¹ See the issues of Sotsialisticheskii vestnik that appeared in 1928–1931, in particular the articles by Iugov, A. and Schwarz, S., as well as the latter's Labor in the Soviet Union (New York, 1952)Google Scholar. Mensheviks fell into the same ideological trap to which the opposition had succumbed: once socialism was ruled out, their minds automatically turned to “capitalism”. They were thus blind to other possible developments.

² There had actually been a decrease not in productivity but in the growth in productivity, a normal phenomenon given the “law” of diminishing returns. Apart from trade union publications and some of those by the NKT, all the Soviet press participated in the campaign. The Torgovo-Promyshlennaia Gazeta (TPG, the organ of the VSNKh), the Komsomolskaia Pravda and authors like Tol'stopiatov, Kallistratov, Kheinman and Kraval' distinguished themselves in this campaign.

³ See Markus, B.L., “K voprosu o metodakh izucheniia sotsial'nogo sostava·proletariata”, Istoriia proletariate, 2 (1930), pp. 15–64Google Scholar. This is perhaps the key Stalinist text on the working classes of the first half of the 1930s.

⁴ The data I have used in this essay are drawn mostly from journals like Ekonomicheskoe obozrenie, Partiioe stroitel'stvo, Statisticheskoe obozrenie, Statistika truda, Trudy TsSU, Vestnik statistiki, Vestnik truda, Voprosy truda; from various editions of Trud v SSSR; from the yearbooks published by the VSNKh in the 1920s; from the 1929 working-class censuses (Rashin, A., Sostav proletariata SSSR (Moscow, 1930Google Scholar)); from documents published in the central and regional series of IndustriaHzatsiia SSSR, 1926–1941; from the collections of state, party, VSNKh, VLKSM, and trade union laws and decrees, etc. An excellent overview of the conditions among Soviet workers at the end of the NEP can be found in Zagorsky, S., Wages and Regulations of Conditions of Labour in the USSR (Geneva, 1930Google Scholar). Data on the workforce and on the evolution of its structure can be found in Izmeneniia v chislennosti i sostave sovetskogo rabochego klassa (Moscow, 1961), and Shkaratan, O.I., Problemy sotsial'noi struktury rabochego klassa (Moscow, 1970Google Scholar).

⁵ See Gimmler, N., (Sukhanov) “K kharakteristike rossiiskogo proletariata”, Sovremennik, 4 (1913), p. 321Google Scholar; Johnson, R.E., Peasant and Proletarian (New Brunswick, NJ, 1979Google Scholar); Kvasha, I. and Shofman, F., “K kharakteristike sotsial'nogo sostava rabochikh SSSR”, Puti industrializatsii, 1–2 (1930Google Scholar); and the 1929 censuses mentioned above.

⁶ Erlich, A., The Soviet Industrialization Debate, 1924–28 (Cambridge, Mass., 1960CrossRefGoogle Scholar).

⁷ K probleme proizvoditel'nosti truda. Sbornik statei i materialov, 1–3 (Moscow, 1924–1925). The drive to rationalization started after a VSNKh investigation into what workers actually did on the job. Preceded by two other investigations ordered by Piatakov in 1920–1921, it was inspired by the literature on scientific management. Thus scientific management, whose importance has at times been overstated, did influence moves to increase pressure on workers.

⁸ See my “Building the First System of State Industry in History”, Cahiers du monde russe et soviétique, XXXII (1991), pp. 539–580.

⁹ “la prosil by poruchit' GPU”, Sovetskie arkhivy, 4 (1991), pp. 71–75.

¹⁰ The data on industrial injuries and dismissals are drawn from Voprosy truda; those on absenteeism, morbidity and number of days worked are from Polliak, G., “Rabochii god i proguly v promyshlennosti”, Ekon, obozrenie, 7 (1926Google Scholar). See too Il'inskii, V., “Rabochii god v promyshlennosti SSSR”, Stat. obozrenie, 2 (1929Google Scholar), and Zagorsky, Wages and Regulations.

