five members of the editorial committee are deputies in the Russian parliament, which adopted the 500-Day Plan through Arctic ports) the miners movement has been rather less enthusiastic about the market. As the inevitable consequences of a transition to the market, as envisaged by become clearer, their lack of enthusiasm is turning into alarm. After the publication of the 500-Day Plan, which calls for an end to subsidies and the eventual freeing of prices, dozens of mining associations and enterprises sent angry telegrams to the government.2
A delegation of miners from the Yakutogol' Association came to Moscow to protest against the intended dismantling of the industry's central administration and the ending of subsidies. "Natural and geological conditions vary from mine to mine," they explained. "Therefore they cannot all be equally profitable. In our association the average cost of coal is from one to eighteen rubles, but in Donbass it is 40 to 120 rubles. Without the centralized redistribution of funds, without subsidies, Donbass will not survive....Without centralized management, all sorts of misfortunes and shocks await the branch."21
Miners withdraw support for free market plan
Taking note of these concerns, the organizing committee of the Second Congress of miners decided against endorsing the plan. One of its members, a miner from Karaganda, explained: "There are disputes in the collectives and in the organizing committee [about the transition to the market]. The interesting thing is that we ourselves participated in the creation of one of the programmes — that of Shatalin....But we wavered. Why? First of all because the hardest blow will be struck against the extractive industries, and we wanted to first see a separate programme of transition to the market in our branch.
"Of course, a part of the people understand that it will be necessary to adopt certain sacrifices, but there are also many who say: why do I need the market if my interests are violated, if I lose benefits and job seniority? ...We are also worried by the fact that the realization of the Shatalin programme calls for a strong presidential power. Yet just yesterday, we proclaimed the democratization of society and selfmanagement."22
The organizing committee demanded with only one opposing vote, even though few of the deputies had seen more than a brief summary of it. 21. Rabochaya tribuna, September 25, 1990. 22. Komsomol'skaya pravda, October 4, 1990. 23. Rabochaya tribuna, October 21, 1990. 24. Personal communication. The Confederation of Labour was founded by the Congress of Independent Workers' Organizations and Movements in Novokuznetsk in May 1990. 25. From the unpublished protocols and personal conversations. At one point, Golikov tried to reassure the Donbass miners, saying that Kuzbass had helped the British miners during their strike: why think they would not help their Donbass brethren?
The emergence of a the maintenance, at least for the transitional period, of the industry's central administration and subsidies. 23 Even the Council of Representatives of the Confederation of Labour, which was subject to strong liberal influence at its founding, also baulked
USSR self-management at endorsing the 500-Day Plan at its September 1990 meeting in Donetsk. 24
The differences in orientation among the mining regions manifested themselves from the very start of the Second Congress of Miners at the end of October 1990 in the debate over the agenda. There were three main items: a report on how the decisions of the first congress had been carried
ALTHOUGH self-management has not played a prominent role out, the transition to the market in the coal in the miners' movement, even those leaders closest to the industry, including a report by the Minister, and the establishment of an indepenliberals would no doubt say that they support the idea. One dent trade union.
often has the impression that their alliance with the liberals is in no small part based on a misconception (fed by liberal
Trade unions little use in face rhetoric about "people's enterprises" and "returning property of closure threat to the people") that the market proposed by the "democrats"
Delegates from the Donbass insisted on is a necessary condition for real self-management.
allotting an unlimited amount of time to
In fact, the history of market reform in Yugoslavia, which has the second question. They felt their region had the richest experience in this area, shows that was at stake and that trade unions would be little use if the mines were closed. Deleself-management poses severe limits to the free circulation of gates from the Kuzbass, on the other hand, capital and labour, and as such is incompatible with the insisted on unlimited time for the third efficient functioning of the kind of "full-blooded market" that point, since, they argued, whatever system the workers lived under, they would need
Gorbachev has said he wants to introduce in the Soviet Union.
strong trade unions to defend them. 25
In Yugoslavia, as well as in the rest of Eastern Europe and the
Though the vast majority of delegates
Soviet Union, the "radicalization" of the market reform is were in favour of a new independent trade union a significant minority wanted to being accompanied by a retreat from the self-management democratize the old one), a split over these
Idea and the restoration of full property rights, including the differences in orientation was narrowly right of owners to manage and sell their enterprises.
averted only at the very end of the congress, when the new trade union was established. But the delegates of the congress remained extremely dissatisfied with the report on the transition to the market, even though the minister had assured them there would be no layoffs in 1991 ("If even one miner is dismissed," he declared,
"you won't have to ask me, I will resign
The discussion made it amply clear that although many miners fear the market, they certainly do not want to retain the old system.
