Dissent within the Bolshevik party The fractions of the X Party Congress in the light of the resistance of the industrial proletariat

Abstract

This paper focuses its analysis in the context of the debates that have arisen within the Bolshevik party regarding the role that, within the framework of the organization of production, industrial workers would have to play after the October Revolution of 1917. An attempt is made to reconstruct the problematic scenario by contrasting the arguments of the contending fractions during the X party Congress of 1921 with the actions of local resistance deployed by the industrial proletariat during the same period. It will be argued that the episode was not limited to expressing a factional struggle aroused by divergent interpretations regarding the programmatic horizon within which the revolutionary process should be framed. The investigation of this confrontation also allows us to glimpse the recognition of a growing distancing of the party structures and the organs of the nascent Soviet power co the workers' bases. The possibility of interpreting this distancing as an indicator of the capacity of the workers' collectives in the factories to oppose an effective resistance to the party directives of raising discipline and laborncerning productivity is raised.