Talk:Stakhanovite movement

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In Memoriam of a Stakhanovite

Vladimir Vysotsky

ПАМЯТИ СТАХАНОВЦА
ВЛАДИМИР ВЫСОЦКИЙ

 Сидели пили вразнобой
 "Мадеру", "Cтарку", "Зверобой" -
 и вдруг нас всех зовут в забой, до одного:
 у нас - стахановец, гагановец,
 загладовец, - и надо ведь,
 чтоб завалило именно его.

 Он - в прошлом младший офицер,
 его нам ставили в пример,
 он был, как юный пионер, всегда готов,
 и вот он прямо с корабля
 пришел стране давать угля,
 а вот сегодня наломал, как видно, дров.

 Спустились в штрек, и бывший зек -
 большого риска человек -
 сказал: "Беда для нас для всех, для всех одна:
 вот раскопаем - он опять
 начнет три нормы выполнять,
 начнет стране угля давать - и нам хана.

 Так что, вы, братцы, - не стараться,
 а поработаем с прохладцей -
 один за всех и все за одного".

 ...Служил он в Таллине при Сталине -
 теперь лежит заваленный, -
 нам жаль по-человечески его...

Partial translation:

We sat and drunk all kinds of spirits, suddenly all of us are called to the mine face: we had a stakhanovite, and it so happened that just he was heaped under. <...> We went down the drift, and our foreman, former zeka a man of great risk, told us: "We dig him out, he would continue producing triple quotas, and all of us are in a really big trouble. So, we better not try too hard, let us work 'All for One and One for All'. He served to Stalin in Tallinn, now he is heaped, we all feel humanly sorry for him.

Mikkalai 07:51, 21 Oct 2004 (UTC)

The article puts a rather positive spin on the Stakhanovites

I've always heard it as a term of derision. The way it was presented to me is that the Stakhanovites would set records in production which management then expected all of the other workers to match (and who was the wag who said that under capitalism man exploits man, but under communism its the other way around?). This emphasis on increased quotas, and penalties for failing them, became another one of the mechanisms of Soviet era oppression and control (<sarcasm>Thank God there aren't any companies like that in America!</sarcasm> of the working classes.

Whjamisonjr 04:10, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

The reason it was presented that way to you is because you lived in the West, and the USSR was the West's mortal enemy. You really think they would tell you great things about Soviet life? For what purpose would they do this? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.221.133.190 (talk) 07:00, 11 August 2012 (UTC)

References to Stakhanov appear in several of Solzhenitsyn’s works and not in a positive way. This is actually the subject of academic research. / --Mccainre (talk) 23:07, 7 November 2021 (UTC)

References

This article does indeed seem to reflect a pro-Stakhanovism bias from the absence of any critical information. Regarding the unsigned comment above that criticism of Stakhanovism is from people who "lived in the West", this person seemed unaware of the fact there are Russian Marxist critics of Stakhanovism whose work can not be called a pro-West bias in any way, since they attack the Stakhanov movement precisely for its capitalistic, individualistic and elitist aspects. For example, Stakhanovism contributed to rising social inequality during the 1930s by encouraging individualistic competition and creating an elite caste of super-workers who could receive high salaries and privileges comparable to the nomenklatura. Also, many accounts of Stakhanovite exploits are easily proven to be fake, many Stakhanovites were known to have scammed the government with fake records, and the Stakhanov movement itself was overall a giant bureaucratic farce which wasted national resources and may have caused an overall net reduction in productivity. A section detailing criticisms of the movement needs to be added. Famisht (talk) 16:56, 21 August 2023 (UTC)

The natural place for it would be Stakhanovite movement § Opposition and termination. That section did previously have a paragraph that briefly mentioned that it was criticised within the Soviet Union as a Stalinist propaganda manoeuvre but this was cut in June, 2023, because no references had been provided for it. However, the section on critical coverage in the Soviet newspaper, Komosolskaya Pravda, remains (although the reference is incomplete).

If you know of and have access to appropriate sources, feel free to add new material to that section to provide more balanced coverage. A brief summary of the new material can then be added to the lead section to reflect the expansion of the article.

If it helps, the cut material was: During the era of de-Stalinization, which sought to undo much of what was done during Stalin's régime, the Stakhanovite movement was declared a Stalinist propaganda maneuver; workers would receive the best equipment and most favorable conditions so that the best results could be achieved. After Stalin's death in March 1953 'brigades of socialist labor' replaced 'Stakhanovism'. – Scyrme (talk) 17:17, 21 August 2023 (UTC)

Great patriotic war

It seems that this article has a soviet bias. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 71.245.164.60 (talk) 04:53, 29 December 2006 (UTC).

Father of the Modern Sales Contest

Stakhanovism sounds the the beginning of the modern sales contest. Managers find someone to set an outrageously high target and then admonish everyone to aspire to it. As days dwindle and reality begins to rear its ugly head, those who doubted all along are silenced through terrorism or termination. As the final days arrive, salesmen reach ahead to push product into other's inventory and convert future sales into the sales contest period, thereby increasing production through gimmicktry and at the expense of future productivity. At the close of the contest, mangement is not obliged to reward any increased productivity, because the target was not reached, but often does so when workers laud bosses for their fairness and justice. Then the organization purges itself of anyone who was smart enough to see how it would conclude, and often blames them for ruining the sales effort with their negative attitudes.

In fiction

I removed the reference to The Working Class Goes to Heaven, included by @Scottandrewhutchins:, because I am sure that a film whose action occurs in Italy in the 60s/70s (I saw that movie, many years ago...) could have nothing to do with the Stakhanovite movement. MiguelMadeira (talk) 11:44, 15 September 2023 (UTC)

Some sources

Here are some sources we should use in discussing the creation of the Stakhanovite legend:

• In Soviet, eager beaver's legend works overtime, 1985 (used in the Simple English wikipedia article)
• Miner celebrity: the real story behind Stalin’s favourite worker
• Did Stakhanov Act Alone?
• Alexei Stakhanov: The USSR's superstar miner
• A.G. Stakhanov in Gaumont Pathé's Soviet Film Archives, 2017

We also need a more precise reference to the Komsomolskaya Pravda article. --Macrakis (talk) 21:20, 26 December 2023 (UTC)