Abstract
On the morning of 1 June 1962, foundry workers at the Novocherkassk Electric Locomotive Works (NEVZ), which employed 13,000 people, began a strike that soon spread to most of the industrial enterprises of this southern provincial town of 130,000. The labor protest was set off by the Soviet government's announcement of a 25-30 per cent increase in the price of meat, meat products, and butter. The workers were also angered by recent piece-rate reductions and increases in output norms, a centrally mandated policy that had significantly cut their wages. Food shortages, a chronic housing crisis, poor work conditions, as well as Nikita Sergeevich Khrushchev's renewed and more forceful denunciation of Stalin at the 22nd Party Congress in October 1961, are all part of the larger background to this conflict.
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