Ian Hebbes

THE COMMUNIST LEFT IN RUSSIA AFTER 1920

INTRODUCTION
This text focuses on the activity of the communist left in Russia after 1920. The
groups covered constituted the left wing of the Russian Communist Party
(Bolshevik), RCP(B), and had their origins in the Left Communist fraction of 1918.
Those few historians who have dealt with this early Left Communist fraction have
failed to show how this current, that only narrowly failed to win a majority in both
the Party central organs and the workers Soviets for its views, could disappear
without trace. The near totality of commentators see the later left communist groups
as either extensions of quite different political tendencies (i.e. the Workers
Opposition) and/or as groups which ceased to exist in the early 1920s due to
repression. The choice of the period after 1920 is based on the fact that most
accounts cease to deal with the communist left as an organised force after this
period, or see it as merely existing in the period of 1920-1921, and then as a
phenomenon isolated from the early left communist fraction of 1918-1919. In order
to establish the continuity of the later work of the communist left with its
predecessors and counterpose this to the prevailing myth maintained by almost
everyone that the Bolshevik Communist/Left Opposition were the sole opposition in
the late 1920s and 1930s.
The attempt to eliminate the communist left from the historical record as an
organised force inside Russia is a reflection of social reality. The communist left were
a minoritarian force, numerically weak and dispersed by the growing terror of the
counter-revolution. Existing in conditions of total clandestinity few of their
documents reached the west, and the main primary sources exist only in tiny left
communist journals of the 1920s which even the largest archives overlook. The rarity

of these documents and the scarcity of information make it impossible to gain more
than an impression of the evolution of these groups and the relations between them.
But enough materials exist to affirm the continued existence of the communist left
and their influence on the better known currents such as the Left Opposition and
the Democratic Centralists.
THE COMMUNIST LEFT AFTER 1920 IN RUSSIA
It is no accident that one of the most obscure groups of the communist left that
fought inside and outside the RCP(B) should emerge in Moscow. This was one of the
centres of the militant proletariat and had from 1917 onwards been a bastion of the
Left Communist Fraction in 1918 and of the Democratic Centralists who still
retained an influence amongst the workers and within the Party despite repeated
purges, transfers and other acts of bureaucratic repression. Neither R.V. Daniels, L.
Schapiro nor E.H. Carr refers to this group whose documents are more accessible
than other smaller breakaways from the RCP(B). The main source for this groups
writings in English is the Workers Dreadnought of 1922. The first document from the
Group of Revolutionary Left Communists (CWP) of Russia appears in vol. IX no.12
June 3rd. It announces that the group has left the social democratic Russian
Communist Party and supports the setting up of the 4th International with the KAPD
(Communist Workers Party of Germany), KAPN (Communist Workers Party of the
Netherlands) and the CWP (Workers Dreadnought) as well as the Bulgarian
Communist Left. This statement suggests that the group in Moscow had already
been in contact with the KAPD for some time and were influenced by their positions
and were in regular clandestine contact. This is further confirmed in the text An
Appeal from the Russian Workers Opposition which shows that the clandestine
group were able to collect money amongst workers in Russia to pay for literature to
be printed in Germany as it was impossible to do so in Russia. But as the
Dreadnought points out the inflation in Russia was so high that the millions of

roubles, painfully collected were so devalued that when exchanged would hardly
cover the postage: thus the comrades appealed for money to aid their work in Russia.
This Appeal stressed the central tasks of the group as the vanguard to oppose the
Russian Soviet governments New Economic Policy and United Front stating we have
entered the struggle against the betrayal of the first triumphs of the revolution. Our
mission is to continue the revolution. By their designation of the term Russian to
both the party and the Soviet government they indicate they regard them as national
(i.e. non-proletarian) organisms, which had departed from internationalism. As with
the rest of the KAI (Communist Workers International) they tended to under-estimate
the counter-revolution and over-estimate the possibilities for a global renewal of the
class struggle, based on the upturn of the class struggle in Germany and the revival
of workers struggles in Russia in 1922 and 1923. Thus they took the side of the
KAPD/Essen against the KAPD/Berlin who opposed as premature the setting up of a
4th International, and sent one delegate to the KAPD 5th Congress in Hanover, who
reported on the illegal work in Russia. In the same issue of Workers Dreadnought,
July 29th 1922 is a longer text on the failure of the united front. (p. 6). This speaks
of the genuine communists in Russia who are making a stand against the united front
and state capitalism, and who are upholding the standpoint of the KAPD. The CWP of
Russias text shows that the 3rd International has gone the way of the 2nd and Two
and a Half Internationals, and it and its trade union apparatus has sunk up to its
eyes in the slough of opportunism and reformism and proceeds to attack the policy of
the united front and elections and parliamentary action declaring that proletarian
revolution can alone lead you out of the blind alley into which capitalism and the
traitors to socialism have brought us. Thus the CWP denounce Lenins peaceable
united front as co-operation with the bourgeoisie. In another earlier text in Workers
Dreadnought June 17 1922, the united front is again denounced and connected to
the internal policy of capitalism which is newly introduced into Russia. It is
described as an out and out right wing platform for which the international has

abandoned its principals, Despite this stand the CWP was not the caricatural ultra
left sectarian group who denounce everything and everyone tout court. While
remaining rightly sceptical of the centrist so-called Workers Opposition and their
rightward moving leadership, who are called unprincipled and backboneless the
CWP of Russia remain willing to pledge support to all that is left of revolutionary
tendencies in the RCP. At this time the Democratic Centralists and left wing
members of the Workers Opposition as well as members of the Workers Group still
carried on opposition work inside the RCP so this was neither a sectarian or utopian
standpoint. However the CWP of Russia did call on these forces to build a new party.
If the CWP was initially ambiguous in its attitude to the Workers Opposition it was
due to the heterogeneous nature of this group: while recognising that the RCP(B) was
incapable of reform from within and that in any case the Workers Opposition is not
capable of doing it they are still prepared to support all demands and propositions of
the Workers Opposition which point in a sound revolutionary direction. But
immediately the CWP of Russia were to criticise the leadership of the Workers
Opposition for pledging themselves to the improvement of the cause of the Menshevik
bourgeois united front in our country (as they themselves called it). Thus the CWP of
Russia clearly distinguished between the Workers Opposition leadership which was
moving in a rightward direction and the rank and file influenced by the workers
struggle and the work of left communists and the Democratic Centralists. At this
point the left communist groups and parties publicised the positions and activities of
the Workers Opposition internationally. Soon, however, the CWP of Russia were to
abandon their limited and highly critical support for the Workers Opposition which is
then referred to as the so-called Workers Opposition in the press of the communist
left. Thus the CWP of Russia acted as a clandestine fraction working outside the
RCP(B) with relations abroad maintained by an exile group in Berlin and a small
presence in the Moscow Party and the proletariat in general. Little more can be said
about this group inside Russia although its supporters in Berlin maintained

