Andrew rothstein

None of the problems mentioned, and of the direct tasks which followed from them—such as full use of the new machinery, repairs to machine tools at the great new works in the Urals, the Siberian steppes and the plains of Central Asia, instead of sending them away, the introduction of the conveyor system and the raising of labour discipline—could have been solved successfully without the continuation of Socialist emulation on a large scale. This took a number of different forms.

One was that of the 200 percenters, and later 500 percenters—and even 1000 percenters—workers who undertook to produce so much more than their quota of output in the standard time, by better mastery of their machine. Another form was the young people’s front-line brigade. This movement, begun by a girl operative, Yekaterina Baryshnikova at the 1st State Ball-Bearing Works in 1943, aimed at increasing output of each brigade with the object of reducing the number of workers employed on each job, and thus making more workers available for other jobs. By the end of 1944 there were 70,000 such brigades, grouping about 500,000 young workers. There were more than 100,000 youth brigades by the end of the war.⁴ Another form was that of public inspections of the organisation of labour, thus borrowing a method used in earlier stages of Socialist emulation: moreover, apart from this method of checking up on output and technique, the trade unions enlisted the help on a voluntary spare-time basis of some 600,000 public inspectors of factory canteens, bakeries, crèches, laundries and other amenities necessary for the encouragement of the war workers. Yet another form was the multi-lathe movement—i.e., the working of two or more machines simultaneously by the same worker (e.g., gun-borers at Leningrad). It aimed not only at increased productivity of labour but also at economising labour itself. The movement had made its appearance first in 1939, at the Urals engineering works and the Kharkov machine-tool works; but it found rapid extension in war-time. Tens of thousands of workers took part in this effort. At one war works there were over 1000 multi-lathe workers in 1944: in the textile industry a great number of new weavers adopted this method.⁵

Another form of great importance was the assistance given to less skilled workers by the more skilled. Thus at the Ordzhonikidze machine-tool works a trade union organiser and skilled engineer, Zaitsev, helped eight new workers, mostly women, to raise their skill, and by 1943 they were regularly exceeding their quota by 50-60%. At the Stalin motor works, Ryabikina, in the armature department, was not managing her quota. The shop committee appointed a Stakhanovite, Kuzina, to give her technical assistance, and after a few months Ryabikina was turning out regularly more than double her quota.¹ In 1943, at special “Stakhanov schools” set up for this purpose in the factories themselves, there were 63,000 workers being trained in the aircraft industry by their fellow-workers, 43,000 in the armaments industry, 38,000 in the munitions industry, 41,000 at the big building jobs in the Urals and Western Siberia, etc.²

Yet a further subject of emulation was the making and collecting of inventions and rationalisation proposals. In the munitions factories during the second half of 1942 there were 24,000 such suggestions, and putting into effect only one-third of them produced an economy of 259 million roubles. In 1942 tank works produced over 15,000 workers’ suggestions, with a total economy of over 71 million roubles. In various railway workshops 4000 suggestions were made, of which just over 1600 were adopted, leading to economies exceeding 17 million roubles per annum.³

Another variety of Socialist emulation was the adoption of detailed plans, similar to the “economic and political agreements” of 1929, in the shape of open letters to Stalin, which were discussed, amended and adopted at mass meetings of the workers concerned. Thus, on 1st January, 1942, 1 million workers, collective farmers and technicians of the Urals signed New Year greetings to Stalin, pledging various increases in their output. On 25th July, in a further letter, 1,275,000 Urals people reported that their pledge had been fulfilled by the doubling and trebling of their output of arms and munitions, and promised to increase output by a further 150% in the second half of 1942.

