Speaking Bolshevik:

1. Speaking Bolshevik: Shock workers, Stakhanovites, Exceeding the norms, “I live in a country where one feels like living and learning”

2. Working class identity under Stalin: • How did the revolutionary proletariat of Europe’s first self-proclaimed socialist State (“ruled for the workers and peasants by the workers and peasants”) turn into Europe’s most quiescent working class within a period of 20 years? • Historical records from 1930s show little evidence of worker unrest, strikes, or demonstrations; but abundant evidence of mass participation in official celebrations, press releases, etc. supporting the status quo. • Is Terror enough to make people work?

5. Official Soviet view: no paradox • The absence of worker unrest follows logically from the premise that workers themselves hold power and desire “their” dream of industrialization. By definition, Soviet socialism, unlike Western capitalism, does not exploit the workers. Work has become a fulfilling way of life, and a source of civic pride.

6. Theories rejecting State-sponsored view: • Regime’s totalitarian structure and repressiveness prevent any possibility of worker autonomy and collective action. • Working class so diluted by raw recruits from the peasantry, it has lost its revolutionary character. Peasant mentality still desirous of strong paternal authority.

7. “speaking bolshevik” • Publically expressing loyalty by knowing how to ‘speak bolshevik’ does not necessarily mean that the speaker/writer believes everything he/she says. Rather, the public pronouncement signals a willingness to participate as if one believed, and it signals that one recognizes the rules (and the discourse) of an agreed-upon reality

8. Imagined glory: working class identity under Stalin • Everybody has the right to work (nobody has the right not to work) • There is no unemployment in the USSR (free or prisoner, skilled or unskilled) • The Soviet worker is part of a global political and historical showdown: every Plan over-fulfilled is a vindication of socialism and a blow to capitalism

11. Shock workers • From the rhythms of peasant labor to the pace of industry: 8 hour days, five days a week, 5 Year Plans • “Storming” productivity, working in bursts, working brigades increase the tempo: shock work

15. Wage differentials • 1931 policy condemns “equalization” and introduces differential wages for differential productivity. Piece rates mean more pieces produced translate to more pay

16. Stakhanovites • Donbass miner achieves record for most coal hewed in 5 hour period • Stakhanovism means breaking labor records, overfulfilling the norms, boosting the power of Soviet labor • Stakhanovism is a signal of uniquely Soviet enthusiasm for labor

20. In private, did workers feel that had traversed a notable trajectory from victims of exploitation to master of production? From uncouth peasant slaves to builders of a new world, a new superpower, and a new culture? Even if the workers knew they were not bosses (despite Party rhetoric assuring them that they were), they also knew they were part of a Soviet working class, and such a status was different than being a worker under capitalism. People advanced: peasants became workers, workers became managers and bosses, (some) managers and bosses moved into privileged, materially compensated political elite.