themselves as a section of the KAI and gave support to other left communist
individuals and groups inside Russia.
This group, however, is not to be confused with the more widely known Workers
Group of the RCP(B) that was formed in February/March 1922. While sharing many
of the same positions as the Workers Group, the CWP of Russia did not organise
inside the RCP(B) in the same way as Miasnikovs group, nor initially share
Miasnikovs analysis of the trade unions as arenas for communist work in Russia.
However the main area of disagreement was on the question of the nature of
revolution and counter-revolution in Russia. The CWP of Russia, under the influence
of the KAPD, was to accept that the revolution of October 1917 was a bourgeois or
double revolution, whereas the Workers Group maintained that the revolution was a
proletarian revolution and the opening of a world-wide proletarian struggle. In this
they upheld the traditional left communist analysis defended since 1918, a shared
recognition with the CWP of the internal involution, and counter-revolution, which
was marked by the defeats of 1918-20. For the Workers Group this was to remain
the reflection of the failure of the world revolution to spread from its bastion in
Russia - rather than any original error in the seizure of power by the proletariat in
1917. The two groups, however, agreed on the need for a new party and a new
International as well as the need to oppose the NEP at home, and the united front
abroad. Both were prepared to support class struggle against the Party/state
apparatus and to engage in illegal work. It is improbable that the two groups of the
left communists in Moscow had no contact with each other, but no documentary
record exists of any contact between them or of them engaging in polemics with each
other. However the Berlin group of the CWP did publish the manifest of the Workers
Group and translate and distribute it internationally. However the KAPD were critical
of the manifesto and despite claiming the Workers Group as the Russian section of
the 4th International in 1924 the documentary material remains ambiguous on the
precise evolution of the two groups in Russia. Certainly the repression growing

inside the Party and the workers state apparatus drove Miasnikov and the Workers
Group to abandon work inside these organisms - it was practically impossible. They
were also to adopt the anti-parliamentary and anti-union viewpoint of the KAPD and
the KAI and adopt the name of CWP which suggests an evolution in their positions
on behalf of the Workers Group. But alongside this is the fact that the Workers
Group did not accept the KAPDs criticisms, nor did it join the KAI which it regarded
as premature. This was connected to its rejection of the immediatist view that saw an
imminent revival of the proletariat in Russia and world wide. Just as it was unwilling
to totally reject the 3rd International and the RCP(B) or the proletarian nature of the
revolution in Russia, it was immune to the idea of rejecting the immediate and
defensive struggles of the workers, a question which was to totally divide and weaken
the left communists in Germany. thus it remains unclear whether the Workers
Group of the RCP(B) fused with the CWP in Russia, despite its differences. What is
known is that the Workers Group was to grow in numbers and influence and
maintain itself as an organisation until the mid 1930s in Russia alongside the
Democratic Centralists. The original CWP was to disappear as a group in Russia,
being maintained for a short while by Russian exiles in Berlin.
The Workers Group was to crystallise around the person of Gabriel Miasnikov who
was a Bolshevik militant since before 1905. Some authors have the origin of this
group as being in the Workers Opposition or its left wing or that it was inspired by
the work of Ignatov. While it is true that elements from both groups were to join the
Workers Groups this is due to the close work between these groups in the 1920-21
struggles inside the Party. The banning of fractions had provoked both increased
solidarity and co- operation within the left fractions and provoked a radicalisation of
the left. The Workers Opposition was always a relatively eclectic tendency which
demonstrated its centrism by its attempts to act as a loyal opposition even after its
ban as a fraction. It was equally seen as the least dangerous of the left opposition by
the right. This provoked a growing alienation on the part of its left wing who were

attracted to the arguments and analysis of the Democratic Centralists and other
members of the left communist wing of the Party who maintained a continuity with
the work of the 1918 Left Communists. Far from being inspired by Ignatovs group,
which itself split up in a number of contradictory directions and symbolised the
increasing impossibility of bridging the gap between the communist left and the
RCP(B) as a whole, the Workers group was in direct political continuity with the
communist left and won elements from both opposition groups on the basis of its
political programme. The personal embodiment of this reality was Miasnikov himself,
a member of the Left Communist Fraction who came from one of the earliest
bastions of left communism in the Ukraine and specifically its core in Samara and
Saratov.
On 12-13 May[1918] a joint conference of the Perm and Motovilikha organisations
assembled, with Gabriel Miasnikov in the van of the Lefts campaign. After fiery
speeches by Borchaninov and Miasnikov himself condemning the Brest peace - for its
failure to provide any real breathing- space and for the retreats from socialist policies
that flowed from it - a resolution in support of the Regional Conferences decisions was
adopted by a vote of thirty to twenty.
He was widely respected throughout the Party, even by his opponents and was able
to win elements of the Samara organisation of the Workers Opposition to his
positions in the discussion clubs set up and (temporarily) tolerated, as a safety valve
in late 1921-22. In Samara the Workers Opposition was still in control of the Party
apparatus and was on the left wing of its fraction. When Lenin met with the 37
Workers Opposition delegates this was a manoeuvre. This manoeuvre was aimed at
the leaders of the Workers Opposition prior to the Party Congress in an attempt to
separate them form both the Democratic Centralists and their own left wing. The
appeal to restrain their militants and cease factional activity had little effect and the
discussion clubs which had become centres of opposition in Moscow and the Urals

were closed down.

