Trudoviki

(also Toilers Group), a petit bourgeois political organization in Russia. Formed in April 1906, the group was composed of deputies to the First State Duma who represented the peasantry and the intelligentsia and who were also of a populist orientation.

The Draft Program of the Trudoviki demanded that the people be given the use of state, appanage, cabinet, and monastery lands, as well as private landholdings above a certain quota; in other words, the Trudoviki demanded the abolition of large-scale landownership and the virtual nationalization of the land. The draft proposed to entrust the preparation of agrarian reform to the peasants, who would elect local land committees on the basis of universal suffrage. Although it expressed the demands of the peasantry as a whole for land, the draft also met the interests of the upper strata of the peasantry by allowing for redemption of land. The Trudoviki also called for a democratic transformation of the political structure of Russia; necessary reforms included the introduction of universal suffrage. The basic principles of the draft were further developed in the Draft of the 104 and the Draft of the 35, which were presented to the Duma on May 23 and 24, 1906.

In their activities both within and outside of the Duma, the Trudoviki could not decide whether to ally themselves with the Cadets or the revolutionary proletariat. The Bolsheviks supported the group’s socioeconomic demands, which reflected the interests of the peasant masses, and maintained a policy of agreeing with the group on individual questions; nevertheless, the Bolsheviks criticized the political instability of the Trudoviki and urged the group to sever relations with the Cadets. The Trudoviki did not, however, become a consistent revolutionary peasant organization. In the period of reaction that followed the coup d’etat of June 3,1907, the activities of the Trudoviki ceased in the provinces.

As a result of the ideological affinity of the Trudoviki and the Popular Socialists, the Trudovik Popular Socialist Party was formed after the February Revolution of 1917 at the sixth congress of the Trudoviki, which was held from June 17 to 23 (June 30-July 6), 1917. Expressing the interests of the kulaks, the party supported the bourgeois Provisional Government and fought against the Bolsheviks; after the October Revolution of 1917, the party sided with the counterrevolution and soon disintegrated.