Eastern Europe

Matiushenko, Afanasy Nikolaevich 1879-1907

A biography of Afanasy Matiushenko, who was one of the key mutineers on the Battleship Potemkin, immortalised by Eisenstein's film, which helped kick-start the 1905 Revolution.

Afanasy Nikolaevich Matiushenko
Also spelled Afanasiy Matyushenko, born 1879 - Kharkov, Russia, died 20 October 1907 - Sevastopol, Russia

The Potemkin mutineer
Afanasy Matiushenko was the son of peasants from Kharkov province in the Ukraine. He was born in 1879, in the village of Dergachi. His father had to give up the unrewarding work of farming to become a shoemaker.

Strike wave sweeps Finland

Finland is experiencing its worst outbreak of industrial unrest for a generation after relations between the right-leaning government coalition and powerful trade unions collapsed over wage negotiations.

The Financial Times reports:

Strikes have either broken out or are threatened in industries spanning the economy, affecting some 40,000 workers in core areas including shipping, forestry, postal services and steel.

In the most serious development, 12,800 nurses have decided to resign en masse next month if their demands for a 25 per cent wage increase over the next two years are not met.

Poland: Bus drivers win strike

Bus drivers in Kielce have won their strike against privatisation.

After 17 days the bus drivers in the South Polish city of Kielce have surprisingly won their strike. The sale of the communal bus company MPK planned by the city’s mayor is stopped and MPK is given to the workers instead. The strike had been preceded by months of confrontation.

1919-1922: The Workers’ Opposition

Leading Workers' Opposition activist, Alexandra Kollontai

A short history of a group within the Russian Communist Party that struggled against the increasing party bureaucracy and for trade union control over industry which, by 1922, had been forcibly disbanded by the party.

The Workers Opposition began to form in 1919, as a result of the policies of War Communism, which set a precedence for the domination of the Communist Party over local party branches and trade unions. During the civil war, the Workers Opposition began agitating against the lack of democracy in the Communist Party as a result of the centralising actions of the party’s bureaucracy.

Counter-revolution and the Soviet Union - Gregori Maximov

Short essay by famous Russian anarchist, Gregori Maximov, on the defeat of the 1917 revolution by counter-revolution from within.

Taken from the Bulletin of the Kate Sharpley Library, No. 14 (March 1998), can also be found on the KSL website here.

Medvedev, Sergei Pavlovich, 1885-1937

Story of the life of Bolshevik metal worker and member of the Workers' Opposition group, Sergei Medvedev, who, like many others who criticised his party's bureaucracy, was executed by the party he spent the majority of his life serving.

Sergei Pavlovich Medvedev was a Russian Bolshevik revolutionary, metalworker, and trade union organizer. Born into a peasant estate, he grew up in the countryside near Moscow and in St. Petersburg. After receiving a primary school education, he began factory work at age thirteen. He first worked at the Obukhov factory in St. Petersburg and participated in the 1901 Obukhov strike.

Kollontai, Alexandra, 1872-1952

Short biography of the Bolshevik feminist Alexandra Kollontai who played a crucial role in the Workers Opposition movement.

Alexandra Kollontai was a major figure in the Russian socialist movement from the turn of the century through the revolution and civil war. During periods of exile she was also active as a speaker and writer in Germany, Belgium, France, Britain, Scandinavia and the United States.

Women fighters in the days of the great October Revolution - Alexandra Kollontai

In this article, written in 1927 (well after the Bolshevik consolidation of power), Alexandra Kollontai describes the leading role in which women played in Russian Revolution of 1917. Though heavily Bolshevik in focus, it describes well the activity of working class women in the revolution.

The women who took part in the Great October Revolution – who were they? Isolated individuals? No, there were hosts of them; tens, hundreds of thousands of nameless heroines who, marching side by side with the workers and peasants behind the Red Flag and the slogan of the Soviets, passed over the ruins of tsarist theocracy into a new future...

The Workers' Opposition - Alexandra Kollontai

Alexandra Kollontai at the International Women's Conference, 1921

Kollontai's pamphlet was one of the central theoretical works of the Workers' Opposition movement within the Bolshevik Party, arguing for increased union control of the economy and the debureaucratisation of the party hierarchy.

First published in Pravda, January 25, 1921 this text was banned in Soviet Russia in March of 1921, by resolution of the 10th Congress of the Communist Party. It was then printed in the Workers ' Dreadnought (by Sylvia Pankhurst), April 22 - August 19, 1921.

On the History of the Movement of Women Workers in Russia - Alexandra Kollontai

Written in 1919, Alexandra Kollontai's essay looks at the role of working class women in the history of Russian radicalism with particular focus on the 1905 revolution.

What year could be said to mark the beginning of the working women's movement in Russia?