Martins, 1983); Siegelbaum,
Stakhanovism and the Politics of Productivity in the USSR, 1935-1941 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988); Siegelbaum, Soviet State and Society between Revolutions, 1918-1929 (Cambridge: Cambridge University, 1994); Siegelbaum, Cars for Comrades: The Life of the Soviet Automobile (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2008).
317 in a state that made it unsuitable to run, managed with his assitant Polezhaev to repair the locomotive and took second place in a competition between locomotive engineers in the Soviet Union [so-called socialist emulation or socialist competition, a sort of forerunner to
Stakhanovism, already became popular in the First Five Year Plan of 1928-32, trans.].
For more on opposition to Stakhanovite instructors, see Randall, "'Revolutionary Bolshevik Work':
Stakhanovism in Retail Trade," 437.
The Stalinist system hid its ruthless exploitation of a forcibly collectivized peasantry, and of slave labour in extraction industries, behind a facade of Promethean work values (
Stakhanovism) and cradle-to-grave welfare provisions for the urban working class it claimed to represent.
During the Stalinist period, taylorism completely disappeared from official discourse to give way to
stakhanovism. The way in which miner Alexei Stakhanov worked (exceeding the norms by 1400 per cent in 1934, that is, 102 tonnes of coal in a single day's work) runs counter to logic.
With the rest of us working longer and longer hours just to make ends meet, we can only wonder at this elite
Stakhanovism. To the unenlightened, it might sound like they have talked themselves into old-fashioned speedup.
As early as 1927, all experiments in alternative work organization were abandoned in the Soviet Union as policymakers embraced Fordism and Taylorism, even if the latter were supplemented by
Stakhanovism, in which shock workers were encouraged to achieve enormous increases in output by emulating the standards set by the "labor hero" Stakhanov (Littler, 1984).
In particular, an entrepreneurial
Stakhanovism may be promoted, as well as state entrepreneurship (which is not necessarily influenced by profit rate but only requires the consideration of relative profit rates of firms to evaluate the convenience to finance them).
There were those who labelled the employee-of-the-month scheme as a kind of new
Stakhanovism (a Russian miner who was displayed as a role model, the 'hero of the socialist work' - see McGregor 1946) or who resented the forced company identity.
The reward of this delicate
Stakhanovism is a nonpareil tour de force of photographic color: pearlescent, plush, at once ultravivid - lurid almost - and superbly specific and subtle, capable of registering exotic minor hues, the textures and patterns of fabrics and furnishings, and all the rosy suffusions, mottlings, shiny creams, and blue-veined translucent grays of a strong-lit nude.
Dr MacShane tells of how an Iron and Steel Trades Confederation delegation that visited the Soviet Union in 1945 later irritated its hosts by reporting its concerns over the ban on strikes,
Stakhanovism, and the identification of unions with management.
Seidman's discussion of
Stakhanovism would certainly be improved by Siegelbaum's 1988 study.