Stalinist Period Research Articles

Equality, Welfare, Myth, and Memory: The Artek Pioneer Camp at the Height of the Khrushchev Era

Equality, Welfare, Myth, and MemoryThe Artek Pioneer Camp at the Height of the Khrushchev Era Mark B. Smith (bio) Artek, with its high-quality buildings and glorious Crimean location, was the most famous Pioneer camp in the Soviet Union. Following its foundation in the 1920s, its significance grew under Iosif Stalin, attracting children from elite families. By 1960, the camp had become an instantly recognizable institution inside the Ukrainian Republic of the USSR, with an all-union cultural presence and an international profile. It was also a gold-standard example of the relaunched post-Stalin welfare system. But if welfare was for everyone, and Artek had an elitist reputation, how did the camp’s social reality and cultural representation match up during the era of apparently proto-communist equality between 1953 and 1964? This article explores the myths and memories that constructed Artek as a Khrushchev-era welfare provider within the Soviet imaginary; it analyzes the lived experience of child welfare in Artek during that period; and it tests the competing pressures of elitism and equality in modulating access to Artek in the example year of 1960. Artek was an exceptional institution in the USSR, and its history is important in its own right, but it also offers a case study of how myths, memories, and social policy shaped childhood experiences during the Khrushchev era. ________ Established in 1925, Artek was inspired by Zinovii Solov́ev, a health-care reformer who imagined a “camp-sanatorium” for children. He found the [End Page 255] location he wanted on the Crimean coast, near the foothills of the Aiu-Dag mountain range. At the start, the camp had places for only 80 children and depended on funding from the RSFSR Red Cross, which Solov́ev himself chaired. Yet within three years, the camp was open year-round, based in permanent buildings, not summer-only tents. By 1930, the complex was divided into a “lower” and an “upper” camp with a total annual capacity of 2,040 children.1 At its post-Khrushchev peak, the Artek complex connected eight camps along the Crimean coast. It had 250 buildings, a canteen for 1,000 diners, a stadium for 10,000 spectators, a staff of 2,000, health-care facilities, classrooms, cinemas, swimming pools, and a post office. Four thousand five hundred Pioneers attended simultaneously in high season.2 Artek was a Pioneer showcase. Established in 1922 within the All-Union Leninist Communist Union of Youth (VLKSM), or Komsomol, the Pioneers were the core extracurricular club for boys and girls aged between 10 and 14. For all their ideological significance, the Pioneers were more akin to Boy Scouts plus Girl Guides than Hitler Youth, even in the Stalin period. By the Khrushchev era, the Pioneers were deeply entrenched in Soviet society. In 1960, 93 percent of eligible children were members.3 More than one-quarter of them (4.4 million) spent time in a Pioneer camp during that year.4 The quality of these rural or seaside facilities was inconsistent. While they were usually located in ecologically clean and quite often in beautiful surroundings, many were spartan, a few had extremely poor facilities, some had insufficient staff, and most offered strikingly unvaried cuisine. Other camps were located within cities, where children spent the day undertaking activities with child-care professionals, sometimes in temporary facilities in housing districts, before going home in the evenings. It was a surprising truth of the Soviet welfare system that the quality of such institutions as children’s camps depended on the identity of their formal owner. The Soviet “welfare state” did not fit within an undifferentiated “state” but melted into an overlapping landscape of varied public institutions. Welfare facilities, from housing blocks to pensions offices, from kindergartens to polyclinics, were the property of different institutions within the Soviet economy. Some of these institutions were “central”: ministries, the Party, and related agencies, including the Komsomol. Often the most [End Page 256] sought-after welfare providers, such as Kremlin Polyclinic no. 1, were owned within this sector. Unsurprisingly, the top-of-the-scale Pioneer camps, most famously Artek, Orlenok (on the Russian side of the Soviet Black Sea coast), and Zerkaĺnyi...

