Stakhanovism and the Soviet Economy

University of Glasgow

Stakhanovism and the Soviet EconomyAuthor(s): R. W. Davies and Oleg KhlevnyukSource: Europe-Asia Studies, Vol. 54, No. 6 (Sep., 2002), pp. 867-903Published by: Taylor & Francis, Ltd.Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/826287 .

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EUROPE-ASIA STUDIES, C Carfax Publishing Taylor & Francis Group

Vol. 54, No. 6, 2002, 867-903

Stakhanovism and the Soviet Economy

R. W. DAVIES & OLEG KHLEVNYUK

MORE HAS BEEN PUBLISHED on Stakhanovism than on any other aspect of the social

history of the second half of the 1930s, with the exception of the 'Great Purge'. In the present article' we have drawn extensively on the major works of Benvenuti and

Siegelbaum, and on the relevant chapters of Filtzer, Rees and other historians.2 These authors examined the social and political background to the Stakhanov movement, and its later development and decline.

This article uses recently declassified archives to consider two further topics. First, the relation between the economic problems of the early years of the second five-

year plan and the emergence of the Stakhanov movement in the autumn of 1935. Second, the extent to which Stakhanovism succeeded in overcoming these problems.

Following the crisis of 1931-33, the years 1934-36 have generally been seen as the most trouble-free period of Soviet economic development in the 1930s. Naum Jasny described them as 'the three good years'. Industry grew rapidly, agriculture was more stable and was expanding, and the standard of living was improving. Bread rationing was abolished in January 1935, and the rest of food rationing in October 1935. A

major industrial price reform in April 1936 followed strenuous efforts in the previous two years to reduce or abolish subsidies to heavy industry.

In the first part of this period, 1934 and the first few months of 1935, the Politburo on the whole pursued a moderate economic policy, dominated by the conception of

'mastering' (osvoenie) the new enterprises and technology which had been established

by the huge investments of the first five-year plan (1928/29-32). A great deal of attention was paid to economic levers for the control of the economy, and a very strenuous effort was made to secure financial stability. The growth of capital investment on the whole proceeded at a moderate pace.

From the spring of 1935, however, a sharp shift was made towards the expansion of investment, and at the same time-in an extreme version of the policy of assimilation-dramatic efforts were made to break down the 'limits' or ceilings (predely or limity) achieved by railways, mines and factories. Closely associated with the attempt to surpass existing capacity limits was the drive to increase the productivity of labour (output per worker), which entered a new stage with the launching of the Stakhanov movement in September-October 1935. Moderation was swept aside.

To understand why this dramatic shift took place, we need to examine these years in more detail.

ISSN 0966-8136 print; ISSN 1465-3427 online/02/060867-37 ? 2002 University of Glasgow DOI: 10.1080/0966813022000008447




TABLE 1 CAPITAL INVESTMENT AS PLANNED IN SECOND FIVE-YEAR PLAN, AND RESULTS, BY YEARS, 1933-1937 (MILLION

RUBLES)

1933 1934 1935 1936 1937 1933-37 Total

Plan (1933 17989 25111 27991 30309 32000 133400 plan prices)' Actual (1933 15698 20740 24554 31074 29397a 121463 plan prices)2 Plan (current 17989 25111 25704 25648 25631 120083 prices)3 Actual (current 18053 23540 27157 35311 33852b 137913 prices)4

Notes: a

Preliminary figure. b Preliminary figure. Final figure: 32029 million rubles (RGAE, 4372/36/255, 1. 41). Alternative final figure: 33200 million rubles (RGAE, 1562/1/1039, 1. 243-document prepared in 1939). General note: These series exclude investment by collective farms from own resources, and labour of population on roads. They include extra-limit (vnelimitnye) investment under decree of 19 September, 1935. These figures are higher than those in the annual state plans in Tables 2, 3 and 4 because the state investment plans do not include growth of livestock, extra-limit expenditure, and various other minor items. The actual figures for agriculture which form part of the totals above include gross additions to livestock, and so are wider than the plan figures, which include only net additions to livestock. Sources:

Vtoroi, i, pp. 718-719. 2 RGAE, 4372/92/101, 1. 78 (report dated 11 May 1938). 3Vtoroi, i, pp. 720-721. 4

RGAE, 4372/92/101, 1. 77 (report dated 11 May 1938).

1934 and the 1935 investment plan

In the course of compiling the economic plans the Politburo and Sovnarkom (the Council of People's Commissars) sought to reconcile the conflicting interests of the commissariats managing the different sectors of the economy, and also to reconcile their demands with the need for economic balance and financial stability. The need for financial balance was strongly urged by the People's Commissariat of Finance (Narkomfin) and the State Planning Commission (Gosplan). Ordzhonikidze (heading Narkomtyazhprom, the People's Commissariat for Heavy Industry) and Mikoyan (heading Narkompishcheprom, the People's Commissariat for the Food Industry) were among the political leaders strongly insisting on the needs of their commissariats. Grin'ko (People's Commissar of Finance) and Mezhlauk (head of Gosplan)-although not members of the Politburo-strongly influenced Molotov, who as head of the Council of People's Commissars (Sovnarkom) normally supported restraint.3

In 1934, following the absolute reduction of investment during the crisis of the previous year, it was planned to increase by about 40%. In the course of the year, however, the Politburo, in an endeavour to maintain economic balance, substantially reduced the original annual investment plan. Actual investment in 1934 was about 30% greater than in 1933 (see Table 1).

The relatively modest level of investment in 1933 and 1934 confronted the commissariats with serious problems. The second five-year plan (1933-37) was not

finally approved until November 1934. But by that time it was already clear that, even

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STAKHANOVISM AND THE SOVIET ECONOMY

according to official estimates, investment in real terms was substantially lower than the amounts laid down in the five-year plan. In 1934 it amounted to only 83% of the five-year plan figure for that year (see Table 1).

This shortfall affected every major sector of the economy. In 1934 investment in the railways (Narkomput' or NKPS, the People's Commissariat for Transport), though substantially higher than in 1933, was 19% less than the five-year plan figure for 1934, and goods transport continued to be a serious bottleneck throughout the year. The shortfalls for the People's Commissariat for Defence (16%) and Narkomtyazh- prom (14%) were also substantial.

Investment lagged behind the five-year plan not only because the central authorities had found it unwise to upset a precarious financial stability but also because the five-year plan assumed-quite unrealistically-that it would be possible to reduce investment costs substantially. According to official figures, these costs, planned to fall by about 10% in 1933, in fact increased by 15%; and in 1934 they declined by only about 1.5%, compared with the planned reduction for the year of about 10%.4

There was a further problem-common to investment projects everywhere, and particularly acute in the Soviet Union of the 1930s. The estimates embodied in the second five-year plan for the cost of the major capital projects were too low. When a project was realised, either its specifications had to be trimmed or the amount allocated to it had to be increased, or both.

Against this background, in the summer of 1934 the commissariats and their departments, and the sectors of Gosplan representing their interests, discussed the draft investment plan for 1935. They expressed great alarm about the prospects for fulfilling the five-year plan. Thus in July 1934 a memorandum from the mining and metallurgy sector of Gosplan pointed out the dire consequences which would follow from the two proposals for iron and steel investment in 1935 which were in circulation: 1375 and 1500 million rubles, compared with the 2050 million rubles provided for in the five-year plan.5 Referring to the higher of the two proposals, the memorandum claimed that its approval would lead to the cancellation of many projects.

These predictions were justified by later events. With little new basic plant coming on stream, iron and steel production increased by only 5% between 1937 and 1940.6 The shortfall during the second five-year plan was not just a matter of providing planned facilities more slowly than the political leaders had hoped. All the cancelled facilities were in militarily-safe areas in the Urals and beyond; without them, the USSR entered World War II with most of its iron and steel industry still located on the territory of the USSR seized by the invaders.

Similar discussions took place in other sectors of the economy, including light industry7 and the railways.8

The 1935 investment plan adopted by the Politburo and Sovnarkom in December 1934 did not accommodate these departmental anxieties (see Table 2). Investment in the heavy industries, the food industry and local industries was planned to be lower than in 1934, and increased only slightly in the other industries. The allocations to housing, education and the municipal economy were also lower than in 1934. The investment plan for the railways, 3200 million rubles, corresponded to the lower of the alternatives discussed in July 1934.9 At the very moment when the abolition of

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TABLE 2 THE CAPITAL INVESTMENT PLAN FOR 1935 (MILLION RUBLES AT CURRENT PRICES)

1935 Plan

1934 16 and 22, As in As at 1935 Actual 13 December December 1935 28 July Actual

(prelim.)1 19342 19343 plan4 1935 Final6 (prelim.)7

NKTP 7950 6950 7330 7374 8456 8739 8535 NKLegP 630 658 658 658 666 740 700 NKPP 718 621 621 635 644 797 789 NKS 447 433 454 503 497 511 475 Mestprom NKLes 413 512 512 512 517 568 525 Narkomzem 1700 1360 1370 1370 1512 1731 1680 NKPS 3000 3200 3200 3937 4108 4244 4150 NKO 717 730 730 1105 1186 Education 400 320 320 316 361 400 425 Other 5525 4622 4782 5681 5560 Total 21500 19401 19977 21684 23547 24842 24015

Note: These are the standard figures for capital investment as approved by the Politburo and Sovnarkom. They exclude collective farm investment, road labour by peasants and additions to livestock, which appear in total investment figures but are not financed by a state allocation. All the planned figures are supposed to be for the volume (ob"em) of investment-the finance provided by the state was intended to be less than this by the amount saved through the reduction of construction costs. The 1934 figure (actual preliminary) is in current prices, evidently for the finance actually provided. The annual state plans are not entirely compatible with one another in Tables 2, 3 and 4. There was no

extra-limit investment in 1934, so to compare the full amount of investment by each commissariat the extra-limit investments should be added in 1935, 1936 and 1937. These increased in each year, and in 1937 amounted to 3827 million rubles (see note 4 to Table 4). 'Other' was calculated by us in Tables 2, 3 and 4. Sources: 1 Plan 1935, pp. 460-461, except NKO: RGAE, 4372/91/3217,1. 4 (report of defence sector of Gosplan, 11 May 1937). 2 Sovnarkom draft of 13 December 1935, referred to in source3 below. 3 RGASPI, 17/162/17,1. 91 (decision by poll dated 15 December); GARF, 5446/1/478,11. 223-236, 236-237 (arts. 2721, 2750, dated 16 and 22 December). 4 Plan 1935, pp. 460-461. Includes 'bread supplement' of 494 million rubles, due to increase of bread price in connection with abolition of rationing. 5 GARF, 5446/1/480, 11. 37, 92. 6 Plan 1936, pp. 506-507. 7 Plan 1936, pp. 506-507, except NKO: as source1 above.

bread rationing was intended to herald a vast expansion in the standard of living and in cultural facilities, investment in these consumer-oriented sectors remained at a low level, or was even further curtailed.

Moreover, by the beginning of 1935 a further complication had emerged: the more urgent needs of defence. In 1934 investment by the People's Commissariat for Defence, and investment in the armaments industries, were both somewhat lower than they had been two years earlier in 1932.10 But Stalin and the Politburo were increasingly alarmed by the growing power and the increasingly aggressive actions of Nazi Germany.11 Against this background, during the first six months of 1935 the Politburo approved major increases in the 1935 investment plan. By the end of July the total investment plan had expanded by about 15% (see Table 2). Three sectors of

870




the economy-the railways, defence and heavy industry-accounted for almost three-quarters of this increase.

First, as early as 23 January 1935 the investment plan for the railways was increased from 3200 to 3937 million rubles (+23%).12 Further increases to 4108 million rubles ( + 28.4% altogether) were approved during the next few months. The decree of 23 January followed the famous Politburo decision of 25 December 1934 to increase the production of freight wagons from 29 000 in 1934 to 80 000 in 1935, which, as Rees put it, 'blasted a hole in the Five Year Plan'. Then, on 28 February, Kaganovich-at this time the second leader of the party-was appointed People's Commissar for Transport.'3 Stalin and his colleagues had concluded that the increased investment already made available to the railways in 1934 had not overcome the previous decade of under-investment.

