Part I

The industrial managers of the Five Year Plans (FYP) had to fulfill several very tall orders. Firstly, they had to often construct industrial plant often from scratch. The interruptions of both World War and Civil War had left existing industrial infrastructure worn-out, out of date, and dilapidated., if it even existed at all. The problems were not just material capital, but human as well as the various wars had left a dislocated workforce and the collectivization drive further complicated matters. The promises of the state to liberate the Soviet proletariat also posed a problem as the shopfloor now became unionized and ensured managers had another power bloc within the system to contend with. Finally, FYPs were predicated upon achieving what could only be termed highly optimistic results in a record time. Moscow not only set high production goals, but made their swift achievement part of the overall plan. With the advent of the Depression, it was imperative that the USSR's industrial production increase both rapidly and thoroughly, both as a propaganda coup and to prepare for the eventuality of conflict with the capitalist world. Wrestling with these factors became a dominant characteristic of life as a Soviet manager during the 1930s.

One obvious solution to create Soviet industry was to import expertise from abroad. The giant steel town Magnitogorsk, which was literally constructed from scratch, relied upon American engineers and other specialists that the Depression had rendered jobless or underemployed. The foreign engineers in the emerging steel town lived in a posh (at least by the standards of Soviet cities) district called Amerikanka. Likewise, the USSR paid Ford a fairly lavish amount to set up industrial plant for what would become GAZ at Nizhny Novgorod. Soviet managers and engineers were not to be idle observers, but were to observe and learn from the foreigners. The Soviet state sponsored engineers at Henry Ford trade school as well as creating its own engineering programs with access to Western engineering journals and other materials. Similarly, Soviet trade missions abroad were often geared towards a more practical end to learn from the West its methods of organization. One such mission led to a brief Muscovite experiment with hamburgers, for example, in 1937 after Mikoyan observed during a US trade mission that the hamburger was a highly efficient proletarian food ideal for the city man on the go.

Yet it was not enough for the FYPs to catch up with the West, the Soviet state had to surpass it. The extreme and at times apocalyptic rhetoric emanating from Moscow was more than just puffery. The emphasis upon speed and exceeding target goals also meant that the Soviet economy did not evolve into a balanced entity, and there critical shortages of material and labor. Industrializing the state necessitated the construction of a transport infrastructure, which in turn meant that the Soviet workforce was far more mobile than its tsarist predecessors. The NKVD system of internal passports and other control mechanisms clamped down on this, but if local working conditions got too poor, some workers could simply disappear into another grandoise project that had better conditions.

Although the Stakhanovism of the second FYP seemed to solve some of the labor shortages, it also caused an enormous share of headaches for Soviet managers. Rewards for Stakhanovites ate into precious and scarce resources and drove the costs of labor upwards. Accidents, work stoppages, and the substitution of will for training all cut into industrial output. This form of shock labor also inculcated bad work habits among the workforce, particularly with regards to outputs. Because the FYP had set goals based on chronology, Soviet production sometimes resembled the process of college term paper writing- middling and fitful periods of work followed by frenetic bursts of activity as the deadline loomed closer. Stakhanovism made for excellent propaganda copy, but it also created an expectation that shock activity could transcend real limits. Moreover, Stakhanovism also created more tensions within the Soviet workforce. Delegating who was a Stakhanov was a major headache for mangers and some Stakhanovs were clearly resented by their fellow workers because they received access to scarce consumer goods and other perks like housing. This helped contribute to violence and other forms of disorder in the industrial zones, many of whom had a frontier-like quality to them.

Another solution to the labor shortage was GULAG labor. Such workers need not be rewarded, and the GULAG system itself operated under the assumption that honest, hard work was a necessary component of reform. Certain sectors of the economy that called for hard labor like forestry increasingly relied upon prisoners and the collectivization of agriculture created a large body of prisoners available for the drudge work of the FYPs. As early as the first FYP, GULAG labor had begun to evolve into a means for managers to make up for recruitment shortfalls. The experiences of intellectuals like Solzhenitsyn have colored Western perceptions of the GULAG system ("political" prisoners like Solzhenitsyn often stayed much longer in the camps, the bulk of the population were often ordinary "criminals"- often defined as such in ever-broadening category- had a different sentencing structure) , but the labor was often quite harsh and human wastage quite high.

But shock and forced labor could not erase the problems of material shortages and scarcity. A good Soviet manager either had to be a tolkach (pusher) or have access to one. A tolkach was one who had a good working knowledge of the system and the various connections needed to grease the wheels to get things done. Blat (sway/favors) became one of the means of social lubrication that ensured a factory had the raw materials necessary. Tolkachi were an important component of a successful state enterprise even though the state's authorities saw their activities as illegal, and it was often theft or speculation. Managers often hid Tolkachi within the their workforce and had a serious of unofficial contracts for raw materials.

"Robbing Peter to pay Paul" thus became a not uncommon phenomena in the first two FYPs. On a macro-level, the unofficial shifting around of scarce resources meant that production goals would not be met. Given the harsh penalties for not meeting goals, many managers developed strategies to make it appear they had met goals. Shoddy output was one way to meet goals, but a risky one. Another stratagem was to shunt imaginary production to another concern with the collusion of that factory's manager. This closed circle turned under-fulfillment into its opposite as it meant that the factories and had met their goals on paper. In a large geographic entity like the USSR, hiding fictive production output within the corners of GOSPLAN was certainly possible, especially since the FYPs almost guaranteed under-production.

For its part, Moscow was certainly aware that this con game played by some of its managers. NKVD investigators often bemoaned the "wall" of local cliques who could designate scapegoats and likewise obscure investigations. The second FYP, which promised more extensive oversight and accountability made matters more dangerous for the planners. Discovery of juking the books invited investigations of the earlier FYPs, and managers often played along with Moscow's new line about responsibility. Blame-shifting downwards, which was the norm for any investigation of the first FYP, was playing with fire because the underlying source of tension- unrealistic plans - remained unresolved. The tensions of the shopfloor unleashed in part by Stakhanovism undercut the solidarity of the workforce and encouraged denunciations upwards. The "wall" of Soviet management soon became a circular firing squad with the advent of the Terror in 1937. Mangers were quick to denounce their compatriots when the state discovered slush funds, cronyism, and other causes of under-fulfillment which were necessary to make the system function but to outsiders looked like wrecking or other forms of sabotage.