By the middle of 1944 the position in the basic war industries was that in the production of armaments, ammunition and aircraft the numbers engaged in Socialist emulation exceeded 85% of all workpeople, and Stakhanovites 38%. In other industries, such as oil, iron-ore and medium engineering, the numbers engaged in Socialist emulation also varied from 80 to 87%. Over the whole of industry, by the summer of 1944, more than 35% of all workers were Stakhanovites.⁴ Labour productivity as a result, and in spite of the great influx of previously unskilled or semi-skilled workers, rose from May, 1942, to May, 1944, by over 40%, and in some industries considerably exceeded this figure, reaching 54% in the munitions industry. At the same time very great economies were secured. The Stalin artillery works alone, for example, economised during the war 100,000 tons of iron and steel, 3000 tons of non-ferrous metals and over 30,000,000 kilowatt hours of power output.⁵ In 1943 the level of overhead charges at most war factories was 30-40% lower than at such factories before the war.⁶ We have seen earlier what vast economies were sccurcd in the country as a whole.

With the end of the war the tasks of rebuilding what had been destroyed and of resuming the advance towards real abundance became even more closely dependent upon the deliberate and planned effort of the Soviet citizen himself than was Soviet planning before 1941. No Government, no machinery of State, could possibly be adequate to cope with the vast destruction left behind by the Germans. Furthermore, as we have already seen, the question of assistance to the U.S.S.R. in repairing this destruction (even allowing for UNRRA aid) occupied a much more humble place than that of assistance to Germany, in the only countries able to give any help from outside. The responsibility of the individual citizens for the bulk of reconstruction in the U.S.S.R. was therefore inescapable. Perhaps the most graphic form in which this was brought home to them on a national scale—every liberated district, of course, provided its parallels—was the beginning of the rebuilding of Stalingrad in 1943, immediately after its liberation.

Assistance to Stalingrad, in kind and in labour, became a matter of honour and emulation almost immediately.⁷ 20,000 volunteers from all over the U.S.S.R., organised in 1084 “Cherkasova” brigades (named after Alexandra Cherkasova, the young girl who began the movement, a bricklayer by profession), repaired and restored, in the course of 1944 alone, a large number of schools, twenty- three crèches and kindergartens, thirty individual houses; but above all took an active part in the rebuilding of the Stalingrad water-works, tram service, river-port and railway lines. In the following year such volunteers repaired 11,000 houses and 275 schools, shops and restaurants. Millions of roubles’ worth of clothes came from the workers of the great textile centre of Ivanovo, window-glass by the trainload from the ancient glassworks at Gus-Khrustalny, 100,000 text-books from school children in other towns.

Nor was voluntary effort of this kind confined to Stalingrad. In the Kursk region Deputy Volchkov reported at the Soviet of the Union on 27th April, 1945,

“workers, employees, housewives are taking training in the building trades, gladly giving their labour for the repair of factories, social and cultural institutions, dwelling houses. At Kursk alone, in 1944, there were 1540 volunteer building brigades at work, composed of 27,000 people.... An important part in drawing the townspeople into restoration work—particularly housewives—is played by the street committees. I should like to describe the work of one of these street committees on Komsomol Street at Kursk.... The committee has four volunteer building brigades, 44 people in all, each of whom has worked over 400 hours. The brigades have repaired 60 dwelling-houses and schools. One of the brigade-leaders, comrade Voronina, a housewife 65 years of age, personally worked 866 hours last year.”¹

It was in 1946, however, with the adoption of the fourth Five Year Plan, that post-war emulation developed on the widest scale. The declared aim was to over-fulfil the Plan in the time provided. It began as a result of a conference of blast-furnacemen and steel smelters from all over the Union, held at Magnitogorsk, in the Urals, in the second half of May. Out of the exchange of war-time experiences and arrangements for mutual aid discussed there, the metallurgical workers of three big plants—the Kirov works at Makeyevka (in the Donetz Basin), the Kuznetzk works in Western Siberia, and the Magnitogorsk plant—decided to initiate a new round of Socialist emulation. Their example was followed by hewers in the Donetz and Moscow coalfields, by blacksmiths at the motor works of Gorky and Moscow, and then by workers in other industries, as well as by collective farmers and other workers in agriculture.

