From June 16th to 25th, 1919, during the nine days of its work, the second All-Russian Congress of Trades Unions solved the fundamental questions of the Russian professional (trades union) movement. The Conference more precisely defined the place of the professional trades unions in a proletarian state, it has more concretely outlined the interrelations of the trades unions with the organs of administration and, above all, with the People’s Commissariat of Labor. All other questions, such as the regulation of working hours and wages, the safeguarding of labor and the social insurance of laborers, the organization of production, and workmen’s control have been solved on the basis of the experience of the past year. The Russian professional unions entered upon a new era of proletarian activity. And the unions are already facing practical problems—to put into practice the principles and resolutions adopted and in all phases of its work to follow one direction, that of still further strengthening its power, and participating more closely in establishing the might of proletarian Russia. THE PROBLEMS OF THE PROFESSIONAL TRADES UNIONS (_A resolution introduced by M. Tomsky_) One year of political and economic dictatorship of the proletariat and the growth of the workers’ revolution the world over, have fully borne out the correctness of the position taken by the first All-Russian Conference of the Professional Trades Unions, who have unconditionally bound up the fate of the economically organized proletariat with that of the Workers’ and Peasants’ Government. The attempt, under the flag of “unity” and “independence” of the trades union movement, to pit the economically organized proletariat against the organs of the political dictatorship of its own class, has led the groups which were supporting this slogan, to an open struggle against the Soviet Government and has placed them outside the ranks of the working class. In the course of the practical cooperation with the Soviet Government in the work for the strengthening and organization of the nation’s economic life, the professional trades unions have passed from control over industry to organization of industry, taking an active part in the management of individual enterprises as well as in the entire economic life of the country. But the task of nationalization of all the means of production and the organization of society on the new principles of Socialism demands persistent and careful labor involving the reconstruction of the entire governmental apparatus, the creation of new organs of control, and regulation of production and distribution, based on the organization and activity of the laboring masses who are themselves directly interested in the results.