Jouhaux to Moscow

Bustling up to Moscow last week went famed Leon Jouhaux, the portly "Tsar of French trade unionism." During last year's active "New Deal" period in France, pot-bellied Tsar Jouhaux was a hero to millions of workers who credited him with browbeating the Cabinet of Socialist Leon Blum into decreeing nationwide shorter hours, vacations with pay. After Socialist Blum was succeeded this year by middle-class Premier Camille Chautemps, who reined in the New Deal and announced an official "pause" (TIME, Nov. 8 et ante) the huge bulk of Labor's Jouhaux has been less impressive. He enormously inflated his importance last week by appearing in Moscow to negotiate a merger between the 23,000,000 trade unionists in the Soviet Union and the 17,000,000 members of the International Federation of Trade Unions (Iftu).

Adolf Hitler smashed the German trade unions affiliated with Iftu. At an Iftu meeting in Warsaw last summer Matthew Woll promised that the American Federation of Labor would join with its 3,400,000 members. But last week in Moscow the backing of almost 5,000,000 French trade unionists made Leon Jouhaux much the most prominent foreigner at what may prove Iftu's greatest congress. Technically, the headquarters of Iftu are in Amsterdam--it is often called the Amsterdam International--and Iftu's General Secretary Shevenels brought from Amsterdam last week the papers inviting 23,000,000 Russians to join.

In Russia, trade unionism was first permitted as a concession after the abortive revolution of 1905, and enrolled members grew to exceed 200,000 under Nicholas II. During the War most unions in Russia were extinguished, but with the revolution of 1917, membership in a trade union was made compulsory by Lenin and 1,500,000 Russians were soon enrolled, with the State deducting union dues from their pay. In 1921 this policy was reversed, and Lenin made trade union membership voluntary. In the early Five-Year Plan period, Russian trade union officials were still attempting to bargain collectively with the Soviet State. They played a considerable role in shaping its wages and hours policies. In recent years Moscow dispatches have reported that this collective bargaining role of Soviet trade unions has "withered away," that the Kremlin has reduced them to the "cultural-educational role" of explaining its decrees to Soviet workers. In 1933, the Cabinet Commissariat for Labor was abolished and its functions transferred to the All-Union Central Council of Trade Unions. Its chief, famed Old Bolshevik Mikhail Tomsky, had maintained that "the trade unions should have an existence entirely separate and independent of the structure of the State." This doctrine clearly was not in harmony with the utter supremacy of Dictator Stalin, and the secret police began investigating Old Tomsky. whose friends in Russia and abroad were numberless. Presently police announced that he had "committed suicide" (TIME, Aug. 31, 1936).

Any public trial of Tomsky in the familiar Moscow style would have split proletarian opinion irretrievably, and his suicide smoothed the ground upon which was negotiated in six days last week the affiliation with Iftu of the Soviet Trade Unions.

A leading negotiator for Moscow with Amsterdam was Solomon Lozovzky, a skyrocketing new favorite of Dictator Stalin. Few weeks ago he was a little known Soviet Trade Union official. Last week he was suddenly nominated for membership in the all-powerful Central Committee of the Communist Party and to become Leader of the Profintern. The Profintern is the Red International of Labor Unions, created in 1921 by the Comintern of Moscow, whose business is to make "The World Revolution of the World Proletariat."

Up to a few years ago Soviet propaganda drilled into Russian workers that Iftu and its leaders were proletarian poltroons, stooges of Capitalism. Such Iftu affiliates as the American Federation of Labor and the British Trades Union Congress replied by publicly abhorring Russian trade unionism as "Red" and its leaders as stooges of Stalin. The pact signed in Moscow last week ended this quarrel and made the International Federation of Trade Unions an organization of 23,000,000 Soviet affiliates and 17,000,000 other affiliates--with all that that implies. Big Leon Jouhaux seemed slated to return to Paris with increased kudos and the favor of Dictator Stalin. Said he: "Soviet adhesion is based on the necessity for co-operation among non-fascist workers of all countries In a common struggle against war and Fascism."

Terms of the pact were kept rigidly secret. None of the 40,000,000 workers involved knew this week what their leaders had signed.

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