Izotov Movement

Background

The Izotov movement was one phase of Soviet socialist competition (sotsorevnovanie). The mass campaign began in 1929 with the First Five-Year Plan and the Pravda publication of Lenin's 1917 article, and the December 1929 congress of shock-worker brigades launched the shock-worker (udarnik) drive to overfulfill output norms. Individual record-setting among workers came next, and its central figure was the Donbas face-worker Nikita Izotov.

Launch

A face-worker at the Kochegarka mine in Horlivka, Izotov reached 562 percent of the plan in January, 558 percent in May and 2,000 percent (607 tons in six hours) in June 1932. He owed this to close study of the coal seam, fast roof support, tight work organisation and well-kept tools.

How it worked

Rather than stop at personal records, Izotov published his experience in Pravda on 11 May 1932, the article that founded the movement. In late December 1932 the first Izotov school opened at Kochegarka, where instruction and demonstrations were given at the coal face. In 1933 a mine section was organised as a school for upgrading young face-workers.

Spread and transition to Stakhanovism

The Izotov schools spread across the country, and Izotovites trained novices in their techniques. In the same period Izotov campaigned against the personalisation (obezlichka) of mine machinery maintenance and helped organise the all-Union mine competition, becoming a propaganda figure for socialist competition in general. The movement was a forerunner of Stakhanovism, which emerged in 1935; Izotov joined that wave, cutting 240 tons in a single shift on 11 September 1935 (over 30 times the norm) and setting a world record of 607 tons in six hours on 1 February 1936.

Character and limits

Formally socialist competition was a voluntary expression of working-class initiative, but in practice it was organised from above through party resolutions. Participants received material and symbolic rewards, and in the shortages of the 1930s shock workers and their enterprises were given priority in machinery, equipment and raw materials. Records were often achieved with other workers' help, better tools or relaxed job requirements, and in many cases they pushed up the norms of other workers, causing animosity.

Difference from Stakhanovism

Stakhanovism aimed at extremely high quotas, and the Encyclopedia of Ukraine holds that many Stakhanovite records were spurious, achieved with the help of other workers, better tools and equipment, or reduced job requirements; Russian Wikipedia likewise states that almost all Stakhanovite records rested on some form of falsification, including Stakhanov's own record, credited to him alone rather than to the brigade that assisted him. The movement was strongest among miners and metalworkers, then spread through almost all branches of the economy.

Workers' initiative and its limits

A worker's innovation against lax work discipline was formalised as one of the forms of socialist competition: it raised technical levels among miners and metallurgical workers and trained young workers, and its mentoring gave Izotov a public voice. Yet the campaign remained under party and state direction, and the resulting quota increases often bred resentment, while the drive to overfulfill plans also degenerated into formality and record falsification. Its evaluation therefore has to hold together both the genuine transmission of skills inside the working class and the labour intensification and statistical manipulation in which it was embedded.