ABSTRACT
V. Lenin's policy towards the workers was at all times ambiguous and his pronouncements before and after his seizure of power were contradictory. Labour relations between the Bolshevik state and the workers became worse than between industrialists and workers in pre-revolutionary times. The Tsektran became a symbol of oppression of the working class and its actions were bitterly resented, even by many leading Bolshevik trade unionists and particularly by Mikhail Tomskii, the chairman of the AllRussian Central Council of Trade Unions. The conflict of aims between the Bolshevik government and the peasants soon led to serious clashes and eventually to bitter hostility. The requirements of the peasants were reasonable. Bolshevik treatment of the peasants was as bad, if not worse, than Bolshevik treatment of the workers, but the situation was very different. Felix Dzerzhinskii's order of 8 January 1921 noted that 'the prisons are packed, chiefly with workers and peasants instead of the bourgeoisie'.
