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Production Collectives and Communes and the “Imperatives” of Soviet Industrialization, 1929-1931

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2017

Lewis Siegelbaum
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Extract

There cannot be any doubt that the confusion in the minds of individual Party members concerning Marxian socialism and their infatuation with the egalitarian tendencies of agricultural communes are as like as two peas to the petty bourgeois views of our “Leftist” blockheads, who at one time idealized the agricultural communes to such an extent that they even tried to implant the commune in the factories, where skilled and unskilled worker, each working at his trade, “had to put his wages into the common fund which was then shared out equally. We know what harm these infantile egalitarian exercises of our “Leftist” blockheads caused our industry.

Stalin, 1934

Now, brother, we don't toady. Nobody sucks up to the foreman.

N. Pogodin, Bakunin commune, Baltic Shipyards

Type
Articles
Information
Slavic Review , Volume 45 , Issue 1 , Spring 1986 , pp. 65 - 84
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. 1986

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References

1. The extent of the decline in real wages cannot be calculated precisely because of the paucityand unreliability of official data and the existence of a four-tier price structure, but see Schwarz, Solomon M., Labor in the Soviet Union (New York: Praeger, 1951), pp. 135–45Google Scholar, and Kingsbury, Susan M. and Fairchild, Mildred, Factory, Family and Woman in the Soviet Union (New York: Putnam's, 1935),pp. 234, 286–91Google Scholar. On the retail price system, see Malafeev, A. N., Istoriia tsenoobrazovaniia v SSSR, 1917–1963 gg. (Moscow, 1964), pp. 146–73, 402Google Scholar. The quotation from Stalin in the epigraph can befound on pp. 76–77 of Stalin, “Otchetnyi doklad XVII s “ezdu partii o rabote TsK VKP(b),” Sochineniia, v. 13 (Moscow: Gospolitizdat, 1952); the quotation from N. Pogodin is in Zarkhii, S., Kommuna v tsekhe (Moscow-Leningrad, 1930), p. 50.Google Scholar

2. Western scholars have not given the trade union purge the attention it deserves. For briefsummaries, see Sorenson, Jay B., The Life and Death of Soviet Trade Unionism, 1917–1928 (NewYork: Atherton, 1969), pp. 238–43Google Scholar; Conquest, Robert, Industrial Workers in the USSR (New York:Praeger, 1967), pp. 151–53Google Scholar; and Daniels, Robert V., The Conscience of the Revolution: Communist Opposition in Soviet Russia (New York: Simon and Shuster, 1969), pp. 344–48.Google Scholar

3. The relation between shock work and socialist competition is discussed more fully in my “Socialist Competition and Socialist Construction in the USSR: The Experience of the First 5-YearPlan (1928–1932),” Thesis Eleven, 4 (1982): 48–67.

4. “Postanovlenie TsK VKP(b) o sotsialisticheskom sorevnovanii fabrik i zavodov,” in Industrializatsiia SSSR, 1929–1932 gg. Dokumenty i materialy (Moscow, 1970), pp. 480–82..

5. Politicheskii i tmdovoi pod'em rabochego klassa SSSR (1928–1929 gg.) Sbornik dokumentov (Moscow, 1956), pp. 250–51; Moskovskii komitet VLKSM, Udarnye brigady (Moscow, 1929), pp. 9,14–19; Sotsialisticheskoe sorevnovanie v promyshlennosti SSSR, Sbornik statei (Moscow, 1930),pp. 31–34, 194–95; and G. Lebedev, “Vziaf novyi kurs,” Molodaia gvardiia no. 16 (1929): 52.

6. Zarkhii, Kommuna v tsekhe, p. 6.

7. Moskovskii komitet VLKSM, Udarnye brigady, pp. 6, 9.

8. Bekker, I., “Proizvodstvennye kommuny Leningrada,” Na fronte industrializatsii [hereafterNFI], no. 10–11 (1930): 9 Google Scholar; Zarkhii, Kommuna v tsekhe, p. 14.

