Studies on Russian workers and their union organisations

1.2.1 The soviet-type social relations of production at the workplace

‘Capital did not exist in Russia, and played no role in the soviet system of production’. And more concretely: ‘The Soviet system was based on a form of wage labour, but it was not based on social relations of capitalist production….Soviet enterprises most certainly were not subjected to the law of value, and so to the production and appropriation of surplus value’.

Nevertheless, under such a system, the former soviet regime established a strong labour control associated with the goal of achieving the target of the production plan. Arnot (1988) therefore points out the life content, the value of an ordinary soviet worker, was greatly bound to the performance of production, which was also emphasised as the achievement of the ‘labour collective’. Had such a societal space ever formed any kind of collectivism / collectivity around enterprise production among everyday relationships between soviet workers and enterprise administration (including the function of the primary trade union organisation)? The answer was not easy, but most experts have raised great doubt about it. Even before Gorbachev’s reform (perestroika) took place, scholars like Filtzer (1986, p.21) had defined the nature of the soviet system as follows:

‘The Stalinist industrialization (1928-41) led to a breakdown of the working class as a historical collective force (a class-for-itself) and to its eventual atomization. The shop-floor relations that thus emerged were neither capitalist nor socialist in character, but specific to a historically unique and perpetually crisis-ridden system of production’.

Similar to Filtzer’s interpretation of the unique form of soviet-type social relations of production, Clarke (1996a) argued that the character of workers at soviet enterprises was not purely an atomised model but comprised a more paradoxical situation. He conectualises this as ‘alienated collectivism’I,defined as a condition ‘in which Soviet workers lived: to the extent that Soviet workers formed a collectivity, this collectivity expressed a commonality of interest with their immediate exploiters. To the extent that Soviet workers constituted a class, as objects of exploitation, they were systemically individualised and fragmented.’ (ibid, p.6) Similar arguments were also presented by a number of scholars but supported by their own definitions. For example, Gordon and Klopov (2000) used ‘pseudo-collectivism’ in their works to describe the general atmosphere in Russian enterprises. By and large, despite the analysts’ different references, the non-existence of genuine collectivism – which is often referred to in the field of the study of the early labour movement in the West – at Russian enterprise level has been commonly recognised as a critical constituent of the social relations at the soviet enterprise level.

One of the most significant elements of ‘symbolic’ / ‘alienated’ collectivism in the field of the social relations of soviet people in their workplace is, as most observations have highlighted, the obvious paternalistic impact on Russian workers’ self-representation. The conception of ‘Soviet / Russian paternalism’ has also been widely employed to describe the inherent characteristic of soviet-type relationships of production within the enterprise. Based on such clarification, Clarke’s theoretical analysis mentioned above also underlined the dominance of enterprise paternalism, which was a form and permanent phenomenon of alienated collectivism. He also pointed out:

‘Paternalism within the Soviet enterprise was much more than a management practice, a means of intensifying the labour of the working class, as in the case in a capitalist enterprise, but was embedded in a wider paternalistic structure under the domination of the state, just as the labour collective of the enterprise was only a part of the working class in whose name the state ruled (Clarke 1996b, p.32).

Interestingly, though not surprisingly, the definitions through which this idea is introduced into Russian labour studies are varied. According to Mandel (1996, pp. 39-40), the role of paternalism ‘was based upon a number of factors: management’s own subordinate status vis-à-vis the ministry and higher party apparatus, the relative absence of market pressures (‘‘hard budget constraints’’), the labour shortage, worker job security, the relatively lax enforcement of labour discipline, the guaranteed wage and a growing ‘social wage’’.

Gorbachev’s economic reform and the radical introduction of privatisation under Yeltsin were both set up to change the traditional mode of enterprise activities. The designed transformation was expected to resolve the problem of the stagnant planned economy. Clarke, however, argued that the real nature of the Russian reformists’ attempt at economic transition is to change: ‘a system based on production at the expense of surplus-appropriation [which] was transformed into a system based on surplus-appropriation at the expense of production’ (1996a, p.4). The argument presents a critical understanding of the further development of labour relations in new Russia’s emerging system, by which Clarke insisted that the transition of new Russia’s socio-economic relations in the early 90s was not necessarily developing towards capitalism. If the production relations were still far from those of the capitalist mode of production, as Clarke then argued, how could we justify interpreting developments in the labour movement as elements of a process of class formation in the new Russia?

With little doubt, such structural factors dominated the course of many further changes. It is unlikely for observers to ignore the fact that although privatisation since 1991 had gradually changed the position of enterprise management, the traditional exercise of paternalistic worker-management relations on the enterprise level still widely existed and Russian workers’ commitment to their collective has enabled their paternalism to retain its status within the enterprise. Consequently, as the main factor in the workplace, while the reform process, such as privatisation, reached enterprise level, the management of most enterprises could easily capture opportunities to exploit the commitment to the ‘labour collective’ as a shell to resist outside investors and therefore their own interests were re-installed. This therefore let many strikes and labour conflicts, as we have seen in the previous sections, arise while they were initiated or exploited by the management’s efforts (the miners’ strikes in 1994 and Vyborg conflict in 2000). As a consequence, Russian workers are more likely to associate with the ambition of their managers and directors, to ‘voice’ their vital demands (under the name of a strategy for the enterprise’s survival). For many observers, labour conflicts did appear from time to time, the critical point is that such:

