Review: Social Dimensions of Soviet Industrialization, by: Rosenberg and Siegelbaum


Shane Tomashot
Review-Social Dimensions
of Soviet Industrialization

            Rosenberg and Siegelbaum have assembled a collection of thirteen essays in their edited edition Social Dimensions of Soviet Industrialization.  The authors focus on the role of social mobility, the relationship between “old and new” workers, management, and the cultural aspects of Soviet Industrialization in the early 1930’s.  They emphasize the dichotomy between government “planning” and government “administration.”  Industrialization, Rosenberg and Siegelbaum contend, caused a “peasantization” of Soviet industry in which disease, confusion and conflict were endemic.  Industrialization bred worker and peasant resistance to a socialist workers’ state, as peasants sought situations with minimal work and minimal responsibility.  Cultural disconnects hindered production, as peasant-turned-workers were unable to meet production quotas or adhere to work schedules.  These aforementioned themes are clearly explained and analyzed throughout the book. 
            The first essay, by Siegelbaum and Suny, emphasizes the various views of Soviet industrialization theory including totalitarian and modernization theories.  These theories are an alternative to Marxist theories, but “fail to explain the peculiarities in the Soviet industrial experience” (p. 4).  They compare management in the U.S. and USSR, stating that managers in both systems were capitalists.  Furthermore, the authors analyze the contributions of numerous historians, including Davies, Bailes, Fitzpatrick, and Lewin as pioneers of Soviet industrial and societal research.   
            Fitzpatrick’s essay, entitled “The Great Departure,” analyzes the otkhod as well as dekulakization and the social impact of the kolkhoz.  She delves into the internal passport policy instituted in 1932 and its impact on the kulak and worker populations.  Furthermore, she investigates what she terms the “push” and “pull” factors on various peasant groups.  Despite various push factors such as collectivization and the famine, many peasants still departed from the village “voluntarily.”  Those who were pushed often departed through forced deportation due to state refusal to issue a passport or dekulakization in general.  She breaks down the statistics concerning peasant migration, attempting to differentiate between those who left voluntarily as opposed to those who departed involuntarily. 
            Merl analyzes the social make-up of the countryside during collectivization.  He breaks society down into a hierarchy of three groups of workers: kolkhozniki at the bottom (collective farmers), private farmers “who had somehow avoided collectivization,” and workers paid by the state (the only group with a regular monthly wage).  The state worked to keep its permanent employment levels low, which “had important implications for social mobility and advancement” (p. 44).  “Collectivization turned agricultural production into the province of the underprivileged” (p. 59).  Advancement, in which a worker was given responsibility of supervision of other workers or kolkhozniki, often met deportation or death for perceived underperformance.  Advancement within the kolkhoz was any job that could get one out of the fields.  Young people could not advance within the kolkhoz and often left for the city.  Kotkin illuminates the “gigantomania” of Soviet industrialization as well as forced migration with the story of Magnitostroi in the Ural Mountains.  Forced migration declarations were often “easier to declare than to enforce” (p. 90). 
In the essays analyzing management structures, R. W. Davies challenges the so-called “administrative-command system” that is often labeled by Soviet historians.  Although authoritative orders from Stalin were the main feature of the Soviet industrial system, other factors played a critical role including some capitalist methods.  Managers’ own philosophies of work and order often conflicted with Kremlin orders while technical specialists did not just accept orders at face value.  These aspects of management are further elaborated upon by Rowney.  Rowney provides statistical analysis of both worker and manager characteristics including education, class, gender and party affiliation.  The coal mining industry, according to Kuromiya, exemplified low worker morale in the command system as well as the masses of untrained and unskilled labor.  Those who were considered “technical experts” often refused to “go into the pits” for fear of worker rebellion and outright animosity toward management officials, as exemplified in the Donbass mine affair (p. 154).
Siegelbaum analyzes the foreman/manager relationship with the upper management of Soviet industrial administration.  He maintains that foremen “retained most of the power” in decision-making “they had had at the outset of industrialization” because is suited the central authority (p. 187).  Shearer’s essay examines the impact of the first two five-year plans on “the organization of work and management which evolved in Soviet machine-building factories” (p. 195).  He finds that production was most successful in areas with managers who understood “local conditions” and the skill sets of his workers rather than the bureaucracy’s formal national standards of production and management (p. 214). 
Solomon’s essay is an interesting investigation of the Soviet criminal justice system during industrialization.  State-sponsored production required numerous regulations as most goods became public goods in the socialist sense.  Solomon discusses the unexpected semi-independence of the judiciary, in which “Soviet judges tried to frustrate a harsh line from Stalin” concerning punishments for “defective goods” or for “cheating customers” (p. 242).  Judges often required standards of evidence and ruled on the less harsh side of the law, with the exception of the Great Terror era.
In the final set of essays, Clark analyzes cultural aspects of industrialization, emphasizing it “as the second phase of revolution” (p. 249).  Writers changed their styles, focusing on entire cities rather than production sites only.  The newly ordained “engineer-architect” became more than a supervisor of projects.  He was “the engineer-architect of human souls” (p. 256).  Eley’s essay considers the European perspective of Soviet industrialization.  The Soviet experience, Eley contends, “was totally without precedent” (p. 270).  Its comparisons may lie with Third World attempts at industrialization during the 1960’s and 1970’s, rather than with past European industrialization periods.  Finally, Lewin provides a good overall synopsis of Soviet industrialization.  He labels the command system as “dysfunctional,” with a politically organized and back-room-dealing bureaucracy (vedomstvennost’) that, in reality, required a politically independent economic apparatus.  The incoherent Soviet economic and political system “turned out to be one without economics” run by “a system without politics” (p. 284).
Rosenberg and Siegelbaum have assembled a fine set of essays, encompassing many intriguing aspects of Soviet industrialization.  The essays follow a coherent and readable economic and social theme.  Furthermore, the final section of the book includes a detailed bibliography for further reading.  Each essay is well documented as well.  This is a well-researched and incisive book that should be held in esteem and utilized by historians of Soviet industrialization and the Stalinist era.                         

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