Labor in State-Socialist Europe, 1945–1989: Contributions to a History of Work 9789633863381

Citation preview

LABOR IN STATE-SOCIALIST EUROPE, 1945–1989

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 1

2020.05.12. 19:27:42

OR L AB tudies D N S KA ary

R

y iplin disc Centur s n t s Tra 21 the for

WO

ean rop u E tral Cen

ss B Pre y t i vers Uni

Se o ok

ries

Volume I. Series Editors: Eszter Bartha Adrian Grama Don Kalb David Ost Susan Zimmermann

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 2

2020.05.12. 19:27:42

Labor in State-Socialist Europe, 1945–1989 Contributions to a History of Work

Edited by

Marsha Siefert

Central European University Press Budapest–New York

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 3

2020.05.12. 19:27:42

Copyright © by Marsha Siefert 2020 Published in 2020 by Central European University Press Nádor utca 11, H-1051 Budapest, Hungary Tel: +36-1-327-3138 or 327-3000 E-mail: [email protected] Website: www.ceupress.com 224 West 57th Street, New York NY 10019, USA All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the permission of the Publisher. ISBN 978-963-386-337-4 (hardback) ISBN 978-963-386-338-1 (ebook) Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Siefert, Marsha, 1949- editor. Title: Labor in state-socialist Europe, 1945-1989 : contributions to a history of work / edited by Marsha Siefert. Description: Budapest, Hungary ; New York, NY : Central European University Press, 2020. | Series: Work and labor: transdisciplinary studies for the 21st century ; volume 1 | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2019043575 (print) | LCCN 2019043576 (ebook) | ISBN 9789633863374 (hardcover) | ISBN 9789633863381 (adobe pdf ) Subjects: LCSH: Labor—Europe, Eastern—History—20th century. | Labor—Europe, Central—History—20th century. | Socialism—Europe, Eastern—History—20th century. | Socialism—Europe, Central—History—20th century. Classification: LCC HD8380.7 .L23 2020 (print) | LCC HD8380.7 (ebook) | DDC 331.12/042094309045—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019043575 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019043576

Labor in State 01 cn.indd 4

2020.06.08. 15:48:23

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  ix List of Tables and Figures  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  xi List of Abbreviations  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  xii Introduction Labor in State-Socialist Europe since 1945: Toward an Inclusive History of Work Marsha Siefert  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

 1

PART I: FINDING WORK, MAKING WORKERS Unemployment in State Socialism: An Insight into the Understanding of Work in 1950s Poland Natalia Jarska  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   27 The Impossibility of Being Planned: Slackers and Stakhanovites in Early Socialist Romania Alina-Sandra Cucu  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   49 Finding Workers to Build Socialism: Recruiting for the Steel Factories in Bulgaria and Albania Ulf Brunnbauer and Visar Nonaj  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   73 “Inappropriate Behavior”: Labor Control and the Polish, Cuban, and Vietnamese Workers in Czechoslovakia Alena K. Alamgir  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   99

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 5

2020.05.12. 19:27:42

vi

Table of Contents

PART II: WORKERS, RIGHTS, AND DISCIPLINE Dishonest Saleswomen: On Gendered Politics of Shame and Blame in Polish State-Socialist Trade Małgorzata Mazurek  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   123 Labor Discipline in Self-Managed Socialism: The Yugoslav Automotive Industry, 1965–1985 Ulrike Schult . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   145 “This Workers’ Hostel Lost Almost Every Bit of Added Value It Had”: Workers’ Hostels, Social Rights, and Legitimization in Hungary and the German Democratic Republic Eszter Bartha . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   167 Discussing Women’s Double and Triple Burden in Socialist Yugoslavia: Women Working in the Garment Industry Chiara Bonfiglioli  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   195

PART III: WORKERS, SAFETY, AND RISK Governing the State of Emergency: Large Industrial Accidents in Communist East Germany Thomas Lindenberger  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   219 Labor’s Risks: Work Accidents, the Industrial Wage Relation and Social Insurance in Socialist Romania Adrian Grama  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   245 Nuclear Yutopia: The Outcome of the First Nuclear Accident in Yugoslavia, 1958 Marko Miljković  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   273

PART IV: WORKERS, PROTEST, AND REFORM Strikes in Czechoslovakia, 1945–1968: Systems Analysis, and the Debate over the Causes of the Collapse of State Socialism Peter Heumos  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   309

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 6

2020.05.12. 19:27:42

Table of Contents

vii

“It Shall Not Be a Written Gift, but a Lived Reality”: Equal Pay, Women’s Work, and the Politics of Labor in State-Socialist Hungary, Late 1960s to Late 1970s Susan Zimmermann  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   337 Labor Protest in the Italian-Yugoslav Border Region During the Cold War: Action, Control, Legitimacy, Self-Management Sabine Rutar  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   373 When Workers’ Self-Management Met Neoliberalism: Positive Perceptions of Market Reforms among Blue-Collar Workers in Late Yugoslav Socialism Rory Archer and Goran Musić  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   395

PART V: TOWARD AN INCLUSIVE HISTORY OF WORK Not Just Socialist Miners, but Miners of the World: Internationalism, Global Trends, and Romanian Coal Workers Anca Glont  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   421 List of contributors  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   441 Selected Bibliography  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   449 Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   459

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 7

2020.05.12. 19:27:42

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 8

2020.05.12. 19:27:42

Acknowledgments

This book grew out of several activities, conferences, panels, courses, and graduate student projects as part of the initiative “Labor History for the 21st Century in a Global Perspective” that Susan Zimmermann and I co-chaired at the History Department of Central European University. Thanks go to the Central European University for a Humanities grant, “Laboring Lives: The Experience of Work in Eastern Europe,” and to the many participants in the courses, conferences, and workshops that have been sponsored along the way. In particular I would like to recognize the welcoming environment of the Labor Network at the biennial European Social Science History Conferences and the European Labor History Network, which hosted several of our panels. The visiting lecturers in the three CEU lecture series on labor history brought invigorating and global perspectives to CEU; their research can be found cited throughout this book. The students at CEU, in the labor history courses and through their own research, have continued to surprise and reward with innovative topics and well-developed studies. I owe an enormous debt to the authors in this book. Without exception they presented high quality research and responded to requests for revision, updates, and assistance with care and patience. This book was fortunate to have the service of excellent translators, supported by the CEU Humanities grant. Thanks go to Kimba Allie Tichenor for translating from German and Forrest Kilimnik for editing the chapter by Peter Heumos, and to Piotr Wciślik for translating Małgorzata Mazurek’s original chapter from Polish. I am especially grateful to the two reviewers of the manuscript for CEU Press, whose comments on the project and on individual chapters enabled a thorough revision. During the revision and publication process I was aided by several doctoral students. Stefan Gužvica helped me find and obtain the visual image used on the cover of the Belgrade statue “Regeneration,” nicely photographed by and gratefully used with permission from Vladana

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 9

2020.05.12. 19:27:43

x

Acknowledgments

Putnik Prica, Art History Department, Faculty of Philosophy, University of Belgrade. Stephen Westlake provided expert help in the preparation of the manuscript, from footnotes to preliminary indexing. Mike Cragg deserves special commendation for his sensitive and professional copy-editing of the manuscript. At Central European University Press, an immense debt of gratitude goes to József Litkei, whose meticulous editing, persistent attention to details, and intelligent questions raised the quality of the final product. Ágnes Barla-Szabó and Péter Inkei contributed their expertise and professionalism to marketing and distributing the book, and Linda Kunos has been remarkably responsive to the needs of the book, its editor, and its authors. The editorial process was guided by a reviewer’s comment that, with work, this collection could achieve international standards. I trust that this book has approached that goal and will contribute to European history and global labor history writ large.

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 10

2020.05.12. 19:27:43

List of Tables and Figures

Figure 4.1: Polish and foreign workers in Czechoslovakia, 1970–1989 

. . . . . . .

 104

*** Table 4.1: Vietnamese and Cuban workers in Czechoslovakia, 1980–1989 

. . . .

 105

Table 4.2: Reasons for departures of Polish workers from companies under the purview of three different Czechoslovak ministries, April 1973–January 1974  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  107 Table 10.1: Rate of workplace injuries and time taken to recover, 1955–1959  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  258 Table 10.2: Social spending on workers’ injury compensation, 1955–1959  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  259

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 11

2020.05.12. 19:27:43

List of Abbreviations

AAN: ABS: AJ: AMV: ANCS: ANRC: AQSh: ARB: AWU: BAB: BArchSAPMO: BIDSZ: BOAL: BStU:

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 12

Archiwum Akt Nowych (Central Archives of Modern Records), Poland Archiv bezpečnostních složek (Archive of the Security Forces), Czech Republic Arhiv Jugoslavije (Archive of Yugoslavia), Belgrade, Serbia Archiv ministerstva vnitra (Archives of the Home Office), Prague, Czech Republic Arhivele Naţionale Caraş Severin (The [Romanian] National Archives – Caraş Severin) Arhivele Naţionale ale României – Cluj (The Romanian National Archives – Cluj) Arkivi Qëndror i Shtetit (National Archive of Albania) Arhiva Radio Beograda (Radio Belgrade Archives), Serbia Arbeiterwohnunterkunft (Workers’ Hostel), German Democratic Republic Bundesarchiv Abteilung Berlin (Federal Archives, Section Berlin), Germany Stiftung Archiv der Parteien und Massenorganisationen der DDR (Foundation for the archives of the parties and mass organizations of the GDR) at the Bundesarchiv in Berlin Bőripari Dolgozók Szakszervezete (Trade Union of Workers in the Leather Industry), Hungary Basic Organization of Associated Labor Bundesbeauftragter für die Unterlagen des Staatssicherheitsdienstes der ehemaligen Deutschen Demokratischen Republik (Federal commissioner for the archives of the Ministry for State Security of the former GDR)

2020.05.12. 19:27:43

List of Abbreviations

xiii

CC al PCR: Comitetul Central al Partidului Comunist Român (Central Committee of the Romanian Communist Party) CGM: Confederația Generală a Muncii (General Confederation of Labor), People’s Republic of Romania Comecon: Council of Mutual Economic Assistance CPB: Centar za profesionalne bolesti (Center for Occupational Health), Belgrade, Yugoslavia ČSSR: Československá socialistická republika (Czechoslovak Socialist Republic) ÉSZV: Építőipari Szolgáltató Vállalat (State Construction Company), Hungarian People’s Republic FAP: Fabrika automobila Priboj GDR: German Democratic Republic IAEA: International Atomic Energy Agency ICRP: International Commission on Radiological Protection ILO: International Labour Organization IMF: International Monetary Fund JNA: Jugoslovenska narodna armija (Yugoslav People’s Army) KC: Komitet Centralny (Central Committee) KDAŽ: Konferencija za društvenu aktivnost žena (Conference for the Social Activity of Women), Yugoslavia KSČ: Komunistická strana Československa (Communist Party of Czechoslovakia) LCY: League of Communists of Yugoslavia LSA Landeshauptarchiv Sachsen-Anhalt, Abteilung Merseburg Merseburg: MNOT: Magyar Nők Országos Szövetsége (National Council of Hungarian Women) MPiOS: Ministerstwo Pracy i Opieki Społecznej (Ministry of Labor and Social Care), Polish People’s Republic MPSV: Ministerstvo práce a sociálních věcí (Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs), Czech Republic MSZMP: Magyar Szocialista Munkáspárt (Hungarian Socialist Workers’ Party) MSZMP PI: MSZMP Központi Bizottságának Párttörténeti Intézete ­(Institute of Party History of the MSZMP Central Committee)

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 13

2020.05.12. 19:27:43

xiv

List of Abbreviations

NA:

Národní archiv (National Archives of the Czech Republic), Prague OHS: Occupational Health and Safety PAK: Pokrajinski Arhiv Koper (Provincial Archives of Koper), Slovenia PCI: Partito Comunista Italiano (Italian Communist Party) PCM: Preşedinția Consiliului de Miniştrii (Presidency of the Council of Ministers), Romanian People’s Republic PCR: Partidul Comunist Român (Romanian Communist Party) PIL: Politikatörténeti és Szakszervezeti Levéltár (Archives of Political History and the Trade Unions), Hungary PMR: Partidul Muncitoresc Român (Romanian Workers’ Party) PZPR: Polska Zjednoczona Partia Robotnicza (Polish United Workers’ Party), Polish People’s Republic PTI: Politikatörténeti Intézet (Institute of Political History), Budapest, Hungary RDA Sofia: Regionalen dŭržaven arhiv Sofia (Regional State Archive in Sofia), Bulgaria ROH: Revoluční odborové hnutí (Revolutionary Trade Union Movement), Czechoslovakia SED: Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands (Socialist Unity Party of Germany) SFRY: Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia SGJ: Statistički godišnjak Jugoslavije (Statistical yearbook of Yugoslavia) SI-PAM: Pokrajinski arhiv Maribor (Regional Archive of Maribor), Slovenia SKNE: Savezna komisija za nuklearnu energiju (Federal Nuclear Energy Commission), Yugoslavia SOA: Státní oblastní archiv (State Regional Archives), Prague, Czech Republic StA Leipzig: Staatsarchiv Leipzig SZB: Szakszervezeti Bizottság (Trade Union Commissions), Hungary SZKL: Szakszervezetek Központi Levéltára (Central Trade Unions’ Archive), Hungary SZMT: Szakszervezetek Megyei Tanácsa (Trade Union County Councils), Hungary

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 14

2020.05.12. 19:27:43

List of Abbreviations

SZOT: SZOTNB: TAM: URM: ÚRO: VEB: VOA: WIDF:

xv

Szakszervezetek Országos Szövetsége (National Federation of Trade Unions), Hungary Szakszervezetek Országos Szövetsége Központi Nőbizottság (Central Women’s Committee of the National Federation of Trade Unions), Hungary Tovarna avtomobilov in motorjev (Automobile and Motor Factory), Yugoslavia Urząd Rady Ministrów (Council of Ministers), Polish People’s Republic Ústřední rada odborů (Central Council of Trade Unions), Czechoslovakia Volkseigener Betrieb (Publicly Owned Enterprise), German Democratic Republic Všeodborový archiv (Trade Union Archive), Prague, Czech Republic Women’s International Democratic Federation

ZCZ-FPV: Zavodi Crvena zastava – Fabrika privrednih vozila (Company archive of Zavodi Crvena zastava Utility cars factory), Serbia ZK: Zentralkomitee (Central Committee), Socialist Unity Party of Germany

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 15

2020.05.12. 19:27:43

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 16

2020.05.12. 19:27:43

Introduction

Labor in State-Socialist Europe since 1945: Toward an Inclusive History of Work *

Marsha Siefert

I

n 1996, some years after the collapse of the “workers’ states,” Stephen Kotkin asked if the study of labor under communism had a future. He hoped that “at some point, new vocabularies and new rationales will be found in the language and experience of laborers to take the labor history of communist and noncommunist countries beyond the epoch of fossil fuel industrialism in which that history was born.”1 In the decades since Kotkin posed this question in a special issue of International Labor and WorkingClass History, others have found those “new vocabularies and new rationales” notably in the “language and experience of laborers,” earlier envisaged in the writing of E. P. Thompson. Nine years later in the same journal, Mark Pittaway introduced a special issue on “Workers and Socialist States in Postwar Central and Eastern Europe.” In contrast to the all-controlling socialist state, Pittaway stressed workers’ agency, arguing that workers’ relationships to those in power were “characterized by consent, accommodation, and conflict that varied from locality to locality, [from] state to state, and from period to period.”2 Recognizing how work varied across region and time, in 2012 Susan Zimmermann and I  originated a  long-term initiative to bring Central, Southeastern, and Eastern Europe into “Labor History for the 21st Century in a Global Perspective.”3 The initiative aimed to stimulate research in a field that had been neglected in recent decades and to contribute to the *

The author would like to thank Ulf Brunnbauer, Adrian Grama, Sue Curry Jansen, Lewis Siegelbaum, and Susan Zimmermann for their comments on earlier versions of this introduction. 1  Stephen Kotkin, “Introduction: A Future for Labor under Communism?” International Labor and Working-Class History, no. 50 (Fall 1996): 1–8; 7. 2  Mark Pittaway, “Introduction: Workers and Socialist States in Postwar Central and Eastern Europe,” International Labor and Working-Class History, no. 68 (October 2005): 1. 3  See Labor History Initiative at “Labor History,” CEU Department of History, https:// history.ceu.edu/LaborHistory, accessed July 6, 2018.

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 1

2020.05.12. 19:27:43

2

Marsha Siefert

ongoing scholarly debates in trans-European and global labor history. While the initiative encompassed a long-term history of the region, including the Habsburg, Ottoman, and Romanov empires and their successor states, a majority of the papers submitted for panels and workshops focused on the state-socialist period. These contributions formed the core of the present book. To illustrate the region’s variety, further studies were added to provide a portrait rich in experience and rife with implications for a revitalized labor history, both European and global.

Labor History for the Twenty-First Century in a Global Context How can the history of work in state-socialist Europe benefit from and contribute to the global history of work? Twenty-first century labor history offers one of those “new rationales” for the history of work by decentering the European narrative of progress. The European model of development, that “epoch of fossil fuel industrialism in which [labor] history was born,” is no longer viewed as the ideal type against which other forms of work are to be compared.4 Neither is wage labor considered the measure of work’s value. Other forms of work—like tributary and reproductive labor, subsistence and informal labor, forced or coercive labor—have been shown to coexist with wage labor in different regional and temporal contexts, bringing their own underlying costs and demands. Introducing work from time periods before the European Industrial Revolution or from locations far beyond the shores of the continent contextualizes European labor history within a global framework.5 Colonial labor practices are integrated into the histories of cotton, sugar, and other commodities previously viewed through an imperial lens,6 and labor migration is investigated as a major factor in transnational labor practices.7  See, e.g., Marcel van der Linden, “Refuting Labour History’s Occidentalism,” in Work and Social Change in Asia: Essays in Honour of Jan Breman, ed. Arvind N. Das and Marcel van der Linden (New Delhi: Manohar, 2002), 249–61. 5  Jan Lucassen, “Outlines of a History of Wage Labour,” IISH Research Paper 51 (Amsterdam: IISH, 2013): 1–34. 6  See, e.g., Sven Beckert, Empire of Cotton: A Global History (New York: Vintage, 2015). 7  See, e.g., Dirk Hoerder, Cultures in Contact: World Migrations in the Second Millennium (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2002); Cindy Hahamovitch, “Creating Perfect Immigrants: Guestworkers of the World in Historical Perspective,” Labor History 44, no. 1 (2003): 69–94; Kateryna Burkush, “On the Forest Front: Labour Relations and Seasonal Migration in 1960s–80s,” Labor History 59, no. 3 (2018): 295–315. 4

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 2

2020.05.12. 19:27:43

Labor in State-Socialist Europe since 1945

3

By focusing upon workers, the new labor history includes groups who did not fit a definition of waged labor.8 Previously excluded workers, such as women, migrants, or forced laborers, enlarge the European story. Adding non-industrial forms of work allows a range of labor relations to be discussed in gradations of free and unfree labor, undercutting the earlier clearcut binary.9 In agricultural-based forms of work on plantations, latifundia, and manorial estates, for example, recovering workers’ stories reassesses the over-powering control of “masters” and property owners. Later generations of peasant-workers also have been taken more seriously as creatively organizing a viable hybrid form of labor participation. Even revisiting the Industrial Revolution from below shows that workers had their own opinions about their new status, complicating the intellectual critiques of their fate.10 Labor historians have also returned to large-scale questions about transnational capitalism.11 Compendia of concept- and country-based studies in industries central to European labor history, such as textiles, have enlarged the typologies of labor regimes, while projects about dockworkers stress the multinational experiences of workers long implicated in world trade, conquest, or war.12 New insights into the duration and persistence of patterns of inequality in labor relations across chronological and systemic divides, along with the consideration of workers’ attempts to improve their lives under these circumstances, have all contributed to new conceptualizations of broad historical trends13 and of the role of labor in local and transnational social movements.14 But within all the research that is globalizing, historicizing, and enlarging the types of work and workers comprising European labor history, one 8

 Marcel van der Linden, “Origins, Spread and Normalization of Free Wage Labour,” in Free and Unfree Labour: The Debate Continues, ed. Tom Brass and Marcel van der Linden (Bern: Peter Lang, 1997), 501–23. 9  See, e.g., Alessandro Stanziani, “Serfs, Slaves, or Wage Earners? The Legal Status of Labour in Russia from a Comparative Perspective, from the Sixteenth to the Nineteenth Century,” Journal of Global History 3, no. 2 (2008): 183–202. 10  Emma Griffin, Liberty’s Dawn: A People’s History of the Industrial Revolution (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2013). 11  Jürgen Kocka, Capitalism: A Short History (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2016); Jürgen Kocka and Marcel van der Linden, eds., Capitalism: The Reemergence of a Historical Concept (London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2016). 12  Lex Heerma van Voss, Els Hiemstra-Kuperus, and Elise van Nederveen Meerkerk, eds., The Ashgate Companion to the History of Textile Workers, 1650–2000 (Farnham: Ashgate, 2016); Sam Davies, ed., Dock Workers: International Explorations in Comparative Labour History, 1790–1970, 2 vols. (Farnham: Ashgate, 2000). 13  See, for example, Andrea Komlosy, Work: The Last 1,000 Years (London: Verso, 2018). 14  Marcel van der Linden, Workers of the World: Essays toward a Global Labor History (Leiden: Brill Academic Publishers, 2008); Beverly J. Silver, Forces of Labor: Workers’ Movements and Globalization since 1870 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003).

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 3

2020.05.12. 19:27:43

4

Marsha Siefert

perspective has been underdeveloped. In long-invested views of European geography, what was conventionally known during the Cold War as “Eastern Europe”—whether as a  separate region, as an exemplar of the Soviet model, or as a node in global commodity chains—has been neglected, abbreviated, stereotyped, or quarantined in labor history.15 Countries “east of west” are often subsumed within larger narratives of “difference,” “backwardness,” or even less complementary adjectives. Even before the Cold War divide, comparative research from an economic perspective was often used to demonstrate the region’s relative lagging behind based on industrial development and GDP measures,16 rarely differentiating the variety in the large imperial expanses comprising the future nation-states of Central, Southeastern, and Eastern Europe. Given the genesis of socialist ideology within a  broader Europe, it is particularly salient that labor under state socialism be reinstated in the conceptual debate on the history of European labor. Labor history of state socialism can go beyond providing “cautionary” tales or offering a few viable practices as exceptions to an otherwise unworkable system. For example, the connections of state-socialist labor practices to the longer history of European social democracy, especially in the post-Habsburg states of Central Europe,17 are often unacknowledged.18 The rich history of European and in-

15

 For some important regional contributions, see Peter Hübner, Christoph Klessmann, and Klaus Tenfelde, Arbeiter im Staatssozialismus: Ideologischer Anspruch und soziale Wirklichkeit, vol. 31 (Cologne: Böhlau, 2005), and the overviews by two authors in this volume: Peter Heumos, “Workers under Communist Rule: Research in the Former Socialist Countries of Eastern-Central and South-Eastern Europe and in the Federal Republic of Germany,” International Review of Social History 55 (2010): 83–115; and Sabine Rutar, “Towards a Southeast European History of Labour: Examples from Yugoslavia,” in Beyond the Balkans: Toward an Inclusive History of Southeastern Europe, ed. Sabine Rutar (Berlin: Lit Verlag, 2014), 323–54. 16  Jacek Kochanowicz and Bogdan Murgescu, “Rural and Urban Worlds: Between Economic Modernization and Persistent Backwardness,” in The Routledge History of East Central Europe since 1700, ed. Irina Livezeanu and Árpád von Klimó (New York: Routledge, 2017), 81–125. 17  For an exemplary study of interwar labor relations in the industrialized areas of Bohemia, see Peter Heumos, “Die Arbeiterschaft in der Ersten Tschechoslowakischen Republik: Elemente der Sozialstruktur, organisatorischen Verfassung und politischen Kultur,” Bohemia-Zeitschrift für Geschichte und Kultur der böhmischen Länder 29, no. 1 (1988): 50–72. 18  On social democracy, see Marcel van der Linden, “A Case of Lost Identity? A Long View on Social Democracy Worldwide,” in Transitions in Social Democracy: Cultural and Ideological Problems of the Golden Age, ed. John Callaghan and Ilaria Favretto (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2006), 35–41; Jan De Graaf, Socialism across the Iron Curtain: Socialist Parties in East and West and the Reconstruction of Europe after 1945 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019).

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 4

2020.05.12. 19:27:43

Labor in State-Socialist Europe since 1945

5

ternational trade unions,19 along with the construction of the welfare state,20 suggest continuities in patterns of labor, social policy, and the lived experience of work that argue for the inclusion of state-socialist Eastern Europe into the broader history of labor relations.21 Of course, the political rupture represented by state socialism as a socioeconomic and political system is significant. Neither should the excesses or transgressions of state socialism, not least toward workers, be ignored. Even the nomenclature for describing the political system—socialism, state socialism, or communism to name a few—is a matter upon which commentators may disagree. However, seeing labor during this period only in moral or political terms misses continuities with Europe further west.22 That is why the inclusion of state-socialist Europe is essential to reconceptualizing diverse modernities overall,23 not just an exemplar of a failed fork in the road. More generally, imagining the history of work as connected among groups and across political divides might assist in moving beyond the themes of modernization and development in seeking alternative narratives for a history of the twentieth century.24 Other research trends suggest that the time is right for integrating the labor history of state-socialist Europe into broader narratives and conceptu-

 Reiner Tosstorff, The Red International of Labour Unions (RILU) 1920–1937, trans. Ben Fowkes (Leiden: Brill, 2016); Geert Van Goethem, The Amsterdam International: The World of the International Federation of Trade Unions (IFTU), 1913–1945 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006). 20  Béla Tomka, “The Welfare State,” chapter 5 of A  Social History of Twentieth-Century Europe (London: Routledge 2013), 154–71; Tomasz Inglot, Welfare States in East Central Europe, 1919–2004 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008); Manfred G. Schmidt and Gerhard A. Ritter, The Rise and Fall of a Socialist Welfare State: The German Democratic Republic (1949–1990) and German Unification (1989–1994) (Berlin: Springer 2013). 21  Susan Zimmermann, “Eastern Europe,” in Handbook: Global History of Work, ed. Karin Hofmeester and Marcel van der Linden (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2017), 131–56. 22  See, for example, Manu Goswami, Gabrielle Hecht, Adeeb Khalid, Anna Krylova, Elizabeth F. Thompson, Jonathan R. Zatlin, and Andrew Zimmerman, “AHR Conversation: History after the End of History; Reconceptualizing the Twentieth Century,” American Historical Review 121, no. 5 (2016): 1567–1607, especially related to moral narratives; Charles S. Maier, “Consigning the Twentieth Century to History: Alternative Narratives for the Modern Era,” American Historical Review 105, no. 3 (2000): 807–31. 23  For a  contextualization of Eastern Europe within the broader history of decolonization, see James Mark and Quinn Slobodian, “Eastern Europe,” in The Oxford Handbook of the Ends of Empire, ed. Martin Thomas and Andrew S. Thompson (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018), http://www.oxfordhandbooks.com/view/10.1093/oxfordhb/ 9780198713197.001.0001/oxfordhb-9780198713197-e-20, accessed July 6, 2018. 24  William G. Rosenberg, “Representing Workers and the Liberal Narratives of Modernity,” Slavic Review 55, no. 2 (1996): 245–69. 19

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 5

2020.05.12. 19:27:43

6

Marsha Siefert

alizations. First, the growth of transnational history and the history of international organizations and interactions has begun to highlight the trans-European and global character of social movements and political formations.25 Discussions of transnational communism26 and socialist internationalism27 increasingly consider the pre–World War II history of European communist parties and transnational workers’ organizations. Workers’ representatives from state-socialist Europe participated in transnational and international organizations. Some were bloc-based such as Comecon28 and the Communist-influenced World Federation of Trade Unions. In others, like the International Labour Organization,29 most of the bloc members—Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and Bulgaria, for example—had joined by 1922 and remained members after 1945 without interruption; the Soviet Union rejoined in 1954.30 One notable example is the way in which the Gdansk Inter-Factory Strike Committee used Poland’s 1957 ratification of ILO Convention 87 on the right to form free trade unions to legitimate their twenty-one demands in April 1980.31 Research on international women’s organizations has inserted the Women’s International Democratic Federa See, e.g., Geoff Eley, Forging Democracy: The History of the Left in Europe, 1850–2000 (Oxford University Press, 2002), chapter 23, “Class and the Politics of Labor.” 26  Bogdan Iacob, “Is It Transnational? A  New Perspective in the Study of Communism,” East Central Europe 40, nos. 1–2 (2013): 114–39. 27  Daniel Laqua, “Democratic Politics and the League of Nations: The Labour and Socialist International as a Protagonist of Interwar Internationalism,” Contemporary European History 24, no. 2 (2015): 175–92. 28  See, e.g., Balázs Szalontai, “Political and Economic Relations between Communist States,” in The Oxford Handbook of the History of Communism, ed. Stephen A. Smith (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), 305–21; Oscar Sanchez-Sibony, Red Globalization: The Political Economy of the Soviet Cold War from Stalin to Khrushchev (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014). 29  See, e.g., Sandrine Kott and Joelle Droux, eds., Globalizing Social Rights: The International Labour Organization and Beyond (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan and International Labour Office, 2013); Michael Forman, Nationalism and the International Labor Movement: The Idea of the Nation in Socialist and Anarchist Theory (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2010). 30  Research reports from the ILO are also illuminating, especially those with comparative data. See, e.g., “Payment by Results in the Building Industry in Eastern Europe,” International Labour Review (Geneva) 68, no. 6 (1953): 524–41; Jacques Monat, “Workers’ Participation in Decisions within Undertakings: The European Experience; A Historical Perspective and Comparative Analysis” (Geneva: International Labour Organization, 1977); ILO, “Women’s Participation in the Economic and Social Activities in the USSR and European Socialist Countries (statistical analysis),” Report no. ILO-ILO/W.4/1980 (Geneva: ILO, 1980). 31  See Daniel Maul, “‘Help Them Move the ILO Way’: The International Labor Organization and the Modernization Discourse in the Era of Decolonization and the Cold War,” Diplomatic History 33, no. 3 (2009): 387–404. 25

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 6

2020.05.12. 19:27:43

Labor in State-Socialist Europe since 1945

7

tion (WIDF), representing women from the state-socialist world, into the history and debate on transnational women’s rights.32 Collective support among industrial workers in times of strife, through unions or professional identification, and trade union cooperation across the Iron Curtain33 are also part of this transnational history. Second, histories from below have enriched the accounts of postwar European reconstruction by “clearing the rubble of Cold War politics,” identifying the shared challenges across the continent in the aftermath of World War II.34 New studies in economic history explain how the comparatively far larger negative impact of World War II on population growth in Eastern Europe contributed to a lack of flexibility in labor supply during the 1950s and 1960s, hence the region’s “falling behind.”35 Chronologically, studies of postwar Eastern Europe are incorporating the more draconian labor practices of the interwar authoritarian regimes and the wartime experience of labor mobilization and industrial practices, including forced labor, to better explain the continuities as well as divisions of the postwar period. Understanding the transition of labor practices to state socialism has been underpinned by two groundbreaking monographs on Hungary and Poland, which have served as a  model for labor history from below.36 As Adrian Grama argues with reference to the immediate postwar period, “the politics associated with raising productivity, first to reach prewar output levels and then to confirm the efficiency of state socialism, defined an entire historical epoch, mediating the transition out of the war economy and setting the trajectory of growth for much of the 1950s.”37 32

 Francisca de Haan, “Continuing Cold War Paradigms in Western Historiography of Transnational Women’s Organisations: The Case of the Women’s International Democratic Federation (WIDF),” Women’s History Review 19, no. 4 (2010): 547–73. 33  Stefan Müller, “West German Trade Unions and the Policy of Détente (1969–1989),” Moving the Social 52 (2014): 109–37. 34  Mark Mazower, “Changing Trends in the Historiography of Postwar Europe, East and West,” International Labor and Working-Class History 58 (2000): 275–82; Holly Case, “Reconstruction in East-Central Europe: Clearing the Rubble of Cold War Politics,” Past & Present 210, supplement 6 (2011): 71–102. 35  Tamás Vonyó, “War and Socialism: Why Eastern Europe Fell Behind between 1950 and 1989,” The Economic History Review 70, no. 1 (2017): 248–74; Tamás Vonyó and Alexander Klein, “Why Did Socialist Economies Fail? The Role of Factor Inputs Reconsidered” The Economic History Review 72, no. 1 (2019): 317–45. 36  The posthumously published monograph by Mark Pittaway, The Workers’ State: Industrial Labor and the Making of Socialist Hungary, 1944–1958 (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2012) was anticipated by several published articles. See also Padraic Kenney, Rebuilding Poland: Workers and Communists, 1945–1950 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1997). 37  Adrian Grama, Laboring Along: Industrial Workers and the Making of Postwar Romania (Berlin: De Gruyter Oldenbourg, 2019), 13.

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 7

2020.05.12. 19:27:43

8

Marsha Siefert

Third, new histories of the Cold War have countered images of regional isolation, showing the permeability of the Iron Curtain and blurring binaries previously assumed as analytical categories. Familiar Cold War vocabularies applied to labor relations like formal and second economies, proletariat and bourgeoisie, capitalist and communist are being recast. Instead, new studies of consumption and tourism in the socialist bloc are identifying the ways in which these activities created linkages for people from the region.38 New studies of “informality” have expanded the way in which waged work as a category of formal economy is subverted, complemented, and amplified, serving as an integral component of how social relationships intersect the varieties of labor.39 No longer seen as mere survival skills in “controlled economies,” informal practices from blat and tribute for services, gifts and favors—even varieties of corruption—are now explored as more globalized forms of labor exchange. The movement of workers across Cold War divides has been seen as much more dynamic, as demonstrated by Yugoslav guest workers in West Germany or generations of workers in polyglot cities on both sides of Cold War borders from Berlin to Trieste. Anecdotal stories of trader tourists who shopped across Cold War borders, or study trips to the Netherlands by Yugoslav department store personnel, have enlarged the sphere of workers’ mobility for consumer goods.40 New histories of trans-bloc cooperation in various industries, such as the participation of automobile makers Fiat and Citroën in state-socialist enterprises,41 or other technological partnerships, notably between Finland and its state-socialist neighbors, created occasions for personnel exchanges and inter-bloc labor relations.42 And, of course, the explosion of studies on transnational Cold

 See, e.g., Radina Vučetić, Coca-Cola Socialism: Americanization of Yugoslav Culture in the Sixties (Budapest–New York: CEU Press, 2018). 39   See The Global Informality Project, http://www.in-formality.com/wiki/index.php?title=The_Global_Informality_Project, accessed July 6, 2018, and the accompanying two-volume encyclopedia: Alena Ledeneva, ed., The Global Encyclopaedia of Informality: Understanding Social and Cultural Complexity, 2 vols. (London: UCL Press, 2018). 40  Mark Keck-Szajbel, “Shop around the Bloc: Trader Tourism and Its Discontents on the East German–Polish Border,” in Communism Unwrapped: Consumption in Cold War Eastern Europe, ed. Paulina Bren and Mary Neuburger (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 374–77; Ivana Mihaela Žimbrek, “Mirrors of the City: Department Stores, Urban Space and the Politics of Retail in Socialist Yugoslavia (1950s–1960s),” (master’s thesis, Central European University, Budapest, 2018). 41  Marko Miljković, “Making Automobiles in Yugoslavia: Fiat Rechnology in the Crvena Zastava Factory, 1954–1962,” and Luminita Gatejel, “Socialist-Capitalist Joint Venture: Citroën in Romania during the 1980s,” The Journal of Transport History 38, no. 1 (2017): 20–36; 70–87. 42  See, e.g., Rutar, “Towards a Southeast European History of Labour.” 38

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 8

2020.05.12. 19:27:43

Labor in State-Socialist Europe since 1945

9

War exchange, from students to artists, documents the coproduction of knowledge of the other.43 Fourth, moving beyond the superpower struggle and East-West divide, scholarship on the history of communism has taken a “global turn,” exploring how communist ideas took hold in parts of the so-called Second and Third Worlds where there were synergies and sympathies.44 Recent ­histories incorporate the global phenomenon of communist parties and movements, ensuring that handbooks and collections address communist societies beyond the standard formation of the “bloc,” such a frequent signifier of Cold War Eastern Europe. Histories of workers under communism now routinely incorporate workers from Asia and Latin America,45 as well as workers from communist parties and unions in France, Italy, or other European countries.46 New research on labor mobility highlights the ways in which workers from socialist countries outside the bloc migrated to Europe, such as Cuban workers who came to 1980s Hungary47 or workers from Mozambique and Angola who worked in the factories of the GDR. Conversely, workers from countries in Eastern Europe often travelled to other aligned or non-aligned nations to literally help “build socialism.” In Albania, for ex See, e.g., Sari Autio-Sarasmo and Brendan Humphreys, eds., Winter Kept Us Warm: Cold War Interactions Reconsidered (Helsinki: Aleksanteri Institute, 2010); Patryk Babiracki and Kenyon Zimmer, eds., Cold War Crossings: International Travel and Exchange in the Soviet Bloc, 1940s–1960s (College Station, TX: Texas A&M Press, 2014); Simo Mikkonen and Pia Koivunen, eds., Beyond the Divide: Entangled Histories of Cold War Europe (Berlin: Berghahn, 2015). 44  Silvio Pons, The Global Revolution: A History of International Communism, 1917–1991 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014); Patryk Babiracki and Austin Jersild, eds., ­Socialist Internationalism in the Cold War: Exploring the Second World (Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016). 45  Tuong Vu, “Workers under Communism: Romance and Reality,” in The Oxford Handbook of the History of Communism, ed. Stephen A. Smith (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), 471–87. 46  See, e.g., Peter Lange, George Ross, and Maurizio Vannicelli, eds., Unions, Change and Crisis: French and Italian Union Strategy and the Political Economy, 1945–1980 (London: Routledge, 2016 [1982]); Eloisa Betti, “Women’s Working Conditions and Job Precariousness in Historical Perspective: The Case of Italian Industry during the Economic Boom (1958–1963),” in Making Sense, Crafting History: Practices of Producing Historical Meaning, ed. Izabella Agárdi, Berteke Waaldijk, and Carla Salvaterra (Pisa: PLUS-Pisa University Press, 2010), 175–205. 47  Alena K. Alamgir, “Recalcitrant Women: Internationalism and the Redefinition of Welfare Limits in the Czechoslovak-Vietnamese Labor Exchange Program,” Slavic Review 73, no. 1 (2014): 133–55; Grażyna Szymańska-Matusiewicz, “Migration and Cultural Flows between Vietnam and Poland,” Asian and Pacific Migration Journal 25, no. 3 (2016): 275–95; James Mark, Péter Apor, Radina Vučetić, and Piotr Osęka, “‘We Are with You, Vietnam’: Transnational Solidarities in Socialist Hungary, Poland and Yugoslavia,” Journal of Contemporary History 50, no. 3 (2015): 439–64. 43

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 9

2020.05.12. 19:27:43

10

Marsha Siefert

ample, it was not only the socialist advisers who were helping the country to industrialize, but also Bulgarian and Czechoslovak workers who built those first factories.48 Thus the globalization of other historical questions has direct relevance for labor history in state-socialist Europe. More recently, Eastern Europe has again become of interest to researchers, but primarily to those seeking to understand the post-socialist transition “back into” Europe.49 Labor practices were a small component of proposed structural and systemic changes, encouraged by trans-European investment and advice from “capitalist” neighbors. However, many studies of transition are based on assumptions about “what came before,” and may not have had the benefit of more detailed research into “actually existing socialism.”50 In fact, in order to discuss “what” the countries of Eastern Europe were transitioning “to”—usually a variant of democracy and capitalism—this research may have had the effect of stereotyping or even erasing those very labor practices. As the “transition” has ended its third decade, in ways that once again seem to expound Eastern European “difference” and “failure,” it is worthwhile to revisit the state-socialist period, going beyond legacies and looking at local specificities to gain a long-term perspective on the region. One goal of this book is to begin such a systematic reflection on how to think together in a more inclusive European history of labor relations.

Challenges and Considerations in Researching Labor under European State Socialism Can labor under European state socialism be investigated without reference to the Soviet Union? Much depends upon the questions being asked and the period under investigation. Whatever position the researcher might take on the role of the Soviet Union’s support, collaboration, or coercion

48

 Elidor Mëhilli, “Socialist Encounters: Albania and the Transnational Eastern Bloc in the 1950s,” in Cold War Crossings: International Travel and Exchange across the Soviet Bloc, 1940s–1960s, ed. Patryk Babiracki and Kenyon Zimmer (Arlington: Texas A&M University Press, 2014), 120–21. 49  For research that does include data on Eastern Europe, see Dorothee Bohle and Béla Greskovits, “Capitalism without Compromise: Strong Business and Weak Labor in Eastern Europe’s New Transnational Industries,” Studies in Comparative International Development 41, no. 1 (2006): 3–25; and Bohle and Greskovits, Capitalist Diversity on Europe’s Periphery (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2012). 50  Norbert Petrovici, “Framing Criticism and Knowledge Production in Semi-Peripheries,” Intersections: East European Journal of Society and Politics 1, no. 2 (2015): 80–102.

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 10

2020.05.12. 19:27:43

Labor in State-Socialist Europe since 1945

11

in the transformation of East European states to state-socialist systems,51 Soviet terminology, goals, and models remain in the descriptive vocabulary. Countries of Eastern Europe might be labeled as “Soviet-type dictatorships,” or the policies compared to “Soviet-style industrialization and collectivization.” To the extent that postwar Eastern European labor transformations are seen as following the Soviet model or as a latecomer to the creation of a workers’ state, Cold War research on Soviet labor history—from both the East and the West—suggested questions to be asked about state-socialist European labor relations. Case studies of workers in individual factories, in protests, and among the peasantry helped to articulate a research agenda, and the USSR offered an ongoing laboratory about theories of economic development and social change. Accordingly, Eastern Europe could easily fall within the “Soviet sphere” of scholarship. As Lewis Siegelbaum suggests, the “drama” and “romance” of the Soviet narrative, especially when assessing the role of workers, was able to drive the research agenda.52 In this collection, which predominantly deals with the 1950s through the 1980s, “Sovietization”—if it is discussed at all—is treated as an internal negotiation among the hierarchies of labor relations as they intersect local communist party membership and goals. Questions about the creation of “class consciousness,” mainstays of earlier research on both the USSR and Eastern Europe, take a  back seat to the everyday manifestations of party structures and ways in which a “Soviet” labor regime contributed to making “socialist men” and “socialist women.” Alternatively, in some cases the process of proletarianization is seen as unsuccessful, incomplete, compromised,  For post-1989 interpretations, see Norman Naimark and Leonard Gibianskii, eds., The Establishment of Communist Regimes in Eastern Europe, 1944–1949 (Boulder, CO: Westview, 1997) and Norman M. Naimark, “The Sovietization of Eastern Europe, 1944– 1953,” in The Cambridge History of the Cold War, Volume I: Origins, ed. Melvyn P. Leffler and Odd Arne Westad (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 195–97; Silvio Pons, “Stalin and the European Communists after World War Two (1943–1948),” Past & Present 210, supplement 6 (2011): 121–38; Timothy Snyder and Ray Brandon, eds., Stalin and Europe: Imitation and Domination, 1928–1953 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014); Mark Pittaway, “Making Postwar Communism,” in The Oxford Handbook of Postwar European History, ed. Dan Stone (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012). 52  Lewis H. Siegelbaum, “The Late Romance of the Soviet Worker in Western Historiography,” International Review of Social History 51, no. 3 (2006): 463–81; Andrei Sokolov, “The Drama of the Russian Working Class and New Perspectives for Labour History in Russia,” in Global Labour History: A State of the Art, ed. Jan Lucassen (Bern: Peter Lang Academic, 2006), 397–452. For more recent research on Soviet labor, especially under industrialization, see Donald Filtzer, Wendy Z. Goldman, Gijs Kesler, and Simon Pirani, eds., A Dream Deferred: New Studies in Russian and Soviet Labour History (Bern: Peter Lang, 2008) and Lewis H. Siegelbaum, “Workers and Industrialization,” in The Cambridge History of Russia, Volume III: The Twentieth Century, ed. Ronald Grigor Suny (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 440–67.

51

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 11

2020.05.12. 19:27:43

12

Marsha Siefert

or even abandoned in the face of the search for workers. For the most part, then, the material conditions and everyday instrumentalities are the starting point for these chapters, which elaborate the choices and dilemmas for those participating at various levels in the labor hierarchy. In many of the studies presented here, party affiliation is one factor among many, such as skilled versus unskilled labor, perceptions of inequality, and privileges of social mobility. More broadly, Eastern Europe—both during the state-socialist period and to some extent even after—was often seen as a laboratory for “national communisms,” a “third way” for the implementation of communist ideas. Variants of Marxist methodological and interpretative frames allowed for a dialogue among researchers within and across the bloc about possibilities for reform. Researchers from the West were keenly interested in the ways in which communist institutions might be subverted from within, or indeed any manifestation of “resistance” to the communist paradigm that suggested possibilities of reform as well as collapse.53 Even choosing to describe the systemic aspects of East European “party-states” as representing state socialism or market socialism represented not only a political act but also a suggestive way of naming and identifying potential reform.54 In this collection, for example, Yugoslavia’s self-management system plays an outsized role, with its amalgam of labor practices and organizations comprising “market socialism.” Workers’ councils and worker participation in self-management from the early 1960s, along with labor’s freedom of movement from the mid-1960s, all put Yugoslavia under the spotlight as a potential incubator of practices favorable to workers,55 as well as a way of reforming, redeeming, or transforming the ideological underpinnings of state socialism. Another example would be the attention paid to the rise of Poland’s Solidarity in the early 1980s. As a workers’ movement that gained momentum and adherents after a failed strike in 1976, the factors that contributed to its rise, breadth, and staying power—whether the unions, religious commonality and support, or the perceived success of “anti-politics”—were the object of attention at the popular level and anxiety for the state-socialist apparat. This workers’ movement also was among the first to be investigated in light of

 Valerie Bunce, Subversive Institutions: The Design and the Destruction of Socialism and the State (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 66. 54  Steve Smith discusses some of the political vocabulary, with its global variants, in his excellent introduction to The Oxford Handbook of the History of Communism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), 3–4. 55  For an example, see Ellen T. Comisso, Workers’ Control under Plan and Market: Implications of Yugoslav Self-Management (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1979). 53

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 12

2020.05.12. 19:27:43

Labor in State-Socialist Europe since 1945

13

the rising interest in gender history, from Andrzej Wajda’s Man of Iron to the “mothers” of Solidarity.56 Thus in a trajectory of state-socialist labor history, the master narrative of “industrial development”—the “fossil fuel industrialism” alluded to by Kotkin—guided both the protagonists and researchers, so the factory remains a major site at which to investigate labor relations.57 Topics of interest to labor historians both East and West—workers’ organizations and unions, worker protests, control and discipline of workers, collective bargaining—remain on the agenda, also for the authors in this book.58 Workers’ agency was certainly discussed in earlier research: workers’ power on the shop floor, and managers’ laxity in enforcing quotas or labor discipline in order to retain workers were documented long before the collapse of communism.59 What has changed is that the everyday life perspective encompasses and emphasizes promises and practices away from the shop floor. For example, the “politics of productivity,” a term used in Cold War–era descriptions of labor both East and West,60 is given a new interpretation and fresh impetus with examples of how hierarchies of skill, ethnicity, and gender are negotiated as part of workers’ expectations in other areas: housing, leisure, education, and social welfare. The role of the workplace in providing such sociability is both particular to the state-socialist enterprise and also distributed unevenly according to these hierarchies. Other resources available to the worker, such as labor law and the employment contract, are also shown to be negotiated from below with more energy, even if not always fulsome success.61 Familiar stories about the thriv David Ost, Solidarity and the Politics of Anti-politics: Opposition and Reform in Poland since 1968 (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2010); Kristi S. Long, We All Fought for Freedom: Women in Poland’s Solidarity Movement (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1996). 57  For a contemporary account, see Jan F. Triska and Charles Gati, eds., Blue-Collar Workers in Eastern Europe (Winchester, MA: Allen and Unwin, 1981). 58  Interestingly, in the chapters of this book, the question of “class consciousness” and formulations of a “working class” were infrequent referents, in part because of the methods of investigation and the questions asked about everyday life. The “class” question remains on the agenda and seems to be making a comeback; see David Ost, “Class after Communism: Introduction to the Special Issue,” East European Politics and Society 29, no. 3 (2015): 543–64. 59  For an excellent discussion, see Charles F. Sabel and David Stark, “Planning, Politics, and Shop-Floor Power: Hidden Forms of Bargaining in Soviet-Imposed State-Socialist Societies,” Politics and Society 11, no. 4 (1982): 439–76. 60  See e.g., Michael Burawoy, The Politics of Production: Factory Regimes under Capitalism and Socialism (London: Verso, 1985). 61  See Dan-Alexandru Săvoaia, “Human Rights and Independent Trade Unionism in Late 1970’s Romania: The Case of SLOMR,” Yearbook of the A. D. Xenopol Institute of History (Iaşi) 55 (2018): 343–60; Agnė Rimkutė, “Workers’ Council as Means of Inclusion and of Exclusion: Some Considerations on Contractual Labour Relationships in Yugoslavia” (paper presented at the conference “New Perspectives on Eastern European Labor History,” May 24–27, 2018, Vienna). 56

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 13

2020.05.12. 19:27:43

14

Marsha Siefert

ing individual garden plot in the failing collective farm, the “grey economy” of bartering, and workers’ “creative” utilization of state properties for their own “entrepreneurship” remain part of the narrative.62 These examples are enhanced by selecting the village or the household—with its extended family connections—as an analytical unit for understanding work.63 Research on gender and work has been in the forefront of recontextualizing the state-socialist factory, by adding women workers and household reproductive labor to the story of industrialization.64 “Women’s liberation through work” as proposed by communist ideology may have had more strategic value than empirical gains in “actually existing socialism,” especially as patriarchal values and lower-status employment for women were the norm in most state-socialist societies. These invidious distinctions may be especially true of emerging jobs in the service sector, from retail to tourism,65 which were heavily staffed by women. Nonetheless, women in state socialism experienced some occupational opportunities and social benefits as compared to the achievements of feminist movements further west,66 due to a  more holistic approach toward policy debates and legislative achievements and the dire need of the statesocialist economies for women’s paid work.67 By the end of the 1960s, extended maternal leave had been introduced in nearly all the countries of Eastern Europe. During the later period of state socialism, national governments introduced more restrictions at the workplace in the areas of women’s 62

 Oana Mateescu, “Making Persons, Placing Objects: Narratives of Theft in Southern Romania,” (master’s thesis, History, Central European University, Budapest, 2002). 63  Theresa Wobbe and Léa Renard, “The Category of ‘Family Workers’ in International Labour Organization Statistics (1930s–1980s): A Contribution to the Study of Globalized Gendered Boundaries between Household and Market,” Journal of Global History 12, no. 3 (2017): 340–60. 64  Jill Massino and Shana Penn, eds., Gender Politics and Everyday Life in State Socialist East and Central Europe (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009); Catherine Baker, ed., Gender in Twentieth-Century Eastern Europe and the USSR (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016); Maria Bucur, “Women and State Socialism: Failed Promises and Radical Changes Revisited,” Nationalities Papers 44, no. 5 (2016): 847–55. 65  Daniela Dumbrăveanu, Duncan Light, Craig Young, and Anya Chapman, “Exploring Women’s Employment in Tourism under State Socialism: Experiences of Tourism Work in Socialist Romania,” Tourist Studies 16, no. 2 (2016): 151–69. 66  See, e.g., Éva Fodor, Working Difference: Women’s Working Lives in Hungary and Austria, 1945–1995 (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2003). 67  Donna Harsch, The Revenge of the Domestic: Women, the Family, and Communism in the German Democratic Republic (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2007); Susan Zimmermann, “Gender Regime and Gender Struggle in Hungarian State Socialism,” Aspasia 4 (2010): 1–24; Éva Bicskei, “‘Our Greatest Treasure, the Child’: The Politics of Child Care in Hungary, 1945–1956,” Social Politics: International Studies in Gender, State & Society 13, no. 2 (2006): 151–88.

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 14

2020.05.12. 19:27:44

Labor in State-Socialist Europe since 1945

15

health, reproductive capacity, and strength. However, the tensions between women’s paid work and childcare, as well as family work, remained. As studies in this volume show, combinations of agricultural work and waged work, as well as mobility among family members, raised questions that men and women faced both together and separately. A last consideration to be mentioned here in doing research on statesocialist Europe is how to interpret and incorporate the abundant empirical research completed during the state-socialist period, research that addressed contemporary questions as well as earlier periods. Historians, sociologists, economists, and anthropologists investigated a wide range of work-related phenomena, often supported by state funding.68 Since labor was a central component in the “catch-up” strategy being pursued through industrialization and increased productivity, its assessment and measurement both domestically and comparatively, both East and West, was part of the research effort.69 After 1989, the end of state socialism and global historiographical trends combined to produce a particularly strong backlash against labor history as such in the region,70 and earlier research, even when cited, was for the most part discredited for its state sponsorship and presumed ideological interpretative lens. Nonetheless, contributors to this volume have found imaginative ways to critically interrogate and reread studies from the statesocialist period to reinterpret policy discussions, assess problems, and recover voices of workers in state socialism.

The Organization of the Book How should a collection that aims to encompass the range and variety of state-socialist labor experiences be organized? The goal was to attract in-

68

 Małgorzata Mazurek, “Between Sociology and Ideology: Perception of Work and Sociologists Advisors in Communist Poland, 1956–1970,” Revue d’Histoire des Sciences Humaines 1 (2007): 11–31; Martha Lampland, The Value of Labor: The Science of Commodification in Hungary, 1920–1956 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2016); Ulf Brunnbauer, “Compartmentalized Pasts: Workers’ History in Socialist Yugoslavia,” ostBlog: Ost- und Sudosteuropa im Fokus der Wissenschaft, https://ostblog.hypotheses.org/751; Adela Hîncu, “Introduction: ‘Peripheral Observations’ and Their Observers,” in Social Sciences in the Other Europe since 1945, ed. Adela Hîncu and Victor Karady (Budapest: Pasts, Inc., 2018), 1–25. 69  Austin Jersild, “The Soviet State as Imperial Scavenger: ‘Catch Up and Surpass’ in the Transnational Socialist Bloc, 1950–1960,” The American Historical Review 116, no. 1 (2011): 109–32. 70  See, e.g., Mihai Varga, “An Anatomy of ‘Collective Anti-Collectivism’: Labor Sociology in Ukraine and Romania,” Global Labour Journal 2, no. 1 (2011): 43–63.

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 15

2020.05.12. 19:27:44

16

Marsha Siefert

novative research that reflected the new approaches to labor history, with particular attention paid to labor relations rooted in work experience. In referring to the global context, the idea was to bring together studies that collectively would allow for some generalizations, some surprises, and some rethinking to emerge from taking the promises and practices of state socialism seriously. Expressed simply, communism promised “the right to work, to free education and healthcare, to housing and quality leisure time, and to a pension in old age.” These promises were theoretically based on “higher human values and noble social principles” and were predicated on equality of opportunity.71 Realizing these promises proved to be difficult in practice. Demands for increased productivity channeled funds into workrelated technological and training improvements rather than social welfare, and  the hierarchical system of planning and management created targets and expectations that increasingly placed workers in competition with each other. Managerial ways of controlling time and output through the system of “piecework,” famously described as workers pitted against the machine, being paid by quantity and not quality,72 was circumvented by workers in myriad ways, often with the knowledge and/or connivance of management. The failure of employment to fulfil socialist promises—especially social mobility, decent housing, and social support—enabled workers to make both moral and actual claims upon the system. Therefore, these studies were organized not by chronological period or by country, but rather by a set of five themes that express the expectations, contradictions, and lived experiences of workers under state socialism. The paradoxes of unemployment when full employment was to be the norm, and labor shortages when jobs were made available, plagued the workers’ states. In Part One: Finding Workers, Making Workers, the authors explore how states and enterprises attempted to recruit workers and socialize them into new work requirements and routines. By the 1950s, as Natalia Jarska shows, matching the existing labor force to workplace needs resulted in a complex discourse in which unemployment became not just an economic issue but a political embarrassment. And women—at least in Poland—were no longer as welcome on the job market. Economists, state bureaucrats, and workers themselves understood work in moral terms and in the context of social justice, making unemployment an untenable construct in public discourse.

