Abstract
The 1930s were marked by a sharp increase in major construction work,1 but, paradoxically, we do not know much about the building workers: in spite of their numbers, they have not caught the attention of historians and have been the subject of few publications. It is not only a question of better understanding of an important section of the working class. Much more is at stake, because building sites provide a privileged view of the industrialisation of the USSR. A systematic study would allow us to consider from a fresh standpoint several questions crucial to the understanding of Soviet development: the extent of mechanisation and the relative importance of Soviet and imported equipment; the place of manual work; and the contribution of prisoners to the development of the national economy. These questions greatly exceed the framework of the present study, which is a first attempt to address just some of the problems. We will examine in turn manpower, productivity, building-site equipment, and the role of the labour camps.
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Notes
N. V. Milyakov’s book Nachal’nyi etap formirovaniya investitsionnogo kompleksa SSSR (Moscow, 1988) came into our hands too late for us to be able to use it.
M. T. Gol’tsman, ‘Sostav stroitel’nykh rabochikh SSSR v gody pervoi pyatiletki (po materialam profsoyuznykh perepisei 1929 i 1932 gg.)’, in the collection Izmeneniya v chislennosti i sostave sovetskogo rabochego klassa (Moscow, 1961).
See S. Z. Ginzburg, O proshlom — dlya budushchego (Moscow, 1983) p. 163. The author of these memoirs, a building engineer, was a deputy to G. K. Ordzhonikidze from 1929 to 1937 (working successively in the Workers’ and Peasants’ Inspection, at VSNKh and at the Commissariat for Heavy Industry).
V. S. Lel’chuk, lndustrializatsiya SSSR: istoriya, opyt, problemy (Moscow, 1984) pp. 132–4.
It is true that the starting-point in 1932 was very low. See N. Jasny, pp. 106, 146–8; R. W. Davies, p. 10. In 1937, productivity dropped by 2.1 per cent compared with 1936. E. Zaleski, La planification stalinienne (Economica. 1984) p. 320.
Ch. Rakovsky, ‘The Five Year Plan in Crisis’, Critique, no. 13 (1981), p. 32. (Translation of an article of July–August 1930, which appeared in Byulleten’ Oppozitsii, Nov.–Dec. 1931).
V. A. Kravchenko, I Chose Freedom (New York, 1946) p. 78. See also Stroitel’naya promyslennost’, 1933, no. 6, p. 3 and V. S. Lel’chuk, p. 187.
C. Rakovsky, p. 31 and T. Kirstein, ‘The Ural-Kuznetsk combine: a case-study in Soviet investment decision-making’, in R. W. Davies (ed.), Soviet Investment for Planned Industrialisation, 1929–1937: Policy and Practice (Berkeley Slavic Specialities, 1984), p. 93.
A. D. Rassweiler, ‘Soviet Labour Policy in the First Five Year Plan: The Dneprostroi Experience’, Slavic Review, Summer 1983, p. 235.
V. N. Zuikov, Sozdanie tyazheloi industrii na Urale (1926–1932 gg.) (Moscow, 1971) p. 167.
V. Shukshin, ‘Vybirayu derevnyu na zhitel’stvo’, Besedy po yasnoi lune (Moscow, 1975) p. 29.
A. Platonov, Kotlovan (Ann Arbor, 1979),
S. G. Wheatcroft, Soviet Studies, April 1981, p. 281.
For all this paragraph, see P. H. Solomon, ‘Soviet Penal Policy, 1917–1934: A reinterpretation’, Slavic Review. June 1980. pp. 200–3.
M. Heller, Le monde concentrationnaire et la littérature soviétique (Lausanne, 1974) pp. 65–6
D. J. Dallin and B. P. Nicolaevsky, Forced Labor in Soviet Russia (London. 1948) on. 181–2
A. Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago, vol. 2 (London, 1975) pp. 92–4.
K. Stainer, 7,000 jours en Sibérie (Paris 1983) p. 404; S. Rosefielde insists on this point in his article ‘The First “Great Leap Forward” Reconsidered: Lessons of Solzhenitsyn’s Gulag Archipelago’, Slavic Review (1980) No. 4 no. 570–1
S. Kuznets (eds), Economic Trends in the Soviet Union (Cambridge, Mass., 1963), p. 84.
D. J. Dallin, The Real Soviet Russia (New Haven, 1944), pp. 194–5; Dallin and Nicolaevsky, pp. 88–92.
P. Barton, L’institution concentrationnaire en Russie (1930–1957) (Paris, 1959) pp. 69–73, 75–7, 371.
S. Swianiewicz, Forced Labour and Economic Development (Oxford, 1965)
W. L. Blackwell, The Industrialisation of Russia: An Historical Perspective (London, 1970) pp. 112–15.
A. Solzhenitsyn, pp. 442–4, gives a much longer list; we have limited ourselves to those for which we have detailed information from the memoirs of M. Buber-Neumann, V. Shalamov, E. Ginzburg, G. Herling, K. Stainer and from P. I. Negretov, ‘How Vorkuta Began’, Soviet Studies (1977) no. 4, pp. 565–75.
D. Rousset, La société éclatée (Paris, 1973), pp. 759–65.
B. S. Utevskii, Sovetskaya ispravitel’no-trodovaya politika (Moscow, 1935) pp. 63–4. S. Firmin lists the following camps: Ukhta (oil and coal); Vorkuta (coal); island of Vaigats (lead and zinc); Yugorskii Shar (exploitation of spath fluorine); Karaganda (agriculture).
J. Miller, Soviet Studies, April 1952, pp. 365–86.
N. Jasny, ‘Labor and Output in Soviet Concentration Camps’, The Journal of Political Economy, October 1951, pp. 410, 412, 418; Dallin and Nicolaevsky, p. 138.
M. Buber-Neumann, Deportée en Siberie (Paris, 1986) pp. 98, 105, 114, 129–31, 135, 158, 160; it was sometimes a question of supplying a machine, cf. pp. 130–1, 133.
Y. Dombrovskii, Fakul’tet nenuzhnykh veshchei (Paris 1978) p. 160.
V. Azaev, ‘Vagon’, Druzhba Narodov (1988) no. 7, pp. 154–5.
N. Petrov, ‘Of camels and tractors’, Critique communiste, (1986), no. 55, p. 86. (Petrov was deported to Siberia as a ‘Trotskyite’ in 1937.)
P. Barton, p. 207; L. E. Hubbard, Soviet Labour and Industry (London, 1942) pp. 148–9; Dallin and Nicolaevsky, pp. 118–20. For a (rather unconvincing) critique of this theory see Jasny, op. cit., (note 78) p. 412.
Approximately 21,000 people out of a total of 51,700, according to A. V. Volchenko, Novokuznetsk v proshlom i nastoyashchem (Novokuznetsk, 1971), p. 112.
M. Ya. Sonin estimates that during the second plan at least 2 million workers (a ‘probable’ figure) left the building sites for industry or another non-agricultural sector; cf. Vosproizvodstvo rabochei sily i balans truda (Moscow, 1959) p. 154. See also R. P. Dadykin in Istoricheskie zapiski, no. 87 (1971), pp. 49–50.
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© 1992 Nick Lampert and Gábor T. Rittersporn
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Depretto, JP. (1992). Construction Workers in the 1930s. In: Lampert, N., Rittersporn, G.T. (eds) Stalinism: Its Nature and Aftermath. Studies in Soviet History and Society. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-12260-8_9
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