Soviet historical science (the Stalinist period) in modern understanding: the change of axiological models

Soviet historical science (the Stalinist period) in modern understanding: the change of axiological models

Costume Tropology of Socialist Realism: Shifts in Vestimentary Semantics in the Texts of High and Late Stalinism

The article examines major modes of costume as a trope in the cultural texts of high and late Stalinism, primarily in journalism and official literature. Successive changes in these modes can be traced through shifts in vestimentary semantics. As the analysis of the texts shows, each period in the history of Stalinism is characterized by one dominant costume trope. Schematically, the evolution of costume tropology in the second half of the 1930s — early 1950s. follows the trajectory: costume as a metaphor for achievements in the period of high Stalinism — costume as a metonymy of socialism in the period of late Stalinism. The thesis is argued that the history of the Stalinist discourse of fashion can and should be considered as a branch of cultural policy, since the evolution of the official rhetoric of fashion correlated with changes in the political agenda and formed a vestimentary projection of the power discourse. Despite the significant differences in costume semantics in different periods of Stalinism, a single axiological basis of the costume in Stalinist culture is revealed: a combination of the state pride and personal modesty. It is also concluded that in the years of high and late Stalinism, the costume and the institution of the official “Soviet fashion” functioned in culture according to the principles of socialist realism and were, in fact, one of its offshoots. In other words, the costume was not merely a cultural text, but a socialist realist text of Stalinist culture.

Józef Hen i Józef Bau

The main subject of this article is Józef Hen’s 1955 short story Samotność (Loneliness). The prototype of its protagonist is Józef Bau, and the prototype of its main theme, the volume of poetry containing the poems “born from the nightmare of the death camp”, is his 1949 volume Cień przechodnia (The passer-by’s shadow), a work interesting both in terms of literature and art (graphics). Samotność is probably the only (and at the same time peculiar) expression of the reception of the volume Cień przechodnia. Hen and Bau met in 1945. The familiarity between the two writers, with Jewish roots, seems to result from a shared experience, the Jewish fate. In the case of Bau, who passed through the ghetto and concentration camps, this fate turned out to be traumatizing, as both his parents and his brother were murdered by the Germans. Nonetheless, the experiences of Hen, who fled to the East (the Soviet Union) in September 1939 and thus avoided similar torments, were painful too. Bau was the first person to report to Hen in detail what a concentration camp was. It seems that Samotność is, above all, a self-referential work, exploring the issue that has been and is still preoccupied with Hen as a writer and as a man who lost a number of his relatives during the war. By writing Samotność, as well as other works dealing the Holocaust and the loneliness of the survivors, Hen frees himself from his own trauma, and also calls for the memory of the “Jewish tragedies” (which were displaced during the period of Stalinism and the domination of socialist realism).

The impact of the People’s Republic of Poland and events at the end of the 20th century on professional activity of contemporary jurists

The second half of the 20th century in Poland was full of momentous events. The consequences of many of them had their repercussions on the ground of application of law. The aftermath of World War II, the Stalinist period, the events of March 1968, people fleeing abroad, new socialist laws and systemic education, the functioning of the socialist economy, or the systemic changes of the 1990s are only the most significant events, the legal consequences of which are still felt today. Most of these events are still discussed in the media and political space at the beginning of the third decade of the 21st century. Current lawyers are also sometimes involved in resolving these long-standing issues both with their clients and in the public space.The study demonstrates that due to the passage of time, legal and cultural changes, the events of the past are less and less frequent among Polish jurists. Media and political reports are created artificially without support in the actual work of the Polish judiciary and lawyers. Polish legal professionals emphasise that old cases from the 20th century are increasingly rare in their professional practice, while media reports are exaggerated.The research was based on interviews with representatives of Polish bar associations of advocates and legal advisers across the country. It was conducted using semi-structured interviews and content analysis. The research belongs to the paradigm of sociology of law and oral history.

«Чуждый ленинизму шаблон сковывает силы партии»: ветеран правящей партии С. С. Старостин о проблемах СССР середины 1980-х гг. в письме к М. С. Горбачеву

The article studies public discussions concerning development of the USSR by 1985. The relevance of the topic is due to the need to study various points of view existing in the Soviet society at the dawn of Perestroika. The basis of the study is classical methods of source analysis: narrative and historical-genetic. The scientific significance is due to the fact that the analytical note by S.S. Starostin on the problems of late Soviet society is being introduced into scientific use for the first time. The study fills the gap in scientific knowledge on public discussions in the USSR by mid-1980s, when the policy of Perestroika prompted both reformers and relative “conservatives” to discuss a new path of the country’s development. Of particular interest are Starostin’s ideas, which the authorities tried to implement at the final stage of Perestroika. The basis for the study is archival document found in the fond of the former chairman of the Soviet Council of Ministers N. I. Ryzhkov (fond 653 of the Russian State Archive of Socio-Political History). In April 1985, Starostin’s note was sent to M. S. Gorbachev, who had recently assumed the post of General Secretary of the Central Committee of the CPSU. The article is to study the nostalgic view on the development of the USSR on the eve of Perestroika. It attempts to reconstruct the value system of the author of the letter. The study is based on traditional methodology of classical source studies. The analyzed document is a monument of social thought reflecting disappointment with the Brezhnev era and hopes for a new Soviet leader. It has been established that, according to his ideological views, Starostin can be called a supporter of the mobilization model of economy built on moral and political incentives. He favoured a retrospective presentation of problems in comparison with the Stalin period. The main problem of the USSR indicated in his text is political mistakes of the authorities after J. V. Stalin. Starostin harshly criticized A. N. Kosygin and departmentalism. He analyzed personnel policy and symptoms of the crisis of the Soviet society and political system of the USSR and stated moral degeneration of the Soviet elite and ordinary citizens. In his opinion, the era of Khrushchev and Brezhnev was characterized by a growth of social deviations (deceit, corruption, falsification of figures, theft, absenteeism) and bureaucracy. Starostin insisted on the need to develop institutions of direct democracy, referendums.