‘Resistance takes a form which can be characterised as one of “solidaristic individualism”, which is a powerful force, but one which does not necessarily have a collective nor an unambiguously class character. This can be clearly seen in the case of collective action even in the most militant branch of industry, coal-mining…. Even in coal-mining there are still no established institutional channels through which workers can press their grievances, even six years after the great miners’ strike of 1989, and four years after the formation of the Independent Miners’ Union’ (Clarke 1996a, p.13).¹⁴

The strength of recognising the need for strong mutual ties between the interest of workers and the interest of management can even extend to the national or political level. The establishment of the ‘Russian Assembly of Social Partnership’, for example, formed by the leadership of the official trade unions and the industrial elite in July 1992, is a clear signal of how broad was the cooperation (Clarke 1992). With such an argument about class formation in post-soviet Russia, Clarke’s analyses present a fundamental contrast to the works of other observers. More discussion around the distinct estimations about the prospects of the new Russian labour movement will be presented in the next section.

Another key factor commonly noted and treated as an essential one in studies of the transition of Russian labour relations is the application of individual-informal methods in workplaces – which is still often seen as the ‘labour collective’ in most workers’ eyes – especially those in daily contacts between workers and their management. In her ethnographic case study at a Siberian coal mine, Ashwin (1999) developed Clarke’s theoretical framework, concentrated on the various forms of appearance of social relations of production to re-examine the contradictory ‘collectivity / collectivism’ of Russian workers at their enterprise, and then demonstrated the derivative characteristics of the Russian labour movement. As the author emphasised, ‘In contrast, this book will argue that what has structured workers’ response to transition is not their dependence per se, but the alienated form of collectivism which characterises workers’ relationship to the labour collective and defines their individual dependence’ (ibid, p.15).

For the investigation, the researcher paid great attention to the role of informal relations at Russian coal-industry enterprises as well as inside the local miners’ community, in which she found that such factors dominate the relations between the management, the union and the workers. Together with the influence of symbolic collectivism, these interaction dynamics between individuals rely on immediate goods but not money (where actually there had continuously been a crisis of cash-shortage, at least as often claimed by the enterprises’ directors). According to her study, the informal relations comprise two aspects: within the enterprise, there are variant means of expressing them, e.g. paying a bribe, blat,¹⁵ and so on; outside the enterprise it appears as the individual strategy of seeking support or protection from family-centred relationships: ‘Survival outside a labour collective was almost impossible’.¹⁶ Ashwin took these relations as an expressional form of the exercise of individual survival strategies. In such a circumstance, thereby, informal relations take on a heavy role within the community / collective. The features of the social relations of the labour collective in her case studies also presented an explanation of why Soviet workers have been seen as both ‘incorporated’ and ‘atomised’. Based on her investigations, she concludes that the lack of independent workers’ organization for the Russian labour movement has been heavily related to such a background of a ‘non-monetary society’ and the shifting nature of collective identification. Similar studies provide more support to her conclusion. Many Russian experts in the field of Russian labour relations, like researchers participating in the ISITO (Institute for Comparative Labour Relations Research) projects, have widely reported such an ‘individual-informal approach’.¹⁷ Various examples have been explored by researchers who want to capture how strong the individual strategy has appeared as the most dominant solution for Russian workers in the face of job-related issues. More importantly, the individual-informal relationships are believed to exist in the daily life of the society (e.g. the relationship between the workers and the management, among workers’ personal connections), and therefore restrain the dynamics for trade union transformation during Russia’s post-soviet transition. As a Russian scholar presented his finding of individual strategies and the adaptation of individualism among the workers’ responses, the workers expressed their views frankly, ‘We ourselves are a trade union. If we encounter conflict, we, maybe three or four persons, will go to the chief of the brigade to find a solution. So we don’t need a trade union’ (Klopov 1995, p.23).

These detailed accounts about individual survival strategies provide us with a more profound basis for a structural explanation. Almost all the previous reviewed studies in this sense shared the basic comment that the present performance of Russian trade unions has not been really transformed, and the critical problem for the Russian labour movement is the lack of a challenge from below, i.e. workers’ self-representation. For the most comprehensive analysis we may remember Clarke’s argument: ‘Workers were almost universally dissatisfied with their condition, but without any institutional channels through which they could articulate and express that dissatisfaction, and without any easily identifiable agents of their exploitation and oppression, they tended to accept their condition with a fatalistic resignation’ (Clarke 1995, p. 399).

Nonetheless, it seems there is a certain limit (contradiction) to the structural-cultural influences. When the management itself involved in corrupt affairs, and that had undermined workers’ original collective interest, workers stood against them as a priority. However, when the importance of enterprise subsistence has reduced, the desire to organise themselves on an enterprise basis might reduce correspondingly. The two explanations in all accounts can be linked together; such factors have eroded the incentive for self-organisation. As a result, the attitudes and actions of Russian workers in the field of self-organization apparently were bounded by such a pro-structural limitation. Such a factor also becomes another reason why union organisations in Russia did not attract workers to participate. Interestingly, the publicising of such facts has captured the attention of other observers, who believe that changes of union strategy and leadership – through ‘reform from below’ - would lead them to form a radical force within the trade union movement.