But the minister offered no new vision, only the need to ask the government for additional subsidies.
The delegates responded with the decision to create their own commission of experts to develop a plan for the industry.
This decision was implicit recognition of the limits of the strictly trade unionist approach that some of the Kuzbass delegates, like Gorlikov, were advocating.
These delegates argued that the congress's basic task was to create a trade union whose principal function would be to obtain the highest possible price for the labour power the workers were selling to the "employers" (rabotodateli). But most of the delegates obviously felt that the new union could not leave the tasks of managing and restructuring their industry outside its purview. *
DAVID SEPPO
B
until recently been a minor note in the organized labour movement in the Soviet Union, it was never completely absent. At the May Organizations and Movements, where the influence of certain liberal Moscow intellectuals was strongly felt, a minority "Bloc of 33" delegates (mostly from outside the mining areas and in particular from the industrial centres of the Urals), argued for an independent labour movement within the movement (a position firmly opposed by the liberals') and proposed the following platform as a response to what they labour's social and political rights: "In no circumstances to deprive the workers of the right to manage their enterprises and management; not to allow the economic reform to be carried out at the expense of workers' interests, the reduction of their real wages and the spread of unemployment; to oppose the democratization of property relations through the sale of state enterprises to private individuals."2
The conflicts over power in the enterprise and the deepening suspicion among the workers that destatization will in practice mean the transformation of their enterprises into the property of the bureau1. According to the bulletin of the Workers' Group in the Yaroslavl' Popular Front, "Many intellectual democrats talk of the need for a union of the democratic intelligentsia and the workers. It sounds nice. But what they mean in practise can be seen from the example of the Yaroslavl' Popular Front....They rejected from the very start the idea that the Popular Front should seek a social base in the workers and they observed with gloomy apprehension from the sidelines the activity of the Workers' Group. The Popular Front not only did nothing for the organization of Yaroslavl's workers, but it simply does not want the creation of a real workers' and really independent workers' organizations...They mouth off about 'common human interests' and toss out stupidities from the tribune to the effect that 'the class approach leads to genocide." From Listok Rabochei Gruppy (Yaroslavl') reproduced in Rabochaya tribuna, November 7, 1990. For analyses of the debates at the Congress of Independent Worker Organizations and Movement on this issue see P. Funder Larsen, "Workers of the USSR, Unite!", International Viewpoint, no. 187, June 18, 1990, and B. Ikhlov, "Neklassovyi vrag," Rabochii
21
vestnik, (Perm') no. 5, May 1990. 2. Rabochii vestnik (Per') no. 5, May 1990, p. 11. March 4, 1991 • #201 International Viewpoint
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movement
crats and "affairistes" of the shadow economy formed the background for the emergence of an organized self-management current in the labour movement in the late summer of 1990. But impulse was provided by the passage in the USSR Supreme Soviet on a new "Law on Enterprises in the USSR" at its spring
This law, adopted with suspiciously little publicity, supersedes the 1987 "Law on State Enterprises" that had broad self-management rights to the work collectives, including the right to elect managerial personnel and to participate in enterprise through their collective councils? The new law was explained at the time by the need to facilitate the process of democratization and the shift to the market. But the activists who managed to learn of it described it as "depriving the work-collective councils of any real functions in management and in Under the new law, which said nothing about self-management, enterprises are to be managed according to their charters, which are to be established by the owners.
