Twenty-Five-Thousanders

Background

At its November 1929 plenum, the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) adopted a decree "On the Results and Further Tasks of Kolkhoz Construction," resolving to dispatch 25,000 advanced urban workers to the countryside on a permanent basis to "provide leadership to the newly created kolkhozes and sovkhozes." The measure was driven by the grain procurement crisis and the momentum of the First Five-Year Plan: the regime needed loyal proletarian cadres in the villages to accelerate collectivization.

Selection and Composition

The response among workers was enthusiastic: over 70,000 volunteered. The All-Union Central Council of Trade Unions (VTsSPS) set selection criteria and regional quotas. After factory-level discussions, 27,519 were ultimately selected. Of the 23,409 whose personnel files are preserved: 92.3% were men, 7.7% women; 69.9% were Communist Party members, 8.6% Komsomol, 21.5% non-party; 48% had over twelve years of production experience; roughly 16,000 belonged to the Metal Workers Union.

Experience in the Countryside

After short preparatory courses and two-to-three-month internships at sovkhozes, the Twenty-Five-Thousanders arrived in the countryside in early 1930, amid the first wave of forced collectivization. Most were assigned as chairmen of large collective farms in the key grain regions: Ukraine, the North Caucasus, the Lower and Middle Volga, and the Central Black Earth Region. However, local officials often ignored them, reassigned them to unrelated tasks, or denied them adequate food and housing. Some were assaulted or murdered by peasants resisting collectivization. Only 40 percent remained through the end of their terms in 1932.

Legacy

Despite these obstacles, many farms headed by Twenty-Five-Thousanders earned awards as model collective farms. The campaign was celebrated in propaganda as heroic socialist construction. Many participants were promoted into rural party and government positions, and several later received the title of Hero of Socialist Labor. The protagonist of Mikhail Sholokhov's novel Virgin Soil Upturned (1932), Semyon Davydov, was crafted as the archetypal Twenty-Five-Thousander.

References

• Viola, Lynne. The Best Sons of the Fatherland: Workers in the Vanguard of Soviet Collectivization. Oxford University Press, 1987.
• Борисов, Ю. С. 25-тысячники. М.: Госполитиздат, 1959.
• Розенфельд, В. Я. Двадцатипятитысячники. М., 1957.