SHOCK WORK MOVEMENT IN THE PERIOD OF “MINI-REFORMS”: FROM APOGEE TO OBLIVION (1931-1933)
Authors: ФЕЛЬДМАН М.А. 
Published: September 2024

В статье рассматривается второй этап социалистического соревнования (1931-1933 гг.), связанный с появлением в январе 1931 г. первых ударных хозрасчетных бригад. Отмечается усиленное внимание руководства СССР к попытке обновить движение ударных бригад в качестве новой «высшей ступени социалистического соревнования». Серьезным препятствием на пути внедрения хозрасчета и хозрасчетных отношений стало состояние нормирования на промышленных предприятиях. Однако главная проблема заключалась в том, что подлинный хозрасчет на уровне участка, цеха, предприятия, треста и отрасли предполагал полную ответственность за качество продукции вплоть до закрытия или перепрофилирования нерентабельного производства. Мифический рост численности ударников и ударных бригад, а с 1931 г. - хозрасчетных бригад - свидетельствовал о глубине расхождения пропагандистской и реальной картины в промышленности. Окончательное осознание неэффективности ударничества пришло к руководству СССР на XVII съезде партии в феврале 1934 г., где тема движения ударных бригад практически не поднималась.

The article considers the second stage of socialist competition (1931-1933), associated with the emergence of the first shock self-financing brigades, which occurred in January 1931. There is increased attention of the leadership of the USSR to an attempt to update the movement of shock brigades as a new “highest stage of socialist competition”. The Supreme Economic Council of the USSR and the All-Union Central Council of Trade Unions adopted a special resolution that determined the organizational structure of self-financing brigades. For each self-financing brigade, a production task was submitted - a work order, which determined quantitative and qualitative indicators, specific standards of labor productivity and overhead costs. However, the article notes a repetition of the mistake that was characteristic of the deployment of the shock brigade movement in 1929-1930 - a bet on the maximum possible coverage of workers with the next form of “socialist competition”. The mechanism of social mobilization again worked in isolation from the real possibilities of the economy and workers’ society. The rationing at industrial enterprises became a serious obstacle to the introduction of self-financing and self-financing relations. However, the main problem was that genuine self-financing at the level of a site, workshop, enterprise, trust and branch of production implied full responsibility for the quality of products, up to the closure or re-profiling of unprofitable production. This contradicted the foundations of the Soviet economy, which was oriented toward quantitative indicators and isolation from the consumer, veiled by the myth of a “break even national economy”. The mythical increase in the number of shock workers and shock brigades, and since 1931 - self-financing brigades, testified to the depth of the discrepancy between the propaganda and the real picture of what was happening in industry. The final realization of the ineffectiveness of the shock work movement came to the leadership of the USSR at the January (1933) Plenum of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks and the Seventeenth Party Congress in February 1934, the participants of which did not practically raise the topic of the movement of shock brigades.