From the outset a determined effort was made to put this movement on the highest level reached at any time in the history of Socialist emulation. On 8th June, 1946, the Central Council of Trade Unions issued the following conditions which a factory must satisfy to be adjudged "victorious” in this campaign: (i) systematic over-fulfilment of production plans as regards quantity; (ii) uniformly high quality of output, and of the types provided for by the plan; (iii) the mastery of new branches of production, not previously undertaken by the competing works; (iv) increase in productivity of labour and reduction of costs, and housing and cultural construction according to plan; (v) good work, on the part both of managements and trade union organisations in the factories, in the sphere of labour protection and welfare measures.² A recurring theme of the campaign was that in the fourth Five Year Plan the total increase in industrial output by 1950 must represent 48% of the 1946 level, while the amount by which labour productivity must increase was 36%—i.e., it was to account for three-quarters of the total improvement of output.

6. Post-war Socialist Emulation

Towards the end of 1946 the summing-up of results of the year’s working began to reveal, not only solid successes in all the spheres mentioned, but a wide variety of types of emulation, recalling its first full flowering during the historic years from 1929 to 1932. The following examples, taken for the most part from the news-columns of Pravda, tell their own story in this respect:

Individual emulation.

“Workers of the Moscow tool works are successfully competing in the post-war reconversion of production. The pre-war level of output of tools has now been exceeded by 25%. In all shops there is a lively emulation of Stakhanovites and shock brigaders for the title of the best worker in their respective craft. The emulation is bearing good fruit. Productivity of labour has grown considerably, and exceeds the level laid down by 10%. A number of shops, with their previous number of workers, are turning out 20-30% more output than at the beginning of the year” (23rd November, 1946).

Youth Brigades. A message from Gorky reports progress at the Molotov auto works, where the “front-line brigade” movement first began in the autumn of 1941, on the initiative of the charge-hand of a toolmakers’ group, Vasili Shubin, a member of the Communist League of Youth. There are over 200 of these brigades at the works now, renamed “youth brigades”. The message continues:

“When emulation began for the fulfilment and over-fulfilment of schedules in the first year of the new Five Year Plan, Vasili Shubin suggested that emulation be organised between the youth brigades for the title of ^‘labour valour brigade’. The management and the works committee of the C.L.Y. supported the proposal. The title is granted to those brigades which, in the course of a month, over-fulfil the production standards, and each member of which individually does the same. A red banner for the winning brigade and twelve money prizes have been established. On the initiative of the toolmakers, Socialist emulation has developed throughout the shops, in honour of the fifteenth anniversary of the founding of the works on 1st January, 1932. Eleven youth brigades have already won the title.” (22nd November, 1946.)

Rationalisation.

“Some 30,000 practical suggestions for rationalisation of production were submitted this year by workers of the leading branches of industry in the U.S.S.R.—iron and steel, engineering, railways and water transport. Their application resulted in an economy of almost 400 million roubles. Many of these proposals are of great value. For example, at the Dnepropetrovsk iron and steel works a workman, Nikolai Astapov, applied a new method of handling the rolling-mill, and produced 7000 tons of sheet steel per month instead of the usual output of 4500 tons. (Soviet Monitor, 30th December, 1946.)

The multi-loom movement. Maria Volkova, a weaver at Orekhovo-Zuyevo, writes:

