In a six-hour
shift in a Donets coalfield on 20th August, 1935, Alexei Stahanov,
the leader of a team using an automatic coal-cutting machine, hewed
a record 102 tons of coal. This compared to an average of 14 tons
per six-hour shift. Stahanov achieved this by reorganizing the working
processes to be performed by his team of miners.
The Soviet
government gave Stahanov's system a great deal of publicity and his
new labour-saving methods became known as Stahanovism and rapidly
spread to other industries throughout the Soviet Union. Joseph
Stalin also gave his approval to the idea that Stahanovites should
be given special privileges and paid higher wages.
On 14th
November, 1935, the first All-Union Conference of Stahanovites was
held, where Stahanov and his supporters explained their methods of
working and gave details of the higher wages that could be obtained
by the rationalization of labour.
A resolution
passed by the Central Committee of the Communist
Party on 25th December, 1935, supported Stanhanov's methods: "The
Stahanov movement implies the organization of labour in a new way,
the rationalization of technological processes, and the proper division
of labour in production; it implies relieving skilled workers from
the performance of secondary and auxiliary work and a better organization
of the working place."
By the
outbreak of the Second World War Stahanovism
had spread to all branches of machine-building, including the manufacture
of motor cars and tractors, to metallurgy, the chemical industry,
and electrical stations.
(1)
Fred Copeman, visited the Soviet
Union in November 1938. He wrote about his experiences in his
autobiography, Reason in Revolt (1948)
Our visit to
the Stalin Auto Plant gave me a shock. We passed through an avenue,
banked on either side with scrap
metal - it looked like the walls of a canyon. This was made up, the
interpreter told us, of the cars which had been unable
to start when they left the belt. They were picked up by a crane and
dumped on to this scrap heap. As this had been
going on for some years there was enough scrap to keep the place going
for some time. The factory itself was a colossal organisation after
the style of Ford's at Dagenham, producing tractors, lorries and cars,
on the moving belt system. It was on reaching the large workshop with
the hundreds of engineers, each at his own lathe, that I received
a most unpleasant surprise. I was well aware of the Stakhanovite Movement,
which is the Russian equivalent of our piece-
work system. I remembered, and had taken part in, the protest against
"Bedaux" and was therefore quite shocked when the interpreter
started to explain the meaning of the hundreds of small red flags,
each attached to a wire on every lathe.
Here and
there a flag would be at the top of the mast, but in the main they
all remained at the same level. As a trade unionist I needed no more
explanation. The mass of workers were deciding just how fast they
intended to go, and
the efforts of the Stakhanovites were being treated in exactly the
same way as those of our own speed merchants in any
British factory - with mistrust and resentment. I noticed the glances
of the majority of the engineers when our deputation was taken over
to one of these speed boys. I had understood that communism won the
goodwill of the workers because of the righteousness of its case.
Here a system of coercion was being used, and it looked as though
the mass of the workers had little time for it.
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