The second major increase in the 1935 investment plan was the addition of as much as 41% to the allocation for the People's Commissariat for Defence. This was made in a series of ad hoc Politburo decisions. It formed part of a general intensification of defence preparations in these months. On 10 May the Politburo decided to increase the size of the armed forces by 50% during the remainder of the five-year plan.14

Thirdly, another series of ad hoc decisions increased the Narkomtyazhprom investment plan from 7330 to 8456 million rubles (+ 15.2%); the most important of these increases was for the aircraft industry.'5

This rise in planned investment was not sufficient to calm the anxieties of major sectors of the economy. Investment in Narkomtyazhprom remained considerably lower than proposed in the five-year plan. While planned investment in the armaments industries, and in power, oil and non-ferrous metals was higher than in 1934, the commissariat still found it necessary to keep down investment in coal, iron and steel and even chemicals to the 1934 level. Nor was there any substantial increase in the allocations to other industrial commissariats, responsible for the light and food industries, and for local industry. The allocations to housing and education increased by only 12.8%, and the allocation to health was apparently even reduced, although the five-year plan had proposed that investment in all these sectors should expand very substantially in 1935.16

The shift to increased investment in 1936

After all the changes, the increase in the 1935 investment plan amounted to about 12%. In view of the continued rapid expansion of production, this did not seriously threaten financial stability-investment remained, or almost remained, within the framework of economic balance which characterised the first phase of economic policy. But it did mark a definite change in the political atmosphere surrounding investment. This change was confirmed by an important decision on urban school construction, adopted on 22 February 1935 by Sovnarkom and the party central committee. It criticised the 'completely impermissible conditions for the education of children' which had resulted from the huge expansion in the number of pupils, not supported by an equal expansion in the number or size of schools. Children went to school in two or even three shifts, their days off varied, and they often lacked a permanent class room. The decision provided for a substantial increase in urban

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TABLE 3 THE CAPITAL INVESTMENT PLAN FOR 1936: THE RIVAL ESTIMATES (MILLION RUBLES AT CURRENT PRICES)

1935 Plan 1936 Plan 1936

As at Actual July 1935 19.vii.35 21.vii.35 26.vii.35 28.vii.35 9.xii.35 29.v.36 (prelim.)

NKTP 8420 5500 6000 6600 8000 8500 10005 9300 NKLegP 666 900 1050 1250 1250 1372 1100

NKPP 644 800 900 1130 1178 1050 NKS 495 345 700 930 1078 750 Mestprom NKLes 517 400 450 650 900 899 850 Narkomzem 1502 1100 1200 1400 2202 2192 NKPS 4068 3000 3000 3650 4100 4809 5487 NKO 1105 2245 2400 2400 Education 361 1000 1100 1100 Other 5675 4660 6841 8394 Total 23453 17700 19000 22000 27341 31615 35053 31750

Note: See Note to Table 2. Sources: 1935 plan: as given in GARF, 5446/26/66,1. 263 (26 July 1935). 1936 plan: 19.vii.35: GARF, 5446/26-4/9,11. 254-255, 247. 21.vii.35: Pis'ma Stalina Molotovu, 11. 249-250. 26.vii.35: GARF, 5446/26/66,1. 263. 28.vii.35: RGASPI, 17/3/969,11. 1, 31-36. 9.xii.35: RGASPI, 17/3/973, 11. 43-46, 60-63; GARF, 5446/1/485,11. 171-172. 29.v.36: RGAE, 4372/34/130,11. 145-146 (memorandum from Kviring, deputy head of Gosplan, to Molotov). 1936 actual: Planovoe khozyaistvo, 1937, 3, 11. 222-228.

school construction, which would enable the third shift and the varying day off to be eliminated by the autumn of 1936. Gosplan was instructed to prepare a plan for school construction in 1936-40 which would enable the elimination of the second shift throughout the USSR.17

This was the background to the discussions about the investment plan for 1936. Gosplan and Narkomfin continued to advocate an extremely cautious policy. On 19 July 1935 Mezhlauk proposed that investment in 1936 should amount to only 17700 million rubles, a reduction of 25% compared with the revised plan for 1935 (see Table 3). In his memorandum to Stalin and Chubar' (who was responsible for Sovnarkom during Molotov's vacation) Mezhlauk stated that an investment plan of this size would make it possible to achieve a budget surplus of 2000 million rubles, and to set aside a reserve of about 10 000 million rubles for price reduction. Mezhlauk justified his proposal by reference to central committee policy:

The policy of further increasing real wages and gradually reducing unified [retail] prices, which has been firmly established by the central committee ... requires a reserve of approximately 8000 million rubles for price reduction.18

The proposed drastic cut in investment was a high price to pay for price reduction. Gosplan's caution at this time requires further study.

872




In Molotov's absence, Stalin was the central figure in the ensuing discussions. A revised version of Mezhlauk's memorandum, proposing a figure of 19 billion (thousand million) rubles, was considered on 21 July at what Mezhlauk described in a later memorandum as a 'conference in the party central committee'. This was evidently not a formal session of the Politburo (if it had been, Mezhlauk would have named it as such), but a meeting in Stalin's office. Stalin's appointments diary records that on 21 July at various times between 3 p.m. and 5 p.m. the following persons were in his office: Voroshilov, Tukhachevsky, Efimov (head of the Artillery Administration of the Red Army), Egorov (chief of the General Staff), Ordzhonikidze, Chubar', Kalinin, Mikoyan, Andreev, Mezhlauk, Ezhov and Kaganovich. The Politburo members remained until 5 p.m.; the military representatives left at 4.15 and Mezhlauk left at 4.45. If the investment plan was discussed with the military present except for the last thirty minutes, the discussion lasted 1 hour 20 minutes; if they were not present, it lasted only about half-an-hour.19 Evidently, even the longer time was insufficient for a serious discussion of the investment plan. Stalin's opinion must have been formed in advance under the influence of the various government departments.

Following the meeting of 21 July Stalin wrote to Molotov referring to Mezhlauk's proposal and describing the outcome of the meeting:

Even with the most economical approach it would not work, especially if we bear in mind the point that the People's Commissariat of Defence must be fully satisfied in all circumstances. I proposed the figure of 22 milliard [thousand million or billion] rubles-Mezhlauk and Chubar' have been instructed to make the allocations (propose them) on the basis of 22 milliard.

Stalin informed Molotov that, with the new total, Narkomtyazhprom would receive 6.5-6.7 milliard (instead of the 6 proposed by Gosplan) and Narkomput' 3.5 milliard instead of 3. But this did not content the commissariats; Ordzhonikidze demanded 9 milliard, Kaganovich 4.5, and so on. Stalin was evidently ready for further conces- sions:

We shall see. There are some things which we must not cut: the People's Commissariat for Defence; the repair of rail track and rolling stock plus the payment for new wagons and locomotives (Narkomput'); the building of schools (the People's Commissariat of Edu- cation); re-equipment (technical) (light industry); paper and cellulose factories (the timber industry); and certain very necessary enterprises (coal, oil, open-hearth furnaces, rolling mills, viscose factories, power stations, chemicals) (Narkomtyazhprom). This makes it more difficult. We shall see.20

Four days later, on 25 July, Molotov replied to Stalin, and was clearly anxious to prevent a further increase in the investment plan. He insisted that 'it is possible and necessary' to keep to the figure of 22 milliard:

I consider it extremely undesirable to increase the construction programme above 22 milliard rubles. I am guided in this by the desire to strengthen the ruble and also to reduce the cost of construction.2

Meanwhile, Mezhlauk, in a further memorandum to Stalin and Chubar', dated 26 July, set out the new allocations on the basis of the 22 milliard total (see Table 3). Mezhlauk, obviously influenced by the attitude of Stalin and the other members of the

873




Politburo, admitted that the figure of 22 milliard would create great difficulties for Narkomtyazhprom and for light industry (the latter, for example, needed 1400-1500 million instead of the planned 1050 million). He nevertheless insisted that an increase in the total above 22 milliard would be 'extremely difficult for financial reasons':

I consider that in these circumstances it would be desirable to confine the discussion to a possible small increase in investment for Narkomtyazhprom and the People's Commissariat for Light Industry, devoting most attention to a reduction in the cost of construction ... by at least 15-20%.

Mezhlauk proposed that the food industry, the artisan cooperatives, education, health and the municipal economy should all be required to increase investment from their own internal resources. For this purpose the government would issue a special decree permitting economic organisations to use their resources more freely, including accumulation for investment purposes outside the plan (vneplanovye nakopleniya). Mezhlauk criticised the present situation, in which paving the streets, erecting street lamps, purchasing minor equipment and minor building repair all had to be included in the investment limits approved by the government. He estimated that the removal of these restrictions could yield a further 900 million rubles.22

These proposals were rejected by the Politburo. Its meeting to consider the plan on 28 July was addressed by Mezhlauk and Chubar' and by the leaders of the major departments of state, including Ordzhonikidze, Kaganovich and Mikoyan. It resolved to increase the 1936 investment plan to 27.3 milliard rubles, with the proviso that construction costs would be reduced by 8%, thus reducing the actual financial grant to 25 milliard rubles. It also resolved that industrial production would increase by 22.5-23.5% (the Gosplan proposal had been 25.3%).23 The allocation to all the major sectors was increased, including education, health, municipal economy and the light, food and local industries as well as Narkomtyazhprom and the People's Commissariat for Defence (see Table 3). Stalin was evidently the moving force in this decision. On 28 July he wrote to Molotov:

22 mld was not enough, and, as can be seen, could not be enough. The increase in school building ( + 760 mil), light industry, timber, food industry and local industry ( + 900 mln rub and more), in defence (+ 1 mld 100 mln), in health, on the Moscow canal project and other items (over 400 mil r) determined the physiognomy and size of the control figures for 1936. I do not complain, because everything that increases the production of consumer goods for the mass market must be given more emphasis from year to year. Without this it is not possible to advance at present.'4

Molotov had no alternative but to accept this fait accompli. In the final letter in this sequence, written to Stalin on 2 August, he grudgingly indicated his reluctant acquiescence:

I would have preferred a smaller amount of capital construction, but I think that we shall cope if we put our shoulders to the wheel (ponatuzhivshis') even with the approved plan of 25 mld r. The possibility of increasing industrial production by 23-22% favours this outcome.

He added that it was also essential to place great emphasis on the reduction of construction costs.25 For the moment Stalin took Molotov's warnings into account. On

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7 August the Politburo rejected a proposal from Narkomzem that its investment plan for 1936 should be increased to 1700 million rubles.26

In spite of this sharp dispute, the 1936 investment plan as approved on 28 July 1935 could not be described as exceptionally ambitious-it was only 16.6% larger than the revised 1935 investment plan approved in July 1935. But this was by no means the end of the matter. Further major increases were made in the plan in December 1935. The December revision continued to reflect the multiple criteria advanced by Stalin to justify a higher level of investment. It was essential to increase expenditure on defence. But it was also essential to increase expenditure which would improve the standard of life of the population: on consumer industries, education and health (and on agriculture, expenditure on which was increased, though this was not specifically mentioned by Stalin). The revised plan, which also included substantially increased investment in the prestigious Moscow-Volga canal, was now 31.6% higher than investment in 1935.

This was a major shift. Mikoyan, in his report to the central committee plenum in December 1935, cited Stalin's famous speech of January 1933 in which he called for a shift from the 'passion of new construction' to the 'passion of assimilation'. Mikoyan drew attention to a passage a couple of lines further on in Stalin's speech:

Only on this basis [assimilation] can we secure in, say, the second half of the second five-year plan, a new powerful jump forward both in the sphere of construction and in the sphere of production.27

Describing this statement as displaying 'prophetic genius', Mikoyan pointed out that the increase planned in capital investment in 1936 meant that 'now we, the whole country, have taken, as our Stalin said, a new powerful jump'.28

In the first few months of 1936 the investment plan continued to 'jump forward'. Further additions, mainly defence-related, were made to the 1936 investment plan, so that by the end of May 1936 it was 46% larger than actual investment in 1935. The published version of the 1936 plan, prepared by Gosplan and with a preface by Mezhlauk, made a virtue of the investment expansion imposed on Gosplan from above. A year previously, the 1935 plan had stated that the 'stabilisation of the volume of finance for construction in comparison with 1934 corresponds to the tasks of 1935: the further strengthening of the ruble, the development of trade and the reduction of prices'.29 But the 1936 plan proclaimed that 'capital investment in 1936 alone amounts to 50% of total investment in the first three years of the second five-year plan'; '1936 is a year of the tremendous growth of construction'.30

The intensification of production: the first stage, 1934-August 1935

Even before the shift to higher investment in the course of 1935, the Soviet authorities had already embarked on a major attempt to achieve the tense targets of the second five-year plan by intensifying production. Of course the second five-year plan itself, in common with all Soviet peace-time plans-from the mid-1920s until the collapse of the Soviet system-assumed and required that the growth of industrial production would depend not only on increases in the labour force (and in the additional capital associated with it) but also on increases in the productivity of labour (output per

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worker). The production of large-scale industry was planned to grow by 124.5% between 1932 and 1937, but the number of workers by only 36.3%. To achieve this, labour productivity (output per worker) would increase by 63%.31 The equivalent figures in the 1935 annual plan were 17.0, 6.1 and 11.0%.32 Thus in both the five-year and the 1935 plan over 40% of industrial growth was planned to come from the increase in labour productivity.

