Alexander Shlyapnikov - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Alexander Gavrilovich Shliapnikov (1885 - 1937) was a Russia

Russia

Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...

n communist revolutionary, metalworker, and trade union leader. He is best remembered as a memoirist of the October Revolution

October Revolution

The October Revolution , also known as the Great October Socialist Revolution , Red October, the October Uprising or the Bolshevik Revolution, was a political revolution and a part of the Russian Revolution of 1917...

of 1917 and as the leader of one of the primary opposition movements inside the Russian Communist Party during the decade of the 1920s.

Early years

Alexander Shliapnikov was born August 30, 1885, in Murom

Murom

Murom is a historic city in Vladimir Oblast, Russia, which sprawls along the left bank of Oka River. Population: -History:In the 9th century CE, the city marked the easternmost settlement of the Eastern Slavs in the land of the Finno-Ugric people called Muromians. The Russian Primary Chronicle...

, Russia

Russia

Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...

to a poor family of the Old Believer religion. His father died when he was a small child. Shliapnikov began factory work at age thirteen and became a revolutionary at age sixteen.

He joined the Bolsheviks in 1903. He was arrested and imprisoned at various times for his radical political activities, including his involvement in the 1905 revolution

Russian Revolution of 1905

The 1905 Russian Revolution was a wave of mass political and social unrest that spread through vast areas of the Russian Empire. Some of it was directed against the government, while some was undirected. It included worker strikes, peasant unrest, and military mutinies...

. Shliapnikov left Russia in 1908 and continued his revolutionary activities in Western Europe, where he also worked in factories and was a devoted trade unionist.

Shliapnikov returned to Russia in 1916. He, Vyacheslav Molotov

Vyacheslav Molotov

Vyacheslav Mikhailovich Molotov was a Soviet politician and diplomat, an Old Bolshevik and a leading figure in the Soviet government from the 1920s, when he rose to power as a protégé of Joseph Stalin, to 1957, when he was dismissed from the Presidium of the Central Committee by Nikita Khrushchev...

, and Petr Zalutskii were the senior Bolsheviks in Petrograd at the time of the February Revolution

February Revolution

The February Revolution of 1917 was the first of two revolutions in Russia in 1917. Centered around the then capital Petrograd in March . Its immediate result was the abdication of Tsar Nicholas II, the end of the Romanov dynasty, and the end of the Russian Empire...

in 1917. More prominent figures such as Vladimir Lenin

Vladimir Lenin

Vladimir Ilyich Lenin was a Russian Marxist revolutionary and communist politician who led the October Revolution of 1917. As leader of the Bolsheviks, he headed the Soviet state during its initial years , as it fought to establish control of Russia in the Russian Civil War and worked to create a...

, Grigory Zinoviev

Grigory Zinoviev

Grigory Yevseevich Zinoviev , born Ovsei-Gershon Aronovich Radomyslsky Apfelbaum , was a Bolshevik revolutionary and a Soviet Communist politician...

, Lev Kamenev

Lev Kamenev

Lev Borisovich Kamenev , born Rozenfeld , was a Bolshevik revolutionary and a prominent Soviet politician. He was briefly head of state of the new republic in 1917, and from 1923-24 the acting Premier in the last year of Lenin's life....

and Joseph Stalin

Joseph Stalin

Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin was the Premier of the Soviet Union from 6 May 1941 to 5 March 1953. He was among the Bolshevik revolutionaries who brought about the October Revolution and had held the position of first General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union's Central Committee...

were abroad or in Siberian exile when the February Revolution began. In 1917, Shliapnikov became a member of the Executive Committee of the Petrograd Soviet of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies. He also was elected to chairmanship of the Petrograd Metalworkers' Union and later of the All-Russian Metalworkers' Union. He led negotiations of a wage agreement between Petrograd metalworkers and factory owners in 1917.

After the revolution

Following the October Revolution

October Revolution

and the Bolshevik seizure of power, Shliapnikov was appointed Commissar of Labor

People's Commissariat for Labour

The People's Commissariat for Labour was established by the Bolsheviks following their seizure of power during the October Revolution. It functioned as a ministry in the new government which was known as Council of the People's Commissars....