Borisov’s study of the Russian miners’ strike movement (2000) presents another insightful study of the collective-union-management dynamics within the structural dominance of Russian workers’ rational-individual choice. The structural factors considered should not be taken as having established a totally conflict-free mechanism. As he revealed,

‘In the strikes that I have studied the strikes were preceded by a period of increasing social tension but in a situation in which there was a certain “contentment-discontentment” or “discontentment-compensatory” balance in relations between the workers and management.…The workers immediately respond to worsening working and safety conditions at work and to wage arrears by reducing their labour intensity and productivity, theft at the enterprise and an increasing lack of discipline. A certain balance is established: enterprise management do not pay wages on time, but weaken control over the workers at the work-place (much research shows that top management do not visit the coal seams for months on end, although they are supposed to do so on a regular basis), ignoring cases of violations of labour discipline and health and safety regulations. Such a “strengthening” of the workers' position accompanied by a corresponding “weakening” of the managers’ authority acts as compensation in conditions of wages delays and allows for the “peaceful” continuation of production activities’ (Borisov 2000, p.211).

In addition to those investigations mentioned above, several case studies of industrial relations in Russian coalmines have provided other interesting points on the background for the development of workers’ collective actions and the settlement of the conflicts, in which the combination of macro structural background with local / community characteristics were presented. As we can see in Ilyin’s account (1998), the aftermath of radicalisation of the coal miners’ movement in Vorkuta presented a quite clear insight: after the spontaneous strike and/or the formation of a radical strike committee, there was little subsequent result. Firstly, for the position of trade unions, neither NPRUP (Independent Trade Union of Workers in the Coal-mining Industry) nor NPGR (the first within FNPR and the second was established in the early 90s) which were reformed or established at the beginning of the 90s, was challenged by the new militant organisations; secondly, the radical, spontaneous action or strike group did not form a strong base in the aftermath. Such studies clearly pointed out that the institutionalisation of the miners’ strikes they studied did not lead to the strengthening of workers’ organisation. Instead of that, over the institutionalisation of these industrial conflicts the events was either used by political figures or by the mine management for their own concerns. These studies provide an important review of the relations between the problems facing the collective, collective action and the union.

1.2.2 Distinct explanations

Despite the wide recognition of the impact of structural constraints on the transition of Russian labour relations, the various estimations of those factors present a critical challenge to the arguments of the relevant studies. Clarke’s early works raised a very significant argument by rejecting the popular prediction that Russia had anyway begun the transition to capitalism, although capitalist elements have undoubtedly emerged. He suggests that the understanding of Russian labour relations should not focus on juridical and political changes without careful reference to the development of the social relations of production On the contrary, he believes that the transition in the 90s was driven by the restructuring of the soviet-system-from-below, subordinating capital and the commodity to the reproduction of the existing social relations of production (Clarke et al. 1993). To develop his analysis, he conducted (coordinated) a considerable number of case-study projects at enterprise level in order to demonstrate the fundamental force within the transition period of Russian labour relations. From these cases, he focuses on the impact of Russian workers’ ‘alienated collectivism’ on their own reaction in the face of the transformation from the soviet system to a capitalist system. Clarke and his colleagues note that Russian workers are still under the constraint of the soviet social relations of production, and, consequently, actively look for a proper management or administration as the ‘carrier’ of their interests. Behind workers’ anger and action the intention is not to break with the ‘rules of game’ but to change its main player. People now get used to asking for someone who has the capacity and will to keep good order to run their enterprise, but not simultaneously to introduce their own protective ability. Because of such characteristics, although we have seen sharp labour conflicts in the past years, ‘the workers’ militias were seeking to defend a management which had been installed with their support and which paid their wages, against the imposition of new owners supported by the regional administration.’ As he then concluded, ‘Russian workers are still embedded in the “alienated collectivism” that had prevented them from developing an independent perspective and playing an independent role since the soviet period’ (2000).

Consequently, when the social relations of production at the enterprise play a determinative role in the transition of Russian labour relations, the internal dynamic for the reform of trade union activities would certainly be weaker: instead of representing workers’ collective interests or providing a channel for its members, most Russian trade unions closely cooperate with enterprise management. More importantly, this is a force which might be addressed by keeping the official trade unions in place and by incorporating those so-called alternative trade unions or marginalising them. Furthermore, together with this weak representative mechanism, the idea of social tripartism has offered a space to reinstate the trade union’s traditional function. Now, the official trade unions have restored their institutional legitimacy in relation to state office, by that they are able to, also glad to, define themselves as a stable force of Russian society.

Resting on all the above arguments, Clarke puts his analysis forward. About the current and future nature of the transitional Russian social structure in which the Russian labour movement is embedded, he argued, ‘Russia is still a long way from capitalism, and the Russian working class still presents a formidable barrier to the capitalist transformation of production. If Russia is in transition to capitalism, that transition will prove to be long-drawn-out, and marked by often acute conflict’ (1996, p.40). Other analysts, though they made similar recognition of the previously mentioned factors in the development of Russian industrial relations, have an estimation of the role and meaning of these factors which differs from Clarke’s conclusion. Indeed, most studies of Russian scholars gave relatively positive accounts of those changes from a general viewpoint.