The Workers Group of the Russian Communist Party was the name appended to a
manifesto issued in 1923. For R.V. Daniels this programme was largely that of the
Workers Opposition (p.160) and the group describes as a direct offshoot of the
Workers Opposition (p.159). However E.H. Carr makes no reference to the origins of
the Workers Group in the Workers Opposition and L. Schapiro (p.306) points out
that while G.I. Miasnikov was at times prepared to support this group, though not a
signatory of the Workers Opposition Platform. Given the fact that the evolution of the
Workers Group and its political positions were within the framework of the
communist left and that its main elements had been members of the Left
Communist Fraction of 1918 undermines R.V. Daniels portrayal of this group as a
left wing offshoot of the Workers Opposition. It is true that the workers Opposition
were strong in the Perm area of the Urals, and to the left of this tendency. It is
equally true that this region and Samara were also strongholds of left communist
militants who were still influential in the Party apparatus. Under these conditions
the Workers Group was able to attract elements who were reacting to the rightward
moving Workers Opposition, as well as from the Democratic Centralist group. The
close work and discussions as well as the solidarity in reaction to growing repression
inside the Party in 1921-22 had produced two opposite reactions within the
Opposition. Those who sought to conciliate with the Party and state apparatus and
those who were to draw more radical conclusions from the course of events. The
former included the majority of the workers Opposition and the Ignatov group who
had joined them. The left, a minority, of the Ignatov group joined with the
Democratic Centralists. In such conditions of polarisation it was inevitable that the
Workers Opposition which attempted to act as a loyal opposition even after its
banning as a fraction, and was the most eclectic of the left tendencies would produce
a variety of splits.

THE WORKERS TRUTH

The Workers Truth was the first group of the communist left to emerge outside the
RCP(B). this group took its name from its paper Rabochaia Pravda (no. l, Sep 1922)
in which it launched an appeal that outlined it programmatic views. The paper was
produced illegally in Moscow and it was here that the group had its base throughout
its existence, during which it was clandestine in operation even before it was made
illegal. R.V Daniels and E. H. Carr, the main secondary sources in English, agree
that the group was mainly composed of intellectuals and some workers, and that it
was probably a splinter group that emerged from the Proletkult movement rather
than directly from the RCP(B). Like this movement which was influenced by A.
Bogdanov, the Workers Truth shared certain of Bogdanovs views and this may have
been a factor in their apparent isolation from other left communist groupings both
inside and outside the RCP, and the indifference or hostility expressed towards them
despite the convergence of their political positions on many key questions.
While Bogdanov had inspired the left fraction of the RSDLP(B), unlike most of the
Vperiod group (1908-1917) he had not rejoined the RCP(B), con- fining his activity to
work in the building of the Proletkult movement. A pamphlet produced by the
RCP(B), O Gruppe Rabocheia Pravda: Bolshevik 7-8 (1924) details how the group
reflected his concepts and terminology and affirmed its allegiance to his views.
However Bogdanov himself denied approval or support for their platform, or being
their leader. With the growth of strikes in 1923 and the fears of the growing influence
of left communists inside and outside the party the merest suspicion of collaboration
or association with the Workers Truth was sufficient for the GPU to have him
imprisoned.
Little is known of the individuals who made up this group, or even how many issues
of its paper came out. It is probable that the group did not exceed 20 core members,

organised as a collective with a milieu of sympathisers perhaps 200-400 in number.

The group was known to have intervened in the strikes in 1922 and 1923 and it was
this activity which brought down the repression which seems to have crushed the
group. An account in Pravda in 1923 refers to the expulsion of 13 supporters of the
Workers Truth from the RCP(B), 7 of whom were members of the collective. And later
that year the Menshevik Socialist Herald, an migr paper produced in Berlin speaks
of 400 members (?!) of Workers Truth purged in a mass nation-wide expulsion of left
communist elements. Even if E.H. Carr is right in asserting that this is probably an
overestimation of the influence of this group, R.V. Daniels is wrong to assert that the
leadership of the RCP did not take such groups seriously, at least in terms of their
potential.
It was not just the paranoia of the GPU and the growing bureaucracy that motivated
the growing repression, but also the ability of these tiny, but growing numbers of
communist nuclei to articulate a coherent critique of the involution and degeneration
of the revolution in Russia and connect this to the defence of the workers immediate
struggles to defend them- selves against the demands of the party/state apparatus.
It was this that distinguished the emerging left communists from the later Left
Opposition: Trotsky could only concede that the Workers Untruth, as he called
them, were the symptom of a problem in the party and its relations with the working
class, but this in no way prevented him form supporting their expulsion and
repression, or opposing the workers struggles of 1922-23. This sectarianism of
Trotsky towards the left communists which was to remain a feature of the Left
Opposition, who refused to seriously confront groups like the Workers Truth,
dismissing them as ultra-leftist or idealist. This did not prevent members of the
Workers

Truth corresponding with Trotsky privately, but these and other

connections with the ultra-left remain unpublished .

When it launched its 1922 Appeal, it had called for propaganda circles ... created in

solidarity with the Workers Truth; Everywhere in the mills and factories, in the trade
union organisations, the workers faculties, the soviet and party schools, the
Communist Union of Youth and the party organisations. At the same time they called
for a new workers party they were still prepared to work within the old
organisations and this reflected both the difficulty of giving a practical orientation
and the political confusions that were to lead to practical and theoretical inability to
adjust to and resist the growing counter-revolution. It was these positions which
contributed to their inability to politically and practically understand and resist the
growing counter-revolution unlike the Democratic Centralist Fraction or the
Communist Workers Group with whom they had discussions and contact. The other
left communist groups were hostile to the politics of this group which put into
question the making of a proletarian revolution in 1917 and the role of the party in a
manner which both echoed the Menshevik arguments of the past and pre-figured the
arguments of the Council Communist groups. Thus Miasnikov and the Communist
Workers Group were critical of this so-called workers opposition and its platform,
while simultaneously recognising it as containing proletarian elements who it called
on to regroup behind its own analysis.
The shared opposition to the NEP and the united front, and to the growth of state
capitalism as well as a willingness to use the few remaining opportunities to work in
the union and party bodies, as well as working illegally outside and against these
bodies could not conceal the growing divergences between the 2 groups. The Workers
Truth tended to work towards a politicisation of the immediate struggles, seeing the
material conditions ... of the organisers of state capitalism were sharply
differentiated from the conditions of the working class and this was based on the
repression and exploitation of the working class: but this view led them to see the
union emphasis on wage demands and conditions of work, as a weakness which
reflected a revival of the old economism. Here they differed sharply from the
Communist Workers Party who saw the unions as Party/State organisms which were

instruments of state capitalist discipline and exploitation. If there was agreement by

