A year’s work of the professional trades unions of Russia was completed by a new conference, the second one in its history—which shows how young our professional movement is as yet. The past year was unparalleled in the history of the entire international trade union movement, both according to the kind of activity as well as those circumstances under which our unions had to carry on their work. It was a year of the dictatorship of the proletariat. On the ruins of the demolished capitalist system, the proletariat of Russia has taken upon itself the task of building up a new, Socialist Russia. While struggling and conquering, it was gradually turning to constructive work—strengthening its dictatorship by taking possession of the entire apparatus of the country’s economic administration. The proletariat, organized into professional unions, constituted the vanguard of the Socialist revolution. The unions were the hotbeds of revolution, and it has fallen to their lot to solve the most complicated problems—in fact they took into their hands the management of all economic affairs, taking over the factories, the mills and the mines. This problem was difficult in itself, and its complexity was increased still further through the economic disintegration and chaos which were caused by the imperialist world war. The Second All-Russian Conference of Trades Unions demonstrated that the Russian professional trades union movement has grown stronger during the year and that its organization has improved in both quantity and quality. The qualitative progress made by the Russian trades union movement expressed itself in that marvelous intelligence which the Conference displayed in grappling with the complicated problems it had to face. If the first All-Russian Conference of Professional trades unions outlined a rough draft of a plan according to which the working class was to steer its course during the period of its supremacy, if at that first conference the delegates were groping in the dark, trying to feel the correct way,—the second Conference found the path sufficiently cleared to proceed forward toward the solution of new problems put forth by the life and practice of the professional movement. If at the First Conference we could only speak of regulating industry and controlling it, now, at this Second Conference, we can already tabulate the results of organization in the realm of industry by the efforts of the working class itself.