The growth of output per worker in turn depended both on improvements in the amount of capital employed per worker (together with the 'quality' of capital) and on the efficiency and intensity of the workers' efforts. Ever since the mid-1920s, Soviet politicians, planners, economists and engineers had sought to measure scientifically- or at least accurately-the optimum output both of industrial plant and machinery and of the workers themselves.

These endeavours resulted in the emergence of a complex system of 'norms' (normy) for measuring capacity and output; the system drew extensively on foreign experience. Capital projects specified the optimum production capacity of the factory, and of the main production units within the factory. These were known variously as 'technical norms' (tekhnicheskie normy), 'technical coefficients' (tekhnicheskie koeffitsienty) or 'limits' (limity or sometimes predely). Thus in the iron and steel industry the main technical coefficient for a blast furnace was the number of cubic metres of furnace volume required to produce a ton of pig iron-the smaller the number of cubic metres, the greater the productivity of the furnace. Similarly, the technical coefficient for an open-hearth furnace specified the number of tons of crude steel which could be produced per square metre of the floor area of the furnace-in this case, the larger the number of tons, the greater the productivity. Similar norms were adopted for specific pieces of machinery. In the coal industry the norm for a cutting machine or a pneumatic pick was the number of tons of coal it could hew in a given period. In the machine-building industries, with their great variety of machines, each machine or type of machine was supposed to have its own technical specifications (known as a 'pasport').

These technical norms for equipment were normally prepared by the engineers in the project or research institute of the industry, or in laboratories or design bureaux attached to factories. With imported equipment, or equipment based on foreign models, the foreign specifications were used, modified for Soviet conditions.

These norms stated the optimum rather than the maximum production which could be achieved-production might be achieved above the optimum by working the equipment too hard so that its life was shortened. Naturally practice fell short of the optimum; and when the production plans for an industry or a factory were prepared, the planners used 'planning norms' (planovye normy) derived from but lower than the technical norms, and showing what it was feasible to produce from the equipment in the period concerned.

A different type of norm, closely related to and often confused with the technical norm of the equipment, was the 'output norm' (norma vyrabotki) which specified the amount of production which a worker would be expected to produce in a given time, and from which was derived the amount of money the worker would be paid for a particular job (the rastsenka, normally known in Britain as 'the rate for the job'). The calculation of output norms was a very complex and tricky business,

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undertaken by the Technical Norming Bureau (TNB) of the factory and carried out by a large army of norm-setters (normirovshchiki). The TNB worked in uneasy association with the technical director of the factory, and the norm-setters with the foremen of the shop concerned, and with the workers themselves. The number of norms and norm-setters was very large: 210 000 norms were in use in the Gor'ky Automobile Works alone.33 The norm-setters were usually poorly qualified: in the machine-building industry there were 12 000 norm-setters, including 400 engineers and 2200 technicians; the remaining 9400 had no technical qualifications.34

Ideally, the output norms were supposed to be obtained by scientific measurement of the best practice-they should be 'technical norms'. But usually, though they were often called 'technical norms', they were obtained by such empirical devices as making a percentage deduction from the time actually taken in the factory to produce the particular component, or by a guess at what it was reasonable to expect from the worker. Hence they were often described as 'experimental-statistical norms' or as 'norms by eye' (na glazok).35

By 1935 norms were coming to the centre of the stage. It was already evident that the ambitious multiple policy goals of the five-year plan would be very difficult to achieve. Even the considerable increases in the 1935 investment plan made in January-July 1935, and in the July 1935 version of the 1936 plan, failed to reach the five-year plan targets. Increasing attention was therefore devoted to the effort to use existing capital and labour more intensively. The open press did not admit that investment was insufficient. But the need to substitute intensification for investment was implicitly and even explicitly acknowledged in public. Stalin's famous speech to Red Army graduates on 4 May 1935, announcing that henceforth 'cadres decide everything', was in effect a call for the intensification of production. Stalin claimed that 'we have already in the main outlived the period of famine in the sphere of technology'-i.e. insufficient capital was not the main problem. According to Stalin, when this technology was mastered by people it could and must 'bring about miracles', which he dramatically and unrealistically quantified:

If at our first-class works and factories, and in our state farms and collective farms, and in our Red Army, there were sufficient cadres who were capable of managing this technology, the country would receive a result double or treble what it has now.36

Meanwhile Ordzhonikidze, whose commissariat was suffering severely from the restrictions on investment, had been making strenuous efforts to increase production from existing equipment since the beginning of 1934.37 Then, on 12 May 1935, eight days after Stalin's speech on 'cadres', one of the main issues discussed at the Council attached to Narkomtyazhprom was the 'technically based norms' (tekhnichesko- obosnovannye normy) for equipment. Ordzhonikidze insisted that the existing norms 'are not progress, but in the best case a reflection of how far we have at present mastered a particular process, and in the worst case-it is yesterday'. He was challenged. Korolev, head of the aircraft industry, defended the 'passports' of machine tools, prepared by the appropriate laboratory, as 'the crucial factor in the utilisation of equipment and labour', but Ordzhonikidze sharply replied:

You know the metallurgists' passport of two years ago, what it was yesterday and today.

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When we negotiated with cde. Birman in February, we spoke of a passport of 1.15 [cubic metres of furnace per ton of pig iron], and he is coming up to 0.98.38

The question of technically based norms was posed even more sharply on the railways. Kaganovich, newly appointed People's Commissar, from April 1935 on- wards strongly criticised the engineers in the commissariat who purportedly insisted that a loading of 55,000-58,000 freight wagons a day was a maximum limit, with the existing state of track and rolling stock. These limits were soon referred to as 'the bourgeois theory of the "limit" ', and the 'limiters' (predel'shchiki) were summarily dismissed, An article attacking the anti-state theory of the limit, published in Pravda on 11 May and signed 'Transportnik', is believed to have been written by Stalin.39 Then in July Kaganovich launched a campaign frankly known as 'forcing the boilers', which aimed to increase the time locomotives were in motion from 7.9 to 10 hours a day.40

The Stakhanov 'leap forward'

It was in this context that the Stakhanov movement was launched. Both Or- dzhonikidze and Kaganovich closely linked their homilies and imprecations about technical norms for equipment with the achievement of higher output norms by the workers. Thus in January 1934 Ordzhonikidze insisted that to achieve improved coefficients for blast furnaces 'the issue here is solely a matter ofpeople', of how well people worked.41 A year later, at the VII Congress of Soviets, eight months before Stakhanov's famous feat, Ordzhonikidze, after discussing the productivity of cutting machines, praised a Donbass miner, Tel'nykh, who was a delegate at the congress, for achieving a monthly output of 10 000 tons compared with the average 2700 in the best coal district.42

Such feats were frequently undertaken during the next few months. Z. E. Zorin, head of Artemugol', a Donbass coal trust, later noted that before Stakhanov's record shift there were already 'people who in specific circumstances work better than others':

I must say straight out that we slept through our own Stakhanov movement. In our mines in June, Medvedev, a coal-face worker, produced 112 tons [per shift], and we did not notice.43

Then in the following month, on 1 July, an engine driver on the Donetsk line, Krivonos, increased the speed of his locomotive from 24 to 31.9 kilometres an hour; he was later treated as a Stakhanovite, or a 'Stakhanovite-Krivonosite', jointly with Stakhanov himself.4

The circumstances of Stakhanov's own record on the night of 30/31 August have been much discussed. While we lack full documentary evidence about the launching of Stakhanov's record, and the organisation of the subsequent campaign, we can reconstruct certain important elements of the story. Stakhanov's feat was certainly inspired by the general atmosphere of encouraging the intensification of labour. The evidence seems to show that it was not directly organised by the Politburo, or by Stalin himself. Stalin was on vacation, and there was nothing about Stakhanov or his

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record shift in the numerous ciphered telegrams exchanged between Kaganovich and Stalin. In the Stalin-Kaganovich telegrams the sole mention of the movement (without any reference to Stakhanov himself) was a paragraph in Kaganovich's telegram of 5 September 1935 in which he took the opportunity to inform Stalin about the success of locomotive drivers in speeding up the trains.45 But Stalin apparently made no response. Probably Ordzhonikidze enthusiastically wrote to Stalin or telephoned him about the developments in heavy industry; but no record of this has so far been traced.46 If there was a prime mover in the campaign, it was certainly Ordzhonikidze. He was strongly supported by his deputy Pyatakov.

At the beginning of August, after struggling for the interests of Narkomtyazhprom in the discussions on the 1936 plan, Ordzhonikidze departed on vacation to Kislovodsk. He travelled through the Donetsk region by train, and received S. A. Sarkis (Sarkisov), secretary of the Donetsk regional party committee, and Zorin, in his coach.47 After they had complained about the lack of supplies, he promised to help, and at the same time asked them to pay proper attention to the work of miners who were showing the way forward (shakhtery-'mayaki', literally 'beacons'), so that there were 'thousands' of leading miners in the Donbass.48

Ordzhonikidze, on vacation in Kislovodsk, read a short item on the last page of the 1 September issue of Pravda:

... in a 6-hour shift Stakhanov gave 102 tons of coal, which is 10% of the daily output of the mine, and earned 200 rubles.

(In fact Stakhanov, contrary to the usual practice, did not do his own propping but worked with two proppers, but even so the output per man was 5.23 times the norm.49) Ordzhonikidze promptly phoned Narkomtyazhprom in Moscow and the coal trust in Kadievka, and within a few days an enthusiastic campaign about Stakhanov's record was organised in the central newspapers. On 6 September Ordzhonikidze wrote to Sarkisov, not mentioning Stakhanov specifically, but setting out his thoughts and plans:

Sarkis-the coal situation, and the fuel situation generally, is bad. It is clear to me today that the management of both Glavugol' [the chief coal administration] and the trusts is bad. This is mainly managers of the old type. They must either be sharply reoriented and compelled to work in a new way, as we did in iron and steel-or be replaced by young people ... Tel'nykh and others must be boldly promoted to leading posts.

... You can't get away from the fact that there are hundreds and thousands of real heroes among the rank and file, who demonstrate brilliant models of how to work ... The experience of iron and steel has fully justified such boldness ... We can't manage without a big shake-up in coal. We can't organise wages along new lines, or the workplace, without a shake-up.50

The campaign spread in the next few weeks to the automobile and engineering industries, and then to the textile and footwear industries, as Benvenuti and Siegel- baum have chronicled in detail.

The strong official backing for the Stakhanovite movement had definite political as well as economic objectives. In 1935 numerous initiatives by the leadership were directed towards consolidating the unity of the country. On 30 July, a month before

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Stakhanov's record, Stalin, addressing a major conference of railwaymen, attended by several members of the Politburo, insisted that there were no major and minor personnel on the railways, only major and minor posts-everyone was equally important.5' The Stakhanovite movement became a major part of the campaign for national unity. In October and November 1935 numerous conferences and meetings between Stakhanovites and political and economic leaders were widely publicised, and every regional and district party secretary and every enterprise director were drawn into the campaign. Then, on 14-17 November, the 'First All-Union Conference of Stakhanovite Working Men and Women' was held in a blaze of publicity, attended by all the members of the Politburo and 3000 managers of the economy and rank-and-file Stakhanovites. The reports of the proceedings became one of the main propaganda documents of the second half of the 1930s. Stalin, in his address to the conference, which was his first known reference to Stakhanovism, described the Stakhanov movement as 'fundamentally profoundly revolutionary'. According to Stalin, the movement 'began of itself, from below' and 'spread across our Soviet Union not gradually, but with an unprecedented speed, like a hurricane'.52

At the conference, the Soviet leaders openly manifested what Benvenuti has characterised as 'reverting to the ultra-ambitious economic expectations of the early Thirties'.53 Ordzhonikidze, reviving a major slogan of the first five-year plan, called for the fulfilment of the second five-year plan in four years in the Donbass coal industry.54 Gurevich, head of the iron and steel industry, drew attention to the campaign for 'the five-year plan in four' in his industry; and the director of the Kirov works in Leningrad stated that his factory would achieve 'five in four'.55 Molotov went much further. After insisting that 'every worker can become a Stakhanovite', he announced:

The productivity of our works and factories will secure us within a short period a doubling and trebling of industrial output, as comrade Stalin has pointed out so many times.56

Ordzhonikidze, not to be outdone, insisted that it was possible to achieve 'without any doubt the doubling, trebling and quadrupling of the productivity of labour and production, as cde. Stalin said-this matter is in our hands'.57

Stakhanovism was the main item on the agenda of the plenum of the party central committee, which met from 21-25 December 1935, and was widely publicised. At this time Stalin was personally active to an unprecedented extent in 'communicating with the people'. He held a series of meetings with delegations of workers and peasants, and representatives of various Soviet republics. A remarkable Pravda editorial on 1 January 1936, entitled 'The Stakhanovite Year', and accompanied by a large photograph of a smiling pipe-smoking Stalin, boldly declared that 'the Soviet land is advancing at a rapid pace to abundance':

The country has never lived so full-blooded a life as at present. Vivacity, confidence and optimism are universally dominant. People are as it were taking to wings. The country is in the process of becoming not only the richest but also the most cultured in the entire world. The advance of the working class to the level of professional engineers and technicians is on the agenda.