 Katalin Miklóssy and Melanie Ilic, “Introduction,” Competition in Socialist Society (New York: Routledge, 2014), 1. 72  Miklós Haraszti, A Worker in a Worker’s State: Piece-Rates in Hungary (London: Penguin, 1977). 71

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 16

2020.05.12. 19:27:44

Labor in State-Socialist Europe since 1945

17

Even when work was available, the attempts by the management of state enterprises to transform workers “according to plan” did not yield ideal results, as Alina-Sandra Cucu explains for two factories in early state-socialist Romania. Using interviews and examples from factory newspapers, Cucu demonstrates how “loyalty” and “socialist emulation” were used by management for socialization. But this process, both expensive and generally ineffective, “created animosity between workers, fracturing their solidarity and endangering their daily collaboration in the production process.” These imagined workers—“Stakhanovites” in Soviet parlance—represented “labor heroism” in the socialist state, but “making workers” could not be separated from managing those that were actually on hand. As Cucu concludes, “the factory walls were porous, and people’s life strategies crept in.” Other challenges to finding workers were experienced in the primarily agrarian regions of several Eastern European countries. The possibilities and the pitfalls of fully proletarianizing these so-called peasant-workers were debated throughout the period of state socialism. One solution in Hungary was mass-scale regular commuting by the kétlaki (literally “living in two places”), near the factory and in the village back home, documented for the Zala oilfields in southwest Hungary.73 Here resentment from the skilled workers (“they don’t know how to learn anyway”) and from those who gave up their land created great tensions in the workforce.74 As Ulf Brunnbauer and Visar Nonaj ask, in countries like Bulgaria and Albania where there was no industrial tradition, what were the incentives for rural dwellers to do factory work? Recruitment was even more difficult given that the state invested too little in supportive infrastructure like housing and social services, as compared to the new industrial cities of Nowa Huta or Dunaújváros.75 The model of “agrarian industrialization” proposed by Brunnbauer and Nonaj suggests that villagers not only had to be persuaded to work even

73

 Mark Pittaway, “The Reproduction of Hierarchy: Skill, Working-Class Culture, and the State in Early Socialist Hungary,” The Journal of Modern History 74, no. 4 (2002): 737–69, here 761–66. 74  Labor in agriculture is an important topic not otherwise represented in this collection, but for state-socialist Hungary, see Martha Lampland, The Object of Labor: Commodification in Socialist Hungary (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995) and Susan Zimmermann, “The Agrarian Working Class Put Somewhat Centre Stage: An Often Neglected Group of Workers in the Historiography of Labour in State-Socialist Hungary,” European Review of History: Revue européenne d’histoire 25, no. 1 (2018): 79–100. 75  Alison Stenning, “Shaping the Economic Landscapes of Postsocialism? Labour, Workplace and Community in Nowa Huta, Poland,” Antipode 35, no. 4 (2003): 761–80; Katherine Lebow, Unfinished Utopia: Nowa Huta, Stalinism, and Polish Society, 1949–56 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2013); Paul A. Compton, “The New Socialist Town of Dunaújváros,” Geography 50, no. 3 (1965): 288–91.

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 17

2020.05.12. 19:27:44

18

Marsha Siefert

part time but also felt less compunction in leaving their factory jobs to do the harvest or simply to see their family. The work-life concept of labor and the family unit are especially important in understanding the way in which wage labor and social reproduction were intertwined in socialist practice. Another method of dealing with labor shortage was recruiting workers from abroad. Labor mobility within the bloc was pronounced, especially for seasonal or specialized work. As Alena K. Alamgir explains in her chapter, Polish workers were essential to several industries in Czechoslovakia during the 1960s and 1970s. But workers also came from much farther away: within the framework of “socialist economic assistance,” workers from socialist or socialist-leaning countries arrived in state-socialist Europe for both training and employment.76 In exploring the lives of Cuban and Vietnamese workers who moved to Czechoslovakia during the 1980s, Alamgir reports a surprising finding. Due to a “split authority” for “foreign workers” between the embassy of the sending country and the employer, these workers were quite active in protesting pay and working conditions. Listing a wide range of strikes by Vietnamese workers—in construction, textiles, and a  plant cultivation company—Alamgir concludes that the more the Czechoslovak government used foreign workers to accommodate shortages, the more they were able to push for demands, supported by their own sending governments. And conversely, upending expectations, one Bulgarian factory worker interviewed by Brunnbauer and Nonaj praised the working conditions in a Bulgarianconstructed steel factory in Libya, commenting that the Libyan factory had a better air conditioning system! Studies of labor under state socialism have been historically concerned with the issues of labor control and labor discipline, but state socialism also promised workers’ rights, social support, and leisure activities. How could discipline be maintained in the absence of even a decent wage, much less other forms of respect? In Part Two: Workers, Rights and Discipline, the contributors revisit the issue of labor discipline within the complex, changing, ambiguous, and sometimes contradictory nature of labor regimes in a range of work settings, and the ways in which workers responded. Małgorzata Mazurek creatively explores a new “shop floor,” literally, through the ways in which the multilevel system of distributing consumer goods under socialism ended up 76

 The circulation of labor from the Global South is a growing research topic. See, e.g., Raia Apostolova, “Duty and Debt under the Ethos of Internationalism: The Case of Vietnamese Workers in Bulgaria,” Journal of Vietnamese Studies 12, no. 2 (2017): 101–25; and the special issue edited by Alena K. Alamgir, “Labor and Labor Migration in State Socialism,” Labor History 59, no. 3 (2018): 271–76, as well as the article in the same issue on Africans in the GDR: Marcia C. Schenck, “A Chronology of Nostalgia: Memories of Former Angolan and Mozambican Worker Trainees to East Germany,” ibid., 352–74.

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 18

2020.05.12. 19:27:44

Labor in State-Socialist Europe since 1945

19

stigmatizing the saleswomen who represented its public face in understocked stores. She suggests that press attempts to generate some sort of understanding for the saleswomen’s plight were a way of disciplining the consumer and turning attention away from the cycles of economic mismanagement leading to shortages. By focusing on the institutionalization of a public mood Mazurek explains how saleswomen shouldered the blame for a state consumption policy based on the dominance of demand over supply. Ulrike Schult’s chapter looks at workers’ behavior as seen by the authorities and scholars of the time. She asks why workers “violated” discipline and how the workers’ representatives in the Yugoslav system of self-management operated in instances of “labor disciplinary violations.” Taking two automobile factories, one in a Slovenian industrialized area and another new factory outside Belgrade, Schult recounts the violations associated with the “peasant-workers” recruited for the Serbian plant. These workers justified their absences in terms of what they felt management owed them—in this case, promised housing—so they spent work time building their own. Nonetheless, Schult finds that not unlike enterprises in other socialist states, the workers’ councils had only limited ability to “humanize” industrial expectations and many of these workers—especially at the bottom of the hierarchy—were in fact disciplined when attempting to pursue their rights. The problem of housing, highlighted in previous chapters, is central to Eszter Bartha’s discussion of the problems of workers’ hostels in Hungary and East Germany. Bartha reads Hungarian “sociography”—a mixture of sociology, literature, and ethnography written at the time—on the problems of workers’ housing as a coded criticism of the system. According to Bartha, one message of this research was that people living in inhuman circumstances cannot be blamed for their behavior, a conclusion that at the time attracted much debate and critique. Both East German and Hungarian citizens complained to authorities about abysmal conditions and the “lack of comfort,” but in Hungary discontent was openly expressed as mounting criticism of “goulash communism.” For the Hungarian “welfare dictatorship,” Bartha argues, the failure of programs of “added value,” central to state-socialist promises to workers, undermined the legitimacy of the regime. Addressing everyday life for female workers, Chiara Bonfiglioli uses a range of materials from factory newspapers to women’s magazines to talk about the unfulfilled promises for women’s work in Yugoslav state socialism. Moving beyond the well-established concept of the “double burden” of combining paid and unpaid work, Bonfiglioli gives voice to women’s interest in assuming a third burden: the “right” to participate politically in factory selfmanagement meetings, a source of self-respect. She also introduces the impact of class differences on both productive and reproductive labor for both men and women, concluding that women’s working lives differed according

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 19

2020.05.12. 19:27:44

20

Marsha Siefert

to generation, geographical location, ethnicity, education, and professional sector. Therefore, she emphasizes, one cannot presume a continuous and uniform pattern over the period. Discussing work under state socialism as a dynamic process, with adaptation to local, regional, and transnational currents, is a good antidote to assuming effective systems of state control. In Part Three: Workers, Safety and Risk in Eastern Europe, the authors address a relatively neglected topic in labor history,77 the ironies and challenges presented by work accidents and by the failure of state-socialist schemes intended to ensure workers’ safety and social support. How well would the promises of social insurance and other benefits compensate for accidents and dangers posed by the jobs required in heavy industry? How, if at all, did management cope with rapid technological transformation and demands for increased production without demotivating or endangering their employees? Looking at more traditional industries like metal foundries and chemical plants along with the newer untested facilities developing nuclear power, these chapters delve more deeply into the consequences for labor relations when accidents occurred. As Thomas Lindenberger suggests, although demands for the improvement of working conditions have been central to workers’ unions and social reforms, especially related to large-scale industrialization, labor historians and labor organizations have not made occupational health and safety among their highest priorities. This issue is particularly notable for statesocialist society, founded on the premise to care for and support workers. Lindenberger focuses on the “double exceptionality” of the GDR within the communist bloc which, having inherited a long-term tradition of mandated safety self-regulation, had to implement new state-socialist practices against risk. He explores how the party and other workers’ organizations responded when things went wrong in the complex environment of skilled factory production. As Lindenberger argues, large industrial disasters functioned as “limited states of emergency” used to “reimplement the party-state’s sovereignty in the realm of industrial relations.” Also taking a longer view, Adrian Grama explores how work accidents came to be “problematized in relation to labor productivity, the consolidation of a national budget for social insurance, and the emergence of a discourse of suspicion regarding welfare beneficiaries” in state-socialist Romania. Taking a closer look at workers’ disability claims, he charts how workers struggled against various authorities—from managers and the labor inspec77

 For one of the few studies of industrial accidents in a state-socialist context, see Lewis H. Siegelbaum, “Industrial Accidents and Their Prevention in the Interwar Period,” in The Disabled in the Soviet Union: Past and Present, Theory and Practice, ed. William O. McCagg and Lewis Siegelbaum (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1989), 85–118.

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 20

2020.05.12. 19:27:44

Labor in State-Socialist Europe since 1945

21

torate to trade union representatives—and how disability claims helped articulate a sense of social justice. In a concluding section, Grama draws attention to the fact that wage labor covered by social insurance was an exceptional phenomenon throughout the twentieth century, so state-socialist practices are of particular relevance. Workers at the nuclear plant in the Yugoslav “Yutopia,” Marko Milj­ko­ vić argues, were to benefit from features of a state-socialist enterprise, such as safety, security, medical monitoring and care, but they were also subject to the gap between “essential and expendable workforce.” What ensues, both immediately and publicly, when a nuclear reactor “over-irradiates” six young workers in 1958 is described in detail, from their medical treatment in France and elevation to “heroes,” to the authorities’ reaction at the scientific and political level. Miljković raises questions about the risk-taking allotted to workers in an industry deemed essential for national defense and the number of vested interests hidden within the protocols of national security. Of all the socialist state’s promises, the right to participate in setting their own working conditions and expectations was workers’ most serious demand. In Part Four: Workers, Protest and Reform, the authors turn to incidents of resistance and unrest, as well as workers’ attempts to reform their work environment through socialist means: the workers’ councils, trade unions, and other committees geared to mediate workplace problems. Examining strikes in Czechoslovakia from the immediate postwar period up to 1968, Peter Heumos looks at how workers tried to influence the relationship between factory councils and trade unions, especially given how industrial work was politicized in the postwar transition to communism. Drawing on the conflicts that ensued from the influx of less-skilled workers and the increased demand for shorter production time, Heumos explains how factory councils matured by building up formal and informal structures to protect the factory workers from centralist intervention, both from unions and the party. By enlarging his discussion to encompass the “lifeworld” of the factory bodies, he also demonstrates how the living environment of state socialism “catalyzed the transformation of the work environment.” Heumos argues that the experience of factory culture must be considered in explaining how everyday labor relations contributed to the collapse of state socialism. Susan Zimmermann presents an in-depth study of a campaign against unequal pay undertaken by a trade union women’s committee in Hungary to combat systematic gendered wage inequality and discrimination. This campaign, which developed against the backdrop of a series of high-level labor policy decisions in 1970, was ultimately unsuccessful. However, as Zimmermann demonstrates, while “investment in social reproduction certainly stabilized the larger gender order as it helped women to cope with the ‘double burden,’” the politics of equal pay “could be, and indeed often were,

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 21

2020.05.12. 19:27:44

22

Marsha Siefert

perceived as generating or enhancing direct competition between male and female workers.” Since many studies, like those represented in this book, document how male skilled workers had considerable bargaining power in state-socialist societies, incorporating gender politics in the study of statesocialist labor is essential to understanding the instrumental treatment of the labor force in state socialism. In Sabine Rutar’s contribution, workers’ strikes are interpreted within their international linkages and global influences, as well as their pre-socialist histories and regional specificities. She studies the interconnected shipbuilding and port industries on both sides of the Cold War Italo-Yugoslav border, where whatever the state-socialist authorities may have desired was conditioned by their interconnectedness to world markets. Beginning with the shared interwar history of this border region, and the popularity of communism among its inhabitants, Rutar discusses the strikes in the port cities of Rijeka (1967, 1971) and Koper (1970) in terms of worker-management conflicts, union demands, and the role of “market self-management.” But she complicates the analysis, arguing that protests on the Italian side of the border suggest an “apparent choreography” of these strikes, which supports the hypothesis of a  “crisis of industrialization” affecting enterprises across the capitalist-socialist divide. Few state-socialist societies escaped the international market or global trends, as Rory Archer and Goran Musić describe how workers understood and responded to the economic crisis in late Yugoslav socialism. Seeing the 1970s as an “interruption” to market reforms of the 1960s, workers in two Serbian enterprises had a  sufficiently “flexible” understanding of socialism to be open to market reforms, even to the detriment of existing workers’ self-management practices. The authors argue that a new generation of workers, without wartime experience and a later entrance to the labor market, was less attached to the country’s institutions, the party and the state. Many expressed the opinion that the market would better reward those that work, not those who were employed through status, family connections, or political influence. An “(un)developed culture of work” was also claimed by workers who had contact with the West, whether as a guest worker or through tourism, and who were dissatisfied with the failure of socialist redistribution of housing and income. These Yugoslav workers hoped not for a “passage to capitalism” but a “deepening of socialism with a stronger market influence.” If the preceding studies demonstrate the complex histories of labor relations under state socialism, Part Five suggests a way that labor studies of Eastern Europe can be historicized and globalized to move Toward an Inclusive History of Work. Anca Glont explores the long history of the miners of Romania’s Jiu Valley as “miners of the world,” whose self-aware interna-

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 22

2020.05.12. 19:27:44

Labor in State-Socialist Europe since 1945

23

tionalism dates back to the Habsburg period. Taking an explicitly global approach, Glont describes how the Romanian mining industry and its workers were integrated within different world regions, not only socialist. Romanian miners acted as intermediaries for mining practices from both East and West through training students from Vietnam, Cuba, Zambia, the Dominican Republic, and Kenya. In her wide-ranging discussion of state ownership, occupational hazards, knowledge transfer, and workers’ culture she describes a range of activities from literacy drives and a Miners’ University to workers’ housing and town development. Glont’s story illustrates a socially aware industry and examples of workers’ international solidarity. Understanding the global context of the Jiu Valley, Glont argues, is not just fruitful but integral to the concepts of global labor history. Two authors in this volume, Grama and Zimmermann, have reflected on the reasons “for the apparent mismatch between Eastern European labor history and the new global labor history.”78 The term “mismatch” is important. Potential linkages of international trends in subaltern and feminist studies omitted Eastern Europe as peripheral, and Eastern European adherence to classic Marxian and social history research paradigms during statesocialism followed by their abandonment thereafter created a “disadvantageous conjuncture.” The historical studies in this volume begin to suggest how new investigations of work experience and labor practices in state-socialist Europe may overcome this divergence. Shared histories and longer-term trajectories of work in this “peripheral” area of Europe can contribute to European history more generally by looking at common topics, from social welfare to shop floor production. Re-invigorated interest in trade unions, whether related to enterprises or, as in state socialism, to a range of other professions as well, requires a serious re-assessment of the state socialist experience. But perhaps most contemporaneously, paying greater attention to labor issues may also refine the questions asked about the post-socialist “transition” after 1989.79 Varieties of shared practices between market and socialist economies, especially in the areas of workers’ representatives through trade unions or factory councils, might help integrate the state-socialist world into a more global understand-

78

 Adrian Grama and Susan Zimmermann, “The Art of Link-Making in Global Labour History: Subaltern, Feminist and Eastern European Contributions,” European Review of History: Revue européenne d’histoire 25, no. 1 (2018): 1–20. 79  Gil Eyal, Iván Szelényi, and Eleanor R. Townsley, Making Capitalism without Capitalists: Class Formation and Elite Struggles in Post-Communist Central Europe (London: Verso, 1998); Besnik Pula, Globalization Under and After Socialism: The Evolution of Transnational Capital in Central and Eastern Europe (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2018).

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 23

2020.05.12. 19:27:44

24

Marsha Siefert

ing of the relation between workers and markets.80 As suggested by a provocative study, Eastern Europe may have even served as a “laboratory” for neoliberalism.81 An informed and refined history of globalization, especially during the postwar period, cannot be written without including the work and lives of those in state-socialist Europe, and those in socialist-oriented states further South and East.82 In conclusion, the empirical studies presented here recall Pittaway’s observation that workers’ relationships to those in power “varied from locality to locality, [from] state to state, and from period to period.” In their variety these chapters demonstrate how using a regionally grounded perspective—recovering those moments of workers’ participation and revisiting the conceptual role of labor in larger paradigms of governance—can further the understanding of the very human history of the experience of work. This volume hopes to represent and encourage a new research agenda by offering examples of how labor history in state-socialist Europe can be studied anew.

80

 For an analysis focusing on self-management in Yugoslavia and the market socialism of Hungary, see Johanna Bockman, Markets in the Name of Socialism: The Left-Wing Origins of Neoliberalism (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2011). 81  Johanna Bockman and Gil Eyal, “Eastern Europe as a Laboratory for Economic Knowledge: The Transnational Roots of Neoliberalism,” American Journal of Sociology 108, no. 2 (2002): 310–52. 82  James Mark and Tobias Rupprecht, “The Socialist World in Global History: From Absentee to Victim to Co-Producer,” in The Practice of Global History: European Perspectives, ed. Matthias Middell (London: Bloomsbury, 2019); Don Kalb, “‘Worthless Poles’ and Other Dispossessions: Toward an Anthropology of Labor in Post-Communist Central and Eastern Europe,” in Blood and Fire: Toward a Global Anthropology of Labor, ed. Sharryn Kasmir and August Carbonella (Berlin: Berghahn, 2014), 250–88; Ju Li, Enduring Change: The Labor and Social History of One Third-Front Industrial Complex in China from the 1960s to the Present (Berlin: De Gruyter Oldenbourg, 2019).

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 24

2020.05.12. 19:27:44

PART I FINDING WORK, MAKING WORKERS

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 25

2020.05.12. 19:27:44

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 26

2020.05.12. 19:27:44

Unemployment in State Socialism: An Insight into the Understanding of Work in 1950s Poland Natalia Jarska

I

“ ’ve always heard and read in newspapers that there are workforce shortages. But there are many unemployed women in this small town— Gostyń—and especially us, young women. I  am twenty-one, I’ve been looking for a job for a year now. I go from one firm to another, and I can’t find any.” This letter was sent to the Polish Radio at the beginning of 1953, the fourth year of the rapid industrialization program called the Six-Year Plan. At that time, letters like this one were still rather rare. Although some listeners were reporting queues at the employment offices, the general situation on the labor market was one of intensive recruitment campaigns, countryto-city migration, and a policy of the “productivization” of women. Yet two years later the radio, press, and party-state institutions were experiencing a wave of such complaints. Unemployment was growing every month. This chapter explores the unemployment problem faced by Poland in the second half of the 1950s. How was “joblessness” described, defined, and perceived by workers, economists, and policy-makers, and what measures and policies were taken against it by the party-state? How unemployment was experienced by (male and female) workers and explained by experts, journalists and the party-state offers an insight into the understanding of work in state socialism and the so-called “socialist economy.” In so doing, the chapter contributes to one of the main issues in new labor history, which is the conceptualization of work.1 My research shows that the conceptualization of work was a dynamic process in state socialism, and that although framed by Marxism, after 1956 discourses on labor and labor policies were shaped by complex cultural and economic factors.

1

 Christian G. De Vito, “New Perspectives on Global Labor History: Introduction,” in “Global labor history,” special issue, Workers of the World: International Journal on Strikes and Social Conflicts 1, no. 3 (2013): 7–31.

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 27

2020.05.12. 19:27:44

28

Natalia Jarska

Unemployment is usually believed to be a nonexistent problem under state socialism. Instead, as a  consequence of policies of full employment, so-called hidden unemployment or overmanning was widespread.2 In Yugoslavia, due to its peculiarities in political and economic development, open unemployment became a serious matter.3 Poland, also burdened with overmanning,4 experienced open unemployment as well, although estimates are truly difficult to make. Moreover, there existed a  widespread concern and even panic over the issue of joblessness, which manifested itself most evidently in the second half of the 1950s.5 Post-1989 historiography on workers in postwar Poland has flourished, mainly focusing on worker-state relations.6 Nevertheless, several studies have explored other important aspects of labor relations during state socialism, such as workers’ agency, labor policies, gender, and workers’ expectations towards the party-state as an employer.7 Still, the problem of the conceptualization and values attached to work needs more attention. How did social actors (like decision-makers, workers, and party officials) experience so-called “full employment”? How was “work” conceptualized and e­ xperienced? Research on the unemployment problem in Poland reveals the importance of age, class, and gender as categories of analysis while discussing work in state socialism. Here I focus on gendered aspects of unemployment in the  Josef L. Porket, Unemployment in Capitalist, Communist and Post-Communist Economies (New York: St. Martin’s Press and Palgrave Macmillan, 1995). 3  Susan L. Woodward, Socialist Unemployment: The Political Economy of Yugoslavia, 1945– 1990 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995). Unemployment rates grew from 5.8 percent in 1959 to 16.9 percent in 1989. 4  In the 1980s, Józef Nowicki estimated hidden unemployment at six million. Interestingly, he included two million women whose work—he assumed—was “economically unreasonable.” His analysis is another example of the gendered understanding of work in socialism. Józef Nowicki, Paradoksy pełnego zatrudnienia w Polsce [Paradoxes of full employment in Poland] (Warsaw: Polskie Wydawnictwo Ekonomiczne 1990), 70. 5  Recent historical studies open up the question of unemployment in state-socialist Poland: Natalia Jarska, “Gender and Labour in Post-War Communist Poland: Female Unemployment 1945–1970,” Acta Poloniae Historica 110 (2014): 49–85; Michał Zgłobica, “Czy naprawdę w Polsce Ludowej nie istniało bezrobocie?” [Did unemployment in communist Poland really exist?], Przegląd Historyczny 107, no. 4 (2016): 619–56; Jerzy Kochanowski, Rewolucja międzypaździernikowa: Polska 1956–1957 [Revolution between Two Octobers: Poland 1956–1957] (Kraków: ZNAK, 2017). 6  For a recent discussion on pre-1989 historiography of the working class, see Natalia Jarska, “The Periphery Revisited: Polish Post-War Historiography on the Working Class and the New Global Labour History,” European Review of History 25, no. 1 (February 2018): 45–60. 7  Especially the works of Jędrzej Chumiński, Małgorzata Fidelis, Dariusz Jarosz, Padraic Kenney, Katherine Lebow, Małgorzata Mazurek, and Hubert Wilk. 2

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 28

2020.05.12. 19:27:44

Unemployment in State Socialism

29

People’s Republic of Poland. While gender is known as a key category in understanding labor relations in postwar Poland,8 this chapter elaborates on the gendered conceptualization of work. I argue that workers, economists, and the party-state perceived work as a citizen’s right that could not be denied. Work was understood above all in moral terms and in the context of social justice. At the same time, these opinions about work reveal that their authors’ views were not entirely egalitarian, and some of the strongest inequalities and discriminatory practices had to do with gender. Social justice was used as one of the arguments against women’s employment, which reveals a  deeply rooted exclusion. Moreover, the party-state and workers often shared these exclusive attitudes. Women’s right to work was sometimes defended, and in other cases denied, which contributed to their generally ambiguous position in the job market. I focus on Poland in the late 1950s for two reasons. First, discussions among state officials, economists, and workers took place at a very specific moment in the postwar history of Poland: the Thaw. In the years 1955– 1958, and especially in 1956 and 1957, expression of public opinion was relatively free. The fear of Stalinism had dissipated, and the new rule of Władysław Gomułka (which lasted until the workers’ protests of December 1970) had not yet established control over the activity of journalists and workers. In 1956 it was not extraordinary to find Marxism criticized in a newspaper, or to ask openly about unemployment in a communist party meeting. Discussions of the “errors” of Stalinism and the Six-Year Plan provided an occasion to reflect on the principles of the political, social, and economic system. This particular situation gives an insight into how work, rights, social justice, and gender were understood in a society that had already experienced communist rule for about ten years. Moreover, Poland had experienced severe unemployment during the interwar period, and difficult and destructive labor policies during the two occupations of World War II. These experiences were still fresh in the 1950s and had an impact on the discourses on unemployment and the policies that were debated or initiated. The analysis and conclusions presented here are based on a variety of historical sources. The most important among them are the documents of the party-state institutions (the Parliamentary Commission of Labor and Social Care, the Economy Department of the Central Committee, etc.), which include stenographic records of discussions and reports, as well as letters sent  See Małgorzata Fidelis, Women, Communism, and Industrialization in Postwar Poland (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010) and Natalia Jarska, Kobiety z marmuru: Robotnice w Polsce w latach 1945–1960 [Women of marble: Women workers in Poland, 1945–1960] (Warsaw: IPN, 2015).

8

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 29

2020.05.12. 19:27:44

30

Natalia Jarska

by workers to these institutions and to the radio. The unemployment problem was well represented in newspaper articles. Sociological research carried out in the late 1950s is also significant, not only because it brought interesting results. Extensive in-depth research on unemployment in 1957 was carried out by a newly founded institution, but was related to an important interwar research institute and shows key historical dimensions of the perception of unemployment. In this chapter I also included some conclusions from my research in Kraśnik, a small town in eastern Poland where in 1948 a metal factory was reopened and employed many peasant women.9 First, the chapter explains the genealogy of mid-1950s unemployment in Poland. In the second part, reactions to unemployment are presented through public discussions and the attempts of the party-state to deal with the issue. The third part is dedicated to interpreting how discourse and policies related the right to work with principles of social justice. The last section addresses the gender dimension of the unemployment problem.

Genealogy of the Problem of Unemployment in Poland In interwar Poland (1918–1939) unemployment was one of the most important economic and social problems. It included both urban and rural unemployment (the second often described as agrarian overpopulation or hidden unemployment) and had a structural and cyclical character. Interwar unemployment was attributed to the demographic situation (a rapid postwar increase in the birth rate), a backward economic structure, and economic crises. During the Great Depression, which severely affected Poland, employment decreased by about 22 percent. The official statistics are misleading, since they include only registered unemployment, and this varied according to policies of public works and unemployment benefits; for example, the 1931 census showed that there were about 680,000 unemployed. In the 1930s unemployment in cities and towns was estimated at one million (two million residents without income, or 22 percent of the urban population).10 Interwar problems in the job market mainly affected men, 9

 This case study has been presented in Natalia Jarska, “Rural Women, Gender Ideologies, and Industrialization in State Socialism,” Aspasia: The International Yearbook of Central, Eastern and Southeastern European Women’s and Gender History 9 (2015): 65–86. 10  Krystyna Mlonek, Bezrobocie w Polsce w XX wieku w świetle badań [Unemployment in Poland in the twentieth century in the light of research] (Warsaw: Krajowy Urząd Pracy, 1999), 28.

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 30

2020.05.12. 19:27:44

Unemployment in State Socialism

31

for various reasons: for example, unemployment affected “male” branches of industry more severely.11 The unemployment rate grew to 43 percent in 1933 in the case of blue-collar workers, and 31 percent in the case of whitecollar workers in 1934. The superfluous workforce in agriculture was estimated to be at least 2.4 million.12 Unemployment as a social problem was intensively researched by sociologists; among the most important and original studies were the “Memoirs of the Unemployed” gathered and edited in the 1930s.13 The post–World War II economic situation of Poland was different. In the immediate postwar years of rebuilding and political and social chaos, still large (although unknown) numbers of unemployed searched for jobs and contributed to social unrest.14 Unemployment affected many thousands of women who became sole breadwinners due to war casualties, postwar migration, and population losses. However, the new economic model—with nationalization of industrial plants and central planning—soon softened this problem. The Rebuilding Plan (1947–1950), and especially the SixYear Plan (1950–1955) characterized by rapid industrialization, quickly created hundreds of thousands of jobs, absorbed a large portion of hidden unemployment in agriculture, and even caused workforce shortages. Moreover, the communists who took power after the war believed in the “full employment” principle. In the economy they attempted to build there was no place for unemployment. State socialism attempted to eliminate unemployment through social ownership and economic planning. As Susan Woodward has noted, “full employment was portrayed by supporters as one of the primary achievements of socialism. Even critics saw it as the basis of socialism’s political legitimacy.”15 In Poland, full employment was stated as an aim of the Rebuilding Plan. As Eugenia Pragierowa, a high functionary of the Ministry of Labor and Social Care, put it in 1947, this principle could be realized only in a planned and non-market economy.16 During the Six-Year Plan employment grew rapidly, by over 400,000 a  year. This was possible not only because so many people searched for work; during this period, institutions and factories searched for workers. 11

 Ibid., 26.  Ibid., 18–29. 13  Pamiętniki bezrobotnych nr 1–57 [Memoirs of the unemployed, nos. 1–57], preface Ludwik Krzywicki (Warsaw: Instytut Gospodarstwa Społecznego, 1933). 14  See Marcin Zaremba, Wielka Trwoga: Polska 1944–1947; Ludowa reakcja na kryzys [The Great Fear: Poland, 1944–1947; Popular reaction towards the crisis] (Kraków: Znak, 2012). 15  Woodward, Socialist Unemployment, 10–11. 16  Eugenia Pragierowa, “Drogi rozwoju polityki pracy w Polsce” [Employment policy development in Poland], Praca i Opieka Społeczna 3 (1947): 200. 12

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 31

2020.05.12. 19:27:44

32

Natalia Jarska

Propaganda encouraged young people to travel to new industrial plants, peasants to take up jobs in the cities, and women to become workers. Graduates of vocational schools and universities came under “work prescriptions”: administrators decided where the graduates were sent to work for three years. Local employment offices organized recruitment campaigns, seeking workers for particular enterprises. The problem of unemployment had apparently almost disappeared. However, as early as 1953, people started to complain about a lack of jobs. From 1954 many towns suffered from constant job shortages, especially small towns without significant industrial plants. The politics of the destruction of private craftwork and trade also contributed to the unemployment problem. By 1955 queues at employment offices in large cities were getting longer and longer. There were 35,000 people registered as unemployed in February, but real unemployment was estimated by the Ministry of Labor and Social Care to be as much as ten times greater.17 At that moment state institutions noticed the problem and started to discuss remedies throughout the years 1956–1958. These discussions were part of a  wider debate about labor and employment policies, held in the context of rethinking the economic model (for example the role of central planning). Meanwhile, unemployment was affecting more regions and the numbers grew, though nobody knew exactly what they were; in 1957 estimates ranged from 180 to 300 thousand unemployed (with total employment at seven million). According to Antoni Rajkiewicz, newspapers published numbers as high as two million unemployed.18 Historians that try to estimate the unemployment rates in state-socialist Poland argue that it was low (around 2 percent), but these estimates do not take into account unregistered jobseekers.19 Leaving behind those uncertain statistics, nevertheless the problem was clearly serious. The very popular women’s magazine Przyjaciółka (Girlfriend) received 1,000 letters daily, among which 600 reported difficulties in finding a job.20 According to many different sources, unemployed people invaded employment offices. A  young journalist de-

17

 Archiwum Akt Nowych [Central Archives of Modern Records, hereafter AAN], Komitet Centralny Polskiej Zjednoczonej Partii Robotniczej [Central Commitee of the Polish United Workers’ Party, hereafter KC PZPR], 237/XXV-13, “Notatka z Ministerstwa Pracy i Opieki Społecznej” [Note from the Ministry of Labor and Social Care, hereafter ­MPiOS], 1955, p. 180. 18  Antoni Rajkiewicz, “Bez koncepcji” [Without concept], Życie Gospodarcze 9 (1957): 1. 19  Zgłobica, “Czy naprawdę.” Nevertheless, the author agrees that the late 1950s and 1960s were the period of highest unemployment. 20  AAN, MPiOS, 42, “Notatka dla kolegium MPiOS w sprawie zatrudnienia kobiet” [Note on women’s employment for MPiOS], 1956, p. 40.

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 32

2020.05.12. 19:27:44

Unemployment in State Socialism

33

scribed the situation: “A visit to the department [of employment] is depressing. One meets hundreds of dispirited people who find themselves without means of subsistence, deeply disappointed, sometimes wronged.”21 What were the reasons for the mid-1950s unemployment? Explaining all the circumstances in which unemployment appeared is an economic question that is beyond the scope of this chapter. Economists at the time did not fully agree while trying to understand the phenomenon. However, it is important to note that the most important reasons—and how they were perceived by contemporaries—were part of the context of opinions and policies applied that are discussed in this chapter. First, industrialization slowed down at the end of the Six-Year Plan, so the economy needed fewer new workers. Moreover, rapid industrialization did not absorb all those who searched for regular employment. The influx of the rural population, who came despite the fact that there was no work for them, continued to pressure the cities and factories. Another large group of jobseekers were the so-called repatriates: the 130,000 Poles from the formerly Polish lands annexed by the USSR during the war, who moved to Poland during the political thaw. Among those new arrivals on the job market (were they unemployed? I will come back to the definitional problem later) there were large numbers of young people, both skilled (graduates of vocational and technical schools) and unskilled. Many could not find jobs despite their qualifications. Economists pointed to the fact that the job market was saturated, and that in the coming years youth unemployment would be even higher. Moreover, many retired people still worked because their pensions were extremely low. Indeed, postwar Poland experienced the largest baby boom in history; natural increase reached 18 per thousand at the beginning of the 1950s. Economists and politicians spoke of overpopulation and the “demographic problem.”22 However, it is striking that in 1956–1957 this phenomenon was associated with unemployment; at that moment hundreds of thousands of potential new workers were still children or even babies. The end of the Six-Year Plan coincided with the inauguration of deStalinization policies and discussions. In the second half of the 1950s the economic model, and especially state management of the economy, was seriously revised. One aim was to raise productivity. The party-state challenged hidden unemployment, especially in administration; the Economic Coun-

 Zofia Krzyżanowska, “Problem, którego nie ma” [A problem that does not exist], Po Prostu 24 (1956). 22  Mieczysław Kabaj, “Teorii zatrudnienia—próba rewizji” [Theory of employment—an attempt at revision], Życie Gospodarcze 20 (1957). 21

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 33

2020.05.12. 19:27:45

34

Natalia Jarska

cil estimated “overemployment” at 10–15 percent in 1956.23 It is interesting to note that in this case the word “unemployment” was not used; the decision-makers and journalists spoke of “redundancies” or “surpluses.” The term “unemployment” was even eliminated through censorship.24 In the years 1955–1958, a few policies were issued by the party-state in order to combat these “redundancies.” The first bill was issued by the government in June 1955; consequently bureaucracy decreased by over 6 percent that year, and by the same amount the following year. The next decision was made in 1958, after a discussion at the Central Committee plenum; in this case the reduction policy included not only white-collar, but also blue-collar workers.25 Dismissed workers swelled the ranks of the unemployed. Another problem—this time a  structural one—was the uneven economic development of regions and cities. In general, there was enough work for all, but it was concentrated in several regions (mainly western parts of the country) and branches (especially mining). While some local employment offices had to organize recruitment campaigns, others remained helpless in dealing with unemployment: they did not have any jobs to offer to the hundreds of registered workers. Migration was impossible due to the housing shortage. According to Lech Sobczak, this geographical disproportion in the job market was one of the three most important problems. The second was a disproportion in qualifications: industry searched for skilled workers, and the majority of the unemployed were unskilled.26 The last disproportion had to do with gender. There was high and unsatisfied demand for male workers, while for women there were always more jobseekers than job offers. The system of recruitment was not genderless: job offers specified the sex of desired workers. This fundamental division in the job market did not disappear even during Stalinism (the Six-Year Plan), when the party-state formally abolished the gender division of work.27 During the Six-Year Plan, women were strongly encouraged to take up jobs; it was a part of the regime’s emancipation policy. Indeed, women made up the

 Mieczysław Kabaj, Elementy pełnego i racjonalnego zatrudnienia w gospodarce socjalistycznej [Elements of full and rational employment in the socialist economy] (Warsaw: Książka i Wiedza 1972), 233. 24  Zgłobica, “Czy naprawdę,” 631. 25  Jarska, Kobiety z marmuru, 210. Members of the Committee engaged in a heated discussion over the reductions as a threat of increasing unemployment loomed. Zgłobica, “Czy naprawdę,” 634–35. 26  Lech Sobczak, Rynek pracy w Polsce Ludowej [The job market in People’s Poland] (Warsaw: Państwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe 1971), 68–69. 27  For more on Stalinist policies towards women’s employment, see Fidelis, Women, Communism, and Industrialization, and Jarska, Kobiety z marmuru. 23

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 34

2020.05.12. 19:27:45

Unemployment in State Socialism

35

majority of new workers, and women’s employment doubled in five years. When the plan finished, women were no longer needed in such great numbers. Moreover, they were the first to be dismissed when the reductions policy was applied. “You called us to work and we do work. Today there is not enough work for us. The Moor has done his duty the Moor can go,” wrote one of the readers of Przyjaciółka complaining about the shift in valuing women’s professional work.28 Irrespective of the hostile opinions towards women’s employment that were expressed during the thaw in the press and among workers, women still searched for jobs. Studies on local unemployment revealed that the opening of a new plant encouraged women to register as jobseekers, which raised unemployment numbers.29 Consequently, in the mid-1950s women comprised the majority of officially registered, as well as real unemployed. Moreover, sometimes geographical and gender disproportions were combined. In those places where there was a factory representing a “male” branch of industry (e.g., mining, steelworks, metal) women found it harder to get a job even if the factory actually needed new workers. This was the case in Kraśnik.30 Meanwhile, in Zambrów where the job market was dominated by one big textile factory, men were refused employment.31 All these causes of unemployment were discussed by politicians, economists, and journalists in the context of economic policy. Was the job market situation a consequence of poor decisions during the Six-Year Plan? Or were the problems structural? They pointed to erroneous and chaotic planning (while defending the central planning principle itself ), and incorrect investment policies. They criticized the “productivization” of women, but also extra-economic circumstances like overpopulation.32 Their perception of the reasons and character of unemployment shaped their reactions and the policies they applied.

28

 The author of the letter, invoking a Polish aphorism, referred to slavery and discrimination. 29  Sobczak, Rynek pracy. 30  In the 1960s, the metal factory in Kraśnik started to train women in skilled professions, usually regarded as male, in order to meet the need for skilled workers. 31  Andrzej Zawistowski, Kombinat: Dzieje Zambrowskich Zakładów Przemysłu Bawełnianego—wielkiej inwestycji planu sześcioletniego [The Works: The history of the textile factory in Zambrów—A big investment of the Six-Year Plan] (Warsaw-Białystok: IPN 2009), 160. 32  For references, see the footnotes in the following part of the chapter.

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 35

2020.05.12. 19:27:45

36

Natalia Jarska

From Disbelief to Ideological Revisionism: Combating Unemployment From 1955, party-state institutions slowly began to realize that they had to deal with unemployment. Since the numbers of registered unemployed were not high, they had not anticipated the problem. The Państwowa Komisja Planowania Gospodarczego (State Commission for Economic Planning) was collecting detailed information about “registered jobseekers” and “job offers.”33 Nevertheless, the Commission avoided the term “unemployment.” The party and Ministry of Labor and Social Care documents also spoke of “local surpluses” and “jobseekers.” This reluctance to name the problem “unemployment” came from the fact that in state socialism unemployment was something unthinkable. Party-state functionaries and economists were convinced that unemployment simply cannot happen in a system of “social ownership of production means” and central planning. In 1957, an economist trying to understand the phenomenon cited a  Soviet political economy manual: “the right to work is conditioned by social ownership of the means of production which gives all citizens equal access to work on land and in industrial plants.” In theory, he argued, under socialism only an excess of work was possible, not a redundant workforce.34 This conviction, founded on the main principles of Marxism-Leninism, was reflected in the Constitution of the People’s Republic of Poland issued in 1952. Article 58 stated: “The right to work is guaranteed by the social ownership of the main means of production . . . planned growth of productive forces, removal of sources of crisis, and of unemployment.” Sometimes the existence of unemployment was denied by definition. “The excess of labor force is unknown in our country,” wrote a journalist (ironically); the title of her article was “Unemployment: A  problem that does not exist.”35 As, in theory, unemployment could not exist in socialism, there was no precise definition that could be used in debating or formulating social policy.

33

 AAN, Państwowa Komisja Planowania Gospodarczego [State Commission for Economic Planning], 3328, “Poszukujący pracy a wolne miejsca pracy” [ Jobseekers and job offers], 1955, p. 6. 34  Kabaj, “Teoria zatrudnienia.” 35  Krzyżanowska, “Problem.”

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 36

2020.05.12. 19:27:45

Unemployment in State Socialism

37

Unemployment was sometimes explained by excluding some of the groups of jobseekers. It was “unreal.” Władysław Daszkiewicz, one of the department directors in the Ministry of Labor and Social Care, wrote that “unemployment here is not widespread; it does not include the basic part of labor force—skilled and unskilled blue-collar workers. It includes women, young people, and white-collar workers.”36 Such a  statement downplayed the importance of the problem. At a  session of the Parliamentary Commission of Labor and Social Care, a member said that “unemployment in our country does not exist. The problem is only how to move jobseekers to areas where there are job offers.”37 A journalist describing women’s problems with finding a job concluded that “actually they are not unemployed,” because these women had never worked before.38 “Unemployment is not related to the political system and is not structural, it has appeared because of low wages which make it impossible for [male] workers with families to earn enough for their living,” a council member argued in a ministerial meeting in 1956.39 Those who had to work and at the same time were redundant on the job market were women. Economists seemed to feel freer to name the problem as “unemployment.” Moreover, some of them soon recognized its structural implications, which led them to revise their theories. Mieczysław Kabaj argued that the idea that overpopulation does not happen in an economy founded on Marxist principles was wrong—because the assumption about unlimited production growth was wrong too. “Theorists of Marxism-Leninism,” he wrote, “did not predict relative overpopulation.” He therefore concluded that unemployment in Poland was permanent.40 By recognizing that unemployment really existed, the economists had to revise the Marxism they knew. “Marxism is a living science,” argued a journalist.41 Finally, needing to face the problem, economists tried to define the term “unemployed.” One asked: “Is the unemployed only a person who has 36

 Władysław Daszkiewicz, “Uwagi o problemie zatrudnienia” [Comments about the employment problem], Nowe Drogi 6 (1957): 82. 37  AAN, Sejm [parliament], 146, “Protokół posiedzenia Sejmowej Komisji Pracy i Opieki Społecznej z 15 maja 1957” [Protocol of the session of the Parliamentary Commission of Labor and Social Care, May 15, 1957], p. 314. 38  Krzyżanowska, “Problem.” 39  AAN, MPiOS, 42, “Notatka stenograficzna z posiedzenia kolegium MPiOS” [Transcripts of the session of MPiOS council], June 1956, p. 71. 40  Kabaj, “Teorii zatrudnienia.” 41  Lech Froelich, “Fantastyczny przyczynek do kwestii równouprawnienia kobiet czyli o problemie dodatków rodzinnych słów kilka” [A fantasy contribution to the issue of women’s equality, that is, the problem of family allowances, a few words], Życie Gospodarcze 1 (1957).

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 37

2020.05.12. 19:27:45

38

Natalia Jarska

lost his/her job? Is the unemployed a peasant-worker’s son, or a daughter of a worker who, after finishing school, is still dependent on their parents?” He then offered an inclusive definition of the unemployed as “a person who is able to work, wants to work, but remains without work.”42 Others proposed a  more precise definition: the unemployed is a  person who is registered as a jobseeker, but cannot find a suitable job (taking into account his/her skills and life conditions) for a long time (two weeks for blue-collar workers, three months for white-collar workers).43 Unemployment—whether recognized as such or not—was treated seriously by the party-state too. Some measures were applied to combat women’s unemployment as early as the end of 1955. The Ministry of Labor and Social Care suggested that local administrations should find work for unemployed women—especially the breadwinners—by transferring men to other positions. Women were engaged in temporary jobs. The Ministry planned to limit migration from the countryside, to establish new cooperatives, and to develop cottage industries. Plans also included means of positive discrimination: in some areas special quotas for female workers were to be introduced.44 Combating female unemployment was included in the new policies towards women’s employment. In 1956 and 1957, these new policies were shaped by two main goals: creating job positions for women who sought employment, but simultaneously slowing down women’s pressure on the job market. The party-state wanted to discourage women, especially mothers, from starting professional careers by raising family allowances for working men.45 Two of the most important measures taken against unemployment were the creation of an intervention fund and the raising of pensions. The first was established by a bill issued in January 1956. Government funds were to be spent by local administrations on organizing new job positions. This policy was not efficient, and by the beginning of 1957 only 10,000 unemployed had found jobs thanks to it.46 In many places funds were spent on temporary and maintenance works, such as raking leaves and cleaning cemeteries and streets.47 These activities could not change the situation in the long run.  Mieczysław Kabaj, “Problem bezrobocia” [The problem of unemployment], Życie Gospodarcze 7 (1957). 43  Rajkiewicz, “Bez koncepcji.” 44  For more on the policy of combating women’s unemployment, see Jarska, “Gender and Labour in Post-War Communist Poland.” 45  Jarska, Kobiety z marmuru, 226–28. 46  AAN, Sejm, 146, “Informacja dla Sejmowej Komisji Pracy o działalności MPiOS” [Information for the Parliamentary Commission of Labor and Social Care about the activity of MPiOS], March 1957, p. 20. 47  Kabaj, “Problem bezrobocia.” 42

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 38

2020.05.12. 19:27:45

Unemployment in State Socialism

39

Funds were treated by local administrations and by the unemployed—as was soon realized—as a kind of allowance.48 The government set aside additional funds to develop small industrial plants. Since an official definition of unemployment did not exist, unemployed workers did not have special status. In 1956 and 1957 some of them received allowances. The industrial plants were obliged to help dismissed workers find new jobs (which they rarely did), and some of them paid three or fourmonth indemnities.49 In 1957 the party-state discussed introducing regular unemployment benefits for dismissed workers, but only to those who had worked at least twelve months and lost their job through no fault of their own. Unemployed workers would be paid 60 percent of their last wage, for either six months (white-collar workers) or twenty-six weeks (blue-collar workers). The motivation for introducing this system of benefits came from the fact that many plants were reluctant to dismiss workers who were not needed. The party-state—which held both salary funds and benefits funds— estimated that it would simply be cheaper to pay benefits instead of normal salaries to “unproductive workers.” This policy would in effect transform hidden unemployment into an overt and visible condition. Preparing this project for the Politburo, the Ministry gathered information about unemployment benefits in interwar Poland, as well as in several Western countries.50 It is not clear why the project was ultimately not carried out. The measures taken against unemployment were rather ineffective and were openly criticized as “partial and humiliating” for unemployed people.51 Employment fell within the competence of many state institutions, but their attitude towards problems on the job market was indecisive and chaotic. According to some economists, they simply did not have enough knowledge about the problem.52 There was no definition and no reliable data. As interest in employment issues was growing, and there was a need for effective policy, in 1957 the Economy Council—a governmental institution incorporating some excellent professionals—ordered broad-based research on unemployment. It was carried out by the Instytut Gospodarstwa Społecznego (Institute of Social Economy), an institute that had just been revived. It is symbolic that this interwar institute was one of the two most

48

 AAN, Sejm, 146, “Protokół posiedzenia Sejmowej Komisji Pracy i Spraw Socjalnych,” May 14, 1957. 49  AAN, Sejm, 146, “Informacja dla Sejmowej Komisji Pracy,” p. 22. 50  AAN, KC PZPR, 1684, “Tezy do dyskusji w sprawie ustawowego zabezpieczenia materialnego osób czasowo pozostających bez pracy” [Thesis for discussion on the bill on benefits for people temporarily without work], 1957. 51  Kabaj, “Problem bezrobocia.” 52  Rajkiewicz, “Bez koncepcji.”

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 39

2020.05.12. 19:27:45

40

Natalia Jarska

important organizations that carried out research about unemployment, focusing on its social aspects. In 1957, in the wave of de-Stalinization and political openness, referring to such traditions was still possible. Yet, the results of the research were presented only in internal reports or published in very limited collections. As it was probably unique in the Soviet bloc, this research merits a brief comment. Carried out in selected towns and cities, the aim of this research was to learn about unemployment numbers and living conditions of the unemployed, as well as the economic structure in the years 1938–1957. The researchers also examined the activity of employment offices. In the first town, Koło (with a population of 10,000), they interviewed 119 families that experienced unemployment (the report included quotations from the interviews). The problem was sketched in a  broad context that included economic structure, birth rate, and housing problems. In interwar Koło there were 800–1,000 unemployed; in 1957, about 600. Although women comprised 30 percent of registered jobseekers, in 1957 there were no job offers for them. Unemployment in Koło was caused by typical problems: economic recession (during the Six-Year Plan no factory was constructed in the town) and the pressure of the rural population on the job market. Low wages forced many women to seek employment.53 Although employment policy was chaotic and most of the measures taken only partially effective, it seems that the party-state was deeply concerned about the problem. There were two reasons for this concern. One of them was the “full employment” principle. When the party-state realized that unemployment was real, it was determined to fight it: “Our society cannot be named socialist, moral, as long as we fail to solve the problem of people looking for work. There is no economic and moral basis for the existence of unemployment in our country.”54 Despite the unemployment problem, the decision-makers were convinced that the economic system they managed was essentially different from capitalism. The constitutional right to work was frequently referenced as an appropriate argument. In the de-Stalinization process (1955–1957), many principles of the political system were questioned, and many policies changed (for instance, the party-state accepted individual farming and abandoned forced collectivization). “Full realization of the right to work”55 was a goal that could not be abandoned.

 Krystyna Mlonek, Sytuacja na rynku pracy, struktura i warunki życia poszukujących pracy w Kole w 1957 roku (Warsaw : Zakład Problemów Zatrudnienia Instytutu Gospodarstwa Społecznego, 1958). 54  Kabaj, “Problem bezrobocia.” 55  AAN, MPiOS, 42, “Notatka dla kolegium MPiOS,” p. 41. 53

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 40

2020.05.12. 19:27:45

Unemployment in State Socialism

41

The second reason for common concern about unemployment was social reactions. The party-state feared social unrest caused by job shortages. “Employment matters have become of great importance—economically, socially and politically,” stated economist Antoni Rajkiewicz at a session of the governmental Commission of Labor.56 While discussing benefits it was suggested that they should be introduced through a parliamentary bill, not an act of lesser standing, “because the problem has a great political and social importance.”57 “No graduate can remain without work, otherwise there will be a youth revolt,” threatened a press account.58 Those fears were realistic. Social reactions towards problems with finding a job (or towards the possibility of being dismissed) were strongly negative. The policy of reducing employment caused “panic,”59 as well as multiple conflicts between different groups of workers.60 People asked about unemployment at election meetings in 1957.61 Low-level party activists were concerned too, “not seeing any solution.”62 Letters sent to party-state institutions and the media reflected their emotions, as well as their understanding of the situation. In these letters (that would ultimately remain unpublished63), the problem with finding a job was associated with the interwar experience or unemployment in capitalist countries. “They have created unemployment like I’ve heard on the radio there is in America,” complained a blue-collar worker. To a reader of Przyjaciółka overcrowded employment offices reminded her of “photographs from the capitalist world.” “It reminds me of interwar times when workers’ children were dying of hunger,” confessed another woman. Letters contained even proposals like this one: “People in Kalisz [a town in central Poland] have to take a banner with the word ‘unemployment’ and go to the town hall, there is no other solution.”64 Workers and unemployed feared that the situation would get worse. People who feared being

56

 AAN, Urząd Rady Ministrów [Council of Ministers, hereafter URM], 22/133, “Stenogram koreferatu na temat aktualnej sytuacji w dziedzinie gospodarki siłą roboczą—prof. Rajkiewicz” [Transcript of the paper on the current situation in workforce management— prof. Rajkiewicz], January 1957, p. 1. 57  AAN, KC PZPR, “Tezy do dyskusji.” 58  Rajkiewicz, “Bez koncepcji.” 59  Krzyżanowska, “Problem.” 60  Such conflicts divided skilled and unskilled workers, young and old, men and women, and rural and urban dwellers. Kochanowski, Rewolucja międzypaździernikowa, 126–31. 61  Rajkiewicz, “Bez koncepcji.” 62  AAN, KC PZPR, 237/VII—3835, “Informacja nr. 18/3292,” March 6, 1956, p. 37. 63  The party-state institutions and official media that received letters prepared thematic reports quoting them, to inform the high party functionaries about “public opinion.” 64  All letters quoted in Jarska, Kobiety z marmuru, 222.

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 41

2020.05.12. 19:27:45

42

Natalia Jarska

dismissed “don’t see any solution for themselves. They felt that the first step towards an unemployment crisis, which they remember from sanacja times [1926–1939], has been taken. . . . I just can’t imagine the moment I will be dismissed from my work.” Workers demanded the fulfillment of the constitutional right to work.65 Sometimes interventions were more decisive than writing letters. In Ozorków “a group of sixty people, mainly women, went to the Provincial Committee [of the PZPR] and demanded employment. . . . They threatened that if they did not get jobs, they will carry a slogan: ‘We want bread and work.’” Desperate people attacked employment offices and smashed windows.66 The party-state and workers felt the same about unemployment, though they expressed it in different ways. Workers did not hesitate to use the proper word, whereas the decision-makers felt uncomfortable admitting that unemployment was real. However, for everyone unemployment was illegitimate in a socialist state. The right to work was recognized and “full employment” was its only realization. Some measures that were taken clearly disadvantaged some groups on the job market. What was the sense of these hierarchies?