¹¹ See the special OGPU report on the reactions of workers to the rezhim ekonomiki in Rossiiskii Tsentr Khraheniia i Izucehniia Dokumentov Noveishei Istorii (RTsKhIDNI), fond 17 (Central Committee), opus 87, delo 200a. See also Corneli, D., Il redivivo tiburtino (Milan, 1977), p. 31Google Scholar, and Werth, N. and Moullec, G., Rapports secrets sovétique (Paris, 1994), pp. 185–207Google Scholar.

¹² I have discussed these ideological developments in “G.L. Piatakov (1890–1937): A Mirror of Soviet History”, Harvard Ukrainian Studies, XVI (1992), pp. 102–166. For an interpretation of the great offensive see Lewin, M., The Making of the Soviet System (New York, 1985)Google Scholar.

¹³ Given the connections between Soviet workers and the countryside, the fact that the state was once again resorting to the sort of terror that characterized the pre-NEP period was immediately known and much resented inside the shops. See for example my “Collectivisation, revoltes paysannes et politiques gouvernementales à travers Ies rapports du GPU d'Ukraine de février-mars 1930”, Cahiers du monde russe et soviétique XXXV (1994), pp. 437–631.

¹⁴ The best contemporary reflections on the party at the end of the 1920s were Rakovskii's, The Professional Dangers of Power (Letters to Valentinov, August 1928), republished in his Selected Writings (London, 1980)Google Scholar. The Smolensk party leaders were found guilty of corruption and sexual degeneracy (see Fainsod, M., Smolensk under Soviet Rule (Boston, 1989; 1st ed., 1958), pp. 48–50Google Scholar). Their punishment – they were demoted to industrial work – spurred workers to protest since, as they said, “industry is not penal servitude”. This punishment indicated the real sentiments of an elite which was soon to resort to a “workerist” ideology. As Arturo Labriola wrote (Au de là du capitalisme et du socialisme (Paris, 1931), p. 13),. “il n'est pas de classes de gens où la haine du travail manuel soit plus vive que parmi ces éléments d'origine ouvrier [I would say “popular” in general] nouveaux venus aux délices de promulguer des décrets et de rédiger des circulates.”

¹⁵ The Shakhty affair has attracted the attention of Western scholars, who have tended to interpret it as a struggle between political power and technocratic ambitions. See Bailes, K., Technology and Society under Lenin and Stalin (Princeton, 1978)Google Scholar and Lampert, N., The Technical Intelligentsia and the Soviet State (London, 1979)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. A letter from Rozengol'ts to Ordzhonikidze in 1928–1929 shows that to Bolshevik leaders sabotage meant attitudes more than actual crimes. See RTsKhIDNI, fond 85. (Ordzhonikidze), op. 1/sekr., d. 91.

¹⁶ I believe that, as a rule, the term “manager” should not be used to refer to Soviet industry's administrators, particularly in the 1930s.

¹⁷ KPSS o profsoiuzakh (Moscow, 1957), pp. 287–302. On these new bosses see Gladkov's Tsement. It is also probable that Stalin, who was adopting many policies associated with Trotsky, wanted to show that he was following his own line, and that he thus chose to attack specialists, whose defense had made Trotsky highly unpopular in party circles.

¹⁸ Romano, A., “‘Contadini in uniforme’ e potere sovietico alla metà degli anni Venti”, Rivista storica italiana, CIV (1992), pp. 730–795Google Scholar; Kun, M., Bukharin. Ego druz'ia i vragi (Moscow, 1992), p. 229Google Scholar.

¹⁹ On the 8th Party Congress (1919) see “Stenogramma zasedanii voennoi sektsii”, Izvestiia TsK (1989), pp. 135–190. The Stalinist leadership of the 10th Army was accused of generously using whipping and corporal punishment to discipline its “proletarian” soldiers.

