1. There is now a substantial literature on Soviet workers in the Stalin and post-Stalin periods. References can be found in the author's studies of Soviet production relations: Filtzer, Donald, Soviet Workers and Stalinist Industrialization: The Formation of Modern Soviet Production Relations, 1928–1941 (London, 1986);Google ScholarFiltzer, , Soviet Workers and DeStalinization: The Consolidation of the Modern System of Soviet Production Relations, 1953–1964 (Cambridge, 1992);CrossRefGoogle ScholarFiltzer, , Soviet Workers and the Collapse of Perestroika: The Soviet Labour Process and Gorbachev's Reforms, 1985–1991 (Cambridge, 1994).Google Scholar

2. Fitzpatrick, Sheila, “The Great Departure: Rural-Urban Migration in the Soviet Union, 1929–33,” in Social Dimensions of Soviet Industrialization, eds. Rosenberg, William G. and Siegelbaum, Lewis H. (Bloomington, 1993), 15–40;Google ScholarKotkin, Stephen, “Peopling Magnitostroi: The Politics of Demography,” in Social Dimensions, eds. Rosenberg, and Siegelbaum. 63–104;Google ScholarFiltzer, , Soviet Workers and Stalinist Industrialization, chap. 2.Google Scholar

3. Davies, Sarah, “Worker Dissent in Leningrad, 1934–1941,” unpublished discussion paper, Centre for Russian and East European Studies, Soviet Industrialization Project Seminar. University of Birmingham, October 1994; Filtzer, Soviet Workers and Stalinist Industrialization, 81–87.Google Scholar

4. Trud February 23, February 24, 1929; November 18, 1930; June 18, June 25, July 2. 1931; January 4, January 5, 1933; Severnyi rabochii (Yaroslavl'), March 9, September 3, 1929; March 23, 1930; Proleiarii (Khar'kov), January 8, 1930.

5. In 1930–1931 the average worker was changing jobs every seven or eight months; in coal mining and construction the average sojourn was four to six months. By 1936 the situation had “stabilized,” to one job change every fourteen months for industry as a whole, and every ten to twelve months in coal. In construction, turnover remained high throughout the decade, at an average of two job changes per year. Filtzer, , Soviet Workers and Stalinist Industrialization, 52–53: taken from Trud v SSSR (Moscow, 1936). and Plan, No. 9, 1937, 21–122 (Ya. Kats).Google Scholar

6. The ascending severity of the labor legislation can be summarized as follows. October 20, 1930: Enterprises banned from hiring workers who had quit their previous place of employment (Central Committee Resolution, Pravda, October 22, 1930). November 15, 1932: Workers guilty of absenteeism to be automatically dismissed, evicted from enterprise housing. and deprived of ration cards (government decree, Trud. November 16, 1932). December 28, 1938: November 1932 penalties reaffirmed; absenteeism defined as lateness of more than twenty minutes (government, party, and trade-union joint decree, Pravda, 12 29, 1938). June 26, 1940: Absenteeism and unauthorized quitting made criminal offenses (Edict of Supreme Soviet. Izvestiya, June 27, 1940). For a detailed discussion of the evolution of labor law and workers' and managers' responses, see Filtzer, Soviet Workers and Stalinist Industrialization, 107–15 and chap. 9.Google Scholar

7. According to John Barber and Mark Harrison, an average of one million workers were prosecuted each year for absenteeism, and a further 200,000 for unlawful quitting. Many others were able to avoid prosecution by fleeing—prompting the regime to declare an amnesty for them in 1944. Barber, John and Harrison, Mark, The Soviet Home Front, 1941–1945: A Social and Economic History of the USSR in World War II (London, 1991), 164.Google Scholar

8. Filtzer, , Soviet Workers and De-Stalinization, 37, 249.Google Scholar

9. Rabochii klass SSSR (1951–11965 g.g.) (Moscow, 1969), 130.Google Scholar

10. Filtzer, , Soviet Workers and De-Stalinization, 66–70, 75–89.Google Scholar

11. See, for example, the press conference held by V. I. Shcherbakov, head of Goskomtrud, reported in Izvestiya, February 5, 1991. Shcherbakov put this argument in more detail in EKO 1 (1990), 38, and Sotsialisticheskii trud 1 (1991), 10. This did not keep him from describing unemployment as “an inevitable evil under market conditions”; Ekonomika i zhizn' 15 (1990), 12.

