Some Bolsheviks were critical of how Vladimir Lenin had reduced the debate on policy issues in the Communist Party after the October Revolution. In 1921 Alexandra Kollantai (Commissar for welfare) and Alexander Shlyapnikov (Commissar for Labour) formed a faction that became known as the Workers' Opposition.

In 1921 Alexandra Kollantai published a pamphlet The Workers' Opposition, where she called for members of the party to be allowed to discuss policy issues and for more political freedom for trade unionists. She also advocated that before the government attempts to "rid Soviet institutions of the bureaucracy that lurks within them, the Party must first rid itself of its own bureaucracy."

The group also published a statement on 27th February, 1921: "A complete change is necessary in the policies of the government. First of all, the workers and peasants need freedom. They don't want to live by the decrees of the Bolsheviks; they want to control their own destinies. Comrades, preserve revolutionary order! Determinedly and in an organized manner demand: liberation of all arrested Socialists and non-partisan working-men; abolition of martial law; freedom of speech, press and assembly for all who labour."

At the Tenth Party Congress in 1922, Vladimir Lenin proposed a resolution that would ban all factions within the party. He argued that factions within the party were "harmful" and encouraged rebellions such as the Kronstadt Rising. The Party Congress agreed with Lenin and the Workers' Opposition was dissolved.