9. Sotsialisticheskoe sorevnovanie (1930), p. 149; Sotsialisticheskoe sorevnovanie v promyshlennosti SSSR (Moscow, 1973), p. 107.

10. Solsialisticheskoe sorevnovanie (1930), p. 66.

11. See, for example, NFI, no. 9 (1930): 45; V Ol'khov, Za zhivoe rukovodstvo sotssorevnovaniem (Moscow, 1930), p. 43; Proizvodstvennyi zhurnal, 6 (1930): 3.

12. See Partiinoe stroitel'stvo [hereafter PS], no. 11 (1931): 10 and 15–16 (1931): 16; A. I.Kapustin, Udarniki: praktika raboty udarnykh brigad (Moscow, 1930), p. 31.

13. NFI, no. 10–11 (1930): 9.

14. Zarkhii, Kommuna v tsekhe, p. 70.

15. Iu. Kokarev, Kak rastet novoe. Istoriia odnoi kommuny (Leningrad, 1931), p. 51.

16. For two exceptions, see Iuzhnyi, A., “Proizvodstvennye kommuny, kak opyt sotssorevnovaniia,” PS, no. 8 (1931): 9–11 Google Scholar, and Zarkhii, Kommuna v tsekhe, p. 70. On the question of whethercollectives and communes did constitute a form of socialist competition, see below pp. 73, 80–81and Trud, 1 July 1931, p. 2.

17. Zarkhii, Kommuna v tsekhe, p. 14.

18. See NFI, no. 9 (1930): 49; Proizvodstvennyi zhurnal, no. 12 (1930): 12. Purely domesticcommunes were popular among Komsomol students and workers already in the mid-1920s and lateramong those mobilized to complete construction projects. For a cautionary but sympathetic portrayalsee N. Pogodin, “Derzost’ “ in Sobranie dramaticheskikh proizvedenii (5 vols.; Moscow, 1960),1:103–98

19. Sotsialisticheskoe sorevnovanie (1930), pp. 45, 66, 160. As of June 1930, the Zlatoust MetallurgicalFactory's eighteen collectives and communes averaged eighty-three members each. Overall, however, among the fifteen Urals enterprises surveyed, the average size was seventeen, slightlyless than that of shock brigades. See Istoriia industrializatsii Urala (1926–1932 gg.) (Sverdlovsk,1967), p. 454.

20. XVI S“ezd Vsesoiuznoi Kommunisticheskoi partii—Stenograftcheskii otchet (Moscow-Leningrad,1931), p. 62.

21. Dubner, P. M. and Kozyrev, M., Kollektivy i kommuny v bor'be za kommunisticheskie formy truda (Moscow-Leningrad, 1930), p. 17.Google Scholar

22. Zaromskii, I., “Proizvodstvennye kollektivy—novaia forma organizatsii truda,” Voprosy truda, no. 4 (1930): 19–20 Google Scholar.

23. Sotsialisticheskoe sorevnovanie (1930), pp. 90–91. The remainder—six in the textile industryand seven in metalworks—practiced “mixed” forms of distribution. It should be noted that 82 percentof all workers in the metalworks communes were drawn from grades three to five of the eight-gradescale (ibid., p. 59).

24. Ibid., pp. 90–91.

25. Ibid., pp. 92–93.

26. Ibid.

27. Ibid., p. 67. In contrast, komsomol'tsy participated in shock brigades to a greater degreethan party members did, at least until the Leninist enrollment of February and March 1930. Seefigures for Moscow and Leningrad cited in Pervyi vsesoiuznyi s “ezd udarnykh brigad. Sbornik dokumentov i materialov (Moscow, 1959), pp. 63–64.

