Workers' Liberty

The AWL and its predecessors campaigned for solidarity with workers'
movements in the Eastern Bloc. We've always backed workers against
bureaucrats - for example in the early 1980s we made solidarity with
Polish workers and supported their call for a boycott of Polish goods
when others on the left hesitated.

We supported individuals like the mineworker Vladimir Klebanov, who
was shut up in a psychiatric hospital for trying to organise for
independent unions in Russia.

In 1987 we organised the Campaign for Solidarity with Workers in the
Eastern Bloc (CSWEB) to solidarise with workers under Stalinism. In
1990 CSWEB organised the first conference of socialists and trade
unionists from Eastern Europe in Britain. It was attended by 400
people.

Further reading
Workers' Liberty book The Fate of the Russian Revolution edited by
Sean Matgamna.