From the end of 1919 to the beginning of 1920, the workers' opposition matured along the periphery of Moscow Oblast and, by March 1920, took shape in the capital with many trade union leaders joining the group. In the same month, at a meeting of the communist faction of the All-Union Central Council of Trade Unions, Shlyapnikov proposed a formula for the separation of powers in the USSR: his simple scheme consisted in the separation of functions of trade unions, Soviets, and the Bolshevik party. According to the leader of the opposition, the party could be the responsible political state leader of the revolutionary struggle and construction, the Soviets - the form of political power, and the trade unions - the only responsible organizations of the national economy and, at the same time, the school of industrial management for workers.