1.2.3 Parallel and positive move in historical sense

Unlike those who have expressed a rather sceptical tone about the state of the Russian workers’ movement (Clarke et al. 1995), Gordon and Klopov (2000), explain how the positive perspective for the future development of Russian labour relations originated. As one of the earliest Russian researchers who presented analyses of the changes in Russian industrial relations and the development of the labour movement, the authors suggest that in Russia’s socio-labour sphere of the 90s there are two parallel responses of workers in different positions. Workers with better conditions would be more likely to take an individual strategy, while workers who are marginalised in the labour market have little alternative but to rely on paternalistic relationships to provide them with resources for minimum survival standards. These two fundamental factors determined the character of new Russia’s socio-labour relations. Also as a consequence of such a weak dynamic, Russian trade union organisations have not yet undergone a further transformation to serve as genuine representatives in defence of their members’ interests. Nonetheless, despite their own confirmation of the facts related to individualism, pseudo-collectivism and a paternalist-authoritarian orientation at the workplace as factors which have undermined the development of the Russian trade union movement, the researchers embrace little doubt that the future of Russian socio-labour relations as well as the trade union movement will still follow a progressive track (2000, pp.251-283). Finally, by setting the changes in Russian trade union organisation against the general background, they conclude that the trade union is undergoing a process of positive evolution.

Gordon and Klopov’s arguments are based on an evolutionary-analytic view in interpreting social transition. The reason for their optimistic estimation can be considered as a popular interpretation of the time, identifying social-psychological factors at either enterprises level or societal level which are the legacies of the Soviet system, and arguing that massive change is possible with the participation of the ‘awakening of the Russian People’. The history of the real labour movement for post-soviet Russia has been only 15 years long, and that means the movement itself was still in an immature stage. Over these 15 years, some serious progress, especially organisational, has been made (at least alternative trade unions have emerged). Secondly, the Russian experience has involved little development of collective self-organization, but it would be incorrect to focus on such experience without a historical vision. The formation of collective action, its organisation in the early 90s and the decline after that are understandable according to Gordon and Klopov – they appear as ‘good’ and ‘bad’ tendencies within their definition. Therefore, with this ‘historical’ comparison, the general tendency of the Russian labour movement during the 90s for the majority of people is still positive. Moreover, if we compare it to the early stages of the labour movement and trade union movement in the West, the development was not slow and a reasonable development in Russian society can be expected.

1.2.4 The improvement of strategy and leadership

In the works of Yadov and his colleagues (1998), they investigate many occasions where Russian workers stood up and disconnected themselves from paternalistic relationships. They suggest that at enterprise level, while paternalism did undermine the orientation of workers’ resistance, it did not always successfully suppress Russian workers’ struggles. On the contrary, from the detailed case studies, one aftermath of such a mode of collective action was the repeated gap between the promised image and its final practice. This suggests that the limit of management paternalism somehow created the starting point of workers’ action (anger). Researcher like Katsva (1999) then emphasise the radicalised tendency pointing out a critical change in the miners’ strike actions, against the background of the ineffectiveness of the action in 1994, 1995 and 1996.

With his specific background in conducting sociological investigation, the Saint-Petersburg-based researcher Maksimov (1996, 2001a, 2004) contributed various observations about the character of Russian workers and specific tendencies of their actions. Not surprisingly, his observations find that Russian trade unions are weak in representing their workers and their members; most of them depend on the employer (management); union leaders are alienated from their members, although they think that they are always committed to arranging social benefits to meet the requirements of their members. Nevertheless, his estimation of the trade union movement in the post-soviet period presents a view similar to the previous point of view, as he argues that ‘the evolution of trade unions is slow, but, apparently, firm’ (Maksimov 2001a, p.80). He then suggests that the development of the trade union movement depends on the evolution of the ‘traditional’ trade unions, the expansion of alternative trade unions, the rapprochement of union organisations, workers’ higher understanding about the trade union’s role, and the recognition of the union’s role by employers (ibid., p.136). The problem of FNPR organisations is their reluctance to undertake the organisational work required to reform the union’s capacity. His overview of the tendency of Russian workers’ collective actions, interestingly, led him to a rather particular ‘prospect’. Firstly, concluding from his survey source, he claims that Russian workers are ready to take part in collective actions, which might be very formal ones, and therefore the Russian labour movement is formed in such a way that subjective mood matters. Secondly, the difference between the Russian workers’ movement and its Western counterparts is that the former are more likely to act under universal demands but not simply economic ones. Apart from such an argument, a part of his conclusion then put forward is that the weakness of the labour movement derives from ‘practical’ factors, which are mainly derived from a lack of coordination and the deficiency of solidarity (2005, p.139). Finally, he suggests the potential solution for the Russian trade union movement is the capacity to develop into a form towards ‘political trade unionism’, and that is why the method of ‘collective protest’ would be able to provide a more effective role rather than taking industrial action in current Russian circumstances.

