From International Press Correspondence, Vol. 3 No. 7, 18 January 1923, p. 62.
From International Press Correspondence (weekly), Vol. 3 No. 2, 18 January 1923, p. 22–23.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Marxists’ Internet Archive.
The trade union movement in the Balkan states (Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, Roumania, Greece, and Turkey) is comparatively young. With the exception of the trade union organizations within the territory of the one-time Austro-Hungarian state, which was united to Yugoslavia, the trade unions of the other Balkan countries have been formed during the last 20 years.
The trade union movement in the Balkans is developing in the atmosphere of a violent class war between labor and capital. The competition and pressure of the considerably more powerful and better organized European capitalism has caused the workers to be exploited with a barbarism which only finds comparison in the backward colonial and semi-colonial countries.
Even before the war the trade unions were forced to carry on long and difficult struggles for every trifling improvement in working conditions, while in many other European countries certain improvements were gained by means of peaceful negotiations between trade unions and capitalists.
The trade unions of the Balkan states have had to fight for the bare right of existence, have had to defend themselves against many attacks involving great conflicts and sacrifices.
It is thus very well comprehensible that opportunism has not been so successful in the trade union movement of the Balkan countries as is the case in the European movement, and that it has not been able to influence the theory and practice of the trade union movement in the direction of class peace, and of collaboration between the proletariat and bourgeoisie. And there has been even less room for a trade union bureaucracy ready to play flunkey to the bourgeoisie.
This objectively explains why, in the Balkan states, the trade unions did not permit themselves to be made the tools of imperialism, even before war was declared, as did the trade unions of Germany, France, England, and other countries, but on the contrary, armed themselves against the imperialist war, and condemned the treachery of the Amsterdam International.
This is also the explanation of die remarkable fact that all attempts made by the reformists, after the war and at the present time, to influence the trade unions, or to create their own organizations. have been unsuccessful.
In this respect Bulgaria and Yugoslavia offer a noteworthy example. The reformist trade union centre existing in Bulgaria up to the war joined the Red centre in October 1920, the latter being affiliated to the R.I.L.U. since its foundation. This effected the complete unity of the Bulgarian trade union movement, a unity entirely revolutionary.
After the revolutionary trade unions were destroyed in Yugoslavia, the reformists endeavoured to head a legal trade union movement. But although they were aided by the government to take possession of the buildings, funds, furnishings, etc. of the revolutionary trade unions still they did not succeed in winning over more than a few dozen deluded workers.
The working masses of South Slavia utterly scorn the reformists, and the raging Terror does not prevent them from uniting in revolutionary trade unious possessing great powers of resistance. On the other hand, the favourable influence of revolutionary socialism has prevented the trade union movement in the Balkan states from being affected by anarcho-syndicalism.
At the present time the capitalist offensive is in full swing in the Balkans. The white Terror enables the capitalists of Yugoslavia to increase the exploitation of labor, for by its aid they have been able to introduce the nine and ten hour working day, and to reduce actual wages to their present level of 40 to 45% of the average pre-war wages.
In Roumania and Greece the same conditions obtain: The capitalists seek to reinforce their economic offensive by means of strengthening political reaction.
It is in Bulgaria alone that all the attempts of the bourgeoisie to establish the white Terror have been without avail. Thanks to this circumstance the Bulgarian trade unions are in a position to organize the resistance of the masses against the capitalist offensive in comparative peace, and are doing this with great success. At the present time the whole country is pervaded by a united strike movement, and led exclusively by the Red trade unions. This unanimous and organized resistance of the working masses against the attack of capital has already borne excellent fruit in Bulgaria.
Not only has the eight-hour day been retained, and the main objective of the capitalist offensive thus successfully defended, but in some of the most important branches of industry it has been possible to gain an actual rise in wages. Thus for instance the average cost of living in Bulgaria rose by 25% between April and October 1922, and during this same period, thanks to the influence of the trade unions, the wages in the leather, sugar, and tobacco industries, and in the building trade, were raised by 35% to 40%. (The average wage in Bulgaria is however still 40% lower than before the war.)
This energetic resistance naturally enrages the industrial magnates, and they are organizing armed bands in their works and factories, led by While Guard Russian officers. In many places these bands have already attempted to attack the workers, and to render strikes impossible, it is gratifying to note that the favorable influence of the R.I.L.U. and of the C.I. is promoting the rapid formation of the proletarian fighting front of the workers of the Balkans against the capitalist offensive.
At the same lime we are enabled to see with increasing clearness that the first prerequisites for an organized fighting front must be created in the Balkans for the trade union movement. The formation of this front is the most important task of the trade union movement in the Balkan states at the present time.
There is no doubt whatever that the tremendous difficulties obstructing the development of the trade union movement, the white Terror in Yugoslavia, the violent persecutions in Roumania, Greece, and Turkey, and the attacks of armed bourgeois bands in Bulgaria, will be shortly overcome by the revolutionary trade union movement.
Last updated on 3 May 2021