“The thought of multi-loom work came to me almost a year ago. I talked it over with my friends, and we decided jointly to take on an additional amount of machinery. At first we looked after 10 weaving looms each, then we went on to 12, later to 14, and now we have begun to look after 16 looms each. According to the year’s programme we should have given the country 190,000 metres of cloth. We completed this by 15th August. By the 29th anniversary of the Revolution we produced another 85,000 metres, thus over-fulfilling our undertaking for 7th November. We are delighted that the initiative of my brigade has extended not only to the Orekhovo factories, but also to many others. There are 170 weavers following my example in our town. It is not only individual weavers or brigades, but entire shops, which have gone over to the multi-loom system: for example, shop No. 3 at No. 2 weaving mill. This movement made it possible for at least two factories of our town to start another 400 looms. As a result, the output of cotton goods in our combine has considerably increased. Last year its daily output was 80,000 metres, and now it is 110,000 metres. I am passing on my experience to my townspeople through Stakhanov schools and industrial training groups. At the invitation of textile workers of Ivanovo and Glukhov, I have given lectures there on the methods by which we work.” (4th November, 1946.)

Chain Shock Brigades.

“Kalmykova and Potemkina, best automatic loom operators at the October Revolution factory (Ramensky district, Moscow region), learning of the methods of work of Maria Volkova at Orekhovo, decided to go over to 180 automatic Northrop looms in their shift, instead of 60 which their brigade looked after hitherto. They began this on 16th August, and from the very first day the brigades began over-fulfilling the plan. On 1st September they were reorganised as chain Stakhanov brigades, covering the entire production process from the sorting of the cotton to the packing of the finished goods. Team leaders were appointed as their assistants in the preparatory departments of the spinning and weaving mills, and in the ring-spinning shop. Each piece of machinery throughout the process was reserved for particular workers. As a result, there was much better checking of the quality of partly finished goods at every stage of the spinning and weaving. The breaking of yarn in the ring-spinning frames and looms, which was one of the chief causes of hold-ups, was considerably reduced. The quality of the finished material improved.... The organisation of chain Stakhanov multi-loom brigades made it possible to release 65 skilled workers and give them looms which hitherto had been idle. The automatic weaving shop previously turned out 12-13,000 metres a day, while now it is producing 16-17,000 metres daily. The earnings of members of the chain brigade have increased.... The initiative of the foremost weavers, Kalmykova and Potemkina, roused the whole factory. Their example was followed by Goryunova and Zaitseva. From 7th September they went over to 120 automatic looms, and are also successfully coping with the plan.... Yesterday Kalmykova’s brigade, having discussed the results of a month’s work in the new way, entered upon Socialist emulation in honour of the coming 29th anniversary of the November Revolution. It undertook to fulfil standards of output in September not less than 160%, in October 170% and to produce above plan 600 kilograms of yam and 20,000 metres of cloth. The brigade has challenged Potemkina’s brigade.” (15th September, 1946.)

Counter-planning.

“Yaroslavl, October 24th. The Shcherbakov road machinery works has completed its year’s plan of output of road motor-rollers in 9½ months. Costs of production have been lowered by 45%, instead of 18.7% provided under the year’s plan. By the end of the year the works will reach the pre-war level of costs of production. The workers have calculated that the plan for 1947 could be fulfilled 125%. With the approval of a general meeting, the management has made this proposal to the Ministry of Building and Road Engineering. The resources of the works for fulfilling this higher plan next year consist of the constantly increasing mechanisation of those processes which absorb most labour. With its own forces, and on its own initiative, the plant is doing a great deal in this direction. Its output capacity is already higher than what was planned for 1947. The workers’ productivity is constantly rising, and now exceeds plan by 15%.” (25th October, 1946.)

“Many Hundred Percenters”.

“At the locomotive repair works, Yaroslavl, there is a widespread expansion of emulation in the various trades. The number of workers performing two or three quotas per shift is constantly growing. At present the works has about 100 ‘three-hundred percenters’ and over 500 ‘two-hundred percenters’. 205 workers have already produced their year’s quota of output.” (19th October, 1946.) “The Kharkov Regional Committee of the Ukrainian Communist Party has held a conference of leading Stakhanovites of the city’s industrial plants, who have fulfilled five years’ quotas ahead of time. There were people of various trades_: old and young. They described how they had secured such a high productivity of labour...” (25th November, 1946).