ПОЛИТИЧЕСКАЯ ЭКОНОМИЯ ПРОСТРАНСТВА: ПРОБЛЕМАТИКА РЕНТЫ И РАЗВИТИЕ ЭКОНОМИЧЕСКОЙ МЫСЛИ В СССР В 1930–1950-е гг.

The article analyzes the development of the rent theory in the Soviet Union in the 1930–1950s which would later become a conceptual basis for the environmental economics in the USSR. Its primary goal is to answer the question of why, after heated debates of the NEP era, the issue of rent completely disappeared from the academic discourse for almost fifteen years. The answer I offer is based on the analysis of the end of history ideologeme — the utopian idea that the development of planning by itself solves all economic and social problems in the country, including all forms of rent. The return of the rent problem back in the economic discourse in the late Stalin period should be understood in the context of the emergent political economy of socialism, a discipline aimed at the overcoming the utopian and antiscientific nature of the end of history ideology. This research also analyzes in a great detail the key article for the development of the rent theory in that period — I. D. Laptev’s “The collective farms’ revenue and differential rent” (1944). The result of the work is the conclusion that the reemergence of the rent theory in the Soviet economic discourse of the Stalin period was accompanied by its normalization — whereas in the 1920s, rent was understood as a heritage of capitalism violating such a key principle of socialism as the distribution according to labor, for I. D. Laptev, it was nothing but a “gift of nature”.

Ресайклинг Игоря Стравинского в журнале «Советская музыка» периода 1933–1966 годов

Stravinsky’s reputation in the Stalin era was tenuous, but in the early 1960s there was a strong surge of interest connected with his visit to Moscow. This metamorphosis of opinions was prepared and formed, among other things, through the press, in particular – in the chief Soviet music journal “Sovetskaya muzyka” (“Muzykal'naya Akademiya” since 1992). This research work is based on receptive methodology; the content analysis of materials during the period of 1933- 1966 demonstrates how in the conditions of almost complete failure to examine his music the critics created the reputation for him of a “formalist” and a “traitor,” and also demonstrated the attempt to “Sovietize” his emergence during the “Khrushchev thaw”. During the Stalin period, Stravinsky’s name appears in the journal only episodically, when he is arguably viewed as a representative of “bourgeois art.” In the early 1960s he was again labelled a Russian composer, and the attempt is even made of appraisal of his music, which is so remote from the Soviet musical style. Although it was not possible to “Sovietize” Stravinsky, such extreme changes of the Soviet authorities’ attitude of him emphasize the uniqueness of his artistic personality.

ПРИНЦИПМИРНОГОСПІВІСНУВАННЯДВОХСИСТЕМЯКДОКТРИНАПІСЛЯХХЗ'ЇЗДУКПССУ 1956 РОЦІ

The purpose of the article is to analyze one of the key moments in the history of the Soviet Union – the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in February 14-25, 1956. The task is to investigate the relationship between the two main ideas that were expressed at the sessions of the Congress by N. S. Khrushchev and party comrades: exposing the personality cult of J. V. Stalin and rethinking the idea of peaceful coexistence of the two systems, proposed by V. I. Lenin. The history of philosophy in Stalin's period, the struggle of dialectics with mechanists is analyzed, the influence of J. V. Stalin on changes in philosophy, which has acquired a dogmatic character thanks to the cult of personality, is demonstrated. Dialectics with its unity of opposites, being at the basis of all phenomena of nature and society, creates contradictions in the understanding of certain phenomena. That is why the concepts of "peace" and "war" acquire opposite connotations. After the exposure of the cult of personality, it is time for a new ideology, part of which is the recognition of terror in past and a peaceful orientation in foreign policy. The article analyzes the critical literature and transcripts of the congress' reports.