12. “Until recently a job [rabochee mesto] had little prestige in our country. Many people, knowing that they could always find work in their trade, did not value their job or their duties. Even though these workers did not always work conscientiously, the administration turned its head the other way, excused their indiscipline with the sole desire to keep them from leaving the enterprise and leaving the work place bare. This, to be sure, is one of the reasons for the ineffectiveness of many of the measures designed to strengthen labor discipline. Now the situation is gradually changing. A place to work has gone up in price, since the enterprise now has an economic interest in cutting the number of cadre. When this interest becomes general, the worker will constantly face the choice: either work well and be necessary to production, so that the question of dismissal never comes up. or work badly and become a candidate for dismissal.” Sotsialisticheskii trud 7 (1989), 74 (Orlovskii, Yu.).Google Scholar

13. Sotsiologicheskie issledovaniya 1 (1989), 38–41 (Zaslavskii, I. E., Moskvina, M. V.).Google Scholar

14. , Filtzer, Soviet Workers and the Collapse of Perestroika, 46–53.Google Scholar

15. , Filtzer, Soviet Workers and the Collapse of Perestroika, 139–41.Google Scholar

16. Ekspress Ltd., Nov. 28-Dec. 4, 1991.

17. Voprosy ekonomiki 9 (1991), 35 (Zaslavskii, I.); interview with officials of the Moscow Labor Exchange, October 9, 1991;Google ScholarRabochaya tribuna, October 24 1991; Vestnik statistiki 6 (1992), 37–38.

18. Voprosy profdvizheniya 2/3 (1935), 35–36 (Shevelev, I.). “In the majority of Leningrad factories work does not begin to get into full swing until 30 to 40 minutes after the horn. They end work, too, considerably before the horn. In July the Sovetskaya zvezda factory recorded 25 occasions where four brigades in full complement went to lunch every day a half hour before the bell. After the dinner break work at factories begins not immediately, but only after 30 or 40 minutes.”Google ScholarGutman, L., Rabotat' pol'nykh sem' chasov (Leningrad, 1933), 19. Another report from Leningrad's Lenin factory described the following: “lvanov left without permission before work had finished; Grigor'ev followed Ivanov's example; Gretyukov came 10 minutes late twice in September; Piskunov, a fitter, goes walking around the shop during work hours. He does this on average 40 to 60 minutes a day. Pashkevich loves to stroll around the shop with ‘his hands in his pockets.’ This is putting it mildly: one of his strolls lasts 10 to 20 minutes.”Google ScholarMolot, September 27, 1934; cited in Voprosy profdvizheniya 2/3 (1935), 69 (Reznikovskii, I.).Google Scholar

19. We can illustrate the point with one of many accounts from the New Economic Policy period, this one taken from the Kolomna engineering works outside Moscow in 1924: “The factory's low productivity is occasioned in part by an insufficiently conscientious attitude from the factory's peasant element towards its work. Workers do not spend the whole day working, but waste a great deal of time smoking, discussing the peasant question, chatting about peasant matters; the rest of the time they work sluggishly, waiting for the horn at the end of work.” Pravda, Aug. 14, 1924; cited in Rabinovich, A., Problema proizvoditel'nosti truda (Moscow, 1925), 143. Rabinovich also cites another Pravda report, according to which workers routinely stopped work a half hour before the end of each shift to collect, read, and discuss the daily newspapers.Google Scholar

20. Rabinovich, , Problema proizvoditel'nosti truda, 105–44, passim;Google ScholarSüß, Walter, Der Betrieb in der UdSSR. Stellung, Organisation und Management 1917–1932 (Frankfurt am Main, 1981), 189;Google ScholarMarsheva, B., Isaev., A., and Shteinbakh, E., Zhenskii trud v mashinostroenii (Moscow, 1933), 41–142;Google ScholarWard, Chris, Russia's Cotton Workers and the New Economic Policy: Shop-Floor Culture and State Policy, 1921–1929 (Cambridge, 1990), chap. 4.Google Scholar

21. Sotsialisticheskii trud 6 (1959), 56–57 (Voronin, E.).Google Scholar

22. This quite specifically Soviet phenomenon even earned a special name, nekomplektnost'. Literally, it means incomplete batching, and refers to the manufacture of a machine or other item whose final assembly cannot be completed for lack of a few often simple or inexpensive components. It was not a phenomenon peculiar to the Stalin period, but became a permanent feature of Soviet production. One of the machine shops servicing tractor production at Leningrad's Kirov works in 1991 had an excellent record of efficiency, but delays in other shops meant that the parts it produced simply had to be stockpiled; for some parts it had accumulated a month's supply. As the factory newspaper remarked, its workers were producing simply for the warehouse. Kirovets (Kirov factory, Leningrad), February 14, 1991.

