THE SOVIET UNION'S ONCE DOCILE WORKING CLASS IS PASSIVE no longer. Strikes — once said to be an impossibility under socialism — are now commonplace. Unofficial workers' clubs, workers' fronts, and embryonic free trade unions are springing up all over the country. These show a marked polarization: some are oriented toward reform; others are openly conservative; many are ethnically biased. It will be argued in this article that this new worker activism could prove damaging to the progress of economic reform, but that further radical changes in the political framework could reduce this risk.
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Elizabeth Teague (1990) studied this question.