Aleksei Grigorievich Stakhanov
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Stakhanov speaks to a fellow miner |
Aleksei Grigorievich Stakhanov (
Russian: Алексей "ригорьевич Стаханов) (
3 January 1906–
1977) was a
miner in the
Soviet Union,
Hero of Socialist Labor (
1970), and a member of the
CPSU (
1936). He became a celebrity in
1935 as part of a movement that was intended to increase worker
productivity and demonstrate the superiority of the
socialist economic system.
Stakhanov was born in Lugovaya near
Oryol. In
1927, he began working in a mine called "Tsentralnaya-Irmino" in the town of
Kadievka (
Donbass). In
1933, Stakhanov was made a
jackhammer operator. In 1935, he took a local course in mining. On
August 31, 1935, it was reported that he had mined a record 102
tons of
coal in 5 hours and 45 minutes (14 times his
quota). On
September 19, Stakhanov was reported to have set a new record by mining 227 tons of coal in a single
shift.
In
1936-
1941, Stakhanov became a student at the Industrial Academy in
Moscow. In 1941-
1942, he was appointed director of a mine No. 31 in
Karaganda. Between
1943 and
1957, Stakhanov worked in the Ministry of Coal Industry of the USSR. In 1957-
1959, he was deputy director of the
Chistyakovantratsit trust, and after that, assistant chief engineer at the mine management office No. 2/43 of the
Torezantratsit trust until his
retirement in
1974.
Stakhanov was a
deputy of the
Supreme Soviet of the USSR of the 1st convocation. He was awarded two
Orders of Lenin,
Order of the Red Banner and numerous
medals. The last Sunday of August was designated "Coal Miner's Day", also apparently in his honor.
Stakhanov was celebrated as a "model Soviet worker" as part of an effort to encourage workers and peasants to surpass their own quotas. Stakhanov's records set an example throughout the country and gave birth to the
Stakhanovite movement.
Stakhanov's story has often been reported in the
United States as an example of Soviet
propaganda. For example, in
1985,
The New York Times printed a story reporting that though Stakhanov had indeed succeeded in his feat, it was only because the Communist Party had pre-arranged the event as a way of boosting public morale, with many other miners working to help Stakhanov beat the mining record. The
Times quoted the chief of the Tsentralnaya-Irmino mine's branch of the Party, Konstantin G. Petrov, as saying that "I suppose Stakhanov need not have been the first... It could have been anybody else. In the final analysis it was not the individual face-worker who determined whether the attempt to break the record would succeed, but the new system of coal extraction."
[ Serge Schmemann, "In Soviet, Eager Beaver's Legend Works Overtime," New York Times (31 Aug 1985), p. 2.] Other sources have questioned whether the event occurred at all. In the context of the
Cold War, however, these skeptical stories may themselves be forms of propaganda.