Unlike the positive estimation in Gordon and Klopov’s analysis, another group of scholars (Mandel 2000a; Buzgalin and Churakov 2003) recognise that the main problems that face the Russian labour movement are partly caused by the ‘reform’ which threw the movement into serious frustration and confusion. Due to a variety of factors, from the passive attitude of workers to the lack of experience among union leaders and activists, they generally locate the lack of strategy, ideology and leadership skills as the central problems of the Russian labour movement.¹⁸ These scholars put more emphasis on the fatal challenges of Russian workers’ resistance to market-orientated reform. Mandel’s studies on Russian labour contain not only his personal research interpretation but also a number of interviews and observations. Derived from those interviews and encountered impressions, his arguments identify the limitations of Russian labour relations related to two aspects: the external and the internal factors. The internal factors include the betrayal of leadership, the absence of a tradition of struggle, and the absence of coordination; and the external factors are the hostile state power (‘soft’ dictatorship), first stage of economic recovery and a clear turn away from neo-liberalism in North America and Western Europe (Mandel 2000a). Despite the absence of a theoretical framework to support his long-term studies of Russian workers, it is still clear that Mandel believes critical reflections on the supposed ‘efficient change’ of Russian trade unions and trade union / labour politics can explain how and why Russian workers are unable to create an independent, militant, and effective labour movement. As the most important conclusion of his account, Mandel argues that the presence of organisational reform of unions as well as factors such as a struggle tradition are key elements for Russian workers to make a successful mobilisation.¹⁹ As part of his argument, the recognition of social partnership then, for example, has appeared as evidence of the problematic strategy of the Russian trade unions.

It seems for such a point of view, that the weakness of Russian workers still arises from the influence of those general conditions such as enterprise paternalist relations and the lack of struggle experience, while the conditions of those relatively successful cases have highlighted the scene and supported his analysis. According to his consideration, for example, in the case of Edinstvo, a union at the VAZ auto plant in Togliatti, the positive elements are: firstly, the independent trade union is quite experienced in taking actions and attracts active members; secondly, the plant has relatively good economic conditions in the market; and finally the effective leadership of the trade union was added (Mandel 2000a, pp.189-191). Interestingly, like the result of the analysis of Maksimov, Mandel believes the solution for the immature Russian trade unionism will come from rather subjective changes among union activists, as he concludes that the fundamental element within the Russian labour movement is that ‘effective resistance in Russia today has to be political’ (2000b, p.660).

Similar accounts are also found in a group of Russian scholars’ reports (Buzgalin et al. 2000; Churakov 2004), based on the results of a series of seminars and conferences involving academic researchers and struggle-experienced union leaders. The most important fact was that workers had started to show their reaction to the imposed management; and more importantly, they started to take action to change the bad consequences of privatisation imposed on their own enterprise. They claim a new phase of workers’ protest has come to the Russian labour movement since 1997, and in spite of those external and internal problems, during ‘the last two years of the twentieth century in Russia the basis for cautious optimism has appeared: the workers’ movement has become more organised, decisive and solidaristic’ (Buzgalin et al. 2000).

What have convinced them are the facts shared by other observers. For they believe that the radicalisation of Russian workers’ resistance across the Russian Federation marks a distinction within the development of the post-soviet workers’ movement in Russia. As a critical matter, the (small-scale) radicalisation, whether of Russian workers’ spontaneous action or the strategy of alternative trade union organisations, appears as critical evidence for such kinds of interpretations. Strikers who took the forms of protest from normal strikes to underground strikes and even hunger strikes clearly were considered as they knew whom to blame, which disconnected them from the traditional collectivism. More importantly, an immediate solidarity had even expanded from that among strikers, their families to the local community (Bizyukov 1996). All the details of the later conflicts in such accounts, as in those of Katsva’s works (1999; 2002), found the nature of workers’ responses – their radicalisation – has developed out of an important change in the form of demands or actions. This estimation differs from those studies that had emphasised more that radicalisation was still restrained by the soviet-type social relations at enterprise level during the transition of Russian labour relations in the 90s. As Clarke (1996, p. 40) wrote, ‘Even among the most militant miners class formation has developed to only a limited degree’ because ‘the miners [are still] tending to blame their fate on the personal deficiencies of managers and politicians, demanding their dismissal and replacement… looking to a good manger, and even a paternalistic ‘owner’, to represent their interests and ensure the realisation of “justice”’.

From these arguments, we see those analyses present a different prospect: there is a way for Russian workers to move beyond the structural barriers. More importantly, here one can pose the confrontation and interaction between the forces of institutionalisation and representing their interests. Take the instance of how Mandel (2000a, p.193) explained the three successful but exceptional cases: he concluded, ‘in each case one can point to special conditions that favour them: a “culture of struggle”, a relatively good economic situation, an unusual concentration of plants in the same sub-sector in a relatively small town where “there is nowhere else to go”. And the main problem they all faced is isolation’. Similar points of view, which emphasise the role of the influence of union leadership and strategy, can be seen through case studies or articles of Russian scholars (Katsva 2002; Maksimov 2002). Moreover, seeing the damage of the new Russian Labour Code to the strength of trade union capacities, another opinion appeared and suggested that subjective effort should be the strategy for trade union activity. Not only analysts but also some Russian union leaders have started to believe that, to some extent, FNPR officials have failed to recruit union members from new enterprises, and these enterprises provide optimal conditions for trade union activities. Unlike the old, often desperate plants left over from the Soviet era, the new enterprises are largely running along with their Western partners. Individual trade unions may gain better organisational conditions to operate effectively in this environment, and the leaders of alternative unions see little point in working together with the FNPR. As the current VKT president, Boris Kravchenko, expressed it, ‘the only way out of the current systemic crisis is to organize workers in new sectors of the economy that are not already unionized. An aggressive policy of expansion, coupled with greater democracy within unions themselves, could make the difference.’ (Kagarlitsky 2006)