the Workers Truth that the unions were organs that defended the interests of
production, i.e. state capital it led to diametrically opposed conclusions to the CWG.
The CWG denied that the unions were simply reformist or that they defended the
immediate interests of the workers, they were not simply non-revolutionary, but
counter-revolutionary . The CWG did not therefore look to the unions to reform
themselves, nor equate the workers struggles for immediate and limited gains with
defensive trade unionism. Far from being a movement which expressed economism
and a retreat, the strikes and immediate struggles were the only basis for a revival of
the proletariat and its communist minorities. For the CWG this meant a revival of
the workers soviets and factory committees in conscious opposition to the unions.
The Workers Truth differences were more profound when it came to the question of
what state capitalism meant in the context of the Russian economy. Ironically, they
shared with Lenin a belief in its historically progressive features in opposition to the
analysis of the various left communist fractions and groups speaking of the October
Revolution eliminating all barriers in the path of economic development not by
inaugurating a world wide proletarian revolution against capitalism as the left
communists defended but in a purely Russian and national framework which saw
the successful revolution and the civil war opening broad perspectives ... of vapid
transformation into a country of progressive capitalism. No wonder Miasnikov saw the
Workers Truth as abandoning Bolshevik internationalism for a Menshevik/
nationalist framework, and the proletarian struggle against all reactionary, stagist
conceptions by blessing the newly emerging state capitalist economy with a
progressive role. While recognising the fusion of the party/state apparatus was
transforming it into an agent of capitalism and calling for workers to resist
exploitation the Workers Truth were to remain fundamentally undermined by a
fatalism, produced by the defeat of the working class which it saw as incapable of
playing any influential role and having now been thrown back almost a decade. Thus

it logically saw its work as the long term work of creating propaganda circles and
awaiting a future resurgence of the working class: unfortunately their recognition
that the workers were defeated did not prevent them from falling into a contradictory
immediatism which supposed they could politicise the strikes of 1922-23.
The Workers Truth, unlike the Democratic Centralist and Communist Workers
Groups were unable to maintain the work of a communist faction and were
completely crushed by the first waves of the counter-revolutionary terror in 1923
although isolated ex-Workers Truth members are mentioned in the Bulletins of the
Left Opposition they had no organisation after 1923 and Miasnikov writing for the
CWG in 1924 stated that by then the Workers Truth had nothing in common with
them, and that they were attempting to wipe out everything that was communist in
the revolution of October 1917 and were therefore completely Menshevist. Unable to
break with Bogdanovs contradictory views which led them to see the bourgeois
counter-revolution as leading to a progressive development of capitalism in Russia,
the Workers Truth remained isolated both nationally and internationally. This view
shares with Menshevism the vision that the revolution was premature. In their
instinctive defence of the workers they were too radical for the Bolshevik right and
centre, or for the conservative Mensheviks; in their analysis of October 1917 and its
subsequent evolution they alienated the communist left. Thus this largely
anonymous collectivity was on the basis of its opposition to the NEP, and its
positions of state capitalism and the party, as well as its defence of the workers
immediate struggles as a left communist group. But it shared with the KAPD of
Berlin a tendency to immediatism and a rejection of the defensive struggles as
inadequate, and a theory of the offensive. In their economic views they also
prefigured the Council Communists in favouring working collectively rather than a
centralised work as a fraction. In fact it remained a marginal and ephemeral
grouping compared to the Democratic Centralists and the Communist Workers
Group who expressed the organisational and political continuity of the left

communist fraction of the RCP as it developed inside and later outside and against
the Party/State apparatus.
THE COMMUNIST WORKERS GROUP
The main focus of this study of the history of the Communist Workers Group is
based primarily on translations of its documents that appeared in various papers of
the international left communist groups which emerged in the 1920s and 1930s. Its
thesis is that the CWG was in political and organisational continuity with the left
communist fraction of the of the RSDLP(B) and an integral part of the international
communist left. In order to demystify the history of this group it is necessary to
criticise the approaches of other historians who have, consciously or unconsciously,
mystified and falsified this history where it has not been ignored or overlooked. Even
the most accessible and sympathetic accounts by the leading expert on Russian
anarchism, the libertarian historian Paul Avrich (Bolshevik Opposition to Lenin: G.T.
Miasnikov and the Workers Group, The Russian Review vo1.43 1984, pp. l-29)1 and
the libertarian Marxist Roberto Sinigaglia (Mjasnikov et Rivoluzione Russa - Edizioni
Jaca Books, Milano 1973), have focused primarily on the personality of Miasnikov
and make little reference to the organised activity of the group which is assumed to
have disappeared as an organised force in the mid 1920s.
The more commonly accessible accounts of the origins of the CWG begin with its
relations with the Workers Opposition, R.V. Daniels, the influential author of The
Conscience of the Revolution: Communist Opposition in Soviet Russia, pp160-161,
writes backed by a small groups of other former Workers Oppositionists, Miasnikov
issued early in 1923 a lengthy manifesto in the name of The Workers Groups of the
Russian Communist Party. The Programme was largely that of the Workers
Opposition. Isaac Deutscher appears to confirm this The Workers; Opposition had
lain low and was breaking up. Its splinter groups, however, had to some extent been

involved in the strike agitation, which was spontaneous in the main. The most
important of these was the Workers Group. Similarly Robert Sakwa reiterates that
the CWG was inspired by the Workers Opposition and a splinter group. However,
both Schapiro (p.306, footnote 33), and Avrich (ibid. p.6) confirm that Miasnikov had
never been a member of the Workers Opposition and this view was shared by one of
its leaders, A.G. Shliapnikov. While it is true that several of the leading members of
the CWG had been members of the Workers Opposition, a complete list of known
members of the CWG shows many who were left communist in 1918 or members of
the Democratic Centralist Fraction. This continuity is down played in order to
emphasise the apparent organic links with the Workers Opposition. If the left
communist groups won over elements of the more militant left wing of the Workers
Opposition it was a result of their opposition to the centrist and vacillating
leadership of the Workers Opposition which was entrenched in the union apparatus
and particularly its growing bureaucracy. Just as the Ignatov group was polarised,
with the left wing joining the Democratic Centralists and the right wing majority
joining the Workers Opposition, so the latter group was polarised under the
influence of the left communists of the CWP and the CWG as well as the independent
left communist nuclei that emerged in the period 1921-23. While the leadership of
the Workers Opposition moved to accommodate itself to the increasingly monolithic
party/state apparatus many of its rank and file militants sided with those workers
and peasants who fought to defend their immediate interests against the growing
demands of state-capitalism and counter-revolution. It was this response to the
growing political and economic crisis that led elements to break from its political
framework of loyal opposition and increasingly muted criticism to join groups like the
CWG and other left communist groupings especially in Moscow and the industrial
centres of the Urals and the Ukraine which had been bastions of the communist left
in 1918. The one genuine splinter group from the Worker Opposition, Panushkins
Workers and Peasants Party, was another short-lived reaction to the NEP, which