28. Molodezh’ SSSR, Statisticheskii sbornik (Moscow, 1936), p. 31.

29. Compare Edwards, Richard C., Contested Terrain: The Transformation of the Workplace in the Twentieth Century (New York: Basic Books, 1979), chaps. 6–8Google Scholar; Rodgers, Daniel T., The Work Ethic in Industrial America, 1850–1920 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Yarrow, Michael, “The Labor Process in Coal Mining: Struggle for Control” in Case Studies in the Labor Process, ed. Zimbalist, Andrew (New York and London: Monthly Review Press, 1979), pp. 170–92.Google Scholar

30. For the trials and their effects, see Bailes, Kendall E., Technology and Society under Lenin and Stalin (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1978), part 2Google Scholar, and Lampert, Nicholas, The technical Intelligentsia and the Soviet State (London: Macmillan, 1979), pp. 39–59, 90–99, 108–117.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

31. See Resheniia II plenuma Tsentral'nogo komiteta Soiuza gornorabochikh SSSR, shestogo sozyva (20–26 sentiabria, 1928 goda) (Moscow, 1928), p. 83; Sobranie zakonov i rasporiazhenii raboche-krest'ianskogopravitel'stva SSSR, no. 2 (1930): 22; and “Za nemedlennuiu realizatsiiu vtorogoukazaniia t. Stalina,” Vorprosy truda, no. 2 (1932): 16.

32. This argument is convincingly made by Hiroaki Kuromiya, “The Artel: An Estimate of itsHistorical Significance,” manuscript, Princeton University, 1981. These ordinary (obychnye) arteli should not be confused with the agricultural collectives of the same name or other varieties discussedby Kuromiya, pp. 5–11. Arteli have all but dropped from sight in Soviet historiography.

33. For such a characterization, see Reznikov, D. I., Udarnye brigady sotsializma (Moscow,1930), pp. 36–37 Google Scholar; Istoriia industrializatsii nizhegorodskogo-gor'kovskogo kraia (1926–1941 gg.) (Go'rkii, 1968), p. 109.

34. Zarkhii, Kommuna v tsekhe, p. 50.

35. Sotsialisticheskoe sorevnovanie (1930), pp. 54, 218–19. The reverse was also the case in theDonbass where the elected leader of a coal miners’ commune was referred to as artel'shchik in anagreement concluded between the commune and the mine administration. See Kalistratov, Iu. A., Za udarnyiproizvodstvennyi kollektiv, 2d ed. (Moscow, 1931), p. 15.Google Scholar

36. Viola, Lynne, “Notes on the Background of Soviet Collectivization, Metal Worker Brigadesin the Countryside, Autumn 1929,” Soviet Studies 36 (1984): 205–22CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and her tables accompanyingher talk on the Twenty-Five Thousanders at the Workshop on the Social History of the Stalin Period,Harriman Institute, Columbia University, February 1985.

37. Sotsialisticheskoe narodnoe khoziaistvo SSSR v 1933–1940 gg., ed. I. A. Gladkov (Moscow,1963), p. 83.

38. Women accounted for 62.3 percent of all textile workers in 1929 and 64.3 percent in 1930.See lndustrializatsiia SSSR, 1929–1932, p. 457.

39. Trud v SSSR, 1931 g., eds. Z. L. Mindlin and S. A. Kheinman (Moscow, 1932), pp. 139–42.

40. Sotsialisticheskoe sorevnovanie (1930), pp. 90–91. Corresponding figures for metalworkersare 48.6 percent and 27.4 percent.

41. Ibid.

42. Industrializatsiia SSSR, 1929–1932, p. 506.

43. Sotsialistickeskoe sorevnovanie (1930), p. 77.

44. Zarkhii, Kommuna v tsekhe, p. 19.

45. Ibid., p. 55.

46. Dubner and Kozyrev, Kollektivy i kommuny, pp. 19, 29–30.

47. Ibid., pp. 45, 56. The Gosplan investigators regarded syndicalism as the disease of themovement. Sotsialisticheskoe sorevnovanie (1930), p. 46.

