Creative unions (Russian: творческие союзы) in the Soviet Union were voluntary societies that united Soviet citizens according to their creative (artistic) occupations.
They were similar to Soviet trade unions; more specifically, in Soviet ideology and law they were a subset of trade unions, because creative professionals were officially a type of worker.
Unofficially, many of their members differentiated themselves culturally from blue-collar workers.
[1] The earliest of them were established in 1932 after disbanding the previous unions, such as RAPP, RAPM, and AKhRR.
Usually people expelled from a union could not make any significant money from their creative work.