The Right to Work, Social Justice, and Gender As I  explained above, the experience of unemployment in state socialism made economists and decision-makers revise the Marxism they knew. Now they were aware of the fact that “social ownership of the means of production” was not enough to forestall the unemployment threat. However, they still thought that current problems on the job market were essentially different from those in capitalism: “It is not a capitalist type of unemployment which is caused by labor shortages, but is a result of low wages.”67 The goals in employment policy remained the same: full realization of the right to work and full employment. It was a complex matter because it had political, economic, and also moral meaning. Nevertheless, ideas began to appear in economic and party-state discourses about employment policies, the implementation of which would lead to deep inequalities in this apparently egalitarian society. These ideas were shared by great numbers of workers too. When both the party-state  AAN, KC PZPR, 237/XXV—21, Letter by Józef Hecht to the newspaper Trybuna Ludu, 1957, p. 82. 66  Jarska, Kobiety z marmuru, 223. 67  Daszkiewicz, “Uwagi o problemie zatrudnienia.” 65

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 42

2020.05.12. 19:27:45

Unemployment in State Socialism

43

and workers realized that there was not enough work, the decision-makers tried—within the ideological framework of full employment—to establish hierarchies in access to job offers. The decision-makers thought that since it was not possible to give work to every citizen, they had to limit the supply of the workforce. These hierarchies were based on moral grounds and were founded on a specific social justice principle. Workers were classified according to their “need” to work as well as their “productivity”; both categories divided society by class, age, and gender. Policies applied, or at least discussed, while dealing with unemployment discriminated against the rural population (among them the category of peasant-workers), elderly people (the retired), and women. Both economists and workers detected that there were groups whose work was unproductive. Rajkiewicz, for instance, spoke of a “worse ability to work.”68 This category included women, especially mothers. Such an attitude was expressed by many social actors. A ministerial report suggested that married women with children should not work for wages.69 Arguments in favor of this opinion were mainly threefold: firstly, work was detrimental for mothers (if they were economically forced to work); secondly, they were less productive than men (because of their extra-professional roles); and thirdly, there was not enough work for them while there were young people and men who were unemployed. One female journalist explained this vicious cycle: women started to search for jobs because wages declined, but their work was less productive (and the “workplace is not a charity organization”), which made it impossible to raise overall production and wages. She concluded that women’s work was a “double evil.”70 “For women burdened with children, work is only a bother,” agreed almost everyone who participated in policy-making in ministries and parliament.71 Mothers “forced” to work were not the only group of women that should not be employed, according to widespread opinion. A  reader of Trybuna Ludu (People’s Tribune, the party-owned daily) wrote: “In our office . . . there are five women whose husbands earn more than two thousand a month. . . . Meanwhile, people who have families are dismissed, and dismissal is a tragedy for them. There is something wrong. . . . I talk to people and we all agree that if married women whose husbands can afford a decent 68

 AAN, URM, “Stenogram koreferatu,” p. 5.  AAN, Sejm, 146, “Wnioski Sejmowej Komisji Pracy i Spraw Socjalnych” [Conclusions on the Parliamentary Commission of Labor and Social Care], 1957. 70  Krzyżanowska, “Problem.” 71  AAN, Sejm, 23, “Protokół z posiedzenia Komisji Pracy i Opieki Społecznej, wypowiedź Leona Chajna” [Protocol of the session of Commission of Labor and Social Care, statement of Leon Chajn], October 18, 1956, p. 405. 69

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 43

2020.05.12. 19:27:45

44

Natalia Jarska

living are dismissed, unemployment would decrease.”72 Work should be denied to women who—as many believed—worked only to afford entertainment and clothes. Employment was a right but also a benefit for those who needed it most. Such opinions were shared by many. In 1958, a recently funded Centre of Public Opinion Research carried out a survey about people’s opinions on the policy of job reductions. Surprisingly, nearly 75 percent of respondents were convinced that it was needed (in spite of unemployment). Among groups that should be dismissed in the first place, they pointed to peasants, and—nearly half of them—to “wives of husbands with good salaries.” However, another group of women was expected to be specially protected against dismissal, and that was the breadwinners.73 Family status was important in realizing women’s right to work. The party-state met workers’ expectations: a bill issued by the government in 1957, dedicated to “principles of employing and dismissing workers,” stated that “in case of equal skills, age, family situation, number of working people in the family, and owning of a farm should be taken into account.”74 As such, social justice was, apart from the right to work, a very important value. For women it was combined with the traditional model of the male breadwinner. Husbands and fathers should be privileged where employment was concerned, because their work is the most important (apart from being more productive). This also implied another moral aspect: men felt ashamed of not being able to earn a living for their families.75 It is characteristic that in their letters, dismissed women pointed usually to their difficult life conditions (and therefore to social justice), rather than to their constitutional right to work. A  blue-collar worker from the Lenin steelworks wrote: “I’ve got six children. My husband’s earnings are not enough to afford modest clothing and food. . . . In our plant many women from the countryside who have farms work there. Their husbands also work. They have a life like in paradise.”76 Instead of the notion of “value,” a  journalist proposed to talk about the “social utility of work.” This interesting concept helped him to exclude housewives from professional labor. Women who do housekeeping in their families are, in his view, not unproductive; their effort is socially useful. 72

 AAN, KC PZPR, Letter by Józef Hecht.  Archiwum TNS OBOP, “Ankieta o stosunku do redukcji (opracowanie częściowe)” [Sur­ vey on attitudes towards reduction (a partial elaboration)], red. Wesołowski, 1958. 74  “Uchwała w sprawie zasad zwalniania, przeszkalania i zatrudniania pracowników w związku z reorganizacją administracji,” Monitor Polski 6, 1957. 75  Lech Froelich, “Fantastyczny przyczynek.” 76  AAN, KC PZPR, 237/XXV—21, Biuletyn no. 8/176, 1957, pp. 89–90. 73

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 44

2020.05.12. 19:27:45

Unemployment in State Socialism

45

What they do can be called work too, and should be remunerated. If their work is recognized and paid, they don’t have to take up regular jobs, and their husbands don’t have to receive family allowances.77 This concept was rather “exotic” in mid-1950s Poland, and probably highly unrealistic, but is worth mentioning as an attempt to discourage married women from professional work without denying them their right to work. According to the author, equality meant the possibility to choose work; one person should have only one “job.” He referred to justice and equality as important values. Everyone would be happier, he argued: “women would raise children better, men would be better workers, complaints about working women would end, and there would be more job positions. The productive forces of society would be better distributed.”78 In the mid-1950s, when unemployment appeared as a problem, women started to become unwelcome on the job market. However, opinions about women’s employment (and unemployment) were diverse, and not only negative. A female blue-collar worker wrote: “there are women who have qualifications, love their professions, and want to work.”79 In 1957, the League of Women declared: “We cannot permit challenging women’s right to work. Those who want to work and are skilled cannot be dismissed from their workplaces.”80 General opinion about women’s work varied depending on local traditions where gender and class are concerned. Peasant women who had entered industry during the Six-Year Plan did not perceive their jobs as being in conflict with their gender; that was also the case in Kraśnik. The model of the male breadwinner and female housewife was new for the peasants who took up jobs in industrial plants for the first time. Attitudes towards women’s employment were also diverse in the urban milieu: the working class had essentially inherited the dominant interwar model of the male breadwinner, whereas the middle class was more likely to accept women’s professional work. Still, after 1955 hostile attitudes towards women’s employment—probably also because of the unemployment experience—were much more strongly represented both in the media and in internal party-state debates. Policies applied to women’s employment also show ambiguity. On the one hand, the party-state tried to limit women’s pressure on the job market

77

 Lech Froelich, “Fantastyczny przyczynek.”  Ibid. 79  Ośrodek Dokumentacji i Zbiorów Programowych TVP [Center of Documentation and Program Collections of Polish Television], 1050/22, Biuletyn no. 3, January 5, 1957, 5. 80  “Wybory a nasze sprawy” [Elections and our issues], Kobieta i Życie [Woman and life] 2 (1957), 2. 78

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 45

2020.05.12. 19:27:45

46

Natalia Jarska

by discouraging them, accounting for the increase in family allowances. On the other hand, it put a lot of effort—even if not effectively—into reducing women’s unemployment by creating job positions for them. Gender shaped unemployment, employment policies, and the very understanding of the most important values of the “socialist” labor market. “Full employment” and even the “right to work” had different meanings for male and female workers. Nonetheless, these meanings were debated and evolving. Even if the majority of social actors actually questioned women’s right to work, it was possible to express other opinions.

Conclusion Unemployment, which appeared in Poland in the mid-1950s, reveals how the party-state understood wage work. It was a good received by citizens, conceived by the state which (it was believed) represented the workers’ interests, and was a kind of manager of the “social ownership of means of production.” Citizens had the right to work, and the realization of this right was part of the legitimization of the “socialist” state. In Poland, where the party-state lacked legitimization, and where the memory of interwar unemployment was still vivid in the mid-1950s, “full employment” gave the communists a chance to build a kind of consensus with workers. The party-state realized that unemployment in socialism was a real threat, but they refused to accept its existence. Work had, of course, its economic dimension, but was also a social and political issue. Socially, one of the most important values was social justice. For the unemployed, social justice—meant to ensure equality—in fact produced discrimination against some social groups which came to be limited in their right to work. Work—understood as employment—was situated in the context of class, age, and gender. In discourses about unemployment in the 1950s, male urban residents and young people were privileged. Women were discriminated against on the job market: by the party-state and its policies, by factory managers and employment offices, and by workers. On the other hand, the party-state understood it had a  moral duty to ensure work for some women, even if they were unwelcome as workers. It shows that gender, the right to work, and social justice could also act in favor of women, but only if they were included in the category of unemployed and workers. The intersection of categories of class, age, and gender in relation to work in state socialism should be further researched. Labor relations in state socialism included many conflicts that involved various different social actors. Conceptualizations of work should be researched as the background

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 46

2020.05.12. 19:27:45

Unemployment in State Socialism

47

for those conflicts. The up-to-date concentration on political conflicts, seen in the party-state versus society perspective (especially in Polish historiography), should be complemented by advanced studies in social history. The research on unemployment in mid-1950s Poland confirms the importance of cultural, political, and economic contexts in the conceptualization of work stressed by global labor history.81 In state socialism, labor relations were defined by the principles of the Marxist economy implemented by the state institutions, but they were not static, being related to—among other factors—labor shortages, gender norms, memory of prewar (capitalist) relations, and the party-state’s search for legitimization. It is also interesting to observe how, by defining work and employment, social actors tried to find a remedy that would save Marxist principles (and how it was done through exclusions of peasants and women). Research on unemployment in state socialism can deepen our understanding of labor relations in this type of economic and political systems. It demonstrates the importance of values such as social justice and the right to work in shaping opinions and policies. These values were taken seriously by workers, economists, and state officials. Moral concerns, believed to be fundamental for Marxism and the socialist state, were shared by workers. They were not the “ruling class,” despite the propaganda, but were also not only passive objects of the party-state policies.

81

 “The process of conceptualization of work and labor is located at the very crossroads of politics, economy, and culture and proves therefore a fundamental way to contextualize labor history in the broader field of social history.” De Vito, “New Perspectives on Global Labor History,” 29.

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 47

2020.05.12. 19:27:45

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 48

2020.05.12. 19:27:45

The Impossibility of Being Planned: Slackers and Stakhanovites in Early Socialist Romania Alina-Sandra Cucu All of them—these and those and the others—were all comrades, brothers, and of one age. Time flew through them. They changed in time, as in a campaign. New recruits became fighters, fighters became heroes, heroes became leaders. Valentin Kataev, Time, Forward!1

On October 12, 1951, workers from the János Herbák factory received the first issue of their factory newspaper for free. The party organization from this leather and footwear factory in Cluj had decided a while ago that the time was ripe for the industrial unit to have its own publication. Reading the pages of Viaţa Uzinei Noastre (The Life of Our Factory) the workers could find new encouragements for their efforts dedicated to overfulfilling the plan, they could understand the importance of the fight for quality in production, and they could learn a thing or two about carrying the international struggle for peace “with the help of the Soviet Union’s nuclear weapon.”2 But the workers heading to the leather and footwear workshops in the autumn morning quickly realized that most pages were covered with the familiar faces of their colleagues. On the first page, three leaders of production had their full names published along with detailed accounts of their accomplishments. On the next one, the round face of a young woman stood next to a column titled “Work discipline.” The picture was accompanied by a letter addressed to “comrade Luiza Hegyi from the sewing workshop no. 1” by Ludovic Sárkádi, a member of the same sewing workshop.

 Valentin Kataev, Time, Forward!, trans. Charles Malamuth (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1995), 73. 2  Viaţa Uzinei Noastre, October 12, 1951. 1

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 49

2020.05.12. 19:27:45

50

Alina-Sandra Cucu

Comrade, You committed to strengthen your work discipline to honor the November 7 anniversary. You did not carry out this commitment and you have been late repeatedly. Comrade, did you think what a  few minutes’ delay means for the workshop, for the factory, and for our country? Did you think that your bad example could induce others to be late, and the minutes can become hours? Did you think that one more pair of boots could come out of our factory’s doors during those minutes? So, the natural consequence of your being late is that we give our country one pair of boots less? Think how much the class enemy rejoices seeing your behavior! And not without reason, because he knows what you should know, too: making more pairs of shoes means we are stronger. Each missing pair of shoes weakens us and strengthens our class enemy! Comrade, I  am convinced you consider yourself among those who struggle for peace. Prove this through actions! Strengthen the commitment you made for honoring November 7 by working. Don’t be late anymore so others cannot say: if Luiza Hegyi may be late, so may I. We trust you, comrade!3

The letter articulated much of the propaganda around the problem of factory discipline and its relationship with socialist accumulation. Through the factory newspaper, the party organization tried to convey concretely how failing to generate surplus weakened not only the factory but also the polity. Since any worker could become a bad example to others in an environment dominated by the idea of “socialist emulation,” larger consequences for individual misconduct in the factory were foretold, while a very specific notion of “loyalty” discursively related the worker to the pedagogical concerns of the state. Because honor was considered an important dimension of any act of work, discipline was summoned for the glorification of a foundational event, the October Revolution. The lesson was clear: work had to be understood as a political act, with broader (even worldwide) consequences. Workers were taught that their daily practices mattered, both for the economic and the political dimension of socialist construction. As such, production appeared to be simultaneously a source of material accumulation, a form of creating a global Other, and a promise of political subjecthood. A December issue of the same newspaper contrasted the bright present of the young Vasile Gădălean with his past as “the son of poor peasants, a youngster who could not learn and could not get on in the world”:  Viaţa Uzinei Noastre, October 12, 1951.

3

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 50

2020.05.12. 19:27:45

The Impossibility of Being Planned

51

He is now free and uses every second to the full for personal development. He is never discouraged but always cheerful and waggish. He has already finished the qualification course but now, after his daily shift, he learns how to work on a special machine from the gallantry section. He is also a member of the factory choir and he enlivens us with his youthful impetuosity. Our work goes better like this: singing, joking, and learning.4

The December portrait emphasized the embodied qualities of the ideal worker: young, skilled, passionate, enthusiastic, with “healthy social origins,” aware of his newly gained freedom, willing to stay in the factory after his strenuous working hours, continuously learning and investing in his personal development. Most importantly, the bright image focused on how the young man was mastering his time by being capable of making “every second” useful, and on how, through his cheerfulness and artistic nature, he was also able to mobilize others. Vasile and Luiza were supposed to have been embarked on a journey of self-transformation, closely followed by the eye of the party organization in the factory. Nevertheless, only Vasile seemed to be successful in his endeavor to become a true socialist worker, through a metamorphosis that allowed him to transcend his poor peasant roots and gain a new life, a factory life that would bear no real resemblance with his past. Taken together, the two portraits draw attention to the fact that the productivist and managerial core of early socialism directed its accompanying pedagogic project more toward the individual laborer than toward workers as a class. They delineate the boundaries of the conceptual space in which the worker had to emerge in the 1950s as a producer and as a political subject. Thus, by capturing the two most important and most problematic sides of the self-transformation of workers in the socialist period—becoming and participating—the two portraits reveal the “dos and don’ts” of the early socialist factory and the drive behind the state’s exercise in pedagogy, ethics, and legitimation. Nothing else is known about Luiza. We do not know if she stopped being late, if she gave the country “one pair of shoes more” every day, or if she became aware of the dangers carried by those minutes that were not saturated with usefulness. Probably not, or otherwise her face would have appeared again in the factory newspaper, accompanying another successful story about increasing awareness and emerging working-class consciousness. After all, stories about slackers who remained slackers did not make for the best reading in a factory newspaper.  Viaţa Uzinei Noastre, December 18, 1951.

4

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 51

2020.05.12. 19:27:45

52

Alina-Sandra Cucu

Only a  few months later though, Vasile’s name appeared on a  list of Stakhanovites from the gallantry section, the same place where his learning process had been captured in December. His evolution from a young villager into a Stakhanovite seemed a straightforward one: hard work, enthusiasm, and the capacity to master his daily tasks better than anyone else would have in his position, all accounted for his achievements. However, there was more behind the celebratory party discourse than met the eye. As my contribution to this volume will show, Stakhanovites did not appear from nowhere, simply due to their personal qualities and their unabated belief in the socialist project. They had to be made. Based on documents from the local Committees of the Romanian Communist Party and from the leather and footwear factory in Cluj/ Kolozsvár, as well as on interviews with workers and executives employed in the city’s industry in the 1950s and 1960s, I show how on the shop floor, the process of making Stakhanovites was complicated, expensive, and never led to the heights of productivity expected by the state officials.5 Moreover, creating a “privileged caste of industrial workers” created animosity between workers, fracturing their solidarity and endangering their daily collaboration in the production process. These findings are not by any means surprising. Starting with the emblematic case of the Stakhanovite movement—Alexey Grigoryevich Stakhanov, the Donbas miner on whom the Stakhanovite movement was molded—heavily relying on exceptional individuals to perform shock work in order to massively exceed their work norms proved to be problematic. These “individual” records needed to be supported by other workers who performed the additional tasks required by this type of performance and by the extra efforts of the new economic executives, who had to ensure that no lack of material or usage of the industrial equipment would hinder these incredible achievements. Working “in assault mode” (munca în asalt) furthered the usual disruptions of production and caused a rapid deterioration of the machinery. Since these laborers pushed the limits of productivity for everyone else and contributed to the party’s efforts to raise work targets and diminish wages, Stakhanovites came to be resented by other workers, who

5

 I conducted research in Cluj for a year and a half between 2011 and 2013. Apart from archival research, I collected forty life histories with laborers who worked in the city factories at the time (most of them at János Herbák, the leather and footwear factory, at Armătura, a faucet factory, at the Railway Workshops, and at Tehnofrig, a manufacturer of frigorific equipment for the food processing industry). I also conducted twelve interviews with former managers of the industrial units. Both types of interviews included questions about the relationship between the reorganization of the labor process, socialist competitions, and labor heroism.

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 52

2020.05.12. 19:27:45

The Impossibility of Being Planned

53

resisted the movement. The fact that labor heroism was lavishly rewarded by state officials did not make things easier on the shop floor.6 In postwar Eastern and Central Europe, the Stakhanovite movement took a less heroic form and carried fewer financial advantages than in the Soviet Union. It lost its momentum at the end of the 1950s, together with other instruments for enhancing productivity coming through Soviet channels. In Romania, fewer and fewer mentions of the “Soviet methods” are encountered in the newspapers of the 1960s and 1970s. Socialist competitions survived but in most cases remained on paper, sometimes accompanied by celebratory empty moments in the factory clubs, as part of what Burawoy and Lukács would have called “painting socialism.”7 The second and third waves of Romanian socialist industrialization were bound to rely more on politics of productivity that focused on Western types of time management, professional training, and uneven urbanization, complemented by the maintenance of a flexible, cheap labor force that kept at least one foot in the countryside.8 Any discussion about slackers and Stakhanovites in postwar Eastern and Central Europe could stop here. We could easily reduce it to just another inconsequential transfer of a  propagandistic trope around the politics of productivity promoted by the state in early socialism, and we would probably not be very far from the truth. However, there are questions that remain unanswered. If Stakhanovism proved to be unsustainable in the long 6

 There is abundant literature focusing or explicitly touching on Stakhanovism. For the Soviet Union, the interested reader can consult Sheila Fitzpatrick, The Russian Revolution (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008) and Everyday Stalinism: Ordinary Life in Extraordinary Times: Soviet Russia in the 1930s (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000); Stephen Kotkin, Magnetic Mountain: Stalinism as a Civilization (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995); Lewis H. Siegelbaum, Stakhanovism and the Politics of Productivity in the USSR, 1935–1941 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991); Solomon Schwarz, Labor in the Soviet Union (New York: Praeger, 1952); Donald Filtzer, Soviet Workers and Stalinist Industrialization: The Formation of Modern Soviet Production Relations, 1938–1941 (Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 1986). For a better understanding of how Stakhanovism was transferred to Eastern and Central Europe, see Mark Pittaway, From the Vanguard to the Margins: Workers in Hungary, 1939 to the Present (Leiden: Brill, 2014); Padraic Kenney, Rebuilding Poland: Workers and Communists, 1945–1950 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1997); Mara Mărginean, Ferestre spre furnalul roșu: Urbanism și cotidian în Hunedoara și Călan (1945–1968) [Windows to the red furnace: Urbanism and everydayness in Hunedoara and Călan, 1945–1968] (Iași: Polirom, 2015). 7  Michael Burawoy and János Lukács, The Radiant Past: Ideology and Reality in Hungary’s Road to Capitalism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992). 8  Alina-Sandra Cucu, Planning Labour: Time and the Foundations of Industrial Socialism in Romania (Oxford and New York: Berghahn Books, 2019); Norbert Petrovici, “Neoliberal Proletarization along the Urban-Rural Divide in Postsocialist Romania,” Studia Universitatis Babes-Bolyai Sociologia 58 (2013): 23–54.

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 53

2020.05.12. 19:27:45

54

Alina-Sandra Cucu

run in Stalin’s Soviet Union, why was it so ubiquitously maintained in the blueprint of socialist construction in postwar Eastern and Central Europe? Why was it so central in the state’s discourse associated with the implementation of planning? Since Stakhanovism did not directly increase productivity in 1950s factories, was the movement useful in other ways in the effort of transforming the factory space? In short, is there something more fundamental we can understand about the politics of productivity in early socialism by looking at how the state tried to separate the factory world into heroes and villains of labor? I argue that during the first Five-Year Plan in Eastern and Central Europe, Stakhanovism was crucial for the continuity of the specific conception of time entailed by the Bolshevik project: the possibility of time transcendence within the boundaries of rational, linear time. As socialist exemplars, Stakhanovites epitomized the real possibility that time could be transcended altogether through the same practices that Taylorism and a rational management of time discipline entailed, only elevated to a new level. Stakhanovites were workers—in many cases starting as ordinary achievers or even slackers—who became able to deny the constraints of linear time and bring the future into the now. Consequently, they were the symbolic carriers of a struggle against the limits set by a long history of marginalization and dispossession as produced at the intersection between backwardness, uneven development, and their corresponding forms of capitalism in the region.9 Labor heroism was constitutive to this struggle for several reasons. First, labor productivity was one of the crucial resources the state had at its disposal to ensure the possibility of socialist accumulation in postwar Eastern and Central Europe. Alongside nationalization, selective industrialization, and the direct and indirect squeezing of the private (mostly rural) economy, workers’ self-restraint and “planned heroism” were the pillars of primitive

9

 For the place of Eastern and Central Europe in the world economy and the structural roots of their backwardness, see Iván T. Berend and György Ránki, Economic Development in East-Central Europe in the 19th and 20th Centuries (New York: Columbia University Press, 1974); Daniel Chirot, ed., The Origins of Backwardness in Eastern Europe: Economics and Politics from the Middle Ages until the Early Twentieth Century (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989); Alexander Gerschenkron, Economic Backwardness in Historical Perspective: A Book of Essays (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1962); Andrew C. Janos, East-Central Europe in the Modern World: The Politics of the Borderlands from Pre- to Postcommunism (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2000); Kenneth Jowitt, ed., Social Change in Romania, 1860–1940: A Debate on Development in a European Nation (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1971); Bogdan Murgescu, România și Europa: Acumularea decalajelor economice (1500–2010) [Romania and Europe: The accumulation of economic gaps, 1500–2010] (Iași: Polirom, 2010).

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 54

2020.05.12. 19:27:46

The Impossibility of Being Planned

55

socialist accumulation as defined by Yevgeny Preobrazhensky in the 1920s.10 Second, labor productivity itself had to spring from workers’ progressive historical consciousness, which emerged as problematic at best in the early years of state socialism. Third, heroic acts of labor actualized the world of what was possible directly on the shop floor, thus making Marx’s intuition that work was the only human activity able to transcend historical time more real than ever.11 Fourth, bringing the future into the now meant that the practical ways in which this was to be achieved could also be made visible to the new economic executives and to the party organization in the factory. Finally, because the capacity to anticipate the future in the act of work was not equally distributed, labor heroism also highlighted those who could not keep up with the tempo of planning and who were simply falling behind time. It became a clear and painful expression of the fact that as a modernizing project, socialist construction did not simply deal with backwardness and uneven development but with a form of radical “nonsynchronicity,”12 which brought various pasts into the now and placed people in different points in time. Planning as working ahead of time could thus be linked to the emergence of a new ethical regime rooted directly in production. It also became the most vivid expression of the nonsynchronicity of socialist construction in a backward and unevenly developed country. Thus, on the shop floor, Stakhanovites embodied the historical possibility of socialist accumulation as “planned heroism,” “the simultaneous combination of revolutionary and time-disciplined orientations in everyday work habits”13 as the core of socialist political economy. Their centrality in the discourse around the implementation of the first Five-Year Plan made clear the fact that planning was always prospective, and not simply in the sense of fragmenting the future into foreseeable achievements. Although by and large the parameters of production were set in advance, they were also 10

 As an ideal-type, socialist accumulation was supposed to combine capitalist expanded reproduction in its Marxist classical understanding, and primitive accumulation envisioned by Preobrazhensky as a  double mechanism comprising workers’ “self-exploitation” and the continuous squeezing of the private sector (primarily agricultural) in relation with the state sector (largely industrial). Yevgeny Preobrazhensky, The New Economics (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1965 [1926]). See also James R. Millar, “A Note on Primitive Accumulation in Marx and Preobrazhensky,” Soviet Studies 30, no. 3 (1978): 384–93; Richard Day, “On ‘Primitive’ and Other Forms of Socialist Accumulation,” Labor/Le Travailleur 10 (1982): 165–74. 11  Karl Marx, Grundrisse: Foundations of the Critique of Political Economy (London: Penguin, 1993 [1939]). 12  Ernst Bloch and Mark Ritter, “Nonsynchronism and the Obligation to Its Dialectics,” New German Critique 11 (1977): 22–38. 13  Stephen E. Hanson, Time and Revolution: Marxism and the Design of Soviet Institutions (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1988), 142.

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 55

2020.05.12. 19:27:46

56

Alina-Sandra Cucu

considered to be unknown, as the factories were always hiding reserves of productivity that were undetermined at the point of planning. According to this logic, the shop floor was actually bearing a yet undiscovered potential for increasing quantity, speed, quality, or efficiency through an improved organization of the production process. Factory managers and workers alike were going to find out the real capacities of the factory when trying to surpass the expectations of the planners. These “hidden reserves” could never be exhausted as the act of work itself was not only generative but regenerative as well. Thus, the increase in the plan figures had its roots in the idea that infinite growth was possible by endlessly expanding and improving workers’ current practices. Revealing these “hidden reserves” became one of the most important missions of the technical staff, from foremen to government officials.14 From this point of view, labor heroism was indeed important in production management, as it became one of the state’s instruments for making the factory space more visible. As its pinnacle, Stakhanovism was important precisely for demonstrating at the end of every mobilization campaign the fact that the “hidden reserves” of the industrial units were indeed on the shop floor, in workers’ muscles and in their own desire to improve. Seeing and understanding how the best laborers could do everything faster, better, and more efficiently, and having them constantly pushing the limits of the production process, was a major step in controlling ordinary workers. Since the implementation of Soviet-style planning can be understood as a school and a laboratory for the new economic executives who were learning in the process, the exceptional productivity of certain individuals became an important asset in the renegotiation of work norms and wages, as it could always be used as a standard against which other workers’ performance could be assessed.15 This was crucial, especially when the Stakhanovites were not old skilled urban male workers but young peasants who had just entered the factory gates and showed the potential for constant personal betterment. In Cluj, a harsh local labor market dominated by endemic shortages emerged at the intersection of three phenomena: the strategy of keeping labor cheap by

14

 Alina-Sandra Cucu, “Producing Knowledge in Productive Spaces: Ethnography and Planning in Early Socialist Romania,” Economy and Society 43, no. 2 (2014): 211–32; Pittaway, From the Vanguard to the Margins. 15  It is clear that Stakhanovism cannot be understood outside of a  broader discussion of productivity in socialism. For an excellent account of the role of labor heroism in the transformation of the wage system in early socialist Hungary, see Mark Pittaway, “The Social Limits of State Control: Time, the Industrial Wage Relation, and Social Identity in Stalinist Hungary, 1948–1953,” Journal of Historical Sociology 12, no. 3 (1999): 271–301.

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 56

2020.05.12. 19:27:46

The Impossibility of Being Planned

57

maintaining part of people’s reproduction outside the city; people’s own strategies of combining industrial work with subsistence agriculture; and the constraining employment regulations following the nationalization of the means of production in 1948.16 Since the lines dividing the best workers from “the rest” were often the same ones that separated the skilled Hungarian laborers from the rural Romanian youth who entered the factory gates, Stakhanovism could only contribute to a further fragmentation of workingclass identification processes. Peasant-workers or youngsters coming to Cluj from rural areas were the ones whose capacities needed to be continuously assessed and whose rowdiness had to be tamed in the socialist factories. Stakhanovism and slacking became the ends of a continuum on which the transformation of this numerous category could find an objective measure: the relationship of each individual worker to the plan figures. Thus, on the shop floor, the politics of time that primitive socialist accumulation entailed were rooted in the tense but mutual relationship between disciplinary procedures and the ontological fracture presupposed by the emerging new world. Making “new” workers could not be separated from managing the “actually existing” ones, and the creation of the New Man could not be separated from the mundane concerns related to labor control. Production management in early socialism was not firmly placed into the disciplinary realm, but rather at the intersection between disciplining in order to transform and purifying in order to transcend. The impossibility of separating these processes was situated at the intersection between a “deficient modernity” and a “modernity consummated,”17 between the backwardness of the semi-proletarian and the advanced historical consciousness of the Stakhanovite.

Making Slackers and Stakhanovites on the Shop Floor The Stakhanovites, as leaders in production and norm busters, were the materialized images of what was possible for the New Man to achieve. They were supposed to emerge as embodiments of good practices and moral standards for the young, inexperienced, and hard to control laborers who 16

 For an extensive discussion of these strategies in Cluj factories in the 1950s, see Cucu, “Producing Knowledge in Productive Spaces.” 17  Peter Fritzsche and Jochen Hellbeck, “The New Man in Stalinist Russia and Nazi Germany,” in Beyond Totalitarianism: Stalinism and Nazism Compared, ed. Michael Geyer and Sheila Fitzpatrick (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 302–44.

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 57

2020.05.12. 19:27:46

58

Alina-Sandra Cucu

worked next to them. Collectively, they were an “imagined working class,”18 a space where the socialist state in its formative years could plan and act as if these workers were representative of labor as a whole. The Stakhanovite as socialist exemplary not only produced more, but also improved the process of production and helped others to achieve higher standards in their own work. He or she innovated, introduced new methods of production, learned continuously, saved raw material, improved quality, produced no waste, and left their work station clean and tidy. Their enthusiasm was supposed to radiate and inspire their coworkers. They were also the first to introduce “Soviet methods” in the factory. Organizing work according to the famous Soviet methods had the declared purpose of enhancing socialist accumulation through various techniques designed to save time and shorten the production process. Many of them were used (or at least reported to be used)19 in the factories in Cluj: “Ciutchin” for increasing quality; “Corabelnicova” for saving raw material; “Cotlear” for skilling the workers at their own workplace; “Nazarova” for taking over the industrial equipment from the previous shift without stopping production; or “Silaier,” “Balasov,” and “Klewsky” for shortening the fabrication cycle.20 In a mobilizing piece of propaganda published in Viața Uzinei Noastre under the motto “Go ahead for the development of the Stakhanovite movement!,” the young Stakhanovite Ilona Lőrincz described how her work and life dramatically changed after implementing one of the most popular Soviet methods: For the last two years I  have worked according to the method of Lydia Korabelnikova, the Soviet Stakhanovite. In the afternoon, I  prepare my tools in such a way that the next morning I can begin work exactly at seven o’clock, using all the 480 minutes as a whole. When I follow the stencil, I use all the small pieces of leather. This way, I can overfulfil my plan by 35 percent, my work norm by 80 percent, and my products meet the quality standard at 95 percent. Today [October 28, 1951], I produce for April 1952. Since I have been using the method of the Stakhanovite Lydia Kora-

 Mark Pittaway, The Workers’ State: Industrial Labor and the Making of Socialist Hungary, 1944–1958 (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2012), 14. 19  Arhivele Naţionale ale României—Cluj [The Romanian National Archives—Cluj] (hereafter ANRC), Partidul Comunist Român (hereafter P.C.R.) Fund 55, Comitetul Orăşenesc, Partidul Muncitoresc Român (hereafter P.M.R.), Cluj, 1/1951, “Proces verbal,” April 28, 1951. 20  I preserved here and elsewhere in the chapter the sometimes odd spelling of the names used by the party organizations for the Soviet methods’ inventors. 18

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 58

2020.05.12. 19:27:46

The Impossibility of Being Planned

59

belnikova, my earnings have increased. Before that, I barely did my work norm and I was earning an average of 6,000 lei per month. Today, using this approach, I earn more than 10,000 lei each month.21

The letter was meant to show how good money was supposed to flow from higher production and how a better management of the self, according to methods already implemented in the Soviet factories, would help the workers achieve them both. However, the situation on the ground was quite d­ ifferent. Although the official newspapers and the reports from party organizations and factory directors alike declared that Soviet methods were generalized in the Romanian factories around 1953, my interviews with factory managers and workers reveal that they were actually rarely implemented. Most of the time, both the workers and the factory management resisted the implementation of these Soviet translations of Taylorist management as much as possible. For management, Soviet methods were expensive, required new technology that was rarely available, destabilized production in other sectors, needed a long time to be mastered, and were ultimately “not that useful.”22 Implementing Soviet methods meant costs they could not afford and industrial equipment they did not possess. The workers resented them, as they saw them as just another “stupid” attempt of the state to squeeze as much as possible from their work.23 Nevertheless, the party organization in the factory continued to promote any method that would have ideally increased speed and quality and would contribute to saving material as part of a broader notion of “efficiency,” which was at the same time tributary to the logic of linear time in which production took place, and to the possibility of millions of individual leaps in time as expressed in the idea of Stakhanovism. This possibility needed to be preserved and celebrated. And the celebrations indeed started, accompanying the launching and unfolding of the first Five-Year Plan in 1951. The Agitprop section of the industrial party organizations and the unions became responsible for organizing various events glorifying the Stakhanovites and other leaders of production. These events mostly included artistic programs, which were presented on the shop floor at the end of the shift, at the factory gates, or at workers’ homes. Examples abound in Agitprop documents. At the Railway Workshops in Cluj, the first brigades to fulfil their June 1952 plan were

 Viaţa Uzinei Noastre, October 28, 1951.  Interview with the director of Armătura in the 1950s, December 21, 2012. 23  Interview with former worker in the 1950s, male, János Herbák factory, April 10, 2013. 21 22

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 59

2020.05.12. 19:27:46

60

Alina-Sandra Cucu

greeted with flowers and congratulations at the end of the day.24 One evening caught two Stakhanovites, Irina Erdős and Iuliana Deák from the János Herbák factory, visiting each other. They did not expect the factory choir to enter the door and start to sing. The president of the factory committee addressed the warm salute of the workers to the two women and, in the spirit of socialist emulation, encouraged them to keep up their work and “raise more Stakhanovites” by teaching the youngsters “what good work means.”25 In 1953, after Stalin’s death and following the murmur of labor unrest in Eastern and Central Europe, these celebratory activities gained momentum as part of the state effort to improve productivity and prevent dissent in the factory through the use of moral and financial incentives, rather than through the disciplinary practices that proved useless over the years. An informative note from the Ministry of Light Industry suggested that the organization of small entertaining programs in which a cultural group sang or danced for the best workers should be extended to every factory.26 Shaming slackers “with music” was also briefly adopted as a practice in 1952, as a mirror for the celebration of Stakhanovites, but workers’ reaction was far from what the party wished for, with gender playing a pivotal role in how workers felt about the public humiliation of their colleagues. As former workers at the factories in Cluj told me in the interviews, for women, seeing their name and face on the notice board under the “bad examples” rubric was one of their most dreadful fears. When one of their colleagues ended up in this situation, women were ashamed for her and hardly discussed the matter, except for manifesting their pity. This level of exposure seemed completely inappropriate for a “good girl,” whose diligence was one of the most valued and appreciated traits. Shaming the slackers did become reason for gossip among the male workers, who seemed to be rather happy to make fun of one another. Nevertheless, their gossips and laughter can hardly be read as a success of the factory party organization in creating a current of public opinion against slackers. Making fun of a bad worker did not mean that he was going to be reported by his colleagues for missing work, for being late, or for producing poor quality goods. One male worker from a younger generation—who was employed later, at the beginning of the 1960s at the Railway Workshops— was still angry when he thought about “all those snitches” who “were running quickly to tell everything to the foreman.” In his opinion, they were

24

 ANRC, P.C.R. Fund 13, Comitetul Regional P.M.R. Cluj, 322/1952, “Raport de activitate al Comitetului Orăşenesc de Partid pe trimestrul II 1952,” p. 40. 25  Viața Uzinei Noastre, May 1, 1952. 26  ANRC, P.C.R. Fund 55, 10/1953, “Nota informativă,” p. 203.

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 60

2020.05.12. 19:27:46

The Impossibility of Being Planned

61

“nothing. To tell something about your colleagues to your foreman . . . you were nothing.”27 Thus, laughter and jokes can be read more as a form of stratifying male sociality within groups than an expression of internalizing the aims and values the union and the party organization wanted to inculcate. Good work did matter for workers. However, being a good worker meant that one was also a respected worker, especially if he or she was not “one of them”: a “fake” Stakhanovite, a  snitch, or a  party leader. Being a  bad worker or being less dependable was certainly laughable, but it did not mean that the respective worker was marginalized, or that the other workers acted in any way as disciplinary agents. Although jokes and laughter were very serious, they addressed values that the workers shared themselves—like respect for good work—and did not reflect the same logic as that entailed by the public exposure of slackers. In interactionist language, as order-takers, the workers were alienated from the symbols and values that circulated within the factory space, and backstage they took a cynical approach toward them.28 In other words, the workers sanctioned bad workers through irony and laughter, but in a markedly parallel universe, one that was theirs—not the state’s—and refused to take part in the appropriation of their own hierarchies. The Union reports for the Cluj County Party Committee in the 1950s repeatedly showed that shaming slackers was not only useless but also angered the workers, including some leaders in production who thought that this manifestation of public opprobrium was “too much” to handle on the shop floor after the faces of their colleagues appeared in the newspaper or on the notice board.29 Thus, extreme forms of public shaming, such as the “spontaneous” concerts of factory bands or the display of undisciplined workers’ names on the notice boards that flanked every corridor, were rapidly dropped. The ambiguity with which the state agents in the factory—new executives, party organizations, and union leaders—treated workers’ solidarity did little if anything to help with creating an ethical regime with strong roots in the daily routines of production. On one hand, they called for work based on class solidarity and loyalty to the socialist project. On the other hand, they continuously aimed to weaken the ties that kept a part of the workers together by trying to infuse into the shop floor an ethic that was manifestly utilitarian in terms of incentives and highly individualist in terms 27

 Interview with former worker, employed in the 1960s at the Railway Workshops, February 2, 2013. 28  Randall Collins, Interaction Ritual Chains (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004), 114. 29  ANRC, P.C.R. Fund 55, 10/1953, “Nota informativă,” p. 214.

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 61

2020.05.12. 19:27:46

62

Alina-Sandra Cucu

of achievements. Although it is hard to support this claim here, it is very probable that the organization of production according to the Soviet-Taylorist model debilitated old solidarities, especially those of the experienced, urban workers, by fragmenting and individualizing their interests. Nevertheless, although utilitarian and individualist attitudes can easily be found in the workers’ abundant complaints about unfair payments, wrong placements in a certain wage category, and less inspired distribution of bonuses, the workers did not habitually unite against slackers. Although in the official documents the 1950s factories in Cluj seemed full of enthusiastic Stakhanovites who were readily spreading the light of their knowledge and the heat of their fervor, workers’ accounts paint a very different image. They show that rather than simply emerging from a flow of advanced proletarian consciousness, Stakhanovites needed to be made, as part of an attempt—which never really succeeded—to create a new ideal of work and life in the socialist factories. Samuel, now in his nineties, who worked as a skilled sewer at the János Herbák factory for forty-five years, described to me how making Stakhanovites always required more than ordinary measures in production.30 They needed to work with the best available material, with the best tools and industrial equipment. Shortages and bottlenecks—such an important part of normal life in the socialist factories—were out of the question when it came to assessing someone’s work as a socialist exemplar.31 Other workers were often placed around, just to help the Stakhanovites with supplemental operations like moving piles of raw material, cleaning their work station, or supplying their workplace with everything necessary for achieving their production targets. While the productivity of the Stakhanovites skyrocketed and their incomes increased correspondingly due to the piecework system, many others around them produced nothing or very little. This was less than a happy outcome both for ordinary workers and for the factory plan. It was especially true when the party organization in the factory needed to prove that young communists without work experience or a high level of skilling could become Stakhanovites, or when an important amount of resources was used to push slackers to improve until their faces could appear in the factory newspaper among the leaders of production. In many cases, work norms were raised immediately after such an “achievement,” follow30

 Interviews with Samuel, a Stakhanovite himself, former worker at János Herbák factory between 1945 and 1990, male, January 13, 22, and 23, 2013. 31  János Kornai, Economics of Shortage (Amsterdam: North Holland, 1979); János Kornai, The Socialist System: The Political Economy of Communism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007 [1992]); Burawoy and Lukács, The Radiant Past; Katherine Verdery, What Was Socialism, and What Comes Next? (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996).

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 62

2020.05.12. 19:27:46

The Impossibility of Being Planned

63

ing a meeting where the workers could listen to a party official telling them that the slacker transformed into a Stakhanovite was the living proof that anybody could become a true socialist worker. Sometimes, these meetings ended abruptly because of the skilled workers’ anger at the practices used to make unworthy Stakhanovites. Since Samuel was a Stakhanovite himself and also held a low position in the party hierarchy, his story was full of moral judgments against other workers who became leaders in production but who were actually “good for nothing.” His experience was quite different. He entered the factory as a nineteen-year-old Hungarian youngster holding a high level of education for a worker at the time: eight years of schooling. Because his dexterity proved to be quite exceptional, he was quickly assigned to the sewing department where he became the first man to work together with several dozens of women, generally older and more experienced than him. He remained the only man around for decades, benefiting from the generalized maternal feeling of his female colleagues. As he got older, these emotions that surrounded him as a youngster faded away, instead being replaced by respect for seniority and for his seemingly extraordinary qualitative work. While in the beginning he disliked the idea of working together with women in a feminized job, Samuel—a highly intelligent and reflexive man— quickly realized that his position was a fortunate one. Being a young man, his colleagues offered him care, protection, and professional advice, and never contested his phenomenal results. “We were like a family,” he told me: I respected them like they were all my mothers, they cared for me like I was their son. They never envied me for my savings. I built this house from material saving bonuses. With my wife. [He pauses and looks at the walls and at the ceiling for a long time and when he continues talking, he has tears in his eyes and a trembling voice.] My friends [male workers from different workshops who were exceptionally productive] were envied and even threatened. They [his friends’ colleagues] didn’t like when somebody had results, because then the foreman always came to them and said: “if Gergő can do this work in one day, why can’t you?”32

Of course, if Gergő could do the job in one day, the factory managers and the members of the party organization in the factory knew the job could be done. The other workers should just emulate Gergő’s enthusiasm, knowhow, and ambition. After all, these were the as yet-undiscovered reserves of

32

 Interview with Samuel, January 13, 2013.

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 63

2020.05.12. 19:27:46

64

Alina-Sandra Cucu

the early socialist enterprises in Cluj, which were generally crippled by hunger for capital and technology. Other aspects of the Stakhanovite movement proved hard to swallow, both for the workers and for the management. Being a Stakhanovite did not matter only or mainly because of the questionable prestige attached to it, but because of the advantages it brought. Although labor heroism did not bear the privileges that it had in the Soviet Union of the 1920s, the Romanian Stakhanovites still had access to bonuses, free subscriptions to books and magazines, discounts of 15–75 percent for workers’ vacations, priority for factory housing and credits, as well as scholarships for their children, free and discounted tickets at theaters, sporting events, cinema, and the opera, and tax exemptions.33 For most workers, witnessing the emergence of consumption hierarchies in a period dominated by penury was hardly an expression of the egalitarian socialist promise. The fact that most of these material advantages were perceived as being illegitimate made things almost unbearable. Since many of these expenses were supported from the Director’s Fund—and this money was one of the few resources the managers had at their disposal when they needed to employ temporary labor or pay overtime—paying extra to the Stakhanovites was also a serious inconvenience for the factory management, especially in a world of production dominated by the severe labor shortages of the 1950s.34 In short, Stakhanovism was not unambiguously productive for the socialist factories in Cluj. It was expensive for the management and it endangered the free use of the Director’s Fund. Most probably, the peasant-workers, the commuters, and the unskilled workers did not care about the Stakhanovite movement at all, as many of its advantages did not concern these peripheral laborers. The old skilled workers simply resented it, as they failed to see the leaders in production as embodiments of a certain work ethics, instead perceiving them as a menace to the fragile balance maintained on the shop floor. The usefulness of Stakhanovism rested elsewhere. As the next section will show, labor heroism was part of a larger repertoire of instruments used to control labor and transform the factories into veritable productive arms of the state. An increasing capacity of the state to see what was happening on the shop floor was essential to these attempts. In this context, labor heroism became a rather limited instrument for discovery that allowed for a better visibility of the labor process and the daily routines in the factory. 33

 The Decree of the Central Committee of the Romanian Workers Party and of the Council of Ministers of the Romanian People’s Republic with regard to Stakhanovites and leaders in production and their moral and material stimulations, 1951; and Decree no. 153 with regard of income taxes, BO no. 22, May 11, 1954. 34  Cucu, Planning Labour.

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 64

2020.05.12. 19:27:46

The Impossibility of Being Planned

65

Even more important, the Stakhanovites represented triumphant selftransformations which brought the future into the present. They were key to the state’s obsession with backwardness, since they could be pointed to as the men (and sometimes women) who had already made the leap required for transcending time. Creating Stakhanovites from ordinary workers simply showed that this individual embodiment in the present of a collective future was possible.

Working in the Future: Socialist Ungleichzeitigkeit Starting with the first Five-Year Plan, being ahead of time became the cornerstone of economic growth, the key feature of the party’s political vision, and the underpinning of the new social order. The “Five-Year Plan realized in four years” was exactly this: time compression, or the possibility to arrive in advance at a specific point in history by swallowing time in the production process. It is no wonder that in the factory documents, socialist accumulation was expressed as future work brought into the present. Although quality and quantity were important indices of the plan, when figures needed to be a direct expression of accumulation they were always articulated around the idea of time. When production was scheduled for the next year, the indication was not to manufacture 10,000 more pairs of shoes than the requested 100,000, but to make the 100,000 pairs of shoes in eleven months. Thus, although material balance was the prevalent economic mechanism of the 1950s, the language of planning was not articulated around quantity.35 When factory managers reported overfulfilling the plan, they actually reported that the plan was fulfilled earlier. For instance, in 1951, documents from the János Herbák factory reported the following “socialist realities”: the plan for 1950 was fulfilled before the deadline at the Rubber Factory (September 28), the Soles Factory (November 9), and the Footwear Factory (December 15). 35

 Material balances refer to a method of input/output planning that accounts for supply and demand in terms of natural (material) units, generally in opposition to using monetary accounting but often using money as an expression of equivalence between the natural units. See J. M. Montias, “Planning with Material Balances in Soviet-Type Economies,” American Economic Review 49, no. 5 (1959): 963–85; Gregory Grossman, “Material Balances,” in Problems of the Planned Economy, ed. John  Eatwell, Murray  Milgate, and Peter Newman (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 1990).

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 65

2020.05.12. 19:27:46

66

Alina-Sandra Cucu

Of course, these happy outcomes were possible only if the leap in time was also realized at individual level. Workers themselves needed to envision their work in time and to finish it in advance. Sometimes, this happened in spectacular ways. On November 7, 1951, at the same leather and footwear factory, the Stakhanovite and Party Regional Conference representative Axente Vasa was already working for 1953, while Ion Ciupea had been working for 1952 since June 16, 1951. In October 1951, twenty-one people were already working for 1953, eleven of them being communists.36 Nonetheless, the possibility to conquer time was not equally distributed. While Stakhanovites and good communists were always supposed to be ahead of their time, slackers in production, semi-proletarians, rural laborers, and seasonal workers were not working at the same pace or with the same capacity to manage themselves while manufacturing a shoe or a nail. This way, production directly constituted categories of rule and legitimated claims, and was immediately translated into the language of class. It was in this context that people like our old acquaintance, Luiza Hegyi, were summoned to resolutely fight the battle for 480 minutes’ work. Missing work, stalling, tardiness, or disorganization became staples of those individuals— and through them, of those social categories—falling behind time and thus hindering the historical advancement made possible by their class-conscious colleagues. In the official discourse, missing work was sometimes transformed into “hundreds of tons of fabric,” or “tens of thousands of shoe pairs” that did not enter the economic circuit.37 Most often, though, absences from illness, absences on leave, and truancies were not calculated in terms of total days off but in terms of the loss of working time by a single hypothetical worker. At one factory, the 2,356 days missed from work without a legitimate reason in October 1951 were equated by the local party organization with eight years of work by one laborer.38 At another factory, the foremen reported around thirty to fifty daily truancies. An additional 800 minutes were lost daily due to workers being late. They were equated to two days of work or 700 lost days in one year, and further with the yearly workload of two workers.39 The official account over the activity of the City Commit-

36

 ANRC, P.C.R. Fund 13, 34/1951, “Darea de seamă a Comitetului Regional de Partid Cluj pentru Conferința Regională”; P.C.R. Fund 55, 1/1951, “Proces verbal,” January 2, 1951; P.C.R. Fund 13, 322/1952, “Darea de seamă pe anul 1951 a Comitetului Orăşenesc de Partid Cluj,” p. 81. 37  ANRC, P.C.R. Fund 3, 253/64, “Raport,” p. 3. 38  ANRC, P.C.R. Fund 13, 34/1951, Dări de seamă şi rapoarte de activitate ale Comitetului Regional de Partid, rapoarte, referate, informări pentru CC al P.M.R., p. 93. 39  Viața Uzinei Noastre, June 15, 1953.

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 66

2020.05.12. 19:27:46

The Impossibility of Being Planned

67

tee of the Romanian Communist Party in 1954 reproduced the same logic of calculation, stating that the incapacity of some industrial units to fulfil their plan and to keep production costs low had its roots in workers’ lack of discipline.40 Party officials reported that more than 170,000 workdays were lost in Cluj in one year because of the workers’ truancies, equating them to the one-year production of a factory with 620 workers. Expressing lost working time in terms of lost production condensed the party’s main concerns in the 1950s: the disastrous effects of rowdiness over production and its consequences in terms of losing time, all being the result of the distance between the actual worker and the abstract bearer of socialist construction. For the party, this expression was a way to underline the importance of the lack of discipline among the workers, but it also intimately connected ideal work to an ideal time flow and to an ideal laborer, the subject of the emerging political project. Consequently, truancies, delays, stalling, and wasting time in any way became the object of a political struggle against losing time. As the managers would recollect in their interviews, this was going to be a task for generations, never fully accomplished and contingent upon future transformations of the regime and its politics of production. In this context, the obsessive preoccupation with the “hidden reserves” of the industrial units became obvious whenever factory managers or the members of the party organization in the factories discussed disciplinary problems. The way in which a representative of the Consumer Goods Industry reported the overfulfillment of the plan for 1952 was telling in this respect. After bragging that the plan for the consumer goods industrial branch had been accomplished in eleven months and eleven days, he detailed the good practices that would ensure equivalent success for all factories in the future. This way, all factories could fulfil the one-year plans in eleven months and the Five-Year Plan in four years. All factories should reassess their possibilities of production and utilize all their existing reserves to the fullest. They have to give special importance to the industrial equipment, which must be maintained in a good functioning state through daily care and through the 100 percent fulfilment of the repairing plan. The organization of the workplace is also very important: its cleanliness and order make the worker connect more strongly to the factory,

40

 ANRC, P.C.R. Fund 55, 2/1955, “Darea de seamă asupra activității comitetului orăşenesc de partid,” p. 236.

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 67

2020.05.12. 19:27:46

68

Alina-Sandra Cucu

resulting in better productivity, which leads further to fulfilling the plan ahead of time. You have to mobilize the workers against the truancies which decelerate production and represent a setback for the fulfilment of the plan.41

And further: You have to fight to discover and mobilize the internal reserves of the factories, to fully utilize the capacity of the machines, to organize your work better, in such a way that not a single hour, not a single minute is wasted away.42

However, finding out where useless time was hiding in the labor process was not an easy task. It required the emergence of specific legibility structures, complex instruments for reading the labor process as a  movement and contextual set of practices, and ethnographic forms of knowledge that would explore the relationship between the factory, the city, and the countryside in depth.43 In this context, Stakhanovism became an important microscope through which work discipline could be analyzed. When work norms were set, only the best workers were timed. The same went for those moments in which management studies employed “photographing” and “self-photographing” as techniques to observe a given worker’s movement and the flow of materials in great detail.44 Samuel’s pride was still visible when he recounted how the foremen and the chief engineer often came to his workstation to see “how things should be done” when quality standards dropped. Ordinary workers hated this window opened by the Stakhanovites into their ways-of-doing and ways-of-knowing. My interviews with former workers in the 1950s factories in Cluj confirmed that the “real” Stakhanovites also faced their colleagues’ opprobrium when their example endangered the fragile shop floor order and the bitter negotiation of work norms. One worker recounted the story of a young friend coming from the same village, who moved to Cluj, took a job at Tehnofrig and soon became a celebrated Stakhanovite. He became skilled as a lathe operator, proving to be so good that directors from other factories wanted to “steal” him from Tehnofrig by offering him better work conditions and a house in Cluj. In fierce negotia41

 ANRC, Fund Clujana, 29-23/1952, “Instrucțiuni şi adrese M.I.U., Direcțiunea Herbak către MIU,” June 5, 1952, p. 93. 42  Ibid., 107. 43  Cucu, Planning Labour; and Cucu, “Producing Knowledge in Productive Spaces.” 44  Ibid.