organised in Moscow and called one demonstration before being crushed by the GPU:
even here it showed the influence of Miasnikovs views on Kronstadt and the need for
peasant unions. Given this context and the political position of both the Workers
Opposition and the CWG, it shows R.V. Daniels view of their relationship is totally
false and at odds with the explicit positions of the CWG defended over the 15 years of
their existence. Far from being inspired by this Workers Opposition, from the outset
they called on the rank and file to break with it organisationally and politically,
rejecting any possibility of the Workers Opposition as a whole making a positive
evolution.
The CWG had initially a dual orientation which indicates the uniquely difficult
circumstances in which it operated. It was both acting as a clandestine fraction
within the RCP(B) and the organs of the workers state and from the outset acting as
the nucleus of a new workers party. Its Bolshevik origins made it immune to any
relations with the Mensheviks or Social Revolutionaries, nor did it heed the
temptation to adopt positions which put into question the proletarian nature of the
October revolution in Russia. It was for this reason the CWG was to reject the
Workers Truth as basically Menshevik despite its apparent leftism, and later break
with the KAI which rejected any united front with the Third International in the mid
1920s. Contrary to the mythology of the Left Opposition in Russia, including Trotsky
himself, the left communists of the CWG were not sectarian. In fact they continued
to

work

inside

the

Party

until

expulsion,

deportation,

mass

arrests

and

imprisonment and torture made this virtually impossible. Before the banning of
factions the left communists had worked on common issues with the Workers
Opposition and the Democratic Centralists and it was to the left-wing of these
groups that they appealed as well as to sincere elements in the Workers Truth to
form a new party, based on a new programme. In this they went beyond the strategy
of loyal opposition which was eventually to split the Democratic Centralists, and was
to remain the strategy of the Bolshevik-Leninist/ Left Opposition. Thus their strategy

was fundamentally based on the impossibility of reforming or recapturing the RCP(B)

as a whole, while recognising that the Party and the workers organs under its
central were areas in which the CWG should intervene. This strategy was outlined in
an article in Socialisticsky Vestnik, July 6th 1924, which states that members of the
workers group can be:
1) members of the RCP(B), 2) expelled from the RCP(B) for political reasons, 3) those not
belonging to any party who are advised to join the RCP(B).
It was this attitude, forged by years of clandestine work for the Bolshevik fraction
inside Czarist Russia, that enabled the CWG to evolve inside Russia and survive
despite the waves of repression that smashed groups like the Workers Truth,
Workers and Peasants Party and the Workers Opposition. Most secondary accounts
simply assume, or act as though, this was the fate of the CWG and that it also
disappeared as an organised force in 1924. Even the lengthy accounts of Sinigaglia
and Avrich simply become an account of Miasnikovs personal exile as though the
group ceased to exist. Yet in some respects the most startling achievements of this
group were in its final years and for this history the primary sources are translations
of their documents which appeared in small left communist journals, untouched by
any of the authors previously referred to. This work was based on the fundamental
documents written in the mid 1920s and it is a testimony to the political clarity and
organisational strength of this group that it was to maintain itself as an organisation
until 1938 when its militants were all finally executed in the purges. The group was
able, almost until the end, to maintain links with its militants abroad firstly in
Berlin, and later in Paris, where Miasnikov worked.
Initially the CWG was one of the strongest of the left communist nuclei - the most
audacious, E.H. Carr; the most important, I. Deutscher; The most interesting, A.
Kollontai. It was not their numbers which threatened the party, however, but their

willingness to intervene in the workers strikes and their potential to give a political
lead to elements inside and outside the Party and organise them. The nucleus of the
CWG, consisted of experienced and influential worker-Bolsheviks, implanted in areas
where the ideas of the left communists were well known since 1918. These were also
the areas where the proletariat was most concentrated and combative, even in the
harsh conditions of 1923-24. Certainly these elements did not directly provoke the
strikes which emerged as a spontaneous reaction to the growing economic and
political crisis, but they were prepared to defend the strikers and give a political
perspective for those prepared to fight the NEP whether inside or outside the Party.
The CWG produced clandestine leaflets, manifestos and a regular press, as well as
circulating literature inside the Party. A network existed for this purpose which was
able to smuggle literature in and out of Russia and into the camps. As late as 1930
the CWG was producing a regular paper, The Road to Power, in Moscow (Source,
LOuvrier Communiste, no. 6, Jan 1930).
In March 1923 the first nucleus of the CWG was formed in Moscow consisting of 3
workers, C. Miasnikov, N.V. Kuznetsov and P.B. Moiseev. They constituted the
Provisional Central Organisational Bureau of the CWG. In February these three had
collectively begun to produce and distribute the hectographed manifesto of the
Workers Group of the RCP(B) which was circulated in Russia and abroad and aimed
to be an intervention into the 12th Party Congress planned in April. The Manifesto
was based on two earlier works of Miasnikov but also went beyond them and again
demonstrates the continuity of this document with the left communist fraction of
1918. This centre was to become the official central organ of the CWG in Russia, and
of the CWP later. The impact of this document, which was circulated at the 12th
Party Congress can be judged from the negative and positive responses within the
working class and the Party. It is difficult to assess objectively the various claims
made about the membership of the CWG. Numerically Avrich (ibid. p.20) states that
Kuznetsovs estimate of 3,000 members in Moscow, and 19,000 throughout the

