ABSTRACT
The Central Workers' Circle was a labor association which had the potential of becoming an embryonic trade union. It was the first labor organization in Russia. It seeks to improve its members economically and culturally. It considered itself a direct part of the labor movement in the West. The members of the Central Workers' Circle typified the workers' intelligentsia. The main reason for creating workers' circles and then unifying those circles in a Central Workers' Circle was to improve their education. The workers' intelligentsia was isolated from their student teachers and isolated from the rest of the working class. The workers' intelligentsia were a rising new force in Russia. Well read and highly skilled, they were born in the image of the West, especially Germany. Some of them knew western languages and a few even traveled to the West. Their May Day demonstrations were an attempt to affirm in Russia the recent resolutions of the Second International.
