ABSTRACT
Any account of the economic life of the U.S.S.R. would be incomplete without some account of the rôle of the trade unions. For one thing, the important part they play, and the extent to which they both stimulate and harness popular initiative from below, represents a large part of the difference between Soviet economy and Nazi economy. In Germany the trade unions were destroyed, and the Labour Front (which does not deal with wage-bargaining and includes employers in its ranks) was put in its place; the employer, although subjected to certain State controls, was officially endowed with the status of Führer or leader of his enterprise, and his employees subordinated to him as “followers”. In the U.S.S.R. the trade unions have retained a continuity of development since pre-revolutionary days, and they play an important part both in the managerial boards of industry (in which trade-union representatives are included) and in the settlement of wages. In the last eight years they have taken charge of the administration both of factory inspection and of social insurance; the Central Council of Trade Unions not only having assumed a large part of the administrative functions of the former People’s Commissariat of Labour (which was dissolved in 1933) but also becoming to a limited extent what in this country would be called a statutory body, competent to issue decrees or ordinances on matters connected with labour conditions in industry.
