USSR

1970-71: Uprising in Poland

A short history of the 1970-71 uprising by workers in Poland which saw strikes and occupations at workplaces across the country. Although suffering savage repression, the uprising forced the government to back down over plans to increase prices of basic consumer goods.

On the morning of December 14 1970, thousands of workers from the Gdansk shipyards downed tools and began marching into the city. Their objective was the local regional office of the Polish United Workers' Party (PZPR), the party that had ruled the People's Republic of Poland since 1952. The protestors were met by police units and fighting between the two sides lasted into the evening.

The tragedy of Karaganda

Members of the CNT and other Spanish anti-fascists in the Soviet Union, 1938-1956.

Abstract: In March 1939, Republican soldiers who had been training as aviation pilots were stranded in the USSR along with the sailors of several vessels from the Spanish merchant navy. They were prevented from leaving and in 1941 were arrested and sent to Novosibirsk Transit Prison. Also detained were several civilians who had been working with children evacuated from the Civil War.

Poland 1956 - Vladan Vukliš

A history of the uprising in Poland, 1956 which began at the ZISPO factory in Poznan.

This is an English translation of the original Serbian. Further editing by libcom from the translated version.

Polish Revolt of 1956

A note on the use of the word 'Soviet' - Neil Fernandez

Comments on radicals' use of the word "soviet" and its relationship to workers' councils and the USSR.

A Note on the Use of the Word 'Soviet'

Neil C Fernandez

Hungary '56 - Nick Heath

A history of the Hungarian uprising of 1956, published as a special supplement of Anarchist Worker on the 20th anniversary in 1976

IT IS NOT out of love for nostalgia that we are commemorating the 1956 Hungarian uprising. Hungary '56 was a prime example of the working class itself reaching for power: doubly significant, it took place in one of the mythical 'workers' states'.

1953: The Working Class Uprising In East-Germany, Cajo Brendel

Cajo Brendel's pamphlet on the East German Uprising 1953.

Class struggle Against Bolshevism

Cajo Brendel

(From original Echanges et Mouvement- london pamphlet) Editor's note :

1953: The gulag uprising at Vorkuta

An article, edited from News and Letters, outlining the uprising at the Gulag in Vorkuta in 1953.

Don't Forget Vorkuta: A Soviet Holocaust

June 2003

Introduction

1962: The Novocherkassk Tragedy

Electric train VL60PK, main product of the Novocherkassk NEVZ works in the early 1960s

An account of the workers uprising in Novocherkassk, USSR, which lasted from June 1-3 and ended in a massacre and mass arrests.

The Novocherkassk Tragedy, June 1-3 1962
by Piotr Suda

1921: Kronstadt: Proletarian spin-off of the Russian Revolution - Cajo Brendel

Cajo Brendel's pamphlet on the Kronstadt rebellion

I

1932: The Vichuga uprising

In April 1932 at Vichuga, Ivanovo Industrial Region (IPO), USSR, 16,000 textile workers struck at several factories and temporarily took control of the town until the uprising was crushed by both heavy repression and promises of reform from central Soviet command.

Part of a wave of unrest which hit the USSR in the IPO, Lower Volga region, the Urals, Western Siberia, Ukraine and Belorussia, the strike was one of the most significant of the 1930s, winning reforms nationally as a result of the threat it posed to the Soviet authority.