Jessen & Richter (Eds.) (43 page)

control it. Regardless of the rhetoric spouted at the podium, workers com-

posed only about one quarter of the total number of delegates at the union

congresses, the remainder included union officials, white-collar employees,

engineering/technical personnel, and over 600 directors of trusts and en-

terprises and their deputies. About two-thirds of the delegates were Party

members. The congresses, aimed at revitalization from below, were still

dominated by paid union officials and managers.39 Along with genuine

efforts by workers, the congresses thus replicated the delicate exercise that

the VTsSPS plenum delegates had performed earlier in which “Bureau-

crats” trumpeted against bureaucracy.

By the end of 1937, over 1,230,000 people had participated in the

electoral process in 146 unions. Elections were held in hundreds of thou-

sands of union groups (
profgrupy
) and shop committees, in almost 100,000

factory committees and 1,645 regional committees. Elections in hundreds

of enterprises were nullified for violating “the principles of union democ-

racy” by not offering more than one candidate and secret ballots. Final

election returns showed a serious shake up of personnel. Over 70 per cent

of the old factory committee members were replaced, 66 per cent of the

94,000 factory committee chairmen, and 92 per cent of the 30,723 mem-

bers of the regional committee plenums. The election results, however,

were mixed in terms of putting workers into positions of power. At the

lower levels of the union organizations, many of the new people were

workers or “people from production”: in the
profgrupy
(the primary

organization), 65 per cent of those elected were Stakhanovites or shock

workers, in the shop committees 62 per cent, in the factory committees 45

per cent, and in the regional committees 25 per cent. These figures indi-

cated strong participation from leading workers in the factories, but they

also revealed an inverse ratio between the level of the union organization

and the percentage of workers elected to it: the higher the level, the lower

the percentage of workers. From the
profgrupy
to the regional committees, for example, the representation of workers dropped by 40 per cent.40 People who did not work in the industry represented by the union still occu-

——————

39 Ibid.

40 Ibid., ll. 10–14.

T H E G R E A T S O V I E T P A R A D O X

165

pied most positions at the upper levels. The wave of renewal weakened as

it rolled toward the upper reaches of the unions.41

In elections for the highest level of union leadership, the central com-

mittees, union members also returned strong votes of no confidence.

Electoral returns from 116 union central committees showed that over 96

per cent of 5,054 plenum members, 87 per cent of presidium members, 92

per cent of secretaries, and 68 per cent of chairmen were replaced. Here,

too, officials at the apex of the hierarchy retained a greater share of posts

that those immediately below them: 96 per cent of central committee

members were replaced, but only 68 per cent of chairmen. Moreover, the

new chairmen and secretaries often transferred from other important

Party, managerial, or union posts. In about one third of the central com-

mittees, they were former heads of factory committees.42 The new electoral

shake up provided the greatest benefits to this group, catapulting them

from leadership of the factories into positions of national prominence.

Party and VTsSPS leaders pointed with pride to the fact that many

newly elected officials were
not
Party members, evidence that “new

people”, “the best Stakhanovites” were becoming active in union affairs.

Far more non-Party members could be found at the lower than the upper

reaches of union leadership. Fully 93 per cent of
profgrup
members did not belong to the Party, in contrast to 19 per cent of the central committee

presidium members.43 Just as the per cent of workers steadily decreased

from the bottom to the top of the union hierarchy, so did the percentage

of Party members increase.

Party leaders’ active endorsement of non-Party people stood in sharp

contrast to their usual policy of promoting Party candidates. What was

their motivation? Union leaders officially presented the elections as a

means “to liquidate stagnation in the unions and root out the entrenched

Trotskyist-Bukharinist agents of fascism and their supporters”.44 The aims

——————

41 There was a similar pattern in the May 1937 Party elections: the regional (
oblast’
and
krai
) first secretaries retained their positions, while the district (
raion
) and primary Party officials were voted out (Getty 1997, 28).

42 GARF, f. 5451, o. 22, d. 64, ll. 10–4.

43 The percentage of non-party members decreased as one moved up the unions’ hierarchies: 84 per cent of shop committee members, 80 per cent of factory committee members, 66 per cent of the factory committee chairmen, 47 per cent of regional committee members, 34 per cent of regional committee presidiums, and 33 per cent of central committee members did not belong to the Party. GARF, f. 5451, o. 22, d. 64, ll. 10–4.