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The editorial closely linked this alluring prospect to the question of labour productivity:

Every newly emerging social system triumphs over the old outdated mode of production because it brings about a higher productivity of labour.

Not surprisingly, in this atmosphere plans grew more ambitious. In September 1935, shortly after Stakhanov's record, the authorities accepted the proposal of Gosplan that the production targets for the October-December quarter of 1935 should be substantially increased, so that industry would exceed its annual plan by 5.2%. The annual plan for pig iron was increased by one million tons, and for crude steel by 700 000 tons. These increases were to be achieved primarily by the increased productivity of labour.58

Shortly afterwards the commissariats, Gosplan and the Politburo began to prepare a revised version of the 1936 plan. After the usual altercations, the plan adopted by the Politburo involved a substantial increase in the production plans as compared with the proposals of the commissariat, as is illustrated by the following figures for Narkomtyazhprom (NKTP) industry (percentage annual increase; decrease shown as -):

Labour Cost of Production productivity production

1935 actual 26.6 18.5 -0.5 1936 plan 1 Oct. NKTP proposal 19.7 13.5 29 Nov. Gosplan 28-30 25-26 -9 proposal NKTP reply 26 20 -6 4 Dec. Politburo decision 26 23 - 8

Sources: 1935 actual: Plan 1936 (1936), p. 394. 1 October and 29 November proposals: RGAE, 4372/92/59, 11-15. Narkomtyazhprom reply: RGASPI, 85/29/503, 1-6. Politburo decision: RGASPI, 17/3/973, 43-46, 60-63; and see Plan 1936 (1936), p. 394.

It will be observed that the approved plans, while representing a substantial increase over previous proposals, fell very far short of the huge increase in production anticipated by Stalin and Molotov. The leaders evidently hoped that the experience of the first weeks and months of 1936 would enable them to increase the plans. Three months after the approval of the 1936 plan, on 15 March 1936, Ordzhonikidze stated revealingly at a conference with the heads of industrial administrations and factory directions:

the Stakhanov movement must not be reduced to achieving a fulfilment of the plan by 30%

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as last year. In my opinion that's nonsense. We gave 26% last year without any Stakhanov movement.59

And five days later, at a meeting of the Orgburo, he claimed that even an overfulfilment (sic-he meant 'increase in production') by 35% would not mean that a Stakhanovite industry had been established. In this connection he reported with approval an extravagant statement by the head of the metal industry that it might be possible to increase the production of crude steel in 1936 to 23 million tons compared with 12.6 million tons in 1935 and the existing 1936 plan of 16 million tons.60

The campaign against 'sabotage' and Stakhanovism

The extent to which Stakhanovism was resisted and resented by workers, managers and engineers has yet to be established. The hostility of some ordinary workers was frequently described in NKVD and party reports in the autumn of 1935.61 There is also a great deal of evidence that many senior managers, factory directors and engineers regarded Stakhanovite record breaking as disruptive to planning and to the progress of the economy. The scepticism of leading industrialists was clearly displayed at a meeting in Narkomtyazhprom of heads of chief administrations and chief engineers on 15 October 1935.62 And in the factories foremen and engineers were harassed by managers to increase the number of Stakhanovites, and by Stakhanovites for failing to supply the extra tools and materials to enable higher production.63

In the autumn of 1935 resistance to Stakhanovism met with an increasingly repressive response from the authorities, and they often linked even mild resistance with counter-revolutionary activity and sabotage. As early as 14 September Pravda published a telegram by Ordzhonikidze in which he anticipated 'philistine scepticism on the part of certain backward leaders, which will in practice mean sabotage', and called for their immediate removal.64 Then, on 20 September, a Pravda editorial was headed 'Fire on the Saboteurs!' On 17 November Stalin, in his speech at the Stakhanovites' conference, while he did not specifically mention 'sabotage', called for 'the curbing of stubborn conservatives among the managerial, engineering and technical staff', at first by patiently persuading them, and then, 'if persuasion does not work, more decisive measures will have to be taken'.65

On 26 November Vyshinsky, the USSR Procurator, reported that on the railways a Stakhanovite had been attacked, and attempts had been made to organise a

'wrecking act' to discredit Stakhanovism. He proposed that the case should be heard in open court and the two main accused should be sentenced to death by shooting.66

On 29 November the question was examined by the Politburo: Stalin personally replaced the proposal to impose the death penalty by ten years of imprisonment.67 On 10 and 16 December Vyshinsky informed Stalin, Molotov and Kaganovich (as commissar for railways) that each of the accused had been sentenced to 6-10 years deprivation of liberty. According to Vyshinsky, the trials were attended by a large number of railwaymen, who showed 'strong approval' of the sentences; the trials were broadcast by radio and reported in the local press.68 A copy of one of Vyshinsky's letters to Molotov is located in the files of Chubar"s secretariat, and Molotov has noted on it 'Cde. Chubar' for inf[ormation]'.69 This is evidence that the

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political leadership of the USSR were informed about the attacks on Stakhanovism and took them seriously.

At the beginning of December Vyshinsky issued a circular requiring the following to be treated as acts of terrorism: 'the use of forcible actions against Stakhanovites, in connection with their activity, which result in their death or other serious consequences; attempts or preparation for such actions'. Damage of machine tools and other mechanisms, undertaken to disrupt the work of Stakhanovites, should be treated as wrecking or as a 'diversionary act'. 'Deliberate hindrance of the activity of Stakhanovites by official persons' should be treated as counter-revolutionary sabotage. Thus anti-Stakhanovite acts were brought under the most severe clauses of the Criminal Code, carrying punishments including the death penalty. Further, 'threats against, and persecution and beating' of Stakhanovites should also carry severe penalties. All such cases should be widely publicised, and should be tried in open court sittings in the presence of a wide public, and reported in the local press.70

Andreev, a secretary of the party central committee and Politburo member, in preparing for the central committee plenum of 21-25 December, at which he gave the keynote speech, was supplied with a considerable amount of NKVD material on the resistance of 'conservative and counter-revolutionary elements' to the Stakhanov movement. The material indicates that by December hundreds of cases of sabotage had already been concocted. The NKVD used the following headings to describe resistance to Stakhanovism: deliberate damage of the equipment of Stakhanovites; creation of unfavourable conditions for their work (including supplying them with poor-quality tools and materials, and allocating inappropriate personnel to Stakhanovite work-teams); illegal reduction of rates for the job and norms; 'decep- tion' by economic agencies (this obviously refers to inaccurate reports); 'counter-revolutionary agitation against Stakhanovite methods'; terror against Stakhanovites.7'

Such broad headings enabled accidents, damage of machinery and poor-quality materials-frequent occurrences in the Soviet industry of the 1930s-to be treated as crimes. Thus a report to Andreev dated 11 October claimed that the collapse of the mine roof and the consequent death of nine of the 14 members of a Stakhanovite brigade at Mine No. 204 in the Chelyabinsk Coal Trust was 'a result of the use of obviously wrecking methods of organising mining'; six engineers were found guilty of wrecking.72 Cases were reported in the legal journal, and in the industrial newspaper, of workers receiving sentences of two-five years' imprisonment merely for strongly criticising Stakhanovism.73

Andreev's address to the central committee plenum discussed the question of sabotage in this spirit. He insisted that it was 'impossible to avoid the decisive opposition of class enemies' and that 'numerous facts, known to everyone, inform us of the more determined struggle of class enemies'. He claimed that much sabotage had taken place but not been disclosed, because (a revealing remark) 'no one now dares to speak openly against the Stakhanov movement'.74 Some other speakers also claimed that Stakhanovism was hindered by sabotage. Thus Ryndin, from the Urals, referred to 'many facts of open and secret sabotage' on the railways, adding that 'Many people have already been exposed and driven out-there were unfortunately quite a number of Communists among them'.75 But on the whole the theme of sabotage was rather muted. Ordzhonikidze criticised the conservatism of 'many and

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very many' managers, engineers and technicians, but did not refer to sabotage.76 The resolution of the plenum stressed the importance of 'breaking the remaining resistance to the Stakhanov movement of the conservative section of managers, engineers and technicians in all branches of industry and transport' and called upon party and trade union organisations to 'expose class-alien elements which attempt to do harm to (pakostit') Stakhanovites'.77 But it did not explicitly mention sabotage. At a Narkomtyazhprom conference held on 26 December, a day after the plenum, the participants, including Ordzhonikidze, paid no attention to the question of sabotage.78

These developments were characterised by Benvenuti as 'the December truce', which showed 'signs of reconciliation between industry and the authorities'.79 While this is an accurate characterisation of the change in attitude of Ordzhonikidze and probably some of the other senior people's commissars, in practice accusations of sabotage and counter-revolutionary activity did not cease, and in some sectors were even intensified. On 23 January 1936 Kaganovich, visiting the Tomsk railway, reported to Stalin in a ciphered telegram that the administration of the line included 'a group of counter-revolutionary and sabotaging elements', and proposed that they should be dismissed and sent for trial.80 This telegram did not mention Stakhanovism. But four days later, having moved on to Krasnoyarsk, he reported in a further telegram to Stalin that 'the depot and repair factory are infested with wrecking elements, connected with the Poles and the Japanese':

At the factory a Trotskyist group has been exposed, engaged in wrecking the repairs, persecuting Stakhanovites and demoralising the workers. The party organisers and the party organisations in the depot and the factory are working disgracefully ... the Stakhanovites are kept under and the workers are in an indifferent mood.

Kaganovich proposed, among other measures, that a senior NKVD official should be sent from Moscow 'to expose completely the disruptive work of the spies and class enemies'.81 Stalin and the Politburo immediately approved all Kaganovich's proposals.

The campaign against sabotage temporarily withdrawn

During the first few months of 1936 the Sverdlovsk region was treated by the central authorities as a kind of case study of Stakhanovism. Evidence from the Sverdlovsk region indicates that prosecutions for anti-Stakhanovite activity increased in the first few months of 1936.82 Stalin instructed Ezhov, a central committee secretary and head of the party control commission, to investigate industry in the region. On 4 February Ezhov reported the results of his conversation (evidently this conversation was by telephone) with the party secretary of the region, I. D. Kabakov:

Their Stakhanov movement is on the whole still developing exceptionally badly ... Comrade Kabakov's explanation of the causes of this disruption of the work is very inarticulate, referring to objective causes. In fact the main reason is the bad leadership of the Stakhanov movement by the regional party committee.

Ezhov reported that Kabakov had requested to travel to Moscow to report the situation. But Ezhov forbade the journey, and instead Kabakov travelled to the copper

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enterprises of the region. Ezhov asked K. I. Bukharin, plenipotentiary of the control commission in the region, to concentrate his efforts on promoting Stakhanovism in the copper industry.83 Stalin's signature appears on the document, testifying to his continuing interest in the question.

In due course K. I. Bukharin and Vasil'ev, a member of the control commission, reported to Ezhov that the Kirovgrad and Krasnoural'sk copper smelting plants, which had fulfilled their plans in 1935, had failed to cope with the plan in the first six weeks of 1936. The Stakhanov '10 days' at these plants had failed, and the number of accidents and hold-ups had increased.84

The outcome of further investigations of the Sverdlovsk region is unexpected. Officials of the industrial department of the central committee reported in a memorandum to Andreev (in charge of the department) that a major reason for the failure of the plan in the copper smelting, coal and timber industry of the region was the large number of accidents and hold-ups. But they continued their memorandum by strongly criticising the 'unfounded repression of engineering and technical personnel'. For example, Spekhov, a shift foreman in the Chusova iron and steel works, had been dismissed from his post and expelled from the trade union as a saboteur of the Stakhanov movement, because he had refused to record the output norms achieved by individual workers. He had then been arrested and held for 16 days in the local police station; he was released for 'lack of proof of sabotage'. All directors of coal mines in the Kizelovsk coal district had been reprimanded, and 65 of the administrative and technical staff had been arrested and sent for trial.85

Following these investigations, on 20 March Stakhanovism in the Sverdlovsk region was discussed at a meeting of the Orgburo of the central committee, addressed by Ordzhonikidze. Ordzhonikidze strongly reproved managers who sought to get rid of Stakhanovite methods of work on the grounds that Stakhanovite 'five-days' and '10-days' were unnecessary because their factories were fulfilling their plans. But he rejected accusations of conscious wrecking.86 The Orgburo resolution, while insisting that the directors of enterprises and heads of factory departments must take the lead in the Stakhanov movement, made no mention of wrecking or sabotage.87

In spite of these developments, accusations of sabotage against managers and engineers did not cease. On 26 March 1936 Pravda again published an editorial headed 'Fire on the Saboteurs!'88 But there were many signs that the anti-sabotage campaign against management was being called off, and that the number of prosecutions of workers and others for making critical remarks about the regime, and for other minor manifestations of disaffection, was cut down. On 31 March Krylenko, People's Commissar for Justice of the RSFSR, sent a long memorandum to Stalin complaining that 'the number of cases brought under the article on counter-revolutionary crimes, and the number of persons sentenced, are continuously and progres- sively increasing'. One of the examples he cited was the case of a weigher in an alcohol factory who had been sentenced to six years' deprivation of freedom. At a meeting on 27 November 1935, during the reading of Stalin's speech on Stakhanovism, he had attacked the movement as 'empty chatter, a fable', and claimed that a friend had told him that 30 or 40 corpses a day were brought out of the Donbass mines. Krylenko commented: 'such cases are very frequent, but it is hardly possible to say that malicious conscious counter-revolutionary agitation is present here'.