### Legislation in secret
A week after the law's adoption, the workers of the main assembly line of the VAZ factory declared: "[We] are deeply angered by the fact that the Supreme
Soviet of the USSR, on June 4 1990,
La "Law on Enterprises in the USSR', in secret from the people, without first even publishing a draft in the press and submitting it to the collectives for discussion. In essence, a gross provocation has been committed against the toilers of the country. A law affecting the interests of every work collective has been adopted without any consideration for the opinion of the toilers themselves."S
In fact, the offensive against self-management, which had never become much of a reality anyway, had begun months earlier with the government's instruction to end the practise of electing managerial personnel. "The absurdity of these elections does not require discussion," wrote the management-oriented journal EKO. "This has already been recognized by N. I. Ryzhkov. M. S. Gorbachev, who first proposed them, has not expressed any opinion, but his silence speaks loudly.'
The liberal ideologues have also participated in this offensive, though often hiding behind self-management rhetoric. Thus, Gorbachev's personal adviser, economist Nikolai Petrakov, has described the creation of councils of stockholders (who are not limited to the enterprise's employees), which will appoint the directors and make key decisions on investments, dividends and prof22 its, as "a sort of step toward self-management free of higher-standing International Viewpoint #201 • March 4, 1991
The convocation of the first All-Union Conference of Work Collective Councils and Workers' Committees in Tolyatti on August 31-September 4, 1990, was a direct response to the passage of the new law. Attended by about a hundred delegates from enterprises employing some two million, it was almost completely ignored by the national media. Rabochaya tribuna (Workers' Tribune - pub lished by the Central Committee of the CPSU) was the only central paper to give it any coverage, and this was really incidental to its main interest in responding to the challenge of Nikolai Travkin, leader of the Democratic Party®, who said he would eat his hat if the paper published the conference's resolution critical of the government.
The crew of the national news programme, Vremya, also came, but its purpose was to film Venyamin Yarin, an "honorary" worker-member of Gorbachev's Presidential Council. Yarin told the conference that the President had entrusted him with the mission of organizing the representatives of the work control councils around himself and the Presidential Council.º Apparently, the conference's failure to respond to this offer explains why no news about it appeared on Soviet television screens.
While the conference approved of the new law's intention of increasing the economic activity of enterprises, it otherwise assessed it as anti-democratic, directed against the self-management, the arbitrary power of the administration and the ministries and holding back the
Work councils outmoded?
Some did argue that the work collective councils had been subservient to management and, in any case, they were outmoded now that the government had adopted a policy of privatization!° that allows for more "progressive" forms of enterprise management. The new law states that enterprises are to be administered according to their charter established by their owner or owners. Since, it was argued, the work collectives are about to become the owners, why make a fuss? If they judged the councils to be useful, they could decide to retain it.
But that was the rub: the majority of delegates were not at all certain that the work collectives would inherit the destatized factories. Certainly this was as far from clear in the 500-Day Plan as it was in the USSR government's "Basic Orientations for the Stabilization of the Economy and the Transition to a Market Economy". Both allow for all forms of property and neither makes specific provision for self-management, let alone for ownership or control by the work collectives. Indeed, if one goes beyond the rhetoric and deliberate fuzziness of sections relating to property and management, their entire thrust is against self-management and for the introduction of full private property rights."
Work councils to choose
Accordingly, the conference demanded that the work collective councils themselves be the ones to choose the appropriate form of property for their enterprises. Specifically, they options: they could either become collective owners, without payment for the enterprise, or they could decide that the would be managed by the councils. In discussing the first option, some argued for payment, since the enterprises were built, not by the collectives, but by the entire
But the majority rejected these arguments, not least because the workers simply lack the means to purchase their enterprises. As for management of the enterprises, all were agreed that under both options the administration should be hired employees of the collective and work under its supervision. The meeting declared "impermissible the transforma3. For a brief discussion of the ambiguous self-management provisions of the 1987 law, see D. Manbetween workers and management", Socialist Register 1989, London, Merlin Press, pp. 102-29, p. 110. 4. Rabochaya tribuna, December 6, 1990. On the 1988 law, see D. Mandel, "Revolutionary reform..." 5. Sobstvennoe mnenie (Tolyatti), no. 7, 1990.
