-
Komsomol Mobilizations to Metrostroi, 1933: A Case Study in labor Recruitment during the Soviet Industrialization Era!
- Slavica Publishers
- Chapter
- Additional Information
Komsomol Mobilizations to Metrostroi, 1933: A Case Study in labor Recruitment during the Soviet Industrialization Era! William K. Wolf For decades the spectacular Moscow Metropolitan subway stood as a compelling symbol of Soviet socialism. Communist authorities promoted it as a foretaste of life in the bright socialist future. Cynics observed that Soviet socialism never came close to reaching the high standards set by the Metro. In postCommunist Russia, when it became fashionable to demolish or renounce all things Soviet, the quintessentially Soviet Moscow subway endured. The Metro after 1991 serves not only as a lasting monument to the Soviet past, but continues to shine in its role as a beautiful and highly efficient mass transportation system. Because the Moscow subway has been such an integral and enduring feature of the Russian capital for more than seven decades, it is perhaps hard to imagine that the successful completion of the first line of the Moscow Metro was ever in doubt. In fact, the Moscow subway project (1931-35) was fraught with difficulties and dangers. In early 1933, more than a year after construction work on the Metro had begun, a whole host of formidable problems threatened to prevent the completion of the subway project. These problems included lack of technical expertise, large beds of quicksand that had to be tunneled through, severe shortages of construction materials and of the machinery needed for the project, and other factors too numerous to be mentioned here. Perhaps the most serious of the many difficulties confronting Metrostroi (as the Moscow subway project was known) in early 1933 was a severe labor shortage. This article will discuss how thousands of Communist Youth League (Komsomol) members were recruited to Metrostroi to help alleviate this labor shortage2 In the process, some light will be shed on the nature of social support enjoyed by Soviet socialism in the 1930s. This is possible because many of the komsomoltsy (Moscow Communist Youth League mem1 Research for this paper began under Allan Wildman's supervision for a dissertation at Ohio State University, "Russia's Revolutionary Underground: The Construction of the Moscow Subway, 1931-35." 2 The Komsomol was a mass organization of youths aged 14 to 23. Its purpose was twofold: to help spread the influence of the Party and government among the general population, and to provide a training ground for future Communists. The Making of Russian History: Society, Culture, and the Politics of Modern Russia. Essays in Honor of Allan K. Wildman. John W. Steinberg and Rex A. Wade, eds. Bloomington, IN: Siavica Publishers, 2009, 153- 80. 154 W ILLIAM K. WOLF bers) who came to Metrostroi in 1933 later described their reasons for coming to the subway project in oral interviews conducted as part of the official history of the Moscow subway. A two-volume history of the Moscow Metro was published in 1935 to coincide with the opening of the first line of the subway system3 Although this official history was heavily censored - as one might expect- the unedited transcripts of the oral interviews can still be found in the Russian archives and they form the primary source upon which this article is based. The labor shortage problem was serious. Despite the fact that by early 1933 the Metrostroi workforce had more than doubled from levels of the previous year, the project was still grievously undermanned. Of a desired workforce of 18,000, Metrostroi employees numbered only 10,000.4 In the absence of proper mechanization at the subway project, augmenting this workforce was imperative, but extremely difficult in a country where unemployment had been eliminated. Furthermore, Metrostroi's severe housing shortage made worker recruitment even more difficult. Even with its undersized workforce , the subway project in 1933 was able to provide housing for only half of its workerss How, then, to dramatically increase the labor force became a decisive question for the Metrostroi leadership in 1933. One of the solutions devised was to transfer large numbers of Moscow's Communist Youth League members to Metrostroi. At first glance this may seem a surprising choice: most komsomoltsy were not only unskilled in tunneling work, they were not even accustomed to hard physical labor. Indeed, veteran tunnelers and even much of the leadership at Metrostroi took a skeptical if not hostile attitude toward the idea of bringing large numbers of komsomoltsy to the project. On the other hand, by 1933 the practice of turning to the Komsomol for emergency recruitments had become a venerable tradition in Soviet history. During...