23. , Filtzer, Soviet Workers and Stalinist Industrialization, 169–73.Google Scholar

24. , Filtzer, Soviet Workers and Stalinist Industrialization, 73–73.Google Scholar

25. On Stakhanovism, see Siegelbaum, Lewis, Stakhanovism and the Politics of Productivity in the USSR, 1935–1941 (Cambridge, 1988);Google ScholarMaier, Robert, Die Stachanov-Bewegung 1935–38: Der Stachanovismus als tragendes und verschärfendes Moment der Stalinisierung der sowjetischen Gesellschaft (Stuttgart, 1990);Google ScholarRittersporn, Gabor, “Heros du travail et commandants de la production,” in Le Soldat du Travail (Paris: Recherche, 1978), 249–75;Google ScholarBenvenuti, Francesco, Fuoco sui sabotatori! Stachanovismo e organizazione industriale in URSS, 1934–8 (Rome, 1988) (an English summary of this book is available as “Stakhanovism and Stalinism, 1934–8,” CREES Discussion Papers, Soviet Industrialisation Project Series, no. 30, Centre for Russian and East European Studies, University of Birmingham [July 1989]);Google Scholar and Filtzer, , Soviet Workers and Stalinist Industrialization, chap. 7.Google Scholar

26. McAuley, Alastair and Helgeson, Ann, “Soviet Labour Supply and Manpower Utilisation, 1960–2000,” unpublished discussion paper (1978), 28a.Google Scholar

27. Sotsialisticheskii trud 7 (1991), 72 (Lopatin, A.). These figures are based on time and motion studies carried out before the large rise in stoppages which hit most factories in 1990 and 1991 due to supply shortages.Google Scholar

28. Filtzer, , Soviet Workers and De-Stalinization, 141–45; Filtzer, Soviet Workers and the Collapse of Perestroika, 182–83.Google Scholar

29. Gutman, , Rabotat' polnykh sem' chasov, 20–21.Google Scholar

30. Za industrializatsiyu, 08 2, 1937 (Khavin, A.).Google Scholar

31. Interview with personnel from the Voskresensk fertilizer factory, July 9, 1991. According to other factory personnel, the stress created by this system led to constant fights over who would get what goods, with the losers sometimes storming out of work. By the same token, the workers were usually paid for the time lost off work during such shopping runs.

32. Trud v SSSR (Moscow, 1988), 63–65, 249–50;Google ScholarZnamya 9 (1991), 211 (Starikov, E.);Google ScholarVaisman, I. A., “O sootnoshenii chislennosti osnovnykh i vspomogatel'nykh rabochikh v promyshlennosti,” Voprosy truda, vypusk 1 (Moscow, 1958), 122;Google ScholarTrudovye resursy SSSR (Problemy raspredeleniya i ispol'zovaniya) (Moscow, 1961), 60;Google ScholarVestnik statistiki 2 (1964), 30.

33. For a fuller discussion of the political economy of working conditions in Soviet industry, see Filtzer, , Soviet Workers and the Collapse of Perestroika, chap. 5.Google Scholar

34. The discussion which follows is based on Filtzer, , Soviet Workers and De-Stalinization, 148–56, and Filtzer, Soviet Workers and Perestroika, chaps. 5 and 6.Google Scholar

35. A metallurgical specialist in the Leningrad shipbuilding industry described how he expedited urgent orders: “I might go personally to the foreman, on the strength of the fact that I might have done him a prior favour or we had some common interest; or I might say to him that I would write an order for one ton of metal, that is, I needed one ton of metal smelted, but I would sign a form saying he'd done me two tons. Or, for example, before this, when he had given me defective metal I had always signed the form stating there were no defects and I had collected the metal—that is, I had done him a favour, allowing him to fulfill his plan.” Where he needed help from workers with whom he did not have such personal ties he would bribe them with alcohol, a standard procedure throughout Soviet industry. Interview with A. K., metallurgical specialist, Leningrad, June 21, 1991.