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 68

2020.05.12. 19:27:46

The Impossibility of Being Planned

69

tions he agreed to stay at Tehnofrig in exchange for a plot of land and credit, along with the promise that his coworkers would “voluntarily” help him to build his house, while the factory would provide him with building materials. He was also persuaded to join the Romanian Workers’ Party. However, later in the year, when he bragged in front of the foreman that he could execute 40 percent more pieces daily than his current record—already better than anyone’s on the shop floor—his coworkers told him to slow down if he did not want to have his arms broken one day. When the norm-setters were around, he actually did so, but these actions brought him negative attention from the party secretary who threatened him that he would be purged if he continued to work in this manner. Neither the “voluntary” help of his coworkers nor the building materials from the factory ever came.45 Disciplining labor as the most crucial reserve the factories had in the 1950s was not simply an administrative issue, but a political one. Work itself was supposed to be the root of “proletarian ethics” and “proletarian morals,” and the factory appeared as the space where certain “definitions and pronouncements about morality”46 had to be acquired. However, transforming this discourse into a material ethical regime increasingly proved to be a practical issue that depended more upon employment regulations, shortages, and discontinuities in production than upon the tropes of socialist personhood circulated by the party officials in their plenary meetings. While the revolutionary class-conscious proletarian was supposed to be the historical conclusion of the synchronous contradictions of capitalism, within the factory walls the communists battled with contradictory factors “alien to the Now,” which were both subjectively nonsynchronous—“a simply torpid not wanting of the Now,” and objectively nonsynchronous—“an existing remnant of earlier times in the present.”47 Since the peasant-worker rather than the proletarian had become the fundamental figure of socialist industrialization, the possibility that the state relied solely on workers who held “historically advanced consciousness” was illusory. The flexible cheap workforce that divided its life between the city and the countryside and between wage labor and subsistence agriculture was central to the highly competitive informal local labor market in Cluj. It embodied the historical encounter between the idea of growth through planned heroism, a topdown opportunistic strategy for industrializing an agrarian country by

45

 Interview with former worker at Tehnofrig between 1952 and 1992, male, June 14, 2013.  Douglas Rogers, The Old Faith and the Russian Land: A Historical Ethnography of Ethics in the Urals (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2009), 14. 47  Bloch and Ritter, “Nonsynchronism,” 3; 31, emphasis in original. 46

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 69

2020.05.12. 19:27:46

70

Alina-Sandra Cucu

keeping labor cheap, and peasants’ own strategies to reproduce themselves as a class.48 By welcoming peasants into the factory, the communists also allowed their rationalities—corresponding to old relations and forces of production—to enter the gates. Moreover, as the state externalized part of their reproduction to subsistence economy in the countryside, these “old” forms were actually extremely concrete and continued to structure people’s experience and visions of the future, expecting the workers to come home to them after work, or even to abandon the factory. The hailing of these proto-capitalist forms structured all those capitalist contradictions that were magnified by the socialist project in its initial phase. This was one of the most important contradictory elements that drove the productive needs of factories in the 1950s: socialism needed workers, but the practices and mentality of the actually existing ones had to be relegated to an “absolute past.” Thus, the unskilled, rowdy, and truant peasant-worker synthesized the nonsynchronicity of the plan, both at individual and class level. In other words, he or she did not fit into the socialist factory as a modern institution, and also did not fit into the heroic endeavor that would get rid of modern rationality altogether. The laborer who worked in the past and fell behind time was simply “an earlier type.”49 Since these “earlier types” were fundamental for early socialist industrialization, the communists could do nothing to stop the “past” entering the factory gates. The factory walls were porous, and people’s life strategies crept in, in many instances debilitating production. Thus, although the peasant-workers were key figures of early socialist accumulation, they were also seen as “earlier bodies [that] emerge in the Now and send a bit of prehistoric life into it,”50 penetrating the factory with their primitive practices, beliefs, allegiances, and rhythms. The communist leaders, then, became painfully aware of the fact that “backwardness” was not a  homogeneous

48

 For more on the Romanian uneven proletarianization as a strategy in the industrialization process, see Cucu, Planning Labour, and Petrovici, “Neoliberal Proletarization.” Both authors have different interpretations of the phenomenon of “under-urbanization” in state socialism than classical studies of the phenomenon assumed. See György Konrád and Ivan Szelenyi, “Social Conflicts of Underurbanization,” Captive Cities: Studies in the Political Economy of Cities and Regions, ed. Michael Harloe (London: Wiley, 1977), 157–74; Pearse Murray and Ivan Szelenyi, “The City in the Transition to Socialism,” International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 8, no. 1 (1984): 90–107; Gregory Andrusz, Michael Harloe, and Iván Szelényi, eds, Cities after Socialism: Urban and Regional Change and Conflict in Post-Socialist Societies (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 2011). 49  Bloch and Ritter, “Nonsynchronism.” 50  Ibid., 23.

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 70

2020.05.12. 19:27:46

The Impossibility of Being Planned

71

realm from which they could escape. It was fluid, resistant, and contagious, so it could not be simply left behind. As a political project, Bolshevism was more than anything a living radical negation of the past. The idealized “home” of early socialist construction was always in the future. The fulfilment of the Five-Year Plan in four years, the fulfilment of the 1952 plan in November, the Stakhanovite Marian Vasile working in June 1953 for October 1954, or Tehnofrig working in August 1954 to meet the targets of April 1955 are all expressions that link accumulation directly to historical advancement. Slackers (as individual embodiments of backwardness) and non-proletarians (as its class incarnations) worked not in the future, but in the past. Since not all workers were capable of working in the future, the calculation of the precise point in time when a specific worker produced was a painful mirror of all the different temporal horizons people brought with them in the factory. At the limit, within this space, socialist planning as the bearer of labor-intensive accumulation and as a path out of backwardness became a hopeless vision. At the extreme, it became impossible. Instead of being simply a coordinating mechanism and a foundation for calculating needs and means, planning in socialism was the ultimate articulation of accumulating in order to transcend and the first means to assess the successes and the failures in the making of the socialist worker. But projects that dwell in the future put no less pressure on the present than those which linger in the past. They also devoid the Now of substance and reality, by making it into a mere vehicle for the manifestation of a bright future. At the limit, not only the past but also the Now is dismissed as second-hand historical time. Since production happened in the present, since the battle for the 480-minute workday was fought in the present, the Now always came back with a vengeance. In the actualization of the socialist project, accumulation as being ahead of time deeply threatened the articulation of socialism as a structure across practices because, at the limit, each factory, each workshop, each team, and even each worker found themselves in a different point in time. Working towards next month’s or next year’s targets put people and the state in a special relationship with time. Party propaganda at the factory level made it clear that today’s workload was actually the production of tomorrow, and any failure to produce accordingly would contribute to continuing a  situation of backwardness and delaying a form of progress beneficial for all. The smooth realization of the plan required that the future was always brought into now, making the present virtually disappear. But when production turned out to be merely a  sequence of broken tempos and rhythms, problems occurred, and unrealized goods remained to be manufactured, the past crept into the present’s economic and political requirements. While one of the central di-

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 71

2020.05.12. 19:27:46

72

Alina-Sandra Cucu

mensions of the socialist accumulation process was that people had to work simultaneously in the present and in the future, many times they had to work in the past as well. Every now and then, people had to catch up with work undone in due time, but what they really had to catch up was not only production, but time itself. At the same moment, they had to manufacture both the objects that belonged to the past and those that belonged to the future. As such, the act of work connected the recent past and the near future in a present which was never valuable for itself. Now had no political or economic meaning as it was always reduced to a mere vehicle for solving nonfulfillment of the past and projects of the future. In its struggle with a backward history, in its desperate attempts to catch up, socialism placed work in the future and produced a melting present, one that was difficult to control and impossible to plan. The tension was permanently there, as the encounter between life, production, and the actual took place in a time which had no political value. Everything happened in a present that did not exist.

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 72

2020.05.12. 19:27:46

Finding Workers to Build Socialism: Recruiting for the Steel Factories in Bulgaria and Albania *

Ulf Brunnbauer and Visar Nonaj

Introduction In 1980, Nataliia Todorova Petrova from the Bulgarian town of Karlovo did what she had thought would be inconceivable: she took a job in the steel factory of Kremikovci near Sofia, the largest industrial plant in Bulgaria. When I  was a  final-year student, our professor for industrial energetics took us there [to the steel plant], and I completely freaked out. I watched and said to myself: “Here, you will never enter.” Yet, after a couple of years I was forced to do it, and why? There is no secret, you know, I say it entirely honestly, it was because of the residence permit [žitelstvo]. [Laughing] Because . . . there was no choice. Of course, there were other ways, but Kremikovci, this was the safest one and . . . you know, my life was really difficult then and I had to settle.1

Ivan Petrov Kirilov, born in the village of Dolna Graštica near the town of Kjustendil in western Bulgaria, entered Kremikovci’s workforce for similar reasons in 1969. After graduating from an agronomist technical school and completing three years of military service, he searched for work in Kjustendil but to no avail. He decided to go to Sofia, where he could stay with relatives. *

This chapter resulted from the research project “Real Socialist Industrial Cultures in the Balkans: The Steel Factories of Elbasan, Albania, and Kremikovci, Bulgaria, as Sites of Communist Socialization,” which was funded by the Fritz Thyssen Foundation (2011– 2014) and was carried out at the Institute for East and Southeast European Studies, Regensburg. We are also grateful to the discussants and participants of the 2014 ESSHC panel in Vienna, where we presented an earlier version of this paper. 1  We decided to use pseudonyms for the names of our interview partners or anonymize them. This interview was conducted in Sofia on April 16, 2012. This female worker, born in 1948, worked in Kremikovci from 1980 to 2001.

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 73

2020.05.12. 19:27:46

74

Ulf Brunnbauer and Visar Nonaj

I went to various workshops, factories, and other enterprises, but everywhere they demanded a residence permit for employment. One day, another relative visited the relatives where I was staying. It appeared that he was the manager of the construction unit in Kremikovci. And he said: “Why are you killing time in Sofia looking for work? Come with me to Kremikovci, I’ll bring you to the human resources department, they are looking for workers and will offer you something, from which you can choose what you want.” I said, okay. [On the next day he went to Kremikovci and, while waiting in front of the human resources office:] A young man approached me and said: “Hi, youngster! What are you for, are you looking for a job?” I said, yes. “Hey, don’t you want to come and work with us at the KIP [control and measurement devices] department?”2

Ivan did not think twice and took the job, which was one of the best in the factory: “There, they work in white shirts, this is a laboratory, this is the most beautiful work in Kremikovci,” were the encouraging words of his relative. As an agronomist, he did not have any special training for this. He was placed in a job training program only after being hired. The recollections of Nataliia and Ivan are similar to many other life stories which we collected in interviews with former workers in Kremikovci.3 Archival evidence further corroborates them. Recruitment by the Kremikovci steel factory, which was the showcase of the presumably modern, planned socialist economy, was often haphazard. People typically entered the factory neither because they were trained for it, nor out of enthusiasm, but for very mundane reasons: because they either could not find a job somewhere else or aspired to get residence permission in Sofia, which was difficult to acquire for citizens born outside of the city. In this chapter we discuss the recruitment practices and experiences of two similar factories, the steel plants in Kremikovci in Bulgaria and in Elbasan in Albania. Both were industrial mammoths epitomizing the ruling communists’ penchant for heavy industry. They were planned as integral parts of the industrialization efforts by the communist regimes of the two countries. Planned to employ many thousands of workers, the two facto-

2

 Interview conducted in Sofia on March 9, 2013. This male worker was born in 1949 and worked in Kremikovci from 1969 to 1990. 3  A total of nineteen former Kremikovci workers were interviewed, representing different professional categories. The sample includes female workers and people with an ethnic minority background. For the Albanian case study, we did seventeen interviews (fifteen male and two female workers). The interviews were semi-structured and were taken between 2012 and 2015, all of them in either Bulgarian or Albanian. Transcripts are maintained at the IOS Regensburg.

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 74

2020.05.12. 19:27:47

Finding Workers to Build Socialism

75

ries faced a well-known problem for any newly developing industry: where could they recruit workers? Neither Bulgaria nor Albania had much of an industrial tradition, so the two new factories could hardly rely on workers from already existing industrial firms. Recruitment was, therefore, a crucial process for the success of industrialization. This was not merely a technical question; recruitment was linked to other salient processes at different levels of social organization and in different domains of the political economy.4 This is why the analysis of recruitment sheds light on the social fabric of state socialism. It exemplifies, for example, geographic and social mobility patterns. It also elucidates the perception of industrial work by “ordinary people” and their appropriation of industrial labor, often for other purposes than the communist planners had initially intended. It illustrates the room for maneuver of enterprises and their managers, because successful recruitment often depended on their creativity and bending of official rules. It also shows how the state reacted to unforeseen problems and, by its responses, created new contradictions. Recruitment resulted in the transformation of society. The thousands of individual jobs in factories such as Kremikovci and Elbasan accumulated into a social process that thoroughly changed both countries. The “industrial man” began to inhibit Bulgaria and Albania as well. The question is: to what extent was the further development of industrial labor shaped by initial recruitment practices and, more generally, by the social and geographic origins of workers? There is comparative research claiming that workers from different backgrounds, such as rural and urban, adapted quickly to the industrial discipline in modern factories, and used “modern” methods for their struggle against exploitation.5 On the other hand, scholarship on early Soviet industrialization highlighted the accommodation difficulties of peasants turned factory workers.6 It seems that socialist institutions mattered 4

 Cf. Lenard R. Berlanstein, “The Formation of a Factory Labor Force: Rubber and Cable Workers in Bezons, France (1860–1914),” Journal of Social History 15, no. 2 (1981): 163. 5  William H. Form, “The Accommodation of Rural and Urban Workers to Industrial Discipline and Urban Living: A Four-Nation Study,” Rural Sociology 36, no. 4 (1971): 488– 508; see the review article Larry Peterson, “Industrialization, Urbanization, and Workers’ Culture: The ‘New’ Social History and the German Proletariat in the Nineteenth Century,” Labour / Le Travail 12 (1983): 173–200. 6  Cf. Donald Filtzer, Soviet Workers and Stalinist Industrialization: The Formation of Modern Soviet Production Relations, 1928–1941 (London: Pluto Press, 1986); William J. Chase, Workers, Society, and the Soviet State: Labor and Life in Moscow, 1918–1929 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1987); Hiroaki Kuromiya, Stalin’s Industrial Revolution: Politics and Workers, 1928–1932 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988); Heiko Haumann, “‘Ich habe gedacht, dass die Arbeiter in den Städten besser leben’: Arbeiter bäuerlicher Herkunft in der Industrialisierung des Zarenreichs und der frühen Sowjetunion,” Schweizerische Zeitschrift für Geschichte 43, no.  1 (1993): 42–60.

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 75

2020.05.12. 19:27:47

76

Ulf Brunnbauer and Visar Nonaj

greatly for that question because they created specific conditions of recruitment and labor organization, which allowed the transfer of pre-industrial practices into industry. At the same time, the analysis of two postwar socialist countries lends itself to a comparison with the Soviet experience.

Steelmaking in Kremikovci and Elbasan The steel works explored in this paper were salient pillars of industrialization and proletarianization.7 The “Metallurgical Complex” in Kremikovci near Sofia (“Brežnev” was added to its name after the Soviet leader’s death in 1982) and the “Steel of the Party” mill in Elbasan were the largest industrial enterprises in both countries. In the 1970s, Kremikovci employed about 20,000 workers, and the Elbasan factory up to 15,000 workers by the end of the 1970s.8 Their production portfolio represented the communist governments’ aspiration to achieve industrial autarky. Steel was fundamental for this, as other industries and infrastructure development required huge quantities of it. Industrialization was, of course, one of the pivotal goals of the communist regimes in Bulgaria and Albania. The challenges were enormous: in Bulgaria, there was only a small industrial base at the end of World War II. Official statistics recorded approximately 90,000 industrial workers in 1945, many of whom worked in small and barely mechanized workshops in the processing of agricultural products.9 In Albania, there was no industrial working class to speak of at all. In 1950—six years into communist rule—the share of people employed in industry, mining, and construction amounted to only 7 percent of the workforce in Albania and 11.4 percent in Bulgaria.10 Yet in both countries, the communists eventually built indus7

 For more on their history, see Ulf Brunnbauer, “Stählerne Träume: Kremikovci und der Neue Mensch,” in Transformationsprobleme Bulgariens im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert: Historische und ethnologische Perspektiven, ed. Ulf Brunnbauer and Wolfgang Höpken (Munich:  Verlag Otto Sagner, 2007), 205−228; Ulf Brunnbauer, Visar Nonaj, and Biljana Raeva, “Workers, Steel Factories, and Communism: Labor in Kremikovci (Bulgaria) and Elbasan (Albania) under State Socialism,” IOS Mitteilungen, no. 62 (2013), accessed August 11, 2015, http://www.dokumente.ios-regensburg.de/publikationen/mitteilungen/ mitt_62.pdf. 8  Brunnbauer, Nonaj, and Raeva, “Workers, Steel Factories, and Communism.” 9   Todor Vladigerov et al., Ikonomičesko i socialno razvitie na Narodna Republika Bălgarija (Sofia: BAN, 1964), 44. On the development of the Bulgarian economy, see also John R. Lampe, The Bulgarian Economy in the Twentieth Century (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1986). 10  Ulf Brunnbauer, “Gesellschaft und gesellschaftlicher Wandel in Südosteuropa nach 1945,” in Geschichte Südosteuropas: Vom frühen Mittelalter bis zur Gegenwart, ed. Konrad Clewing and Oliver J. Schmitt (Regensburg: F. Pustet, 2011), 669.

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 76

2020.05.12. 19:27:47

Finding Workers to Build Socialism

77

trial societies, though to a lesser extent in Albania than in Bulgaria. By 1989, 45.3 percent of the Bulgarian workforce was employed in industry, rendering Bulgaria one of the most industrialized countries in the world. Industry and mining contributed almost 60 percent to the gross domestic product by that time. In Albania, according to official and likely inflated figures, 31 percent of the workforce was employed in industry, mining, and construction by the end of the 1980s.11 The lower share of industrial employment in Albania was the result of deliberate state policies (see below). In their pursuit of total autarky, the regime in Albania placed more emphasis on retaining a substantial farming population, and the country refused to take foreign loans to expand its industry.12 As such, Bulgaria and Albania stood for two different patterns of communist economic policy: full industrialization and restrained industrialization, respectively. While differing in timing and ultimate degree of industrialization, economic policies in Albania and Bulgaria also displayed important similarities. In both countries, the state prioritized heavy over light industry, with the well-known detrimental consequences on the provision (or rather, nonprovision) of the population with consumer goods. Heavy industry received the bulk of state investment because economic planners thought that capital industry would lay durable foundations for a modern economy by producing the investment goods necessary for further development. As Katherine Verdery put it, “Socialist regimes wanted not just eggs but the goose that lays them.”13 The concentration of resources in heavy industry created significant imbalances in the economy as a whole, which contributed to the economic malaise of state socialism. This investment decision was also consequential for the character of the emerging working class: factories in heavy industry employed more people, wielded more political influence, and were more successful in acquiring resources from the state. Workers in heavy industry received higher wages and enjoyed more bargaining power than, for example, female workers in the textile industry. It is important to note that the size of an industrial enterprise mattered greatly, not only for economic but also for social reasons; companies in state socialism were not mere employers but also

 Ibid., 668–69; Leszek A. Kosiński, Demographic Developments in Eastern Europe (New York: Praeger, 1977). 12  Örjan Sjöberg, “Rural Retention in Albania: Administrative Restrictions on Urban-Bound Migration,” East European Quarterly 28, no. 2 (1994): 205–33; Michael Kaser, “Eco­nomic System,” in Albanien (Südosteuropa-Handbuch 7), ed. Klaus-Detlev Grothusen (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1993), 289–311. 13  Katherine Verdery, What Was Socialism, and What Comes Next? (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996), 26. 11

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 77

2020.05.12. 19:27:47

78

Ulf Brunnbauer and Visar Nonaj

providers of social benefits. Privileged enterprises offered housing, vacation homes, educational opportunities, cultural and other leisure activities. The steel factories of Kremikovci and Elbasan, therefore, while being a microcosmos of state socialism, were at the same time not representative of industry as a whole. The decision to build the two factories came at crucial moments in the economic development of socialist Bulgaria and Albania. Kremikovci was established first. The Central Committee of the Bulgarian Communist Party decided in 1958 to build a large steel plant at the village of Kremikovci near Sofia.14 The factory was an essential part of the Chinainspired “Great Leap Forward” propagated by Bulgaria’s party leadership at that time. This program amounted to a renewal of massive investments in heavy industry, after the state had previously put more emphasis on consumer industries. The decision also constituted a  refusal of initial Soviet ideas for the division of labor between the member countries of the Council of Mutual Economic Assistance (Comecon). The Bulgarian government did not accept their country being reduced to a  prime producer of canned tomatoes; they wished to boast of their own heavy industry. Eventually the Bulgarians, as one of the Soviets’ closest allies, acquired Comecon and Soviet backing for the construction of Kremikovci. From the Soviet Union, they received loans, machinery, and technical specialists. This made Kremikovci also a powerful manifestation of the “eternal Bulgarian-Soviet friendship.” One important purpose of the factory was to create jobs in order to erase urban unemployment, which at that time was substantial as so many peasants were leaving their villages due to the collectivization of farming. Furthermore, the communists hoped that the new factory would give Sofia a more proletarian outlook. In 1965, the first steel was cast. The economic motivations of the Albanian communists were similar. In 1964, the Fifth Congress of the Party of Labor of Albania passed the decision to build the country’s first steel plant, which was to be located near the town of Elbasan in central Albania. In 1961, Albania had broken with the Soviet Union losing further economic support from the Soviets and their allies. The creation of a national steel industry was, therefore, imperative because the country’s leadership rejected the notion of importing steel. The Albanians requested help from the People’s Republic of China, their last remaining powerful ally. The Chinese government sent hundreds of specialists to assist in the construction of the plant in the 1960s. They also pro-

14

 For a history of the steel plant, see Michael Palairet, “‘Lenin’ and ‘Brezhnev’: Steel Making and the Bulgarian Economy, 1956–90,” Europe-Asia Studies 47, no. 3 (1995): 493–505; Brunnbauer, “Stählerne Träume.”

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 78

2020.05.12. 19:27:47

Finding Workers to Build Socialism

79

vided loans and machinery, and took over to test the iron ore sent by Albania for inspection. For both plants, national politics were of the utmost importance. Their directors were invariably members of the Communist Party’s Central Committee and in the 1980s, the Elbasan director was even a Politburo member.15 This politicization connected the fate of the factories closely to political events, including foreign policy. Elbasan is a case in point: initially, the Albanians depended on China for support. However, in 1978 they also broke with Beijing, instituting a  strict official policy of self-reliance. The cooling of relations between the two countries prior to the complete break is evident in reports from the Elbasan steel factory, which detailed the economic damage of alleged Chinese “sabotage.” Even before the cessation of relations, day-to-day interactions between Albanians and Chinese in Elbasan became increasingly fraught. When China terminated its economic assistance, the Albanian economy in general, and the Elbasan steel plant in particular, suffered severe disturbances. This forced the management, under close government surveillance, to seek contacts with Western firms, such as the Salzgitter AG in West Germany, in search of technical expertise.16 It is ironic that the technical demands of a major instrument in the pursuit of autarky, i.e., the steel plant, forced the Albanian leadership to seek contacts with a capitalist country. The Bulgarians were faced with similarly paradoxical results. While Kremikovci allowed them to accomplish their goal of self-reliance in steel production, the plant’s insatiable demand for resources created new external dependencies. The iron ore deposits in Kremikovci, which had been the prime reason for the location of the plant, proved to be insufficient. The Bulgarians were forced to import most of the iron ore from the Soviet Union and other countries. They also had to buy coke, as Bulgaria did not possess its own bituminous coal deposits to produce it.17 Now the plant’s location far away from the nearest port turned into a major disadvantage, compounded by the notorious unreliability of the Bulgarian railways that transported ore and coke from the Black Sea port of Burgas to Kremikovci. Aside from that, the production technology was outdated and was barely modernized during the 1970s and 1980s. Eventually, the productivity of Kremikovci was lower than that of the older and smaller steel plant in the town of Pernik, which had been founded before World War II. Thanks  Feruz Mataj, Kur jeta kërkon të flas: Kujtime (Tirana: West Print, 2011), 331.  Arkivi Qëndror i Shtetit [National Archive of Albania; hereafter AQSh], Ministria e Industrisë, 496, 1985/298, 10. 17  Regionalen dŭržaven arhiv Sofia [Regional State Archive in Sofia, hereafter RDA Sofia], f. 3207, op. 8, a.e. 3, 126–39. 15 16

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 79

2020.05.12. 19:27:47

80

Ulf Brunnbauer and Visar Nonaj

to its vast size, Kremikovci produced more steel than the Bulgarian economy needed; however, due to its poor quality, Kremikovci could only sell its products at prices below production costs. A 1986 report by the party committee in the factory concluded that “the metallurgical products are exported to capitalist countries for the price of scrap metal.”18 The state was forced to finance these losses, which is why Kremikovci continued to swallow up a significant part of the total industrial investment in Bulgaria. When all costs are factored in, it would have been cheaper for Bulgaria to buy Soviet steel rather than to produce its own.19 The Elbasan factory faced similar if not worse economic problems. In the 1970s, the enterprise repeatedly failed to achieve its planned production goals. In the mid-1980s, the plant struggled to receive enough raw materials, particularly iron ore and nickel, from domestic suppliers who preferred to export these commodities. Production almost came to a standstill in the late 1980s. Interviewed workers remember that they often stood idle.20 From a business point of view, the wisdom of maintaining the two factories despite their economic failings can thus be questioned. Yet neither of them operated on predominantly economic premises. They carried important social, political, and cultural functions. Therefore, the party-state— which was well aware of these economic shortcomings—was ready to commit further resources to keep them afloat. One reason was the fact that the two factories were thought to be sites of the creation of the socialist worker; as such, they had an important social engineering purpose. They carried important symbolic meanings too. Much like other large-scale sites of the construction of socialism, Kremikovci and Elbasan were overdetermined by sometimes conflicting meanings.21 Albanian leader Enver Hoxha called the construction of the Elbasan factory a “second liberation” of the country, after the first one by the communist partisans in World War II. Overloaded ideological valence was one of the reasons why the communist governments were ready to invest so much political and financial capital in these factories. Eventually, the symbolic meaning would outweigh their economic rationale: both factories were essentially poetic endeavors, while from a business point of view, they were a failure. 18

 RDA Sofia, f. 3207, op. 11, a.e. 3, 18.  See Palairet, “‘Lenin’ and ‘Brezhnev’”; Bruno Schönfelder, Vom Spätsozialismus zur Privatrechtsordnung (Berlin: Berliner Wissenschaftsverlag, 2012), 896. 20  Raymond Hutchings, “Albanian Industrialization: Widening Divergence from Stalinism,” in Industrialisierung und gesellschaftlicher Wandel in Südosteuropa, ed. Roland Schönfeld (Munich: Oldenbourg, 1989), 123. 21  Cf. Stephen Kotkin, Magnetic Mountain: Stalinism as a Civilization (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997); Klaus Gestwa, Die Stalinschen Großbauten des Kommunismus: Sow­ je­tische Technik- und Umweltgeschichte, 1948–1967 (Munich: Oldenbourg, 2010). 19

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 80

2020.05.12. 19:27:47

Finding Workers to Build Socialism

81

Taking Work in Kremikovci and Elbasan One of the challenges of the two projects was to find workers, initially for the construction and then for the operation of the factory. Recruitment was not only an important social and economic fact; as a process it contributed to the transformation of social structures at that time. The lack of any industrial tradition and the specific timing of industrialization meant that workers were recruited under very different circumstances than in Western Europe. The question of where the first generation of industrial workers came from was an important theme in historical literature on the Industrial Revolution.22 From that literature it is known that there were different pathways to industrial recruitment, depending on concrete socioeconomic conditions and institutions. One important source was former artisans and workers from declining protoindustrial production: that is, from nonfarming sectors. These brought experiences of wage-labor into industrial production. Another source was women and children from farming households, who were massively recruited by early cotton mill entrepreneurs in Great Britain, for example. In general, it seems that early industrialists in Western Europe faced little problem in staffing their factories.23 They could exploit a market of labor that tended to be free and mobile, as one of the results of peasant emancipation and the end of various forms of indentured labor. The institutional conditions in communist Albania and Bulgaria were noticeably different from Great Britain in 1800. First, there was no free market, and economic development was thought to proceed according to a  plan with fixed investment and output figures, set not only for the national economy and its different branches, but for every company. Second, in both countries relocation was strongly restricted, at least on paper. Third, instead of private entrepreneurs it was the state which owned the means of production and made investment decisions, thus creating an indissoluble nexus between economy and politics. Factory managers had to take into account both political constraints and possibilities when filling the ranks of

 Cf. Rainer Liedtke, Die Industrielle Revolution (Cologne: UTB, 2012); Hans-Werner Hahn, Die Industrielle Revolution in Deutschland (Munich: Oldenbourg, 2005), 80; Lee T. Wyatt, The Industrial Revolution (Westport, London: Greenwood, 2009), 137 passim; Edward P. Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class (London: Victor Golancz, 1963). 23  Morris D. Morris, “The Recruitment of an Industrial Labor Force in India, with British and American Comparisons,” Comparative Studies in Society & History 2, no. 3 (1960): 305–28. 22

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 81

2020.05.12. 19:27:47

82

Ulf Brunnbauer and Visar Nonaj

their workforce. Fourth, to make matters even more complicated, the governments failed to establish a functioning system of central labor allocation. In the end, it was a complex interplay of different mechanisms from above and from below that drove the recruitment process. In both countries the industrial workforce was one mostly of the communists’ making. This was in marked contrast to East Central Europe, especially Czechoslovakia, the Soviet Occupation Zone/GDR, and partially also Hungary and Poland, where a relatively large and often well-organized industrial workforce had been in place when the communists took power. Mark Pittaway comments that “Eastern and especially Central European workers had powerful preexisting working-class cultures, values, and aspirations which clashed sharply with notions underpinning Communist party attempts to reshape those workers in their own image.”24 These traditions nurtured opposition against Stalinist labor policies, as shown by Peter Heumos with the example of Czechoslovak workers, who opposed Soviet-style attempts to increase the intensity and speed of work.25 The Soviet example of rapid industrialization since 1929 highlighted the consequences of the difference between established and newly recruited workers for shop floor relations. New workers, who usually came from the countryside, were more liable to accept Stalinist patterns of labor management, while they lacked the routines and knowledge to manipulate the production process. Rapid recruitment led to a  profound social transformation of the Soviet working class, as Donald Filtzer summarized: “From being an old, experienced working class with long traditions of struggle and organization it became a predominantly young, peasant-based, and unskilled workforce with little proletarian cultural tradition.”26 So, how would shop floor relations develop if almost all workers were new recruits into industry? Most of the new workers in Kremikovci and Elbasan came from the countryside. On the one hand, this seemed inevitable given the lack of substantial industrial reservoirs from which the two enterprises could recruit. On the other hand, it was a legal paradox because in both countries, stringent restrictions on relocation from villages to cities were in place. Hence, the analysis of recruitment offers insights into the reality of the internal mobility regimes in Bulgaria and Albania. The governments of both countries 24

 Mark Pittaway, “Introduction: Workers and Socialist States in Postwar Central and Eastern Europe,” International Labor and Working-Class History, no. 68 (2005): 5. 25  Peter Heumos, “Grenzen des Sozialistischen Produktivismus: Arbeitsinitiativen und Arbeitsverhalten in Tschechoslowakischen Industriebetrieben in den fünfziger Jahren,” in Arbeit im Sozialismus—Arbeit im Postsozialismus: Erkundungen zum Arbeitsleben im östlichen Europa, ed. Klaus Roth (Münster: LIT, 2004), 199–218. 26  Filtzer, Soviet Workers and Stalinist Industrialization, 47.

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 82

2020.05.12. 19:27:47

Finding Workers to Build Socialism

83

had imposed mobility restrictions in order to stem the rural exodus triggered by collectivization. In Bulgaria, the government introduced new restrictions on relocation to Sofia in the early 1950s, revitalizing pre-communist legislation. In 1955, these restrictions were extended to other large cities and later to smaller ones as well.27 The government wanted to prevent the emptying of the countryside and the overwhelming of cities with too many newcomers from the villages. In Albania, regulations were even stricter. Relocation from one place of residence to another was dependent on permission by the authorities. In the early 1960s the flood of rural migrants was, indeed, practically stemmed.28 The Albanian government thought that the urban labor pool should replenish itself from its own sources, as should the rural one.29 The apparent contradiction of this rule was not lost to managers, particularly in view of the fact that industrial growth depended mainly on the increase of inputs, one of which was labor. From the overall demographic development of Bulgaria and Albania it appears that the Albanian regime was more consistent in enforcing these administrative restrictions, although it also did not manage to fully implement them. Despite an ongoing trend of urbanization, the majority of the Albanian population continued to live in the countryside, whereas in Bulgaria the rural-urban distribution was reversed within a generation. According to official statistics, the share of Albania’s population residing in urban areas increased from 20 percent in 1950 to 36 percent in 1989, while in Bulgaria it grew from 30 to 67 percent in the same period.30 The recruitment practices of the Kremikovci plant help to explain why the rural exodus continued almost unabated in the 1960s in Bulgaria despite legal restrictions. It seems that practically anyone who wanted work at Kremikovci was hired. One of the main motives to take a job in Kremikovci was the granting of a residence permit (žitelstvo) for Sofia, which was otherwise difficult to acquire. Thanks to its political leverage, the Kremikovci management faced no difficulties in obtaining residency permits from the city authorities for its newly recruited workers. One of our interviewees recalled how he had hesitated to apply for work in Kremikovci because he had thought that possession of a Sofia residence permit was a precondition, yet his boss assured 27

 These restrictions were based on a 1942 law. In 1981, there were only 121 small towns without residence restrictions. Gerald W. Creed, Domesticating Revolution: From Socialist Reform to Ambivalent Transition in a Bulgarian Village (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1998), 145; Ivajlo Dičev, “Usjadaneto na nomadskija komunizăm. Socialističeskata urbanizacija i krăgovete na graždanstvo,” Sociologičeski problemi 3–4 (2003): 33–63. 28  Sjöberg, “Rural Retention in Albania,” 215. 29  Ibid., 218. 30  Brunnbauer, “Gesellschaft und gesellschaftlicher Wandel,” 685.

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 83

2020.05.12. 19:27:47

84

Ulf Brunnbauer and Visar Nonaj

him: “Don’t you know that Kremikovci awards the žitelstvo?”31 Many workers took work in Kremikovci only for that purpose and soon left in order to find a job in the city of Sofia proper. Another interviewee remembers that “I was impressed that there was a lawyer who worked there as a worker. . . . He came for the residence permit.”32 Another worker, who came from Vidin, took a job in Kremikovci in order to secure permission to settle in Sofia for himself and his wife, who consequently took a job in Bulgaria’s most prestigious hospital, Pirogov, in Sofia. Even though the mobility restrictions were much more vigorously enforced by the Albanian regime, the recruitment practices of the Elbasan steel plant reveal deviations from them. Örjan Sjöberg, drawing exclusively on secondary material, assumed that the strict rules were not always enforced because they contradicted other salient political goals, such as the achievement of industrial growth and the maintenance of high employment levels. He suspected that Albanian enterprises also practiced a strategy of hoarding labor and, therefore, sought additional workers beyond the central authorities’ allocations.33 Archival evidence indeed shows that the Elbasan plant circumvented mobility restrictions: it had no choice if it wanted to fulfill the plan. The difficulties were also compounded by the fact that in Elbasan, many workers from villages accepted a job only for the purpose of receiving an urban residence permit (pashaportizim), and a significant number of them soon left the factory.34 This explains why not many residents of Elbasan were motivated to take a job in the steel factory: they already possessed the legal right to live in the city. One of the main sources of recruitment in Elbasan was therefore the countryside, in contravention of existing rules. In 1971, for instance, the district party committee reported to the Central Committee of the Party of Labor of Albania that members of several agricultural cooperatives had left their villages and were employed by factories in other districts, among them the Elbasan steel plant, without the required permission from the local authorities. The State Planning Commission discovered that several factories in Elbasan, with tacit approval from the local authorities, recruited workers from villages despite the fact that there were unemployed persons in the city.35 This was a clear violation of recruitment regulations. Enterprises were 31

 Interview with B. A. T., Sofia, April 1, 2012. Born in 1949, he worked in Kremikovci from 1980 to 2001 and also acted as a trade union functionary. 32  Interview with N. K., Sofia, October 2, 2012. He was born in 1942 and worked in the plant from 1963 to 1997. 33  Sjöberg, “Rural Retention in Albania,” 219. 34  AQSh, Bashkimet Profesionale të Shqipërisë, f. 657, document no. 1974/63, 5. 35  See AQSh, Komisioni i Planit të Shtetit, 495, 1977/23, 24–37.

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 84

2020.05.12. 19:27:47

Finding Workers to Build Socialism

85

obliged to hire only persons who had been officially released from their agricultural cooperatives. Illegal employment by urban firms deprived the cooperatives of their workforce and threatened their performance. Many of these workers came from so-called “kulak families,” who had illicitly moved to the cities. They were employed without a work permit or employment contracts. It seems that taking a job in a large industrial plant was a strategy to leave behind the social stigma of being labelled a “kulak.” This is reminiscent of the Soviet experience, where many former “kulaks,” banned from entering a kolkhoz, ended up in the surging industrial sector. The Albanian Central Committee emphasized in a letter to local party committees that such cases were against the party line.36 The Central Committee also complained that party grassroots organizations “did not demonstrate class consciousness,” when “kulaks” were deployed at important “frontlines of labor” and even received awards such as “The Pride of the Plant.”37 The Council of Ministers, therefore, instructed the party committees to keep persons with suspicious political leanings away from the cities.38 Another practice of the factory was to employ workers from the countryside on temporary contracts even after their initial work contracts had expired.39 The recruitment patterns by the “Steel of the Party” factory help to explain why Elbasan’s population significantly increased in the 1970s (from 39,100 in 1969 to 62,400 ten years later), despite the strict legal limits on resettlement. Elbasan consistently recorded higher numbers of rural migrants who lived in the town without permission than the capital, Tirana.40

Finding Workers Establishing a sufficient supply of workers for the two steel factories turned out to be more cumbersome than the economic planners had expected. The reason for that was the fact that recruitment turned into a ceaseless task. Both enterprises recorded high labor turnover which forced the management to constantly find replacements for workers who left. The aforementioned practice of workers taking a job only for the sake of acquiring a residence permit was one of the underlying factors behind the continuously high rates of labor turnover. The annual balance sheet of the Kremikovci 36

 Elbasan, in particular, attracted attention more than once. AQSh, KQ i PPSh, 14, 1971/162, 1–4. 37  AQSh, KQ i PPSh, 14, 1971/162, 2. 38  Ibid., 20. 39  AQSh, KQ i PPSh, 14, 1977/590, 1–15. 40  AQSh, Këshilli i Ministrave, 490, 1976/478, 24.

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 85

2020.05.12. 19:27:47

86

Ulf Brunnbauer and Visar Nonaj

plant for 1970 counted 15,232 blue-collar workers at the beginning of the year. During that year, the enterprise hired 3,040 new workers while 3,618 (or 23.7 percent of the total) left. The enterprise ended the year with 14,654 workers, which was almost 500 below the plan figure.41 In the first half of the 1970s, the annual rate of labor turnover in Kremikovci was around 17 percent. Between 1971 and 1975, the plant hired 17,492 workers, while 13,950 left.42 High rates of labor turnover were also typical for other socialist economies. Thanks to full employment, workers in search of better pay, lighter work norms, better work conditions, and so forth, could easily find a job somewhere else.43 In the Soviet Union it took only a year—from 1929 to 1930—to not only eradicate urban unemployment, but to create a severe shortage of labor.44 This created new opportunities for workers. David Filtzer found out that the average Soviet worker changed jobs every eight months in 1930, and turnover rates were more than 100 percent per year in heavy industry.45 While these were extreme rates under the conditions of a chaotic industrialization frenzy, even in more settled times, a high degree of worker movement from job to job remained characteristic for the Soviet and other socialist economies.46 In Bulgaria and Albania as well, labor became scarce once urban unemployment was eradicated by rapid industrialization in the early 1960s and early 1970s, respectively. The restrictions on rural-urban mobility in Albania aggravated the problem. Kremikovci and Elbasan found it difficult to maintain a  constant inflow of recruits, despite the fact that they offered much sought-after urban residence permits. In Kremikovci, wages for workers were even 15 to 18 percent higher than the industrial average in Bulgaria, and workers could earn a  25 percent premium for the “fulfillment of the plan.”47 However, as Michael Palairet claimed, “Sofia residents avoided working there as if it

41

 RDA Sofia, f. 1459, op. 3, a.e. 637.  RDA Sofia, f. 1459, op. 3, a.e. 528, 63; f. 1459, op. 3, a.e. 537, 4. 43  See Mihail Cernea, “Individual Motivation and Labor Turnover under Socialism,” Studies in Comparative International Development 8, no. 3 (1973): 303–23. 44  Filtzer, Soviet Workers and Stalinist Industrialization, 45; Kuromiya, Stalin’s Industrial Revolution, 201–13. 45  Filtzer, Soviet Workers and Stalinist Industrialization, 51–53. 46  Charles F. Sabel and David Stark, “Planning, Politics, and Shop-Floor Power: Hidden Forms of Bargaining in Soviet-Imposed State-Socialist Societies,” Politics and Society 11, no. 4 (1982): 439–76; Katharyne Mitchell, “Work Authority in Industry: The Happy Demise of the Ideal Type,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 34, no. 4 (1992): 679–94. 47  RDA Sofia, f. 1459, op. 2, a.e. 4 and a.e. 14; f. 1459, op. 3, a.e. 528, 74. 42

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 86

2020.05.12. 19:27:47

Finding Workers to Build Socialism

87

were plague-infected.”48 Work in Kremikovci seemed unappealing to many. When the plant was constructed, there was a great lack of housing and other facilities, which caused significant turnover of workers on the construction site.49 Yet also after production had started, the Kremikovci factory was apparently not a  very attractive place. Working conditions were hard, especially in the immediate production of steel and coke. A former worker in Kremikovci, who had also worked in a Bulgarian-constructed steel factory in Libya, praised the conditions in Libya, where air conditioning kept the temperature at 28 degrees Celsius. In Kremikovci, by contrast, “it was like hell. . . . It [work in Libya] was nice that we saw that metallurgy could also be beautiful.”50 Another shortcoming of Kremikovci was the fact that it required a relatively long, and often not very reliable, commute from downtown Sofia to the plant. Initial ideas to build sizeable housing estates around the factory did not materialize. Most workers lived in Sofia, and the factory spent a considerable amount of money on subsidizing their transport. Much like many other industrial enterprises in state socialism, Kremikovci particularly struggled to find skilled workers.51 These were generally in short supply and they were wooed by other enterprises. The factory tried, for example, to recruit workers from the older and politically less favored steel plant in Pernik, against which the management of that firm vigorously, but unsuccessfully protested. This source of labor, however, was by no means sufficient. Even though the Ministerial Council and the Politburo passed special resolutions giving Kremikovci priority status in employment, the management faced difficulties in finding candidates for vacant positions. A 1971 report states that “regardless of the given privileges” the required number of specialists could not be hired. Many of the candidates were not satisfied with the salaries offered, while others declined a job offer because the enterprise could not immediately provide them with housing.52 For the Elbasan factory as well, there are reports that people without a job preferred to wait for other opportunities rather than to take work in the steel factory, and that parents in Elbasan tried to avoid their children becoming employed there.53

48

 Palairet, “‘Lenin’ and ‘Brezhnev,’” 501.  RDA Sofia, f. 3481, op. 1, a.e. 1. 50  Interview with I. L. M., born 1957, who joined Kremikovci in 1979. The interview was conducted in Sofia on April 16, 2012. 51  E.g., RDA Sofia, f. 1459, op. 3, a.e. 528 (for 1972), 62–63. 52  RDA Sofia, f. 3207V, op. 4, a.e. 1, 15–18. 53  AQSh, KQ i PPSh, 14, 1982/83, 12–13. 49

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 87

2020.05.12. 19:27:47

88

Ulf Brunnbauer and Visar Nonaj

The Bulgarian government took various measures to support the recruitment efforts at Kremikovci.54 For example, they commissioned recruitment teams that went to villages to attract new workers. These efforts particularly targeted villages with large Turkish and other minority populations, whose available labor pool was proportionally larger than among the majority population because they had been less affected by the rural exodus so far. This is why Kremikovci employed a significant number of Turkish and Roma workers. In 1974, more than 30 percent of workers in an important production line belonged to an ethnic minority.55 A 1985 State Security report counted almost 1,200 “Bulgarians with restituted names” working in Kremikovci (meaning ethnic Turks, who at that time were subjected to a campaign of forced assimilation which involved the taking of Bulgarian names). The enterprise hired also more than 500 Vietnamese contract workers, after Bulgaria signed an agreement with Vietnam for the recruitment of laborers. In 1973 the government issued Decree No. 4, which stipulated that army recruits would be discharged from service if they signed a work contract for at least five years of uninterrupted work in Kremikovci. In 1974 the Politburo additionally sent 1,500 army recruits into the factory.56 The party organization in the plant was also actively recruiting workers. A  Komsomol report of 1985 said that Komsomol committees in the factory had begun to practice “self-supply.” This meant that “the Komsomol work collective attracts young people because the administrative departments of the Combine do not have the physical capacity to do it.”57 The Elbasan steel plant found it equally hard to recruit enough workers. It was especially difficult to attract, and retain, better-qualified urban workers who were loath to take such a physically demanding job. As such, the majority of newly hired workers had little formal training. There was significant labor turnover as well, not least because unskilled workers left for less strenuous work once they acquired some professional skills in the Elbasan factory.58 The State Planning Commission deplored “uncontrolled fluctuations” that posed a threat to maintaining a sufficient number of qualified workers.59 In 1973, 1,378 workers left the enterprise in only eleven months ( January to November). The planning authorities calculated in the early 1970s that the steel factory required more than 11,000 additional workers 54

 See reports in Tsentralen dŭržaven arhiv [Central State Archive, Sofia, TsDA], f. 136, op. 56, a.e. 354, 2–3; RDA Sofia, f. 1459, op. 3, a.e. 537, 6. 55  RDA Sofia, f. 2336, op. 1, a.e. 31, 19. 56  RDA Sofia, f. 2336, op. 1, a.e. 48, 46–51. 57  RDA Sofia, f. 3207V, op. 10, a.e. 6, 54. 58  AQSh, KQ i PPSh, 14, 1972/18, 42. 59  Ibid., 2.

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 88

2020.05.12. 19:27:47

Finding Workers to Build Socialism

89

in the 1971 to 1976 period, due to the combined effects of constant worker departure and expansion of production.60 Yet by May 1977, approximately 5,000 workers had left since 1975 (also including those employed in the construction of the plant).61 From 1976 to 1982, approximately 70 to 80 percent of the workforce was said to have left the factory.62 So, at least in the steel factory of Elbasan, labor fluctuation rates were on par with levels in Bulgaria. This forces us to rethink the “totalitarian” nature of the Albanian communist regime, which—though its particularly repressive nature cannot be doubted—obviously failed to steer such a salient social process as the recruitment of industrial workers. As a matter of fact, Albania’s attempt to establish a central mechanism for the allocation of workers failed. A  1971 Council of Ministers decree gave the State Planning Commission the exclusive right to fix annual new workforce quotas for each individual enterprise in any district. A firm was allowed to recruit workers from other districts only if there were no workers available in their own district and to hire only the number of workers set by the central planning body. Only the Council of Ministers was authorized to allow modifications. Yet because of poor coordination between the State Planning Committee and the district authorities, as well as the ineffective work of the local authorities, the district authorities were often unable—or unwilling—to comply with requests for workers coming from industrial enterprises. Sometimes districts claimed that they had sent higher numbers of workers to Elbasan than actually entered the factory.63 As a consequence, there was also a chronic labor shortage in the Elbasan steel works, which resulted in the nonfulfillment of the plan and financial losses. In 1974, for example, the factory failed to fulfill the plan because several districts had not sent the required number of workers.64 The factory, as such, depended on its own initiatives. In its efforts, it could count on the support of the local authorities in Elbasan, who displayed a forthcoming attitude toward granting residence permits to workers hired by the steel factory. A successful factory was also in their interests, while the failure to meet plan targets could focus the ire of the central authorities onto them. The management of the factory used various means to find the required number of workers. It also employed conscripts immediately after they had finished military service: in 1975 alone, the manage60

 AQSh, KQ i PPSh, 1972/169, 15.  Metalurgu, May 19, 1977, 2–3. 62  Lekë Sokoli, “Metoda e edukimit ideoestetik të rinisë t’i përshtatet nivelit të saj, dialektikës së zhvillimit të vendit,” Rruga e Partisë 3 (1986): 78. 63  AQSh, KQ i PPSh, 1975/846, 2–24; AQSh, Komisioni i Planit të Shtetit, 1974/8, 1–3. 64  AQSh, f. 495, 1974/8, 3. 61

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 89

2020.05.12. 19:27:47

90

Ulf Brunnbauer and Visar Nonaj

ment hired 700 former soldiers.65 Moreover, the local party organization took efforts to direct workers to the steel plant. In times of particular need for labor, the Elbasan party committee organized “voluntary campaigns,” in which workers from other plants in Elbasan would rush to assist the steel factory. On different occasions the factory newspaper, Metalurgu, cheered the fact that thousands of volunteers participated in various construction works at the factory.66 The efficiency of these campaigns can be doubted: participation was not truly voluntary, so the motivation of the participants is questionable; nor did the participants have the required technical skills. The factory’s management was obviously not too happy with them either. This is why the trade union, which aided these campaigns, complained that the administrative staff of the enterprise did not readily cooperate with the volunteers. The factory even found it difficult to supply the volunteers with sufficient tools and instruments.67 These complaints sound very similar to grievances from enterprises in Bulgaria with respect to the state’s practice of sending students into “physical production.” Each summer, tens of thousands of students would work in factories and on collective farms. Enterprise managements usually considered these untrained recruits a nuisance rather than a benefit.

