Georgian Trade Union Alliance
Source: The Communist Review, May 1921, Vol. 1, No. 1.
Publisher: Communist Party of Great Britain
Transcription/HTML Markup: Brian Reid
Public Domain: Marxists Internet Archive (2006). You may freely copy, distribute, display and perform this work; as well as make derivative and commercial works. Please credit “Marxists Internet Archive” as your source.
The Georgian Trade Union alliance has sent the following greeting the International Council of the Red Trade Unions:—
“The Georgian workers, liberated from the yoke of the bourgeoisie and its tools, the Mensheviks who usurped power in Georgia three years ago, assembled for the first time after those three years in Red Soviet Tiflis, send their warm brotherly greetings to the International Council of Red Trade Unions, the leader of the revolutionary workers of the world.”
Violently deprived of contact with the International proletariat, the Georgian workers, remaining true to the principle of International solidarity, repeatedly attempted to stretch out their brotherly hand to their comrades abroad. Our attempts were stifled by volleys of lead and the Georgian gaols.
The ruling class exerted its utmost efforts to lead the Georgian Labour movement away from the path of the class struggle, and commit it to an understanding with the bourgeois. It pushed the Georgian labouring masses into the arms of the Yellow Amsterdam International, representatives of which—Kautsky, Renaudel and Co.—travelled all over Georgia, endeavouring to permeate the healthy organism of the Georgian proletariat with the poison of unprincipled opportunism.
Deprived of organic contact with the Red International of Trade Unions, we were unable to play an active part in that gigantic struggle between labour and capital which was developing all over the world. Perforce we remained passive spectators of the decisive conflict.
Yet all attempts of the enemies of the working class have not sufficed break down the class solidarity of the Georgian proletariat which has arisen against its oppressors, and with the aid of the valiant workers’ and peasants’ Red Army has achieved liberation from the yoke of the Mensheviks. The wall separating us from the world proletariat has been broken down.
On this happy day we, the workers of Soviet Georgia engaged in the building of a truly independent Soviet Republic, solemnly announce our into the ranks of the Red International of Trade Unions.
For the Georgian Trade Union Alliance,
ARCHVADZE.
DUMBADZE.
FODRIA.
Rosta. March 17th