Kuzbass Autonomous Industrial Colony
At the Tenth Party Congress, Vladimir Lenin said that the fuel crisis had led to the need to spend gold on the purchase of coal from abroad.
Lenin, realizing that the economic crisis in Russia was too deep and that industry in the young Soviet Republic could not be restored on its own, wrote the "Letter to American Workers".
.. For industrial construction ... to support the Russian Revolution and to show the world what free workers can do when their talent is not hindered by the profit system and when they themselves are the sole owners of the products of their labor.” The negotiation process between representatives of the Soviet authorities and the American initiative group continued until the end of 1921 [2]..
The agreement between the Council of Labor and Defense (STO) and the board of colonists composed of Bill Haywood, Sebald Rutgers and others, on the creation of an autonomous industrial colony in Kuzbass, was signed on December 25, 1921, in Moscow.
On the initiative of Lenin, the leaders and members of the colony had to pay a “subscription” and would collectively be responsible for ensuring that “only people who are capable and willing to consciously endure a series of severe deprivations, inevitably associated with the restoration of industry in a country that is very backward and ruined”.
[2] The American side, represented by Rutgers, categorically opposed the intervention of the Supreme Soviet of the National Economy in the affairs of the "autonomous industrial colony."
Serious disagreements between the Soviet authorities (represented by Valerian Kuybyshev) and the autonomous workers, including on the financial conditions and the composition of the colony's organizing committee, subject to approval by the Labor and Defense Council, prevented practical steps to transfer Kuzbass to operation.
In addition, a group of American enthusiasts received complaints from Ludwig Martens, who described Haywood as “only an agitator, semi-anarchist,” and Rutgers as “a wonderful comrade and propagandist,” but “hardly an administrator.”.
While men were the majority, a significant number of the foreign colonists were women, who were drawn to the colony by its promises of gender equality and the freedom from 'Kitchen Slavery' the Soviet Union in general offered.
The “Kuzbass AIC” reconstructed a number of mines, built and put into production the first chemical processing plant in Russia and organized an advanced agricultural farm.
[4] Additionally, the gender roles which many of the women workers had hoped to escape would creep into daily life, as many were expected to take charge of household duties while simultaneously participating in colony work.
[4] Most of the communal aspects of colony life would come to an end with the institution of the New Economic Policy, as Kuzbass, along with all other Soviet enterprises, was expected to adopt a wage labour system in the name of increasing productivity.
Two of the departees, Ruth and Thomas Doyle, would go a step further, accusing the Soviet government of having 'scammed' them and making claims that they had been pressured to participate in 'free love' with the colony, with its Russian leadership attacking the idea of monogamy (a statement which all of the remaining colonists would refute).
