The "trade-union debate" marked the rise of the "workers' opposition." Relying on the provisions contained in the party program adopted at the 8th Congress of the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks) in 1919 - primarily on the part that “trade unions should come to the total concentration of control over the entire national economy" - Shlyapnikov criticized the central committee with his like-minded comrades for “militaristic methods” of working with trade unions, specifically because during the Russian Civil War, unions were massively deprived of independence and absorbed by the government of the RSFSR.