36. This was not just true of auxiliary operations. The “modernization” of production jobs was held back by the notorious unreliability of Soviet robots and machine tools with programmed controls. The robots in particular were so expensive, yet added so little by way of increased output, that one study estimated that they would only pay for themselves in 500 years. When they went out of action, often for lack of spare parts, the workers whom they had displaced had to return to their old jobs. Sotsialisticheskii trud 5 (1990), 35 (Khrulev, N., Salomatina, L.);Google ScholarKats, I. Ya. and Pavlychev, V. V., Uskorenie nauchno-tekhnicheskogo progressa v ob“edinenii: Opyt Ivanovskogo stankostroitel'nogo proizvodstvennogo ob”edineniya im. 50-letiya SSSR (Moscow, 1989), 22;Google ScholarSovetskaya Rossiya, June 1, 1988; Za sovetskuyu malolitrazhku (AZLK motor vehicle factory, Moscow), 11 20 and 12 27, 1989, 07 9, 1990.Google Scholar

37. The factory's paper, Za sovetskuyu malolitrazhku (the title was changed in January 1991 to Moskvich) was quite exceptional in the range and depth of its coverage of production difficulties. The discussion which follows is based on a more detailed case study reconstructed from the paper's accounts, which appears in Filtzer, , Soviet Workers and the Collapse of Perestroika, 183–88, 190, 209.Google Scholar

38. Za sovetskuyu malolitrazhku, December 27, 1989.

39. Kirovets, July 4, 1990.

40. For a detailed analysis of the repair sector during the 1960s, but which applies equally to the Brezhnev and Gorbachev years, see Filtzer, , Soviet Workers and De-Stalinization, 167–71. The accelerating growth in the number of repair personnel is documented inGoogle ScholarTrud v SSSR (Moscow, 1988), 63–65.Google Scholar

41. In addition to the historical and theoretical accounts provided by David Montgomery and Harry Braverman (not to mention the debates among socialists which Braverman's book provoked), see the participant-observation studies by Roy, Donald, Lupton, Tom, and Burawoy, Michael: Montgomery, David, Workers' Control in America: Studies in the History of Work, Technology, and Labor Struggles (Cambridge, 1979);Google ScholarBraverman, Harry, Labor and Monopoly Capital: The Degradation of Work in the Twentieth Century (New York, 1974);Google ScholarRoy, Donald, “Quota Restriction and Goldbricking in a Machine Shop,” American Journal of Sociology 57 (03 1952): 427–42;CrossRefGoogle ScholarRoy, , “Work Satisfaction and Social Reward in Quota Achievement: An Analysis of Piece Work Incentive,” American Sociological Review 18 (10 1953):507–14;CrossRefGoogle ScholarRoy, , “Efficiency and the ‘Fix’: Informal Intergroup Relations in a Piecework Machine Shop,” American Journal of Sociology 60 (11 1954): 255–66;CrossRefGoogle ScholarLupton, Tom, On the Shop Floor (Oxford, 1963);Google ScholarBurawoy, Michael, Manufacturing Consent: Changes in the Labor Process Under Monopoly Capitalism (Chicago, 1979);Google ScholarBurawoy, , The Politics of Production (London, 1985).Google Scholar

42. Sotsiologicheskii issledovaniya 1 (1990), 19 (Gimpel'son, V. E., Magun, V. S.); 2 (1990), 53–54 (V. D. Kozlov); 10 (1990), 8 (A. N. Komozin); 5 (1992), 23–32;Google ScholarSovetskie profsoyuzy 7 (1991), 27 (Mitin, A.);Google ScholarSotsialisticheskii trud 6 (1989), 67 (Vikhornov, V., Vvedenskii, V.); 10 (1990), 46 (V. Sekachev). Interview with worker at the Samara aviation factory, May 1993.Google Scholar

43. On norm setting in the 1930s see Siegelbaum, Lewis, “Soviet Norm Determination in Theory and Practice, 1917–1941,” Soviet Studies 36 (01 1984): 15–68;CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Filtzer, , Soviet Workers and Stalinist Industrialization, chap. 8.Google Scholar

44. What follows is drawn from Filtzer, , Soviet Workers and De-Stalinization, chap. 4, and Filtzer, Soviet Workers and the Collapse of Perestroika, chap. 2.Google Scholar

45. See Cook, Linda J., “Brezhnev's ‘Social Contract’ and Gorbachev's Reforms,” Soviet Studies 44 (1992): 37–56.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

46. Izvestiya, October 27, 1990. The new law on decentralized wage-setting went into force on January 1, 1991.

47. This gender division of labor is vital to understanding the political economy of the Soviet system, but unfortunately space does not allow its full treatment here. I have dealt with it at greater length in Soviet Workers and De-Stalinization, chap. 7; and Soviet Workers and the Collapse of Perestroika, chap. 5.

48. If workers showed up for work drunk, according to discipline regulations they were to be sent home. In reality, foremen would let them into work and put them on difficult or poorly paid jobs that other workers refused to do. By the same token these same foremen would have to act very gingerly when dealing with skilled workers in essential operations, for example, tool makers or machinists making spare parts.