. Lenin called for a Bolshevik dictatorship, which was opposed by some Bolsheviks. Shliapnikov supported a coalition government composed of left socialist parties, but he did not resign his post in the government, as some other Bolsheviks did. He played an important role in evacuating industry from Petrograd, as the Germans approached in 1918. As Commissar of Labor, he helped draft important directives on workers' control of industry and nationalization of industry and he staffed government bureaucracies with staff from trade unions. In the summer of 1918, he went to the south of Russia on a mission to gather food for the population of the Bolshevik-controlled cities of central Russia.

In December 1918 Shlyapnikov was replaced as Commissar of Labor by Vasili Schmidt

Vasili Schmidt

Vasili Schmidt was a Bolshevik politician.On 1 December 1918 he was appointed Commissar for Labour, a post he held until 29 November 1928. He was particularly concerned with the statification of the trade unions.-Bibliography:...

and then served as Chairman of the Revolutionary Military Council of the Caspian-Caucasian Front in the Russian Civil War

Russian Civil War

The Russian Civil War was a multi-party war that occurred within the former Russian Empire after the Russian provisional government collapsed to the Soviets, under the domination of the Bolshevik party. Soviet forces first assumed power in Petrograd The Russian Civil War (1917–1923) was a...

. He also served in the Revolutionary Military Council of the Western Front during the Civil War. During the Civil War, Shliapnikov began to criticize the increasing tendency of the Russian Communist Party and Soviet government to rely on authoritarian measures to enforce policies towards industry and industrial workers. To Shliapnikov, denial of workers' right to participate in economic decision-making was a step away from the goals of the 1917 revolution.

Opposition leader

Shliapnikov became leader of the Workers' Opposition

Workers' Opposition

The Workers' Opposition was a faction of the Russian Communist Party that emerged in 1920 as a response to the perceived over-bureaucratisation that was occurring in Soviet Russia.-Membership:...

movement inside the Russian Communist Party. Alexandra Kollontai

Alexandra Kollontai

Alexandra Mikhailovna Kollontai was a Russian Communist revolutionary, first as a member of the Mensheviks, then from 1914 on as a Bolshevik. In 1919 she became the first female government minister in Europe...

was a mentor and advocate of the group, which was composed of leaders of trade unions and industry who were all former industrial workers, usually metalworkers. This movement advocated the role of workers, organized in trade unions, in managing the economy and the political party. The Russian Communist Party leaders succeeded in suppressing the Workers' Opposition and in 1921-1922 finally subordinated trade union leadership to the Party. In 1921, Shliapnikov was forced out of his elected post as chairman of the Metalworkers' Union.

In 1922, Shliapnikov and some others from within and outside the Workers' Opposition, including Alexandra Kollontai, presented an appeal, called the Letter of the Twenty-Two, to the Communist International Executive, requesting that the Comintern help heal a "rift" within the Russian Communist Party between Party leaders and workers. Party leaders and Party-controlled media condemned the appeal. Two of the signatories of the appeal were expelled from the Party, but Shliapnikov, Kollontai, and Sergei Medvedev

Sergei Medvedev

Sergei Pavlovich Medvedev was a Russian Bolshevik revolutionary, metalworker, and trade union organizer. He was born into the peasant estate and 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...

narrowly escaped expulsion.

Shliapnikov turned to writing his memoirs and held jobs in metals import and economic planning institutions. The Party Central Control Commission investigated him and Sergei Medvedev

Sergei Medvedev

in 1926 and in 1930 for alleged factionalism in connection with the formation of oppositionist groups among workers in Baku and Omsk. In 1930, the Party Politburo forced Shliapnikov to publish a public confession of "political errors" in writing his memoirs of the revolution. This was not the same as a confession of political errors committed by him since the revolution.

Death and legacy

Shliapnikov was expelled from the Communist Party in 1933 and imprisoned in 1935 for alleged political crimes. Charged under Article 58 of the Soviet Criminal Code, he did not confess guilt, nor did he implicate others. Nevertheless, he was found guilty, based on others' testimony, and he was executed on September 2, 1937.

Shliapnikov was posthumously rehabilitated and restored to membership in the Communist Party in 1988.

Works

"A. G. Shliapnikov (avtobiografiia)." In Iu. S. Gambarov et al. (eds.), Deiateli SSSR i oktiabr'skoi revoliutsii: avtobiografii i biografii, 3: 244-251. Moscow, 1927-29; reprint edition, 1989.
On the Eve of 1917. Richard Chappell, trans. New York, 1982.

External links

Alexander Shlyapnikov Internet Archive, Marxists Internet Archive, www.marxists.org/
Works of Alexander Shlyapnikov (in Russian)