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Vyshinsky was instructed to investigate the general issue raised by Krylenko, and on 16 April sent Stalin and Molotov a memorandum which on the whole supported Krylenko's view.89 Vyshinsky was not the kind of person who would have taken such a step without a strong hint from his masters that it was appropriate.

Following this exchange Krylenko published an article in the journal of the commissariat criticising the imposition of long prison terms on backward workers such as a woman who was sentenced to five years because she shouted at a workmate who advocated Stakhanovism 'You just want to earn a bonus, you Parisian lady'.90 At this time the Supreme Court of the RSFSR reviewed the sentences imposed in Sverdlovsk region and terminated or reduced more than half of them.9'

The position of the managers was further clarified in their favour in June. On 7 June a famous Pravda editorial, 'Lessons of the Donbass', which must have been authorised at the highest level, commented on the poor performance of the Donbass coal industry, which had produced less coal in May 1936 than in December 1935. It attributed this failure not to sabotage but to the practices of storming, and of record breaking merely for show, and to the persecution of engineers and technicians. Then, at the extensively reported Council of Narkomtyazhprom, which met from 25-29 June, many speakers, headed by Ordzhonikidze and Pyatakov, insisted that the overwhelming majority of managers and engineers were loyal.92

This new deal for the managers and engineers continued during the summer. The first of the major political trials, the Zinoviev-Kamenev trial, was held on 19-23 August. But following the trial, on 31 August, a central committee directive was sent to regional party secretaries which read as follows:

Recently, in a number of party organisations, responsible officials appointed by the central committee, and in particular directors of enterprises, have been dismissed from their posts and expelled from the party without the knowledge and agreement of the central committee. In this connection the central committee must make it clear that such actions by local party organisations are incorrect.

The directive insisted that all such cases must be referred to the central committee with supporting material.93

The draft directive was prepared by Kaganovich and Ezhov, and sent to Stalin on vacation by ciphered telegram on 29 August. The telegram to Stalin stated that the directive had been prepared 'in conformity with your wishes'-so evidently Stalin had been persuaded-for the moment-that further repression of senior managers was unwise. The same telegram to Stalin included a draft Politburo decision prepared by Kaganovich and Ezhov which criticised Izvestiya for publishing an item entitled 'An Exposed Enemy'. This reported that the party organisation of the Magnezit factory, Chelyabinsk region, had expelled the director of the factory from the party for assisting and protecting Dreitser, who had been executed as a Trotskyist terrorist. The draft Politburo decision proposed that the decision of the Magnezit party should be annulled, that the Chelyabinsk newspaper which published this decision without checking it should be reproved, that the Chelyabinsk correspondent of Izvestiya should be dismissed for supplying Izvestiya with information from the local press which he had not checked, and that Izvestiya should publish the proposed Politburo decision and a statement from the editors of the newspaper that the offending item

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should not have been published.94 On the following day, 30 August, Stalin approved this draft decision, and on 31 August it was adopted by the Politburo.95 On 1

September it was published in the press.

The shift back to more balanced growth from July 1936

More or less simultaneously with this more moderate treatment of grumbling workers and awkward managers, the Politburo returned to policies of more balanced growth. While Stakhanovite methods continued to be advocated, the revised economic policy tacitly renounced the extravagant hopes which only recently had been placed on Stakhanovism. The reasons for this shift in policy have not yet been fully ascertained. One important factor was certainly anxiety about financial stability. On 29 April 1936 the Politburo decided to save money by reducing the interest on mass loans to the

population from 8-10% to only 4%, and to extend the length of the loans from 10 to 20 years; all previous loans were to be converted to these less favourable terms. Stalin

by this time shared the apprehensions of Molotov, Gosplan and Narkomfin. But, anxious about the indignation which these measures would arouse among the 50 million loan holders, he decided to report the matter to the plenum of the party central committee before a public announcement. His brief statement to the plenum on 3 June was quite frank:

This is a serious matter, comrades, which cannot be postponed. It is a result of the need for money. As you are well aware, we spend an alarming amount of money on things which cannot be delayed. Expenditure is growing at a rapid rate. Much money has been spent, and is being spent, on such matters as building schools, teachers' pay, urban improvement, irrigation and afforestation of a number of parts of the country, and constructing canals.

Money is being spent on defence, and even more will be spent in future. Defence must be developed as required, both in quality and especially in quantity. We do not yet have a navy, and a new one must be established. This is a very serious and expensive matter.

Then it must be borne in mind that in 1937 we will begin a mass reduction of the prices of food products and consumer goods. A commission is working under cde. Molotov ... There is already a target of reducing prices by 10, 20 and in some cases 30%. This circumstance will also increase the tension on our state budget.

That is the situation, comrades.96

The shift in policy turned on the preparation of the 1937 economic plan. In July Gosplan despatched to Stalin and Molotov the draft plan directives for 1937. An

accompanying letter from Mezhlauk paid due respect to the successes of Stakhanovism and the prospects for exceeding the second five-year plan, but its practical proposals were different in tone. Thus it stressed that the main tasks of heavy industry in 1937 were to pull up the lagging industries, considerably improve the

quality of production, ensure that products were complete with all their component parts, reduce the amount of production in progress, reduce losses and considerably reduce costs. Against this background Gosplan proposed that the rate of growth of industrial production in 1937 should be only 20.1%, and the productivity of labour would also increase by 20%. The capital investment proposals followed similar lines:

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TABLE 4 THE CAPITAL INVESTMENT PLAN FOR 1937 (MILLION RUBLES)

1937 Plan 19 July 7 December 29 March 1937 1936' 19362 19373 Actual

NKTP 7200 8440 8667 8609 NKLegP 1250 1466 1406 1003 NKPP 770 970 970 789 NKS Mestprom 770 770 770 419 NKLes 800 900 1010 680 Narkomzem 2300 2314 1964 NKPS 4200 5553 3957 NKO 2250 2450 1936 Education 1100 1100 649

Other 7968 7513 Total 28600 30670 32593 27519

Note: There may be some inconsistency in the prices used in the different columns; and the coverage of the series needs checking for compatibility. See also Note to Table 2. Sources: 1 GARF, 5446/1/487,11. 114-122 (art. 1282/226s, decree of central committee and Sovnarkom). 2 GARF, 5446/1/488,11. 198-201 (art. 2075/413s). 3 Plan 1937, 11. 26, 34, 42-55, 120-121. 4 RGAE, 4372/35/255,11.48-49, except NKO: RGVA (Rossiiskii gosudarstvennyi voennyi arkhiv), 51/2/445, 11. 13-14 (dated 13 June 1938). In addition to the state plan total of 27 519 million rubles, extra-plan (vneplanovye) investment amounted to 684 million rubles, extra-limit (vnelimitnye) investment to 3826 million rubles.

the volume of investment should be planned at 28.6 milliard rubles as compared with the planned 35.5 milliard in 1936.97

In sharp contrast with the discussions of the 1936 plan in July 1935, on 19 July 1936 the Politburo simply accepted the Gosplan proposal for capital investment (see Table 4). As for industrial production, it was to increase by a relatively modest 23%, compared with the 30% now expected for 1936. In 1937 light, food, timber and local industries were all planned to grow more rapidly than heavy industry.98

The Politburo directives of 19 July also proposed a significant departure in planning procedures: 'the established practice of recording the fulfilment of the plan of gross production is incorrect ...; the fulfilment of the plan of every industrial enterprise must be valued first of all by its production of finished and complete output which precisely corresponds to the fixed standards of quality and technical conditions, and to the product-mix fixed for the particular enterprise'. Ordzhonikidze had already foreshadowed one aspect of this change in his speech to the Narkomtyazhprom Council on 29 June, in which he announced that Stalin had proposed a shift from measurement in gross production to measurement in commodity production. This indicates that Stalin was still paying attention to problems of industrial policy in spite of his increasing preoccupation with preparing the cases against former opposition leaders.

During the next few months the commissariats prepared their plans on the basis of these directives. It emerged later in the year that the counter-demands of the All-Union commissariats alone would require an additional investment of 12 863

888




million rubles above the 28 600 million rubles in the July directives.99 The strongest pressure came from Narkomtyazhprom, which had been squeezed most. As early as 23 July Ordzhonikidze had requested an extra 1257 million rubles in a long memorandum to Stalin and Molotov, without success.100 In its plan for 1937 Narkomtyazhprom requested 12 744 instead of 7200 million rubles, claiming that the increase was made necessary by the new defence plans approved by government.'10 The Narkomtyazhprom plan was signed in Ordzhonikidze's absence by his deputy Rukhimovich. At the beginning of October 1936 Ordzhonikidze sent Stalin a plea for support from Kislovodsk, insisting that he could not manage with only 7200 million rubles. 102

But the Politburo stuck to the moderate investment policy. On 7 December the investment plan was increased by a mere 2070 million rubles; 1240 of this (60%) went to Narkomtyazhprom (see Table 4). The Politburo also maintained a relatively modest plan for industrial production. The 7 December decision instructed Chubar' and Mezhlauk to determine the plan 'on the basis of the possibility of some reduction of industrial production as compared with the Gosplan proposals'.'03 The final plan, not approved until 29 March 1937, further increased investment to 32.5 milliard rubles, but the increase of industrial production (all industry) was fixed at only 20%, somewhat lower than the July 1937 directives, and far below the increase of production by 28.4% achieved in 1936.104 The 1937 plan still insisted that the managers of economic agencies and enterprises must pay proper attention 'to securing favourable conditions for the development of the Stakhanov movement and to the determined dissemination of the experience of individual Stakhanovites among the workers'.'05 But the production plans for 1937 demonstrated that even the more modest hopes attached to Stakhanovism would not be realised, let alone a doubling, trebling or quadrupling of productivity.

The economic results of Stakhanovism

Only 1936 can properly be described as a 'Stakhanovite year'. The purge of senior managerial staff was launched in November 1936 and was followed in the second half of 1937 by much wider mass purges in industry and all other sectors of the economy. The purges overwhelmed Stakhanovism-and all economic planning. In 1937 industrial production increased far less than planned, and capital investment declined in both real terms and current prices for the first time since 1933. The mass purges ended in the autumn of 1938, but henceforth Stakhanovism was merely one element, albeit a not insignificant one, in the effort to improve the operation of the economy. In our present account we therefore confine ourselves to developments between September 1935 and the end of 1936.

Productivity of capital and labour

The productivity of both capital equipment and labour improved very rapidly in the years 1934-36. We consider here the extent to which the improvement accelerated after the advent of Stakhanovism.

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TABLE 5 RAILWAY 'EFFICIENCY' INDICATORS, 1933-1937, 1940

1933 1934 1935 1936 1937 1940

Daily distance: 163.51 168.51 189.13 233.53 2484 2574 goods locomotive (km) Daily distance: 97.61 117.51 128.43 140.73 139.85 139.95 goods wagon (km) Commercial 13.81 14.21 15.63 18.33 19.66 20.36 speed: goods train (km/h) Fuel per 10000 2882 2662 2697 2487 km (kg)

Note: The figures for 1934 and 1936 were stated in the source to be preliminary. Sources: 1

Osnovnye pokazateli ... 1935, p. 118. 2 Plan 1935, pp. 626-627. 3 Plan 1937, pp. 124-125. 4 Transport i svyaz' SSSR: statisticheskii sborik (1967), p. 113. 5 Ibid., . 110. 6 bid., p. 112. 7 Ibid. p. 115.

