Russia on the Road to New Industrial Relations From Unipartite Commands to Tripartite Partnership via Bipartite Conflicts and Bargaining

Abstract

In the initial stages of perestroika, the essence of our labor movement was, first, an economic struggle for improvement in working conditions and in pay and, second, an ever-clearer conscious political struggle for one or another type of social development, for the complete overthrow of state socialism or its restoration. It is natural that until now—the winter of 1991-92—the main thing that has been achieved by the labor movement has been in the sphere of politics and has signified that the mass of ordinary people has become involved in public life. It played a decisive role in staving off attempts by national-Bolshevik fundamentalists in the winter and spring of 1991 to turn back the clock on our whole social development, and it helped to crush the revolt in August 1991.