ABSTRACT
V. Lenin's instructions to his comrades on how to undermine the trade unions speak for themselves: 'resort to all sorts of schemes and strategems, employ illegal methods and evasions, conceal the truth, in order to penetrate the trade unions.' The destruction of independent trade unions put an end to the 'workers' creativity' so highly praised by Lenin. The cooperatives were another independent mass movement, this time mainly of peasants. The cooperative movement ran consumers' associations, agricultural associations, and cottage industries: it also ran credit and savings funds. The main slogan of the Bolsheviks before and during their coup had been: 'All power to the soviets'; yet within six months this 'parliament of the people' found itself deprived of all real influence in the affairs of state. The Menshevik deputy Boris Dvinov proposed in May 1921, that an immunity charter for deputies be adopted and the proposal was carried by the Plenum of the Moscow Soviet.
