The coal industry of the USSR during the civil war and the transition to peaceful work for restoring the national economy (1918-1925)

Abstract

The first steps towards implementing workers' control in industry were taken during the February bourgeois-democratic revolution. Immediately after the February events in Petrograd, the factory committees of the factories of the military and naval ministries, elected in the first days of the revolution, in the absence of administration, which had partially fled or been removed by the workers themselves after the fall of the monarchy, were faced with the need to deal with issues of wages, supplying enterprises with fuel, raw materials, etc. A similar situation developed in a number of other state and private enterprises. The Provisional Government, expressing the interests of the bourgeoisie, sought to limit the rights of the factory committees to issues of labor and representation before government and public institutions, avoiding even mentioning the control functions of the factory committees in official documents. The working class soon broke the narrow framework in which the bourgeoisie tried to place the activities of the factory committees. The victory of the Great October Socialist Revolution introduced into the activities of factory committees are fundamentally new: they have become officially recognized organs of workers' control, relying on the full power of the proletarian state (see article).