48. Rogachevskaia, L. S., Sotsialisticheskoe sorevnovanie v SSSR—istoricheskie ocherki, 1917–1970 (Moscow, 1977), p. 119 Google Scholar; Ponomarenko, G. Ia., Vo glave trudovogopod'ema, Kommunisty Donbassa—organizatory sotsialisticheskogo sorevnovaniia rabochego klassa v pervoi piatttetke (Kiev,1971), p. 120 Google Scholar; Rudenko, A. F., “Bor'ba shakhterov Donbassa pod rukovodstvom bol'shevistskoi partiiza novye formy sotsialisticheskogo sorevnovaniia v 1931–1932 gg.,” in Trudy kafedry istorii KPSS Khar'kovskogo Ordena Trudovogo Krasnogo Znameni gosudarstvennogo universiteta im. A. M. Gor'kogo (Khar'kov, 1959), 7:131 Google Scholar; Slutskii, A. B., Rabochii klass Ukrainy v bor'be za sozdanie fundamenta sotsialisticheskoi ekonomiki (1926–1932 gg.) (Kiev, 1963), pp. 16, 190Google Scholar.

49. Sotsialisticheskoe sorevnovanie (1930), pp. 69–70.

50. Ibid., pp. 81–82; NFI, no. 9 (1930): 50; Voprosy truda, no. 4 (1930): 25.

51. Sotsialisticheskoe sorevnovanie (1930), pp. 94–95.

52. Ibid.

53. This supposition is based on the correlation between propensities noted above on pp. 70–71, on the predominance of semiskilled and unskilled workers in metalworks collectives and communes,and on the fact that the vast majority of communes were formed in that industry.

54. Zarkhii, Kommuna v tsekhe, pp. 72–73, 75; and Reznikov, Udarnye brigady, p. 35.

55. PS, no. 6 (1930): 45.

56. This flux is analyzed in R. W. Davies, “Planning and the Soviet Factory, 1926–1934,” informalworking paper, University of Birmingham (Birmingham, U.K., 1981), pp. 7–11. See also Hiroaki Kuromiya, “Edinonachalie and the Soviet Industrial Manager, 1928–1937,” Soviet Studies 36 (1984): 185–204.

57. Istoriia industrializatsii Urala, p. 454.

58. NFI, no. 9 (1930): 45. The same charge was made in Pervyi Vsesoiuznyi s “ezd, p. 98.

59. Leningradskie rabochie v bor'be za sotsializm, 1926–1937 (Leningrad, 1965), p. 206.

60. Elektrozavod had completed the Five-Year Plan in two-and-a-half years according toPravda, 3 April 1931, p. 1.

61. See, for example, Voprosy truda, no. 4 (1930): 25–27; Pravda, 21 July 1931, p. 3; Trud, 1 July 1931, p. 2; la. Leibman, and Raisov, A., “Aktual'nye problemy truda na sovremennom etape,” Bolshevik, no. 12 (1931): 15.Google Scholar

62. Pravda, 11 December 1929, p. 4, and Pervyi Vsesoiuznyi s“ezd, p. 98.

63. Istoriia industrializatsii, pp. 99–100.

64. Pervyi Vsesoiuznyi s “ezd, pp. 79, 84, 141.

65. Rezoliutsiia ipostanovleniia I Vsesoiuznogos “ezda udamykh brigad (Moscow, 1930), pp. 40,103.

66. Pravda, 25 February 1930, p. 3; Trud, 9 April 1930, p. 3; Za industrializatsiiu, 30 May1930, p. 3.

67. XVI S'ezd, pp. 62, 103, 653.

68. Sotsialisticheskoe sorevnovanie (1930), pp. 80, 84; Iu. Kalistratov, “K voprosu organizatsiitruda v 3-m godu piatiletki,” Na planovom fronte, no. 2 (1931): 24.