"Demokratizatsiya no proizvodstve, vlast' dela i vlast'..ch'ya?", EKO (Novosibirsk), no. 8, 1990, pp. 7. Rabochaya tribuna, April 22, 1990. See also, R. W. Davies, "Gorbachev's socialism in historical perspective," New Left Review, Spring 1990, pp. 22-3. 8. Of the sundry liberal parties, Travkin's has made the most effort to court workers. Travkin himself, who rather dubiously claims he was once a worker (at present he is a businessman and politician), regularly appears at large worker gatherings, spreading his mes sage of primitive anti-communism. So far he has had little success among the workers, who have generally been withholding their allegiance from all political par9. In December 1990, Gorbachev disbanded this largely symbolic advisory council, one of whose main purposes seems have been co-opt potential opposition. Yarin, a metallurgical worker, had been co-chaiman of the anti-liberal United Front of Toilers. He liked to say that after 30 years at the factory, all the property he had accumulated was what he was wearing. As a member of the Presidential Council, Yarin enjoyed a spacious apartment, trips abroad, a generous salary, and, of course, much official honour. It did not take him long to come round fully to Gorbachev's policies. The United Front of Toilers, whose fortunes have been flagging since its foundation in the summer of 1989 (its worker support is quite thin) recently ousted Yarin (according to Yarin, he resigned.) 10. "Privatization" and "destatization" are often used interchangeably in the Soviet Union. 11. The 500-Day Plan gives the work collective one month to propose a form of property for the enterprise, but the decision remains that of the state authorities. It also allows that 10% of the stocks "may be transferred" (this apparently also depends on the discretion of the authorities) to the enterprise for sale and transfer on preferential terms to members of the work collective (not the collective as a group). 12. This account is based on personal communications from participants and Rabochaya tribuna, September 9, 1990.
tion of ministries into concerns playing the role of leasors of joint stock companies." It called on the Supreme Soviet to suspend the law until it could be revised to take into account the decisions of the conference and it asked republican parliaments to ignore those provisions that contradicted the self-management provisions of the 1987 law. A new draft law should be submitted to a national discussion. The conference elected an organizing committee to co-ordinate the activities of the work-collective councils and workers' committee throughout the country and to act as their spokesperson. It was instructed to participate in revising the law and to convoke a full congress of self-management committees in December that would establish a permanent organization. 12
This was the first organized expression of how at least a significant part of the workers see "destatization". It made clear the underlying differences between the motives of the workers' support for market reform and those of the liberals. As noted earlier, rhetoric aside, a "full-blooded market", the liberals' ultimate goal, requires the establishment of full private property rights. The workers, for their part, support market reform and the enterprise autonomy that it would provide as conditions for a more efficient economy and real self-management by the collectives. Although the conference was silent on this, it was implicit in its position that enterprises that become the property of the collectives (there is no question for those that remain state property) could not be divided or sold.
### Successful conference
Despite the organizing committee's meagre resources and the difficulty finding a large enough hall, 700 delegates mainly workers and about seven million workers, attended the Founding Congress Work-Collective Councils and Workers' Committees 1990. Many of the delegates had to pay their own way, and mittees, to reaffirm the Tolyatti conference's position on the "Law of Enterprises in the USSR" and on destatization, and to develop a plan of
The congress founded the Union of Work-Collective Councils and Workers' Committees and elected a council of representatives from the major regions, with three co-chairpersons.14 A heated debate took place over the issue of a warning strike at the start of January to support the programmatic Although a strike was not ruled out, it was decided first to try other means, in particular to act through the Republican parliaments. The chair of the USSR Supreme Soviet A. Luk'yanov tried to reassure the the Soviet parliament agreed that the self-management councils should have the right to decide all the matters that affect the vital interests of the
He invited them to to work with the parliament on revising the Laws on the Enterprise and on Property, which, he admitted, had already been overtaken by events. But the delegates were not reassured. Sergei Novopol'skiii of the AZLK factory explained "It does not depend on promises and declaration and not even on the intentions of the other side, but on our decisiveness. If they do carry out our demands, we declare a strike. "15
A dominant theme of the discussion was the danger of a quiet appropriation of state property by bureaucratic clans who are adapting the market to their interests. Much evidence, along the lines cited in my article in the previous issue of /V, was brought to support that fear. The Union's programme of immediate measures took note of the "critical situation in the coun try linked to the attempt by the administrative-command system to consolidate its power through the appropriation of the
USSR property belonging to the people and to leave the toilers in the situation of hired labourers deprived of rights." It called on the councils to convene their collectives to hear reports from the administration on its activity, "including [that relating to] joint enterprises, small enterprises, tives, as well as its participation in associations and concerns...and to stop any attempts to transform enterprises behind the back of the collective into concerns, joint-stock companies and so on."