Activities of the state labour reserves system as an urbanization factor in after-war Ukraine (1945 – the early 1950s).

The article is devoted to analyzing the role, scale of influence and significance of the Labour Reserves system for the post-war urbanization processes in Ukraine. The State Labour Reserves (SLR) was a Soviet centralized structure that mobilized young people, trained skilled workers, and accumulated and distributed this new personnel among enterprises in strategic industries and infrastructure. The activity of the State Labour Reserves system of the USSR became a rather specific factor that played a significant role in the urban development of Ukraine during the period of Late Stalinism. The real impact of the Labour Reserves on urbanization processes was: – the mechanical movement of a significant number of young people from rural areas to cities; – the transformation of potential workers in the agricultural sector into industrial workers, increasing the share of the working class compared to the collective and state farm peasantry; – the creating conditions for inculcating the urban way of life to young people mobilized from the countryside, their incorporation into urban society. The real reasons for the establishment of forced conscription into SLR facilities were the general militarization of the economy and society at the time, as well as the unpopularity of the hard-working jobs to which conscripts were sent, effectively using non-economic coercion. It was assumed that a significant mass of young people had to move centrally from rural areas to industrial centres (that is, urban settlements). Youth appeals to SLR facilities during the post-war reconstruction led to the organized migration of about three-quarters of a million young people from rural areas to cities. The cities of Eastern Ukraine (mostly Donbas) were the most significant areas of such centralized movement under the auspices of the Labour Reserves. Soviet labour laws of the 1940s were analyzed. It was found that fleeing Labour Reserves and illegally leaving the workplace was considered a criminal offence and punishable by imprisonment. The USSR State Labour Reserves system became one of the tools to control and regulate urbanization processes in the country for the Stalinist totalitarian regime. Mobilized boys and girls were involved in non-agricultural sectors of the economy. They were forced to quickly get used to anonymous transactions among the large population of Ukrainian cities and inevitably changed their way of life, becoming part of a new generation of urban society. The research is based on materials from the Central State Archives of Supreme Bodies of Power and Government of Ukraine and the State Archives of Sumy region.

From Self-Criticism to Self-Destruction: The Re organization of the Canon of Soviet Aesthetics During the Period of Late Stalinism

From Self-Criticism to Self-Destruction: The Re organization of the Canon of Soviet Aesthetics During the Period of Late Stalinism

ХАЙРИ ГИМАДИ: ШТРИХИ К ПОРТРЕТУ: К 110-ЛЕТИЮ СО ДНЯ РОЖДЕНИЯ ТАТАРСКОГО ИСТОРИКА (1912–1961)

The article is the first research work on the biography of Khairi Gimadi, who was a bright representative of the Soviet school of historians, whose activities took place at the time of tighter ideological pressure on the Tatar intelligentsia. Kh. Gimadi’s works on the history of the Tatar ASSR were created in the context of the ongoing campaigns against “bourgeois objectivism” and “cosmopolitanism”, linguistic and political economic discussions. Being a loyal communist, he often had to sacrifice his scientific principles, and it ultimately led to the disillusionment with the current system and the tragic death of the historian. The article uses the method of oral history (in-depth interview), which played an important role in building a holistic picture of the life of Kh. Gimadi. For the first time, the personal file of the historian is introduced into a scientific circulation, the documents from which allow us to trace the pedagogical, scientific, and socio-political activities of the scholar. The most valuable are the memoirs and letters of Kh. Gimadi. These records are kept in his children’s personal archives and reflect the childhood and adolescence of the future historian: they describe in detail the years of mass famine in the Volga region, children homelessness, the work of the Children’s commissions and orphanages. The materials of the article may be useful for the researchers studying the development of the Humanities during the period of late Stalinism, the daily life of the Soviet children of the 1920s and the intelligentsia of the 1940s and 1950s.

