Workers' Opposition - End of The Movement

End of The Movement

Members of the former Workers' Opposition continued to advocate their views during the period of the New Economic Policy but increasingly became politically marginalized. Shlyapnikov and his supporters conducted discussions with Gavril Myasnikov's Workers' Group, but unlike Myasnikov, were determined not to leave the ranks of the Communist Party. Some members of the Workers' Opposition, including Shlyapnikov and Kollontai, signed the "Letter of the Twenty-Two" to the Comintern in 1922, protesting Russian Communist Party leaders' suppression of dissent within the Party. Shlyapnikov, Kollontai, and Sergei Medvedev narrowly escaped expulsion from the Russian Communist Party at the Party's Eleventh Congress in 1922. Kollontai subsequently became an important diplomat and Shlyapnikov turned to writing his memoirs.