Composition of the Workforce The continuous inflow of new workers into the factories had significant consequences for the composition of their workforce: on the one hand, over the years a stable core workforce emerged. On the other hand, a significant share of their workers at any given moment were new hirelings who remained in the factory only for a few years (if at all). “Old” workers knew the routines of production and even though they did bend factory rules, they generally seemed to have had an interest in maintaining production and developed a kind of proletarian ethos. In our interviews with workers who had worked in Kremikovci for many years, we found out that they strongly identified with the factory and were proud of the products of their labor.68 New workers, in contrast, often disrupted production and left their workplace without giving notice, which reflected badly on the production figures of

65

 AQSh, Ministria e Industrisë dhe e Minierave, 496, 1975/707, 1–32.  “Kolektivat punonjëse të qytetit në kombinatin metalurgjik,” Metalurgu, September 26, 1974, 4; “Aksionistë të rinj në kombinat,” Matalurgu, February 9, 1978, 2. 67  AQSh, Bashkimet Profesionale, 657, 1976/134, 1–56. 68  For archival evidence, see, e.g., RDA Sofia, f. 2336, op. 1, a.e. 24, 20. 66

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 90

2020.05.12. 19:27:47

Finding Workers to Build Socialism

91

the smallest units of work organization, and thus on the premiums allocated through them to individual workers. One obvious result of permanent recruitment was the fact that large percentages of the two steel plants’ workforces came from villages. According to a  1974 trade union report, more than half of all workers in Kremikovci were of rural origin.69 In the Elbasan factory, around half of the workforce in 1983 hailed from small towns and villages. In interviews taken for our project, former Kremikovci workers remember few coworkers who came from Sofia. It seems that common origins and kinship bonds attracted more villagers—a pattern also known from other processes of industrialization. One author, who had worked in Kremikovci, wrote that “I learnt that in one brigade in the mechanical repair factory, kinsmen and neighbors gathered.”70 The same author also provided a positive angle on rural recruitment: “The people came from villages . . . they entered into the working class, and they turned themselves into benevolent persons.”71 This notion of the transformative power of industrial work on the self is a recurrent motif in the proletarian literature of that time, which described the emergence of socialist subjectivity.72 In an ironic twist, the officially-promoted idea of the cathartic effect of industrial work had an equivalent in real life. Kremikovci offered an opportunity for people with “problematic pasts.” Because of the shortage of labor, the factory management would not be very selective when hiring workers; they accepted convicted criminals and people with questionable political credentials. In the archives of the Bulgarian state security we found an interesting case:73 Stoian H. R., a worker in Kremikovci, was questioned by the secret police in 1963 for reasons that we do not know. This interrogation revealed an interesting life story. After World War II, he had worked on the construction of the socialist town of Dimitrovgrad in the late 1940s. He then fled to Turkey, and in 1951 moved on to Brazil. In 1957, after an amnesty was declared by the Bulgarian government, he returned to Bulgaria. In 1961 he was sentenced to one-and-a-half years of imprisonment for habitual drunkenness. After his release from the notorious labor camp on the Danube island of Belene, he returned to his family in Kazanlŭk and started

69

 RDA Sofia, f. 2336, op. 1, a.e. 6, 44.  Vesela Kitanova, Hiliada i petstotin gradusa na sianka (Sofia: Otečestven front, 1978), 91. 71  Ibid., 88. 72  Cf. Jack R. Friedman, “Furtive Selves: Proletarian Contradictions, Selfpresentation, and the Party in 1950s Romania,” International Labor and Working-Class History, no. 68 (2005): 9–23, accessed August 11, 2015, doi: 10.1017/S0147547905000177. 73  KOMDOS [Committee of Dossiers, Archive of State Security, Sofia] f. VІ, a.e. 342, part ІІ: Agenturno-operativni materiali, 21. 70

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 91

2020.05.12. 19:27:47

92

Ulf Brunnbauer and Visar Nonaj

to work in the town of Gabrovo. After that he took a job in Kremikovci. While this most certainly is an idiosyncratic case, it can be taken as an indicator of the fact that the shortage of labor offered a chance of work to people whose past put them at severe risk of social exclusion. One consequence was that the state security established a dense network of agents and informants in the steel factory to report on what they considered expressions of political disloyalty. In Albania as well, the combination of a  rigid state-administered recruitment system and growing demand for industrial labor created cracks in an otherwise repressive hierarchy of citizenship rights. Here, the rural districts could manipulate the compulsory transfer of workers for their own ends. They tried to use these quotas to dump people they deemed problematic into towns. In 1975 the Minister of Construction reprimanded several districts because some 200 workers and presumed specialists, whom they had sent, were either not qualified at all or displayed “bad moral-political attitudes.” The minister demanded they be replaced by diligent and politically reliable workers.74 In regular campaigns for “volunteers” for the Elbasan plant, districts decided to send physically or mentally ill as well as “untrustworthy” people.75 This was an elegant way in which agricultural cooperatives could improve the political profile of their members by sending away those whom the party-state considered disloyal and actually wanted to keep out of the cities. Districts also used delegation quotas to send their unemployed and idle citizens to other places. There is evidence that the Elbasan factory employed people from “problematic” families as well, even though the family biography was an important measurement of political loyalty in communist Albania.76 The Elbasan steel factory obviously could not be too selective. For the management, the implications of dubious political pasts of new workers were of less concern than the economic effects of their rural origins. Most new workers neither had experience in industry nor relevant training. As such, the company files are filled with management complaints about the lack of pertinent skills. A human resources report from Kremikovci in 1983, for example, complained that “the percentage of workers without secondary education is high. Out of 17,701 blue-collar and white-collar workers under the age of forty, 5,846 do not have a secondary degree. This is caused, on the one hand, by the departure of personnel with higher or secondary educa74

 AQSh, KQ i PPSh, 14, 1975/846, 8.  AQSh, Bashkimet Profesionale, 657, 1976/134, 1–56. 76  On the consequences of origins from a “bad family,” see Georgia Kretsi, Politische Verfolgung und Gedächtnis im (post)sozialistischen Albanien am Beispiel der südlichen Grenzregion (Berlin: Harrassowitz, 2004). 75

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 92

2020.05.12. 19:27:47

Finding Workers to Build Socialism

93

tion, and on the other hand by the fact that among the newly hired workers, those with primary education alone are the largest group.”77 Training was usually done on the job. In both enterprises, the factory managements and trade union organizations established what seem to be quite comprehensive schemes of on-site job training, yet the results were unsatisfactory. A 1984 report from Kremikovci lamented the fact that “despite the existence of a well-established system [of training] we meet serious resistance against it.” The report blames “leaders” at different levels of decision-making in the firm for not recognizing the need to improve skills.78 A  joint party and trade union report about the human resources department of Kremikovci deplored that “we have still not overcome the old ways: hiring someone first, and only then thinking about his job training.”79 Similarly, in Elbasan, training activities were often not well attended. Workers preferred to work overtime, rather than go to evening or weekend classes.80 The courses also did not provide sufficient financial incentives to prompt all new workers to raise their skills. Workforce fluctuation further impeded the efficiency of qualification measures: new workers constantly had to be trained, and since many of them planned to stay for only a short while, they often saw little purpose in attending a training program. One of the consequences, attributed by economists to the rural origins of many workers, was a lack of discipline. The problem of the adaptation of workers from villages to the industrial production process was discussed prominently by contemporary sociologists in state-socialist countries, in particular those with a significant number of peasant-workers, such as Poland, Yugoslavia, and Romania.81 From this research, as well as from comparative research on a variety of countries, a differentiated picture emerges. It seems that the concrete organization of production was crucial for the question of whether workers from rural and urban backgrounds differed in their attitudes towards factory work. For example, William Form, in his analysis of automobile industry workers in Argentina, India, Italy, and the United States, found “relatively few strong differences within countries between the accommodation patterns of workers reared in rural milieus and those of workers reared in urban milieus.”82 Research on early Soviet (and 77

 RDA Sofia, f. 1459, op. 5, a.e. 195, 3–4.  Ibid., 10. 79  Ibid., 32. 80  AQSh, KQ i PPSh, 14, 1982/114, 1–32. 81  Cf. Walter C. Bisselle, “Peasant-Workers in Poland,” Studies in European Society 1 (1973): 79–90; William G. Lockwood, “The Peasant-Worker in Yugoslavia,” Studies in European Society  1 (1973): 91–110; Alexander Metejko, “From Peasant into Worker in Poland,” East Europe 21, no. 6 (1972): 7–14. 82  Form, “The Accommodation of Rural and Urban Workers,” 504. 78

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 93

2020.05.12. 19:27:47

94

Ulf Brunnbauer and Visar Nonaj

late czarist Russian) industry, in contrast, has found notable differences in work behavior between workers from working class families and those coming from the countryside.83 This was also caused by the peasant-workers’ frequent habit of returning home for the harvest during the summer. The Bulgarian authorities, at least, were adamant in their opinion that workers from the villages were the worst offenders with regard to labor discipline, manifest in a high degree of absenteeism, drinking on the job, and arriving late, as well as leaving early. Among the least disciplined workers, those with a minority background were singled out, especially Turks and Roma. The question, then, is whether the occurrence of violations of labor discipline should be explained mainly by referring to ingrained rural habits, or rather to the particularities of the organization of production in the factory. In view of the aforementioned research we gravitate toward the second position. Socialist factory organization made the continuity of certain prefactory practices possible. These were amalgamated to become something new in the factory. Factory organization in Kremikovci and Elbasan was not conducive to transforming rural recruits quickly into efficient laborers. Production was inefficient, machines often broke down and the supply of materials was irregular. All this gave workers more room for deciding how to control their work time than in a capitalist factory. In Bulgaria, the organization of labor facilitated the persistence of traditional community bonds. The main reason for this was the so-called brigade system of production. Since the 1970s, brigades served as the core units of production, numbering on average between fifteen and twenty workers. By 1980, approximately 82 percent of the workforce of Kremikovci worked in brigades.84 These brigades were relatively autonomous in terms of the responsibility vested in them, and they worked on their own account. The government had hoped this system would increase productivity, by linking earnings to output and by decentralizing decision-making. Eventually, the brigades turned into relatively self-contained units, often consisting of people who shared other bonds (such as kinship and provenance). Brigades took very literally the ideological catchword of “self-administration,” thereby appropriating official policies for their own ends. The brigade leaders acted as middlemen between workers and managers and, as abundant archival evidence makes clear, tried to shield their brigades from impositions from above, defending their workers’ interests. Brigades, for example, regularly distributed premiums among members in an equal way, although

 Chase, Workers, Society, and the Soviet State; Filtzer, Soviet Workers and Stalinist Industrialization; Haumann, “Ich habe gedacht, dass die Arbeiter in den Städten besser leben.” 84  “Otčet za rabota na KPK,” RDA, f. 3207, op. 8, a.e. 1, 168. 83

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 94

2020.05.12. 19:27:47

Finding Workers to Build Socialism

95

these were thought to inspire individual overachievement. Alternatively, brigade leaders suggested one member after another, regardless of performance, for such rewards. In the factory newspaper Kremikovski Metalurg, an engineer complained that “It is nice that the brigades aspire towards selfmanagement—to decide, to distribute, and to plan on their own. Yet it is no secret that there were cases when the brigade did not agree to dismiss even people with seven disciplinary warnings.”85 However, the factory management depended on brigade leaders, who played an essential role for maintaining production and overcoming problems on the shop floor. They also socialized newcomers into the factory environment and helped to recruit new workers (much like various forms of foremen in other examples of early industrialization).86 Frequent violations of labor discipline should neither be seen primarily as a remnant of rural habits, nor as a result of “petty-bourgeois attitudes” (as ideologists fretted), but as the systemic result of deficient production processes and the bargaining power of workers. Since workers could credibly threaten to leave, the factory management was lenient to take strong measures against violators of labor discipline.87 The management preferred to hoard labor, even unreliable workers, in order to alleviate workforce shortages at times of peak production. Given the difficulty in finding adequate replacements, it was a rational strategy of the management to accept a certain degree of violations of labor discipline in order not to offend workers with a heavy-handed approach. The same logic was evident in Stalin’s Soviet Union, even though severe punishments were prescribed against absenteeism and undisciplined behavior.88 The example of Kremikovci shows that the management’s room for sanctions against workers who regularly arrived late, left early, worked badly, got drunk during work, malingered, took overly long breaks, etc., was limited also by interventions from the trade union and party organizations in the factory. The government lamented that trade union officials “took the incorrect position with respect to the punishment of undisciplined workers,” rather than vigorously fighting slack discipline.89 This meant that dismissed workers stood a good chance of being reinstated if they complained to the party or trade union

 “Samoupravlenie i brigade,” Kremikovski metalurg, February 12, 1988, 9.  Morris, “The Recruitment of an Industrial Labor Force in India,” 325. 87  RDA Sofia, f. 2336, op. 1, a.e. 31, 19–20. The company newspaper, Kremikovski metalurg, also regularly complained that factory managers turned a blind eye to workers’ violations of labor discipline. See, for instance, “Trudova disciplina,” Kremikovski metalurg, no. 2151, March 1, 1985, 7. 88  Filtzer, Soviet Workers and Stalinist Industrialization, 64. 89  RDA Sofia, f. 2336, op. 1, a.e. 23, 74. 85 86

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 95

2020.05.12. 19:27:47

96

Ulf Brunnbauer and Visar Nonaj

committee in the factory, because both were loath to be seen as betraying workers’ interests. In the Albanian context, workers enjoyed less leeway and bargaining opportunity than in Bulgaria, not least because of the comparatively more stringent enforcement of mobility restrictions. However, frequent articles about a lack of discipline and other forms of “wrong” behavior in Elbasan’s local newspaper, Shkumbini, show that factory life was not devoid of such phenomena. The newspaper regularly published pieces by “voluntary” correspondents who deplored problems in the factory, such as the fact that workers often appeared late at their workplace. High levels of sick leave also attracted critique and suspicion by the newspaper. A major difference between Bulgaria and Albania, evincing the more repressive nature of Albanian communism, was the ideological framing of violations of labor discipline. They were regularly described as constituting imperialist subversion and as treason against the heroic fatherland, whereas in Bulgaria, the partystate, though constantly deploring the lack of efficiency, did not exploit workers’ violations of the factory code for ideological reasons. In Albania, such a political framing must have had a limiting effect on the readiness of management to turn a blind eye to these violations. Nevertheless, brigade and factory leaders often tolerated unexcused absences of workers, especially those who overstayed their holidays, for similar reasons to those in the Bulgarian case.90 The exact dynamics and spaces of these negotiation processes in the Albanian context are yet to be explored.

Conclusion The two flagship enterprises in Kremikovci and Elbasan were important production sites not only of steel but also of a new society. This new society was envisioned by the communists to be populated by New Men: hardworking, disciplined, class-conscious proletarians. It is evident—and neither a new nor a surprising revelation—that the social reality was different from the utopian blueprint, even in showpiece sites of social engineering like the two steel plants. The factories recruited workers from different geographic as well as social sources, and as these contexts changed, recruitment brought new kinds of workers into the factory, which rendered the making of a socialist working class a long-term, volatile process—and one whose end came surprisingly quickly with the collapse of communist rule. This is not unusual: in nineteenth-century capitalist contexts, it had sometimes taken de90

 AQSh, Bashkimet Profesionale, 657, 1974/17, 12; 1977/206, 83.

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 96

2020.05.12. 19:27:47

Finding Workers to Build Socialism

97

cades to turn former farmers into industrial workers in a social, cultural, and political sense, and not merely an economic one.91 Violations of factory discipline, often as a means of protest by the powerless, had also been an inherent element of proletarianization in the West, but nonetheless an industrial society with respective work attitudes emerged. In state socialism as well, large factories were important sites of socialization into industrial society and into wage labor, but workers often adapted on their own terms. This created a heterogeneous factory community whose membership was volatile, as many workers came and went, while others became long-standing members. The very organization of production, based on small units (brigades), made it possible for new recruits to merge into workplace-centered primary groups which had developed their own self-interest (Eigen-Sinn) and learned how to assert it. Therefore, workers enjoyed some power on the shop floor, despite the absence of genuine workers’ organizations. Analysis of the recruitment process sheds light on the reasons for the relatively high bargaining power of workers in the state-socialist factory. This was expressed also by Stephen Kotkin in his study on Magnitogorsk: “The state policy of full employment further reinforced workers’ leverage. Workers discovered that in the absence of unemployment or a ‘reserve army,’ managers and especially foremen under severe pressure to meet obligations could become accommodating. What resulted could be called a  kind of equal but nonetheless real codependency.”92 Recruitment practices reflected these relations, and contributed to them, because the aggregate demand emerging from permanent hiring by many enterprises created a  shortage of labor, which in turn translated into workers’ bargaining power. These relations were compounded by the existence of self-contradictory political goals, such as the attempts of the Bulgarian and Albanian regimes to strictly control domestic mobility. With that, they—at least theoretically—reduced the supply of labor and thereby strengthened those offering this commodity on the market. The managements of factories such as Kremikovci and Elbasan were constantly required to develop creative solutions and to engage in informal practices in order to acquire the necessary inputs for production, inter alia, labor. Such difficulties and paradoxes opened up the space for agency by “ordinary” people who, for example, recognized that they could circumvent restrictions on domestic mobility if they agreed to take a job in one of the two steel factories. Established workers had the chance to improve their situation by moving to firms that offered higher salaries, 91

 Cf. Berlanstein, “The Formation of a Factory Labor Force,” 63.  Kotkin, Magnetic Mountain, 224.

92

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 97

2020.05.12. 19:27:48

98

Ulf Brunnbauer and Visar Nonaj

more benefits, and better working conditions because industrial enterprises desperately tried to fill vacancies or add surplus labor. The difficulties in recruiting workers prevented a  tougher factory regime: on the one hand, strict enforcement of labor discipline would have alienated workers and pushed them to look for a job somewhere else. Experienced workers also developed routines for how to maintain as much control as possible over their own work time and, thus, the production process. On the other hand, the constant recruitment of new workers from the countryside resulted in low average skill levels. These factors constitute one reason for frequent disruptions of production and posed structural limits to efforts at increasing efficiency. Hence, the specific recruitment practices in Bulgaria and Albania contributed to the very conditions which allowed industrial workers to gain a relatively high level of agency. The difficulties in finding new workers also stimulated factories to provide various benefits to workers. Recruitment and a sort of mundane, real-life workers’ socialism went hand in hand. Full employment paid off—for the workers. Recruitment also created the peculiarly socialist form of industrial society in another way: it was at the heart of geographic and social mobility which merged people from different backgrounds into new social milieus. This is not a  unique phenomenon at all but resembles industrialization processes in other countries at different periods and under various political systems. Apart from its speed, especially in the Bulgarian case, what really stands out is the situation after recruitment: state-socialist institutions provided a  different pathway to industrial socialization, which is why socialist factory life looked so different to its capitalist equivalent. The political economy and institutional setup of a society, therefore, are of great significance to the course of proletarianization.

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 98

2020.05.12. 19:27:48

“Inappropriate Behavior”: Labor Control and the Polish, Cuban, and Vietnamese Workers in Czechoslovakia Alena K. Alamgir

O

ne of the legacies of the Cold War is the conceptualization of the statesocialist era as a time of immobility characterized by “isolation and the reduction of cross-border contact to a minimum,” since “movement across state borders was very carefully controlled.”1 This portrayal ignores a robust and “oft-overlooked circulation of people, goods, knowledge, and capital”2 that existed between the state-socialist states, circulations that Christina Schwenkel calls “socialist mobilities.” Drawing on archival documents, Jerzy Kochanowski3 reports that, in the mid-1970s, some 25 percent of Poles travelled outside the country.4 In fact, he continues, when cross-border travel reached a  mass scale, it was not unusual for 2,000 people to board a train bound for Budapest, several times more than the regulations permitted, which “rendered any effective control impossible.”5

1

 David Turnock, “Cross-Border Cooperation: A Major Element in Regional Policy in East Central Europe,” Scottish Geographical Journal 118, no. 1 (2002): 20, 19. 2  Christina Schwenkel, “Rethinking Asian Mobilities: Socialist Migration and Post-Socialist Repatriation of Vietnamese Contract Workers in East Germany,” Critical Asian Studies 46, no. 2 (2014): 236. 3  Jerzy Kochanowski, “Pioneers of the Free Market Economy? Unofficial Commercial Exchange between People from the Socialist Bloc Countries (1970s and 1980s),” Journal of Modern European History 8, no. 2 (2010): 196. 4  We must take into account the pitfalls of cross-time comparisons, as well as the radical differences in country sizes and their geographical locations. However, given the vehemence of the claim that state-socialist governments immobilized their citizens, it is nonetheless instructive to note the fact that, in 2014, only about 21 percent of US citizens, or 68,303,358 people, traveled abroad, and in 2000, the number was only 35,717,731, not even 13 percent of the (then) population of the United States. See US Office of Travel and Tourism, http://travel.trade.gov/view/m-2014-O-001/index.html and http://travel. trade.gov/view/m-2000-O-001/index.html, accessed July 29, 2015. 5  Kochanowski, “Pioneers of the Free Market Economy,” 198.

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 99

2020.05.12. 19:27:48

100

Alena K. Alamgir

In addition to tourism, which often included not just shopping but also informal trading,6 there was another robust form of cross-border travel: namely, that for educational and employment purposes. Far from being immobile, the socialist world was, as Susan Bayly put it, “crosscut and interconnected by agreements under which scientific and technical specialists in their thousands were continually on the move to distant places.”7 And so were tens of thousands of blue-collar workers, whose travel took two basic forms. The first consisted of the daily or weekly cross-border commute for jobs. This form of employment abroad was primarily the result of initiatives taken by companies on one side of the border, and workers on the other side. The states were involved in it by regulating the basic conditions of employment, such as the issues of welfare provisions and benefits.8 An example of this type of cross-border employment was, for instance, the employment of some 600 Hungarian citizens in Slovak companies located near the Czechoslovak-Hungarian border in 1974.9 The second form of employment abroad consisted of labor exchanges that were sponsored and organized by the states (although in the late 1980s, companies started playing a greater role in these as well). We can distinguish between two types of such labor exchanges: (1) mutual exchanges between European state-socialist countries, and (2) exchanges between these countries and non-European socialist, or socialist-leaning, countries.

6

 On tourism combined with shopping and various forms of informal trading, see, e.g., Alenka Švab, “Consuming Western Image of Well-Being: Shopping Tourism in Socialist Slovenia,” Cultural Studies 16, no. 1 (2002): 63–79; Ferenc Hammer, “A Gasoline Scented Sinbad: The Truck Driver as a Popular Hero in Socialist Hungary,” Cultural Studies 16, no. 1 (2002): 80–120; Michelle Standley, “‘Here Beats the Heart of the Young Socialist State’: 1970s East Berlin as Socialist Bloc Tourist Destination,” The Journal of Architecture 18, no. 5 (2013): 683–98; or Anne E. Gorsuch, All This is Your World: Soviet Tourism at Home and Abroad after Stalin (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011). 7  Susan Bayly, “Vietnamese Intellectuals in Revolutionary and Postcolonial Times,” Critique of Anthropology 24, no. 3 (2004): 336. 8  Czechoslovakia and Poland signed such an agreement with regard to welfare provisions for Polish cross-border workers in 1948. See Ondřej Klípa, “Polští pracovníci v ČSSR: nevítaná družba. Specifika dočasné zahraniční pracovní migrace v  socialistickém systému” (Ph.D. dissertation, Charles University, Prague, 2013), 23. 9  Národní archiv (hereafter NA), Prague, “Zpráva o současné problematice při zaměstnávání zahraničních pracovníků v ČSSR a návrh zásad dalšího postupu,” material presented at the meeting of the presidium of the government of the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic on October 11, 1974 (I hereby thank Dr. Ondřej Klípa for making the document available to me).

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 100

2020.05.12. 19:27:48

“Inappropriate Behavior”

101

State-Socialist Labor Migrations Intra-European state-socialist labor migration often grew out of cross-border employment. Thus, in the early post–World War II years, Polish citizens started appearing in Czechoslovakia as individual commuters. By 1961, some 4,000 Polish citizens worked in Czechoslovakia as a result of an agreement signed between the regional governments (the districts of Eastern and Northern Bohemia on the Czechoslovak side, and the Wrocław voivodeship [county] on the Polish side).10 In 1964, a  government-level Protocol and Agreement were signed, and some six years later, the number of Polish workers in Czechoslovakia climbed to 15,000. The program peaked in 1974, when almost 21,000 Polish citizens were permanently employed by Czechoslovak enterprises;11 furthermore, some 45,000 Polish youth traveled to Czechoslovakia annually for seasonal agricultural work.12 Czechoslovakia was also a destination for Bulgarian workers. First, in 1946, agricultural workers arrived, and, after the signing of an intergovernmental treaty in 1957, industrial workers started arriving as well.13 The German Democratic Republic (GDR) was also a significant destination for intra-bloc labor migration, employing, in the late 1970s, between 60,000 and 70,000 Poles, Hungarians, Bulgarians, and Yugoslavs.14 The third largest destination for intra-bloc labor migration was the Soviet Union.15 The other type of labor mobility that existed among the state-socialist countries involved workers from socialist or socialist-leaning countries outside Europe coming to Europe for training and work. The main destination countries were the Soviet Union, the GDR, Czechoslovakia, and Bulgaria, and to a  lesser extent later on also Hungary and Poland. In the case of Czechoslovakia, the vast majority of overseas foreign workers came from Vietnam and Cuba. Based on various partial statistics compiled from archival documents of the Czechoslovak Labor Ministries, I estimate the total number of Vietnamese workers employed in Czechoslovakia between 1967 and 1989 at about 60,000. Additionally, some 23,160 Cubans worked in Czecho10

 Petra Boušková, “Pracovní migrace cizinců v  České republice v  70. až 90. letech,” in Národní diskuse u kulatého stolu na téma vztahu mezi komunitami 19. února 1998, sborník dokumentů (Prague: MPSV, 2005), 34. 11  Ibid., 34, 35. 12  Ibid., 35. 13  Klípa, “Polští pracovníci v ČSSR,” 74. 14  Friedrich Levcik and Sue Halsey Westphal, “Migration and Employment of Foreign Workers in COMECON Countries and Their Problems,” Eastern European Economics 16, no. 1 (1977): 13. 15  Ibid., 14.

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 101

2020.05.12. 19:27:48

102

Alena K. Alamgir

slovakia between 1978 (when the first worker-exchange treaty with Cuba was signed) and 1989.16 The GDR’s overseas foreign worker schemes were more extensive: “In 1988 alone more than 78,000 [workers] from Vietnam, Mozambique, Angola, and Cuba” were employed in GDR enterprises.17 One factor that significantly shaped the overseas labor migration schemes was the fact that at the time, many of the non-European sending countries had only just embarked on wide-scale industrialization projects and/or had their economies in ruins as a consequence of anti-colonial or other wars. As a result, labor migrations took place within the context of comprehensive development aid, or “socialist economic assistance,” provided to these countries by the state-socialist European countries and the Soviet Union. In the overseas workers’ training and labor programs, commitments to socialist modernization and economic development converged: since (socialist) modernity, which was ideologically desirable, could not happen without economic progress, these programs were conceived of as projects that were simultaneously useful in a  pragmatic sense and imperative in an ethical sense. These programs, then, were not conceived of as “mere” labor migration schemes, but incorporated elements of professional training as well. In some cases—those in which training was to take place exclusively on-the-job, not in educational settings—the training component may have sometimes fallen by the wayside (in the Czechoslovak case, this happened to the Cubans). In other cases—prominently in the case of Vietnamese migration, not just to Czechoslovakia but also to the GDR, Bulgaria, and the Soviet Union—the “training leading to productive overseas labor” model became well developed and was quite successful, at least through the end of the 1970s, as I have described and argued elsewhere.18 Scholarly literature on these blue-collar labor migrants working in statesocialist European countries remains rather modest, perhaps with the exception of Mozambican and Vietnamese laborers in the GDR.19 This literature 16

 Boušková, “Pracovní migrace cizinců v České republice,” 36.  Jude Howell, “The End of an Era: The Rise and Fall of GDR Aid,” The Journal of Modern African Studies 32, no. 2 (1994): 310. 18  Alena Alamgir, “Socialist Internationalism at Work: Changes in the Czechoslovak-Vietnamese Labor Exchange Program, 1967–1989” (Ph.D. dissertation, Rutgers University, 2014). 19  Jochen Oppenheimer, “Mozambican Worker Migration to the Former German Democratic Republic: Serving Socialism and Struggling Under Democracy,” Portuguese Studies Review 12, no. 1 (2004): 163–87; Jonathan R. Zatlin, “Scarcity and Resentment: Economic Sources of Xenophobia in the GDR, 1971–1989,” Central European History 40 (2007): 683–720; Damian Mac Con Uladh, Guests of the Socialist Nation?: Foreign Students and Workers in the GDR, 1949–1990 (Ph.D. dissertation, University College London, 2005); Mike Dennis, “Working under Hammer and Sickle: Vietnamese Workers in the German Democratic Republic, 1980–89,” German Politics 16, no. 3 (2007): 339–57; 17

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 102

2020.05.12. 19:27:48

“Inappropriate Behavior”

103

tends to portray the schemes as primarily expedient propaganda tools, while the workers are typically seen as victims of exploitation and oppression perpetuated by both the home and the receiving states. The programs were, no doubt, embedded within a larger framework of European state-socialist governments’ Cold War geopolitical concerns and foreign relations.20 It is also undeniable that migrant workers, especially in the 1980s, were often shortchanged in terms of both wages and the professional development they had been promised. However, as I show elsewhere, the assertions of blanket exploitation are incorrect.21 In this chapter, I discuss a matter that has thus far been absent from existing literature: the issue of foreign workers’ resistance and protests against working conditions they found unfair. If migrant bluecollar workers in state-socialist societies were mistreated, or even exploited, they also challenged and resisted this mistreatment, often effectively. Besides correcting the historical record, this issue is also of theoretical interest. In their astute sociological analysis of the state-socialist workplace, Burawoy and Lukacs22 only discuss the so-called “key workers” as capable of resisting “managerial dictatorship.” Key workers were those who possessed special skills and firm-specific experience making them indispensable to the foremen for meeting the production goals. Consequently, “management [was] forced to rely on such workers, who [were] then able to extract concessions in defense of their interests.”23 However, the state-socialist migrant workers, especially the non-European ones, were rarely if ever key workers. If anything, they were in fact marginalized in ways that were strikingly similar to the way women, for instance, were marginalized in state-socialist facFelicitas Hillmann, “Riders on the Storm: Vietnamese in Germany’s Two Migration Systems,” in Asian Migrants and European Labour Markets: Patterns and Processes of Immigrant Labour Market Insertion in Europe, ed. Ernst Spaan, Felicitas Hillmann, and Ton van Naerssen (London, Routledge, 2005); Pipo Bui, Envisioning Vietnamese Migrants in Germany: Ethnic Stigma, Immigrant Origin Narratives and Partial Masking (Piscataway, NJ: Transaction Publishers, Rutgers University, 2003); Jude Howell, “The End of an Era: The Rise and Fall of GDR Aid,” The Journal of Modern African Studies 32, no. 2 (1994): 306. 20  Michael Radu, “East vs. South: The Neglected Side of the International System,” in Eastern Europe and the Third World, ed. Michael Radu (New York: Praeger, 1981); Bartłomiej Kamiński and Robert W. Janes, “Economic Rationale for Eastern Europe’s Third World Policy,” Problems of Communism 37 (1988): 15–27; Marie Lavigne, “East-South Trade: Trends, Partners, Commodity Composition, Balances,” in East-South Relations in the World Economy, ed. Marie Lavigne (London: Westview Press, 1988). 21  Alamgir, “Socialist Internationalism at Work.” 22  Michael Burawoy and János Lukacs, “Mythologies of Work: A Comparison of Firms in State Socialism and Advanced Capitalism,” American Sociological Review 50, no. 6 (1985): 723–37; and Michael Burawoy and János Lukacs, The Radiant Past: Ideology and Reality in Hungary’s Road to Capitalism (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1992). 23  Burawoy and Lukacs, “Mythologies of Work,” 733.

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 103

2020.05.12. 19:27:48

104

Alena K. Alamgir

tories.24 Yet, as I will show in this chapter, these migrant workers also protested against their working conditions and wages and challenged the management of the enterprises they worked for. Thus, the analysis of foreign workers’ protests can reveal other avenues for pushing for workers’ interests and rights within the state-socialist context.25

Polish Workers in Czechoslovakia In Czechoslovakia, the Polish constituted the biggest group of foreign workers until the 1980s. Figure 4.1, taken from Ondřej Klípa, is telling: 50,000 40,000 30,000 20,000 10,000 0 1970

1972

1974 Polish

1976

1978

1980

1982

1989

Total

Figure 4.1: Polish and foreign workers in Czechoslovakia, 1970–1989 Source: Ondřej Klípa, “Polští pracovníci v ČSSR: nevítaná družba; Specifika dočasné zahraniční pracovní migrace v socialistickém systému” (Ph.D. dissertation, Faculty of Social Sciences, Charles University, Prague, 2013), 108.

24

 See Joanna Goven, “The Gendered Foundations of Hungarian Socialism: State, Society, and the Anti-Politics of Anti-Feminism, 1948–1990” (Ph.D. dissertation, UC Berkeley, 1993), 254. 25  On working class resistance in state socialism, see, e.g., Peter Heumos, “State Socialism, Egalitarianism, Collectivism: On the Social Context of Socialist Work Movements in Czechoslovak Industrial and Mining Enterprises, 1945–1965,” International Labor and Working-Class History 68 (2005): 47–74; Kevin McDermott, “Popular Resistance in Communist Czechoslovakia: The Plzeň Uprising, June 1953,” Contemporary European History 19, no. 4 (2010): 287–307; Johann Smula, “The Party and the Proletariat: Škoda 1948–53,” Cold War History 6, no. 2 (2006): 153–75; Mark Pittaway, “The Reproduction of Hierarchy: Skill, Working-Class Culture, and the State in Early Socialist Hungary,” The Journal of Modern History 74, no. 4 (2002): 737–69; Jeffrey Kopstein, “Chipping Away at the State: Workers’ Resistance and the Demise of East Germany,” World Politics 48, no. 3 (1996): 391–423; Robert K. Evanson, “Regime and Working Class in Czechoslovakia, 1948–1968,” Soviet Studies 37, no. 2 (1985): 248–68.

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 104

2020.05.12. 19:27:48

105

“Inappropriate Behavior”

The line with squares represents all foreign workers in the Czechoslovak economy, while the line with diamonds represents Polish workers. Throughout the 1970s, the lines barely diverge from each other; sometimes, especially early on, they actually overlap. In other words, until about 1980, the two categories were almost identical: to have been a foreign worker in Czechoslovakia for a long time almost certainly meant to be a Pole. In the 1980s, the two lines depart sharply from each other, as the Poles were being replaced by other foreign workers. Based on my archival sources,26 it is clear that these other workers were almost entirely Vietnamese and, to a significantly lesser extent, Cubans (see Table 4.1). Table 4.1: Vietnamese and Cuban workers in Czechoslovakia, 1980–1989 Year

Number of Vietnamese workers

Number of Cuban workers

1980

3,529

4,726

1981

11,543

3,972

1982

21,314

4,241

1983

22,446

3,737

1984

*

5,352

1985

15,300

*

1986

11,400**

*

1987

18,900

10,600

1988

28,955

8,031

1989

35,609

*

* missing data ** expected numbers (actual numbers unknown)

26

 Data compiled from various reports prepared by the Czech (i.e., republic-level, not the federal Czechoslovak) Labor Ministry, usually titled “Přehled o počtech zahraničních pracovníků k  31. prosinci [rok] podle resortů a  jednotlivých zahraničních partnerů” [Summary of numbers of foreign workers as of December 31, according to (industrial) departments and individual foreign partners], with the exception of data for years 1985 and 1986, which come from “Návrh do VSR: Prováděcí protokol o spolupráci mezi Československou socialistickou republikou a  Vietnamskou socialistickou republikou v oblasti dočasného zaměstnávání kvalifikovaných pracovníků Vietnamské socialistické republiky spojeného s další odbornou přípravou v československých organizacích v roce 1987” [Proposal for the VSR: Implementation protocol on (sic) the cooperation between the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic and the Socialist Republic of Vietnam in the area of temporary employment and further technical training of skilled workers from the Socialist Republic of Vietnam], undated draft.

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 105

2020.05.12. 19:27:48

106

Alena K. Alamgir

The operation of the logic of substitution is apparent from the numbers: for instance, between 1985 and 1986, when the number of Polish workers in companies managed by the Industry Ministry was expected to decrease from 3,663 to 2,845, the number of Cuban workers was expected to rise from 3,619 to 4,033.27 By the very late 1980s, this logic was clearly the guiding principle of foreign workers’ employment in Czechoslovakia. As a matter of fact, a report on the current situation and expected developments regarding training and employment of foreign workers explicitly used the language of replacement when it stated that the Vietnamese state “puts practically no limits on the numbers of its citizens who could work in the ČSSR [Czechoslovak Socialist Republic].” The two sides agreed that 15,000 Vietnamese workers would arrive in 1988, with the expectation that “in future years new Vietnamese workers would replace the departing Cuban and Polish workers.”28 While Polish workers played an important role in the Czechoslovak economy overall, their presence and labor was particularly crucial to certain industries, such as the textile industry. In 1974, for instance, Polish workers comprised 10.4 percent of all workforce in the cotton industry and 7.4 percent in the flax industry. Even these numbers, however, do not capture their importance adequately because, in addition, individual plants had units—and, as a  ministerial memo put it, “quite a few of them” (nejsou výjimkou)—in which Polish workers constituted more than 40 percent of the factory’s overall workforce.29 It is then fair to say that, in such cases, the fortunes of the companies heavily depended on the Polish workers they were employing. Yet, as a whole, Polish workers seemed not to have been an easy workforce to manage. For one thing, they had stunningly high turnover levels. In 1976, for example, some 32,000 Polish workers joined Czechoslovak enterprises, while “roughly the same number of Polish workers left” the country.30 Table 4.2, originally compiled by the Czechoslovak Federal Labor

27

 NA, Table “Ministerstvo průmyslu ČSR: Předpokládaný stav zahraničních pracovníků v letech 1985 a 1986 podle národností a VHJ (fyzické stavy dle uzavřených, resp. připravených protokolů).” 28  NA, “Zpráva o současném stavu odborné přípravy a  dočasného zaměstnávání zahraničních občanů v československých organizacích a o výhledu této spolupráce do roku 1990,” emphasis mine. 29  NA via Klípa, “Zpráva o současné problematice při zaměstnávání zahraničních pracovníků v ČSSR a návrh zásad dalšího postupu,” report presented by the minister of labor and social affairs of the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic, Michal Štancel, to the presidium of the Government of the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic, on October 11, 1974. 30  Ibid.

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 106

2020.05.12. 19:27:48

107

“Inappropriate Behavior”

Ministry, details the reasons for departures of Polish workers from companies under the purview of three different ministries.31 Table 4.2: Reasons for departures of Polish workers from companies under the purview of three different Czechoslovak ministries, April 1973–January 1974 Reason for departure

Industry Ministry of the Czech Socialist Republic

Federal Ministry of Metallurgy and Heavy Engineering

Federal Ministry of General Engineering

Apr 1973

Jan 1974

Apr 1973

Jan 1974

Apr 1973

Jan 1974

End of contract

6.5%

5%

Not available

20.9%

15.3%

12.3%

Health and family reasons

31.7%

30.1%

Not available

28.9%

17.3%

19.5%

Request of Polish authorities

1%

1%

Not available

3.5%

7.6%

4.4%

Absenteeism

14.3%

12%

Not available

3.9%

24.5%

24.2%

Gratuitous desertion (svévolný odchod)

17.8%

20.4%

Not available

15.2%

9.7%

8.8%

Other reasons

28.7%

31.5%

Not available

27.6%

25.5%

30.8%

If we combine the “absenteeism” and “gratuitous desertion” cells, we arrive at the figures of 19–34 percent of Polish workers employed in the three industrial areas in 1973–1974 who refused to submit to the will of their Czechoslovak employers. And, concomitantly, less than 21 percent in the best case, and a mere 5 percent in the worst case, of the Polish workers in these industries fulfilled their original contractual obligations. Moreover, this fluctuation was happening in the context of plans, agreed upon by the governments of both countries, according to which the number of Polish workers in Czechoslovakia was supposed to gradually increase, with the goal of reaching 50,000.32 This goal never materialized, however, and the highest number of Polish workers employed in Czechoslovakia was less than half of that—20,825—in 1974.33 31

 Ibid.  NA via Klípa, “Zpráva o zaměstnávání zahraničních pracovníků v ČSSR,”  document prepared by the federal Czechoslovak Labor Ministry for the meeting of the Economic Section of the Central Committee of the Czechoslovak Communist Party on February 27, 1978. 33  Boušková, “Pracovní migrace cizinců v České republice,” 35. 32

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 107

2020.05.12. 19:27:48

108

Alena K. Alamgir

However, individual workers’ insubordination was not the only reason behind high turnover rates; so were the decisions by Polish authorities, which canceled work contracts or withdrew their workers from Czechoslovak companies, sometimes at short notice. For instance, in 1979, the Polish side gradually reduced the number of its female workers in a textile factory that was Czechoslovakia’s sole producer of damask and terry cloth from 829 to 460, with the plan of eventually withdrawing “all female workers under the age of forty-five, which [amounted to] 193 persons.”34 This was a cause of great concern to the company, as the withdrawal of so many workers was likely to have serious adverse effects on production, alongside concomitant losses of revenue from both domestic and export trade. Czechoslovak officials speculated that the representatives of the Polish government used workers’ withdrawals, or the threats of withdrawals, as a method to push through their workers’ demands. For example, a 1984 report noted: “In an effort to secure more advantageous conditions than the treaty mandates, the Polish side pretended (předstírala) already in 1983 that it was having difficulties with securing workers [for work in Czechoslovakia], and it fell 2,000 workers short. . . . Given the decision of the Czechoslovak side not to give in to the demands, in the best possible case, we can expect approximately the same decrease in 1984 as we experienced in 1983.”35 First of all, this quote shows that, at least by the early 1980s, the relationship between the Czechoslovak and Polish officials involved in the worker exchanges was frayed, conceptualized as something of a tug-of-war, and filled with suspicion. More important for the argument pursued in this chapter, however, is that it also indicates that Polish officials were actively promoting the interests of their workers. If this involvement by the sending state’s officials is only hinted at in this report, it is documented explicitly elsewhere. For instance, in February 1983, the deputy director of the Czechoslovak textile factory Jitka personally visited employment offices in the Polish towns of Brzeg and Opole in order to negotiate the recruitment of female Polish workers for his company.36 He succeeded, but by August, the recruited Polish workers were already complaining about their working conditions, even asserting that the company was “bullying them.”37 The company, for its part, described the Polish em34

 Archiv bezpečnostních složek [Archive of the Security Forces, hereafter ABS], Kanice. “Informace o operativní situaci ve VčK pro vedoucího tajemníka KV KSČ,” written by KS SNB—Správa Státní bezpečnosti, Hradec Králové, October 25, 1979. 35  NA, “Informace o předpokládaných odjezdech zahraničních pracovníků v roce 1984,” February 14, 1984. 36  ABS, OB 332 ČB, “Dělníci,” “Nástup dalších PLR dělnic do n.p. Jitka Jindř. Hradec,” March 3, 1983. 37  ABS, OB 332 ČB “Dělníci,” “Characteristika pracovní morálky mezi polskými dělnicemi pracujícími v n.p. JITKA Jindřichův Hradec,” August 25, 1983.

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 108

2020.05.12. 19:27:48

“Inappropriate Behavior”

109

ployees’ work performance as “bad” and noted that “it has been pointed out to the Polish workers that they were paid for the work that they actually performed, not merely for being present during the shift,” with the latter remark meant as a response to workers’ complaints about low wages. The company further told the workers that it “would not yield to any sort of pressure.”38 However, the workers responded by informing the management that the head of the regional (voivodeship) employment office in Opole would travel from Poland to the Czechoslovak factory to help resolve the conflict. This happened, and the Polish representatives were able to successfully apply pressure on their Czechoslovak counterparts: a report from a meeting between the company’s management and “the representatives of the Polish People’s Republic” stated that “the company’s leadership promised to replace part of the hostel furnishings, and to equip the rooms with cooking stoves and refrigerators,”39 thus presumably addressing at least some of workers’ complaints. It seems, however, that the Czechoslovak company may have failed to deliver on (all) its promises, as some three months later the Polish authorities announced that they planned to withdraw their workers from the plant one year before the end of the contract, in July 1984. A company insider ascribed the decision to withdraw the workers to “the efforts of the Polish side . . . to put pressure on the management of the JITKA Company in order to obtain further working and material advantages for its workers, which the Polish side had already requested in the past, but the JITKA leadership rejected.”40 As it turned out, the withdrawal was not an empty threat on the part of the Polish authorities, and the Polish workers did indeed leave. The company decided to resolve its labor shortage problem by securing fifty Cuban female workers to replace the outgoing Polish workers,41 exemplifying the shift in the overall employment of foreign workers in Czechoslovakia.

Cuban Workers in Czechoslovakia However, the Cubans did not turn out to be the best replacement for Polish workers. There were frequent complaints about them as well. Although the Czechoslovak sources discussed all the complaints as disciplinary transgres38

 Ibid.  ABS, OB 332 ČB “Dělníci,” “Jednání zástupců z PLR v n.p. Jitka Jindřichův Hradec,” November 23, 1983. 40  ABS, OB 332 ČB “Dělníci,” “Prodloužení pracovní smlouvy s PLR státními příslušnicemi zaměstnanými v n.p. Jitka Jindř. Hradec,” February 16, 1984. 41  ABS, OB 332 ČB “Dělníci,” “Ukončení pobytu dělnic z PLR, které pracují v n.p. Jitka Jindřichův Hradec,” July 4, 1984. 39

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 109

2020.05.12. 19:27:48

110

Alena K. Alamgir

sions, only a few of the reported incidents—such as the complaint by a company that it had outfitted its hostel with brand new furnishings, which the Cubans “have already managed to completely wreck”42—would seem to belong in that category. Other complaints betray intercultural misunderstanding, or even confrontation with undertones of civilizational scorn and racializing discourses. Typical examples include the complaint that the Cubans were “expressing their temperament, especially in the evening hours, by playing various musical instruments, drums, et cetera,”43 complaints about Cuban workers’ behavior in pubs and restaurants, the judgment that conflicts between the Czechs and the Cubans were caused by the latter’s “excessive temperament,”44 and that these behaviors were sufficient to explain “Czechoslovak citizens starting to express an aversion” to the Cubans.45 I analyze racialized discourses deployed against foreign workers in Czechoslovakia elsewhere.46 In this chapter, I want to draw attention instead to the last type of complaints that appeared in the archival documents: those that directly concerned the Cubans’ participation and incorporation in the production process in Czechoslovakia. A 1979 report, for instance, complained about Cubans refusing to work overtime and on Saturdays.47 Similarly, a report from 1982 stated that Cuban workers were “refusing to perform jobs for which financial remuneration is low,”48 a concern that was reiterated in a follow-up report six months later.49 Or again, a quarterly report of the economic section of the Czechoslovak counter-intelligence service from 1985 reported a “mass refusal to work by Cuban citizens” in an auto42

 ABS, OB 332 ČB, “Zahraniční dělníci,” “Zapojení zahraničních dělníků v ekonomice ČSSR—zpráva,” report by Jindřichův Hradec district police for state police authority, dated June 15, 1981. 43  ABS, OB 332 ČB, “Delegáti,” “Zapojení zahraničních dělníků v ekonomice ČSSR—odpověď na dožádání,” written by Správa Státní bezpečnosti, 3. odbor, České Budějovice, November 30, 1978. 44  ABS, OB 332 ČB, “Zahraniční dělníci,” “Zapojení zahraničních dělníků v ekonomice ČSSR—zpráva,” report by Jindřichův Hradec district police for state police authority, June 15, 1981. 45  ABS, OB 332 ČB, “Zahraniční dělníci,” “Zahraniční pracovníci z Kuby—žádost o operativní kontrolu,” Krajská správa národní bezpečnosti, České Budějovice, September 21, 1981. 46  Alena Alamgir, “Race Is Elsewhere: State-Socialist Ideology and the Racialisation of Vietnamese Workers in Czechoslovakia,” Race & Class, 54, no. 4 (2013): 67–85. 47  ABS, “Zapojení zahraničních dělníků v ekonomice ČSSR—vyhodnocení” written by OS SNB, Jindřichův Hradec, June 18, 1979. 48  ABS, OS 412 ČB “Cizina,” “Zapojení zahraničních dělníků v ekonomice ČSSR— sdělení,” July 7, 1982. 49  ABS, OB 412 ČB “Cizina,” “Zapojení zahraničních dělníků v ekonomice ČSSR— sdělení,” report from district police (SNB) to regional police administration (Krajská správa SNB), December 10, 1982.

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 110

2020.05.12. 19:27:48

“Inappropriate Behavior”

111

motive parts manufacturing company, motivated by “a protest against work assignments.”50 Sometimes concerns about Polish and Cuban workers converged, such as when, in July 1981, it was discovered that: Male Cuban workers employed by the power plant and the Energostroj company in Chvaletice travel to meet female Cuban workers in Černožice, in the vicinity of Hradec Králové, where they come into contact with Polish workers, from whom they gain information about the situation in the Polish People’s Republic. Subsequently, they show dissatisfaction in the workplace and make statements to the effect that they will go on strike, as is happening in Poland.51

Whether or not Cuban workers’ expressions of dissatisfaction with their wages and working conditions were fueled by the actions of the Polish Solidarność movement, as this report suggests, is up for debate. More important to the argument pursued in this chapter is the fact that such expressions of dissatisfaction were made possible by the way the foreign worker programs were structured. Notably, representatives of the sending countries’ governments (usually embassy staff but also officials and administrators back home) retained—in a striking contrast to most labor migration schemes, including guest-worker programs, in non-state-socialist contexts—a great degree of control over their workers. We have already seen this in the case of Polish workers, and we see it in the case of the Cubans as well. A 1979 report, for instance, described a group of Cuban workers in a Czechoslovak company as “an independent structure of sorts that refuses to submit, even in basic matters, to any instructions from anyone except those coming from the Cuban Embassy.”52 This was possible due to a structural attribute of these labor migration schemes, which we could call split authority. Split authority meant that in the workplace, foreign workers fell under the jurisdiction of the Czechoslovak companies for which they worked. However, the final say on all other matters, and to some extent even on labor-related matters, belonged to their respective embassies: that is to say, to the workers’ home governments. This meant, for instance, that no matter how much a company, or the Czech (or Slovak) Labor Ministry, 50

 ABS, Na Struze, I/5/e-59A/1985, “Čtvrtletní informace XI. S SNB: Hodnocení bezpečnostní situace a dosažených výsledků ve služební činnosti po problematice XI. správy SNB za III. čtvrt. 1985.” 51  ABS, Kanice, addition from Hradec Králove, package 11, “Informace o operativní situaci ve VčK pro vedoucího tajemníka KV KSČ,” July 15, 1981. 52  ABS, Kanice, “Informace o operativní situaci ve VčK pro vedoucího tajemníka KV KSČ,” written by KS SNB—Správa Státní bezpečnosti, Hradec Králové, June 15, 1979.

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 111

2020.05.12. 19:27:48

112

Alena K. Alamgir

wanted to fire a worker (or extend her contract or move it to another company), it could not do so until and unless the embassy issued an approval. This structural feature was crucial to the ability of foreign workers to challenge their working conditions. The Vietnamese case exemplifies this in a particularly salient manner.

Vietnamese Workers in Czechoslovakia In both oral histories and archival documents, the Vietnamese are often described as almost fabulously docile, diligent, and disciplined workers. As a  former Labor Ministry clerk said: “No, there were no really significant problems . . . the Vietnamese, they are hardworking.”53 A former HR manager in one of the largest Czech industrial conglomerates of the period echoed the ministerial clerk in his assessment: “The Vietnamese, they had a more pronounced tendency to apply themselves at work [in contrast to the Cubans] . . . the first groups [that arrived to the factory] were absolutely ideal.” Furthermore, he claimed that “the Vietnamese, they work relentlessly, they are very diligent.” His effusiveness continued throughout the interview: “The Vietnamese, more so than the Cubans, the Vietnamese were better liked [by the Czechs], they were more industrious and kind of [hesitates, looking for the right word] more disciplined and calmer.”54 Similarly, a report that criticized the Cubans contained glowing reviews of the Vietnamese workers.55 Another report based on information obtained from various enterprises employing Vietnamese workers described them as “disciplined, hardworking, modest, well-behaved both in the workplace and in public, and therefore well liked,” as well as having an “interest in work and making an effort to earn as much money as possible.” These qualities, stated the report, meant that the Vietnamese were “gladly [ochotně] working night shifts and accepting overtime work and weekend work.”56 Or again: “The management of Texlen [a spinning mill company] notes that the Vietnamese workers’ work ethic is incomparably better than that of the [female] workers from Cuba.”57 53

 Interview, April 20, 2010.  Interviews, March 18 and 25, 2010. 55  ABS, OB 332 ČB, “Zahraniční dělníci,” “Zapojení zahraničních dělníků v ekonomice ČSSR—zpráva,” report by Jindřichův Hradec district police for state police authority, June 15, 1981. 56  ABS, “Komentář k vývoji stavu a pohybu vietnamských pracovníků v I. pololetí r. 1981,” October 20, 1981. 57  ABS, Kanice, addition from Hradec Kralove, package 11, “Informace o operativní situaci ve VčK pro vedoucího tajemníka KV KSČ,” July 15, 1981. 54

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 112

2020.05.12. 19:27:49

“Inappropriate Behavior”

113

Yet this is not the whole story, not by a  long shot. An undated (but likely written in the fall of 1982) Labor Ministry report states that, according to information obtained from the companies, “Vietnamese workers express their dissatisfaction with strikes.”58 According to another report, most strikes—56.5 percent—took place in agriculture, the construction industry, and forestry, although only 30 percent of Vietnamese workers worked in these sectors.59 Another report60 contains a list of sixteen strikes carried out by Vietnamese workers in late summer 1982, practically all of them over low wages. Yet another document mentions a  strike by forty-eight workers in a Prague construction firm (Pražský stavební podnik) in the fall of 1982.61 The strike was preceded by the workers’ refusal to show up for final exams that were to conclude a three-month training period. But “the entire group of fifty workers announced [to the management of the company] that they did not intend to take part in any further training, neither language [acquisition] nor professional.” During the strike, the Vietnamese workers explained that they were refusing to work in protest against their wages, which they considered too low, and demanded that they all be paid 12 Kčs per hour. Other sources report yet more strikes taking place at around the same time. In mid-August 1982, some female Vietnamese workers employed in a spinning mill ( Jitka Otín) refused to work in protest against the compulsory “transfer.”62 The women further complained that the machines on which they worked were technologically inferior to the machines used by their Czechoslovak coworkers. Their wages also became an issue, although one which transpired only indirectly, when a source apprising the secret police of the situation mentioned that “the lower wages earned by the Vietnamese workers are caused by the fact that they are not fully trained yet.”63 Vietnamese women in another branch of the same textile factory ( Jitka 58

 NA, “Informace o některých incidentech vietnamských pracujících v ČSSR,” undated.  NA, “Informace o současných problémech spojených se zaměstnáváním vietnamských pracovníků v čs. organizacích,” September 1982. 60  NA, “Přehled o stávkách a další závážné protispolečenské činnosti vietnamských pracovníků v čs. Organizacích.” 61  NA, Letter from the director of Pražský stavební podnik to the Vietnamese Embassy in Prague, September 23, 1982. 62  “Transfer” was a tax of sorts introduced at the request of the Vietnamese government, which asked that 15 percent (later reduced to 10 percent) of workers’ basic wages (základní plat) be collected by companies and transferred into a bank account owned by the Vietnamese government. In the treaties, the payment was described as going toward “the costs of workers’ recruitment, preparations for their trip to Czechoslovakia, and a contribution to the fund for the defense and [re]construction of the homeland.” Transfer was highly unpopular among Vietnamese workers as it lowered their wages. 63  ABS, OB 332 ČB, “Dělníci,” “Nenastoupení pracovnic VSR na odpolední směnu,” August 18, 1982. 59

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 113

2020.05.12. 19:27:49

114

Alena K. Alamgir

Jindřichův Hradec) went on strike in protest against the transfer at around the same time,64 as did thirty women workers in yet another spinning mill (Přádelny česané příze Nejdek)65 about a month later. There was also a legendary two-week-long strike carried out by some 100 women working for a  plant cultivation company; this strike remains immortalized in a  myth that still circulates in the Czech Vietnamese community today, which I discuss in detail elsewhere.66 The strikes were certainly a vexing issue for both the Czechoslovak enterprises and the Czech Labor Ministry. But the Vietnamese Embassy’s response to the strikes possibly aggravated them even more. The program’s administrators at the Czech Labor Ministry believed that “the indecisive stance of the Vietnamese Embassy contributes to the wave of strikes. The embassy conducts protracted investigations, and wavers [váhá] over punishing the strikes’ organizers and sending them back to the SRV [Socialist Republic of Vietnam].”67 To illustrate this, the report recounted the events following a weeklong strike of eleven workers that took place in the middle of August 1982 in a plant cultivation company. At first, the representatives of the embassy and the Czech ministry representatives agreed to send the five “most active organizers of the strike” back to Vietnam. However, the ambassador then expressed dissatisfaction with the proposed solution, saying that all eleven workers should be sent back. In the end, however, the embassy only sent two persons back in late October. From the Czech Labor Ministry’s point of view, “the embassy’s approach makes the organizers of strikes think that they may not be punished at all. During their weekend trips to other places in the ČSSR, they boast of the successes that they achieved by going on strike, and in that way they contribute to the strikes spreading further.” Sometimes, the ministry even asserted that the embassy was directly to blame for Vietnamese workers’ disciplinary transgressions, as at the Živanice agricultural cooperative, where there were “twenty-four unexcused absences, which were caused by inappropriate behavior of the staff of the [Embassy’s] Department for Workers’ Care.”68 (Alas, the docu64

 ABS, OB 332 ČB, “Dělníci,” “VSR státní příslušníci,” around October 14, 1982 (strike took place on August 13, 1982). 65  ABS, Kanice č. př. 1756/1988, balík č. 6 “Pobyt a činnost občanů Vietnamské socialistické republiky v Západočeském kraji—zaslání podkladů,” October 20, 1982. 66  Alena Alamgir, “‘They Knit Sweaters and Refuse to Follow Foreman’s Orders’: Vietnamese Female Workers in State-Socialist Czechoslovakia,” unpublished. 67  Archive, Ministerstvo práce a sociálních věcí [Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs, hereafter MPSV], “Informace o současných problémech spojených se zaměstnáváním vietnamských pracovníků v čs. Organizacích,” uncatalogued, end of 1982. 68  NA, “Odborné školení vietnamských pracovníků v MZVž [Ministerstvo zemědělství a výživy] (výňatky z komentářů podniků ke statistice).”

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 114

2020.05.12. 19:27:49

“Inappropriate Behavior”

115

ments do not specify what that “inappropriate behavior” by embassy staff entailed.) The Czechoslovak administrators also complained that the Vietnamese group leaders,69 who were nominated for their positions by the Vietnamese side, “often work for the [embassy] even though they are stationed in the company.” In other words, the Czechoslovak clerks objected to the group leaders being the instruments of the embassy, as it were, rather than implementing the companies’ policies, and thus contributing to the disciplining of workers. Besides the support that the Vietnamese officials (sometimes) lent to their workers who protested against their working conditions, they also intervened on the workers’ behalf directly. For instance, in late 1984, the head of the Department for Workers’ Care at the Vietnamese Embassy in Prague informed the Czech Labor Ministry that the embassy staff made trips to two enterprises from which Vietnamese workers had repeatedly asked to be moved elsewhere. The embassy officials reported that a majority of workers there only engage in arduous, unskilled work. Their main job is to liquidate and clean up an old power plant and a chemical workshop ([in the case of the company located in the town of ] Most), or else arduous and unskilled labor with low wages ([in the case of the company located in the town of ] Vlašim). In addition, housing conditions are not good or comfortable either. 70

To bolster their case, the embassy staff added that “the workers of the two groups are, for the most part, former soldiers, who fought for peace and socialism on the front lines. They came to the ČSSR with the greatest goal: to acquire skills for their future during their four-year stay. That is why we ask you, comrade department head, to transfer these workers [to other companies].”71 Judging by handwritten comments on the margins of the letter, this appeal seems to have been successful. A Czech Labor Ministry clerk wrote: “Please, discuss with comrade Pospíchalová, and make transfer pos-

69

 With the exception of cross-border employment, blue-collar labor migration in the socialist world did not occur at the individual level, but was organized in groups. These groups, as a rule, had group leaders, whose activities were manifold and included acting as interpreters, both in the linguistic and cultural sense, as liaisons between the company management and the workers, and first-level disciplining agents, among other things. 70  MPSV, Letter from Dr. Nguyen Phuc Loc, CSc., the head of the Department for Workers’ Care at the Vietnamese Embassy in Prague, to Ing. Karel Kozelka, the head of the Foreign Workers Secretariat at the Czech Labor Ministry, November 12, 1984 (uncatalogued). 71  Ibid.

