Abstract
In November 1935, Serafima Borisova was awarded a thousand-ruble bonus and a portable gramophone in recognition of her accomplishments as a Stakhanovite labor hero. Unlike Aleksei Stakhanov, for whom the honor was named, Borisova did not mine coal; she sold women’s clothing. As an exemplary saleswoman, Borisova carefully organized clothing displays, beautified her sales section, procured new designs and fabrics to meet consumer needs, and informed industries and cooperative artels what consumers wanted. In addition to meeting norms for sales, she provided excellent customer service.1
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Notes
For more on Stakhanovism see Lewis Siegelbaum, Stakhanovism and the Politics of Productivity in the USSR, 1935–1941 (Cambridge, 1988)
Donald Filtzer, Soviet Workers and Stalinist Industrialization: The Formation of Modern Soviet Production Relations, 1928–1941 (Armonk, 1986)
R. W. Davies and Oleg Khlevnyuk, “Stakhanovism and the Soviet Economy,” Europe-Asia Studies 54: 6 (September 2002): 867–904
Mary Buckley, “Krest’yanskaya gazeta and Rural Stakhanovism,” Europe-Asia Studies 46: 8 (1994): 1387–1407; idem, “Why be a Shock Worker or a Stakhanovite?” in Women in Russia and Ukraine, ed., Rosalind Marsh (Cambridge, 1996), 199–213; idem, Mobilizing Soviet Peasants: Heroines and Heroes of Stalin’s Fields (Lanham, 2006).
Despite its significant presence in retailing, scholars have largely ignored or misunderstood Stakhanovism in the retail sector. Julie Hessler briefly discusses it in “Culture of Shortages: A Social History of Soviet Trade, 1917– 1953,” Ph.D. diss., University of Chicago, 1996, 273–4. Her book, A Social History of Soviet Trade: Trade Policy, Retail Practices, and Consumption, 1917– 1953 (Princeton, 2004), does not provide any further examination of Stakhanovism. Leonard Hubbard devotes 2 sentences to Stakhanovism in Soviet Trade and Distribution (London, 1938), 256. He argues, incorrectly, that “the term Stakhanovite, strictly speaking, [was] not applied to shop assistants.”
I. Ia. Veitser, “Stakhanovskie metody — v torgovliu,” ST 12 (1935): 12.
Veitser quoted in M. Zernov and I. Dimant, “Stakhanovskie metody v rabote prodmagov,” ST 2 (1936): 52.
Z. Bolotin, “Stakhanovskie metody v sovetskoi torgovle,” ST 2 (1936): 8–9.
N. Strogov and D. Frenkel’, “Stakhanovskaia tekhnika torgovli tkaniami,” VST 6 (1938): 62–3; GASO 2108/1/20: 33–4; “Ratsionalizatorskie predlozhenüa v univermagakh,” ZKU 6 (1936): 1. Apparently Stakhanovites offered almost 700 additional proposals, but these proposals were more localized.
N. Strogov, “Izuchenie pokupatel’skogo sprosa v pokazatel’nykh univermagakh,” ST 9 (1936): 56–62
Iu. Berkovich, “Rastit’ podlinnykh stakhanovtsev torgovli,” ST 10 (1936): 19.
I. V. Stalin, “Rech’ na pervom vsesoiuznom soveshchanii stakhanovtsev,” Sochineniia I [XIV], 1934–1940 (Stanford, 1967), 89–90.
For more on the promotion of mass-produced novelty goods in the 1930s, see Jukka Gronow, Caviar with Champagne: Common Luxury and the Ideals of the Good Life in Stalin’s Russia (Oxford and New York, 2003).
Iu. Berkovich, “Stakhanovskoe dvizhenie v torgovle,” ST 12 (1935): 18; G. Nikolaev, “Zdes’ sorevnuiutsia po-nastoiashchemu,” ST, July 29 1937, 2.
L. Okun, “Stakhanovskoe dvizhenie v sel’skoi torgovle,” ST 7–8 (1936): 75.
I. Strogov, “Stakhanovskaia tekhnika torgovli galantereei,” VST 8–9 (1938): 57–9.
E. P. Golovina, “Borba partii za razvitie torgovli v period pobedi uprocheniia sotsializma, 1933–1941,” in Sbornik trudov, vol. 34, ed., Ministerstvo torgovli RSFSR (Leningrad, 1969), 277.
GARF 5452/28/176: 3–5; RGAE 7971/1/271: 26, 28–9; S. Likhov, “Molodye stakhanovtsy torgovli,” ST 3 (1936): 53–4.
I. Dimant and M. Zernov, “Ot stakhanovskogo mesiachnika — k povsednevnoi rabote po-stakhanovski,” ST 4–5 (1936): 42–9; GARF 5452/28/125: 64.
Gol’dman, “Stakhanovskie shkoly v torgovle,” ST 11 (1939): 41–7. Shvernik’s quote is on pp. 41–2.
Mary Buckley, “Categorizing Resistance to Rural Stakhanovism,” in Politics and Society under the Bolsheviks, eds., Kevin McDermott and John Morison (New York, 1999), 162, 172.
Siegelbaum, 198, 299; Filtzer, Soviet Workers, 179, 205; Leon Trotsky, The Revolution Betrayed (New York, 1972), 124; Buckley, “Why be a Shock Worker or Stakhanovite?” 205.
Buckley, “Categorizing Resistance,” 185; idem, “Krest’yanskaya gazeta and Rural Stakhanovism,” 1390; Roberta Manning, “Women in the Soviet Countryside on the Eve of World War II, 1935–1940,” in Russian Peasant Women, eds., Beatrice Farnsworth and Lynne Viola (Oxford, 1992), 221–2.
GARF 5452/28/9: 49; RGAE 7971/1/366: 61–4; GASO 2108/1/20: 23–23ob; TsDNISO 30/6/177: 68–9; TsGARUz 91/8/156: 1, 7, 14–15, 26–7, 35; 91/8/157: 2–3, 5; Ekel’chik, “Direktor otorvavshiisia ot massy,” ST, March 26 1937, 2; E. Sadal’skaia, “Direktor Panteleiimov ne liubit kritiki,” Rabotnitsa 11 (1937): 12
L. Mirkina, “Istoriia odnogo ratsionalizatskogo predlozhenia,” Stakhanovets torgovli 2 (1936): 2.
A. Osipov, “Krugovaia poruka,” Stakhanovets torgovli 2 (1936): 3; Sadal’skaia, 12; Ekel’chik, 2
M. Zernov, “Opyt raboty instrukturov po vnedreniiu stakhanovskikh metodov raboty,” ST 7–8 (1936): 81.
Dimant and Zernov, “Za novyi pod″em stakhanovskogo dvizheniia v torgovle,” VST 1–2 (1938): 35.
For more on Stakhanovite “celebrities” in industry see Siegelbaum, 181; Stephen Kotkin, Magnetic Mountain: Stalinisrn as Civilization (Berkeley, 1995), 210–11.
Choi Chatterjee, “Soviet Heroines and the Language of Modernity, 1930–1939,” in Women in the Stalin Era, ed., Melanie Ilic (Basingstoke, 1999), 49.
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© 2008 Amy E. Randall
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Randall, A.E. (2008). “Revolutionary Bolshevik Work”. In: The Soviet Dream World of Retail Trade and Consumption in the 1930s. Consumption and Public Life. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230584327_5
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