Soon after the first Congress of the Railroad Workers’ Unions, in February, 1918, the unions of railway workers were “merged with the state”--that is, they were forbidden to strike or to function as defensive or offensive organizations of the workers, and were compelled to accept the direction of the officials appointed by the central government and to carry out their orders. At the second Congress of the Railroad Workers’ Unions, February, 1919, according to _Economicheskaya Zhizn_ (No. 42), this policy was “sharply and categorically opposed” by Platonov, himself a Bolshevik and one of the most influential of the leaders of the railway men’s unions. At the Moscow Conference of Shop Committees and Trades-Unions, March, 1919, it was reported, according to _Economicheskaya Zhizn_ (No. 51), the unions “having given up their neutrality and independence, completely merged their lot with that of the Soviet Government.... Their work came to be closely interwoven with the state activities of the Soviet Government.... Only practical utilitarian considerations prevent us from completely merging the trades-unions with the administrative apparatus of the state.” At the ninth Congress of the Communist Party, held in Moscow, Bucharin proposed the adoption of certain “basic principles” governing the status of trades-unions and these were accepted by the Congress: “In the Soviet state economic and political issues are indivisible, therefore the economic organs of the Labor movement--the unions--have to be completely merged with the political--the Soviets--and not to continue as independent organizations as is the case in a capitalistic state. Being more limited in their scope, they have to be subordinate to the Soviets, which are more universal institutions. But merging with the Soviet apparatus the unions by no means become organs of the state power; they only take upon themselves the economic functions of this power.” In his speech Bucharin contended that “such an intimate connection of the trades-unions with the Soviet power will present an ideal network of economic administrative organization covering the whole of Russia.” It is quite clear that the unions must cease to exist as fighting organizations in the Bolshevist state, and become merely subordinate agencies carrying out the will of the central power.