country, is a wild exaggeration (citing Sorin, ibid. 115-117) but not why this should
be so. He says that by summer the group had some 300 members in Moscow, where it
was centred, as well as a sprinkling of adherents in other cities - many were old
Bolsheviks, and all, or nearly all were workers. (Sinigaglia, ibid. p.59, gives 200 in
Moscow). Even if these figures are correct, given the high level of political
commitment required by the CWG and the existence of other left groups and
tendencies, this would still reflect a strong political presence in Moscow. There were
only 1655 Bolsheviks at the beginning of 1917. But other evidence suggests a higher
figure of perhaps 1,000 throughout Russia and a much wider influence than has
normally been given to this group. In Moscow the groups most active members,
apart from those on the Bureau, were I. Makh - who replaced A. Moiseev on the
central organ, S.I.N. Tuinov, V.P. Demidov, Renzina, I.M. Korov, G.V. Shokhanov, A.I.
Medvednev (not to be confused with S. R. Medvedev, leader of the Workers
Opposition), Porestnatov, Trofinov, Luchin, C.R. Duchkin. On the 5th June the group
convened a Conference in Moscow which elected a Moscow Bureau of 8 members
with Makh as the delegate an the Central Bureau. Miasnikov had already been
arrested in May and Kuznetsow had taken over as spokesman for the group. The
group continued its work towards the Party and particularly the leaders of those
centrist formations which were on the brink of liquidation, giving the rank and file
the chance to judge the worth of opposition leaders like Lutinov, Kollontai and
Ignatov who, while sympathising with the ultra left, did nothing in practice to
endanger their own positions. They wished to restrict criticism to internal Party
debate, a condition which would lead to silence eventually. Others contacted, like
Riazanov, similarly refused to break Party discipline and defend left communists
from GPU repression. Having worked with the Workers Opposition over the Appeal of
the 22, this was to prove a watershed for that tendency who retreated and eventually
formally recanted its positions. The CWG had won over its left wing and soon
abandoned any further attempts at working with this current.]

The Conference also elected a secretariat of 4 which may account for Avrichs
conflicting sources. And Kuznatsov reports that a 4 person bureau was elected for
youth work. At this time the group was only planning a journal. However, it did have
a printing press in Moscow.
Initially the official RCP had responded cautiously. Having nullified the left factions
inside the Party, it hoped to be able to similarly intimidate others by the expulsion
and repression of individuals. Miasnikov was arrested on May 25th, a month after
the 12th Party Congress, and it was this Congress that had branded the CWC as
counter-revolutionary and hence illegal. The Party was not yet reduced to a purely
capitalist instrument and so Kossior of the Democratic Centralists and Trotsky were
able to speak sympathetically of the mistakes of the Party and the difficulties which
drove the comrades into ultra-left errors. The Party was still prepared to engage (in
private) in a political debate with its opponents whether through the form of Sorins
relatively objective pamphlet on the left communists, which the Party circulated
internally. Trotsky went along with labelling, the CWG as objectively counterrevolutionary and anti-Party, while engaging in private correspondence with
Democratic Centralists and Miasnikovites. Even Bukharin tried, in person, to
persuade Miasnikov to recant to no avail. With the growth of strikes in August and
September the RCP(B) moved against the group as a whole. They made their move
when they became aware of the CWGs growing agitation, and its preparations to call
a one day general strike and a mass demonstration, in commemoration of the Bloody
Sunday march of 190,5, with Lenins portrait heading the march. The Central
Committee produced a resolution branding the CWG as anti-Communist and antiSoviet and ordered the GPU to suppress it.
Thus in September 28 members of the CWG were arrested. Five, including Kuznetsov
had already been expelled and 9 more were expelled including Moiseev, Tuinov,
Berzina, Demidov, Kotov and Shokhanov. The remaining 14 were reprimanded. With

this and the re-arrest of Miasnikov, who had been promised immunity by Zinoviev
and Kretinsky, the Soviet ambassador in Berlin, in the fall of 1923 Avrich (ibid. F. 24)
concludes that in Jan 1924 when Lenin died the Workers Group had been silenced.
It was the last dissident movement in the Party to be liquidated while Lenin was still
alive smashed with the blessing of all the top Soviet leaders. Sinigaglia and others
appear to concur, but this was not the case. Most commentators agree that the
RCP(B) had good reason to fear the influences of the group like the CWG in
conditions of growing inflation, unemployment and a strike wave, which they were
attempting to politicise. What is significant is that they overlook the evidence that
the CWG carried out work in the Red Army and found an echo for their positions, a
factor which was a tangible threat evoking uneasy memories of 1917.
The CWG, which was opposed to the united front tactic of the Third International,
was to propose a united front with the RCP(B) rank and file and its left wing, but
with the growing impossibility of any fractional work inside the RCP it became an
open party, the CWG, probably regrouping with the original CWP nucleus who were
influenced by the KAPD. This led the group to deepen its critique of the unions and
eventually abandon any work inside these state capitalist organs. From the outset
the CWG had been highly critical of these organs, favouring the factory committees
and workers soviets as organs to defend workers interests and express a revival of
workers democracy.
This is the Workers Groups assessment of the unions (taken from correspondence
intercepted by the police): The silent army of the dominant group in the RCP; A blind
army in the hands of the bureaucrats; A bureaucratic appendage of the Politburo.
(Translated from Sinigaglia, pp.64-65).
Similarly the communist workers Party adopted an anti-parliamentary position close
to that of the KAPD and the Italian Left. thus they were open to the discussions of

the communist left with whom they maintained links via a bureau in exile, under the
direction of a Rumanian militant, Kate Rumanova, and others. This bureau helped
with printing, sending material into Russia and publicising the work of the CWP of
Russia abroad. This work was moved to Paris when Miasnikov arrived there in
October 1930. The group in Russia was able to publish a regular bulletin form which
most of the following was translated. It gives some picture, however partial, of the
groups continued activity:
In Moscow Oct 1924 the GPU arrested a group of Red Army soldiers who had the
support of some officers, at the Spashi Barracks. They were accused of discussing
with the CWG about the resolution of the Party banning the group and its activities in
repressing the CWG publication and banning its militants from Moscow On Nov 7 th
1924 the left communists did organise a demonstration in Moscow protesting against
the suppression of their views. Not only the CWG members but also the non-party
members were arrested by the GPU for the crime of sympathising with the communist
left On December 8th 1924 the Moscow CWG issued a leaflet publicising the arrest of
11 of its group in the Urals (Perm) who had gone on hunger strike . They demanded to
be told the reasons for their arrest and a public trial On December 27 th 1924
banished members of the CWG were escorted under armed guard of the GPU on a train
into internal exile in the Northern woods of Russia. (At Tschardynsk) Also that
month the GPU confiscated a second printing press organised clandestinely by the
CWG In December further unrest was reported in the army. The GPU are reported to
have broken a counter-revolutionary conspiracy, arrested a clandestine organisation of
communists in the Red Army who called the NEP the New Exploitation of the Proletariat
and called for a struggle for that it was supposedly the Third International to work to
undermine capitalist armies in just this manner. The next day in response to the GPUs
actions a part of the battalion stationed in the Kremlin declared their dissatisfaction
with the leaders politics and declared their solidarity with the CWG. For this they were

