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Getting Together then Falling Apart: Tomsky and British Trade Unionists during NEP
Author(s) -
WYNN CHARTERS
Publication year - 2014
Publication title -
the russian review
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.136
H-Index - 24
eISSN - 1467-9434
pISSN - 0036-0341
DOI - 10.1111/russ.10747
Subject(s) - opposition (politics) , communism , political science , soviet union , economic history , trade union , political economy , law , public administration , international trade , sociology , history , business , politics
Mikhail Tomsky, who is best known as the chairman of Soviet trade unions and a member of the “Right Opposition” to Stalin in the Politburo, also played a central role in international affairs when the Soviet leadership adopted the tactic of pursuing “united fronts” with non‐communist organizations during the 1920s. Tomsky, among the most moderate and appealing Bolshevik leaders, proved to be the only one who could make that happen. He orchestrated one of the Soviet Union's few foreign policy achievements of the period, the creation of the Anglo‐Russian Committee in 1924, linking British and Soviet trade unions together. Tomsky achieved this success by charming British trade unionists while holding his hardline Soviet critics at bay. But his balancing act between the moderate trade union leaders in London, who proved open to his overtures in the mid‐1920s, and critics of his pragmatic policies in Moscow following the failure of the 1926 British general strike, could not be sustained and the Anglo‐Russian Committee collapsed in 1927.