"The Workers' Question" in the Context of Democratization: Reflections on the Sources and Certain Prospects of the Mass Labor Movement in the USSR

Abstract

One of the realities of the political situation within our country has been the development of a mass workers' movement, which is having a perceptible influence on the moral and political climate of society and is "feeling out" a social niche for itself. After several months of vacillation (from August 1989 to May 1990), conditioned by the choice of political reference points, the most influential workers' organizations (the Council of Workers' Committees in the Kuzbass, the Donetsk Municipal Workers' Committee, the "Democratic Workers' Movement" of Vorgashor, etc.) came out unequivocally in favor of a radical version of democratic reforms and made known their lack of confidence in the former nomenklatura structures, which in one way or other derived from the monopoly position of the CPSU within the system of power.