sent to Smolensk.
The bulletin also talks of a wave of repression in the Ukraine where the entire
membership of the central bureau of the CWP in the Ukraine was arrested.
While precise details are not available, it is clear that the group managed to exist in
an organised form, issuing appeals, leaflets and manifestos until 1929, when it still
had a clandestine press which was being produced in Moscow. Its militants were
scattered throughout Russia with many in exile, deported to the isolators and labour
camps, or on the run from the GPU. In exile, whether in Berlin or France, in 1930
this network was sustained by correspondence and occasional bulletins. Their work
was published in England by the Workers Dreadnought and the Commune and in
Germany by the press of the KAI/KAPD and others; but the best source of
information on their activity in the early 1930s is the journal LOuvrier Communiste,
produced by ex-Bordigists and KAPD elements with whom Miasnikov collaborated in
exile in France. These documents also find a partial corroboration in the Bulletins of
the Left Opposition and the writings of Trotsky where the CWG are ridiculed as
marginal, sectarian ultra-leftists and called Miasnikovists. But events were to give
the scattered nuclei of the CWG a chance to have an influence on the discussion in
the communist left wing of the RCP. The growing political and economic crisis, as
well as Hitlers rise to power, and the impotence of both the left and united
opposition to counter the growing Stalinist counter-revolution, was compounded by
the number of capitulations in the opposition, both from the Bolshevik Leninists and
the Democratic Centralists. In the case of the latter this produced a radicalisation of
a large left wing minority known as the irreconcilables. The Democratic Centralists,
for 10 years, had dithered (Ciliga), now capitulation to Lenins ultimatum, now
supporting the Trotskyists in their struggle with Stalin. Its orientation ... proved to he
sterile. The Five Year Plan shook the group to ifs foundations. The majority, like the
majority of the Trotskyists, capitulated and justified this by saying that from the

moment when the NEP and the bourgeoisie were liquidated, socialism was being
built. Again we can see a counter-reaction from a section of the Democratic
Centralists around Timotei Sapronov who continued to reflect that section of the
group that had its origins in the original Left Communist fraction of 1918. Ciliga
shows how this group, which was essentially reconstituted on a new basis (The
Manifesto of the 15) was constantly winning over militants from the irreconcilable
wing of the Bolshevik Leninists, and eventually it was to win a majority in Vorkuta.
At the same time Miasnikov shows that the CWG had opened a discussion with this
group, recognising that its new platform, which spoke of Stalinist counter-revolution
and Thermidor, represented a qualitative evolution and a break with the Democratic
Centralist orientation of the past which was relatively uncritical of Lenin. This again
confirms that the CWG were correct not to jump to the sectarian conclusion that the
RCP(B) as a whole was counter-revolutionary, even when it rejected any possibility of
its reform. The Workers Groups orientation enabled it to win over both the Sapronov
groups and the majority of the left irreconcilables, as well as some remnants of both
the Workers Opposition and the Workers Truth into a Federation of left communist
groups. The aim of this organisation was to co-ordinate the activities of its militants
and to promote a discussion on the perspectives both internationally and nationally
for the proletariat. The CWG saw this as a step towards the refounding of a CWP of
Russia on a broader basis. However, the Democratic Centralists and ex-Trotskyists
were by no means homogenous. Older Democratic Centralists were less critical of
Bolshevism, though some were more than willing to form a new party Others (a
minority) wanted to call for a 4th International. The CWG militants Zankov and
Tuinov were hesitant on this point because they had already experienced the
problems caused by the premature formation of the Communist

Workers

International (KAI 4th International). However, the CWG did work for the formation of
Communist Parties in the Soviet Union, and were therefore not totally homogenous
on this point. However they were clear on the counter-revolutionary nature of the

Russian state, and the state capitalist nature of the economy. Ante Ciligas account
tends to focus on the positions of individuals, and he fails to realise the CWG; was
the main force behind a regroupment which went beyond the confines of Vorkuta:
where 20-25 comrades were united. And that the Group of 15 were no longer
Democratic Centralists but a new group, but this is understandable given the
conditions in which the group operated. In August 1928 a similar regroupment had
taken place as a result of a conference in Moscow in which a representative of the
Group of 15, the Bureau of the CWG and some escaped ex-Workers Oppositionists
had created a bureau which issued a joint appeal for the formation of a Communist
Workers Party in Russia. The discussions at Vorkuta may have reflected a parallel
development or a direct response to this initiative: the evidence is not clear. Ciliga
dates this as occurring in 1933, so it is possible there is no direct connection given
the time lag.
Initially, as its name implies, the Communist Workers Group considered that it was
a fraction of the RCP(B) and it worked to regroup revolutionaries on the basis of its
programme whether through work inside the Party, and the trade unions, cooperatives, as well as the Soviets or outside these organs, which were by this time
tied to the state. They supported workers strikes and demonstrations. In this latter
respect they broke with Soviet legality and the loyal opposition strategy of the
Democratic Centralists who worked solely within the Party, and the more right wing
so called left Opposition which was beginning to emerge. However the CWG, from the
start, were not sectarian, they called on elements from the Workers oppositely and
the Workers Truth to break with these organisations to form an authentic
Communist Party in Russia and in this policy they were successful. From the outset
they had won over elements from the left wing of the Workers Opposition and the
Democratic Centralists as well as elements from the older left communist fraction of
1918. It is also probable that they absorbed those elements in the Communist
Workers Party of Russia to become a unified group that supported the KAI in

Russia. The CWG was prepared to work with the Third International in a united front
against the bourgeoisie, which for them included its left wing, Social Democracy.
Unlike the Democratic Centralists and the Bolshevik Leninist Left Opposition they
did not believe in reforming the RCP or the Third International; even if they were still
workers organisations they were increasingly becoming obstacles to any world
revolution. Thus they were to regard the Left Opposition, and the Unified Opposition
as centrist, or centre right block with no possibility of reversing the growing counterrevolution internally and globally. Despite being banned and declared an anti-Party,
counter-revolutionary grouping, despite deportation, imprisonment, beatings and
torture the CWG was to survive as a clandestine group in many areas of the USSR
with an influence beyond its small size. It was this capacity to survive due to the
political and organisational abilities of its members who comprised many veteran
Bolsheviks who had learned to engage in clandestinity before the War.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Jean Barrot and Denis Authier, La Gauche Communiste en Allemagne, 1918-1921,
Payot, Paris 1976. Especially chapters 16 and 17
E. H. Carr, The Bolshevik Revolution 1917-1923, vols. 1-3 : The Interregnum 19231924; Socialism in One Country 1924-1926, vols. 1-3 Foundations of a Planned
Economy, 1926-1929 vols. 1-2
W.J. Chase, Workers, Society, and the Soviet State Labor and Life in Moscow, 19181929, University of Illinois Press 1990
Ante Ciliga, The Russian Enigma, Ink Links PB 1979
Barbara Evans Clements: Bolshevik Feminist Life of A. Kollontai, Indiana University
Press 1979

