Recent studies have considerably deepened our understanding of Stakhanovism, the movement of model workers intended to spur others to greater productivity, which began in September 1935. However, archival materials and obscure local sources opened even more recently have provided new evidence on the dynamics and results of Stakhanovism within the factories. This chapter looks at how the movement produced new tensions or exacerbated old ones at the point of production, particularly among various strata of people on the job. These strains will then be linked much more directly than other inquiries have done to the Great Terror as it developed from the fall of 1936 on. The Stakhanovites' story and its connection to the coming of mass arrests reveal new aspects of a two-way relationship between state and society. Finally, I will also discuss the fate of workers in the terror in more detail than previous writers have done.

Stakhanovism had a wide range of unsettling effects on factory life. First, the movement broadened and/or revived workers' opportunities to criticize management and to offer suggestions about production organization and processes. This wave of criticism enhanced old tensions and provoked new ones within the factories. Second, additional demands on managers and technical personnel (ITR, inzhenernye-tekhnicheskie rabotniki or engineering-technical employees) now arose. Supervisors' reactions to these demands caused further problems between levels of people involved in industrial production. Such interaction within enterprises, unleashed or deepened by Stakhanovism, led at least a significant part of the Stalinist leadership to suspect managers and ITR of sabotage. All of these factors played a part in engendering the Great Terror.