²⁰ See Tol'stopiatov's report to the 8th Trades Union Congress (December 1928), Stenotchet (Moscow, 1929), p. 332; Fainsod, Smolensk under Soviet Rule, pp. 306ff.; Maizel', D., “Rezul'taty perevoda predpriiatii na 7-chasovoi […]”, Voprosy truda, 3 (1930)Google Scholar; SSSR, Gosplan, Trud v SSSR, 1926–30 (Moscow, 1930), p. xiGoogle Scholar; NKT SSSR, Trud v SSSR k XVI part, s'ezdu (Moscow, 1930), p. 102Google Scholar; Finarov, A.P., “Perevod promyshlennykh predpriiatii na 7-chasovoi […]”, Istoriia SSSR, 6 (1959), pp. lOlffGoogle Scholar.

²¹ The following collections of documents contain many references to the beginnings of shock work and the opposition of older workers to it: Politicheskii i trudovoi pod'em rabochego klassa SSSR (Moscow, 1956), pp. 101–102, 214; Sotsialisticheskoe sorevnovanie na predpriiatiiakh Leningrada (Leningrad, 1961), pp. 7, 31, 36; Pokoleniia udarnikov (Leningrad, 1963), pp. 8, 36–37; Marsh udarnikh brigadov, 1921–41 (Moscow, 1965), pp. 38, 153–157, 204; Sotsialisticheskoe sorevnovanie v SSSR (Moscow, 1965), pp. 48–49; Industrializatsiia SSSR, 1929–32, p. 502.

²² Ibid. The VLKSM went as far as defending the role of informers inside factories who had been attacked by the unions (Koms. Pravda, 28 July 1929; Trud, 30 July 1929; Sots, vestnik, 15, 19 August 1929).

²³ Vos'moi S'ezd professional'nykh soivzov SSSR (10–24 Dekabria 1928g), Stenotchet (Moscow, 1929); Marcucci, L., “Il primato dell' organizzazione. Biografia politica di L.M. Kaganovič” (Dottorato di ricerca, Università di San Marino, 1992)Google Scholar.

²⁴ Lampert, The Technical Intelligentsia, p. 110.

²⁵ On Tomskii's 1929 removal see Vaganov, F.M., “Razgrom pravogo uklona v VKP(b), 1928–30”, Voprosy istorii, 4 (1960)Google Scholar.

²⁶ Krivitskii, R., “Sots. sorevnovanie”, Ekon. obozrenie, 5 (1929)Google Scholar; Industrializatsiia 1926–28, pp. 401ff.; Sots, sorevnovanie na predpriiatiiakh Leningrada, p. 85; Politicheskii i trudovoi, pp. 214ff.

²⁷ On the methods employed to “recruit” workers see Iastrerov, G., “Rost proletarskogo iadra”, Partiinoe stroitel'stvo, 3–4 (1930)Google Scholar; “Postanovlenie TsK o dal'neishei rabote po regulirovaniu”, ibid.; A. Dmitriev, “Opyt massovoi verbovki”, ibid.; “Ukreplenie riadov partii”, ibid., 11–12 (1930); V. Riakobon', “Partiia i ee rezervy”, ibid., 3–4 (1930); K. Mezhol, “General'nyi smotr' riadov partii”, ibid., 10 (1930); and F. Ruzel', “Rost partii za dva goda”, ibid.

²⁸ Kosior, I., “Chistka partii i khoziaistvenniki”, TPG, 28 04 1929Google Scholar.

²⁹ In March the VSNKh newspaper opened a column, “Za edinolichnoe rukovodstvo fabrikoi-zavodom”, devoted to its criticism. The “triangle” remained a fictitious embellishment up to the end of 1935, when the situation briefly changed because industrial cadres were purged.

