Who is alexei stakhanov

Petrov: "I suppose Stakhanov need not have been the first It could have been anybody else. In the final analysis it was not the individual face-worker who determined whether the attempt to break the record would succeed, but the new system of coal extraction. Still, according to the newspaper, Stakhanov's approach had eventually led to the increased productivity by means of a better organization of the work, including specialization and task sequencing.

Stakhanov on the cover of Time Magazine , 16 December Alexey Stakhanov facts for kids Kids Encyclopedia Facts. Quick facts for kids. Lugovaya, Oryol Oblast, Russian Empire. Torez, Soviet Union. All content from Kiddle encyclopedia articles including the article images and facts can be freely used under Attribution-ShareAlike license, unless stated otherwise.

Cite this article:. However, there were problems with wastage and inefficiency in the plans. Official figures were exaggerated or gave only a partial picture of the targets met, so it is difficult to know the extent to which production increased. Top of Page. In a coal miner called Alexei Stakhanov was reported to have dug tons of coal in a single 6-hour shift.

This was many times more than a miner was expected to cut. Stakhanov was rewarded and praised as an example to all other workers. The public were not told that Stakhanov had two co-workers, plus machinery in perfect working order, to help him achieve so much.

Russians were told to model themselves on Stakhanov. They rose to the challenge in what became known as the Stakhanovite Movement. Stakhanovites tried to perform feats of great productivity, through working harder and also through reorganising the way things were done in their place of work. They were rewarded with better pay and also lots of praise and publicity.

This was just one way in which Stalin attempted to persuade his new industrial labourers to work more efficiently. To achieve the enormous feat of industrialisation, Stalin had to modernise agriculture. There had to be enough food, not only to feed the workers in towns, but also for export. Selling grain abroad would raise the money needed to invest in industry. Stalin decided to take control of all farms and make them much larger and more productive. The farmers were not compensated.

They were expected to work with other farmers and hand over most of their produce to the government. In return, they would be supplied with tools, tractors and taught how to produce more. The policy of collectivisation was not popular with the peasants. Many refused to give up their land or to give the government the crops that they had grown. Instead, they preferred to slaughter their animals, burn their crops and destroy their farm machinery. Stalin ordered the army to liquidate them.

The party wanted to create an increasingly formalised elite representing the human qualities of a superhero worker. Such workers began to receive special privileges from high wages to new housing, as well as educational opportunities for themselves and their children.

And so the Stakhanovites became central characters in Soviet Communist propaganda. They were showing the world what the USSR could achieve when technology was mastered by a new kind of worker who was committed, passionate, talented and creative. This new worker was promising to be the force that would propel Soviet Russia ahead of its western capitalist rivals.

Soviet propaganda seized the moment. A whole narrative emerged showing how the future of work and productivity in the USSR should unfold over the coming decades.

Stakhanov ceased to be a person and became the human form of a system of ideas and values, outlining a new mode of thinking and feeling about work. It turns out that such a story was sorely needed. The Soviet economy was not performing well.

Soviet Russia had not overcome its own technological and economic backwardness, let alone leap over capitalist America and Europe. The five-year plans were systematic programmes of resource allocation, production quotas and work rates for all sectors of the economy.

The first aimed to inject the latest technology in key areas, especially industrial machine building. But this technological push failed to raise production; the standard of living and real wages ended up lower in than in But not just any personnel. This was how Stakhanov stopped being a person and became an ideal type, a necessary ingredient in the recipe for this new plan. So the new plan needed figures like Stakhanov.

This happened despite reservations from managers and engineers who knew that machines, tools and people cannot withstand such pressures for any length of time.

Regardless, the party propaganda needed to let a new kind of working class elite grow as if it was spontaneous — simple workers, coming from nowhere, driven by their refusal to admit quotas dictated by the limits of machines and engineers. On November 17, , Stalin provided a definitive explanation of Stakhanovism.

Quite the contrary, the movement demanded a new kind of worker, with a new kind of soul and will, driven by the principle of unlimited progress. Stalin said:. These are new people, people of a special type … the Stakhanov movement is a movement of working men and women which sets itself the aim of surpassing the present technical standards, surpassing the existing designed capacities, surpassing the existing production plans and estimates.

Surpassing them — because these standards have already become antiquated for our day, for our new people. In the ensuing propaganda, Stakhanov became a symbol burdened with meanings. Ancestral hero, powerful, raw and unstoppable. But also one with a modern, rational and progressive mind which could liberate the hidden, untapped powers of technology and take command of its limitless possibilities. He was cast as a Promethean figure, leading an elite of workers whose nerves and muscles, minds and souls, were utterly attuned to the technological production systems themselves.

Stakhanovism was the vision of a new humanity. It allowed the rise of production quotas. Yet this rise had to remain moderate, otherwise Stakhanovites could not be maintained as an elite. And, as an elite, Stakhanovites themselves had to be subjected to a limitation: how many top performers could really be accommodated before the very idea collapsed into normality?

After all, how many high-performers can there be at any one time? Any forced distribution system inextricably leads to exclusion and marginalisation of those who fall in the lower categories. Far from humane, these systems are always, inherently, threatening and ruthless. Stakhanov fitted perfectly this ideal.

This was the logic of the Stakhanovite Movement in the s. But it is also the logic of contemporary popular and corporate cultures, whose messages are now everywhere. One management consultancy firm even calls itself Infinite Possibilities. Indeed, these very sentences made it on to a seemingly minor coffee coaster used by Deloitte in the early s for their graduate management scheme.

How far will you take it? Insignificant though these objects may appear, a discerning future archaeologist would know that they carry a most fateful kind of thinking, driving employees now as much as it drove Stakhanovites.

But are these serious propositions, or just ironic tropes? Since the s, management vocabularies have grown almost incessantly in this respect. It is in this light that we have to show our selves as worthy members of corporate cultures. Pursuing endless possibilities becomes central to our everyday working lives.