First, capital equipment.106 The capital stock of the railways was used far more

intensively during the second five-year plan. Table 5 shows that the daily distance covered by both locomotives and wagons, and the average commercial speed of goods locomotives, increased substantially, and the amount of fuel consumed per unit distance travelled declined. These higher indicators became a permanent feature of

railway operation (see figures for 1940). The data in Table 6 for the improved utilisation of blast furnaces and open-hearth furnaces are even more striking. In this case Stakhanovism did not produce a great change in the rate of development of

efficiency. However, the daily distance travelled by goods locomotives and wagons increased more rapidly in 1936 than in 1935. Commercial speed also increased more

rapidly in 1936. But this is a dubious indicator of efficiency. Expert railway opinion seems to agree that the speed-up of trains probably had harmful consequences. The

incomplete figures available for accidents (avarii) and major accidents show that in both categories there was a substantial increase in October, November and December 1935.107 At the beginning of 1936 the definitions of 'accidents' and 'crashes' were

changed, so that the 1936 data are not comparable with 1935.108 On the new definition, the total number of accidents and crashes declined somewhat between January and April 1936, but the number of hours of 'complete interruption to traffic' due to accidents increased from 1398 in January to 1864 in April.109 At this point information on rail accidents ceased to appear even in the confidential statistical bulletin of Gosplan.

In the case of iron and steel plant, in contrast, the evidence seems to be that a substantial part of the improvement was due to the better use of plant. This conclusion is on the whole supported by the data in Table 7. In the case of both open-hearth furnaces (producing crude steel) and rolling mills, in the new furnaces installed during

890




TABLE 6 EFFICIENCY OF UTILISATION OF IRON AND STEEL FURNACES, 1933-1940

1933 1934 1935 1936 1937 1938 1939 1940

Coefficient of 1.71 1.35 1.23 1.09 1.11 1.14 1.20 1.19 utilisation of useful volume of blast furnace (m3/ton) Crude steel per m2 of 2.29 2.81 3.32 3.99 4.33 4.37 4.27 4.24 floor space of open- hearth furnace (tons)

Source: Promyshlennost' SSSR:statisticheskii spravochnik (1964), pp. 173-174.

the second five-year plan, production in 1937 was considerably higher than the projected capacity when the furnaces were designed. The new blast furnaces (producing pig iron) performed less well. But during the second five-year plan there was a large increase in the output from capacity which had been installed before 1933, in the case of blast furnaces as well as open-hearth furnaces and rolling mills. A thorough American study of the Soviet steel industry concluded:

... the next three years saw a remarkable increase, one which was not confined to the iron and steel industry and which, to the best of our knowledge, represents the most rapid rise in industrial productivity the world has ever seen. Between 1933 and 1936 blast-furnace productivity increased 55% ...

... Perhaps the most satisfactory result from the point of view of the Soviet leadership was that the sharp rise in productivity permitted fulfilment of the production goals of the Second Five Year Plan with the expenditure of much less precious capital than had been anticipated. The goals were met with 19 new blast furnaces instead of 45, with 86 new open-hearth

TABLE 7 PRODUCTIVE CAPACITY AND OUTPUT IN THE IRON AND STEEL INDUSTRY, SECOND FIVE-YEAR PLAN (000 TONS)

New capacity during 1933-37

3. Revised 4. Actual 1. Planned in 2. Achieved in capacity of production five-year plan five-year plan capacity achieveda 1937

Blast furnaces 12963 5380 6300 4673 Open-hearth 8585 3387 5956 4376 furnaces Rolling mills 8584 1312 3667 2038

Notes: a

According to the source, the revision was undertaken in 1936 as a result of the Stakhanov movement (but see our text). General note: These data are taken from a report on the results of the second five-year plan prepared by GUMP (the Chief Administration of the Metallurgical Industry) in 1938. They refer only to the enterprises subordinate to GUMP at that time, so that, for example, the Zaporozh'e steel works is omitted. Brief data for the whole iron and steel industry will be found in RGAE, 4372/92/101, 1. 81 (dated 11 May 1938). Source: RGAE, 7297/38/75, 11. 2-12, 16-28.

891



00

N>c TABLE 8

QUARTERLY OUTPUT PER WORKER IN SELECTED INDUSTRIES, 1934-1936 (IN RUBLES AT 1926/27 PRICES)

Coal Iron and steel Metalworking and All machine-building Narkomtyazhprom

Rubles % above Rubles % above Rubles % above Rubles % above previous previous previous previous period period period period

542

586 603 633 637 620

1512

2.9 5.0 0.9

14.4

1712 1911 1946 2072 1913

620 14.4 1880

639 2014 680 6.4 2211 735 8.0 2385 833 13.3 2652 721 16.3 2315

720 16.1 2369

2065

11.6 1.8 6.5

26.5

2203 2344 2362 2640 2390

24.3 2334

-2.6 9.8 7.9

11.2 23.1

26.0

2536 2683 2758 3159 2791

2769

1933

1934 Jan-Mar. Apr.-June July-Sept. Oct.-Dec. 1934 average (A) 1934 average (B)

1935 Jan.-Mar. Apr.-June July-Sept. Oct.-Dec. 1935 average (A) 1935 average (B)

1928

7.1 0.9 9.8

16.2

6.4 0.8

17.7 15.7

13.0

-3.9 5.8 2.8

14.5 19.6

18.6

2064 2211 2320 2449 2241

2115

2251 2424 2538 2877 2528

2437

9.6

-8.1 7.7 4.7

13.4 19.5

15.2

go

0 p

0

m <ll

0rf

c?

Pw



1936 Jan.-Mar. 830 - 0.4 2848 7.4 3212 1.7 2880 0.1 Apr.-June 810 -2.4 2966 4.1 3399 5.0 3003 4.3 July-Sept. 843 4.9 2904 - 2.1 3293 - 3.1 2951 - 1.7 Oct.-Dec. 857 1.7 3144 6.8 3706 12.5 3297 11.7 1936 835 16.0 2967 25.2 3409 23.1 3036 24.6 average

Average quarterly increase (%) Jan.-Sept. 4.9 5.0 1.6 1.4 z 1935 O

Jan.-Sept. 0.7 3.1 1.2 1.2 1936 Oct. 1934- 3.9 5.3 5.6 3.7 Sept. 1935> Oct. 1935- 3.8 5.2 4.5 4.0 Sept. 1936 Oct. 1935- 3.4 5.5 6.1 5.5 Dec. 1936 Jan.-Dec. 1.0 4.1 4.0 3.6 , 1936 O

Sources: 'T1 1933, 1934 (quarterly) and 1934 (A): Tyazhelaya promyshlennost' za 1934 god (1935), pp. 98-99. 1934 (B), 1935 (quarterly) and 1935 (A): Tyazhelaya promyshlennost' za 1935 god (1936), p. 185. 1935 (B) and 1936: Tyazhelaya promyshlennost' za 1936 god (1937), p. 154. O

?-




furnaces instead of 164, and with 49 new rolling mills instead of the 107 called for in the Second Five Year Plan. This was the ideal way to solve Preobrazhensky's dilemma!"?

The author pointed out that these impressive results had required some investment in improvements to old and new plant, but the amounts were not large. He also noted that 'the spurt did not last long'. As Table 6 shows, productivity in 1939 was lower than in 1937. We have not so far found evidence that this poor performance was due to the over-use of the equipment. It may have been the consequence of the loss of many senior and less senior engineers during the purges. But all this requires further investigation. In 1936 the efficiency with which the plant was used improved more rapidly than in 1935: in blast furnaces by 11.4 against 9.1%; in open-hearth furnaces by 20.1 against 18.1%.

As for output per worker, there was certainly an enormous increase in 1936 (see Table 8). In Narkomtyazhprom industry it rose by 24.6% in 1936 compared with 15.2% in 1935. The rate of growth of productivity did not increase in 1936 in the coal and iron and steel industries. But a substantial part of the increase in 1935 resulted from the effects of Stakhanovism in the last quarter of that year. It is therefore often assumed that Stakhanovism was responsible for an acceleration in labour productivity throughout industry.

The quarterly data shown in Table 8, however, present a different picture. There was certainly an initial surge in output per worker in October-December 1935. But in the coal and iron and steel industries, and in Narkomtyazhprom industry as a whole, the average quarterly rate of increase in productivity was approximately the same in the 12 months following Stakhanov's feat (October 1935-September 1936) as in the 12 months preceding it (October 1934-September 1935)."' Stakhanovism therefore appears as merely a quarterly blip in the general advance in productivity which had begun well before the Stakhanovite campaign.

At the micro-level Stakhanovism undoubtedly led to significant improvements in various industrial practices. But the advantages were partly or wholly cancelled out by the upheaval in the regularity with which supplies were available, and in production planning generally. An alarming development in industry, as on the railways, was the immediate increase in accidents. Vyshinsky, Chief Procurator of the USSR, addressed a letter to Stalin and Chubar' pointing out that in the first three months of 1936 accidents in the coal and iron and steel industries were substantially higher than in the same months of 1935. He proposed the establishment of a government commission to study the problem."2 In June 1936 the well-known industrialist S. P. Birman complained that accidents and damage to furnaces had increased in April-May as a result of the 'drive for quantity' and the bad treatment of equipment."13 The Utopian hopes of Stalin, Molotov and Ordzhonikidze were gainsaid by experience even before the purges disrupted the industrial economy.

Costs

The Stakhanov movement was frankly intended to appeal to the material interests of the participants as well as to their devotion to the Soviet system and their country. Molotov, in his correspondence with Stalin in July 1935, called for the complete

894




abolition of consumer rationing, with the objective that 'wages should really become the main regulator of the growth of the productivity of labour'.14 These intentions carried with them, however, the danger of disrupting financial stability. Improved productivity involved improved fulfilment of output norms, and hence led to higher wages. In an increasing minority of cases workers were paid by progressive piece rates, so that the increment to wages increased more rapidly than productivity, once a worker had fulfilled 100% of the norm. If norms were unchanged, wage inflation could not be avoided, and there would be no possibility of reducing industrial costs and prices.

Ever since the late 1920s the wage system had been constructed on the premise that labour productivity would rise more rapidly than wages. This was to be achieved by an annual upward revision of norms of output (i.e. cutting the rate for the job), plus ad hoc upward revisions when new equipment was introduced. It proved extremely difficult to maintain this policy in practice. In 1934, according to official figures industrial labour productivity rose by 11.0%, but the average wage in industry rose by 16.3%."5 An annual norm revision took place in March-April 1935.16 But in the first nine months of 1935 the average wage in industry rose far more rapidly than labour productivity.'7

The Stakhanov movement threatened to widen the gap. In the first months of the campaign the press was full of reports of the huge wage increases received by Stakhanovites, and attempts to increase output norms were slapped down.' 8 At a Narkomtyazhprom conference on 15 October 1935 Pyatakov peremptorily told Rataichak, the head of the chemical industry: 'if you want to wreck the Stakhanov movement, revise the norms'.119 Between August and December 1935 the average daily wage of industrial workers increased by 16%, while in the same months of 1934 it had increased by only 5.0%.120 However, the situation soon changed. At the conference of Stakhanovites in November, many speakers criticised the old norms for both equipment and workers' output as out-of-date and superseded. But it fell to Stalin to state that the norms of output must be increased. In the final speech of the conference, he insisted that 'a planned economy is impossible without norms'; norms were needed as 'a great controlling force' to bring the mass of the workers up to the level of the most advanced. But norms must be increased. It would be unrealistic to fix them at the level reached by Stakhanovites; the mass of workers would be unable to achieve them:

We need technical norms which would be placed somewhere between the present technical norms and the norms achieved by the Stakhanovs and the Busygins.'12

Stakhanovism was the main item on the agenda of the December plenum of the central committee. One of the main purposes of the plenum was to prepare the ground for revision of both types of norm. In its resolution Stalin inserted a substantial paragraph calling for the replacement of existing technical norms and output norms as out of date.'22 Throughout the text of the resolution Stalin replaced ambiguous expressions such as 'check the norms critically' and 're-examine the norms' by the specific requirement 're-examine the norms in the direction of an increase'.123

The timetable laid down in the resolution varied according to the industrial

895




TABLE 9 LABOUR PRODUCTIVITY AND WAGE INCREASES IN BRANCHES OF HEAVY INDUSTRY

(% INCREASE IN 1936 ABOVE 1935)

Labour productivity Average wage (workers)

Narkomtyazhprom: total 26.1 23.2 District power stations 48.0 21.2 Coal 16.0 19.7 Oil extraction 0.8 19.4 Oil processing 29.3 28.8 Iron and steel 25.2 23.5 Iron ore 30.9 23.9 Coking chemicals 16.2 19.0 Fire-resistant materials and 23.8 19.6 ceramics Non-ferrous metals 19.4 22.7 (excluding processing) Machine-building and 23.1 22.0 metalworking Chemicals 23.7 23.3 Mining-chemical 21.8 17.3

Note: These data are for the chief administrations (glavki) concerned, and so include some production not related to the product group, and exclude production of the product group for which other chief administrations were responsible. Source: Tyazhelaya promyshlennost' za 1936 god (1937), pp. 149-150, 187-206.

commissariat. In all industries the revision of equipment norms was to be completed by the end of 1936. Narkomtyazhprom was 'to begin the revision of output norms in the direction of some increase' at the beginning of 1936; in the other commissariats the norms were to be revised somewhat later.124

The changes in norms in the course of 1936 are carefully examined by Benvenuti, Siegelbaum and Filtzer. In heavy industry, norms were increased by between 10% and 55%, depending on the sub-industry.125 But as Filtzer shows, the norm increases were so arranged that the majority of workers soon exceeded their norms. In 1936 the average wage exceeded the planned wage by 7.7%. Wages were overspent by 2019 million rubles, only 716 million rubles of which was attributed to the overfulfilment of the production plan.126 But productivity had increased more rapidly than wages for industry as a whole: the norm revision had succeeded in curbing the wage inflation.127 The results varied considerably according to the industry. As Table 9 shows, in heavy industry the ratio of wages to productivity was unfavourable in most of the extractive and primary industries, including coal, oil extraction, coking chemicals and non-ferrous metals. While the planned reduction in production costs was not achieved, costs measured in comparable terms declined substantially-by 4.1% in industry as a whole and 6.1% in heavy industry. This was the background to the quite favourable financial results of 1936. Currency issue was planned to increase by 1300 million rubles in the course of the year, and the actual increase, 1546 million rubles, exceeded the plan by an unusually modest amount.128

Summary 1. The second five-year plan, which nominally ran from 1933 to 1937, was launched

896




at the XVII party congress in January-February 1934. In the years 1934-36 industry expanded very rapidly, drawing on the immense investments carried out during the first five-year plan. However, as early as 1934 it became clear that investment had not achieved the amounts provided for in the five-year plan, and that major projects would have to be delayed or canceled altogether, even in key branches of heavy industry. The main commissariats sought to obtain large increases in investment. But Molotov, as head of Sovnarkom, supported by Gosplan, Narkomfin and the State Bank, was anxious to avoid excessive inflation and disproportion in the economy. Sovnarkom, with the agreement of Stalin, succeeded in maintaining relatively modest increases in the 1935 investment plan, continuing the practice of the previous two years.

