MANUAL LABOUR EXALTED

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 79, Issue 15, 18 January 1936, Page 13

MANUAL LABOUR EXALTED

With the congress o? Stakonovists attended by 2500 delegates and addressed by M. Joseph Stalin, General Secretary of the Communist Party; M. G. K. Ordzhonikidze, Commissar for Heavy Industry and M. Clemence Voroshiloff, Defense Commissar, the Soviet campaign to glorify manual labour is given new impetus. Stakonovism is the name which has been given to a co-operative system designed by Alexei Stakanoff, a young miner from the Donbas coal region. Its purpose is to divide up any piece of work, and so systematise it that tic greatest individual productivity will will be the result. The congress is a gathering of the simplest workers from every branch of industry for the advancement of productivity along every line. This is being done partly through the lionising of individuals like Alexei Stakanoff, who have made outstanding records in tbeii fields. M. Stalin assured his hearers that the Stakanoff movement is one of the most vital and constructive in the whole Soviet undertaking, since x . r it aims at setting up a new set of norms in labour. Now that “levelling” has been firmly repudiated in the Soviet Union, the k vast State industrial and political ma-

i chine is facing a problem long fainiliaF in more advanced countries—that of persuading a sufficient number of its young people to prepare themselves for the more commonplace tasks of life. Soviet young people, like all others, > show a preference for spectacular and well-paid work. The ruling Communists refuse to explain this phenomenon as a universal human problem. They prefer to blame themselves for not guiding young people properly. The Kremlin’s spokesman, M. L. Soznovsky, writing in the Government newspaper, “Investia,” declares: “We have been shortsighted in forming a one sided and artificial ideology for our young people. We have permitted a preference to develop for the so-called intellectual occupations, which carry the outward appearance of self-impor-tance and fame.” When Soviet children are asked what they want to do, says M. Soznovsky, they reply that they want to be aviators, artists, natural scientists, actors, writers, ship captains. Only a tew girls express a preference fur teaching, and no children want tu become shoemakers, textile workers, tailors or bakers* “Why is this true?” asks M. Soznovsky, and replies: “Because we have permitted our children to gain a falsa conception of so-called honourable .occupations and tho-e without honour.”