Trade Union Debate was a political discussion that took place between late 1920 and the spring of 1921 within the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, concerning the role and function of trade unions in Soviet Russia. At a time when the Soviet government was transitioning from the extreme centralization of War Communism to a more mixed economic policy under the New Economic Policy (NEP), trade unions became the focus of an ideological struggle within the Party. The debate highlighted divergent views on whether trade unions should maintain autonomy from the state or be directly integrated into the apparatus of the state.
The result of the debate at the 10th Congress of the Russian Communist Party was a rejection of the positions put forward by Leon Trotsky, the Workers' Opposition, and the Democratic Centralists. The Congress passed the resolution On the Role and Tasks of the Trade Unions, which affirmed Vladimir Lenin's definition of trade unions as educational organizations, or "schools of communism." [1] [2]