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Victor Reuther on the Soviet Experience, 1933–35: An Interview

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 December 2008

Anatoli Ilyashov
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Information
International Review of Social History , Volume 31 , Issue 3 , December 1986 , pp. 298 - 323
Copyright
Copyright © Internationaal Instituut voor Sociale Geschiedenis 1986

References

1 Gorky, formerly the mediaeval city of Nizhni-Novgorod, is a major urban industrial center in the Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic and the administrative center for the Oblast' (Province) under the same name, located some 260 miles east of Moscow.was renamed in 1932 in honor of Maksim Gorky (pseud. for Aleksei Peshkov), the well-known writer, who was born there in 1862.

2 Walter Reuther later was to became the President of the UAW in 1946, President of the CIO in 1951, and a Vice President of the AFL-CIO and head of the Industrial Union Department after the merger in 1955. His union activities started before the Gorky- automobile-plant experience as a tool and die worker. Upon his return to the United States from his “world tour” with his brother Victor, he successfully organized automobile workers into UAW Local 174 on Detroit's West Side and became its president in 1935. In 1936 he was elected to the international executive board of the UAW, and later by 1939 became the director of the UAW's General Motors Corporation department and elected first vice-president of the UAW in 1942. His union career involved extensive work in the UAW, the ClO and the AFL-CIO, and ended with his unfortunate death in an airplane crash on May 10, 1970.

3 Avtostroi was the Soviet automotive branch or “trust” that was established to promote the development of automobile production in the Soviet Union. It became based in the Detroit area after negotiations were completed with Ford Motor Company in 1929. Amtorg Trading Corporation, as the official trading organization of the Soviet Union dealing with the United States, is an American corporation subject to the laws governing such entities within the United States; the main office is in New York. Currently, major shareholders of Amtorg are the Bank for Foreign Trade and the Central Union of Consumers' Co-operatives of the USSR. Among its functions, it supervises and assists in the servicing of contracts with companies, conducts on behalf of foreign-trade associations export and import operations in the American market, and assists Soviet foreigntrade companies in the transport of cargoes and technically related questions that arise in business dealings. In the 1930's it was an important agency in the United States for facilitating technical transfers of labor and machinery, and fostering favorable trade relationships.

4 The Ford Motor Company's River Rouge complex, located in Dearborn, Michigan. in the Detroit vicinity.

5 Turin, the automobile center of Italy, housing Fiat.

6 Charles, E. Ruthenberg (1882–1927), a founder and first National Secretary of the Communist Party of America in 1919.Google Scholar

7 The Moscow News (weekly), begun in October 1930, was supplemented later by another English-language newspaper, the Moscow Daily News, headed by such prominent people as Anna Louise Strong as associate editor and Mikhail Borodin as editorin-chief. It became a mouthpiece for English-speaking workers, who experienced problems in their workplaces and lives. Awards and congratulations were mingled together with individual accounts of frustration in dealing with matters as inefficiency and bureaucracy. It also provided needed world news, and information on national developments and Party analyses.

8 FZU or fabrichno-zavodskoe uchilishche refers to factory training or apprenticeship. It also refers to schools for such technical education, or shkoly fabrichno-zavodskogo uchenichestva, which combined classroom instruction along with direct work training in industrial plants. The schools recruit and train young workers, both male and female, usually between 16 and 19 years of age, and have courses of instruction ranging generally from a few months to a year, depending on the trade. See, for example, Osovskii, E. G., Razvitie teorii Professional'no-tekhnicheskogo obrazovaniia v SSSR, 1917–1940 (Moscow, 1980),Google Scholar or James, Crowther, Industry and Education in Soviet Russia (London, 1932).Google Scholar

9 Literally, GAZ stood for the Gorky Automobile Plant or Works, which after its completion as the new major industrial automobile complex for the Soviet Union in late 1931, assembled Ford Model A cars and Ford Model AA trucks of the 1930 vintage. It was named in honor of V. M. Molotov, Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR from 1930 to 1941.

10 Schutzbunder or Schutzbündler was a term used to describe Austrians who were part of the abortive insurrection against right-wing elements in the Austrian government. It was derived from Schutzbund, which was the Social Democratic Party's own armed force in the ‚twenties and early 'thirties, and a descendent of the People's Guard of 1918. See Ilona, Duczynska, Workers in Arms: The Austrian Schutzbund and the Civil War of 1934 (New York, London, 1978).Google Scholar

11 Sergei Kirov, in charge of the powerful Leningrad Party organization since 1925, became a member of the Politburo in 1930 and a Secretary of the Central Committee of the Party in 1934. He was suddenly assassinated on December 1, 1934, in the Party headquarters of the well-known Smolny building in Leningrad, which precipitated what was to come to be known as the great purges of the 1930's. There continue to be varying interpretations as to who the instigator of Kirov's death was.

12 See Victor, Herman, Coming Out of the Ice: An Unexpected Life (New York, 1979).Google Scholar

13 Often referred to as the Ford Massacre, it took place on March 7, 1932, when the Unemployed Councils scheduled a hunger march on the Ford plant in Dearborn, Michigan, to present the Company a list of fourteen demands, including such demands as jobs for unemployed Ford workers, a seven-hour day with no reduction in pay, a slowing down of “speed-up”, an end to job discrimination against black workers, the right to organize into unions, and the abolition of the paramilitary Ford Service Department, noted for its surveillance of and strong-arm tactics among employees. With banners that read: “We Want Bread, Not Crumbs”, and “Tax the Rich and Feed the Poor”, the approximately three thousand demonstrators were told to stop by the police when they reached the Dearborn cityline. The protesters continued on with a barrage of teargas shot at them by the police and with streams of icy water by firefighters dispatched to the scene. Countering by letting loose a barrage of stones, they were met by bullets that were fired into the crowd by the police. Four people were killed (and in all likelihood a fifth, a black, was killed) and as many as sixty were wounded. As head of the Ford Service Department, Harry Bennett had a major role in devising this outcome. The Detroit prosecutor's office placed the blame for the bloodshed on the Communists and not the police.