The Union's basic goals are the achievement of "legal guarantees and the realization in practice of the voluntary and free choice by the work collectives of forms of property and management, as well as "drawing of work collectives into the process of managing their enterprises, as one of the main ways of fighting against the totalitarian system with the aim of overcoming the alienation of the toilers from power and from property and the liquidation of the cruel exploitation of the people by the barrack-bureaucratic state." ly, the "union unites the labour collectives in the aim of mobilizing their civic activity as a factor for the general improvement of the situation in the country, as a factor of constant positive pressure from below on legislative and executive organs, and finally, as a factor that will block antipopular actions and facilitate the precise and swift execution of plans and decisions in the interests of the toilers. "16
From a socialist point of view, the programme of the new Union is not unambig uous, and it is worth looking first at some of the potential dangers it presents. As already noted, although the inalienable and indivisible nature of the collective's property flows logically from the programme, this is never made explicit.
No economic conception More importantly, there is no overall economic conception. The Union clearly supports market reform (although this too is not really spelled out), but is this reform to lead to a system defined by market relations, that is, one in which the market dominates and dictates its logic to society, or to one where market relations are a mechanism of economic regulation and coordination subordinated to the collective, conscious will of the society?
It could be argued that the movement's emphasis on enterprise autonomy and on ownership by the collective can serve as a basis for an eventual restoration of capitalism as well as for the construction of a management, depending on whether the accent is on the market or on the collective power of the workers. If it is on the 13. Rabochaya tribuna, December 8 1990. 14. These are a mechanic-assembler from VAZ, an engineer from the new Elabuga auto factory and the chairman of the work-collective council of the Mos-
23
15. Rabochaya tribuna, December 12, 1990. March 4, 1991 • #201 International Viewpoint
USSR former, there seems little more reason to welcome monopolism based upon workers' self-management than bureaucratic monopolism; both involve the pursuit of particular, corporatist interests at the expense of the collectivity.
Gorbachev moves to right
With Gorbachev moving to the "right" (in particular his attempt to shore up the Union and the disintegrating through extraordinary presidential powers based upon a greater reliance on the army and the KGB and his appointment of conservatives to certain top posts) and the realization among liberals that "destatization" is not proceeding as they would like (that is, in a way that would give ample influence and reward to the intellectual élite and to a private sector not dependent on bureaucratic whims), some liberals are already proposing the idea of an alliance self-management movement,
Gavriil Popov has publicly warned of two possible variants of privatization: "the transfer as property to the bureaucracy (along with the trade mafia) of that which they have, so to speak, already been "managing" so successfully; or democratic privatization, with transfer of enterprises to the toilers." (A supporter of the 500-Day Plan, Popov no wants to seen the second option realized than do the bureaucrats he is attacking.)
Igor Klyamkin, one of the most insightful liberal ideologues, has now also come round to seeing in Gorbachev the leader of the "revolution from above". Yel'tsin, on the other hand, represents for him "new [unnamed] forces"; Yel'tsin wants a "different [unspecified] kind Klyamkin laments the fact that nationalism cannot serve as a basis for "democracy" (that is, for the liberal intelligentsia and its restorationist project) in Russia, as it does in other republics. He suggests, however, that such a basis might be constructed from the struggles provoked by destatization, and he calls for "a broad bloc of employees and entrepreneurs. "18
The hopes pinned on this tactic of harnessing the popular movement to the liberal programme in the Russian Republic by playing up the opposition of a supposedly democratic republican parliament led by Yel'tsin to the undemocratic central government and parliament led by Gorbachev has some basis.
tactic has a major trump in Yel'tsin's personal popularity as an outspoken opponent of the establishment — though there are some signs that his star too might be waning. Thus, the workers of the VAZ assembly line, whose resolution was cited above, appealed to Yel'tsin and the Russian parliament to defend their self-management rights against the central government. Their programme of the 24 tives to work through their republican par- December Congress called on the collecInternational Viewpoint #201 • March 4, 1991 liaments and to push for the transfer of their enterprises from Union to republican jurisdiction.
