STAKHANOVISTS

Evening Star, Issue 22889, 22 February 1938, Page 1

STAKHANOVISTS

? RUSSIAN ABOUT FACE jTlie “ Stalinist month of Stakhanov vist records,” planned to launch the* third Five-year Plan with a bang, be-4 ginning January 1, has been abruptlv; cancelled by the Central Committee of' the Communist Party (writes Harold 1 ; Denny from Moscow to the ‘ New York) Times ). The Stakhanovist month .will] be held in March instead, with less; emphasis on setting individual records,? ahe avowed reason for the Communists Party leaders* decision is to remedv cer,i tain glaring faults In the operation of stakhanovism, Soviet scheme for in-J creasing the output of labour. The de-> cision was accompanied by editorials in! the principal Soviet organs demanding! a change of emphasis from the making! of stupendous production records byl individual Stakhanovists while the rest! of the workers were neglected to bring-! mg up the production of the plant’s per- 1 sonnel as a whole. This marks an im-i portant new step.ia the Soviet Govern-! meat’s endeavour to overtake labour! productivity in capitalist countries, and] is an obvious effort to overcome the! evil that sprang ‘up soon after the heJ ginning of Stakhanovism in the autumn'i of . 1935—namely, that pertain workers are enabled to earn high wages while* other workers are unable to increase] theirs, with consequent diaaontenw among the less favoured ones. , .The decision condemns the idea behind the Stakhanovist month : of re-! cord breaking and says, the main task of any Stakhanovist period should bo expansion of the ranks of Stakhanovists,! and that will be the object of the Stak-1 hanovist month in March.

Th« idea of a record-breaking Janu-, ary was conceived by the Moscow Com--* mitte© of the Communist Party, and was put forward at a mass meeting of Stakhanovist workers here on December 17. The idea was taken up by other! party committees throughout the .So-i viet Union, and received abundant pub-1 hcity, including laudatory editorials inP Pravda ’ and ‘ Izvestia.’

- The Communist Party resolution* however, rebuked local leaders for hav- i mg launched such a movement without consulting the Central Committee. The Stalinist month of Stakhanovist, records was conceived • near the end of! double Stakhanovist “decade*” j twenty days—originally begun on De-, cember 1 to gjve a victory of industrial production to the country on the eve of the Stalinist elections. It was renewed for another 10 days.

Perfectly .astounding individual , records were made, leading Stakhanovists overfilling their “ norms’’—the output on a piecework basis, constituting a standard day’s task,, that a worker, must fulfil to dvaw'a full day’s pav—bv 1,000, 2,000, and 3,000 per cent, and even higher. The highest record—--9,000 per cent.—was made by Ivan ixUQolr, atakbanovist milling machine operator of a machine-building plant.' M. Gudoff was elected a Deputy in the Supreme Soviet (Parliament) from a district that includes the Kremlin, aud therefore with the aid of Josephs Stalin’s own ballot. His performance seemed miraculous, and was discussed ! m t E o 'i? COII<,:m ' c Council of the Coun-* oil .of People’s Commissars. Then th«i story came but how he did it. He worked on two machines instead of the usual one, and he hadiJ them completely refitted and improved! in many ways, so that he could feed 20i cams into each at a time instead of 1 only one. The whole plant organisation;! assisted him.

But although the Soviet Press has enthusiastically published prodigious) individual records, daily production imj key industries has not increased! markedly through these. Stakhanovistj; periods, but in several of the most ,im-’ portant it has actually declined. Freight-car loadings fell. • Copper, smelting, which is one of the wdrst{| laggards in Soviet industry, ' started?] with a slight improvement over late) November, zig-zagged up and down,; and achieved a low of 48.3 per cent. of* the plan near the end of the second!, ten-day period. Coal made slightly bet-J ter records than before the “ decades with a high of 98.7 per cent, fulfilment ] on December 5. Oil production gradu- J ally fell from an average of 87 perj cent, fufilment to a slightly better than 1 85. These two inc«Bgruo*i facts—that* while individuals were setting fantas-" tic . records preduction as a whole was I not _ gaining perceptibly—undoubtedly ■ inspired the decision to pamper out-. • standing Stakhanovists less in oomparison with their fellow workers.