Inside Lenin's Government by Lara Douds

Author:Lara Douds
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bloomsbury UK

Collegiality in the Commissariat of Labour, September 1918

Somebody among us has rendered a crime against Soviet power, either the collegium or the commissar. (A.M. Stopani, collegium member of the Commissariat of Labour, 30 August 1918)

The examples of conflict within the commissariat collegia outlined above are instructive as it is difficult to judge whether a body is collegial or not when all the members agree on the issues at hand. The best opportunity to observe where authority lies in practice is when agreement breaks down. One such case will now be examined in detail to demonstrate that the collegium was much more than simply an advisory body under the commissar. In September 1918 a conflict erupted between the People’s Commissar for Labour and the other members of the commissariat’s collegium. This conflict forced Soviet leaders to consider more precisely the nature of the relationship between commissar and collegium, which was ill-defined in legislation. The Commissariat of Labour was among those named in the initial decree on the formation of the Workers’ and Peasants’ Government. It had not existed in the imperial bureaucracy, but was formed as a Ministry by the Provisional Government in 1917. Aleksandr Shliapnikov was appointed People’s Commissar for Labour. He was a natural choice for this role from his previous experience in the labour movement, a former steel worker and long-time Bolshevik Party member.59 Shliapnikov initially faced problems in taking control of the old Ministry of Labour, where carry-over officials obstructed his efforts.60 However, the commissariat’s internal records, and the testimony of its commissar, show that despite the bureaucratic sabotage it was among the first to be successfully up and running.61

The minutes of the sittings of the commissariat collegium show that initially it was a healthy, collegial body. By no means did Shliapnikov simply make a decision and report it to the collegium. Here intense, and at times, fiery debate was conducted by the collegium members on all major policy issues. Decisions were then made on majority vote. The commissar found himself outvoted on a number of occasions. One example was the June 1918 discussion of the establishment of the amount of leave for workers. Two sides emerged in the debate, one led by Shliapnikov and A.N. Paderin, and the other by V.P. Nogin, M.P. Tomskii and V.V. Shmidt. Shliapnikov’s side argued that two weeks of leave per year for all workers would suffice. The other side argued that this was not enough, and that workers in more physically demanding and dangerous jobs should be granted extra leave. Eventually Nogin’s side won the debate, the minutes recording that Shliapnikov ‘hotly protests against separate agreements; only the enemies of the working class gain through this. They are provocational tactics!’62 However, Shliapnikov proved such a competent organizer and statesman that he became one of the major figures in the Soviet government in its first year. Sovnarkom entrusted him with a wide variety of other jobs during this period, including organization of other state organs and participation in various government commissions. In late May 1918 the Party Central Committee gave him the crucial task of food procurement.

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