thumb|Alexander Shliapnikov

Alexander Gavrilovich Shliapnikov (; August 30, 1885 – September 2, 1937) was a Russian communist revolutionary, metalworker, and trade union leader. He is best remembered as a memoirist of the October Revolution of 1917 and as the leader of the Workers' Opposition, one of the primary opposition movements inside the Russian Communist Party during the 1920s.

Biography

Early years

Alexander Shliapnikov was born August 30, 1885, in Murom, Russian Empire to a poor family of Russian ethnicity and of the Old Believer religion. His father died when he was a small child. In 1898, at the age of 13, Shliapnikov began factory work at the Kondratov factory in Vacha, and one year later began working in Sormovo factories in Nizhny Novgorod, where he had his first encounter with Marxist literature. At the invitation of his older brother Peter, Shliapnikov moved to St. Petersburg in late 1900, beginning work alongside his brother at the Semyannikov (also known as Nevsky) factory, and rapidly became involved in labor unrest there. By age fifteen, Shliapnikov had been blacklisted and could no longer find work at the major factories in St. Petersburg, and was forced to return to Sormovo, where he once again found himself unemployable due to his suspected radicalism. While in Sormovo, he was entrusted with illegal literature to distribute back in Murom, which he later designated as his initiation into the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party.

Pre-Revolution Activities

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1905 and Emigration from Russia

According to Shliapnikov himself, he joined the Bolsheviks in 1903, the year of their split with the Mensheviks.

Works

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References

Sources

Further reading

  • Barbara C. Allen, "Alexander G Sljapnikov in der Verbannung und in Havt 1934 bis 1937", in: Jahrbuch für Forschungen zur Geschichte der Arbeiterbewegung, Heft III/2015.
  • Robert V. Daniels, The Conscience of the Revolution: Communist Opposition in Soviet Russia. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1960.
  • Michael Futrell, Northern Underground: Episodes of Russian Revolutionary Transport and Communications through Scandinavia and Finland, 1863–1917. New York: Frederick A. Praeger, 1963.
  • Larry E. Holmes, For the Revolution Redeemed: The Workers Opposition in the Bolshevik Party, 1919–1921. The Carl Beck Papers in Russian and East European Studies, no. 802 (1990).
  • Larry E. Holmes, "Soviet Rewriting of 1917: The Case of A. G. Shliapnikov." Slavic Review vol. 38, no. 2 (June 1979), pp. 224–242.
  • Jay B. Sorenson,The Life and Death of Soviet Trade Unionism: 1917–1928. New York: Atherton Press, 1969.
  • The Workers' Opposition in the Russian Communist Party: Documents, 1919–30. Edited and translated by Barbara C. Allen. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 2021.*
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