Hegemony and Transformism: Post-Soviet Trade Unions as an Object of Study

Abstract

The article discusses Maksim Kulaev’s book “Trade Unions, Workers’ Movements, and Hegemony in Contemporary Russia”, which is dedicated to the history of trade union and workers’ movements in the post-Soviet era. The author attempts not only to reconsider what has happened to trade unions over the last thirty years but also to make sense of them drawing on Antonio Gramsci’s theory, which emphasized the need for the formation of hegemony as a sociocultural framework rather than purely political framework, enabling the establishment of value foundations for the dominance of the working class and resistance to the dominant hegemony of capitalist elites.The book chapters, in which the author describes the history, discourse, and interactions of trade unions with various political forces and social movements, are undoubtedly valuable. Importantly, this analysis is built on a vast array of diverse information—observations, documents, interviews, and data by other researchers. This allowed the author to critically reassess the data obtained in the 1990s, a time when much was still unknown and unclear. Now, this work represents a significant milestone, providing a perspective on the post-Soviet development of the workers’ and trade union movements after a quarter of a century. The book is of interest to researchers studying social structures, trade union and workers’ movements, and socio-labor relations.