³⁰ Khlevniuk, O., “Prinuditel'nyi trud v ekonomike SSSR”, Svobodnaia mysl', 14 (1992), pp. 73–84Google Scholar. In the years that followed, the forced labor system developed into a multifold phenomenon and included the OGPU GULag camps, which held a few hundred thousand prisoners by the mid-1930s; the NKVD “labor colonies”; mass corvées, involving millions of peasants each year; and the villages of the 1.8 million peasants who were “dekulakized” in 1930–1931 (spetspereselentsy) which, despite a very high mortality rate and mass escapes reaching figures unheard of in the times of serfdom, continued to have about one million inhabitants throughout the decade because of new arrivals. See the various articles by Zemskov, V.N., especially his “GULag (istoriko-sotsiologicheskii aspekt)”, Sotsiologicheskie issledovaniia, 6–7 (1991), pp. 10–27Google Scholar and 3–17; Graziosi, A., “The Great Strikes of 1953 in Soviet Forced Labor Camps”, Cahiers du monde russe et soviétique, XXXIII (1992), pp. 419–445CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On corvées see Albrecht's, Karl-J. memoirs, Le socialisme trahi (Paris, 1943)Google Scholar. A German communist and a protégé of both Clara Zetkin and Münzenberg, Albrecht became a senior Soviet official before returning to Germany and collaborating with the Nazis. One should be circumspect in using his memoirs.

³¹ Kpss o profsoiuzakh, p. 376; Trud k XVI, pp. 60ff.

³² Lampert, The Technical Intelligentsia, pp. 112ff.; Lewin, The Making of the Soviet System, p. 226; a NKT comment to this effect is related in Zagorsky, Wages and Regulations, p. 25. Workers said similar things: see Lampert, The Technical Intelligentsia, pp. 14, 112ff.; Fainsod, Smolensk under Soviet Rule, pp. 306ff.

³³ See Tol'stopiatov, I., “Usilif' bor'bu za truddistsiplinu”, Voprosy truda, 8 (1929)Google Scholar.

³⁴ For the 1923 survey see Lampert, The Technical Intelligentsia, pp. 27–28; the 1923 Central Committee papers in the Trotsky Archives, T 2964; Kheinman, S.A., “K kharakteristike sostava kadrov promyshlennosti SSSR”, Ekon. obozrenie, 12 (1929)Google Scholar, 1 and 2 (1930). Workers sometimes murdered or maimed this kind of cadre. The phenomenon was widespread enough to be given a name, bykovshchina (in November 1928 a Skorokhod worker, Bykov, shot his newly promoted foreman; see Sots, sorevnovanie na pred. Leningrada, p. 315). In the following years the already extensive powers of industrial administrators were progressively strengthened in order to increase the effectiveness of coercion on peasant workers. They thus became true serf-superintendents (prikazchiki), acting on behalf of the new lord of the country.

³⁵ On dismissals see note 10 as well as L.M., , “Naem rabochei sily”, Statistika truda, 8 (1929)Google Scholar; Kallistratov, I., “Trudovaia distsiplina”, Statisticheskoe obozrenie, 10 (1929)Google Scholar; Zaromskii, A., “Na bor'bu s tekuchest'iu”, Voprosy truda, 9 (1930)Google Scholar; and lndustrializatsia 1929–32, pp. 382–383.

³⁶ For data on industrial injuries and absenteeism see note 10. On labor turnover see Trud v SSSR, 1934 (Moscow, 1935), pp. 140ff.; Tntd v SSSR, 1936 (Moscow, 1936), pp. 95ff.; Industrializatsiia 1929–32, pp. 439ff.; and Industrializatsiia 1933–37, p. 421. Despite official complaints, Soviet industrial cadres soon began to appreciate the significance of labor turnover and to use it to select a “convenient” workforce by getting “rid of elements not willing to work with fervor” (in TsPKP, Otchet 1921 g. (Bakhmut, 1922), pp. 206ff.).

³⁷ The figures for wage levels in 1928 are drawn from official statistics (Trud 1930, p. xxii for wages); Schwarz, Labor in the Soviet Union', and Barber, J., “The Standard of Living of Soviet Industrial Workers”, in Bettelheim, C. (ed.), L'industrialisation de I'Urss (Paris, 1981), pp. 109–122Google Scholar. For the comments of foreign workers see my “Foreign Workers in Soviet Russia, 1920–40”, International Labor and Working Class History, 33 (1988), pp. 38–59; and “Visitors from Other Times”, Cahiers du monde russe et soviétique, XXIX (1988), pp. 161–180 (an expanded, combined version of these two essays was published in Graziosi, A., Industria e stato in Unione Sovietica, 1917–1953 (Naples, 1993)Google Scholar). See also “Platforma soiuza marksistov-lenintsev (grappa Riutina)”, Izvestiia TsK KPSS, 11 (1990), p. 168 and “Collectivisation, revoltes paysannes” for data on the actual food rations given to workers in Ukraine in 1930. For the effects of this fall in real wages see Strumilin's study on the civil war years, which in this were so similar to the 1930s: Zarabotnaia plata i proizvovitel'nost truda v 1913–22 (Moscow, 1923).