2. In the hope of achieving a high level of production in spite of the restrictions on investment, the main commissariats responsible for branches of the economy, especially Narkomtyazhprom and Narkomput', sought with some success in 1934 and the first six months of 1935 to achieve greater yields per unit of capital and rapid increases in output per worker. But these successes were insufficient to achieve the major goals of the plan.

3. In the second half of 1935, therefore, a sharp change in policy took place. First, the investment plan for 1936 was greatly enlarged. After several increases, at the end of 1935 it incorporated an increase over the previous year of as much as 50%. This over-optimistic plan was adopted on Stalin's initiative in spite of the objections of Molotov and Gosplan. It was intended to provide substantially increased resources for education and light industry as well as armaments, the railways and heavy industry.

4. The planned increases in investment reinforced the expectation that labour and capital productivity would sharply increase. This was the context for the series of record-breaking production accomplishments in industry and on the railways. Stakhanov's record in the coal industry was strongly supported by Ordzhonikidze (Stalin was not apparently directly involved), and soon became part of a nation- wide campaign. The political leaders hoped that it would lead to extraordinarily large increases in production, without any further increases in investment. Stakhanovism was treated as a means for displaying and securing the unity of the nation.

5. As part of the attempt to impose the Stakhanov movement on reluctant managers and workers, a drive against 'sabotage' was launched in the last months of 1935. It was, however, temporarily abandoned in the spring of 1936, and the Politburo implicitly abandoned the hopes for a gigantic increase in production. Simul- taneously, probably influenced by the increasing inflationary pressures, it adopted a more modest investment plan for 1937.

6. The Stakhanov movement did not achieve a substantial change in economic performance. While the authorities succeeded in counteracting the cost-increasing effects of Stakhanovism, and it led to some improvements in working practices, it also resulted in disproportions and excesses. Most of the progress in 1934-36 cannot be primarily attributed to Stakhanovism. Both the intensity of use of equipment and output per worker were increasing rapidly before September 1935. In 1936 a small improvement took place in the rate of increase of the efficiency

897




of iron and steel plant, but it is not clear how far this resulted from Stakhanovism. Output per worker in the industries we have examined did not increase more rapidly in 1936.

7. As other studies have shown, the effects of Stakhanovism were quite short-lived. Its economic significance already began to decline in 1936, and in 1937-38 it was submerged by large-scale repression in industry.

CREES, University of Birmingham Gosudarstvennyi arkhiv Rossiiskoi Federatsii

List of acronyms

NKTP or Narkomtyazhprom NKLegP NKPP or Narkompishcheprom NKS Mestprom NKLes or Narkomles NKZ or Narkomzem NKPS or Narkomput'

NKO NKPros Sovnarkom GUMP

People's Commissariat of Heavy Industry People's Commissariat of Light Industry People's Commissariat of Food Industry People's Commissariats of Local Industry People's Commissariat of Timber Industry People's Commissariat of Agriculture People's Commissariat of Transport (Ways of Communication) People's Commissariat of Defence

People's Commissariat of Education (RSFSR) Council of People's Commissars Chief Administration of Metallurgical Industry

1 The authors are grateful for their comments to the participants in the conference on 'Stalin's Politburo, 1928-1953', held in the European University Institute, Florence, 30-31 March 2000, and in the Work Group on the same topic held in the Centre for Russian and East European Studies, University of Birmingham, in August 2001. Our research was supported by the British Economic and Social Research Council (grant no. R 000 237388, project on 'The Soviet Politburo and Economic Decision-Making and Development in the Stalin Era'). Note that throughout this article we have used official statistics. These overestimate the rate of growth of capital investment, production and labour productivity (but not wages). They do, however, adequately indicate relative changes in and between different sectors.

2F. Benvenuti, Fuoco sui sabotatori!: Stachanovismo e organizzazione industriale in Urss, 1934-38 (Rome, 1988); F. Benvenuti, 'Stakhanovism and Stalinism, 1934-8', CREES Discussion Paper SIPS No. 30, Centre for Russian and East European Studies, University of Birmingham, UK, 1989; L. H. Siegelbaum, Stakhanovism and the Politics of Productivity in the USSR, 1935-1941 (Cambridge, 1988); D. Filtzer, Soviet Workers and Stalinist Industrialization: the Formation of Modern Soviet Production Relations, 1928-1941 (London, 1986); E. A. Rees, Stalinism and Soviet Rail Transport, 1928-41 (London and Basingstoke, 1995); M. Buckley, 'Was Rural Stakhanovism a Movement?', Europe-Asia Studies, 51, 2, 1999, pp. 299-314. One of the present authors has examined the relation between Stakhanovism, the anti-sabotage campaign and the political repression of 1936-38 (0. Khlevniuk, In Stalin's Shadow: the Career of 'Sergo' Ordzhonikidze (New York, 1995)). 3

Mikoyan wrote in his memoirs that 'Molotov as chairman of Sovnarkom felt responsible for preserving proportions in the economy and, in particular, was very concerned to maintain the stability of our currency, to reduce the losses of economic organisations and to seek sources of profit'. According to Mikoyan, 'he was under the strong influence of the People's Commissar for Finance Grin'ko; Grin'ko was an intelligent man, well-trained, and had a good grasp of questions relating to his commissariat.' A. Mikoyan, Tak eto bylo (Moscow, 1999), p. 520.

898




4 See the Gosplan estimates for investment and investment costs in 1933-37 (dated 11 May 1938) in Rossiiskii gosudarstvennyi arkhiv ekonomiki (henceforth RGAE), 4372/92/101, 73-76. In 1934 building costs were planned to decline by 15% (see E. Zaleski, Stalinist Planningfor Economic Growth, 1933-1952 (London and Basingstoke, 1980), p. 660), while the costs of capital equipment remained approximately stable (building costs amounted to two-thirds of all investment costs).

5 For this memorandum see RGAE, 4372/33/122, 11. 250-248. The figure of 2050 million rubles was taken from the five-year plan directives presented to the XVII party congress in January 1934. The published plan (approved in November 1934) gave 2025 million rubles (Vtoroipyatiletniiplan razvitiya narodnogo khozyaistya SSSR (1933-1937 gg.) (Moscow, 1934), (i, 1. 718). The figure eventually allocated was 1565 million rubles (in current prices) (RGAE, 7297/28/71, 1. 5). These figures include iron ore but not the coking-chemical industry.

6 See Promyshlennost' SSSR: statisticheskii sbornik (Moscow, 1957), p. 105. 7 Memorandum in the Gosplan files addressed to Kviring, a deputy chairman of Gosplan, dated 20

July 1934 (RGAE, 4372/33/122,11. 190-189). 8 RGAE, 4372/33/122, 1. 149 (dated 20 July 1934). 9 See previous note. 10 See M. Harrison & R. W. Davies, 'The Soviet Military-economic Effort in the Second Five-Year

Plan (1933-1937)', Europe-Asia Studies, 49, 3, 1997, pp. 380, 384. 1 This view was supported by Litvinov in the People's Commissariat for Foreign Affairs, and by

Tukhachevsky and his associates in the Red Army. On 31 March an article by Tukhachevsky in Pravda, entitled 'The War Plans of Nazi Germany', presented an alarming account of German rearmament; the article was corrected and endorsed by Stalin. For Stalin's corrections see Izvestiya TsK, 1990, 1, pp. 160-170.

12 Gosudarstvennyi arkhiv Rossiiskoi Federatsii (henceforth GARF), 5446/1/480, 11. 29-61 (Sovnarkom decree, art. 149/19ss).

13 For these developments see Rees, p. 103 and ch. 5 passim. 14 For the most substantial increase in defence investment see Rossiiskii gosudarstvennyi arkhiv

sotsial'no-politicheskoi istorii (formerly RTsKhIDNI) (henceforth RGASPI), 17/162/18,1.44 (art. 118, dated 22 May); for the decision about the size of the army, see RGASPI, 17/162/18, 11. 24, 35-37 (art. 102).

15 RGASPI, 17/162/18 (art. 172, dated 22 April 1935). 16 See Vtoroi, i, pp. 718-719. 17 GARF, 5446/16/3049,11. 1, 9, 12-14. Republican and local education authorities requested an

increase in investment by 67 million rubles in 1935, and on 10 May Sovnarkom allocated an additional 16.5 million rubles.

18 GARF, 5446/26/66, 1. 266. We have not so far found a decision of the Politburo or Sovnarkom requiring a specific reduction of retail prices in 1936.

19 See the entries for 21 July (Istoricheskii arkhiv, 1995, 3, p. 172). 20 Pis'ma I. V. Stalina V. M. Molotovu, 1925-1936gg.: sbornik dokumentov (Moscow, 1995), pp.

249-250. 21 RGASPI, 558/11/769, 11. 159-160. 22 GARF, 5446/26/66, 11. 264-266. 23 RGASPI, 17/3/969,11. 1, 31-36. The Politburo decision was promulgated as a Sovnarkom decree

on the same day (GARF, 5446/1/482,1. 92). 24 Pis'ma Stalina Molotovu, p. 251. 25 RGASPI, 558/11/769, 11. 162-163. 26 RGASPI, 17/163/1072, 11. 166-167. 27 Stalin, Sochineniya, xiii (Moscow, 1951), p. 186. 28 Pravda, 27 December 1935. 29

Narodno-khozyaistvennyi plan na 1935 god (Moscow, 1935) (henceforth Plan 1935), p. 301. 30

Narodnokhozyaistvennyi plan na 1936 god (2nd edn, Moscow, 1936) (henceforth Plan 1936), pp. 269, 280.

31 Vtoroi, i, pp. 429, 434-435. 32Plan 1935, pp. 443, 451. 33 See Filtzer, p. 210. 34 Za industrializatsiyu (henceforth ZI), 29 December 1935 (speech of Andreev to December 1935

plenum of party central committee). 35 Filtzer, chapter 8, gives a detailed account of the variety of devices by which norms were

accommodated to the political, social and economic circumstances of the factories. 36 Pravda, 6 May 1935; Stalin, Sochineniya, xiv (US edn, 1967), p. 63. Note that the Russian word

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'tekhnika', which we have inadequately translated here as 'technology', means not only technical methods but also productive capital, machinery.

37 See for example his call for an increase in the efficiency of blast furnaces in January 1934 and his emphasis on the need to use coal mining equipment more intensively in January 1935 (S. Ordzhonikidze, Stat'i i rechi, ii (Moscow, 1957), pp. 545-546, 585-587, 619-620, 632-634).

38 RGAE, 7297/138/77,11. 120-122. Birman was at this time director of the Petrovsky iron and steel works. For the 'negotiations' at the Congress of Soviets on 31 January, at which Birman agreed to 1.15 in a public discussion with Ordzhonikidze, see Ordzhonikidze, pp. 632-633.