R.V. Daniels: The Conscience of the Revolution -Communist Opposition in Soviet

Russia, Clarion Books 1969
Isaac Deutscher, The Prophet Armed: Trotsky 1919-1921: The Prophet Unarmed:
Trotsky 1921-1924, Oxford University Press 1976
Eduard A. Dune, Notes of a Red Guard, University of Illinois Press 1993
R.C. Elwood, Inessa Armand, Cambridge University Press 1992
Israel Getzler Kronstadt 1917-1921. The Fate of a Soviet Democracy, Cambridge
University Press 1983
Ronald Kowalski, The Bolshevik Party in Conflict: The Left Communist Opposition of
1918, Macmillan 1991
Lenin, Collected Works Progress Publishers, Moscow, (translated from the 4th and 5th
Russian editions).
G.M. Maximoff The Guillotine at Work: vol. l The Leninist Counter-revolution,
Cienfuegos Press 1979
Mary McAuley, Bread and Justice: State and Society in Petrograd 1917-1922,
Clarendon Press 1991
Christian Rakovsky, Selected Writings on Opposition in the USSR 1923-30, Alison and
Busby 1981
T.H. Rigby, Lenins Government -Sovnarkom 1917-1922, Cambridge University Press
1979
Guy Sabatier, Trait de Brest Litovsk 1918. Coup dArret la Rvolution, Spartacus

Pamphlet 1977
Richard Sakwa, Soviet Communists in Power, Macmillan 1990
L. Schapiro, The Origins of the Communist Autocracy Political Opposition in the Soviet
State. First Phase 1927-1922, Macmillan 2nd edition 1977
J. Si, Sur la Priode de Transition: les Positions des Gauches de la IIIe Internationale,
especially chapter 4 pages 62-82 on the Communist Left in Russia; Photocopy
produced commercially, First edition Leiden, Holland 1986
Carmen Siranni, Workers Control and Socialist Democracy: the Soviet Experience,
Verso 1982
S.A. Smith, Red Petrograd - Revolution in the Factories 1917-1918, Cambridge
University Press 1983
Z.A. Sochor, Revolution and Culture: Bogdanov-Lenin Controversy, Cornell University
Press 1988
Leon Trotsky, The Challenge of the Left Opposition, vol. 1 1923-5, vol. 2 1926-2; vol. 3
1928-29
Pathfinder 1982
C.D. Ward, The Communist Left in Russia, 1918-30; Unpublished manuscript, no
date.
Documentary materials on the Communist Left
Cahiers Leon Trotsky: 7/8 Numro Spcial. Les Trotskistes en Union Sovietique II

The Left Opposition in 1923, David S. Law in Critique no.2, Glasgow, no date.
Economics of the Left Opposition - special issue of Critique no 13, Glasgow 1981
Workers Group
Roberto Sinigaglia, Mjasnikov e la Rivoluzione Russa Jaca Book
On the Current Situation: Theses of the Left Communists (1918), Critique pamphlet
1977, Glasgow.
Two Documents of the Communist Left in Russia, in Workers Voice no.14, 1974, a
left communist bi-monthly from Liverpool.
Documents of the 1923 Opposition, New Park 1975
The Platform of the Joint Opposition 1927; New Park 1973
David Ross, Revolution and Counter Revolution in Russia, a mid 1970s pamphlet of
the Revolutionary Workers Group of Chicago.
The Workers Opposition - Alexandra Kollontai, Solidarity pamphlet no.7, no date.
From Workers Dreadnought, London 1922, July 29th, p.6: From Russian Workers,
the Group of Revolutionary Left-wing Communists (Communist Workers Party) of
Russia on the Failure of the United Front, and an account of the Delegate from
Russia to the 5th Special Congress of the KAPD.
Left-Wing Imprisonment in Russia: with an Appeal to the Communist International
and its Sympathising Proletariat from Various International groups of the Left
Communist and an Additional Appeal by the CWG of Russia (ibid. vol. XI no 11, May
31st 1924).

The Manifesto of the Communist Workers Group of Russia was published in the
Workers Dreadnought throughout January and February of 1924. Also large sections
were published in Communist, produced by Guy Aldred. The most accurate available
source is the French translation by the group Invariance which is based on the KAPD
edition, with their critical notes.
Also texts from Sapronov, Miasnikov and others in French published by the group
LOuvrier Communiste in their journal of the same name in the 1930s. Including the
Manifesto of the 25, Sapronovs group that broke from the Democratic Centralists.
Paul Avrich, Bolshevik Opposition to Lenin: G.T. Miasnikov and the Workers Group
The Russian Review vol. 43, Jan 1984, pp. 1-28.
The Appeal of the Workers Truth Group (1922) translated in G.P. Maximoff and R. V.
Daniels documentary history.
The Commune, (Glasgow) May 1923-April/May 1929, with the following articles:
Persecution in Russia, June 1924; Communism Suppressed in Soviet Russia,
November 1925, subtitled: Anti-Parliamentarians Imprisoned without Trial for
Propagating Communism against Compromise, referring to Miasnikov and the
Communist Workers Groups;
The Persecution of Miasnikov, November 1925, with excerpts from his prison
statement;
Halt this Counter-revolution, February 1926, with excerpts from Miasnikovs prison
manifesto;
Letter from Kte Rumanova of the Miasnikov Group in Berlin, December 1926;
The German Movement, July/August 2927, letters from AAUD-E and Cardozo of the

KAI with Aldreds comment on a manifesto issued in support of Miasnikov;

Anti-Parliamentarianism Abroad, Sept/Oct 1927, with details on groups in
Germany, Holland and Russia derived from correspondence, papers etc.;
Shall Labor Liquidate Socialism or Capitalism, November 1927, an article on the
Russian Communist Workers Groups with further excerpts from Miasnikovs
manifesto;
The Struggle in Russia, December 1927, a letter from Kte Rumanova with excerpts
from the Appeal of Russian Workers Opposition.
***