³⁸ This fact, reported by several Soviet sources including Istoriia rachikh Moskvy (Moscow, 1983), pp. 206ff., is confirmed by Western studies such as those by, Barber, J., “Soviet Workers and the State, 1928–41”, Crees papers (1980)Google Scholar, and Kuromiya's, H.Stalin's Industrial Revolution. Politics and Workers, 1928–32 (Cambridge, 1988)Google Scholar. Also OGPU reports on the workers' mood confirm this point. See for example those which can be found in RTsKhIDNI, f. 17 (Central Committee), op. 85s, dd. 213, 307, 311.

³⁹ On the OGPU reports in Russian archives see Depretto, J.P., “L'opinion ouvrière (1928–32)”, Revue des Etudes Slaves, LXVI (1994), pp. 55–60CrossRefGoogle Scholar; N. Werth, “Une source inèdite: les svodki de la Tchèka-OGPU”, ibid., pp. 17–27.

⁴⁰ Ostapenko, I. P., “Iz istorii proizvodstvennykh soveshchanii”, Voprosy istorii, 6 (1958)Google Scholar; Industrializatsiia 1926–28, pp. 405–406. See Kuznetsov, S., “Massovaia rabota-na nep-reryvku”, Partiinoe stroit., 1 (1929)Google Scholar on the uninterrupted working week; see also Trud k XVI, pp. 17–18. There are some beautiful letters from Moscow workers in Sots, vestnik. See for example 23, 5 December 1929.

⁴¹ See note 22. Material on the opposition to shock work of skilled workers and old foremen (who had often once been skilled workers) may also be found in Pervyi s'ezd udarnykh brigad. Sbornik dokumentov (Moscow, 1959), pp. 39, 40, 69, 80, 112, 143, 158, and in Politicheskii i trudovoi, p. 215.

⁴² In the summer of 1929 Trud repeatedly denounced the fact that hazardous occupations, until then either forbidden or protected, were now becoming “a matter of heroism”; holidays became working days for the sake of industrialization; whole shifts had to carry on working “voluntarily” until they had met their “pledges”, etc.

⁴³ “Proverka vypol'neniia reshenii TsK”, Partiinoe stroitel'stvo, 7–8 (1930).

⁴⁴ In 1930 the NKT (Trud k XVI, p. 20) denounced the fact that workers were working in “factories, shops and yards that would be closed were labor protection legislation to be respected” and that conditions were worse in heavy industry and on new building sites. In Magnitogorsk, for example, shock workers worked twelve hours a day, without a break, and often froze to death (Scott, J., Behind the Urals (Bloomington, 1973Google Scholar); Frankfurt, S., Men and Steel (Moscow, 1935), p. 74Google Scholar, for Kuznetsk).

⁴³ Among workers “who had made 1917” and had stayed in the factories, this defeat was borne with a feeling of shame for the consequences of their own efforts. See for example Ciliga, A., Dieci anni dietro il sipario di ferro, 1 (Rome, 1951), p. 77Google Scholar.

⁴⁶ Lewin, The Making of the Soviet System, pp. 38ff., 302ff., has spoken of “deculturation, criminal behaviors, unpalatable countercultures”, etc. One should add to this an explosion of sectarianism and popular religious movements, confirmed by some recently published archival documents (see Werth, N., “Le pouvoir sovié” Revue d'itudes comparatives Est-Ouest, XXIV (1993), pp. 41–106CrossRefGoogle Scholar). This general picture, strengthened by new research being carried out in Russian archives, fits the official Soviet data published in the 1920s and after 1956 and casts serious doubts on some of the 1970s and 1980s Western scholarship on the Soviet working classes (surveyed by Rossum, Leo van, “Western Studies of Soviet Labour During the Thirties”, International Review of Sodal History, XXXV (1990), pp. 433–453Google Scholar).