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 115

2020.05.12. 19:27:49

116

Alena K. Alamgir

sible: the reasons are skill-related. . . . they are doing unskilled work, and risky work at that; we have to accommodate the Vietnamese side!”72 Significantly, the embassy staff would sometimes go ahead and do what they thought was right for their workers, even if it meant going against the express wishes of Czechoslovak enterprises or administrators. In the spring of 1986, for instance, the Vietnamese embassy requested that its workers employed in a  construction company be transferred elsewhere. In an attempt to accommodate them, the Labor Ministry administrators arranged for the group to be moved to a glassworks company. This move, however, was met with a sharp negative reaction by the Construction Industry Ministry, which wanted to retain the Vietnamese workers in the company. From the correspondence it transpires that, after being first notified about the impending transfer, the Construction Industry Ministry protested, and persuaded the Labor Ministry to rescind its decision. However, the Vietnamese Embassy would not accept the rescission, and insisted on the group’s transfer out of the construction industry.73 The embassy argued that the company used the workers only in unskilled or auxiliary jobs, which did not provide them with qualifications. Furthermore, references to the ideological underpinnings of the program were once again used to bolster the argument: “Most of the transferred workers were former members of the Vietnamese Army whom the Vietnamese side wants to acquire qualifications.”74 These are only two of the numerous cases in which Vietnamese governmental officials (mainly at the embassy but also back in Hanoi) went to bat for their workers. The fact that they were able to do this was made possible by the structure of the program, which preserved a great degree of control and decision-making power for the sending government.

Conclusion What do we learn from these windows into the programs that brought the three largest groups of migrant workers into state-socialist Czechoslovakia? First of all, that the workers were active agents who pushed vigorously for their interests, and resisted workplace unfairness when they encountered it. They used various means to do this. One method consisted in a refusal to be 72

 Ibid.  MPSV, Letter from Václav Karas, the deputy labor minister of the Czech Socialist Republic, to Pavel Měchura, deputy construction industry minister, April 18, 1986 (uncatalogued). 74  MPSV, “Převod vietnamských pracovníků z rezortu MSv ČSR,” July 17, 1986 (uncatalogued). 73

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 116

2020.05.12. 19:27:49

“Inappropriate Behavior”

117

a disciplined workforce, most evident in the case of the Polish workers and their astoundingly high turnover rates, absenteeism, and willful quitting. Other methods consisted in bona fide industrial action; in all three groups, this ranged from a refusal to perform low-paying jobs all the way to strikes, documented particularly in the case of the Vietnamese workers. There is an odd contradiction in the conceptualization of Vietnamese workers—both in oral histories and in archival documents (primarily the reports of the Czech Labor Ministry)—as almost fabulously diligent laborers on the one hand, and rabblerousing agitators on the other. From this, we could conclude that they actually were a paragon, or an ideal type (in the Weberian sense), of socialist worker: they applied themselves in their jobs and pushed for their rights as industrial workers. The second important thing that each of the three case studies makes apparent is the crucial role played by officials from the sending states. This role was dual. On the one hand, some, if not all, of the workers’ activism and resistance was made possible by, at the very least, tolerance, and possibly overt encouragement for their actions by the home officials and administrators. No less importantly, these administrators were able to supply such encouragement, or shield the workers from the suppression of their budding activities, due to the way these schemes were structured: namely, thanks to the fact that the sending governments retained a large degree of control over their workers. Certainly, sending states involved in the arranging of work contracts for their nationals as part of Western European guest worker schemes pushed for their workers’ interests as well. For instance, in 1964, the Turkish government was able to get the West German state to disburse child allowance to Turkish workers for their children living in Turkey.75 It is also worth noting, however, that when the workers first raised this demand two years earlier, they received no assistance from the Turkish consulate in West Germany.76 The Italian government was able to “achieve various improvements in recruitment procedures, housing, leisure activities, and training” for its workers in Germany. Importantly, however, “Italy, as an EEC member, enjoyed a decided political advantage for advancing its interests . . . [while] by contrast, the efforts of the Turkish government to make sure its citizens were properly taken care of in Germany were more

75

 Ulrich Herbert and Karin Hunn, “Guest Workers and Policy on Guest Workers in the Federal Republic,” in The Miracle Years: A Cultural History of West Germany, 1949–1968, ed. Hanna Schissler (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000), 194. 76  Jennifer Miller, “Her Fight Is Your Fight: ‘Guest Worker’ Labor Activism in the Early 1970s West Germany,” International Labor and Working-Class  History 84 (Fall 2013): 229.

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 117

2020.05.12. 19:27:49

118

Alena K. Alamgir

limited and generally came too late.”77 In other words, the efficacy of the Italian government’s advocacy was rooted in its shared membership in an economic-political alliance, which provided both the incentives and the mechanisms making possible, even urgent, the accountability of the receiving government to the sending government. Therein lies the parallel with the state-socialist labor exchanges, in which the power of the sending governments also rested to an important degree in membership in the same economic-political alliance and the attendant ideological commitments that could be (and were, as we saw above) mobilized to buttress the sending governments’ claims and demands. By contrast, as Jennifer Miller78 shows for the Turkish workers in the Federal Republic of Germany, their best hope of defending their rights and interests lay in their ability to bring German labor unions and native workers to their side and ensure their participation in industrial actions organized by migrant labor. While this tactic was sometimes successful, and arguably came with the significant added benefit of fostering workers’ solidarity across national and ethnic lines (something that vigorous action by sending governments on behalf of their workers abroad may have had a hard time accomplishing), it goes without saying that the presence of (robust) unions in the receiving country is a prerequisite for this tactic to be viable even as a theoretical option. In the absence of those, migrant labor worldwide finds itself in the situation that the Turkish workers did when they could not recruit their German counterparts to join their efforts: “[N]either the West German unions nor the Turkish consulate would represent these workers, placing them in a no-man’s-land that mirrored their lived reality: not truly welcome in West Germany and yet no longer under Turkish protection.”79 Returning to the Czechoslovak case, one more element made it possible for the foreign workers to push for their demands: the fact that the Czechoslovak state was increasingly channeling them into companies and industrial sectors experiencing the greatest labor shortages. As we have seen, this meant that in some companies these workers came to comprise a sizable portion of the overall workforce, and as such, though they were not key workers individually, they became a vital workforce collectively. Somewhat ironically, therefore, as the Czechoslovak state gradually began to retreat from its socialist and internationalist commitments in favor of focusing on its own economic dilemmas and pressures while, in the process, commodifying foreign workers and using them to plug the holes in its labor market,

77

 Herbert and Hunn, “Guest Workers and Policy,” 201.  Miller, “Her Fight Is Your Fight.” 79  Ibid., 229. 78

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 118

2020.05.12. 19:27:49

“Inappropriate Behavior”

119

it also simultaneously bestowed new power on the foreign workers, whose disciplined labor became crucial to the success of Czechoslovak enterprises. By the same token, the enterprises became more vulnerable to the foreign workers’ refusal to provide their labor. Structurally, then, it was this combination of increased commodification of foreign workers, a harbinger of things to come, and the structure of the labor migration schemes that preserved the sending government’s control over the workforce it sent abroad, a remnant of things past, that empowered the workers.

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 119

2020.05.12. 19:27:49

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 120

2020.05.12. 19:27:49

PART II WORKERS, RIGHTS, AND DISCIPLINE

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 121

2020.05.12. 19:27:49

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 122

2020.05.12. 19:27:49

Dishonest Saleswomen: On Gendered Politics of Shame and Blame in Polish State-Socialist Trade Małgorzata Mazurek

O

n entering a store in state-socialist Poland, customers would be troubled by a number of questions. Might there be commodities hidden under the counter for “kith and kin”? Why was customer service losing out to the manicure that was consuming the saleswoman much more than the task of providing relevant information (even if that was only a dismissive “we are out of stock”)?1 Among other noteworthy absurdities there were the self-service supermarkets inside of which one could often see a lucky few consumers roaming around, while the crowd outside was desperate to get in.2 These confusing shopping experiences were typically explained by the arbitrary power, dishonesty, and idleness of the saleswoman (ekspedientka). Their managerial whims were to blame for the ordeal of the consumer. Most of all, however, the “dishonest saleswoman” was a two-dimensional figure. She held arbitrary power over consumers, but at the same time, she was an embodiment of the pitfalls of everyday communism.

1

 Grzegorz Sroczyński, “Co dzień w Peerelu: Biblioteka skarg i wniosków” [Daily life in communist Poland: Library of complaints and applications], Karta, no. 32 (2001): 109. 2  John R. Turcan, “Some Observations on Retail Distribution in Poland,” Soviet Studies 29, no. 1 (1977): 128–36. On the shortage economy during state socialism, in Poland in particular, see János Kornai, The Socialist System: The Political Economy of Communism (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1992); Kornai, Niedobór w gospodarce [The shortage economy] (Warsaw: Państwowe Wydawnictwo Ekonomiczne, 1985); Janusz Beksiak, and Urszula Libura, Równowaga gospodarcza w socjalizmie [Economic equilibrium in socialism] (Warsaw: Państwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe, 1969); Janusz Beksiak, Społeczeństwo gospodarujące [The economic society] (Warsaw: Państwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe, 1976); Janusz Kaliński, Gospodarka Polski w latach 1944–1989: Przemiany strukturalne [The Polish economy in 1944–1989: Structural transformations] (Warsaw: Państwowe Wydawnictwo Ekonomiczne, 1995); Krzysztof Hagemejer, Analiza niezrównoważonego rynku w Polsce w latach siedemdziesiątych i osiemdziesiątych [Analysis of the unbalanced market in Poland in the seventies and eighties] (Ph.D. dissertation, Department of Economics, University of Warsaw, 1987, typescript).

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 123

2020.05.12. 19:27:49

124

Małgorzata Mazurek

By the mid-1960s, women constituted nearly 90 percent of the grocery clerks in communist Poland. Saleswomen held one of the most underpaid, unpopular, and untrustworthy jobs in the country; simultaneously iconic and despised, the saleswoman was probably the most ambivalent figure of everyday communism. With the consolidation of state socialism in the 1950s and 1960s, the “dishonest saleswoman” became a  gendered social institution, shaped by shop assistants’ actions, the economic situation, the public perception of shortages, and the legal measures of the socialist state. These elements—social practices, the shortage economy, moral effects, and law-making—are key to understanding how service labor was experienced under communism and how this work regime affected its entire social environment, particularly with regard to consumers. The social perception of saleswomen and the legal regulations of their work mutually reinforced each other to produce a lasting culture of blame and shame. In the late 1950s, assertions about the dishonesty of shop assistants were reconfigured into a legal principle, known as material or financial liability (odpowiedzialność materialna). The principle of material liability made shop assistants responsible for any cash or goods shortages, or manko, in the shop. In other words, if the trade administration discovered any manko, shop assistants had to pay for it out of their own pocket. In most cases, manko was a result of the simple seizure of cash or merchandise that could happen on both sides of the counter. However, from 1959 onwards the only persons blamed for manko were sellers, not buyers. Thus, the socialist administrative law not only responded to the general mistrust towards trade workers; it also magnified this mistrust. Debates and regulations concerning manko put “dishonest saleswomen” at the center of critiques about the inefficiencies of state-socialist trade. I trace this process of stigmatization, focusing on the unintended consequences of putting the burden of a shortage economy on trade personnel. The story of the Polish “dishonest saleswomen” serves as a case study for how mechanisms of social blaming, gendered politics of labor, and legal measures came together to shape a  work environment that determined the lives of thousands of women in communist Poland and beyond. Even though saleswomen had leverage over consumers, as they engaged in favoritism (selling under-the-counter goods and engaging in other practices that violated equality among consumers), they also remained the most stigmatized occupational group in communist Poland. Manko remained endemic throughout the period of state socialism, and the principle of material liability intended to counteract it also proved to be extraordinarily persistent. Socialist commerce was one of the most antagonistic spaces of everyday life, and its punishing labor regime lasted until the fall of communism.

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 124

2020.05.12. 19:27:49

Dishonest Saleswomen

125

Stalinist and Post-Stalinist Measures against Manko Attitudes of trade personnel became an ideological issue in East Central Europe in the immediate aftermath of World War II. As petty theft remained widespread after the war, the Polish party-state organized numerous campaigns that shamed and punished trade personnel.3 The “Battle for Trade” from 1947 was a major step in establishing the communist regime and had practical implications for many ordinary citizens. This political campaign fought the private sector by targeting economic delinquency among shop owners and sales clerks.4 Yet the stigmatization of salespersons also penetrated the fledging state trade, which communists presented as superior to the private and cooperative sectors. Under Stalinism, especially during the food crisis between 1951 and 1953, the party made “profiteers,” allegedly hidden as “moles” inside state-socialist trade, responsible for shortages.5 The efforts of communist propaganda, echoing the Soviet campaigns against the shopkeeper-thieves,6 perpetuated a glaringly negative image of trade as a harbinger of fraud, bribery, and speculation.7 The stigma surrounding commerce also reflected the structurally low status of trade in the Soviet-style economy. Stalinism in East Central Europe meant that Poland, like other state-socialist countries, had to follow the Soviet model of distribution and consumption. This model neglected the service role of trade. According to Stalinist dogma, services—as opposed to industry and agriculture—were deemed “unproductive” sectors of the econ3

 Protokół z odprawy sekretarzy POP z aktywem instytucji handlowych województwa zieleniogórskiego z udziałem pionu CRS, ZSS i MHD, która odbyła się w dniu 16 marca 1952 w Komitecie Wojewódzkim PZPR, Archiwum Akt Nowych [New Documents Archive, hereafter AAN], Wydział Handlu Komitet Centralny Polskiej Zjednoczonej Partii Robotniczej [Central Committee of the Polish United Workers’ Party, hereafter KC PZPR], record no. 237/XXIX-12, folio 239. 4  See Janusz Kaliński, Bitwa o handel: 1947–1948 [Battle for trade: 1947–1948] (Warsaw: Książka i Wiedza, 1971). 5  For a detailed analysis of the crisis during the Stalinist period, see Mariusz Jastrząb, Puste półki: problem zaopatrzenia ludności w artykuły powszechnego użytku w Polsce w latach 1949–1956 [Empty shelves: The problem of supplying the population with items of general use in Poland in the years 1949–1956] (Warsaw: Wydawnictwo Wyższej Szkoły Przedsiębiorczości i Zarządzania im. Leona Koźmińskiego, 2004). 6  Julie Hessler, A Social History of Soviet Trade: Trade Policy, Retail Practices, and Consumption, 1917–1953 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004), 310–11. 7  Ibid., 311.

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 125

2020.05.12. 19:27:49

126

Małgorzata Mazurek

omy and therefore did not require as much investment as, say, metallurgy.8 As one Stalinist propaganda text asserted, “the superiority of state-socialist trade manifests in the constant reduction of distribution costs.”9 During Stalinism, the party blamed individuals—and not institutions— for generating economic problems. According to the official view, the success of the command economy depended on the “moral” rather than material infrastructure of trade: the actions and behavior of the selling personnel. One element of this Soviet-style moral economy was the so-called “war on manko”: a war against petty theft and cash shortages in socialist trade. Framed as a “fight against the enemies of socialism,” the war on manko became a landmark of Stalinist economic policy. Everyone employed in trade was potentially to blame for manko: the actual perpetrators, the bystanders, and the enablers. Any salesperson was now regarded as potentially suspect, just because she had access to cash and merchandise. With de-Stalinization, which started in 1953, Polish party activists increasingly acknowledged that petty theft was not only a problem of morality and personal conduct (that is, salespersons’ behavior); it also reflected wider macroeconomic and organizational deficiencies of socialist trade. This attention put manko perpetrators (or mankowicze) back in the spotlight, though for different reasons.10 The fight against manko was no longer an ideological manhunt, but became part of the modernization of socialist trade. When in 1955, Szczecin party authorities registered over twelve million zloty of losses due to manko in their district, they argued that “if this amount was spent on investment in the trade sector, one could have built and furnished about 150 stores with modern equipment.”11 8

 Certainly, the Soviet model of trade was neither homogeneous nor persistent. In the Soviet system of distribution, there existed pockets of the so-called “cultured” modern commerce, which encompassed a  network of expensive hard currency stores. See Julie Hessler, “Cultured Trade: The Stalinist Turn towards Consumerism,” in Stalinism: New Directions, ed. Sheila Fitzpatrick (London: Routledge, 2000), 182–209. 9  Kazimierz Boczar and Henryk Chołaj, Rola handlu socjalistycznego w gospodarce Polski Ludowej [The role of socialist trade in the Polish economy] (Warsaw: Książka i Wiedza, 1956), 90. 10  For more information about research on economic delinquency, see Dariusz Jarosz and Maria Pasztor, Afera Mięsna: fakty i konteksty [The meat scandal: Facts and contexts] (Warsaw: Centrum Edukacji Europejskiej, 2004); Jerzy Kochanowski, “Szara strefa Października: ‘Notatka’ o nielegalnych dochodach w Polsce 1956–1957” [Gray zone of the Polish October: A ‘Note’ about illegal income in Poland, 1956–1957], Przegląd Historyczny 95, no. 1 (2004): 77–96; Maciej Tymiński, “Malwersacje w przedsiębiorstwach socjalistycznych (1950–1970)” [Embezzlement in socialist enterprises, 1950–1970], Dzieje Najnowsze 34, no. 4 (2002): 97–113. 11  Wydział Handlu i Finansów KW PZPR w Szczecinie, Porozmawiajmy: Materiały dla pracowników handlu [Let’s talk: Materials for trade sector employees], May 1956, 13.

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 126

2020.05.12. 19:27:49

Dishonest Saleswomen

127

After Stalinism, the authorities initiated systematic research on the service economy and soon discovered that the scale of petty crime in the trade sector was enormous. According to official estimates, 81.4 percent of everyday transactions in shops involved fraud.12 Due to the vast expansion of the state sector, the shadow economy within state-socialist trade effectively increased by default, though the increase was also a reaction to the political and economic liberalization that followed the change of party leadership in 1956.13 At the same time, however, economic offences were penalized with new force. In the early 1960s, the new first secretary, Władysław Gomułka, pushed for the death penalty for major economic crimes such as large-scale embezzlement, theft of state property, or profiteering. 14 During the Gomułka era (1956–1970), penal measures became more repressive and severe in trade than in other branches of the economy.15 The post-Stalinist debate on economic delinquency also introduced more detailed measures against petty and mass-scale manko, with a  new focus on protecting state property.16 In June 1959, Polish authorities adopted a bill on the material co-responsibility of workers for the shortages of cash and goods in the trade sector.17 The bill officially assigned shop assistants sole responsibility for manko. Clerks became a priori suspects, whether

12

 Jacek Marecki, “Przestępczość gospodarcza: mechanizm i środki zaradcze” [Economic delinquency: Mechanism and remedies], Kultura i Społeczeństwo 6, no. 3 (1962): 61. 13  The scale and structure of the “informal economy” under communism is difficult to assess. Since credible quantitative data on misuse during the Stalinist years is not available, it is difficult to reconstruct in detail the dynamics of illegal transactions in the postwar period. However, the post-Thaw gray economy certainly underwent some qualitative changes. Economic delinquency was better organized (the so-called “clique” features) and misuses occurred more often in the gray zone between the socialist and private sectors, which had been marginal only a few years before. See Kochanowski, “Szara strefa Października,” 77–83. 14  Jarosz and Pasztor, Afera mięsna, 77–98. For cases of misuse in the meat trade between 1963 and 1969, Dariusz Jarosz established that out of 1,989 accused, 1,767 were convicted and sent to prison, ten of whom received life sentences, and one of whom received the death sentence. Only thirty-eight people were acquitted. Ibid., 363. 15  Lech Dzikiewicz, Odpowiedzialność majątkowa personelu sprzedającego [Material liability of the sales staff ] (Warsaw: Wydawnictwo Prawnicze, 1971), 52. 16  Jan Górecki, O środkach walki ze spekulacją i nadużyciami na podstawie stenogramu wykładu wygłoszonego na centralnym kursie aktywu propagandowego “Aktualne problemy polityki partii i rządu” [On the means of combating speculation and abuse on the basis of the transcript of a lecture delivered on the central course of the propaganda act “Current problems of party and government policy”] (Warsaw: Książka i Wiedza, 1957). 17  Stanisław Garlicki, Mieczysław Piekarski, and Andrzej Stelmachowski, Odpowiedzialność cywilna za niedobory [Civil liability for shortages] (Warsaw: Wydawnictwo Prawnicze, 1970); Dzikiewicz, Odpowiedzialność majątkowa, 11.

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 127

2020.05.12. 19:27:49

128

Małgorzata Mazurek

they were shop managers or merely rank-and-file shop assistants.18 In practice, the 1959 bill paved the way to the presumption of the shop clerk’s guilt. Furthermore, it strengthened the perception that their dishonesty was the primary cause of shortages. The principle of material liability had a collective character, much like it did during Stalinism, as the responsibility for one colleague’s fraud would now fall on the entire collective. Some experts immediately noticed that the principle of material liability introduced new dysfunctions into socialist trade. “Given that the bill of 1959 created the conditions for shifting the technical-organizational and individual risk to workers, it is no wonder that the latter focus more on selfdefense than customer service,” wrote one union representative.19 Another expert observed that the bill secured the interests of the trade sector administration at the expense of rank-and-file shop clerks.20 In the following section, I present the ways in which the principle of material liability—the central post-Stalinist reform in socialist trade—intersected with the gendered perception of shop assistants’ work.

Mankowicze: Gendered Politics of Shame and Blame In the post-Stalinist era, mankowicze—the manko perpetrators—became the object of numerous sociological surveys. These surveys demonstrated wider ambitions to modernize socialist trade, as they often accompanied the official campaigns dedicated to improving service culture. Experts studied petty theft, while creating programs to reduce waiting lines and watching Western “public relations” campaigns as a model to follow.21 However bi18

 See Halina Niedzielska, “Społeczne koszty systemu odpowiedzialności majątkowej w handlu” [Social costs of the property liability system in trade], Roczniki Instytutu Handlu Wewnętrznego 77, no. 1 (1976): 55–66. 19  Dzikiewicz, Odpowiedzialność majątkowa, 242. 20  Tadeusz Zapałowski, Odpowiedzialność materialna pracowników handlu [Material responsibility of trade employees] (Warsaw: Instytut Handlu Wewnętrznego i Usług, 1980), 17; idem, Ekspertyza dla Ministerstwa Handlu Wewnętrznego o sposobie wdrażania eksperymentu znoszącego wspólną odpowiedzialność majątkową pracowników handlu [Expert opinion for the Ministry of Internal Trade on the implementation of an experiment abolishing the joint property liability of trade employees] (Warsaw: Instytut Handlu Wewnętrznego, 1971), typescript; idem, “Ocena sposobu wdrażania nowej formy odpowiedzialności materialnej w handlu” [Evaluation of the method of implementing a new form of material responsibility in trade], Roczniki Instytutu Handlu Wewnętrznego i Usług 4 (1978). 21  In 1966, a group of economists and sociologists from the Warsaw School of Economics’ Main School of Planning and Statistics (Szkoła Główna Planowania i Statystyki, SGPiS) organized, in cooperation with Społem, a conference on the implementation of the idea

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 128

2020.05.12. 19:27:49

Dishonest Saleswomen

129

ased, the experts’ and party-state’s look at shop assistants offers a lively portrait of mankowicze.22 Manko perpetrators were subjected to both class and gender profiling, though the latter was undoubtedly dominant. In the 1960s, the sales profession had undergone a near-complete feminization, which translated into the lower social and material status of trade personnel. During the entire postStalinist period, more than 90 percent of shop clerks confirmed they had lower work status than other occupations.23 This pejorative self-perception translated into poor salaries and the low popularity of sales work. By the 1960s, the best one could say about saleswomen is that they did not have a criminal record.24 The wider public shared the negative stereotype about sales work. On the list of the most prestigious occupations compiled in 1965, sales ranked at number twenty-six; only “unqualified worker,” “office cleaner,” and “unqualified worker of the farming cooperative” ranked lower.25 In fact, “shop assistant” was not even considered a profession in communist Poland, despite the trade union’s efforts to change this. A common view was that the “commodities sold themselves,” and thus anyone could do the job.26 of public relations in socialist trade. See Spółdzielnia spożywców a środowisko: Materiały z konferencji naukowej, Kudowa 8–12 luty 1966 [The consumer cooperative and the environment: Materials from the scientific conference, Kudowa February 8–12, 1966] (Warsaw: Zakład Wydawnictw CRS, 1966). 22  Many contemporary experts argued that increasing investment into the consumption budget (which took place after 1956) did raise the population’s living standards, but did not contribute to the reduction of the gray economy. This is why tightening the surveillance and control of the trade sector was regarded as the proper response. See Michał Kalecki, “Próba wyjaśnienia zjawiska przestępczości gospodarczej” [An attempt to explain the phenomenon of economic crime], Kultura i Społeczeństwo 6, no. 3 (1962): 77. 23  Jerzy Altkorn, “Stosunek pracowników handlu do zawodu” [The attitude of trade employees to their profession], in Socjologia handlu: Wybrane zagadnienia [Sociology of trade: Selected issues], ed. Andrzej K. Koźmiński and Adam Sarapata (Warsaw: Państwowe Wydawnictwo Ekonomiczne, 1972), 245–46; Lidia A. Mikuła, “Z badań nad psychiczną uciążliwością pracy w handlu” [From research on the psychological burden of work in trade], Handel Wewnętrzny, no. 4 (1976): 70. 24  Stefan Kwiatkowski, “Sylwetki zawodowe sprzedawców” [Professional profiles of sellers], in Koźmiński and Sarapata, Socjologia handlu, 225. 25  Włodzimierz Wesołowski, “Prestiż zawodów—system wartości” [Prestige of occupations—value system], in Socjologia zawodów [Sociology of occupations], ed. Adam Sarapata (Warsaw: Książka i Wiedza, 1965), 200. 26  For instance, in 1960 the board of Społem cooperative stores approved a project to introduce a definition of the occupation of salesperson, which was, however, ultimately rejected by the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Internal Trade as premature, under the assumption that most of the shop personnel in Poland were far from complying with the professional standards set forth in the project. That situation did not change at least until the end of the 1960s. See Maria Konieczna-Michalska, Kształcenie sprzedawców przy warsztacie pracy w spółdzielniach handlowych [Training of salespeople at a workshop of trade cooperatives] (Warsaw: ZW CRS, 1969), 32, footnote 8.

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 129

2020.05.12. 19:27:49

130

Małgorzata Mazurek

Characteristically, investigators into manko offences sexualized female suspects. Their general assumption was that what they perceived as lax personal conduct led to the appropriation of property. One author of a study on delinquency in cooperative trade in the Gdańsk voivoideship wrote about one female mankowiczka who “fancied showing up in clubs in the company of male strangers (Communal Cooperative ‘Farmer Self-Help,’ Stowakowo, Elbląg municipality, the manko at 90,000 zloty).” 27 Another described a  saleswoman who “was very sociable and enjoyed visits from men, to whom she would give away wine on credit or without asking for payment,” or a  female mankowiczka who, when “planning a  trip to West Germany seized money for travel arrangements and was late in covering for the shortfall.”28 The surveys on mankowicze related gender to a social hierarchy of shop clerk delinquency. Large-scale, highly profitable crimes were the domain of men. Those who were caught stealing from the counter or pocketing small amounts were mostly women, who occupied lower posts in the organization. The investigators detailed the temptations that were supposed to justify seizure of money. Some saleswomen were said to take money to offset the costs of a wedding, a husband’s drinking, or spending on entertainment for oneself or others. “The person materially liable [for the products in stock] according to some of the interviewees would not abandon her husband at any price, even if they were not getting along. She would finance his excessive vodka drinking,” went the story of one female co-op member from Tczew.29 Some journalists and researchers pointed to the postwar social norm of permissiveness, expressed by a common saying that “where everyone steals, there are no thieves.” Manko could thus be explained by postwar social deprivation and poverty. But the gender aspect still appeared, as the official discourse on manko stressed that women were susceptible to temptation and vanity. In research on department stores, one sociologist noted that “young, female employees were believed to withdraw small sums from the cash desk or ‘borrow’ products on sale, especially in the case of female clothing departments.” The sociologist went on to state that “almost as a rule . . . these women have destitute backgrounds and their attraction to fancy dressing and high living standards is understandable in light of the type of customer they interact with”; in essence, “these women seize public property as a mechanism of upward mobility.”30 27

 Ibid., 84.  Ibid., 70. 29  Marecki, “Przestępczość gospodarcza,” 84, cf. footnote 12. 30  Andrzej K. Koźmiński, “Dom towarowy jako środowisko pracy zawodowej” [The department store as a work environment], in Koźmiński and Sarapata, Socjologia handlu, 321. 28

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 130

2020.05.12. 19:27:49

Dishonest Saleswomen

131

Gendered profiling of mankowicze went hand in hand with an investigation of their psychology. Research on the emotional costs of working in the trade sector, which began in the 1960s, developed on an unprecedented scale. The research extensively discussed the impact of the material liability principle on saleswomen’s behavior. Occupational psychologists warned that shop assistants’ work was extremely stressful. According to a  1975 study, nearly 60 percent of the trade employees manifested some symptoms of neurosis; of these cases, more than 40 percent acquired such symptoms while on the job.31 A  psychologist who identified neurosis among saleswomen claimed that “the most notable reason for mental disorder among the neurotic salespersons seems to be their inability to achieve a sense of security in the work environment.”32 That feeling of insecurity, psychologists concluded, resulted largely from shifting the risk of trading operations to rank-and-file sales personnel. Close to 40 percent of the mankowicze suffered from the fear of being repeatedly blamed for shortages; they felt mistreated and shamed.33 Other saleswomen were afraid that they would be forced to account for a loss that was not their fault.34 From the perspective of the management, the existing system of property protection had its benefits. It disciplined the workers and served to stave off absenteeism. Arguably, the principle of material liability prompted saleswomen to “show up at work even when on sick leave, so much did they fear a shortfall would be discovered.”35 However, some saleswomen, especially those from rural and more traditional communities, found their work advantageous. Shop assistant work was a cleaner and less monotonous alternative to, say, assembling parts at a factory, despite lower salaries and a lack of social benefits that industrial workers enjoyed. Interviewees from the Płock province noted that “clean work,” “a decent workload,” and “perfect suitability for women” were all positive features of the job. Among the disadvantages, they mentioned the factors that had haunted trade personnel since 1959: “professional responsibility” and a “risk of going to jail.” One person admitted that “when having access to cash, it is easy to generate manko without even wanting to.” 31

 Data comes from research on employees of the Central Department Stores conducted in 1968–1969 by a group of psychiatrists and sociologists under the leadership of Dr. Leder. See Elżbieta Paszkiewicz, “Wpływ sytuacji zawodowej pracowników handlu na powstawanie i rozwój nerwic” [The impact of trade workers’ professional situation on the formation and development of neuroses], in Koźmiński and Sarapata, Socjologia handlu, 332–47. 32  Mikuła, “Z badań nad psychiczną uciążliwością pracy w handlu,” 69. 33  Niedzielska, “Społeczne koszty systemu,” 60–61. 34  Aleksy Wakar, ed., Teoria handlu socjalistycznego [The theory of socialist trade] (Warsaw: Państwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe, 1966), 196. 35  Zapałowski, Odpowiedzialność materialna pracowników, 87.

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 131

2020.05.12. 19:27:49

132

Małgorzata Mazurek

Another said that shop clerks’ “obligations are plenty and reputation is bad: you often hear that saleswomen steal.”36 Shame was the emotion that strongly determined clerks’ behavior. Almost two thirds of Delikatesy saleswomen in Warsaw confessed that even though they had a long daily commute, they did not want to work closer to home. They seemingly felt ashamed to work in their neighborhood and anxious that their neighbors would expect perks while shopping.37 A seventeen-year-old girl, straight out of trade school, revealed: “I am ashamed to admit to working in the trade sector. I am a member of a sports club. My girlfriends from the club stopped talking to me when they learned I  was a  clerk. They were convinced that we [the saleswomen] are all crooks.” Other saleswomen claimed that they were treated “as the worst sort of human beings.”38

At the Expense of the Customer By the end of the 1960s, it became evident that the unintended consequences of the material liability bill introduced in 1959 affected not only saleswomen, but also customers. Abuses against consumers were perhaps the most basic way of managing the bill’s consequences. Trade administration was also complicit in this process, and there was a silent permissiveness towards cheating at the expense of the consumer. “Since you are liable [for the losses of the shop], do protect the merchandise. But even if you fail to do so, you will get by; after all, you work in trade,” went the general assumption in the trade sector.39 To “get by,” in this case, meant stripping the customers of small amounts through the sale of underweighted, under-measured or incorrectly priced products. It was increasingly plain that most salespersons could not actually do their jobs without small acts of theft (or overcharging at the customer’s expense) to cover for manko. In 1961, a research team led by Michał Kalecki estimated that as much as 81.4 percent of the 194 transactions they

36

 Adam Sarapata, “Pozycja społeczna zawodów handlowych we współczesnym społeczeństwie polskim” [The social position of trade professions in contemporary Polish society], in Koźmiński and Sarapata, Socjologia handlu, 412. 37  Kwiatkowski, “Sylwetki zawodowe sprzedawców,” 230. See also Błażej Brzostek, Za progiem: Codzienność w przestrzeni publicznej Warszawy lat 1955–1970 [On the doorstep: Everyday life in the public spaces of Warsaw in the years 1955–1970] (Warsaw: Wydawnictwo Trio, 2007), 347. 38  Kwiatkowski, “Sylwetki zawodowe sprzedawców.” 39  Zapałowski, Odpowiedzialność materialna pracowników, 91.

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 132

2020.05.12. 19:27:50

Dishonest Saleswomen

133

analyzed were fraudulent.40 In the Białystok region, 73.6 percent of the shop employees preferred to work during the shop’s peak hours, when most of the cheating took place.41 Waiting lines and crowds in the store provided conditions favorable to trickery and played to some extent into the clerk’s hands. Saleswomen, for their part, immediately rationalized these offences. They assured themselves that small losses were insignificant for the customer, while the clerk must get by. Disruptions in customer service became another unintended consequence of the peculiar anti-manko system. Because of the legal and organizational measures, stocktaking and long delivery stoppages became everyday plagues of commercial establishments, as did longer waiting lines.42 The Institute for Internal Trade and Services’ research on work efficiency demonstrated that sales personnel spent more than half of the time assigned to customer service on monitoring the shopping space.43 Saleswomen, afraid that customers would steal the merchandise, devoted a substantial amount of time to guarding it. For example, it was quite difficult to persuade them to move to the busiest department, even if customers perceived this organizational inflexibility as absurd. However, from the saleswoman’s perspective, it made sense: abandoning the department for which she was materially liable might lead to losses from theft, to be covered from her own pocket. The principle of material liability hindered the modernization of sales techniques like self-service and pre-selection. Since there were no funds to invest in anti-theft equipment, attendants and cashiers had to play that role. Instead of attending to the customer, the attendants focused on surveillance, with the help of special mirrors and monitoring desks.44 Self-service stores 40

 Marecki, “Przestępczość gospodarcza,” 57–72.  According to the opinions of surveillance and control personnel in the cooperative trade sector (61 percent of answers), seasonal sales hikes were one of the main reasons, or perhaps propitious circumstances, of misuses. Wacław Jakubowski and Henryk Bronakowski, “Socjologiczne aspekty niedoborów (mank) w spółdzielczej sieci handlu detalicznego woj. białostockiego” [Sociological aspects of cash shortages (manko) in the cooperative retail trade network of the Białystok province], Roczniki Spółdzielczego Instytutu Badawczego 4 (1965): 105. 42  Roman Peretiatkowicz, Zakupy w Warszawie [Shopping in Warsaw] (Warsaw: Ośrodek Badania Opinii Publicznej przy Polskim Radiu i TV, 1962), 8; Anna Wysocka, “Z rachunku matematycznego wynika: obecny system remanentów nie opłaca się ani sklepom, ani przemysłowi, ani klientom” [The mathematical calculus shows: The current remnent system is not profitable for stores, industry, or customers], Express Wieczorny, March 17, 1965. 43  Zapałowski, Odpowiedzialność materialna pracowników, 85. 44  Rudolf Gruszka, “Obroty, zarobki personelu i problem mank w sklepach samoobsługowych” [Turnover, staff earnings, and the manko problem in self-service stores], Społem 23 (1958): 8. On self-service in Warsaw stores in the 1960s, see Brzostek, Za progiem, 350–56. 41

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 133

2020.05.12. 19:27:50

134

Małgorzata Mazurek

would ration shopping baskets, since it was easier to keep an eye on a small number of customers. Queuing for a basket soon became a daily occurrence: consumers would waste time waiting outside the shop, while a few customers would be allowed inside.45 This practice was so common that many stopped questioning this bizarre organization. As one Ministry of Trade expert recalled: “a couple of years earlier customers would loudly protest about hiding baskets in the rear of the store. After all, self-service was introduced to deal with queues. . . . Now queuing buyers have stopped protesting. They have become accustomed to the situation.”46 With personnel occupied by surveillance rather than service, the self-service shops turned into a sort of panopticon.47 Reform-minded experts were disappointed with shop clerks’ indifference toward proper modern customer service. Research by a  group of scholars from the Central School of Planning and Statistics demonstrated that relations with the customer were not something shop clerks actually cared about much, if at all. One researcher wrote with sarcasm that “the shop assistants wished the customers would put their heads down and finally stop ‘disrupting’ their work.”48 As many as 62 percent of clerks declared an openly indifferent attitude toward the customer, whereas 15.6 percent admitted some form of resentment, according to the study.49 After all, the consumer, who was deprived of any choice between shops and products, would buy anyway. Asked about the main objectives of commercial operations, Warsaw saleswomen pointed to technical and economic aspects: “customer supply in general (78 percent),” “expansion of the product range (51 percent),” and “execution of the turnover plan (50 percent).” Much lower than all of these was

45

 This phenomenon was noted by the British economist John R. Turcan who, on visiting Poland in 1975, was amazed to discover that long queues in front of urban department stores had nothing to do with goods shortages, but rather with a peculiar organization of work that was geared towards reducing the number of customers in the shopping space. See Turcan, “Some Observations,” 128–36. 46  Zapałowski, Odpowiedzialność materialna pracownikow, 83–84. 47  Ibid., 18; Jan Kania, “Wzorce zachowania się sprzedawców wobec nabywców” [Patterns of behavior of sellers toward buyers], in Koźmiński and Sarapata, Socjologia handlu, 155. 48  Marek B. Kamiński and Andrzej K. Koźmiński, “Związki pomiędzy elementami procesu kształtowania się postaw pracowniczych” [Structure of forming employee attitudes], in Integracja sprzedawców sklepowych: Wyniki badań nad postawami pracowniczymi w handlu warszawskim [Integration of shop assistants: Research results on employee attitudes in the Warsaw trade], ed. Jerzy Kurnal (Warsaw: Towarzystwo Naukowe Organizacji i Kierownictwa, 1965), 149. 49  Jan Kania, “Kwalifikacje sprzedawców a  poziom usługi” [Qualifications of salespeople and the quality of service], in Koźmiński and Sarapata, Socjologia handlu, 256.

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 134

2020.05.12. 19:27:50

Dishonest Saleswomen

135

“customer service satisfaction,” at 30 percent.50 If the attempts to modernize trade seemed to be failing, the culture of trade, and relations between saleswomen and customers, were to deteriorate even further.

The “Dictatorship of the Saleswomen” in the Years of Crisis (mid-1970s–1980s) With the economic slump that dragged on in East Central Europe from the mid-1970s into the late 1980s, saleswomen came to be blamed for the arbitrary way in which they distributed scarce goods. Their discretionary power over customers became a  new matter of public concern and an object of moralizing discourse. With the economic crisis, hiding products under the counter and favoritism became the most contentious forms of misuse. These practices expanded to alarming proportions in the summer of 1981, when the stalemate between the party and the oppositional Solidarity movement aggravated the economic meltdown. Saleswomen’ public image worsened even further, and shops became a central stage of distributive conflict. Once the very availability of commodities became a chronic problem, under-thecounter sales turned into an attractive form of exchange. Favoring some customers at the expense of others met with a vicious reaction, and favoritism during shop transactions came to be perceived in moral terms, as the principal manifestation of the saleswomen’ dishonesty and undue entitlement.51 In the Solidarity era (August 1980–December 1981), which marked the rise of mass opposition and the independent trade unionist movement, consumers began to organize. Most of all, they began to counter what they perceived as the arbitrary power of dishonest saleswomen. Queue committees popped up across the country to tame the “dictatorship of the saleswomen” (dyktatura ekspedientek). They often organized with the support of inde50

 Marek B. Kamiński and Andrzej K. Koźmiński, “Postawy pracownicze” [Employees’ attitudes], in Kurnal, Integracja sprzedawców sklepowych, 129. 51  The sale of products under the counter, or keeping merchandise away from customers’ reach, existed throughout the entire communist period in Poland. According to official estimates, misuses of this kind were recorded in 31.1 percent of investigated establishments; the real number was probably higher. Informacja o wynikach kontroli wykonania postanowień decyzji nr 127/75 Prezydium Rządu z dnia 8.10.1975 r. w sprawie zwalczania nielegalnego obrotu produktami rolnymi, 31.07.1976 [Information about the result of the audit concerning the implementation of Decision no. 127/75 of the Presidium of the Government of October 8, 1975 on combating illicit trafficking in agricultural products, July 31, 1976], AAN, Państwowa Inspekcja Handlowa, Sprawozdania zbiorcze akcji kontrolnych w 1976 r., record no. 1/15.

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 135

2020.05.12. 19:27:50

136

Małgorzata Mazurek

pendent Solidarity trade unions.52 The queue committees oversaw order in waiting lines and appointed queue leaders, who represented the queuing crowd in their relations with trade personnel. Their goal was not only to discipline those assembled in front of the store, but also to control the work of shop assistants. Sometimes the consumers—thanks to their organization and determination—took power hitherto reserved for the saleswomen by deciding on a store’s opening hours, or mediating conflicts between regular and privileged customers (pregnant women, war veterans, and people with physical disabilities). Queue committees also attempted to make the shopping experience more transparent: for instance, they demanded that trade workers make public all paperwork related to turnover and deliveries. 53 Characteristically, these consumer-citizen assemblies were often resentful and stigmatizing towards saleswomen. By reflecting mistrust toward them as the holders of goods, the customers propagated the belief that shortages were exacerbated by the incompetence of the trade apparatus and perceived ill will. The assumptions about saleswomen’s propensity for misuse, favoritism, and murky dealings were not novel, but in 1981, as the supply crisis escalated, hostility and aggression toward them peaked, essentially resulting in a witch hunt.54 In Katowice, a customer irritated with the rationing of butter threw a lump of it at the cashier. In Bytom, a queuing customer used tear gas to threaten the personnel. In another shop in Bytom, a shop manager tried to establish some order in a queue of around 400 people waiting for butter. The local newspaper reported about “an im Sekretariat Krajowej Komisji Porozumiewawczej NSZZ “Solidarność,” Uchwała Krajowej Komisji Porozumiewawczej o powołaniu Związkowych Komisji Kontroli Społecznej, 12.08.1981r. [Secretariat of the National Coordination Commission of NSZZ “Solidarność,” Resolution of the National Coordinating Commission on the establishment of the Union Social Control Commission, August 12, 1981], Ośrodek “Karta,” Archiwum Opozycji Collection, record no. A/8C.5, folio 24; “Powołanie związkowych Komisji Kontroli Społecznej w Regionie Świętokrzyskim” [The establishment of the Social Control Commission in the Świętokrzyskie region], AS: Biuletyn pism związkowych i zakładowych, no. 31 (1981): 205. 53  Magdalena Smoczyńska, “Jak znieść stan wyjątkowy w handlu” [How to abolish the state of emergency in trade], Gazeta Krakowska, May 11, 1981, reprinted in Gazeta Handlowa, May 24, 1981, 7; for a more detailed description of the queue committees that formed during the Solidarity era, see, for instance, Jan Maślanko, “Prosto z kolejki” [Straight from the queue], Gazeta Handlowa, January 4–11, 1981, 5; R. K., “Wykup” [The buyout], Gazeta Handlowa, September 27, 1981, 1; Teresa Nałęcz-Jawecka, “Jednak można coś wymyślić i zrobić” [Indeed, one can be inventive and active], Gazeta Handlowa, October 4, 1981, 3. 54  “Czym żyją w Nysie” [What they are concerned with in Nysa], Tygodniówka WPHW Opole “Solidarność,” September 7, 1981; “Apel do społeczeństwa—klientów sklepów” [An appeal to the public—the customers], ibid., Ośrodek “Karta,” Archiwum Opozycji Collection. 52

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 136

2020.05.12. 19:27:50

Dishonest Saleswomen

137

pulsive old man” who, irritated with the shop manager’s intervention, “led a group of other men to assault her and the saleswoman.” The two women were beaten and kicked to the ground. To add insult to injury, the police were completely passive and refused to intervene in the shop brawls, playing down the importance of the events as “none of their business.”55 The incidents clearly demonstrated that saleswomen, as an occupational group, were rather isolated. Both the police and, more importantly, the regime-affiliated unions representing trade workers failed to defend them and remained passive.56 The regime-affiliated union was more interested in disciplining clerks than creating policies to protect them.57 In two appeals addressed to the trade sector workers, the unions called for “keeping calm, restraining emotions, and carrying on with work.”58 They reminded trade workers to keep calm and polite toward customers and appealed to the latter that “shop assistants’ work was political work.”59 These appeals, however, fell on deaf ears. The regime-affiliated unions had neither political legitimacy, nor control over the economic situation that would help improve the relationship between sellers and buyers. The independent Solidarity unions, by contrast, were more proactive. Solidarity intervened in relations between saleswomen and consumers, ar-

55

 Ibid.  See, e.g., Związek Zawodowy Pracowników Handlu i Spółdzielczości w Polsce, Materiały z IV Krajowego Zjazdu Delegatów ZZPHiS, Warsaw, 19.04.1970 [Materials from the Fourth National Congress of Delegates of the Polish Workers’ Union, Warsaw, April 19, 1970] (Warsaw: ZW CRS, 1971); Związek Zawodowy Pracowników Handlu i Spółdzielczości w Polsce, Materiały z V Krajowego Zjazdu Delegatów ZZPHiS, Warsaw 18–19.10.1972 [Materials from the Fifth National Congress of ZZPHiS Delegates, Warsaw, October 18–19, 1972] (Warsaw: ZW CRS 1973); Związek Zawodowy Pracowników Handlu i Spółdzielczości, Uchwała Prezydium Zarządu Głównego ZZPHiS z dnia 15.X.1973 w sprawie umacniania działalności związku wśród kobiet i na rzecz kobiet zatrudnionych w handlu i spółdzielczości [Resolution of the Presidium of the General Board of ZZPHiS of November 15, 1973, on strengthening the union’s activity among women and for women employed in trade and cooperatives] (Warsaw: Instytut Wydawniczy CRZZ, 1973), for internal use. 57  Concept coined by Winicjusz Narojek, see his “‘Socjologia kolejki’ i ‘socjologia targowiska’” [Sociology of the “waiting line” and “the market”], in Powroty i kontynuacje: Zygmuntowi Baumanowi w darze [Returns and continuations: A gift to Zygmunt Bauman], ed. Elżbieta Tarkowska (Warsaw: IFiS PAN, 1995), 42–53. 58  “Apel prezydium Zarządu Głównego Niezależnego Związku Zawodowego Pracowników Handlu i Spółdzielczości obradujące w dniu 26.03.1981 r.” [Appeal of the Presidium of the Main Board of the Independent Trade Union of Trade Workers and Cooperatives held on March 26, 1981], Gazeta Handlowa, April 5, 1981, 4. 59  “List otwarty Rady i Zarządu ‘Społem’ CZSS do pracowników spółdzielczości spożywców” [An open letter from the Council and the Management Board of “Społem” CZSS to employees of the cooperatives], Gazeta Handlowa, July 26–August 2, 1981, 2. 56

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 137

2020.05.12. 19:27:50

138

Małgorzata Mazurek

guing that the stigmatization of trade sector employees was the regime’s fault. Solidarity also recognized the shaming and blaming mechanism that caused the saleswomen’s predicament. Solidarity claimed that the partystate officials had long allowed for the scapegoating of saleswomen, and by doing so, shifted the responsibility for the regime’s failure to provide consumer goods onto them. The official discourse about “incompetence of the trade workers” was, according to Solidarity members in Opole, an example of “fake propaganda.” “We call upon our customers, members of our Union and all inhabitants: do not believe those who want to divide us. We are not the swindlers! The swindlers are those responsible for this state of misery.”60 Solidarity unions’ appeals were also gendered, as they portrayed saleswomen as defenseless women.61 This was partly an accurate description. Even though the majority of saleswomen joined the new independent unions, many felt they did not belong to Solidarity’s civic community. Accordingly, its leaders reminded the public that almost all salespersons were Solidarity members. “We hope nobody will succeed in driving the shop counter through our Union,” went the appeal.62 The shop counter metaphor served as a reminder of social divisions seemingly stronger than the oppositional spirit against the regime. In the late fall of 1981, despite Solidarity’s support, the situation in front of the shops had clearly gotten out of control. From time to time, militia or Solidarity activists were called to intervene and mediate between angry customers and the shop personnel. Terrified saleswomen complained that “the police arrived immediately when customers called, but came late, if at all, when the shop was asking for help.”63 For the first and only time during the Solidarity strikes, the saleswomen, unable to cope with the increasing pressure of the queue committees and punishing legal regulations, decided to go on strike.

60

 “Apel do społeczeństwa—klientów sklepów” [An appeal to the public—the customers]. Appeals with the same content were also released in other parts of Poland. See “Apel pracowników WPHW w Ostrowcu Świętokrzyskim do Społeczeństwa i klientów sklepów” [Appeal of WPHW employees in Ostrowiec Świętokrzyski to the public and customers], AS: Biuletyn pism związkowych i zakładowych, September 17–25, 1981, 211. 61  “Trochę życzliwości dla ludzi zza lady: Apel NSZZ Pracowników Społem do społeczeństwa” [A bit of kindness for people behind the counter: The NSZZ Społem employees’ appeal to society], Gazeta Handlowa, November 29, 1981: 2; Andrzej Pytel, “Zabić wróbla?” [Kill the sparrow?], Sprzężenie: Biuletyn Komisji Zakładowej NSZZ “Solidarność” Stołecznego Przedsiębiorstwa Handlu Wewnętrznego i Usług no. 15 (1981), special issue: 1. 62  “Apel do społeczeństwa—klientów sklepów.” 63  Tadeusz M. Kozłowski, “Strach, gorycz i gniew: Po gotowości strajkowej w SPHW” [Fear, bitterness and anger: After the strike alert in the Metropolitan Enterprise of Internal Trade] Gazeta Handlowa, December 6, 1981, 1.

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 138

2020.05.12. 19:27:50

Dishonest Saleswomen

139

The impulse to announce a strike alert came in the aftermath of an article, published in November 1981 in the regime’s newspaper Głos Pracy, which accused one shop team of distributing scarce goods among themselves.64 In communist Poland such articles appeared quite often, but this time the party’s accusation was the last straw. The next day 150 clerks, outraged by the “slanderous article” and the “propaganda targeting the trade sector and its employees for years,” declared a strike alert. The initiative was led by the Solidarity local cell and received rather reluctant support from Solidarity’s regional leadership. Striking saleswomen pointed to the dramatic supply situation, writing banners like “Where is the merchandise? We want to sell!” Other banners were more explicit: a poster proclaiming “Clerks are being hanged” showed trenchantly that the salespersons understood themselves as the main scapegoats of the supply crisis.65 The strike demands from November 1981 demonstrated that saleswomen’s concerns were met with miscomprehension and indifference: the public simply shrugged their shoulders. However, thanks to Solidarity, which created an alternative public sphere to that controlled by the party-state, saleswomen could finally present themselves as victims of stigmatization. “Enough is enough!” they exclaimed. “It is high time society acknowledged that blaming us for the market situation turns public attention away from those really responsible and leads to discord between our employees and the customers. We want to sell in conditions in which shopping does not entail danger of injury or death, cases that have actually occurred.”66 These words referred to the entire period of stigmatizing trade workers: “We assert that in the postwar history of our country, we were the targets of constant attacks from the mass media. We were found guilty for goods shortages, for the existence of queues, and product deficiencies,” the strikers argued.67 The specific postulates of the striking saleswomen were somewhat technical; nonetheless, they led to political outcomes. The Strike Committee 64

 “Sprzedawano w suterenie tylko dla pracowników” [Sold in the basement only to employees], Głos Pracy, November 18, 1981, 1; “Tylko dla pracowników: Śladem naszych publikacji” [Only for employees: Following our publications], Głos Pracy, November 19, 1981, 1, 2. 65  Kozłowski, “Strach, gorycz i gniew,” 1. 66  “Komunikat z 19.11.1981” [Message from November 19, 1981], Sprzężenie, November 21, 1981, special issue, 4. During the strike alert, the trade union MKS received telexes from all over Poland about scandals in commercial establishments, whose victims were saleswomen. On November 19, a  telex from Toruń reached Warsaw strikers, reporting that one of the local saleswomen had died of a heart attack in the aftermath of a brawl with the customers. See “Telex KZ NSZZ ‘Solidarność’ Toruń,” Sprzężenie, November 19–20, 1981, special issue, 2. 67  “Komunikat z 19.11.1981,” 4.

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 139

2020.05.12. 19:27:50

140

Małgorzata Mazurek

demanded security and the removal of the most punishing legal and informal measures that hindered shop assistants’ work. Further, it called for security at work and for the establishment of a militia to help sales staff monitor the property under their custody. Saleswomen also addressed the problem of the disorganized rationing system. Finally, they called for the elimination of queue committees. The shop personnel perceive the queue committees negatively, not least because consumers had successfully took control over the sale of goods, effectively extending their working hours. Most of all, the queue committees met with saleswomen’s resistance because they reinforced saleswomen’s negative image, whether intentionally or not.68 It took shop assistants more than twenty years after the harmful anti-manko legislation was introduced in 1959 to articulate their concerns, while it took the Solidarity revolution to create a political discourse about saleswomen’s blaming and shaming. For the first time since the creation of the state-socialist trade, the saleswomen created this discourse themselves.

Conclusion: The Vicious Circle of Stigmatization The strike alert of the trade workers lasted for under a week, and finished three weeks before the introduction of martial law in December 1981.69 Talks with the authorities concluded in line with the clerks’ demands: the trade administration pledged to harmonize and clarify the organization of sales, and the police finally committed to greater involvement in securing order in the shops. This was, however, a pyrrhic victory. Although the introduction of martial law by first secretary Wojciech Jaruzelski contributed, in an awkward way, to satisfying some of the saleswomen’s demands more quickly, the supply crisis and economic misery lingered on. Moreover, Jaruzelski’s regime curtailed freedom of assembly, which meant that the queue committees—the symbol of citizen-consumers’ power—were now forbidden. The end of Solidarity’s legal status also meant the end of saleswomen’ collective bargaining power. Their work life returned to the old routine. Once again unhappy and frustrated, they managed the shortage economy

68

 Kozłowski, “Strach, gorycz i gniew,” 4.  “Protokół uzgodnień spisany w dniu 24.11.1981 r. w budynku Stołecznego Przedsiębiorstwa Handlu Wewnętrznego przy ul. Widok 5/7/9 pomiędzy grupą delegowaną przez Międzyzakładowy Komitet Strajkowy a grupą przedstawicieli władz w składzie” [Report about the settlement from November 24, 1981, Warsaw’s Trade Enterprise building at Widok street 5/7/9, between the delegated group of the Inter-Enterprise Strike Committee and a group of government representatives], Gazeta Handlowa, December 6, 1981.