1.2.5 Unresolved questions

All the literature of Russian labour studies reviewed in the previous sections represents the main explanations, with variant approaches, over the characteristics and difficulties of the transformation of industrial relations in post-soviet Russia. Most researchers agree that the unique social relations of production at the enterprise level – which were inherited from the Soviet economic system – have created a critical contradiction for such a transformation. Russian labour organisations, as a part of the elements within the society’s transition, also encounter difficulties in transforming themselves into a new type of labour organisation. Russian workers, either those who took part in actions or those who did not, project a stage in which social subjects finally subjectively subordinated themselves to the paternalist melody. It is clear, however, that the differences among the estimations of the reviewed studies leave an uneasy task to clarify. The analyses like Clarke presented reveal the nature of immature activism among Russian workers – even those most militant workers – as well as revealing the myth of ‘collectivity’. Such an interpretation reminds us of the potential background to a mature stage of subjective actions, as it concentrated on the weakness of workers’ organisation; the interpretation contributes a rather fundamental, structural analytic understanding to the study of workers’ reactions and future perspectives in post-soviet society. As a contrast, those who hold rather positive estimations of the progress of the Russian workers’ movement, at the same time suggest that all the progress could have the potential to develop further. Within such a kind of explanation, the social and enterprise conditions do form a structural obstacle to the progress of the labour movement, but the strength of subjective force, which involves the reform of union leadership and strategy in the face of a passive attitude among the rank and file, is able to overcome the obstacles. Another group, standing on a pluralist approach, not only suggests the co-existent social relations of production, but also the co-existent, parallel tendencies of collective action. To meet the question of why do some workers organise in alternative unions and others do not, the arguments seem to encounter a tangled scene.

Those works suggested the reform of union activity, such as strike effect, leaders’ experience, treating the union organisation as an instrument, would strengthen Russian workers’ resistance. The emergence of alternative trade union organisations in the late 80s and early 90s or the radicalisation of labour struggles since the mid-90s, as appeared in a group of case-study works (Bizyukov 1996; Ilyin 1998; Katsva 2002) was only concentrated in a few sectors, and more critically these occasions barely affected workers in other sectors. Even in those ‘unrest’ sectors, radicalisation was also limited. That is why the dominant dynamics of labour relations suggest little change. The argument seems to identify the leadership or strategy as critical because workers here have already united as a whole. According to such an explanation, the gap between the grievances and the organised resistance within the Russian labour movement simply needs to be covered by a ‘bridge’, constituted by a mature ‘subject’. This implies a mature strategy or a mature civil society, and sometimes the former fosters the latter. Such expectations were not based on a full investigation of the difficulties of the survival of the radical organisation and its activists. Nevertheless, even if a leadership with an effective strategy can indeed play a major role within an individual enterprise, the question would be why even the individual cases of successful union leadership have been accompanied by unsuccessful coordination among the union leaders. It is worth examining the above concern by focusing on the level of the trade union’s primary organisation.

According to the above analyses, the central question raised by the differences mentioned fairly reflects a primary difficulty of defining the course of the Russian labour movement: what will be the dynamic of the current and future state of Russian labour relations? Certainly, from a sociological point of view, the response of ‘social actors’ to the environment they live in has never been as simple as the constraints of behaviourism. The parallel scenes of all the accounts on Russian workers’ activities show the diversity of its dynamic and potential. As we believe that Russian workers get used to expecting a saviour or a khozyain (master), that does not mean they treat themselves as nikto (nobody) in everyday life. The exploration of the meaning of the differences between the interpretations as mentioned above has been the main task for social science, as Giddens (1979) tried to resolve by presenting the conception of ‘duality of structure’, related to the typical debate over the interaction between ‘subjectivity’ and ‘objectivity’ in the interaction relations of society in the field of social science. The answer requires a more specific analysis to investigate the process of the articulation of the relation between workers’ workplace response and the involvement of union activity.

The concern over the role of Russian union organisation and its performance in the development of industrial relations is understandable, for this factor has been constantly raised in the field of industrial relations in the West. On the one side, there has been constant doubt over the role of those elements gathering individual experience into collective consciousness because, as Kerr and Siegel have argued, examination of communication and interpersonal relations cannot explain why whole industries are more strike-prone than others (1954 cited Hyman 2001, p.59). In the discussion of work and identity, Leidner (2006) argued:

‘The conceptualization of identity as rooted in interaction and as an object of ongoing contestation undermines the assumptions that the self has a stable core, unitary and consistent over time. Rather, it problematizes identity, taking for granted that selves are social constructions and that identities are multiple, situational, fluid, and discursive’ (2006, p.439).