⁴⁷ Sots, sorevnovanie na pred. Leningrada, p. 318; Kolomichenko, I., “Sozdanic traktornoi promyshlennosti”, Istoriia SSSR, 1 (1957), pp. 80ffGoogle Scholar.; Kuromiya, Stalin's Industrial Revolution.

⁴⁸ I believe that even the best Western historiography gave too much credit to these complaints, perhaps because it hoped to detect in them a proof of workers' resistance.

⁴⁹ Erenburg, I., II secondo giorno (Rome, 1945), p. 42Google Scholar; Kataev, V., Time, Forward! (Bloomington, 1976), p. 332Google Scholar; Trotsky's Diary in Exile, 1935 (Cambridge, Mass., 1976) and Moscow News, 29, 29 July 1990. In 1920s novels like Nikandrov's Ruda one could instead read: ”Yes, we are the derevenshchina […] the ‘dark ones’ […] Every day we walk 10 miles to the factory, not because we need to work, but because we are greedy ]…[” At the 8th Trades Union Congress (p. 31) Tomskii had invited skilled workers to understand that newcomers too were ”workers, with their own inner life”.

⁵⁰ SSSR na stroike, 3 (1931); K probleme, 3, p. 60; Trotsky Archives, T 922–923.

⁵¹ Goudov, I., Le destin d'un ouvrier soviétique (Moscow, 1978)Google Scholar; Stakhanov, A., Rasskaz o moei zhizni (Moscow, 1937)Google Scholar; Labour in the Land of Socialism, 1st Stakhanovite Conference (Moscow, 1936); Istoriia rabochego klassa Sibiri, 1917–37, p. 248; Biul. oppozitsii, 47 (January 1936).

⁵² Grossman, V., Vie et destin (Paris, 1980), p. 467Google Scholar.

⁵³ Lewin, The Making of the Soviet System, p. 100.

⁵⁴ Stalin, I., “Nuova situazione, nuovi compiti dell' edificazione economica” (06 1931)Google Scholar, in Questioni del leninismo (Moscow, 1946).

⁵⁵ K probleme, 3, p. 34; Ruzel', “Rost partii za dva goda”; Advienko, M., “Sdvigi v strukture proletariata”, Planovoe khoziaistvo, 6–7 (1932)Google Scholar; Trud v SSSR, 1936, pp. 307ff.; Drobyzhev, V. Z., “Rol' rabochego klassa v formirovanii komandnykh kadrov promyshlennosti”, Istoriia SSSR, 4 (1961)Google Scholar; Kuromiya, Stalin's Industrial Revolution.

⁵⁶ I believe that these roots help to explain the attraction of the Stalinist “workerism” of 1928–1931 on many Western academics in the 1970s and 1980s, and particularly those with a “New Left” past.

⁵⁷ See Sternhell, Z., Ni Droite, Ni Gauche (Paris, 1983), pp. 39Google Scholar, 44, 88–90, on the Cercle Proudhon and, in particular, on Edouard Berth, who later joined the Communist Party.

⁵⁸ Scherrer, J., Georges Sorel en Russie, in Julliard, J. (ed.), Georges Sorel et son temps (Paris, 1985)Google Scholar.

⁵⁹ Medvedev, R., Lo stalinismo (Milan, 1972), p. 191Google Scholar.

⁶⁰ In 1936 Gastev was in charge of preparing cadres for the Stakhanovite movement (Bailes, K. E., “Gastev and the Soviet Controversy over Taylorism”, Soviet Studies, 3 (1977)Google Scholar). Spengler's 1918 hymns to cement, steel and men of steel were commented on in the USSR by Piatakov, G.L., “Filosofiia sovremennogo imperializma”, Krasnaia Nov' 7 (1922), PP. 182–197Google Scholar.