Memento obětí totalitních režimů jako motor kariéry, nebo závazek kontinuity vědecké práce

Although totalitarianism has already been widely discussed in academia, the war victims still generate a lot of attention today. This article examines the transformation of academia in Central Europe after 1945 and the reflections of war victims among scholars. To what extent did these losses to science and the loss of personal friendships create an awareness of commitment to continuity in academic work, the need to push through reforms, and the establishment of new institutions? The author focuses on the experience and career prospects of Czech natural scientists (mathematicians, astronomers, physicists) who re-established themselves in the 1940s and 50s and who firmly opposed the essential elements of totalitarianism in their professions (binding ideology, mass party, monopoly on information, central management, planned economy). Although this definition corresponds to the Stalinist period, many categorical decisions and reforms started immediately after the war (planned economy, mass university studies, centralization of research, binding ideology of revolutionary justice). The article shows how the general secretary of the Czech Academy of Sciences and Arts, physicist Viktor Trkal, used the argument of victims when he accused his colleagues of collaboration. The students’ experience has diversified, as shown with two interviewees. The historiographical explanation of a too short post-war democracy replaced by “captive universities” and “chained academies”, and the belief that Stalinists put much worse ideological pressure on historiography than other sciences, are being disputed.

Dekonstrukcja wolnego zawodu w systemie totalitarnym na przykładzie regulacji prawnej wykonywania zawodu rzecznika patentowego w Polsce w okresie stalinowskim

In Poland before the Second World War, the profession of patent attorney was categorised as one of the so-called liberal professions. Its legal status and rules of practice were compared to the solicitor profession. A patent attorney practiced his profession personally, independently, and autonomously. In order to exercise his profession, he ran an independent patent attorney’s office. In the second half of the 1940s, with the communists taking power in Poland, a radical transformation of the social, political, economic, and legal system of the state along the lines of Stalin’s Soviet Union began. Any social, political, or economic activities characterised by independence and autonomy were thus in axiological contradiction with the ideology of the planned totalitarian state. The Act on the Establishment of the College of Patent Attorneys passed on 20 December 1949 completely abolished the structure of the patent attorney profession as a free profession, exercised in its own name and on its own account. From that moment on, the patent attorney became a civil servant performing their professional activities under strict hierarchical subordination to his superiors. There was no guarantee of their intellectual independence or professional autonomy. The practice of the patent attorney profession was subject to public law. The Patent Attorneys College was in fact another state office. It was organisationally and financially linked to the Patent Office — an administrative body granting legal protection to objects of industrial and commercial property, collecting and making available patent documentation and literature. The president of the Patent Office supervised the Patent Attorneys College. Both the Patent Attorneys College and the Patent Office were supervised by the State Economic Planning Commission. The State Commission for Economic Planning was a kind of super-ministry, tasked with a Soviet-style mission of closely supervising and controlling the entire centralised economy of the Polish state. The chairman of the State Economic Planning Commission also had key powers to influence patent attorneys. It was he who determined the subject of their professional examination, he who appointed a person meeting the statutory requirements to the position of a patent attorney. He could also exempt a candidate for the profession from meeting the requirements as well as appoint the president of the Patent Attorneys College. The Act of 20 December 1949 was repealed with the end of the Stalinist period in Poland. In 1958, the profession of patent attorney was briefly reinstated as a free profession. After that, until the end of the existence of the socialist state called the Polish People’s Republic, patent attorneys performed their profession as employees within the meaning of the labour law. It was not until the fall of communism in Poland that the profession of a patent attorney was re-established as a liberal profession under the provisions of the Act on Patent Attorneys of 9 January 1993.

Encyclopedias as tools of modernization: Stalinist versions of agrarian knowledge

The article considers directions of the agrarian modernization as presented in the four editions of the Soviet agricultural encyclopedia from the mid-1920s to the mid-1950s. On the basis of some historical examples and theoretical concepts, the author explains the scientific, ideological and political significance of encyclopedias in the formation of social knowledge and ideology; shows how during the Stalinist period, the Soviet agricultural encyclopedias passed through several successive great leaps in the representation of agrarian knowledge under the accelerated Soviet modernization; stresses the manipulative way of managing agrarian knowledge and human capital in agriculture - on behalf of the leader and ruling party. The article describes the transition from the first Soviet encyclopedia of the 1920s, which focused on the modernization of peasant Russia, to the encyclopedia of the early 1930s, which denied the importance of the peasantry and praised the projects of large-scale industrial-agricultural production; many authors of the first peasant encyclopedia were repressed. The encyclopedia of the late 1930s reflects the fight against the authors of the previous encyclopedia of the great leap and the purges in the name of the ideology of the planning-management approach in the further modernization of Soviet agriculture. The encyclopedia of the late 1940s - early 1950s reflects the victory of the technocratic-bureaucratic worldview and personnel approach to the agrarian sphere, which prevailed in the agriculture of the USSR until the very end of the Soviet era. The author focuses on the influence of the subjective factor (political leaders, editors-in-chief and anonymous authors) on the ideology, topics and style of encyclopedic articles. In conclusion, the author notes that the strong ideological control and volatile political situation distorted knowledge in the Soviet agrarian encyclopedias, which negatively affected the quality of rural human capital and largely predetermined the stagnation of rural development in the late USSR.

