LABOUR EXODUS FROM THE URALS

Evening Star, Issue 21220, 29 September 1932, Page 1

LABOUR EXODUS FROM THE URALS

,l A HUMAN TORRENT ’’ The Commissariat of Heavy Industry of the Soviet Union has published the results of an investigation of labour conditions in the Urals. The investigation was undertaken in order to discover why the l< labour flux,” which was unknown in the Ural industry until about two years ago, has now ' become the greatest disorganising factor there. Tlie report states that a “ human torrent ” is now sweeping from the Urals, and newly recruited workers are insufficient to make good the losses duo to the great exodus of old hands. Formerly, says the report, the Ural workers wore the most stable cadres of Russia. They had become attached to their particular localities in the course of two or three generations, and even the great revolutionary upheaval affected them little. Under the old Capitalist system each household had permanently acquired its own house or hut, with a plot of land, and most of them had a cow, some pigs, poultry, and other small cattle. They were naturally unwilling to leave those possessions, and the industries thus had permanent professional workers on the spot. But the new spirit which developed under the Five-year Plan took no account of the advantages derived by Soviet industry from this permanent element. Over-zealous Communist agitators influenced local authorities against the small-holders, who were, consequently, persecuted for _ their possessions, branded as semi-Kulaks. and taxed beyond all measure, until they and their families found it preferable to abandon their homes and seek employment elsewhere. Now there is hardly any remnant left of this permanent element, and the Ural industries have almost entirely lost wlmt they called their “ own ” experienced workers, having become a sort of corridor for the “ human torrent ” which rushes through in search of heifer conditions rumoured to exist in other places which arc always said to ho a little farther on. Some of the biggest works in the Urals can thus register morn than 100 per cent, turnover in their workmen in the course of a few months. ■

The Commissariat's report says that the agitators and officials wore right in principle, hut at the present stage of development it was wrong to ignore the strong binding factor of personal possession, and some means must he found to attach experienced hands again to their posts by temporarily conceding something tu their private interests, the most convenient way being to allow them again to acquire a house, a cow, a plot of land, some poultry, and rabbits for their private use.