Nevertheless, the liberals' attempt to win the self-management movement to their cause has slight chance of success: their market reform is no more compatible with a revolution from below and genself-management than that of the reformist wing of the bureaucracy. And these two groups need each other to realize their programmes, which are really not that different. It was only a little over a year ago that Klyamkin himself wrote that the transition to the market could not be achieved democratically, since the workers are too attached to the idea of social justice.20 Now, after suddenly "discovering" that Gorbachev, in contrast to Yeltsin, has embraced "revolution from above" he nevertheless still concludes (not at all disapprovingly) that a Gorbachev-Yeltsin alliance is inevitable, though for good measure he concludes that it will be a stormy marriage of
Ineffective democracy
As Sergei Stankevich, deputy mayor of Moscow and one of the three leaders of the liberal "Interregional Group" in the USSR Parliament put it in the closing days of 1990: "The situation in the country is critical and by ordinary parliamentary methods, using only our newly-born and still-ineffective democracy, it will be impossible to resolve our Therefore, we need a more authoritarian leadership of the reform process."21 The liberals' feeble reaction to Gorbachev's shift to the "right" indicates that Stankevich's views are widely shared by his colleagues, or that, in any case, they can find no acceptable alternative to Gorbachev.
Of course, few would deny the need to restore some semblance of order in the economy. The presidential decree reactivating and strengthening "workers' control" of trade (to be aided by the KGB!) should be seen as a populist gesture on Gorbachev's part. But this measure is not really intended to change the relations of power in the economy.
The unmistakable thrust of Gorbachev's latest shift (certainly not his last -the "revolution from above" has only one possible programme: the market) is bureaucratic recentralization, in practice necessarily means strengthening the power of the economic managers vis-à-vis the workers. The All-Union Meeting of Managers of State Enterprises that took place at almost the same time as the self-management congress adopted a strong law and order reso-
In contrast this gathering, held in the Kremlin's Palace of Congresses, addressed by Gorbachev himself received broad press coverage. 23
As the liberal-apparatus becomes more explicit, so the liberals' success in winning popular support as the only real democrats and most fearless enemies of the bureaucracy declines. On the other hand, socialists, who so far have remained relatively isolated from their potential social base, are the only ones who embrace the revolution from below and put forth a consistent democratic programme. The self-management ment thus opens up new possibilities for breaking their isolation.
Summing up political developments in 1990, Pavel Voshchanov, political observer for Komsomol' skaya pravda, lamented "a mass shift to the right in consciousness....The discrediting of the democratic idea is one of the political outcomes of this last year." By Voshchanov, of course, means "liberalism". His use of the term "right" is more ambiguous, since it can refer to conservative "defenders of socialism" as well as to genuine socialists (these two groups are indistinguishable to the liberals, who are in complete agreement with the liberals that socialism has already been constructed in the Soviet Union). But there is no evidence of a shift in mass consciousness towards the conservatives, either of the Stalinist or of the Pamyat' (Great Russian chauvinist) type. On the contrary, the management current demonstrates continued strength of democratic sentiment among the workers.
Weakening liberal influence
The creation of the Union of WorkCollective Committees is itself a sign of the weakening of liberal ideological influence in an important sector of the labour movement. The recognition of the need for coordinating their activities indicates that self-management activists are beginning to discover the limits of a corporatist approach to their struggle for enterprise autonomy. Such an approach, which has received strong encouragement from liberals, was to a large degree a spontaneous reaction on the workers' part to their experience with bureaucratic centralism. But this seems to be changing under the impact of what they have already experi17. Radzikhovskii, "Kapitalizm v otdel'no vzyatoi kvartire," Nedelya, no. 48, November 25, 1990, p. 7.
"Oktrabr'skii vybor prezidenta," Ogonek, no. 47, November 1990, p. 7. 19. In the view of A. Kolganov, a Marxist economist at Moscow University, the "500-Days" are based upon a bloc between the "new rich" and the party-economic bureaucracy on terms dictated by the new rich. The Union programme calls for a smoother, less painfu path of transformation of the bureaucracy into new rich, naturally on its own terms. A. nomenklatumyi kapitalizm," Dialog, No. 17, Novem20. E. Bérard-Zarzicka, "Quelques propositions pour une perestroika autoritaire", Les temps modernes (Paris), no. 523, February 1990, pp. 11-22. 21. Komsomol'skaya pravda, December 30, 1990. 23. Rabochaya tribuna, December 8, 9 and 11, 1990. 24. Rabochaya tribuna, December 6, 1990.
