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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