The Workers’ Movement in Russia

Studies of Communism in Transition series

Simon Clarke, Professor of Sociology, University of Warwick, UK and Scientific Director, Institute for Comparative Labour Relations Research (ISITO), Moscow, Russia, Peter Fairbrother, Professor, RMIT University, Australia and Vadim Borisov, former Research Fellow, University of Warwick, UK

This major book surveys the development of the new workers’ movement in Russia under perestroika to understand how it connected with the workers at shop floor level and the national and local political authorities to whom it addressed its demands, and whose development it sought to influence.

‘. . . this is a valuable and quite unique book. It is all the more remarkable in view of the difficulty of systematic data collection in the chaotic conditions prevailing in Russia, and in its labour movement in particular. . . . this is an extremely valuable contribution to the study of the contemporary Russian labour movement. It presents systematically a wealth of data that shed important light not only on the workers’ movement but on Russian civil society in general as well as on its political system. No serious student of Russia can afford to overlook it.’
– David Mandel, Labour Focus on Eastern Europe

‘This important book chronicles the emergence of a new working class movement, and seeks to trace both its connections in the enterprises, and its impact on the political authorities. So little is known about this remarkable movement, that this work will fill an important gap.’
– European Labour Forum

‘. . . the book makes a very important and unique contribution to our understanding of Russia’s beleaguered independent workers’ movement.’
– Linda J. Cook, Slavic Review

‘However, this is a valuable and quite unique book. It is all the more remarkable in view of the difficulty of systematic data collection in the chaotic conditions prevailing in Russia, and in its labour movement in particular. This is an extremely valuable contribution to the study of the contemporary Russian Labour movement. It presents systematically a wealth of data that sheds important light not only on the workers’ movement but on Russian civil society in general as well as on its political system. No serious student of Russia can afford to overlook it.’
– David Mandel, International Review of Social History

‘. . . the immense wealth of detail will be of interest to advanced graduate students and researchers in the areas of labor relations, workers’ movements, privatization ideology and practice, and post-Soviet social and economic decline.’
– A.H. Koblitz, Choice