machine, but with the war over, the railwaymen began to protest against military management.
Other unions, too, raised their voice against the permanent militarization of the railways.
At the beginning of November (1920) the Conference of Trade Unions passed a resolution which recommended "the most energetic and systematic struggle against centralism, militarization, bureaucratism as well as autocratic and minute tutelage of the workers ' unions."
The conference expressed also its conviction that "it is high time for the Railway Union to abolish military methods and return to ordinary proletarian democracy within the union."
But Trotsky—the head of the union—ignored the decision of the conference. Pointing out the manifest improvement of the transport under his management, he started a campaign for the adoption of military methods all round as the basis for a new efficiency in industry.
Far from denying his action in appointing the chiefs of the railway unions, Trotzky defended it at the congress of the transport workers. His speech is quoted in the New York Call of January 14, 1921, as follows:
Now as to the question of appointees. Is it right, as the State has said, that it was necessary to change the head official of the union? Rightly or wrongly we have intervened. …
The union was not suited to the revolutionary demands of the working-class, and our faction waged a merciless internal struggle and put its own men everywhere. …
And so the working-class, in the persons of its political representatives, says: Here we interfere; we are going to narrow this period of struggle between the two groups; we economize; we diminish; we order. To deny the principle of intervention is to deny that we live in a workers' state.