69

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 140

2020.05.12. 19:27:50

Dishonest Saleswomen

141

from behind the counter, while consumers either sought their favor or— with less luck—protested against favoritism. In the 1980s, the enthusiasm for consumer self-organization dissipated in the crises of everyday life, while the saleswomen came closer than ever to resembling their vilified image. In terms of trade organization, the principle of material liability for goods under custody was not abolished, and behavior patterns had not changed. Instead of losses, shops would generate debt that was paid off by the employees (or from customers’ pockets) and not by the enterprise. The history of saleswomen in state-socialist trade can be best understood as a vicious circle. Trade sector workers found themselves occupying a vulnerable position between consumers and the party-state decision-makers and administration. Under communism, shop assistants were expected to represent the socialist economy and modern trade culture. At the same time, however, key decisions regarding the system of distribution and consumption, such as the amount and quality of goods, were beyond their control. Nevertheless, as holders of goods, they were endowed with discretionary power over customers, a  fact which only exasperated the social anger against them and magnified suspicions of dishonesty. Shop clerks, first as private smallholders and later as a feminized workforce paid by the state, were an easy target of public criticism. During Stalinism they were perceived as a relic of capitalist property relations, a symbol of petit-bourgeois demoralization and parasitism at the expense of the working class. From the mid-1950s on, the saleswomen’s image was one of unqualified shop personnel, indifferent towards customer needs and prone to corruption. The saleswomen acted as messengers of bad news. Their “not available” uttered from behind the counter was confronted by public anxiety and frustration. As the last link in the chain of distribution, they absorbed all the deficiencies and misuses created along the way in the system of stateled socialist trade. Eventually, all goods and cash shortages were offset at the expense of the consumer. This, in turn, generated social anger. Saleswomen were actors within a wasteful system, full of loopholes and leakages, which consequently gave rise to the gray sector, which was quite expensive to maintain from the viewpoint of economic rationality and social costs. At the same time, they were abandoned to work in poor conditions, without the attractive social and material benefits that some other—predominantly male—occupational groups like miners or steel workers enjoyed to a much larger extent. In the post-Stalinist era, political authorities and trade administrators shifted the responsibility for the gray economy, and the temptation to engage in informal distribution of goods, to shop assistants. The alleged dishonesty of sales personnel was framed in gendered discourse, in which

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 141

2020.05.12. 19:27:50

142

Małgorzata Mazurek

women, who dominated trade and service industries, were portrayed as susceptible to petty crime. Meanwhile, the management of commercial establishments tolerated dishonesty toward consumers, as it helped cover up for any cash shortages or manko. As far as consumers were concerned, the attribute of dishonesty hindered any efforts at self-organization in order to effectively control the distribution of products. Furthermore, it seems that social perceptions of saleswomen as fraudulent masked the complicity of many consumers in the gray sector. The queue committee acted in the name of the unprivileged, in the interest of those who lacked connections or hard cash. Yet in reality, hiding products under the counter did in fact involve “both sides of the counter.” It required both saleswomen and their favored clientele to involve themselves in transactions that were unfair with respect to other consumers.70 The saleswomen, therefore, were more than just a target of shaming and blaming: they were also a group onto which consumers projected anger, which covered the organizational neglect of the entire trade sector and their own personal complicity. This circular process of blaming the saleswomen revealed the weakness of social actors and institutions, as well as the dysfunctionality of service labor under state socialism. The history of the dishonesty stigma in the context of everyday shopping in communist Poland is one of how the atmosphere around the shortage phenomena translated into legal and social institutions: the material ­liability bill of 1959 and the queue committee. The public mood of mistrust towards the holders of goods was amenable to symbolic, social, and juridical codification. State propaganda, the media, and expert discourse all shaped the language of stigmatization. The institutionalization of mistrust towards shop clerks encompassed everyone, from party-state officials, ­social scientists, and journalists to ordinary shoppers in queues. These groups generated public knowledge about the notoriety of the “women behind the counter.” But the rationale behind it—the causes and effects of the entire system of state property protection—remained obscure. As this chapter has shown, the principle of material liability was a  convenient way to protect the finances of commercial establishments, while expanding the possibilities of misuse at the customer’s expense. During late communism, the institution of the queue committees only confirmed the negative image of the saleswomen, advancing it to the level of popular unrest. All in all, the punitive labor regime and consumers’ self-organization augmented the experience of mistrust among thousands of women who worked as shop assistants in communist Poland. But systemic arguments  Alena Ledeneva, Russia’s Economy of Favours: Blat, Networking and Informal Exchange (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998).

70

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 142

2020.05.12. 19:27:50

Dishonest Saleswomen

143

did not sell well in the crisis years, as the saleswomen evoked social anger and were hardly acceptable as members of the anti-regime citizenry. Even though shop clerks were finally able to voice their concerns in terms of group interest, the shop “counter” set them apart from other Solidarity members and society at large. As the 1981 saleswomen’s protest demonstrated, even when tamed and balanced by informal transactions, divisions between the holders of goods and their clients excluded political solidarity. Saleswomen protested against both consumers’ vigilance and against the juridical regime that protected state property rather than consumers. Put together, the manko system and the empty shelves created a distinctly hostile work environment. The chaotic atmosphere of queuing and bickering, prone to petty misuse, also contributed its share. Under communism, thousands of women who became shop assistants gained some financial independence, access to scarce goods, and were even empowered vis-à-vis other citizens. But they had to pay a high personal price: the stigma of dishonesty.

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 143

2020.05.12. 19:27:50

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 144

2020.05.12. 19:27:50

Labor Discipline in Self-Managed Socialism: The Yugoslav Automotive Industry, 1965–1985 Ulrike Schult

Introduction From the 1960s to the 1980s, the factory newspapers of two vehicle producers in Yugoslavia published caricatures showing industrial workers who engaged in agricultural work while on sick leave. A 1971 example from the Serbian factory Zavodi Crvena Zastava (Zastava) shows a  man working in a field, with features that identify him as a village dweller and an industrial worker at the same time.1 He is wearing overalls, a workers’ cap, and traditional peasant shoes called opanci. The readers of the factory newspaper could easily recognize him as a “peasant-worker.” Such cartoons could also be found in the newspaper at a Slovenian factory, in which a blue-collar worker went on sick leave to work in agriculture while his employer, a stateowned factory, was led to believe he was recovering from illness.2 The contract that workers signed with their employer obligated them to work for the factory. Yet for numerous reasons, workers sought to exercise control over their working time in spite of managerial objectives. These practices were treated as disciplinary violations. This article reflects on the struggle for control over working time between workers and management in socialist industrial production in Yugoslavia. Violations of factory discipline are a site of friction where these struggles become apparent. If workers exerted control over their working time in ways that the management saw as undesirable, we can assume that they possessed power that was not formally assigned to them. The aim in the first section of this chapter is to explain the workers’ motives for violations of work discipline. In a second section, the responses of the management and other bodies, such as the trade unions and the communist party  “Na odmoru si?” [Are you on holiday?], Crvena zastava, November 24, 1971.  “Pepe Volan vas opazuje” [Pepe Volan calls your attention], Skozi TAM, May 1963.

1 2

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 145

2020.05.12. 19:27:50

146

Ulrike Schult

(League of Communists of Yugoslavia), will be traced. The role of the ideological and organizational principle of workers’ self-management in managerial attempts to exert control over working time deserves special attention, since official Yugoslav ideology claimed to make labor relations more participatory. Yet the ways in which Yugoslav workers violated labor discipline, and the factors influencing these practices, resembled in many ways those in planned socialist economies and thus indicate more hierarchical relations. Practices of control and labor discipline in Yugoslav self-managed industrial enterprises have not yet been studied. However, Yugoslav industrial sociology between the 1960s and 1980s reflected on the hierarchical power relations exhibited in the penalization of disciplinary violations.3 Studying the struggle over controlling working time in a historiographical perspective advances our understanding of the social realities of Yugoslav self-management and its place among socialist and capitalist modes of industrial production. Two factories producing motor vehicles serve as case studies in this microhistorical analysis, which encompasses the period beginning with the Yugoslav economic reforms of the mid-1960s, and ending with the economic crisis of the early 1980s. The first example is the Zavodi Crvena Zastava (the Red Flag Works), in the central Serbian town of Kragujevac. Zastava was to become one of Yugoslavia’s biggest industrial conglomerates, employing more than 50,000 workers by the mid-1980s.4 It had developed out of the nucleus of Serbian industry, Prince Aleksandar Karađorđević’s cannon foundry established in 1853. The utility vehicle factory under the Zastava umbrella, the basis of my archival research, had 4,679 employees in 1989.5 The second example is the Tovarna avtomobilov in motorjev, or TAM (automobile and motor factory), situated in the northeastern Slovene city of Maribor, which industrialized after its connection to the Austrian railways in 1846. In 1941 the Nazi occupiers founded the factory to produce aircraft engines during World War II. In 1986, at its peak, TAM employed around  Veljko Rus, Odgovornost in moč v delovnih organizacijah [Responsibility and power in labor organizations] (Kranj: Moderna organizacija, 1972); Branislav Čukić, Apsentizam u radu i samoupravljanju [Absenteeism at work and in self-management] (Kragujevac: Svetlost, 1985). 4  Zastava danas [Zastava today] (Kragujevac: Zavodi “Crvena zastava,” 1986), 11. The figure of 50,000 refers to all factories and services belonging to the conglomerate across Yugoslavia. An estimated 30,000 worked at Kragujevac, distributed among various production sectors such as motor vehicle production, hunting and sports weapons, machine tools, and components for motor vehicle production. 5  Kamenko Sretenović, “V: Razvoj i proizvodnje privrednih i terenskih vozila” [V: development and production of utility and all-terrain vehicles], in Zastava u drugoj polovini XX veka [Zastava in the second half of the twentieth century], ed. Radoljub Micić et al. (Kragujevac: Uduženje “Kragujevac–naš grad,” 2013), 242. 3

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 146

2020.05.12. 19:27:50

Labor Discipline in Self-Managed Socialism

147

8,000 people. Archival sources from the enterprises, the socialist mass organizations, and the factory newspapers Crvena zastava and Skozi (ZIV) TAM served as the empirical base of this analysis. Both enterprises functioned according to the principles of self-management from 1950. This entailed an increasing level of decentralization and the installation of workers’ councils at the top of the company as well as in its subunits. In the official view, these principles were to humanize the industrial workplace, in contrast to both capitalist economies and centrally planned socialist economies. Yet the strategies workers used to exercise control over their working time resembled, in several ways, those which their colleagues applied, both in other state-socialist countries and in capitalist economies. The ideological claim to create democratic relations at the Yugoslav industrial workplace, however, made strictly hierarchical measures in sanctioning violations of labor discipline somewhat problematic. Violations of the factory rules manifested in different ways: workers arriving late, leaving early, or not coming to work at all. They spent their time at the factory in activities other than their job assignments such as sleeping, walking, driving around the company premises, playing football, gambling, working for private purposes using factory equipment, and trading in goods which they had brought into the factory. Theft, physical conflicts, and the consumption of alcohol were other violations of labor discipline which were reported in materials from the factories at Kragujevac and Maribor.

Explanations for Violations of Labor Discipline Contemporary actors and scholars explained violations of the factory rules in various ways, identifying three fields of explanations that were intertwined, often in an ambiguous manner: namely, adaptation to (changing) living and working conditions; insufficient control over the production process on the part of the management; and the refusal of workers to respect the time regime of industrial labor. VIOLATIONS OF LABOR DISCIPLINE AS STRATEGIES OF ADAPTATION TO URBANIZATION AND INDUSTRIALIZATION After World War II, Yugoslavia, like other countries in Southeastern Europe, underwent radical socioeconomic change toward an industrialized economy, processes that had been evolving at a slower pace since the midnineteenth century. The Soviet-style industrialization launched after 1945 met with heterogeneous socioeconomic, cultural, and historical conditions

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 147

2020.05.12. 19:27:50

148

Ulrike Schult

throughout Yugoslavia, but generally had to face a predominantly agrarian economy. While in some regions—chiefly the southeastern republics and provinces—industry had to be established from scratch, the northwestern parts of the country had a considerable industrial tradition. Slovenian industry began to develop during the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and so the socialist project came as a  second wave of industrialization. In line with Marxist ideology, capitalist relations between capital and labor were suspended by nationalizing industrial enterprises after 1945. In 1950, self-management was subsequently introduced in state-owned enterprises. Industrial employment, the urban population, and the standard of living all rose significantly, especially up to the 1960s. Much like other Southeast European states, significant internal migration, both over short and long distances, was a characteristic feature of the industrialization and urbanization process in Yugoslavia. As such, it was increasingly common for commuters to travel to the factory every day. Equally common were workers who kept close bonds with their villages of origin: the “peasant-workers.”6 As Marie-Janine Calic points out for the Yugoslav case, mixed family incomes from private-run small agriculture and industrial wages were common at the time. In 1951, about 14 percent of the workforce at Zastava in Kragujevac resided in surrounding villages, at a distance of between five to thirty kilometers.7 This percentage rose dramatically, once motor vehicle production started in Kragujevac in the mid-1950s and caused a highly dynamic rise in the workforce. The number of peasant-workers also rose in Slovenia: from a total of 47,000 in 1953, the number grew to 71,000 in 1957.8 In both Serbia and Slovenia, city populations in the 1960s and 1970s were predominantly made up of migrant populations. The share of migrants in Serbian cities remained constant, at 66.9 percent and 65.7 percent in 1961 and 1971, respectively. The Slovenian picture is marked by a lower, steadily

 Marie-Janine Calic, Geschichte Jugoslawiens im 20. Jahrhundert [History of Yugoslavia in the twentieth century] (Munich: C. H. Beck, 2010), 205–6; Dragoş Petrescu, “Workers and Peasant-Workers in a Working-Class ‘Paradise’: Patterns of Working-Class Protest in Communist Romania,” in Arbeiter im Staatssozialismus: Ideologischer Anspruch und soziale Wirklichkeit [Workers in state socialism: Ideological claim and social reality], ed. Peter Hübner, Christoph Klessman, and Klaus Tenefelde (Cologne, Weimar, Vienna: Böhlau, 2005); Eszter Bartha, Alienating Labour: Workers on the Road from Socialism to Capitalism in East Germany and Hungary (New York, Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2013), 50. 7  Miroslav D. Popović, Kragujevac i njegovo privredno područje: Prilog privrednoj i socijalnoj geografiji grada i okoline [Kragujevac and its economic district: A contribution to the economic and social geography of the city and its surroundings] (Belgrade: Srpska akademija nauka, 1956), 354. 8  Jasna Fischer, Žarko Lazarevič, and Jože Prinčič, The Economic History of Slovenia: 1750– 1991 (Vrhnika: Razum, 1999), 169.

6

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 148

2020.05.12. 19:27:50

Labor Discipline in Self-Managed Socialism

149

decreasing influx of rural population: in 1961 migrants accounted for 60.6 percent of the city population, while their share decreased to 55.7 percent in 1971.9 A 1970 survey of the TAM factory in Maribor shows that around 40 percent of the workforce lived more than six kilometers away from the factory,10 so one can assume that a considerable share of the workers may have been engaged in agricultural and factory work at the same time. Violations of labor discipline were particularly associated with peasantworkers. They were accused of lacking productivity, sleeping on night shifts after a working day in the fields, and taking false sick leave to do agricultural work.11 Contemporaries and scholars alike drew on adaptation processes to explain conflicts over the control of working time. The authorities and the factory management interpreted this adaptation as a symptom of the “cultural deficits” of the agrarian population vis-à-vis the ideal of the dedicated socialist worker. In the 1950s, state representatives even spoke of politically hostile acts.12 Starting with E. P. Thompson, who discussed the consequences of the transformation of English labor environments in the eighteenth century, scholars identified divergent time regimes in agrarian and industrial societies to explain farmers’ resistance to time regimes at the factory once they became industrial workers. The cyclical concepts of time dominating traditional agriculture on the one hand, and linear time concepts in industry on the other, were in conflict in this stage of transformation.13 In the Yugoslav case, this model was applied in sociological studies dealing with socialist urbanization and its consequences for villages by the 1960s.14 As farmers, the new workers were accustomed to seasonal changes and physical capabil9

 Miroljub Rančić, “Some Characteristics of the Population of Urban and Other Localities,” Yugoslav Survey 17, no. 2 (1976): 25. 10  Pokrajinski arhiv Maribor [Regional Archive of Maribor; hereafter SI-PAM], f. 0990, št. 631, “Poslovno poročilo TAM 1970” [Business report 1970], 32. 11  “Na odmoru si?”; “Pepe Volan vas opazuje.” 12  Ivana Dobrivojević, Selo i grad: Transformacija agrarnog društva Srbije 1945–1955 [Village and city: The transformation of Serbian agrarian society, 1945–1955] (Belgrade: Institut za savremenu istoriju, 2013), 228. 13  Edward P. Thompson, “Zeit, Arbeitsdisziplin und Industriekapitalismus” [Time, work discipline, and industrial capitalism], in Gesellschaft in der industriellen Revolution [Society during the industrial revolution], ed. Rudolf Braun et al. (Cologne: Kiepenheuer & Witsch, 1973). For the industrialization of Bulgarian agriculture, see Doroteja Dobreva, “Zeitrhythmen und Umgang mit Zeit im Arbeitsalltag des sozialistischen Dorfes: Das Beispiel eines Gebirgsdorfes in Bulgarien” [Time rhythms and use of time in everyday work in a socialist village: The example of a mountain village in Bulgaria], Etnologia Balkanica, no. 4 (2000): 67–89. 14  See, for example, Ruža First, “Adaptacija poljoprivredne radne snage na industriju” [Adaptation of the rural labor force to industry], Sociologija sela 5, no. 4 (1967): 61–66.

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 149

2020.05.12. 19:27:50

150

Ulrike Schult

ity restricting their autonomy in planning and executing agricultural work. After entering the factory, management-enforced rules and Taylorist production principles determined the rhythm of the working day, which constituted a loss of control over one’s working time. According to management calculations, norms were to be completed in intervals fixed by the rhythms of the machines involved in production. In her social history of interwar Serbia, Calic invokes rural underemployment and the low education levels of peasant-workers as factors hindering adaptation to labor regimes in Taylorist production environments.15 Since property sizes stayed small and mechanization of agriculture remained at low levels until the 1960s, these factors equally affected the socialist postwar industrialization.16 Besides these adaptation processes to the time regime of industrial labor, contemporaries criticized parallel employment in agriculture and the factory. Workers sleeping on night shifts or taking false sick leave were obstacles to regular production cycles. These practices were regarded as proof of the peasant-workers’ inability to adapt to industrial production processes and the prevailing urban lifestyles. As Nicole Münnich notes, accusing the migrant population of cultural deficits was an indicator of conflicts over scarce resources. The lack of adequate housing for the migrant labor force in the growing Yugoslav cities was probably the most intense conflict of that kind.17 Münnich’s analysis criticizes the contemporary and historiographical degrading of the migrant population as generally unable or unwilling to adapt to urban lifestyles. While she focuses on acts like “wild construction” of houses on the edges of Belgrade and on bringing agriculture to the city, workers’ strategies to divide their working time between industry and the agricultural economy were regarded as unwanted behavior. Both must instead be classified as evidence of the peasant-workers’ capacity to rationally adapt to changing living and working conditions, rather than backwardness or irrational resistance to change. How these strategies were reflected in conflicts over labor discipline will subsequently be discussed with regard to the shortcomings of housing and transportation infrastructure in the cities. In addition to posing obstacles to regular production, the adaptation strategies of a  large share of the new industrial workforce with close ties

 Marie-Janine Calic, Sozialgeschichte Serbiens 1815–1941: Der aufhaltsame Fortschritt während der Industrialisierung [Social history of Serbia 1815–1941: The detained progress during industrialization] (Munich: Oldenbourg, 1994), 307–14. 16  Calic, Geschichte Jugoslawiens, 207. 17  Nicole Münnich, Belgrad zwischen sozialistischem Herrschaftsanspruch und gesellschaftlichem Eigensinn: Die jugoslawische Hauptstadt als Entwurf und urbane Erfahrung [Belgrade between the socialist claim to power and the society’s Eigensinn: The Yugoslav capital as a design and urban experience] (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2013), 375–86. 15

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 150

2020.05.12. 19:27:51

Labor Discipline in Self-Managed Socialism

151

to the countryside did not fit into the ideological projection of the “New Man.”18 This idealized vision of disciplined, class conscious, and cultivated workers did not correspond to the social reality, which resulted in critiques from, and concern among, the authorities. When migrant workers and commuters relied on the incomes and social security resulting from their labor in industry, and simultaneously on the supplies and income from agricultural work, the party up to the 1960s and 1970s denounced these adaptation strategies as ways for peasant-workers to illegitimately benefit from their double status.19 According to this interpretation they were not only unreliable as industrial workers, but also consciously harming the community. Yet representatives of the party and mass organizations were aware that low wages and the need for subsistence agricultural work were often closely related. In a discussion over wage levels in Maribor in 1968, a trade union functionary indicated that companies at the town’s periphery gained competitive advantages due to the fact that workers were active in private agriculture.20 Knowing that workers there were not fully reliant on their industrial incomes, managers of these enterprises could afford to pay lower wages, while factories with predominantly urban-based workforces could not do so. The argument that workers were illegitimately taking advantage of their double status could also be turned against management making strategic use of this fact to decrease the costs of production. Another aspect of the transformation from a predominantly agrarian to an industrial society concerned the infrastructural conditions of migration. As in other rapidly industrializing societies of Southeastern Europe, until the 1970s Yugoslavia largely lacked adequate housing and transportation infrastructure for the influx of workers to the industrial centers,21 unevenly affecting the different social groups within the factories. Under Yugoslav self-management the companies were required to provide housing for their

 Josip B. Tito, Die Fabriken in Jugoslawien werden von Arbeitern verwaltet [The factories of Yugoslavia are being managed by the workers] (Belgrade: Jugoštampa, 1950), 38–39. 19  Dobrivojević, Selo i grad, 228–29. 20  SI-PAM, f. 1341, št. 18, “Zapisnik 2. redne—razširjene—seje komisije za gospodarstvo pri občinskem sindikalnem svetu Maribor” [Protocol of the 2nd regular—extended— meeting of the commission for economics at the municipal council of the Maribor trade union], May 27, 1968, pp. 9–10. 21  Petrescu, “Workers and Peasant-Workers”; Biljana Raeva, “Migracijata selo–grad i ‘seljanite-rabotnici’ v socialističeskija Dimitrovgrad” [Village to town migration and “peasant-workers” in socialist Dimitrovgrad], in Svetăt na bălgarina prez XX vek: Sbornik s dokladi ot nacionalnata naučna konferencija 9–10 Juni, Dimitrovgrad [The Bulgarian world in the twentieth century: Collection of papers from the national scientific conference, June 9–10, Dimitrovgrad], ed. Elena Georgieva and Nedjalka Todorova (Sofia: Paradigma, 2011). 18

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 151

2020.05.12. 19:27:51

152

Ulrike Schult

workers and to distribute it through the mechanisms of self-management. Due to recruiting strategies and power structures within the factories, migrant, young, and unskilled workers were underprivileged in this distribution. As a result, skilled laborers and white-collar personnel could benefit from housing financed by the monetary contributions of the whole workforce.22 By contrast, migrant, young, and unskilled workers typically had to use large shares of their incomes to rent rooms from private landlords or to build their own houses. Constructing these houses as well as commuting, if workers continued to live in rural areas, was time-consuming. In Zastava’s factory newspaper in the 1970s, blue-collar workers still complained about the financial and time-based pressures that came with building their family house.23 What was not mentioned in the public sphere created by the factory newspaper were the conflicts over working time connected to private house-building. Yet at Zastava, until the early 1980s, disciplinary cases occurred in which workers justified their absence from the workplace with the need to build their family house.24 Workers without housing in the industrial centers, who did not opt to build their own home in the cities, had to commute to the factories. While the transportation infrastructure in Maribor offered better conditions to commuting workers than that in Kragujevac, conflicts over working time evolved there as well, as documented at the factory newspaper Skozi TAM in 1972.25 Such conflicts could easily lead to the emergence of clichés about the unreliability of commuting workers and place them in the focus of factory disciplinary procedures.

22

 SI-PAM, f. 1341, št. 84, “Vprašalnik o stanovanjski problematiki: Delovna organizacija Tovarna avtomobilov in motorjev Maribor, 1970” [Questionnaire about the housing problem: Working organization of the automobile and motor factory, Maribor, 1970]; Eva Berković, Socijalne nejednakosti u Jugoslaviji [Social inequalities in Yugoslavia] (Belgrade: Ekonomika, 1986), 75. 23  R. Kostić, “Novi dom se podiže uz odricanja: Gradnja na placevima podeljenim prošle godine” [The new home is being built in the face of self-sacrifice: Construction on allocated plots last year], Crvena zastava, April 10, 1974. 24  Company archive of Zavodi Crvena zastava Utility cars [hereafter ZCZ-FPV], RS Tap., 1977, “Zapisnik sa I. sednice Radničkog saveta OOUR-a Tapacirnica” [Protocol of the first meeting of the workers’ council of the Upholstery Basic Organization of Associated Labor (BOAL)], March 24, 1977, 4. 25  Vlado Elvič, “Odgovor vodje delovne enote” [Answer from the manager of the work unit], Skozi TAM, December 15, 1972.

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 152

2020.05.12. 19:27:51

Labor Discipline in Self-Managed Socialism

153

VIOLATIONS OF LABOR DISCIPLINE AS ADAPTATION BEYOND INDUSTRIALIZATION AND URBANIZATION In his analysis of Soviet industry, Donald Filtzer has noted that the transition from an agricultural to an industrialized society does not sufficiently explain conflicts over labor discipline, since large-scale absenteeism continued in the 1970s and 1980s.26 Similarly, in Yugoslavia conflicts over false sick leave, poor use of working time, theft, and leaving early from work continued after the major wave of industrialization ended in the 1960s. Filtzer explains this as a result of working habits brought into industry by former peasants, hostility towards the political leadership, and workers’ political atomization. In Yugoslavia, macroeconomic and social development from the 1960s onwards facilitated conflicts over labor discipline. Industrial workforces continuously reacted to poor working and living conditions by earning extra income, even after the major wave of industrialization. Moreover, consumption opportunities had been promoted since the 1950s and Yugoslavs came to expect an ongoing rise in living standards. A 1965 economic reform partially opened the recently industrialized Yugoslavia to the world market, which resulted in demands for Yugoslav products. At the same time, foreign aid, and later Western credit, were making investment in industry and private consumption possible beyond the country’s economic abilities. Yugoslavia’s partial integration into world markets resulted in economic crises brought about by the two oil crises of 1973 and 1979. Uniquely among the state-socialist economies, from the 1960s onward Yugoslavia suffered from officially acknowledged mass unemployment. Having experienced intensive industrialization only just after World War II, Yugoslavia was severely affected by the worldwide industrial crisis. The promise of full employment in wage-labor would not be fulfilled. The indebtedness of the Yugoslav state reached dramatic levels in the 1980s, when the living standard of the population was significantly decreasing after a relatively short period of well-being unknown before the 1950s. As such, conflicts at Yugoslav industrial enterprises around labor discipline after the 1960s can be explained by adaption strategies of the workforce as well. Earning income to supplement one’s industrial wage or securing food from one’s own private crops were widespread. The need for extra income was caused by numerous factors, including the desire to participate

26

 Donald Filtzer, “Labor Discipline, the Use of Work Time, and the Decline of the Soviet System,” International Labor and Working-Class History, no. 50 (1996): 17.

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 153

2020.05.12. 19:27:51

154

Ulrike Schult

in consumer practices and the need to finance the construction of private housing, but also by wages insufficient to secure basic living conditions for a stratum of low-income blue-collar workers.27 Theft, the use of factory resources, and employees’ extensive use of discounts on factory products were reported at both TAM and Zastava. People obtained goods, tools, or services for private purposes, private business, or resale.28 Other evidence shows the wide variety of moonlighting jobs not involving factory property or services. While there are references to employees who moonlighted during or after regular working hours in Maribor which do not specify the occupation,29 in the sources from Kragujevac there is a range of evidence on sources of additional income, including performing music in pubs,30 selling goods brought into the factory from outside,31 and illegal taxi driving.32 These examples probably represent only a snippet of the opportunities for self-employed labor, besides wage-earning at the factory. Earning extra income, however, continuously caused conflicts over the control of working time. 27

 For the practice of moonlighting jobs in Zagreb during socialism, see Tihana Rubić, “Afternoon Moonlighting—It Was a Must: The Dynamics and Paradoxes of the Croatian Socialist and Post-Socialist Labor Market,” Narodna umjetnost 50, no. 1 (2013): 121–44. 28  Franc Kocman, “Dolgoprstneži ne miruju” [The pilferers are not resting], Skozi TAM, May 7, 1969; “Večje število kaznivih dejanj, manjša škoda” [Higher number of offenses, lower damage], Skozi TAM, September 21, 1984; B. R., “Otkrivena grupa kradljivaca svećica” [Group of thieves uncovered], Crvena zastava, July 1965; Ž. Glišović, “Beleška: Savest” [Note: Conscience], Crvena zastava, July 21, 1971; ZCZ-FPV, RS OOUR PV, 1984, “Zapisnik sa 7. sednice Radničkog saveta OOUR-a ‘Privredna vozila’” [Protocol of the seventh meeting of the workers’ council of the “Utility cars” BOAL], May 25, 1971, 16; “Ukinute povlastnice za kupovinu automobila” [Discounts for the purchase of automobiles cancelled], Crvena zastava, May 1965; SI-PAM, f. 0990, št. 710, “Sklepi 8. redne seje izvršilnega odbora Tovarne avtomobilov in motorjev Maribor” [Resolutions of the eighth meeting of the executive board of the automobile and motor factory], March 27, 1975, 2; Đ. Ostojić, “Iz naših odmarališta sa Ohrida i Brača: Pojedinci se nekorektno ponašaju” [From our holiday homes in Ohrid and Brač: Individuals are behaving incorrectly], Crvena zastava, September 8, 1971. 29  “Prosta sobota zaostrila probleme prevoza delavcev” [Saturdays off aggravated the problems of workers’ transportation], Skozi TAM, January 28, 1972; SI-PAM, f. 0990, št. 710, “Sklepi 35. redne seje izvršilnega odbora delavskega sveta delovne organizacije Tovarne avtomobilov in motorjev Maribor” [Records of the thirty-fifth meeting of the executive board of the workers’ council of the labor organization at the automobile and motor factory, Maribor], March 6, 1979, 2. 30  ZCZ-FPV, Disc., 1972, Rbr. 32/72, October 20, 1972. 31  ZCZ-FPV, Disc., 1978, Rbr. 173/78. 32  State Archive of Serbia, Đ-2, k. 453, “Pregled Predstavki i žalbi upućenih centralnom komitetu SK Srbije, njegovom organima i funkcionerima u junu 1982. god” [Overview of petitions and grievances handed in to the central committee of the League of Communists of Serbia, its organs, and functionaries in June 1982], Belgrade, August 1982, 11.

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 154

2020.05.12. 19:27:51

Labor Discipline in Self-Managed Socialism

155

With rising unemployment and the decrease of real wages in the late 1970s and early 1980s, seeking additional income became a consideration for many workers, not just those in the lower income groups. Unemployment rates in Yugoslavia between 1971 and 1980 rose from 3.3 percent to 8.4 percent.33 Due to the heterogeneous socioeconomic development of Yugoslavia, regions and towns were very unevenly affected by unemployment, as statistical data for Maribor and Kragujevac show. In 1971, Kragujevac had six times more unemployed inhabitants than Maribor. Ten years later there were fourteen times more unemployed in Kragujevac, while the population of Kragujevac municipality numbered several tens of thousands less than in Maribor.34 The need to support unemployed household members therefore put extra pressure on those who were employed, especially in regions with high unemployment rates. LIMITED MANAGERIAL CONTROL OVER WORKING CONDITIONS Regardless of the political system, labor discipline must also be regarded as an element of friction that points to the limits of management’s ability to control production. Considering organizations in capitalist economies, Heiner Minssen points out that in Taylorist industrial production exact time planning, a fixed quantity of sub-steps in production, and the surveillance of both, are all assumed. Standardized, formalized, and steady work processes, however, are a condition rarely met in labor environments. Lower predictability and steadiness of work processes results in wider autonomy experienced by workforces, and management’s greater dependence on cooperative arrangements with the workers.35 Such dynamics can be observed in the way violations of labor discipline were treated in socialist Yugoslavia and other state-socialist systems. At Maribor’s TAM factory in the mid-1960s, the central working council, the trade unions, and the factory/local newspapers discussed the interrelation between fears of social insecurity and shortcomings in the organization of work processes as the main reason for the low level of labor dis Christopher Prout, Market Socialism in Yugoslavia (Oxford: University Press, 1985), 225.  Data for 1971: Statistički godišnjak Jugoslavije 1976 [Statistical yearbook of Yugoslavia 1976] [hereafter: SGJ-YYYY] (Belgrade: Savezni zavod za Statistiku, 1976), 565; SGJ1972, 608; SGJ-1976, 563; data for 1981: SGJ-1984, 622; SGJ-1982, 695. 35  Heiner Minssen, “Kontrolle und Konsens: Anmerkungen zu einem vernachlässigten Thema der Industriesoziologie” [Control and consensus: Comments on a neglected topic of industrial sociology], Soziale Welt 41, no. 3 (1990): 368. 33 34

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 155

2020.05.12. 19:27:51

156

Ulrike Schult

cipline. In discussions at a TAM workers’ council meeting in 1966—a year of economic recession—foremen and heads of departments showed understanding for workers not doing their jobs properly, if managers could not ensure smooth-running production processes.36 Until the beginning of the 1970s, when supplies were lacking, workers slowed the pace of their work so as not to finish work too quickly and thereby have nothing more to do, which could result in their dismissal due to a  labor surplus.37 Unwanted breaks in the supply chain, which could cause production stoppages, were often followed by the accumulation of work. This meant that, in addition to fulfilling regular tasks, products left unfinished while material was lacking also had to be finalized, which required additional efforts by the workforce. In this way, idle time and working overtime often alternated. The Yugoslav motor vehicle industry faced many difficulties in planning and enforcing production due to economic crises of varying intensity between the 1960s and 1980s. The limited amount of foreign currency available to purchase up-to-date technology and certain raw materials immensely complicated the conditions of production. Similarly, the principle of decentralization, inherent to self-management, created a rising need for coordination between the various parts of the companies. Both Zastava and TAM were growing until the second half of the 1980s. Simultaneously, both companies increasingly fragmented into more autonomous sub-units, caused by the demands of the self-management ideology. These conditions significantly impeded the predictability and steadiness of Taylorized production processes, and thus limited the extent to which management could exert control over working time. As has been described for the Soviet Union, GDR, and Bulgaria, arrhythmic production in Yugoslav factories blurred the lines between forced idle time and workers’ resistance to the time regimes of industrial production.38

36

 SI-PAM, f. 0990, št. 704, “Zapisnik XIII. rednega zasedanja delavskega sveta podjetja Tovarne avtomobilov in motorjev Maribor” [Records of the twelfth regular meeting of the workers’ council of the automobile and motor factory, Maribor], February 14, 1966, 8–11. 37  Ibid. Until the early 1970s, labor law allowed the dismissal of employees if continuous surplus labor was expected. Later, dismissals against the will of the employee were only possible for disciplinary reasons. 38  Filtzer, “Labor Discipline,” 15; Andrew I. Port, Die rätselhafte Stabilität der DDR: Arbeit und Alltag im sozialistischen Deutschland [Conflict and stability in the GDR: Work and everyday life in socialist Germany] (Berlin: Links, 2010), 238; Ulf Brunnbauer, “Die sozialistische Lebensweise”: Ideologie, Gesellschaft, Familie und Politik in Bulgarien (1944– 1989) [“The socialist way of life”: Ideology, society, family, and politics in Bulgaria, 1944­ –1989] (Cologne, Weimar, Vienna: Böhlau, 2007), 250–51.

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 156

2020.05.12. 19:27:51

Labor Discipline in Self-Managed Socialism

157

WORKERS’ RESISTANCE TO MANAGERIAL CONTROL OVER WORKING TIME Workers’ resistance to managerial control can offer another explanation for violations of labor discipline. Three aspects will be discussed here, namely: the degree of Taylorization of labor processes; strategies to restrict output; and strategies to gain time for satisfying personal needs. Particularly during the transition from artisanal to Taylorized production, skilled workers resisted new manufacturing systems. This form of resistance to managerial control over working time was present in capitalist, planned, and self-managed economies alike.39 The transition to Taylorist production at Zastava can be dated to the mid-1950s, when the Italian vehicle manufacturer Fiat introduced its production technologies to the Yugoslav company operating under Fiat’s licenses.40 Marko Miljković describes how the older “craftsmen” resisted cooperation with the newly educated engineers, posing a serious obstacle to the new forms of production. In another way Taylorist work organization, which sought to calculate and control the isolated steps of production, had its limits in administration and management jobs. This was reflected in the way disciplinary procedures against white-collar and blue-collar workers were distributed among the two groups. As the Slovenian industrial sociologist Veljko Rus noted as early as 1969, practices of sanctioning violations of labor discipline mainly affected blue-collar workers, a clear tendency that can be further confirmed with data from Zastava.41 White-collar workers’ greater autonomy over working time, due to the lesser degree of controllability of their work, points to the imbalance of power caused by Taylorist principles of production. As noted in the context of asynchronous production rhythms at TAM in 1966, workers also resisted production norms by restricting output.42 In such situations, they did so to “save work” for anticipated ongoing order  For early nineteenth century England, see Edward P. Thompson, Die Entstehung der englischen Arbeiterklasse [The making of the English working class] (Frankfurt/Main: Suhrkamp, 1987), 331–32; for the Soviet Union of the 1930s, see Filtzer, “Labor Discipline,” 15. 40  Marko Miljković, “Western Technology in a Socialist Factory: The Formative Phase of the Yugoslav Automobile Industry, 1955–1962” (Master’s thesis, Central European University, 2013), 103–6, accessed January 15, 2015, http://etd.ceu.hu/2013/miljkovic_marko.pdf. 41  Rus, Odgovornost in moč, 162; ZCZ-FPV, Disc., 1972, “Povrede radnih dužnosti od 1 do 43” [Violations of labor obligations from 1 to 43]; ZCZ-FPV, OOUR MO, 1984, “Disciplinska komisija OOUR-a MO od 42, 1984” [Disciplinary commission of the Machining BOAL from 42]; Čukić, Apsentizam u radu, 66, 107. 42  SI-PAM, “Zapisnik XIII. rednega zasedanja DS, 14.02.1966,” 8–11.

39

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 157

2020.05.12. 19:27:51

158

Ulrike Schult

shortages and thus lack of work at their departments. In other words, they exerted control over their working time, against the interests of the management, in order to prevent dismissals. Similarly, workers in the Soviet Union, but also in capitalist systems, slowed down work to keep norms low, as Filtzer pointed out.43 The lack of control over production, which became apparent in work stoppages, also opened up ambiguous spaces for other forms of resistance. Apart from concrete directional forms of resistance intended to maintain norms or secure one’s own job, production stoppages additionally contributed to blue-collar workers regaining time for their personal needs. Alf Lüdtke introduced the concept of “Eigen-Sinn” (“willfulness,” “spontaneous self-will”) to denote this striving of workers to reappropriate time for themselves in an otherwise highly regulated time regime.44 Analyzing the behavior of workers in the capitalist German machine engineering industry around the year 1900, he notes that “Eigen-Sinn” has to be distinguished from strategic and directional forms of resistance. By walking around in the workshops, chatting with colleagues, and playing jokes involving physical contact as expressions of “Eigen-Sinn,” workers distanced themselves from the constraints of Taylorized working environments. Lüdtke stresses the ambiguity of illegal breaks. On the one hand, they could be interpreted as a way to exhibit explicit resistance against the management, but on the other, they could also be seen as a more subtle defense against managerial control over working time, which reduced the workers’ ability to fulfill their needs. Unwanted production stoppages, as Zastava and TAM witnessed under socialism, increased such ambiguous distinctions. The case of a  qualified tinsmith at Zastava, who was charged with a disciplinary procedure for leaving his workshop during idle time, can be considered an example of this ambiguity.45 Playing football during work stoppages (and beyond?) at Zastava in the early 1970s similarly shows these ambiguous spaces that resulted from the combination of irregular production rhythms and the “Eigen-Sinn” of the workforce.46 43

 Filtzer, “Labor Discipline,” 21.  Alf Lüdtke, “Lohn, Pausen und Neckereien: Eigensinn und Politik bei Fabrikarbeitern in Deutschland um 1900,” [Wage, breaks, and banter: Eigensinn and politics among factory workers in Germany around 1900], in Eigen-Sinn: Fabrikalltag, Arbeitererfahrungen und Politik vom Kaiserreich bis in den Faschismus [Eigen-Sinn: Everyday factory life, experience of labor, and politics from the German Empire to fascism], ed. Alf Lüdtke (Hamburg: Ergebnisse Verlag, 1993), 137–43. 45  ZCZ-FPV, Disc., 1972, Br. 43, “Zapisnik o usmenom javnom pretresu,” [Protocol of the oral hearing], October 30, 1972. 46  B. Dinić, “Beleška: Opasne igre” [Note: Dangerous games], Crvena zastava, June 9, 1971.

44

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 158

2020.05.12. 19:27:51

Labor Discipline in Self-Managed Socialism

159

Workers who reclaimed working time for their own needs have been documented in other state-socialist economies and the Yugoslav self-managed economy alike. Researchers found evidence of workers leaving the workplace in order to watch television broadcasts of sports competitions and thus successfully distance themselves from the constraints of industrial production.47 The tendency towards underemployment, arrhythmic production, and job security in both types of state-socialist economies encouraged this use of working time. As Filtzer suggests, the establishment of such patterns and their subsequent reproduction is highly probable.

Responses to Violations of Labor Discipline Several instances of conflicts over control of working time, which were treated as disciplinary violations, have been noted in the factories and beyond. How did management, the party, mass organizations, and state authorities react to their workforces’ strategies to make use of factory working time and resources for their own purposes? How important was the relationship between the principles of Taylorist industrial production and Yugoslav self-management? The concrete responses will be grouped into control, cooperation, and other methods, such as condemnation, education, appeals, and incentives. SELF-MANAGEMENT AS SUBSTANTIVE HUMANIZATION OF TAYLORIST CONTROL TECHNIQUES? When introducing self-management in 1950, the communist leadership of Yugoslavia claimed to be suspending the division between manual and intellectual labor. Theorists of self-management aimed to humanize labor relations by going one step further than the Soviet-style economies had done when they nationalized the means of production. Workers’ councils and the 47

 For Bulgaria, Ulf Brunnbauer, Visar Nonaj, and Biljana Raeva, “Workers, Steel Factories, and Communism: Labor in Kremikovci (Bulgaria) and Elbasan (Albania) under State Socialism,” IOS Mitteilungen, no. 62 (2013): 34, http://www.dokumente.ios-regensburg. de/publikationen/mitteilungen/mitt_62.pdf; for the GDR, Sönke Friedreich, Autos bauen im Sozialismus: Arbeit und Organisationskultur in der Zwickauer Automobilindustrie [Constructing cars during socialism: Work and organizational culture in the Zwickau automotive industry] (Leipzig: Leipziger Universitätsverlag, 2008), 411; for Yugoslavia, Gregor Starc, “Sportsmen of Yugoslavia, Unite: Workers’ Sport between Leisure and Work,” in Remembering Utopia: The Culture of Everyday Life in Socialist Yugoslavia, ed. Breda Luthar and Maruša Pušnik (Washington, DC: New Academia Pub., 2010), 280–81.

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 159

2020.05.12. 19:27:51

160

Ulrike Schult

subsequent decentralization of enterprises were to secure more democratic and participatory labor relations. The Yugoslav system thus partially questioned Taylorist production methods by restricting the control which management had over business decisions and other questions. Yet simultaneously Taylorist technologies for the organization of labor were transferred from capitalist production into the Yugoslav context. Western European companies were the sources of this technological and organizational transfer: for instance, the TAM factory at Maribor was founded by the Nazi occupiers in 1941. After an interval of production under Czechoslovak licenses, the socialist successor company TAM started a long-term cooperation with a West German vehicle manufacturer, Klöckner-Humboldt-Deutz, in 1957. Transfers in the same direction occurred at Zastava in Kragujevac, where the Italian automotive producer Fiat served as the model for production. It is very unlikely that the two Yugoslav companies in these uneven partnerships questioned the Taylorist production methods that were common in capitalist companies during the second half of the twentieth century. Several lines of argument support this assumption: the technological and economic dependency of the Yugoslav companies on their capitalist partners; the lack of discussed alternatives to Taylorist production modes; and the findings of Yugoslav industrial sociology, which demonstrate hierarchical power relations in Yugoslav enterprises.48 On the organizational level, the principles of time planning—setting the quantity and quality of sub-steps in production, and the surveillance of these sub-steps—were applied in a top-down manner. Despite the method of their application, these organizational conventions were, to a certain extent, adapted to the demands of workers’ self-management. However, they did not radically intervene in the production process, as for instance new management techniques did in capitalist enterprises of the 1980s. In their case, principles of group work and lean management granted greater autonomy to working groups and rejected rigid control practices based on management’s mistrust of the workforce.49 Hierarchies in Yugoslav companies were never leveled to such an extent, and decentralization never granted autonomy to  Rus, Odgovornost in moč; Vladimir Arzenšek, Struktura i pokret [Structure and motion] (Belgrade: Univerzitet u Beogradu; Institut društvenih nauka, 1984); Josip Županov, Samoupravljanje i društvena moć: Prilozi za socijologiju samoupravne organizacije [Self-management and power in society: Contributions to a sociology of self-managed organization] (Zagreb: Globus, 1985). 49  Kira Marrs, “Herrschaft und Kontrolle in der Arbeit” [Authority and control at work], in Handbuch Arbeitssoziologie [Handbook for the sociology of work], ed. Fritz Böhle, Günther Voß, and Günther Wachtler (Wiesbaden: VS Verl. für Sozialwissenschaften, 2010), 339–40. 48

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 160

2020.05.12. 19:27:51

Labor Discipline in Self-Managed Socialism

161

small working groups to self-organize their work. Yugoslav self-management implied that councils and commissions elected by the workforce had a formal right to influence management decisions. While the competencies of directors, self-management bodies, and party politics were never clearly distinguished from one another, it was these councils and commissions who were entitled to exert control over the Taylorist production flows. An example from Alf Lüdtke’s research on the German steel producer Krupp between the mid-nineteenth century and the early twentieth century specifies what constituted such classical Taylorist control in a capitalist economy.50 The Krupp management spelled out rules and temporal guidelines at work in great detail, along with a differentiated system of control and sanctions. Such elements of control could be found in Yugoslav selfmanaged companies too. Workers’ councils endorsed “rulebooks on employment relationships” that contained detailed definitions of disciplinary violations. A 1966 Zastava rulebook contained seven types of minor violations of labor discipline and forty-eight severe ones.51 Its 1983 counterpart at TAM went into even greater detail and defined sixteen minor and seventy-eight severe violations.52 To sanction such violations, the workers’ councils formed disciplinary commissions. Once a disciplinary violation was filed against a worker, a procedure followed including the hearing of witnesses, potential trade union support for the accused person, and a collective decision from the commission. The extent of support workers could expect from the trade unions was often diffuse, just as in other state-socialist countries. If a commission considered the charge against a worker to be justified, it imposed a penalty, with sanctions varying from public admonition to fines and dismissals. Even though figures are missing, the fragmentary data of Zastava’s disciplinary commissions show that dismissals were imposed in the 1970s and 1980s.53 At TAM in Maribor, a clear tendency toward more severe punishment is visible in the statistics detailing why workers left the factory. While between 1971 and 1975 the rate of disciplinary dismissals was consistently below 1 percent of 50

 Alf Lüdtke, “Arbeitsbeginn, Arbeitspausen, Arbeitsende: Skizzen zu Bedürfnisbefriedigung und Industriearbeit im 19. und frühen 20. Jahrhundert” [Start of work, breaks, end of work: Sketches on the satisfaction of needs and industrial work in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries], in Lüdtke, Eigen-Sinn, 93–97. 51  Central company archive Zavodi Crvena zastava, UO ZCZ, 1966, “Pravilnik o radnim odnosima” [Rulebook on employment relationships], March 4, 1966, 25–28. 52  SI-PAM, f. 0990, št. 654, “Pravilnik o delovnih razmerjih, 1983” [Rulebook on employment relationships], 61–67. 53  ZCZ-FPV, “Povrede radnih dužnosti,” 1972; ZCZ-FPV, Disc. Tap., 1979–80, “Odluke disciplinske komisije Tapacirnica” [Decisions of the disciplinary commissions of the upholstery]; ZCZ-FPV, “Disciplinska komisija OOUR-a MO, 1984.”

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 161

2020.05.12. 19:27:51

162

Ulrike Schult

the total amount of workers who had left, it had risen to over 12 percent by 1981.54 As mentioned earlier, disciplinary sanctions were overwhelmingly imposed on blue-collar workers.55 This and other findings of Yugoslav industrial sociology indicate the persistence of hierarchical power structures. Accordingly, Taylorist principles were only suspended to a certain extent in Yugoslavia. Workers were granted formal participatory rights in management decisions, but not the radical dismissal of control practices based on mistrust. The fact that workers in Yugoslavia could object to decisions by disciplinary commissions was not a unique feature of the self-management system. Besides being attached to the workers’ council, the functioning of disciplinary commissions and the modes of objecting to their decisions were procedurally very similar to those in Soviet and East German enterprises.56 Another similarity involved the use of commissions that were sent to investigate whether workers on sick leave were actually recuperating at home, when they were suspected of misusing illness claims for moonlighting or other activities.57 COOPERATION Despite the presence of mechanisms to control and sanction violations of labor discipline, a  high level of tolerance towards such violations existed. Although workers’ autonomous control over working time, theft, and multiple labor relations hampered the enterprises’ productivity and profit, it was partly accepted by the management. On the one hand, management lacked 54

 SI-PAM, f. 0990, št. 636, “Poslovno poročilo TAM 1975” [Business report TAM 1975], 32; SI-PAM, f. 0990, št. 750, “Poslovno poročilo DO TAM za leto 1982” [Business report of the labor organization TAM for the year 1982], 14. 55  Rus, Odgovornost in moč, 162; ZCZ-FPV, “Povrede radnih dužnosti, 1972”; ZCZ-FPV, “Disciplinska komisija OOUR-a MO, 1984”; Čukić, Apsentizam u radu, 66, 107. 56  For disciplinary procedures in the Soviet Union, see Mary McAuley, Labour Disputes in Soviet Russia, 1957–1965 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969); for the GDR, Marion Hage, Betriebliche Konflikthandhabung in der DDR und der Bundesrepublik [Conflict resolution in enterprises in the GDR and the Federal Republic] (Hamburg: Verlag Dr. Kovac GmbH, 2001). 57  Danilo Vincetič, “Kako smanjšati število boleznin” [How to reduce the number of illnesses], Skozi TAM, November 26, 1976; Z. Ž., “Većim zalaganjem do plana” [With greater efforts to the plan], Crvena zastava, September 14, 1977; for Poland and the GDR, see Małgorzata Mazurek, “Das Alltagsleben im sozialistischen Betrieb am Beispiel der ‘Rosa-Luxemburg-Werke’ in Warschau an der Schwelle zur ‘kleinen Stabilisierung,’” [Everyday life in the socialist enterprise on the example of the “Rosa Luxemburg Plant” in Warsaw on the brink of “new stabilization”], in Hübner, Kleßmann, and Tenefelde, Arbeiter im Staatssozialismus, 305; Friedreich, Autos bauen im Sozialismus, 412f.

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 162

2020.05.12. 19:27:51

Labor Discipline in Self-Managed Socialism

163

control over smooth production rhythms and depended on the cooperation of workers during phases of intensive production; on the other, tolerating violations of discipline served to maintain social peace within the company. During periods of economic crisis, such as the mid-1960s or from the late 1970s onwards, when growing parts of the workforce could hardly support themselves and their families with just their industrial wages, managers on the shop floor tended to turn a blind eye to violations of labor discipline. In Yugoslavia, as in other state-socialist economies, these cooperative strategies towards violations of labor discipline in turn caused conflicts between higher and lower management.58 While managers on the shop floor were dependent on the cooperation of the workforce, higher management called for uncompromising action. These processes of negotiation and conflict took place within enterprises that could act relatively independently from state authorities. Enterprises in centrally planned socialist economies had to deal with further demands from the responsible ministries.59 While Yugoslav authorities had harshly condemned the low level of labor discipline of peasant-workers in the 1950s, legalizing parallel self-employed activities became one of the political leadership’s strategies to deal with low income levels and critical supply situations in the 1970s.60 Yet tolerant attitudes towards workers who used company resources for their own means, or autonomously exerted control over their working time, had ambivalent consequences. While they stabilized relations at the enterprises, they simultaneously destabilized the enterprises by reducing their productivity.61 CONDEMNATION, EDUCATION, APPEALS, AND INCENTIVES In addition to control and tolerance, management and socialist mass organizations employed alternative methods to stimulate higher labor discipline in Yugoslavia. Generally, ideological condemnations of industrial workers accused of labor discipline violations, and repressive methods for dealing with

 Filtzer, “Labor Discipline,” 16; Friedreich, Autos bauen im Sozialismus, 397–99, 408; Mazurek, “Das Alltagsleben im sozialistischen Betrieb,” 305; Port, Die rätselhafte Stabilität, 238, 246; Brunnbauer, Die sozialistische Lebensweise, 204–6. 59  Brunnbauer, Die sozialistische Lebensweise, 206. 60  Dobrivojević, Selo i grad, 228–29; ZCZ-FPV, RS, 1976, “Zapisnik sa nastavka 25. sednice Radničkog saveta” [Record of the continuation of the twenty-fifth meeting of the workers’ council], March 24, 1976, 3; M. Pećo, “Život na dva koloseka” [Life on two tracks], Svetlost, September 13, 1979. 61  For the case of a worker seeking permission for supplementary self-employed labor in his profession at Zastava: ZCZ-FPV, “Zapisnik sa 7. sednice” [Record of the 7th meeting], 16. 58

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 163

2020.05.12. 19:27:51

164

Ulrike Schult

such violations, were uncommon after the 1950s. Instead, the authorities and the enterprises chose a variety of measures to enforce labor discipline. During the phase of intensive industrialization after World War II, educational measures were of great importance. Both Zastava and TAM identified vocational training as well as more general education as ways to improve labor and technical discipline. Factories, mass organizations, and local educational institutions offered courses ranging from elementary school education for adults to vocational and ideological training. Appeals from management and mass organizations to raise work ethics among the workforce were widespread throughout the socialist period. Their representatives used the factory newspapers, meetings of the workers’ councils, as well as party, trade union, and youth organization meetings to announce their calls. Various forms of appeals could be read throughout the decades in factory newspapers, including reports of the activities of disciplinary commissions (mainly in the 1960s), caricatures of labor discipline violations, and articles presenting decisions taken at the meetings of the selfmanagement bodies and mass organizations. Portraits of workers who were to serve as positive examples for their colleagues, or articles on specific problems with labor discipline, supplemented the measures to promote labor discipline via the factory newspapers. These appeals refrained from ideological attacks on workers, such as accusing them of expressing anti-socialist attitudes by violating labor discipline. Instead, frequent arguments highlighted the common interest of both workers and the factory administration: the economic success of the enterprise on the market, which should guarantee the workers’ well-being.62 To a  limited extent workers’ achievements in terms of fulfilling norms, but also in terms of the commercial success of the enterprises or their sub-units, could be reflected in their wages: as such, financial incentives were also present. This constitutes a key difference to other state-socialist economies, in which the main goal was the fulfillment of the plan. Labor competitions were another common feature of planned socialist economies and the Yugoslav system. Trade unions and youth organizations were in charge of organizing these company-wide, local, republic-wide, or all-Yugoslav events throughout the socialist period.63 Furthermore, propos62

 “Iz sindikalnog odbora Zavoda: Održana godišnja skupština” [From the trade union committee of the Zavodi: Annual assembly held], Crvena zastava, March 1965; Ž. Glišović, “Otvorena kritička rasprava o slabostima u radu” [Open critical discussion on weaknesses at work], Crvena zastava, February 15, 1972; SI-PAM, f. 1346, šk. 39, “Zapisnik (izvleček) 6. sestanka OO ZK TOZD Površinska obdelava” [Record (abstract) of the sixth meeting of the OO ZK surface processing BOAL], January 24, 1983. 63  Andrea Matošević, “Politika rada Pokreta za visoku produktivnost” [The politics of the

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 164

2020.05.12. 19:27:51

Labor Discipline in Self-Managed Socialism

165

als for technical improvements were intended to motivate workers to take responsibility for the production process and to increase productivity.64 Both labor competitions and technical improvements promised material as well as symbolic awards for successful participants.

