How backward workers became soviet: Industrialization of labour and the politics of efficiency under the Second Five‐Year Plan, 1933–1937

Abstract

The daily round of a Soviet worker in the I 930s took her past many walls adorned with posters depicting people at work. One of these posters might show a construction site, with youthful workers, large cranes and trucks, in the background a spectacular giant of a power station taking shape. Another poster might show a large well-lit factory floor, gleaming machine tools ordered in clean lines, production workers busy in an unhectic but purposeful attitude, behind them a graphical display of production figures. The first type of picture was particularly apposite to the period of the First Five-Year Plan (I928-32), the primary purpose of which was summarized by the slogan 'acquisition of technology': the building of new railways, waterways, power stations, furnaces and factories, and the importation of technology. The second type of picture was particularly apposite to the period of the Second Five-Year Plan (0933-7), the purpose of which was summarized by the slogan 'mastery of technology': the creation of an industrial civilization that would make full use of the expensively acquired technological capacity. The present article is concerned with the meanings and situations on factory shop-floors during the latter period, the 'formative years' of the Soviet industrial culture.