9See Rees, pp. 114-118. 40 See ibid., pp. 119-120. 41

Ordzhonikidze, pp. 545-546. 42 Ibid., pp. 619-620. 43 RGAE, 7297/38/175, 1. 273 (report to conference on the coal, oil, chemical and metallurgical

industries, attended by participants in central committee plenum, 26 December 1935). 44 See Rees, p. 123. 45 RGASPI, 558/11/743,11. 29-36. 46 Stalin was in Sochi, Ordzhonikidze on the northern side of the mountains in Kislovodsk and

Zheleznovodsk. 47 Owing to the large number of aircraft disasters, the top leaders were not permitted to travel by

air. 48 RGASPI, 85/29/119,1. 114. 49 See Siegelbaum, pp. 70-71. 50 RGASPI, 85/29/460,11. 2-3, published in Sovetskoe rukovodstvo: perepiska, 1928-1941 (1999),

pp. 310-311. Tel'nykh was the record-breaker in the Donbass praised by Ordzhonikidze the previous January (see above). 51 Cited by Kaganovich in Pervoe Vsesoyuznoe soveshchanie rabochikh i rabotnits-stakhanovt- sev, 14-17 noyabrya 1935: stenograficheskii otchet (Moscow, 1935), p. 189. For other aspects of this speech see Rees, p. 122.

52 Pravda, 22 November 1935; Stalin, Sochineniya, xiv, pp. 80, 87-88. 53 Benvenuti, 'Stakhanovism ...', p. 24. 54 See his exchange with Artyukhov, head of the Gorlovka mine (Pervoe, p. 47). 5 Pervoe, pp. 108, 133. See also Zhdanov on some Leningrad factories (ibid., p. 299). However,

the independent-minded Tochinsky insisted, contradicting Ordzhonikidze, that the major iron and steel works at Enakievo was not ready to fulfil the five-year plan in four years; Ordzhonikidze in reply asserted that the iron and steel plan would be 'considerably exceeded' in four years (ibid., pp. 150, 318).

56 Ibid., p. 281. The comment on Stalin evidently referred to his speech of 4 May (see above). 57 Ibid., p. 324. 58 See GARF, 5446/33/71,11.48-49, reporting the initial Sovnarkom proposals of 7 September and

the Gosplan upward revision of 14 September; GARF, 5446/1/483, 1. 34, where Sovnarkom on 16 September accepted the new proposals with minor changes; and RGASPI, 17/163/1080, 11. 109-110, where the Politburo approved further increases on Molotov's proposal-these were incorporated in a Sovnarkom decree of 26 September.

59 RGASPI, 85/29/129,1. 9. 60 RGASPI, 85/29/129,1.9 (Ordzhonikidze's personal file; the same speech appears in the Orgburo

papers: RGASPI, 17/114/741,11. 103-112). Ordzhonikidze's percentage fulfilments evidently refer to increased production compared with 1935, as 1935 production was 26% above 1934 production, and only a few percentage points above the 1935 plan. The production of crude steel in fact reached 16.2 million tons in 1936, slightly above the plan approved in December 1935.

61 See S. Davies, Popular Opinion in Stalin's Russia: Terror, Propaganda and Dissent, 1934-1941 (Cambridge, 1997), pp. 32-34.

62 See Benvenuti, 'Stakhanovism ...', pp. 31-32; RGAE, 7297/38/180, 11. 93-283. 63 These issues are extensively discussed in Khlevniuk; Filtzer, chapter 7; R. Thurston in J. A. Getty

& R. T. Manning (eds), Stalinist Terror: New Perspectives (Cambridge, 1993), pp. 142-160, as well as in Benvenuti and Siegelbaum.

64 The telegram was dated 12 September. 65 Stalin, Sochineniya, xiv, p. 98. 66 GARF, 8131/37/58, 11. 20-21. 67 RGASPI, 17/163/1086,11. 60, 61-63. The resolution was approved by poll, with the signatures

of Stalin, Molotov, Ordzhonikidze, Mikoyan and Kaganovich; Voroshilov, Chubar' and Andreev informed the secretary of their approval.

68 GARF, 8131/37/58,11. 89-90, 99.

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69 GARF, 5446/26/49, 1. 277. Chubar' was a deputy chairman of Sovnarkom under Molotov. 70

GARF, 8131/37/58, 11. 32-34. 71

RGASPI, 73/1/141,1. 205. 72 RGASPI, 73/1/141, 1. 241. 73 See Filtzer, p. 204. 74Pravda, 29 December 1935. 75 RGASPI, 17/2/561, 1. 32. 76Pravda, 27 December 1935. 77 Pravda, 26 December 1935. 78 For this conference see Khlevnyuk in E. A. Rees (ed.), Decision-Making in the Stalinist Command

Economy, 1932-37 (London and Basingstoke, 1997), p. 120; Benvenuti, 'Stakhanovism ...', pp. 75-76. This was a conference of participants in the plenum concerned with the coal, oil, chemical and metallurgical industries. The report of its proceedings appears, in somewhat different versions, in ZI, 31 December 1935; RGASPI, 85/29/114; and RGAE, 7297/38/175,11. 46-275.

79 Benvenuti, 'Stakhanovism ...', 11. 35, 40. 80 RGASPI, 17/163/1092,1. 23. 81 RGASPI, 17/163/1092, 1. 70. 82 See Siegelbaum, pp. 200-201. 83 Arkhiv Prezidenta Rossiiskoi Federatsii (APRF), 3/26/19, 1. 80. 84RGASPI, 17/114/741, 11. 77-86. An article by K. I. Bukharin in ZI (the newspaper of

Narkomtyazhprom), 6 April 1936, condemned the inflated reports of Stakhanovite successes in Urals factories.

85 RGASPI, 17/114/741, 11. 65-73. 86 RGASPI, 17/114/741, 11. 103-112; the same materials are in Ordzhonikidze's files: RGASPI,

85/29/129, 11. 6-9. 87 RGASPI, 17/114/604, 11. 48-50. 88 For examples of prosecutions at this time see Benvenuti, 'Stakhanovism ...', pp. 40-42. 89 For Krylenko's memorandum and an account of Vyshinsky's comments see Sovetskoe

rukovodstvo, pp. 328-330. 90

Sovetskaya yustitsiya, 1936, 5, cited in Siegelbaum, p. 202. 91 See Siegelbaum, 1. 203. 92 These events are extensively described in Benvenuti, 'Stakhanovism ...', pp. 42-49, and in

Siegelbaum, pp. 127-135. 93 APRF, 3/22/150, p. 129. 94 RGASPI, 558/11/93, 11. 135-136; 81/3/101, 11. 77-79. The original item appeared in Izvestiya,

29 August, so Kaganovich was quick off the mark. 95 RGASPI, 558/11/93, 1. 126; 17/3/980, 1. 79. 96 RGASPI, 17/2/572, 11. 34ob., 35. 97 RGAE, 4372/92/63, 11. 210-225. 98 RGASPI, 17/3/979, 11. 56-59. These proposals were embodied in a joint central committee and

Sovnarkom decree: GARF, 5446/1/487,11. 114-122 (art. 1282/236s). See also Rees (ed.), pp. 57-58 (Davies & Khlevnyuk).

99 GARF, 5446/20/1916, 11. 51-52. 100

GARF, 5446/20a/371, 11. 108-117. 101

GARF, 5446/20a/371, 11. 84-107. 102 RGASPI, 558/11/778, 11. 118. 103 GARF, 5446/1/488, 11. 198-204 (art. 2075/403s). 104 See Plan 1937, pp. 7-40 (decree of TsIK and Sovnarkom); the production figures are on pp.

42-45, the investment figures on pp. 142-143. 105 Ibid., p. 11. 106 These data cannot be taken at their face value as an accurate measure of more efficient use of

capital. We need to investigate how far the increased performance was due to the installation of more and improved capital. How far was the better performance of locomotives and wagons due not to their more efficient use but to the greatly increased supply in these years of rolling stock and rails, which relieved the pressure on the system? How far were the improved indicators of iron and steel plant due to the increased proportion of more advanced and larger furnaces?

A further question to be untangled is how far the more intensive use of equipment led to its more rapid deterioration. If the equipment did deteriorate, was the more intensive use economically justified?

107 See the monthly data in Osnovnye pokazateli vypolneniya narodno-khozyaistvennogo plana

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1935 and in the monthly Osnovnye pokazateli, January-November 1935. It may be calculated from these data that in 1935 the number of accidents was:

Group I accidents (major) Group II accidents

January-December 1935 5801 14358 (monthly average) September 5061 15313 October 6589 18357 November 7145 19870 December 7682 22833

108 Osnovnye pokazateli, January 1936, p. 90. 109 See Osnovnye pokazateli, January, February, March and April 1936. 110 M. G. Clark, The Economics of Soviet Steel (Cambridge, MA; Harvard University Press, 1956),

pp. 253-255, a study which has not been superseded after nearly half a century. We might also call it 'Ordzhonikidze's dilemma' ...

11 It is safe to assume that the impact of Stakhanovism was small in September 1935, the first month after Stakhanov's feat.

112 GARF, 8131/37/72, 11. 237-239 (no date). Accidents in the coal industry of the Donbass increased from 28 390 to 31 864 (deaths increased from 235 to 261); accidents in the iron and steel industry of the Donbass and Dnepropetrovsk increased from 7167 to 7799.

13Sovet pri narodnom komissare tyazheloi promyshlennosti SSSR, 25-29 iyunya 1936 g.: stenograficheskii otchet (Moscow, 1936).

14 RGASPI, 558/11/769,11. 162-163. All rationing of food was abolished on 1 October 1935, and of industrial consumer goods on 1 January 1936 (see Oleg Khlevnyuk & R. W. Davies, 'The End of Rationing in the Soviet Union, 1934-1935', Europe-Asia Studies, 51, 4, 1999, pp. 587, 592).

115 See Plan 1935, pp. 442-443, 637, and Zaleski, pp. 550, 562. 116 See Siegelbaum, pp. 87-88; Benvenuti, p. 24. The relevant Narkomtyazhprom order of 13 March

1935 is printed in Industrializatsiya SSSR, 1933-1937gg (1971), pp. 284-285. 117

Compared with the same period of the previous year, the average wage rose by 28.3% and productivity by only 11% (Osnovnye pokazateli, September 1935, pp. 21-23; Osnovyne pokazateli ... 1935, pp. 59-61). These figures are for the increase in the daily wage as compared with daily productivity. The large increase in wages was mainly because they had been increased to compensate for the increase in bread prices at the beginning of the year.

118 On 11 October the industrial newspaper Za industrializatsiyu reproduced the norms decision of the previous March, printing in bold type the clause 'The revision of out-of-date norms shall be completed not later than 1 May 1935 and the revised norms shall be fixed (zakrepit') for a period of 1 year'. See Siegelbaum, p. 88, and Industrializatsiya SSSR, 1933-1937gg, pp. 284-285.

119 See Lewis H. Siegelbaum, 'Soviet Norm Determination in Theory and Practice, 1917-1941', Soviet Studies, 36, 1, 1984, p. 60; Siegelbaum, p. 87; Benvenuti, Stachanovismo ..., pp. 191-192; and RGAE, 7297/38/180, pp. 153-154.

120 See data in Osnovnye pokazateli, January 1936, p. 142. 121 Stalin, Sochineniya, xiv, pp. 95-96. Stalin used the phrase 'technical norms' (tekhnicheskie

normy) rather than 'output norms' (normy vyrabotki). The term was used to refer both to norms for equipment and norms of output for workers. It was clear from the context that Stalin was referring to output norms for workers, but evidently some people assumed that norms of equipment should also be intermediate between the old level and the Stakhanovite records. At the central committee plenum in December, Mikoyan delicately corrected Stalin's ambiguity:

I think that when norms of capacity of equipment and of production capacity of factories are fixed, we must take the indicators of the Stakhanovites as a basis, because technical norms of equipment and norms of output are different things. We cannot revise the capacity norms of equipment and factories every year or two. This is fixed for many years ahead. (Pravda, 27 December 1935).

122 RGASPI, 558/1/3191, 11. 6, 9-10. Part of his insertions was in his own handwriting, part a

typerwritten text probably prepared on Stalin's instructions. 123 Ibid., 11. 13-15. 124 Pravda, 26 December 1935. 125 See Filtzer, p. 184.

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STAKHANOVISM AND THE SOVIET ECONOMY 903

126 GARF, 5446/26/74,11.36-30-memorandum by Chubar' and Mezhlauk, dated 31 January 1937. 127

According to official data, in all large-scale industry gross production increased by as much as 30%, labour productivity by 22.4% and the average monthly wage of workers by 20.5%. For these figures see Narodno-khozyaistvennvi plan Soyuza SSR na 1937 god (Moscow, 1937), pp. 44-45; these are preliminary figures.

128 For the plan see RGASPI, 17/162/19, 1. 15-Politburo decision dated 15 December 1935. For the outcome see Khlevnyuk & Davies, 'The End of Rationing ...', p. 595.



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Stakhanovism and the Soviet Economy

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