A-Infos (en) FDCA: 100 years of proletarian autonomy [it]

One hundred years ago, in May 1905 in Ivanovo-Voznesensk (a textiles district
of Moscow) the first Workers' Soviet was born. The platform of demands of the
workers of the area sought:
* the abolition of night work and overtime
* a minimum monthly wage
* the abolition of the "factory police"
* the freedom of speech and freedom of assembly for workers.
The Soviet was made up of 110 delegates, had a collegial management and its
tasks were:
* to manage strikes
* to block any separate actions or bargaining
* to ensure the maintenance of order and the strengthening of organization
between the workers
* to ensure that work was not recommenced without a decision of the Soviet.

This, then, is how the proletariat's revolutionary experience began in Czarist
Russia and would eventually lead to the 1917 insurrection. It was the "First
Russian Revolution".

Following a series of local strikes and the creation of new workers'
organizational forms, in October 1905 the Council of Workers' Deputies of St.
Petersburg was born. This Soviet elected a provisional executive committee of
22 members (2 for every district of the city, 2 for every trade union) and had
its own newspaper. It managed to impose the introduction of an 8-hour day in
the factories. The struggle was then repressed with every means at the disposal
of the bosses, who were reduced to locking out and firing 19,000 workers.

Soviets then appeared in all of Russia's industrial cities.

There were about fifty Workers' Councils and some councils were formed by
soldiers and peasants. The movement of poor peasants and farm labourers grew
with forms of struggle which ranged from a refusal to pay taxes to driving out
local authorities and landowners.

1905 was therefore an extremely important example for the international
proletariat, an experience which was directly linked to the proletarian
structures of self-government through councils born in France during the Paris
Commune in 1871.

The Soviets were exclusively organized by, managed by and made up of
proletarians who were struggling for their own class interests. They were
organizations that aimed for class unity and the autonomy of the working class.

Apart from economic demands, the Soviets also had a whole series of of policies
which were aimed at changing society in a socialist way. The following 10 years
saw a progressive spread of class consciousness in the hearts of the Russian
proletariat.

In fact, in 1917 the Soviets rose up again to become the principal actors of
the "second revolution" in October, only for the Bolshevik Party, Lenin and
Trotsky, to destroy them, first by using them for their own purposes, later by
removing any traces of workers' control or autonomy and, finally, by physically
eliminating any opposition to the party's dictatorship.

The Soviets of 1905 and of the period from 1917 to 1921, the Factory Councils,
the neighbourhood Councils, the "third revolution" of Kronstadt and the
Makhnovist movement in Ukraine remain as milestones in the history of
proletarian autonomy and of the class struggle against the enemies of the
revolution, of equality and of freedom. They form a part of those revolutionary
experiences of the proletariat on which Anarchist Communist theory is based.


Federazione dei Comunisti Anarchici
May 2005

http://www.fdca.it/fdcaen


From: Federazione dei Comunisti Anarchici <internazionale@fdca.it>

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