The Shandean. Ed. Peter de Voogd. Vol. 30.

<i>The Shandean</i>. Ed. Peter de Voogd. Vol. 30.

The Reform Communist Interpretation of the Stalinist Period in Czech Historiography and Its Legacy

This article is concerned with the continuities in the interpretation of the 1950s in Czechoslovakia from 1956 to the present. It first concentrates on the way the year 1956 (one that remained quiet in the country, as opposed to Poland and Hungary) has been treated in Czechoslovak historiography. It aims to show that an almost exclusive focus on political history has produced until today a misleading image of this apparent communist stability as based on repression rather than on a genuine basis of support for the communist rule. The German historiography of communism shows the usefulness of a socio-political approach that could serve as model. The article then further retraces the permanence of this misleading interpretation to the influence of a highly politicized narrative of the terror period inspired by the work of historian Karel Kaplan and other intellectuals of the Prague Spring era. For this it makes use of Kaplan’s autobiography, which has only ever appeared in French. One particular point of interest is the historiographical treatment reserved to the Stalinist leader Klement Gottwald. The article suggests that this reform communist narrative, which blames the terror on the Soviets without questioning the responsibility of Czech society, has kept the history of the 1950s in Czechoslovakia from evolving at the same pace as the historiography of the post-1968 period. It therefore needs to be acknowledged and challenged.

The Anatomy of Stalinist Police States

Abstract This article examines the building of Communist surveillance networks in Czechoslovakia and Poland in the early 1950s, focusing on the methods employed by the operational divisions of the secret police in these countries and their system of “preventative policing,” and shows how the secret police networks shaped the information reaching Communist party leaders and Soviet advisers in East-Central Europe during the Stalinist period. By examining how the regimes collected information on the economy, religious institutions, higher education, and other areas of everyday life, the article traces how blanket surveillance networks became more institutionalized, insular, and scripted over time, hindering the state's ability to collect and process meaningful information. These problems were symptomatic of larger informational barriers facing Soviet-style regimes.

Polish Social Pedagogy in the Stalinist Period (1945–1956)

The social pedagogy is an important, specific part of the Polish pedagogy, with a unique character – since it began to emerge at the end of the 19th century in Polish lands. Although it developed very dynamically in the interwar period, both theoretically and institutionally and in terms of practical activities, after 1945 it experienced some great difficulties in returning to normal functioning in the scientific world, as did all the social sciences, considered by the new communist authorities to be dangerous for the “new” man and the society. The purpose of this article is an attempt to describe the situation of social pedagogy in Poland at the beginning of introduction of political, economic and social changes inspired by the ideology of communism in the so-called Stalinist period, i.e. between 1945 and 1956, with reference to the two currents in which it functioned at that time – one focused around the person and the concept of Helena Radlińska and one created on the borderline of pedagogy and social teaching of the Catholic Church.

B. G. Muzrukov and the Problem of Production Organization at the Urals Machine-Building Plant (1946–1953)

Introduction. The purpose of the article is to assess the economic consequences of the transfer in 1947 of the director of the Urals Machine-Building Plant (UZTM) B. G. Muzrukov into the system of the Soviet atomic project for the subsequent development of production at UZTM. B. G. Muzrukov was the main initiator, developer and organizer of the reconversion program carried out at UZTM since 1944. His transfer coincided with the height of its implementation. Materials and Methods. The authors used statistical and clerical materials on the activities of UZTM in 1946–1953. Based on the annual accounting reports of the plant for its main activities, dynamic statistical series of data were compiled on the implementation of the UZTM plan for the shaft and nomenclature of products (method of average percentage). The information obtained was analyzed in the context of the planning targets, personnel changes, and the state of production discipline at the plant. Results and Discussion. It was established that the reassignment of B. G. Muzrukov aggravated the problems associated with the implementation of the production reconversion program at UZTM. They were marked in a number of internal and external factors (drop in reporting rates, conflicts in the workforce, changes in planned buildings, adjustments to the reconversion program by the relevant ministry). Conclusion. The tested/shown method of analysis and evaluation of the results of the UZTM operation can be extended to other industrial enterprises of the USSR in the 1940s–1950s. The subsequent analysis of the data in dynamics and comparison will allow the professional community to expand its own understanding of the specifics of the functioning of the industry in the period of the late Stalinism.