Industry
We tend to understand pre-modern societies through the methods of production that they mastered during their history (like the Bronze Age or the Iron Age) or through how they produced and managed energy (wind, water, or oil). But when dealing with early modern or modern societies, researchers tend to formulate separate arguments about the political, industrial, social, and religious history of the period and sometimes overlook how these issues intersect. It is just as reductive to understand a particular society’s history through industry alone, as it is to overlook how indispensable industry is in shaping a society’s history. Therefore, the theme of Industry strives to acknowledge both the site of production and the processes of consumption and consumerism that follow, and to articulate the historical experiences of working people, power systems, and places where industries were located and developed. We are interested in, but not limited to, issues of technology and innovation, production and social life, urban planning and residential areas of workers, competition and labor, etc. We believe that we can gain a better understanding of a society’s history by focusing on the ways in which it sustained itself, which often relies on a deep understanding of its industry.
Filter by periods:
Primary Sources
Reaction of the USSR workers to the Soviet-Chinese conflict in July-December, 1929
The presented report shows the reaction of population in the USSR to the Soviet-Chinese conflict in July-December, 1929 over the control on Chinese Eastern Railway. The text includes opinions expressed by workers from Ukrainian industrial plants and mines in their private conversations, and in the work teams. They illustrate a wide range of opinions dominating in society: from ardent support of the Soviet Union in the conflict, and calls to go to the front, to denying the need for confrontation. It must be highlighted that discussions of the condition and provisions in the Soviet Army would often end up in reflections about the causes of internal economic problems in the country. Many workers...
Concerning the Intensification of the Fight Against Persons Who Avoid Socially Useful Work, statement 1961
The Soviet authorities not only motivated workers to labor feats, but also punished those who refused selfless work for the benefit of the motherland. For example, in February 1948, a decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR was signed "On the eviction from the Ukrainian SSR of persons who maliciously avoid work in agriculture and lead an anti-social, parasitic lifestyle." Similar approaches were approved by the resolution of the RSFSR from 1961, which encouraged to identify (that is,to report), punish and even imprison people who chose a non-socialist way of life. The document shows that despite official claims about the advantages of communist production and socialist competition, many people...
The Movement of Collectives and Shock Workers Brigades of Communist Labour, article
This article is part of the Soviet Encyclopedia and was written by Semion Romanovych (in life Srul Rakhmilevich) Gershberg (1908-1984). He was a researcher of Soviet history who specialized in the topic of "labor strikers". From 1931 to 1949, Gershberg worked for the Pravda newspaper and was fired during the 1949 anti-Semitic campaign in the USSR. Since 1949, he worked at the publishing house "Soviet Encyclopedia", where he held the position of deputy head of the editorial board. In 1961, he published the book "Movement of Collectives and Strikers of Communist Labor" and based on this research created the same article for the Great Soviet Encyclopedia (third edition 1969-1978, which consists of 30...
Members of the Communist Labor Brigade and the presentation of Komsomol tickets at the Mariupol Heavy Machinery Plant
The photo shows the moment of the ceremonial presentation of a Komsomol ticket to an employee of the Mariupol heavy engineering plant. In addition to the ticket, a party or Komsomol functionary hands an unknown woman a pennant, which may indicate that this new Komsomol member has already achived significant results in the performance of the party’s labor tasks. Most likely, she is a representative of the leaders of the plant, and it was important for the Soviet system that the leaders of the production were part of the Komsomol-party asset. If we follow the name of this source, then the young worker is part of the “communist labor brigade”, which was an...
“Screen of Pryazovia” (Pryazovskyi Ekran) № 1
This newsreel is a valuable source on the history of the development of the Mariupol industry. It was produced by the city club of film amateurs. Following the example of the Ukrkinochronika studio in the capital city which published the main newsreels in the republic, the authors of this piece created a short film report with 4 stories that tell about the deputies, the introduction of innovations in blast furnace steelmaking, about the winners of the socialist competition, and about the meeting of workers with a Soviet cosmonaut.
Collective of Communist Labor at Shoe Factory
Television news of the Lviv Television Studio followed the operators of Ukrkinochronika who chose shoe factory No. 3 as a model enterprise of the city’s light industry. The television camera shows to the audience Kateryna Lysak, an exemplary employee of the enterprise that was granted a status of a “communist labor enterprise”. At such enterprises, the example of the pioneers was to be followed by other workers, and a television clip told the people of Lviv about leaders of production and how the shoe factory was developing.
Song of the Communist Labor Brigades
"Song of Communist Labor Brigades" was written in 1956 by the composer Arkady Filipenko (1912-1983), who, in addition to academic music, wrote works for operettas and films. The verses to the song were written by another outstanding figure of Soviet culture of the Ukrainian SSR, Oleksa Novitsky (1914-1992), who was a military correspondent during the war, and later became a Shevchenko scholar. Both authors had the "right" biographies for writing the anthem of the communist labor brigades, which was performed at official events in the Ukrainian SSR, and was also published in large numbers for performance by professional and amateur groups. The song has a solemn mood and asserts that the communist labor...
The socialist competition in the USSR went through several stages in its development: the shock work [udarniki] of the turn of the 1920-30s, self-supporting brigades [khozrastchetnyie brigady], the Stakhanov movement of the mid-1930s, the thousanders [tysiachniki], etc. of the period of the Second World War, the Stakhanovism-shockwork of the period of “restoration of the national economy” (1950s), then, from the end of 1950s – the movement for a communist attitude to work [kommunisticheskoie otnosheniie k trudu]. Since the 1970s, when the Soviet economy was already depending solely on natural resources, the socialist competition turned into a painful obligatory fiction, although it officially ended only in the second half of the 1980s.
У 1950–1960-х роках на підприємствах Радянської України поширилися практики, скеровані на удосконалення праці. Двигуном цього процесу були так звані передовики – учасники руху трудящих СРСР за комуністичне ставлення до праці та за виховання людини комуністичного суспільства.
This mini-course introduces you to a field: cultural history. Cultural historians question how to analyze, articulate, and define how people ascribe meaning to various ideas, objects, and practices. You’ll acquire a “toolbox” of analytic frames useful for research in any field of study or cultural practice. For our “case study” of cultural history, we will delve into the history of the arts in the Russian Empire and Soviet Union from the late Imperial to the Stalinist period. This is not a comprehensive course on the arts in Russia or the Soviet Union, by any means. Rather, we will focus on the world of the arts by examining social, political and economic structures as...