Conversely, the absence of mobilizing leadership has been pointed to as one factor explaining the absence of collective identification and action. On this side, through his detailed case study, Gouldner (1954) suggested that the life experience of workers’ community directly affected the emergence, the formation and the aims of their collective action. Out of this two-sided debate, Cronin stressed the community element for European labour history in this way: ‘The complex web of union organization, community life, and institutions can be seen as products of working-class activity and as institutions creating social and political space within a hostile society’ (1983, p.12). Therefore, the central question here is how effective and how fundamental the community element is in the making of their collective presence? As we are concerned about the individualist attitude of Russian workers as a whole and the paternalistic style of industrial relations at the enterprise level, the immediate perspective that comes to us is the weak, limited, community and identity. ‘Community’ as a common expression derived from cognitive identity, embraces the following processes of potential division: inside / outside, ego / alter, and ‘opposition’ / ‘enemy’. Or, as Kelly (1997), drawing on Tilly’s (1978) conception, suggested, we need to consider the roles played by injustice, agency, identity, and attribution in shaping the ways people define their interests. It is therefore worth revisiting the community / identity factor to clarify the role of work organisation and the social organisation of the workplace in encouraging or discouraging the formation of a collective identity as well as the role of the work environment and occupational community in encouraging or inhibiting independent workers’ organisation.

By locating the question of the lack of self-organisation and prospects of ‘reform from below’ for trade unionism at the mining collective, Ashwin (1999) underlines the state of the ‘community’ to examine the connection of several factors. Firstly, ‘Workers at Taldym mine express their attachment to the collective at every turn, at the same time the precise focus of their identification is difficult to pin down... It soon becomes clear, however, that the workforce is deeply divided between the blatnye and neblatnye. But the neblatnye do not stick together when it counts’ (p. 138). It was clear through her observation that the identities of collective members are shifting and thus contested. As part of the consequence, the basis for collectivism is limited, and ‘all-mine collectivism takes an alienated form in which all expectations are directed at the figure of the director’ (ibid.). Instead of working things out with their trade union organisation, informal relationships and individualised solutions, which I mentioned earlier, dominate the social and working life of the collective members. Moreover, the trade union to some extent was active but still rather acted in a traditional way and workers did not put much trust in the union. Her account contributes a very clear connection between the problem of the union organisation’s lack of possibility and the community / identity factors. Nonetheless, the process of identification among collective members comprises its own specific social environment, and therefore the lack of self-organisation or the lack of ‘reform from below’ for its shop-floor union organisation explains how the ‘traditional’ trade union model only slowly, or even not at all, develops alternative representations among the workers. In other words, these factors may have had a significant impact since such factors also embrace strong local features, and the subjective response – union’s strategy or leadership role – was just part of the local features. For example, Ilyin’s study (1998) on the movement of Vorkuta’s coalminers highlighted how those factors in a specific context facilitated the formation of the massive support for the protest as well as the alternative union organisation. In his analysis, the structural (economic), geographic and cultural (societal) features of the local industry determined the effect on its situation of industrial relations; and these were the damage to the miners’ interest (the fall of living standards), the social and technical organisation of the mines and the common memory of the Gulag, which provided energy to the protest (p.266-268). With their detailed accounts, surprisingly, the investigation of the union activities focused rather on the traditional interaction with management as well as members. Is such a conclusion still accurate when the scenes move to where the collective members have not shared such strong ‘identification’ features? And what about if there is a group of active workers who have tried to overcome the traditional connection between union organisation and the members?

In addition, such an approach soon faced obstacles to further investigation to clarify what the effect on collective identity would be if the trade union can present alternative, not traditional, functions. Since these analyses mainly focused on miners and their community, once the ‘structural reform’ of the mining industry – the dominant factor of objective interest as Ilyin defined it – came to an end, we no longer have a chance to abserve its union activism to make a comparison with other energetic and emerging sectors.

Noteworthily, these studies provided few explanations of how the reform-induced differences, the establishment of new trade unions within the development of patterns of local union movement organisation, in terms of the interrelationship between leaders and the ordinary workers, were determined. The observation can also be approached from another point of view which focuses on the subjective reform of the union and the potential for activism or self-organisation stimulated by other specific social factors. More optimistic analyses, as mentioned earlier, though they share the basic explanation about the strong impact of the legacy of the soviet system, present very different perspectives on the transition period of Russian trade unionism. In these studies we had no chance to make comparisons. To set up an analytic approach to comprehend the whole process from dissatisfaction to collective action is equally required, as said ‘it is important to distinguish between interests, organization, mobilization and forms of action because changes in these four aspects of collectivism do not necessarily coincide’ (Kelly 1998, p.64).

1.2.6 The theoretical approach of this study

To explain the role of work organisation and the social organisation of the workplace in encouraging or discouraging the formation of a collective identity, the brief review presented in the previous sections shows that, while analysing the effective connections between the force of the subject and its objective conditions, the investigations face a typical problem from both perspectives. The fact that a serious dialogue among different interpretations has not been fully engaged highlights the research motive for this thesis. For doing so, the study can try to integrate the empirical achievement and methodologies to demonstrate the dynamic of Russian workers as a whole, in face of the vast social transformation. Perhaps, the analyses would have been able to comprehend the underlying process of the social relations of production (and its boundary). Inspired by assuming a meaningful dialogue between different academic interpretations, this research would like to present a fresh approach to the field of Russian labour studies. With the aim of developing a serious account of workplace relations and the pattern of trade union activities, as well as the leadership effect, this research set out to investigate the development of leading trade unions and their interactions with the workers.