⁶¹ Spendel, G., Gli intellettuali sovietici degli anni Venti (Rome, 1979), pp. 24ff.Google Scholar; Fitzpatrick, s., The Commissariat of Enlightenment (Cambridge, 1970)Google Scholar.

⁶² Spendel, Gli intellettuali sovietid, pp. 17, 21. In 1913 Lenin called Lunacharskii a charlatan and claimed Gorky and Lunacharskii's ideology was “something unbelievably confused, contorted and reactionary”.

⁶³ Gil'bert, M., “K voprosu o sostave promyshlennykh rabochikh v gody grazhdanskoi voiny”, Istoriia proletariata SSSR (1934), pp. 208ffGoogle Scholar. and (1935), pp. 143ff.; Shkaratan, Problemy.

⁶⁴ As Vittorio Foa reminded me, What is to be done? contained a great deal of scorn and contempt for workers.

⁶⁵ Shock work, vydvizhenstvo and the attack on the unions were a mockery of these good intentions. This helps to explain why more than a few leftists fell for the new Stalinist policy at first.

⁶⁶ Bukharin, N. (and Piatakov, G.), The Economics of the Transition Period (1919)Google Scholar, reprinted in The Politics and Economics of the Transition Period (London, 1979); Osinskii, N., “O stroitel'stve sotsializma”, Kommunist (Moscow), 1 and 2 (1918)Google Scholar.

⁶⁷ Even Rakovsky, possibly the best of the old Bolsheviks, spoke in 1920 of the necessity to treat peasants with “an iron rod”. On the methods employed see M. Wehner, “Krest'ianskoe soprotivlenie, golod i reaktsiia pravitel'stva, 1921–22”, to be published in Cahiers du monde russe.

⁶⁸ See Trotsky's, writings in Sochineniia, XV, Khoziaistvennoe stroitel'stvo (Moscow, 1925Google Scholar) (some are reprinted in How the Revolution Armed, 1–3 (London, 1979–1981)). Trotsky spoke of the necessity to “organize emulation in detail” (thus pointing to sorevnovanie's lack of spontaneity since its very beginning; see too Lenin's article “How to organize sorevnovanie”). Trotsky also defended the extension of edinonachalie within industry, maintaining that factories should be directed by people with powers similar to those of “military commissars”. He threatened to shoot “labor deserters”; requested the state of siege in the mines in the Urals, where workers did not behave like “true” proletarians. He was ready to “uncover” plots in order to introduce harsh antilabor measures, and he published articles with titles anticipating the antilabor measures of 1928–1929, such as “How to fight absenteeism”, “Fighting against labor desertion”, and “On labor discipline”.

⁶⁹ Deutscher, I., II profeta armato (Milan, 1956), pp. 694ff.Google Scholar, and Carr, E. H., La rivoluzione bohccvica, 1917–23 (Turin, 1964), p. 635Google Scholar.

⁷⁰ Something similar had already happened in the Red Army, where tsarist officers often behaved better than volunteers. See Figes, O., “The Red Army and Mass Mobilization”, Past and Present, 129 (1990), pp. 168–221CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and 8th Party Congress, “Stenogramma zasedanii voennoi sektsii”.

⁷¹ In TsPKP, Otchet 1921 g., pp. 294ff. See also my “At the Roots of Soviet Industrial Relations and Practices: Piatakov's Donbass in 1921”, to be published in Cahiers du monde russe, XXXVI (1995).

⁷² 8th Party Congress, “Stenogramma zasedanii voennoi sektsii”.

⁷³ Quite interesting from this point of view are the papers of the Politburo commission headed in 1922 by Ordzhonikidze, in RTsKhlDNI, fond 85, op. 23, d. 1–12. See also my article quoted in note 71.