Russian Rerolution enced of the market and the threat posed by growing economic dislocation.
"Certain elements would very much like to split up the workers as potential owners, explained a delegate to the Congress from the Elabuga auto factory. "When they are isolated from each other, it will be easier to manipulate them in the service of alien interests. This is one of the reasons we called the congress. "24 Much was said at the congress of the need for a strong central authority capable of restoring respect for laws and harmony among the republics, uniting regions and establishing stable economic relations in a unified economic space. But the rejected Gorbachev's authoritarian solution. According to V. Kataev, a delegate
"Such an authority cannot be established from above with the aid of a club and decrees. It will be established by the work collectives themselves become the complete masters of the socialist property. In that case, as the resolution of the Congress states, the workcollective as owners are prepared to bear full responsibility for the results of the economic activity of their enterprises and for order in the country.25
V. Adrianov, co-chairman of the Union and a mechanic on the VAZ assembly line, expressed the outlook of the self-management movement in the following terms: "The work-collective councils in the enterprises were born of perestroika. But from the very start, they were separated from each other. Today the time has come to unite. Why? We are standing on the threshold of the market. We are not indifferent when it comes to who will get that part of the national property that will undergo destatization. The aim of our
PROTEST CANE union: through common efforts, the possibility for every collective to itself choose the form of property, to itself become, if it so desires, the owner of its enterprise without payment. workers, having become the master, the owners of the property, are capable of stopping the advancing chaos in the econ-
"The programmes of transition to the market that have been adopted within them the danger of violation of the workers' interests. Exploiting the confusion, the administrative-command apparatus is attempting not only to hold onto the reigns of management, but to become in fact the owners of the means of production, creating concerns, associations, joint-stock companies. As for us, we are left the role of hired labour, the draught force of the economy. We cannot and simply do not have the right to allow that."26
A socialist path
If the workers are really going to prevent this, they will have to take up the fight for a socialist path of development. For it alone holds out the prospect of genuine democratization of economic political relations. While the liberals form alliances with the apparatus in order to push through by authoritarian means a reform that would leave economic power in the hands of a small élite, the socialists emerge as the only real democrats. In a joint declaration at the end of September 1990, a coalition of left parties and groups in Moscow condemned the official
"One more social would maintain power and property in a new form in the hands of the party-state BREAD LINE LALI
USSR bureaucracy and the "affairistes" of the shadow economy. The bosses of the [Brezhnev] period of stagnation want to change the form of their domination... And once again, the burden of these transformations will fall entirely on the shoulders of ordinary people.... Yesterday's "irreconcilable" fighters against the privileges of the partocracy are prepared today to defend the power of the same nomenklatura, with the only difference that now transactions will occur in cash [pod nalichnyi raschet)...The slogans of justice, humanism, and charity, under which the democratic movement of the perestroika period developed, have been replaced with calls for a cruel economy, a firm hand, and the auctioning off of the nation's wealth...
"It is necessary to overcome the false alternative between totalitarianism and a monopoly-dominated capitalist market and to take our own path, determined by the creative activity of the people where the live and work and by the unity of their actions as a people. In this work, our sympathies lie with social, production and territorial self-management, though this too cannot be imposed from above.
Among the immediate measures proposed in the declaration are: the right of work collectives to determine independently, without purchase, the forms of property, management and self-management in their enterprises; the right of local soviets to manage land and natural resources, monitored by public organizations; the right of republics and other territorial formations to independently determine their status as well as the powers they voluntarily delegate to superordinate organizations; the abolition of presidential power; democratic opposition to the creation of authoritarian national states that refuse national and civil rights to their own minorities; the consistent introduction of full human rights, in particular the abolition of the death penalty, of anti-strike legislation, of all forms of forced labour, of the internal passport regime, and of the political police; the right of the local population through their soviets and through referenda to veto the construction of enterprises on their territoту."