Furthermore, as I will demonstrate in the section on how the fieldwork started, without a careful distinction of information from research objects, a misunderstanding of the role of trade union organisations may easily come about, while some useful types of investigation, such as the networks of the union activists, are neglected. The question, would union activists in their everyday work strengthen, or on the contrary, depress the capacity / development of the solidarity of their members – ordinary workers – stimulated another concern over the fieldwork period. A comparative study of the process of such interaction by investigating the character of different occupations, organisational histories and union survival strategies ought to answer the expectation of those who believe the union leadership could have changed the fate of the Russian labour movement. From that we could clarify in more detail how the existing social and workplace conditions may obstruct the fundamental transformation of various sectors, and how the reproduction of current Russian trade unionism and industrial relations occurs. Correspondingly, the study aimed to clarify how much (or how little) the direction or the practice of union strategy, as those observers emphasise, can have an impact on such societal weakness.

The first concern of the research is to study the environment and the characters within the formation of workers’ immediate response at their workplaces. That is to learn the nature of the work content characteristic of workers’ professions and occupations, and to investigate the basic environment in which their interaction is embedded. As many studies have revealed, individualist solutions (formal and informal) are the most frequent choice, and therefore determinant of the lack of Russian workers’ self-organisation. There are also several details we should distinguish within their (individual) approaches while facing job-related problems. To take one example, arising from the work of Russian scholars Gordon and Klopov (2000), it is bit confusing whether the application of an individualist response means nobody needs help or rather nobody can provide help? Corresponding to such a solution, the observation may compare what kind of workplace culture, such as one primarily expressing the grievance outlet or one indicating management strength, is formed? Furthermore, what do ordinary workers expect from their trade unions in terms of union intervention? The basis of such expectations certainly relates to the current nature of Russian trade unions. The immediate response of workers when they find that the trade union committee at their workplace simply stands on the side of the administration (management) is therefore related to the role and nature of Russian trade unions.

The second part of the research investigation, as most industrial relation studies have to cover, is the role and activity of the trade union. Various literatures have revealed how Russian trade unions run their organisations. To answer how the evolution of Russian trade unionism may develop so that workers might have sufficiently representative organisations in face of the difficulties at work and life, this research will focus on the union’s daily activities to present an in-depth study of the organisation. The research will investigate how trade union functionaries or activists define their activity, as well as the way, the method they use to tackle such job threats as they face. Another interesting aspect rarely discussed in most literatures is the role of the union office at shop-floor level in workers’ workplace interaction. It is therefore also relevant to learn the function of the trade union office. To articulate with the first concern above, another primary task of this case study is to explore the daily contact and interactions between members and trade union activists. Furthermore, the establishment of a cross-workplace or cross-profession labour organisation, such as a confederation or regional union organisation, provides a broader picture to contest the strength and character of the union’s development strategy. The investigation will then move forward to find out what, where and how the formation of the communicative channel within the circle of trade union functionaries is assigned? From this aspect we will also explore the effect of coordination / (dis-)continuity within the member trade unions of trans-professional confederations. The selected case studies, as presented in the following chapters, are applied to explore sufficient aspects to clarify the effect of transforming union organisation, and then we could go back to address the fundamental argument of the reproduction of soviet-type labour relations in post-soviet Russian society.

Finally, through the selected case studies the thesis seeks to explain the formation and transformation of Russian trade unionism regarding the effect of union strategy. Most studies mentioned earlier are of the 1990s, but my case study can be employed to investigate how the situation has changed, especially for alternative unions after the new Labour Code and the withdrawal of the AFL-CIO’s sponsorship. Here the primary aim is to clarify, among the selected organisations, what has really changed on the ground from the beginning of the transition period to the current time; and to analyse the role of the professional in unions’ organisational activity. Furthermore, by explaining why and how different labour organisations follow a similar course, this thesis is able to give an evaluation of the potential impact of union strategy while locating it against the background of current Russian labour relations.

Apart from the differences in their analytic perspectives, another practical problem within many of the studies reviewed in previous sections is the ‘key objects’ of their observation. These studies used their interview findings in a way that assumed the trade unions leaders’ opinion fairly reflected the movement of the members’ attitudes. Based on interviews with union leaders and relying on stories they gave, while the understandings of ordinary workers’ attitudes were illustrated with questionnaires and surveys, those research findings might have ignored the complexity of the underlying information. As another example, observers (Mandel 1996) suggest that grassroots’ struggle action is the only way to change or at least to balance the current problems of the Russian trade union movement. Such an argument, though close to classical points of view about the dynamics of the trade union movement in the West, neglects to examine how these union leaders reflect upon their own union activities.²⁰ In the next section I will present a practical experience of accessing the active workers to demonstrate why the methods of field work also matter for conducting a study on trade union organisations. In general, this research will focus on the relations between trade union strategy and workplace social relations, in which the observation of trade union organisation is designed to follow their everyday functions as a basis to re-examine the progress of current Russian labour studies.

To achieve such an aim, the research started from contact with a circle of local activists in St Petersburg. The experiences of the fieldwork provided useful insights for the understanding of the style of trade union activities. The methodological reflections will be included with the brief description of the background of labour organisations in St Petersburg.

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