⁷⁴ A large part of the country was transformed into a huge NKTP company town. In a letter written to Ordzhonikidze after a tour in the Urals in 1933, Piatakov noted that “the city soviet, the governing bodies of the provinces (raiony), the trade unions, the militia, the GPU, the GOSBANK, the courts, etc.” were housed in buildings owned by the NKTP and lived on its allowances. “In fact, the director (of the factory) decides arbitrarily to give or not to give. This leads to conflicts” (in RTsKhlDNI, fond 85, op. 1/sekr., d. 136). This helps us understand the scope of the animosity Stalin could utilize in his assault on the NKTP in 1935–1937.

⁷⁵ Shliapnikov, A., “Nashi raznoglasiia”, Pravda, 18 01 1924Google Scholar.

⁷⁶ Spendel, GU intellettuali sovietici, p. 35.

⁷⁷ Gross, B., Willi Miinzenberg (East Lansing, MI, 1974)Google Scholar; Gruber, H., “Willi MUnzenberg. Propagandist for and against the Comintern”, International Review of Social History, X (1965), pp. 188–210CrossRefGoogle Scholar and ”Willi Miinzenberg's German Communist Propaganda Empire”, Journal of Modern History, 3 (1966). Recently a conference devoted to Miinzenberg and his work was held in France.

⁷⁸ I was unable to locate his autobiography, Kein Bedarf an Weltgeschichte. Geschichte eines Lebens (Wiesbaden, 1950). In the late 1930s Barthel published books like Deutsche Männer in roten Ural (1938) and Kaukasisches Abenteuer: Deutsche Bauern in Russland (1941) in Germany.

⁷⁹ Radek's letters are in RTsKhlDNI, fond 85, op. 1/sekr., d. 79. I quote from them in my “ G.L. Piatakov (1890–1937): A Mirror of Soviet History”. In previous years Radek had been an enemy of German trade unionism, whose “conservatism” he judged to be one of the main obstacles to revolution.

⁸⁰ D. Steila, “The Experience of the War in the Reflections of Left Bolshevism”, to be published in Cahiers du monde russe.

⁸¹ Goldman, E., Living My Life (New York, 1970), pp. 730ffGoogle Scholar.

⁸² Even the then current definition of the aims of literature – “literature must promote the construction of the socialist society” – showed that intellectuals were now considered “builders” of myths for the masses.

⁸³ An English translation of Gorky's, letter has been published in Political Archives of the Soviet Union, 2 (1990)Google Scholar.

⁸⁴ Moscow News, 29, 29 July 1990.

⁸⁵ In a sense, with SSSR na stroike Piatakov was continuing a family tradition, though on a much larger scale. At the beginning of the century his father, one of Kiev's wealthiest industrialists, used to publish volumes devoted to his factories. They contained many illustrations of machines, chimneys, and housing projects, etc., but none of workers. See for example Mfariinskii sveklosakharnii zavod (Kiev, 1909).

⁸⁶ Bonnell, V. E., in “The Peasant Woman in the Stalinist Political Art of the 1930s”, American Historical Review, XCIII (1993), pp. 55–82CrossRefGoogle Scholar, reaches conclusions that are some-times not too far from, but less explicit than, mine. “The Potemkin Village” is the title of a chapter in Fitzpatrick, S., Stalin's Peasants (Oxford, 1994)Google Scholar.

⁸⁷ Ginzburg, L., “Bol'nye voprosy orgnabora”, Voprosy truda, 7 (1932)Google Scholar; Antipova, I.V., “Iz istoriia sozdanita Magnitogorskogo […]”, Istoriia SSSR, 5 (1958)Google Scholar; Jz istorii Magnitogorskogo metallurgkheskogo kombinata. Sbornik dokumentov (Cheliabinsk, 1965). Even Ordzhonikidze spoke of atrocious conditions during his visit to Magnitogorsk.

⁸⁸ Obviously the former “builds” too, but not in the sense understood by the latter.

⁸⁹ Trud XVI, p. 4.

⁹⁰ Ordzhonikidze is quoted by Lampert, The Technical Intelligentsia, p. 117; Piatakov's 1930s ideas on the role of the trade unions can be found in his speeches to the NKTP Soviets in 1934–1935.