69. These directives continued into 1931; see Istoriia industrializatsii Turkmenskoi SSR (2 vols.;Ashkhabad, 1978), 1:150–51 and Trud, 1 July 1931, p. 2.

70. Trud, 2 October 1930, p. 2, and 12 October 1930, p. 1.

71. Ibid., 5 October 1930, p. 1.

72. See Davies, R. W., “The Syrtsov-Lominadze Affair,” Soviet Studies 33 (1981): 29–50 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Syrtsovhad been a harsh critic of shock work. See his O nashikh uspekhakh, nedostatkakh i zadachakh (Moscow-Leningrad, 1930), pp. 8–9.

73. Markus, B., “Sotsialisticheskoe sorevnovanie na pod “eme,” Bolshevik, no. 4 (1931): 31.Google Scholar

74. PS, no. 7 (1931): 64–66.

75. Oprishchenko, A. L., “Voprosy sotsialisticheskogo sorevnovaniia rabochego klassa SSSR vsovetskoi istoriografii,” in Nekotorye problemy istorii sovetskogo obshchestva, ed. Astapovichand, Z. A. Gusev, K. V. (Moscow, 1964), p. 160 Google Scholar.

76. Stalin, I. V, Sochineniia (13 vols.; Moscow, 1946–1951), 13:53–82.Google Scholar

77. Bolshevik, no. 12 (1931): 16–17.

78. Trud, 16 July 1931, p. 3.

79. Ibid., 23 September 1931, p. 1; Industralizatsiia SSSR, 1929–1932, pp. 266–70.

80. A. Rozanov, “Forsirovat’ perestroiku sistemy zarabotnoi platy,” NFI, no. 19–20 (1931): 34.

81. Eskin, M., Osnovnyeputi razvitiia sotsialisticheskikh form truda, 2d ed. (Moscow-Leningrad,1936), p. 79 Google Scholar; Leningradskie rabochie, p. 220.

82. Trud, 9 July 1931, p. 3.

83. Pravda, 12 September 1931, p. 2.

84. Ostapenko, I. P., Uchastie rabochego klassa SSSR v upravlenii proizvodstvom (Moscow,1964), p. 160.Google Scholar

85. PS, no. 15–16 (1931): 18; Eskin, Osnovnye puti, p. 79; Rudenko, “Bor'ba shakhterov,” p. 131.

86. See Trud, 11 July 1931, p. 2, for an attack on Komsomolskaiapravda, which had advocated such responsibility. This system bears striking resemblance to the one set up by Thomas Bata at hisshoe factory in Zlin, Czechoslovakia, as enthusiastically described by Paul Devinat, “Working Conditionsin a Rationalised Undertaking: The Bata System and its Social Consequences,” International Labour Review 21 (1930): 45–69. For examples after September 1931, see Slutskii, Rabochii klass Ukrainy, p. 233; Istoriia industrializatsii, pp. 170–78.

87. N. Borisovskaia, “K organizatsii khozraschetnykh brigad,” Ratsionalizatsiia proizvodstva [hereafter RP], no. 2 (1932): 6; V Nikol'skii, “K itogam konkursa khozraschetnykh brigad,” NFI, no. 3–4 (1932): 16–20.

88. Shadek, G., “O khozraschetnykh brigadakh,” RP no. 8 (1933): 8–11; Na trudovom fronte, no. 11 (1932): 4–5.Google Scholar

89. Trud, 18 June 1931, p. 2.

90. Bol'shevik, no. 12 (1931): 18–19.

91. RP, no. 2 (1932): 5; Za industrializatsiiu, 18 January 1935, p. 3.

92. Mehnert, Klaus, Youth in Soviet Russia, trans. Davidson, Michael (London: Allen and Unwin,1933), p. 253.Google Scholar

93. Sotsialisticheskoe sorevnovanie (1930), pp. 54–55.