44 Ibid., l. 11.

166

W E N D Y Z . G O L D M A N

were thus an exact replica of Stalin and Zhdanov’s program for the Party

itself: to renew democracy from below and to remove former opposition-

ists. In the campaign for union democracy, “non–Party” served as a signi-

fier for workers, just as “Party”, especially among unionists in leading

posts, signified a greater likelihood of oppositional activity. Top Party and

union leaders viewed mid- and upper level union officials as the analog to

the regional leaders they denounced at the February–March CC plenum.

By mobilizing workers to remove these officials, top Party leaders were

able to target former oppositionists and gain working class support in

much the same way they sought to use the rank and file Party cadres

against their regional leaders.45

Workers voted out the overwhelming majority of old officials, but did

they succeed in replacing them with workers? Salary data shows that over

half the newly elected officials did not take a pay increase in their new

posts. In other words, they did not move up from lower positions, and

certainly not from the shop floor. In 1938, there were 5,484 salaried posi-

tions within the unions.46 Of the people elected to these posts, 59 per cent

either took a pay cut or stayed at the same level. Of the remaining 41 per

cent who increased their salaries, the overwhelming majority did not make

a big jump: they gained less than 200 rubles per month. Union elections

thus encouraged officials to play a type of leapfrog. The union pots began

to boil, but unlike the proverbial frogs that remained in hot water, leading

officials began leaping laterally. The newly elected chairman of the Union

of Oil Refinery Workers, for example, was previously the head of a shop.

As head of the union, he earned 1,000 rubles a month, 100 rubles
less
than he earned as shop boss. The new chairman of the Union of Coalminers of

the East was previously the head of the Cadre (Personnel) Department of

the Eastern Coal Transport Trust. He, too, took a pay cut, from 1,200 to

800 rubles. The new chairman of the Union of Medical Workers (
Medsan-

trud
) was previously director of a shoe workshop; the chairman of the Union of Fish Workers, the deputy chairman of the Murmansk town soviet;

——————

45 Getty and Naumov (1999, 263–68, 322–33, 357–61, 576–83) argue that regional leaders were targeted for removal by Stalin and his supporters not only because they represented a threat to centralized power, but because they were a likely pool of oppositionists. The process of mobilizing the lower ranks against the regional leaders involved several advances and retreats between the June 1936 and February–March 1937 Central Committee plenums.

46 These included chairmen and secretaries of union central and regional committees, and chairmen and secretaries of their respective presidiums.

T H E G R E A T S O V I E T P A R A D O X

167

and the head of the Union of Iron Ore Workers, director of the

Liebknecht mine.47 These newly elected chairmen of the union central

committees were not workers; they were managers in powerful local and

regional posts. They earned high salaries compared to workers.48 Leading

officials stubbornly defended their privileges even through the unpredict-

able vagaries of “revitalization”. Managers moved into unions, and former

union officials were most probably appointed to management posts. Lat-

eral leapfrog was one way regional and local cliques protected each other.

If these men were representative of the newly elected officials, the higher

union staff appeared to have been “renewed” by the bosses!

Conclusion

Analysis of the elections suggests that many interests were at play. Stalin,

Shvernik, and other Party leaders aimed to gain workers’ support and root

out former oppositionists. They viewed the personal fiefdoms that had

developed around regional elites as obstacles to these aims. The democracy

campaign was a way to rebuild working class support, and to forge a united

Party, purged of opposition and corruption. The workers hoped to remove

corrupt and complacent “Bureaucrats”. The campaign for union demo-

cracy offered the opportunity to elect officials who would address accident

rates, working conditions, housing, food supply, and wages. They voted the

old leadership out, especially at the lower levels, in the hope of creating

unions that would represent their interests. For union officials, the cam-

paign initiated a desperate struggle to maintain their standing. They sought

to preserve their standing by moving members of their own “family

circles” from one leading post to another.

——————

47 The study covered 1,349 paid, elected officials or about one-quarter of the total paid elected union
apparat
, see GARF, f. 5451, o. 22, d. 75, ll. 2–4.

48 The average monthly wage in industry in 1935 was 185 rubles, with a range of 129 rubles for workers in the linen industry, and 223 rubles in the oil industry. Women textile workers were frantic when machine stoppages further reduced their small paychecks, because they could scarcely feed their children on their regular wages. Highly skilled workers in heavy industry might earn up to 500 rubles. Yet union officials earned considerably more than workers even at the highest end of the pay scale.
Trud v SSSR. Statis-ticheskii spravochnik
(TsUNKhU Gosplana, Moscow, 1936), 97.