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So now it's OK to discuss the causes of the collapse of the USSR, as opposed to when I posted last year on the alienation of Soviet workers towards the regime from the 20s to the 80s. Soviet workers never seemed to get the orders coming from Stalin and Beria, then later Khrutschev and Brejnev, being accused of "bezideinost" (lack of political comitment) because they were always bitching about price increases and absolutely hated the "peredovki" that were supposed to create emulation by their hard, unyielding comitment to ever increasing productivity figures. Members of the "peredovki" (1920s through 1960s), "excellent work battalions", were beaten up in remote localities, as they pushed up production quotas. While it took and ordinary worker 60 minutes to install the upholstery in a Soviet car, a "peredovki"/"novatory" would do it in 35minutes flat, and thus force all the other workers to "follow in their glorious footsteps towards socialsim". A favourite means of revenge was to switch the pneumatic airpressure for the drill/pneumatic screwdriver with the oil hose, thus resulting in a large explosion of oil all over the upholstery. Peredovki were also given the wrong bolts, or bolts covered with sand, resulting in bolted pieces spectacularly falling off at the end of the assembly line. In fact, it now appears that Stalin was right : a great amount of sabotage was being inflicted on the Soviet economy by workers who had decided to be "indifferent" and "work-shy" in the face of an unprecedented militarization of the workforce (workers forced to work on Sundays, interior passports being issued to prevent workers from changing city/region, compulsory haranging by the nomenklatura, reduction in purchasing power comlpared to the Khlokozien market, increased surveillance of the workplace, etc.) Of course, one had to be careful in order not to land in I.T.L (gulag) "Reeducation through Work Institution", where hundreds of thousands were worked to death on the mines of the Kola penisnsula, Northern Dvina, or especialy Norislk on the Yenisei. (17%/year mortality rate). To call this "resistance" to Stalinism would be misleading. Workers were just fed up with the ever changing rules (after each plan, the 4th plan, just after WWII was grudgingly accepted, but the 7th was really felt as annoying). Under Khroutshcev, workers got their hopes up again, and the Soviet economy started to produce more consummer goods. But it quickly turned out to be a farce. The local Soviets were re-organized in larger "regional units", more changes were introduced in middle-management (through technical training), and workers became increasingly under the direct control of foremen whose pay was linked to "productivity increases". In the case or rural workers, who comprised half of the Soviet workforce, they were reagraded as "apolitichnost" because they stubbornly retained their 0.5 ha private garden and continued to sell to Kholkhozien markets. And were ever trying to encroach upon the Kholkhoze lands to agrandize their private gardens. The situation was exactly the same as in feudal Europe, where peasents had to work the "ager" (crop fields) for the lord, but were always trying to use the commons (marshland, meadows, briar patches, woods, roadsides, etc) to graze their own cattle. And of course use the "hortus" (small private garden next to the house) to grow an incredibly productive and well-manured variety of vegetables that they would sell in the towns (raisins-wine, courgettes, pumpkins, beans, strawberries, ...). ________________________________________________ Send list submissions to: Marxism@greenhouse.economics.utah.edu Set your options at: http://greenhouse.economics.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