Conclusion Conflicts over labor discipline in Yugoslav industry indicate that workers and management were locked in a struggle over the control of working time. Unlike other state-socialist countries, Yugoslavia had an economy that was organized by self-management principles, was integrated into world markets, and experienced mass unemployment; however, adaption strategies involving conflicts over working time ultimately resembled those in other state-socialist economies. In particular, the urbanization and industrialization processes led to comparable modes of adaption, which came to light in disciplinary practices. Furthermore, structural economic and social problems beyond the symptoms of accommodation to industrialization and urbanization continued to provide reasons for workers to violate the time regime of their industrial workplace. Housing shortages, problems with the supply of food, consumer goods, and services, the low income levels of less skilled blue-collar workers, and widespread economic crises resulted in comparable strategies of accommodation of the industrial workforce in Yugoslavia and that of other state-socialist economies.65 As elsewhere in state-socialist economies, work stoppages due to technological deficiencies and supply shortages were common in Yugoslav entermovement for high productivity], in Socijalizam na klupi: Jugoslavensko društvo očima nove postjugoslavenske humanistike [Socialism on the bench: Yugoslav society in the views of the new post-Yugoslav humanities], ed. Lada Duraković and Andrea Matošević (Pula, Zagreb: Sveučilište Jurja Dobrile/Srendja Evropa, 2013); Branislav Pavlović, ed., Sistem proizvodnih takmičenja radnika SOUR Zavodi “Crvena zastava” [The system of production competitions of workers of the Complex Organization of Associated Labor Zavodi “Crvena zastava”] (Kragujevac: Koordinacioni odbor Saveza Sindikata; Organizacioni odbor proizvodnih takmičenja SOUR Zavodi “Crvena zastava,” 1981); “17. Kovaške igre Slovenije” [17. Blacksmiths’ games of Slovenia], Skozi TAM, September 28, 1984. 64  SI-PAM, “Sklepi 8. redne seje izvršilnega odbora,” 2; ZCZ-FPV, RS OOUR PV, 1973– 75, “Zapisnik sa 44-te sednice Radničkog saveta OOUR-a za proizvodnju kamiona i unutrašnje opreme vozila” [Record of the forty-fourth meeting of the workers’ council of the BOAL for the production of trucks and interior fittings], January 24, 1975, 3–5. 65  For GDR, see Friedreich, Autos bauen im Sozialismus, 307, 406–11; Port, Die rätselhafte Stabilität, 246; for the Soviet Union, Filtzer, “Labor Discipline,” 15, 18; for Poland, Mazurek, “Das Alltagsleben im sozialistischen Betrieb”; for Bulgaria, Brunnbauer, Nona, and Raeva, “Workers, Steel Factories, and Communism,” 34.

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 165

2020.05.12. 19:27:51

166

Ulrike Schult

prises. Often, forced idle time was hard to distinguish from conscious violations of the time regime in factories, an ambiguity which generated conflicts between the management and the workforce. The cooperative practices between lower management and workers in response to these conflicts also resemble the ways in which violations of labor discipline were handled in other state-socialist systems. This similarity can be explained by the comparable infrastructural and socioeconomic challenges that all these countries were facing. The state-imposed ideology of Yugoslav self-management highlighted the participatory possibilities of the workforce in organizational processes. It furthermore encompassed a claim to humanize industrial labor relations as such. Yet Taylorist production techniques were only partially questioned. The discourses and practices involved in the sanctioning of disciplinary violations reveal the enduring hierarchical power relations between intellectual and manual labor in Yugoslav enterprises, a  fact that Yugoslav industrial sociology had underlined since the late 1960s. The way in which sanctioning practices systematically disadvantaged subgroups of blue-collar workers, such as unskilled or migrant workers, further exposes the limits of workers’ self-management. Yet ongoing failures to prevent workers from disposing of their working time in a way undesired by the management suggests a certain degree of workers’ informal power. Under the given circumstances of periodic economic crisis, arrhythmic production, and underemployment, neither authorities nor management succeeded in preventing workers from exercising this limited control over their working time.

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 166

2020.05.12. 19:27:51

“This Workers’ Hostel Lost Almost Every Bit of Added Value It Had”: Workers’ Hostels, Social Rights, and Legitimization in Hungary and the German Democratic Republic* Eszter Bartha

W

orkers’ hostels constitute a relatively understudied area of 1970s social history.1 In this chapter—apart from presenting two case studies, one in the GDR and one in Hungary—I argue that contemporary literature produced in connection with social rights (or rather, the lack of social rights, as experienced by many workers who had to spend years in such “temporary” accommodation) can offer an insight into the decline of trust in the so-called “welfare dictatorships”2 and the crisis of their legitimacy. I call these regimes welfare dictatorships because they were based on a rec-

*

 Research for this article was conducted within the framework of the project funded by NKFI-OTKA (No. K 120010): “The Changing Structure of Industrial Labor: The Social and Political Stratification of Industrial Workers in United Germany and Postsocialist Hungary.” The lead researcher of the project is Eszter Bartha. 1  Tamás Kohut offers a discussion of Hungarian sources but lacks a comparative dimension. Sándor Horváth looks at everyday strategies of resistance; however, he focuses on the most problematic hostels in Budapest in order to verify his thesis about the overall criminalization of state socialism. Beatrix Bouvier, who offers a review of GDR social policy, likewise focuses on the most challenging aspects of housing under Honecker and the failure to fulfil the original promise of providing adequate housing to all GDR citizens. See Tamás Kohut, “‘Erkölcsi téren ma már a szállókon rend van’: Mindennapi élet a szocialista korszak munkásszállásain” [“In terms of morals, all is in order now at the hostels”: Everyday life in the workers’ hostels during the socialist era], Korall 9, no. 32 (2008): 60–77; Sándor Horváth, Két emelet boldogság: Mindennapi szociálpolitika Budapesten a  Kádár-korban [Two floors of happiness: Everyday social policy in Budapest in the Kádár era] (Budapest: Napvilág, 2012), 218–31; Beatrix Bouvier, Die DDR: Ein Sozialstaat? Sozialpolitik in der Ära Honecker [The GDR: A welfare state? Social policy in the Honecker era] (Bonn: Dietz, 2002), 152–201. 2  Eszter Bartha, Alienating Labour: Workers on the Road from Socialism to Capitalism in East Germany and Hungary (Oxford and New York: Berghahn, 2013).

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 167

2020.05.12. 19:27:52

168

Eszter Bartha

ognition that the dictatorship of the proletariat could not change human needs or the ways of satisfying these needs. As such, from the perspective of labor, the decline of state socialism started well before the actual collapse of these regimes. During this period of decline, at least in Hungary, even low-level functionaries formulated a strong criticism of a socialism which could not afford to provide workers with minimal levels of housing comfort (housing was provided, but comfort was not). I argue that this slow erosion of legitimacy went hand in hand with the economic weakening of the statesocialist regimes. I offer a new perspective from three aspects. Firstly, I compare the East German experience with Hungarian everyday life in the hostels, reconstructed with the help of contemporary surveys, sociological studies, and literature. I interrogate the question of how we can rethink the uniqueness of Hungarian “goulash communism” in the light of comparison, how the similarities and differences between the types of socialism propagated in the two countries were reflected in everyday life, and how local conditions and opportunities shaped the practice of modernization and the development of new industrial sectors. Secondly, I introduce archival sources which have not yet featured in existing literature: in the Archive of Trade Unions we can find several reports written by low-level functionaries and cultural workers about the functioning and conditions of the Budapest workers’ hostels in 1985–86 in the framework of a  cultural contest (Munkásszállások a közművelődésért, or workers’ hostels for public education). I analyze the role and function of the unusually sharp criticism formulated in these documents, and I further argue that the appeal of the party had been decreasing well before the political collapse of state socialism. I stress that the reports were written by party members, or at least by people loyal to the regime, which renders one question all the more important: what do such critiques tell us about the legitimacy of the regime? I am therefore less interested in everyday life at the workers’ hostel than in the issue of legitimacy: more precisely, the conflict between the social reality of welfare dictatorships and the official Marxist-Leninist ideology, which Michael Burawoy also documented in Hungary in the 1980s.3 Finally, I seek to interpret the loss of legitimacy that I document in this paper in the context of the history of welfare dictatorships.

 Michael Buroway, The Politics of Production: Factory Regimes under Capitalism and Socialism (London: Verso, 1985).

3

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 168

2020.05.12. 19:27:52

“This Workers’ Hostel Lost Almost Every Bit of Added Value It Had”

169

Commuters and Applicants for State-Owned Flats: Workers’ Hostels in the GDR and Hungary During the period of state socialism, Hungary managed to lead the industrially more developed GDR in some areas. One factor in this development was the standard-of-living policy adopted by János Kádár after the Hungarian revolution of 1956.4 The new policy towards labor, inaugurated by the decree of 1958, aimed to satisfy the material demands of the workers, promising solutions for housing (which was a great social problem in the capital) and the support of workers’ education and culture. There was strict party control over the execution of the resolution: large state enterprises and industrial districts sent regular reports about the condition of the working class to the center. János Rainer M. argues that Kádár sought to win over all social strata;5 I, however, share the view of György Földes that the large industrial working class enjoyed a privileged position among social strata, which the party sought to pacify.6 In the GDR, Erich Honecker succeeded Walter Ulbricht as general secretary in 1971. The latter had to go partly because of his insistence on a policy of austerity (Ulbricht sought to develop the so-called strategic sectors first, before extending welfare policies).7 The workers were, however, reluctant to wait; during the final years of Ulbricht’s austerity, we find very sharp criticism even in party documents, which would be repeated only when Honecker’s state itself fell.8 Economists warned Honecker of the danger of 4

 On the relationship between the party and labor at the dawn of the revolution, see Mark Pittaway, The Workers’ State: Industrial Labor and the Making of Socialist Hungary (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2012). 5  János Rainer M., Bevezetés a kádárizmusba [Introduction to Kádárism] (Budapest: 1956-os Intézet-L’Harmattan Kiadó, 2011). 6  György Földes, Hatalom és mozgalom, 1956–1989 [Power and movement, 1956–1989] (Budapest: Reform Könyvkiadó-Kossuth Könyvkiadó, 1989). 7  On the East German reform, see Michael Keren, “The Rise and Fall of the New Economic System,” in The German Democratic Republic: A Developed Socialist Society, ed. Lyman H. Legters (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1978), 61–84; Heinz-Gerhard Haupt, Jörg Requate, ed., Aufbruch in die Zukunft: Die 1960er Jahre zwischen Planungseuphorie und kulturellem Wandel; DDR, ČSSR und Bundesrepublik Deutschland im Vergleich [Departure into the future: The 1960s between planning euphoria and cultural change; The GDR, CSSR, and the Federal Republic of Germany in comparison] (Munich: Weilerswist, 2004); André Steiner, Von Plan zu Plan: eine Wirtschaftsgeschichte der DDR [From plan to plan: An economic history of the GDR] (Munich: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 2004). 8  For examples, see Bartha, Alienating Labour.

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 169

2020.05.12. 19:27:52

170

Eszter Bartha

the state’s increasing indebtedness, but Honecker refused to increase prices, arguing that the Polish “counter-revolutionary” demonstrations all started with price increases.9 Honecker’s argument demonstrates that the welfare dictatorships—in spite of their communist rhetoric—based their legitimacy on increasing consumption, though the GDR’s leader found a less expressive name for his policy: “the unity of economic and social policy.” In the field of housing, Honecker’s GDR could indeed boast impressive results: over twenty years, the government planned to build 3.5 million flats, with the premise that housing was a basic social right that should be solved centrally. Even though apartment problems were documented even in the 1980s,10 the East German workers’ hostels continued to offer temporary accommodation for the applicants. In Hungary, according to the surveys conducted by the trade union, the majority of the workers who lived in hostels were commuters, and only about one-fifth of the residents used the hostel as permanent accommodation.11 Those who lived there permanently belonged to the financially and socially deprived groups of state socialism: the same survey found that “68 percent of the permanent residents have practically no savings.”12 The survey also showed that these people could not count on assistance from the state or the council in the solution of their housing problem. Their only hope of leaving the hostel was to find a partner who had a flat. Péter Szigeti’s 1976 survey likewise found that the majority of construction workers living at hostels were commuters, who tolerated their poor living conditions in the hope that they could make more money in the capital than in their home town or village.13 Szigeti certainly does not idealize everyday life at the hostels. For instance, when describing a building complex at Mogyoródi út, he notes that “we can practically speak of storied barracks. . . . There is litter everywhere, the kitchen shed its plaster, the tables are not cleaned after use, even though many people eat here.”14 We also learn

 Steiner, Von Plan zu Plan.  See Bouvier, Die DDR: Ein Sozialstaat?, 152–201. It is worth noting that single people stood at the bottom of the waiting lists. 11  Katalin Láng and György Nyilas, “Ideiglenes állandóság: Tanulmány a munkásszállókon élők életkörülményeiről és rétegződéséről” [Temporary permanency: A study on the living conditions and social layering of workers’ hostels], in Peremhelyzetek: Műhelytanulmányok [Edge situations: Working papers], ed. Ágnes Utasi (Budapest: Társadalomtudományi Intézet-Kossuth Könyvkiadó, 1987), 65. 12  Ibid., 68. 13  Péter Szigeti, Építőipari munkásszállások lakóinak életkörülményei: Két építőipari munkásszállás szociológiai vizsgálata [Living conditions of people living in construction workers’ hostels: A sociological examination of two construction workers’ hostels] (Budapest: Szakszervezetek Elméleti Kutató Intézete, 1976). 14  Ibid., 6. 9

10

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 170

2020.05.12. 19:27:52

“This Workers’ Hostel Lost Almost Every Bit of Added Value It Had”

171

that even these barracks were overcrowded, with eight people sleeping in one room and only eight gas cookers for 240 people, of which two or three did not function. There was only one cupboard, which no one used because items were stolen from it.15 There were frequent fights and a lot of drinking, and the trade union and the enterprise together could not solve such a basic problem as the provision of hot water for bathing. Although there was a hostel committee, which was supposed to provide for its self-governance, its main task was to “discipline the alcoholics.”16 The question of why people volunteered to live under such circumstances tells us something not only about the everyday life of hostels, but also about the conditions which forced these people to commute. The urban residence and higher wages meant upward social mobility for many, despite their living conditions. The contrast between urban and rural residence was also observed in contemporary Hungarian “sociography,” a mixed genre of literature, sociology, and ethnography. The workers’ hostel was presented in much Hungarian ethnographic writing not as a socialist achievement but as a hotbed of deviance and criminality which, thanks to its primitive living conditions, prevented adaptation to urban culture, and induced the residents to find comfort in medicine, prostitution, alcoholism, or suicide (the youth was considered to be a particularly endangered group). This perspective is characteristic of contemporary sociography, where urban culture was understood as a threat to young women’s morality. This otherwise conservative message can, however, be interpreted as a sharp criticism of workers’ hostels and also as a hidden (or coded) criticism of the regime, which could not cope with deviance in spite of its promise of a “normal and safe life” for everybody. Some examples of this are evident in the sociography of Alíz Mátyus, where the hostel represents the lack of life prospects for young girls, who therefore become victims of prostitution and drinking,17 or the writing of Katalin Sulyok and Mária Ember, where the girls—rather than forming a happy community—prevent each other’s marriages and end up as alcoholic spinsters, who sleep with elderly men for a drink.18

15

 Ibid., 3. Kohut also mentions that clothes have been stolen from the common bath of the hostels. By comparison, in the East German sources there are no complaints of stealing. See Kohut, “Erkölcsi téren ma már a szállókon rend van.” 16  Szigeti, Építőipari munkásszállások, 3. 17  Alíz Mátyus, “‘Végtelen óta folynak a percek…’: Lányok a munkásszálláson” [“The minutes have been infinite…”: Girls at the workers’ hostel], Valóság 20, no. 8 (1977): 77–87. 18  Katalin Sulyok and Mária Ember, “Messzi lát a falu szeme: Szociográfiai riport vidékről feljött, munkásszállón élő textilgyári munkásnőkről” [Far sees the village’s eye: A sociographic report about women textile factory workers living in workers’ hostels], Forrás 8, no. 9 (1976): 34–41.

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 171

2020.05.12. 19:27:52

172

Eszter Bartha

The workers’ hostel also represented the dreary living conditions that the girls could not escape. Sulyok and Ember wrote of “sitting in one of the rooms of the factory workers’ hostel. Five beds are standing in a row. Five iron bunk beds. The room is unfriendly, the walls are undecorated, and lighting is provided by one poor electric bulb. The floor has been faded by the overuse of detergent.”19 Initially the girls attempt to defend themselves against the alienating environment by forming a  close-knit community,20 but it ultimately turns out that even the community is destructive: it renders adaptation to urban culture impossible while also preventing the girls from getting married (which was their only chance according to the external observers, such as the sociographers, to escape from the workers’ hostel and establish a real home). The latter message is very conservative indeed, but it is a frequent stereotype which was characteristic of the petty bourgeois world of the Kádár regime, where an unmarried woman automatically counted as a social outcast. However, the ethnographic study of Sulyok and Ember offers no possible course of action outside of the realm of a “good” marriage: the director of the hostel ends up in a mental institute; the girls form an alliance to prevent the marriage of one member of the community, though she does eventually manage to marry; and the rest of the girls become desperate spinsters, for whom the only “entertainment” (or way to get rid of the everyday drudgery) is to indulge in a life that is morally unacceptable in a “decent” working-class environment (alcoholism, frequent exchange of sex partners, etc.).21 It is worth noting that female individualism does not play a role in this account: the girls either form a  close community where the individual is subordinated to the group, or they get married. However, aside from the conservative message related to female emancipation, Ember and Sulyok’s work can easily be interpreted as a coded criticism of state socialism, since the individuals themselves are not responsible for their failed lives. Instead, the authors blame inhuman circumstances for the inhuman outcomes: strenuous, monotonous factory work (the girls are textile workers) and the miserable living conditions embodied in the workers’ hostel, which perfectly match the desolate work environment. We don’t need a vivid imagination to read the sociography as sharp criticism of a regime which boasted of emancipating the working class: monotonous work, an impersonal and dreary environment, distorted human relations, and a bleak future characterized by an escape through alcohol, suicide, or mental illness. We should note here that 19

 Ibid., 34.  “We created our own community. And this is not like the brigade, where we do it because we have to. Here, we really do what we want.” Ibid., 34. 21  Ibid. 20

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 172

2020.05.12. 19:27:52

“This Workers’ Hostel Lost Almost Every Bit of Added Value It Had”

173

this image appears in other contemporary fiction: I can mention here Ákos Kertész’s famous novel Makra, where Makra, a diligent and honest worker, escapes from the “workers’ state” by committing suicide. While in Hungary even official sociology recognized that the workers’ hostel was a long way from the promised socialist paradise, in the GDR the letters of complaint which fulfilled similar functions to this genre were very much cultivated by the party as a means of communication between the political powers and the “little man.”22 Although the letters of complaint often depicted a very gloomy picture of the petitioners’ life, public criticism was beyond the tolerance of the rigid GDR regime.23 Considering how much “political and ideological watchfulness” was demanded from the East German citizens (and in particular from the party members) one cannot help but wonder how sharply critical the tone of the workers’ correspondence was, especially if we take into account that the workers were petitioning the omnipotent representatives of power. The following letter of complaint demonstrates not only that some workers’ hostels lacked minimal comfort even in the GDR (although we find no outright complaints of theft, which was a  more frequent grievance in Hungary24) but it also shows that the workers were very conscious of their social rights, the enforcement of which they demanded (not asked) from the otherwise feared authorities. I have been working as a locksmith for sixteen months in the VEB Carl Zeiss Jena. I live now in block 86/87 in the hope that I would eventually get a one-room flat where I could move in with my girlfriend, for whom I came here to work. I was told that I would get a flat after a year. As such, I kept on waiting patiently, even though life in the hostel cannot be described as pleasant. The toilets and washing facilities are in a very bad condition or they are altogether unfit for use. I put up with all the inconvenience and lack of comfort because at least my individual freedom was not limited. But for a few weeks now, members of the factory’s security personnel have been sitting at the entrance, and when one enters, one immedi22

 The letters written to the television by GDR citizens also give valuable insights into everyday life under Honecker. See Ina Merkel, ed., “Wir sind doch nicht die Meckerecke der Nation”: Briefe an das Fernsehen der DDR [“We are not the complaints column of the nation”: Letters to the GDR television] (Berlin: Schwartzkopf & Schwartzkopf, 2000). 23  See, e.g., Mary Fulbrook, Anatomy of a Dictatorship: Inside the GDR, 1949–1989 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995); Charles S. Maier, Dissolution: The Crisis of Communism and the End of East Germany (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997); Thomas Lindenberger, ed., Herrschaft und Eigen-Sinn in der Diktatur [Domination and self-will in the dictatorship] (Cologne: Böhlau, 1999). 24  See also Kohut, “Erkölcsi téren ma már a szállókon rend van,” 65.

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 173

2020.05.12. 19:27:52

174

Eszter Bartha

ately gets the impression that it is a boarding school or a barracks. I feel an immediate attack on my personal freedom. The requirement to register guests annoys my girlfriend and friends who visit me here. At 10 p.m. every visitor has to leave the hostel and sometimes visits are denied in the absence of an identification card. This applies also to the weekends, when we young people would like to spend more time together. Not even an extra ten minutes can be arranged with the security staff. One is constantly controlled here as soon as one enters the hostel. The police also regularly patrol the neighborhood, which makes one feel like a common criminal. Sometimes the policemen quietly creep from door to door, and they eavesdrop on people. I have come to Jena to build an independent life, which is impossible under these circumstances. Only a flat could give me prospects. I spend the whole year in Jena and I can only travel home for a couple of days, three times a year. As such, this small room with the many orders and prohibitions and a real jailer is, after all, my main residence. I think that twentythree-year-old people have a right to expect something better than this.25

Even Hungarian cultural workers criticized the strict controls at the entrance of the hostels and the ban on receiving guests in the evening (when the workers would have time for their social life). The criticism in more liberal Hungary appeared not only in the reports of the cultural workers, which had few readers, but also in the contemporary professional literature. We can read that “the sexual misery of the workers’ hostels is shocking” in the introduction of a 1980 publication entitled Szállás, otthon (Accommodation, home), which was targeted at a wider audience.26 The author openly took the side of the young people condemned to “sexual misery” instead of engaging in moral preaching or supporting the hostels’ strict house rules: “Under these circumstances, young people are pushed to live their most intimate and most private life publicly at the banks of the river Danube and they even risk being penalized by the police.”27 We have to note that while “loose morals” and “sexual freedom” were frequently attacked by the newspapers of workers’ hostels and trade union functionaries, here we can read 25

 Unternehmensarchiv der Carl Zeiss Jena GmbH, Jena (hereafter UACZ), VA 933, “Eingabe zur schlechten Unterbringung in der AWU,” March 9, 1974, emphasis added. 26  Sándor Veres, “A munkásszállók társadalmai” [The societies of workers’ hostels], in Szállás, otthon: A tanácsi vállalatok munkásszállásainak helyzete; A közművelődési tevékenység feltételei, gyakorlata a munkásszállókon [Accommodation and home: The situation of the workers’ accommodations of the council companies; The conditions and practice of public cultural activity in the workers’ hostels], ed. Anna V. Sütő, Sándorné Deák, and Ferenc Szabó (Budapest: Budapest Főváros Tanácsa VB. Művelődésügyi Főosztálya, Budapesti Művelődési Központ, 1980), 1–26. 27  Ibid., 23.

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 174

2020.05.12. 19:27:52

“This Workers’ Hostel Lost Almost Every Bit of Added Value It Had”

175

a relatively “liberal” call for the recognition of young people’s right to a normal sexual life and more generally, for a life free of political or other control—exactly what the young East German worker missed from Honecker’s state. While writing such a  letter required certain courage, we must take into account that the social rights guaranteed in the welfare dictatorships strengthened the author’s situation and consciousness, since it is highly unlikely that he intended to provoke the authorities, who could have helped to solve his housing problem. As the letter shows, GDR citizens were very conscious of their social rights. This reinforces my point that the self-legitimation of the regime (the workers’ state) was not merely a political slogan: instead, both the workers and the authorities took it seriously. This explains the sharply critical tone of the workers’ correspondence with the authorities, which would be otherwise inexplicable and irrational in a “police state,” as the GDR is depicted in mainstream social science. In more liberal Hungary, sociologists, cultural workers, and even lowlevel party functionaries assumed the role of mediating between the political powers and the “little man.” Following the lead of Iván Vitányi, one can observe a reformist wing among the cultural workers, who boasted of reading Western literature and referred to Western paradigms in their reports. One can, indeed, argue that the “Westernization” of Hungarian sociology, alongside the credibility deficit of Marxist ideology, started well before the actual collapse of state socialism. In both the GDR and Hungary we can find several complaints about the lack of comfort in the hostels and the unsociable nature of some roommates; however, in the Hungarian reports of cultural workers we can also observe the frequent stressing of alienation and atomization, which were associated with the “primitive” hostel life. Since in the reports of 1985–86 many cultural workers refer to Western sociologists, we have to take into account that this discourse expressed a general intellectual disappointment with state socialism. Furthermore, the study of deviant phenomena (such as alcoholism, prostitution, or suicide) were themselves often seen as part of a “dissident” intellectual culture. In any case, there is a  recurrent hypothesis in the Hungarian literature that fewer material resources automatically result in a dearth of human relations. According to the research of Péter Szigeti, “half of the Hungarians and one third of the Roma people have no friends at the hostel,” 28 and it is remarkable that “few can count on their newly acquired friends in case of trouble.”29 In the research of Katalin Láng and György Nyilas, “the permanent residents of the hostels are lonely, and some of them have no one to turn  Szigeti, Építőipari munkásszállások, 73.  Ibid.

28 29

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 175

2020.05.12. 19:27:52

176

Eszter Bartha

to in case of bigger problems.”30 I  must stress, however, that these authors operate with a normative concept of a community, while other communities can exist which live according to different norms or possess different sets of values. It seems that, even though they were disappointed with state socialism, cultural workers continued to believe that “organic” communities could be formed out of the atomized individuals, provided that they shared similar cultural values. Szigeti, for instance, notes that “out of the residents of this hostel many stand at a  lower cultural level and they cannot appreciate the communal establishments. This is often expressed by the damaging of furniture or other equipment. A further problem is that real, organic communities cannot be formed at the hostels due to the circumstances [meaning the lower cultural and civilizational needs of many residents].”31 The author adds that “it is shocking that cultural workers at the hostels cannot even cope with illiteracy”32 (by comparison, in the East German sources we can find no such complaint), and he also gives a list of the deviant phenomena that are characteristic of the hostels (most notably alcoholism). However, the author failed to note that human relations could be formed not only in learning groups and evening schools, but also in the TV rooms (which the cultural workers regarded with contempt), pubs, and discotheques. Further problems resulted from the fact that urban workers often looked down on the residents of the workers’ hostels and they were reluctant to make friends with them.33 However, we must be aware of the fact that the residents of the hostels themselves did not form a united group: there were significant differences between those who often possessed a house somewhere in the countryside and chose to live at the hostels in the hope of higher wages, and those who would have been practically homeless without the hostels.34 If we want to analyze the social composition of the residents of the hostels in Hungary, we cannot overlook these important differences in the social stratification within the hostels. Although the lack of comfort in the hostels was frequently criticized both in the GDR and Hungary, complaints about the unsociable nature of some roommates shed light on one more important feature of the welfare dictatorships: that even “deviant” people had an inalienable right to the basic social provisions of the regime. As we will see, “deviant” behavior also existed in the ideologically more rigid GDR (though it was less tolerated 30

 Láng and Nyilas, “Ideiglenes állandóság,” 69.  Szigeti, Építőipari munkásszállások, 82. 32  Ibid., 38. 33  I have previously observed that there existed a bias against the rural workers, who were also considered to be “backward” within the party. See Bartha, Alienating Labour. 34  Horváth in Két emelet boldogság focuses only on the latter group, without noting that it constituted only the smaller part of the residents. 31

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 176

2020.05.12. 19:27:52

“This Workers’ Hostel Lost Almost Every Bit of Added Value It Had”

177

than in Hungary).35 The following letter of complaint to the chief director of Carl Zeiss was written by a young worker, who worked three shifts, and whose patience was heavily tried by his new roommate (who had to move in because of his divorce): I am a twenty-six-year-old worker and I work on the three-shift system. I live in Neulobeda-West, block 10. My reason for writing is as follows. At the beginning of this year a young man, Mr. K36 moved to our flat. He does not work in the VEB Carl Zeiss and he does not have a permanent job. He does, however, have a hobby: he is a disc jockey. He stores his music equipment in the flat. He frequently comes home very late at night with lots of other people who are very loud. The noise is really extreme, particularly at weekends. There are sometimes as many as ten strange people sleeping in the flat. They often help themselves to my food and drink from the fridge, and they leave the bath and the kitchen in a filthy state. I have worked for ten years in VEB Carl Zeiss Jena on the three-shift system, which is very tiring, especially when one can’t sleep at home. I told the managers of the hostel about the problem, but it seems that they either don’t care or they can’t help with this problem. As such I would like to ask for your help because this situation is getting on my nerves. I really need my rest so that I can concentrate on my work at the machine in the plant.37

In this case we know the reply: investigators found that Mr. K had married a  woman who also worked in the Zeiss factory, and they received a  oneroom flat in a family hostel. The couple, however, broke up and Mr. K was asked to relinquish the common flat, which he refused to do, arguing that he had nowhere to go. He then received a room in the petitioner’s hostel. It turned out that Mr. K was currently unemployed because he had resigned from Carl Zeiss, declaring that he would earn his living by making music. Despite repeated warnings, Mr. K refused to change his lifestyle: In March, after several complaints, the managers of the hostel went to his room (he lay in bed and did not make any effort to get out of bed) and demanded that he should look for alternative accommodation, a new job,

35

 I mention here the example of a young worker named Matthias Domaschk, who founded a living community with his friends. Since they opposed the compulsory military service, had church connections, etc., eventually Domaschk was pushed to commit suicide, while his friends immigrated to West Germany. Thüringer Archiv für Zeitgeschichte, “Matthias Domaschk,” Jena F6 Friedengemeinschaft. 36  Initial changed by the author. 37  UACZ, VA Nr. 3742, “Eingabe,” June 9, 1983.

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 177

2020.05.12. 19:27:52

178

Eszter Bartha

and should respect house rules while he lives in the hostel. He does not pay his rent on time, and he had to be warned many times to behave himself. In May 1983 he was again asked to leave, but he responded that he considered it unthinkable.38

The reply promised that there would be stricter enforcement of the house rules, but effectively management was as powerless in this case as the hostel: the letter repeated that Mr. K was allowed to stay in the hostel for as long as he had no alternative accommodation. Let’s recapitulate what has happened here. The young man, Mr. K, obviously showed “deviant” features of behavior: joblessness, loud music, frequent partying, a lack of respect for the authorities (he did not even bother to get out of bed when the hostel committee visited him), and an individualist lifestyle. The petitioner, on the other hand, was a loyal and diligent worker, who worked three shifts and needed to rest after work. Still, the authorities were powerless since even the “deviant” young man had the right to basic social provisions such as housing. The case shows that despite the repressive climate in the GDR, people not only defiantly asserted their rights, but these rights (among others the right to housing) were indeed strictly protected by law and by the common understanding of the authorities. While the system undoubtedly was not the kind of socialism that Marx had envisaged, it did respect some important socialist achievements, and those who “ran” the system were very conscious of these social rights. The story of Mr. K is not unique in the GDR. There is evidence that the situation of single mothers received special consideration. For instance, a young woman turned to the chief manager with the complaint that she did not receive the one-room apartment that the flat distribution committee had promised her, and the management of the hostel where she lived refused to store the furniture that she bought for the new flat: “Two weeks ago colleague Mrs. P invited me for a discussion with the management of the hostel. She did not let me speak and explain the situation and she was totally reluctant to help me. She told me: ‘You can put your furniture on the street, that’s your problem. By September 30, the room should be cleared.’ It was not the first time that she spoke to me in this manner. I am no longer willing to deal with this colleague, and I really need a larger room for my furniture. I would like to ask for your support.”39 The letter was marked with the comment “Scandal!!!” The reply, unfortunately, has not survived

38

 UACZ, VA Nr. 3742, “Untersuchungsbericht zur Eingabe des Kolln. X,” June 24, 1983.  UACZ, VA Nr. 3453, “Eingabe,” September 23, 1980.

39

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 178

2020.05.12. 19:27:52

“This Workers’ Hostel Lost Almost Every Bit of Added Value It Had”

179

but if the investigation proved the complaint to be true, Mrs. P would have received a strong reprimand for her heartless words.40 While Beatrix Bouvier describes at length what was not fulfilled from Honecker’s flat program and which groups’ housing problems remained unsolved,41 it is also worth noting that the state-socialist regime itself never claimed that the hostel provided “ideal” housing conditions; it was intended to be a  temporary solution for people who would otherwise have nowhere to go. The inadequate conditions in the hostels were described at length by petitioners in the GDR and by cultural workers or ethnographers in Hungary. After the change of regime, it became fashionable to “discover” the deviances of state socialism and present them as novel findings: in the Hungarian case, the “deviant” discourse was part and parcel of an intellectual climate which became increasingly hostile firstly to official Marxism and secondly to the whole idea of socialism and Marxist thought. While it was widely recognized that the hostels’ permanent residents constituted a deprived social group,42 it is worth asking: what would have happened to them without the hostels? The answer appeared after 1989, when hostels were dissolved or transformed into privately run enterprises: many residents did indeed become homeless. While the GDR was undoubtedly more developed than Hungary (consider the frequent complaints of stealing in Hungary and the high numbers of illiterate residents), the West German standard of living in general was higher than that of the GDR, where functionaries endlessly “fought” for the sufficient provision of the people with consumer goods. An exclusive focus on the deprived groups under socialism is, however, biased, and will only result in the reproduction of Cold War stereotypes. We should stress that certain social rights and values were observed and respected by regime functionaries as well as the central powers, which highlights the essentially socialist features of the regime. Even the most deprived groups were entitled to basic social provisions such as housing. The lack of comfort and the overcrowded accommodation did not constitute the “evil” nature of the regime; these were signs of the essential material limits of the welfare dictatorships. However, workers were well aware of the fact that they had the inalienable right to petition the authorities and

40

 Ibid.  Bouvier, Die DDR: Ein Sozialstaat?, 152–201. 42  Aside from the previously cited literature, see Zsuzsa Ferge, who argues that sociologists already showed by the end of the 1960s that poverty existed in socialist Hungary. Zsuzsa Ferge, Társadalmi áramlatok és egyéni szerepek: Adalékok a rendszerstruktúra és a társadalmi struktúra átalakulásának dinamikájához [Social currents and individual roles: Some data on the dynamics of the transformation of system structure and social structure] (Budapest: Napvilág Kiadó, 2010). 41

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 179

2020.05.12. 19:27:52

180

Eszter Bartha

demand (rather than just ask for) basic social provisions. This explains the daring and sharply critical tone of the letters of complaint in a state where even the publication of a harmless satirical newspaper could lead to severe repressive measures, and the feared secret police constantly watched over the citizens. I return to the example of Mr. K, who worked as a disc jockey. His depicted lifestyle was in sharp contrast with the working-class ideal of the regime, and deviance was much less tolerated in the GDR than in Hungary where alternative cultures—in different frameworks depending on the period—could even appear in public. The young man was not even employed by the enterprise: he consistently violated the house rules and failed (or refused) to pay the rent. All these were not enough to expel him from the hostel because he had nowhere to go. Petitioners often went as far as one desperate mother, who also worked as a shop steward, and who turned to the Council of Ministers of the GDR with the following threat: My husband is a technologist in the optical precision instruments plant of VEB Carl Zeiss Jena. I work as a nurse at the women’s clinic of the Friedrich Schiller University. We have lived for seven years in a small furnished room of the nurses’ hostel. Since my childhood I have lived in poor conditions: when I was six, my parents got divorced and my mother and I got one room in a house. This room was wet, with mold fungus on the walls. It took my mother ten years to get a bigger flat. When I came to Jena, I lived for three years in a  dormitory, where I  had only a  bed and a  shelf that I could call my home. In 1977, I received a room of nine square meters with sloping walls. Half a year later I got married and my husband moved in with me. We lived for three years in this room, where we could only sleep on a couch because there was no room for a bed. Then we got a room of twelve square meters and we could finally have a double bed. Last year we had a baby, so right now three of us have to live in these miserable conditions. The last offer that we received was a two-room AWU [Arbeiterwohnunterkunft, workers’ hostel] flat but I  think that it is senseless to move from one AWU into another. I find it very unjust that after six years of waiting we can only get an AWU flat, and even this is too small. I hope that my family will get an adequate flat before the end of this year because I have no more strength to live in this state with my child.43

43

 UACZ, VA Nr. 4617, “Eingabe an den Ministerrat der DDR,” March 14, 1983, emphasis added.

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 180

2020.05.12. 19:27:52

“This Workers’ Hostel Lost Almost Every Bit of Added Value It Had”

181

The woman refused to appear in front of the committee because, according to her husband, she recognized that her letter contained incorrect and false statements. The husband himself did not know of the letter and he declared that he would have prevented it from being sent: He found the sentence “I have no strength to live in this state with my child” particularly shocking, and he could not easily accept it. He maintained, though, that the sentence had no political message, and his wife did not think of leaving the GDR.44 The chairperson of the committee and another member visited the woman in her home where they were personally convinced of the poor living conditions of the family. The colleagues made it clear to her that her letter had a  political message, particularly if one took into account that she was active in the trade union as a shop steward. They concluded that she just wanted to underline the urgency of her case, for which she does not blame our state.45

In any case, it was stated that the letter was written because of an administrative mistake, since the family’s flat problem had been already solved. In 1983, a single mother with a child received a three-room flat by mistake. This flat was then allocated to the family of the nurse, while the single mother moved to a  two-room flat. According to the report, the problem was caused by the slow flow of information between offices.46 The case, however, reveals not only the extensive propaganda war between the two Germanies but also shows that socialist officials were in fact attentive to their citizens’ social problems. Within the framework of this chapter, I cannot make a systematic comparison of East German and Hungarian housing conditions and possibilities. I would, however, point out three important aspects which arose from this (admittedly asymmetric) comparison. Firstly, in the Hungarian case we can consider the commuters as a specific group: they had to be content with the workers’ hostels not because they had no possessions, but because they could make more money in the capital than in their rural residence. In Szigeti’s research, many respondents explicitly mentioned the need to support their families as one reason they chose to live in the hostels. 47  At that time it was possible to apply for the so-called Ausreiseantrag, which enabled immigration to West Germany. Applicants were, however, considered to be “traitors” to the regime, and they were heavily pressured to renounce their application. 45  UACZ, VA Nr. 4617, “Untersuchungsbericht zur Staatsrat- und Ministerrats—Eingabe in der Wohnungsangelegenheit Frau X,” April 27, 1983. 46  Ibid. 47  Szigeti, Építőipari munkásszállások, 30. 44

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 181

2020.05.12. 19:27:52

182

Eszter Bartha

If we look at workers’ wages in the surveys conducted by Szigeti (in 1976) or Láng and Nyilas (in 1987), they do not support the one-sided thesis that this group only suffered from deprivation. I would rather explain this through the so-called status-inconsistency found in the research of Péter Róbert and Tamás Kolosi,48 which was highly characteristic of Hungary: there was inconsistency between several status indicators, for instance between housing and income. But I can also refer to the consumer groups of Ágnes Utasi, where consumption reveals similar inconsistencies in middleranking groups (for instance, members of these groups characteristically acquired expensive durable consumer goods which they see as status symbols, such as a television or a motorbike, while limiting their consumption very much in other areas).49 Contemporary ethnographers likewise found that the acquisition of status symbols was an important goal for workers: they observed that late state socialism was “not like in the 1950s,”50 and young people would spend their earnings on expensive tape recorders and other durable consumer goods instead of saving.51 Láng and Nyilas speak of “consumer hedonists” (it is worth again noting the influence of Western sociology upon the classification); such a term suggests that this group could not have been deprived in all dimensions.52 The workers’ hostels undoubtedly also gave accommodation to people who would be seen today as “social cases”: the have-nots, who lived at the periphery of society and who had nowhere to go except the hostel.53 The  Tamás Kolosi, Tagolt társadalom: Struktúra, rétegződés, egyenlőtlenség Magyarországon [A fragmented society: Structure, stratification, inequality in Hungary] (Budapest: Gondolat Kiadó, 1987); Péter Róbert, Státusz-mobilitás a magyar társadalomban [Status-mobility in Hungarian society] (Budapest: kandidátusi disszertáció, 1985). 49  Ágnes Utasi, Fogyasztói magatartástípusok, mint az életstílusok egyik vetülete [Consumer behavior types as a projection of lifestyles] (Budapest: kandidátusi disszertáció, 1984). 50  The first half of the 1950s—the so-called Rákosi era—was characterized by great poverty and a general shortage of consumer goods. On the relationship between the party and the working class in this era, see Pittaway, The Workers’ State. 51  Veres, “A munkásszállók társadalmai,” 27. 52  Láng and Nyilas, “Ideiglenes állandóság.” 53  A 1979 report of the workers’ hostels found that “the lifestyle, social attitudes, and values of the residents of the workers’ hostels are decisively influenced by the environment and material conditions in which they live. This is best shown by the fact that deviant behavior forms at the hostels occur three to four times more frequently than the national average [emphasis in original]. It would be important to consider how far the present ambiguous nature of the hostel—it is neither a hotel nor a dormitory—reinforces deviant conduct.” The report adds that the researchers cooperate with the Department of Public Education of Eötvös Loránd University of Sciences. Politikatörténeti és Szakszervezeti Levéltár (hereafter PIL), A Szakszervezetek Budapesti Tanácsa Kulturális, Agitációs és Propaganda Osztály iratai. A munkásszállások közművelődési tevékenysége, PIL XII. 14/8. 114. ő.e. 15, November 21, 1979. 48

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 182

2020.05.12. 19:27:53

“This Workers’ Hostel Lost Almost Every Bit of Added Value It Had”

183

idealist ideologists of socialism indeed expected deviant phenomena to decline in the new regime; social outcasts or other “hoboes” were recommended to get communal support.54 Today’s historians, however, should not evaluate the practices and opportunities of the welfare dictatorships according to the unreasonably high expectations of a socialist utopia, nor should they interpret the contemporary Zeitgeist in the present intellectual climate.55 The fact that poverty existed in socialist Hungary was well known to sociologists and ethnographers, some of whom published their discoveries at the time. Workers’ hostels were considered to be a  necessary evil rather than socialist achievements by ethnographers, leaders of the hostels, and even by cultural workers. This is supported by their reports and ironic observations such as the one noting the “joint effort of the trade union and enterprise was not sufficient to provide a hostel designed for 4,000 people with hot water.”56 The criticism of the “sexual misery” of the hostels likewise suggests that functionaries were well aware of the inadequacy and discomfort of this type of housing. However, while cultural workers often tended to assume that residents constituted a homogeneous group, we have to add that many people had no plans to move to the capital.57 Modernization theory, which gave preference to urban dwelling—or, rather, associated it with a higher cultural level—undoubtedly influenced many cultural workers and functionaries. Nevertheless, it is an open question as to how many of the commuters desired this kind of mobility. We may assume that young people were more attracted by the city than middle aged men who had left their families behind, but even within this former group objectives and motivations could have varied: not everybody wished 54

 We can find several heroes and heroines in Soviet literature who were influenced by this somewhat naive ideology. I cite here Anatoly Rybakov’s classic work, Children of the Arbat, which is partly autobiographical. The main hero of the novel can be seen as the archetypal socialist community man. However, he comes into conflict with the regime precisely because Stalinism relies on a different type of human character. 55  There is a globally distinguished Soviet literature in the 1920s, which reflects on the distance between the socialist ideal and the Soviet reality while not questioning the ideal itself as a progressive ideology. Ilya Ilf and Evgeny Petrov’s immortal hero Ostap Bender, who is in pursuit of elusive riches, does not oppose the human principles advocated by the new regime; it is not the socialist ideal itself which is ridiculed in their two novels (The Twelve Chairs and The Little Golden Calf), but the power which distorts the ideal. Even though Ilf and Petrov had different social agendas to Mikhail Bulgakov, we should note that in the famous circus scene of The Master and Margarita, Woland, masked as the devil, reveals that in the socialist capital people are as greedy as they are under capitalism. If we think of the special shops where one could buy goods only for gold or hard currency, there remained clear differences in the distribution of consumer goods. 56  Szigeti, Építőipari munkásszállások, 82. 57  Ibid.

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 183

2020.05.12. 19:27:53

184

Eszter Bartha

to live in a new block of flats, which was the most viable solution to the housing problem for those who could rely on their savings.58 We cannot, however, study the Hungarian workers’ hostels without studying commuters, and we always have to bear in mind that the real have-nots constituted a minority among the residents of the hostels. My second point is that in the more developed GDR, the hostels indeed functioned as temporary accommodation, and people had a  realistic chance to acquire newly built flats after they had spent some time at the AWU. Here, single people constituted the most disadvantaged group because they stood at the bottom of the waiting lists (family, shift work, and social activity were all factors that could shorten the waiting time).59 Early marriage and childbirth were often motivated by the desire of young people to acquire their first new home.60 Peter Hübner argues that the social policy of the GDR centered on the enterprise;61 I would instead argue that the regime transferred both social and political tasks to the enterprises, which in the post-Fordist corporate enterprise culture are strictly separated from the realm of labor. The East German managers had to deal with the workers’ housing problems as part of their managerial duties, but there were also cases when workers asked for help because of an alcoholic partner, adultery, or an unsociable roommate. People in the GDR would not hesitate to demand the enforcement of their social rights, and functionaries—even at the highest level—had to demonstrate that they cared for the social wellbeing of citizens. In that sense the letters of complaint and the entire system of petitioning—though it undoubtedly reinforced paternalism—reflected a mutual understanding shared by both workers and functionaries that workers had an inalienable right to basic social provisions, and that these social rights were part and parcel of the official legitimating ideology of the regime.

58

 The new apartment blocks were also frequently seen as sites of alienation and atomization. For instance, in Ágnes Bálint’s novel Madárfürdő (Birdbath), the alienated family moves from the capital to a village, where they meet organic communities and family relations are restored. In a novel by Endre Fejes entitled A fiú, akinek angyalarca volt (The boy with the face of an angel), the entire Kádárist society is shown to be penetrated by greediness, betrayal, and selfishness. Everybody is alone, relationships are dysfunctional, and not even the money-grabbers are happy in the novel. The main hero escapes from society by committing suicide and the only positive way out is offered by a group of uncorrupted young people, who want to establish a living community. 59  See my earlier interviews in Bartha, Alienating Labour. 60  Ibid. 61  Peter Hübner, Konsens, Konflikt und Kompromiβ: Soziale Arbeiterinteressen und Sozialpolitik in der SBZ/DDR, 1945–1970 [Consensus, conflict, and compromise: Social policy and the social interests of workers in the SBZ/GDR, 1945–1970] (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1995).

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 184

2020.05.12. 19:27:53

“This Workers’ Hostel Lost Almost Every Bit of Added Value It Had”

185

This duality of the enterprise culture and social policy can also be observed in Hungary. While the reports openly discuss the social problems of the hostels’ permanent residents (alcoholism, suicide, drug addiction, prostitution, higher levels of criminality), they fail to ask a vital question: is it really the hostel that triggers all these deviances? I would instead argue that the enterprise which was socially responsible for the workers and functionaries had to deal with social problems as an essential component of their official duties. Although I discussed at length the lack of comfort in many “problematic” hostels, we should also consider the fact that without the hostel and the enterprise’s social policy, which employed (or rather, had to employ) even social “cases,” many of these people simply had nowhere to go and nothing to do with their lives. Under state socialism, people were entitled to a certain social minimum, including employment and housing. As we have seen, the “objective difficulties” of a semi-peripheral country accounted for the inadequate provisions, rather than the “evil” nature of party functionaries. Thirdly (and I consider this difference as an introduction to the next section, where I  analyze the reports of cultural workers from the mid1980s), although in the GDR the system of petitioning served as the main forum for criticism, in the more liberal Hungary criticism of “actually existing” socialism had increasingly become an integral part of dissident intellectual discourse, which consciously made reference to non-Marxist (or even outright anti-Marxist) Western authors. While many sociographers undoubtedly believed in a  more human-faced society, where people did not have to live in overcrowded workers’ hostels lacking basic comfort and sometimes even hot water, disappointment with the Kádárist society slowly turned into a firm belief that socialism was to blame for the wide gap between ideology and social reality. Sociography undoubtedly had a rich antisystemic tradition in Hungary: during the interwar period, its criticism was mainly targeted at the semi-feudal conditions of the country and rural poverty. Katalin Sulyok, Mária Ember, and Alíz Mátyus62 highlight the essential contradiction between an ideal socialist society and the dreariness and hopelessness of the textile workers’ everyday life as embodied in the hostel. We should note that, although the authors were all female, a certain conservatism regarding gender roles can be observed. Upward mobility for the girls is exclusively represented by marriage; failure to marry either induces them to prostitute themselves or forces them to return to their rural residence, from which they originally sought to escape.63 62

 See Sulyok and Ember, “Messzi lát a  falu szeme,” and Mátyus, “Végtelen óta folynak a percek.” 63  Working-class girls are represented similarly in the American canon of the interwar period (for instance, in the novels of F. Scott Fitzgerald or Theodore Dreiser).

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 185

2020.05.12. 19:27:53

186

Eszter Bartha

The hopelessness and the lack of prospects for a better life represented by the hostel undermined not only the official Marxist-Leninist ideology but also the legitimation of the welfare dictatorships. In Honecker’s GDR, the extensive and intensive correspondence between the authorities and citizens can be understood as a corrective mechanism: the citizens formulate a complaint, the authorities investigate the case, and justice is restored, thereby reinforcing the harmony between the power and the “masses.” However, those who risked publicly stating that the East German economy could not compete with West Germany or openly criticized the regime faced harsh repressive measures.64 Silence led the regime to believe that it enjoyed widespread support during the years when trust in the party and the state was quickly diminishing. It is therefore illuminating to study a period when Hungary’s political and economic liberalization preceded that of its neighbors—even the industrially and socially more developed GDR and Czechoslovakia.

Critical Discourse and Public Education: Decreasing Legitimacy in the Welfare Dictatorships In the following section I introduce a group of sources which have yet to be studied. These include the evaluating reports of cultural workers, alongside reports of visits to the workers’ hostels, for the cultural contest Munkásszállók a közművelődésért (Workers’ hostels for public education) in 1985–86. I also seek to analyze the language of these reports and thereby contribute to an emerging discussion about knowledge production under state socialism. My main argument is that the discourse produced by the cultural workers became increasingly critical of Kádárist society and expressed serious doubts about the main legitimating discourse of the welfare dictatorships, which relied on providing an ever-increasing standard of living for their citizens. I go even further to argue that this discourse fit in with an overarching dissident intellectual culture, which gradually undermined the legitimacy of the Kádár regime. When even low-level party functionaries started to share this critical discourse (or wanted to demonstrate their belonging to the intelligentsia by reproducing discourses of atomization and deviance), this essentially brought the deepening crisis of legitimacy to the surface.65

 The Antragsteller, those who wanted to leave the GDR legally (by applying for a permit to leave the country for good), also faced harsh repression. 65  For an illuminating discussion of legitimacy under state socialism, see Pittaway, The Workers’ State. 64

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 186

2020.05.12. 19:27:53

“This Workers’ Hostel Lost Almost Every Bit of Added Value It Had”

187

But let us first see the statistics. The first meeting about public education in the workers’ hostels of the capital was held in 1975. From 1980 we have the following data: 43 percent of the workers’ hostels in Budapest were maintained by the State Construction Company (ÉSZV), 22,000 people lived in these hostels. The councils maintained eighty-eight hostels with 9,000 residents, 92 percent of the residents of Budapest hostels were men, and 87 percent were commuters (which shows that the have-nots indeed constituted a  minority).66 We must recall the cultural workers’ frequent complaints about the high ratio of illiteracy (complaints which are not found in the East German sources): 35 percent of the men and 39 percent of the women who lived at the hostels had not finished primary school.67 In 1986 the following guidelines were given for the evaluation of applicants for the contest: The traditional forms of public education (films, lectures, entertaining festivals, contests, exhibitions) exist at almost all of the ÉSZV hostels. There are, of course, opportunities beyond these “staple” programs [“konzerv” műsorokon túl] (which serve as the basis for the evaluation of the cultural workers’ work). How much these opportunities can be exploited depends on local circumstances.68

The reports of the visits to the hostels, however, were not flattering. We can observe that the writers of the reports relied strongly on the rich critical tradition of Hungarian sociography. In most of the evaluation reports there are no attempts to pay lip service to the idea of the workers’ hostel. Instead, it is depicted as the distressing symbol of a dreary working-class life, which gives little if any hope of escape: I have already written long comments about the ugly building of this hostel, which alongside other ÉSZV hostels reminds one of the grey socialist realism of the 1950s: it is halfway between a railway station and a mon66

 PIL XII. 14/8. 115. ő.e. 5.  Ibid. We should note that, in the wider context, this was not a very bad ratio. In one of the most developed parts of Hungary, Győr-Sopron County, 24 percent of the total workforce had not finished primary school according to surveys conducted in the Rába factory (which was considered to be a socialist model factory). See Győr-Moson-Sopron Megyei Levéltár (hereafter GYML), MSZMP Győr-Sopron Megyei Bizottsága iratai, Az MSZMP Magyar Vagon- és Gépgyár Bizottság iratai, GYML XXXV. 415/195/3, “Pártbizottsági ülés jegyzőkönyve: Jelentés a munkásművelődés tapasztalatairól, helyzetéről és szerepéről, fejlesztésének feladatairól a Magyar Vagon- és Gépgyárban, Melléklet (MVG összes dolgozójának iskolai végzettség szerinti megoszlása korcsoportonként),” July 6, 1977. 68  PIL XII. 14/8. 120. ő.e. 198, July 1986, emphasis in original. 67

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 187

2020.05.12. 19:27:53

188

Eszter Bartha

strous cultural hall. The mere sight of this institution makes me feel distressed. Here, one feels completely lost; and the bareness and unfriendliness of the environment is not mitigated by even one intimate room or club. Public life is restricted to the long queue before the canteen (where they cannot even bring their guests!). The canteen, where I  spent some time and talked to a few people, looks like a third-rate pub. It was full of Polish guest workers, soldiers on leave from the neighboring barracks, and residents of the hostel, who had already consumed an impressive amount of alcohol. In the long corridors of the ground floor we can find the same climate: beer, cards, billiards, and in the distance some young people apathetically play ping-pong. (Note that the fight against alcoholism occupies a prominent place in the cultural plan of the hostel).69

The same ÉSZV hostel, on Tejút utca in Csepel,70 is described in a similar vein by another visitor: We have not experienced any positive change in the hostel, which looks like the neighboring military barracks. Everything is long, large, and dreary—the corridor, the canteen, and the TV room nicknamed the “club.” The only difference between the barracks and the hostel is that the soldiers and the hostel residents are waiting for dinner in different queues. It is, however, a big difference that while military service lasts one and a half years, residents of the hostel spend decades at the hostels of Tejút, Bartók, Ve­ nyi­ge, Könyves, and Harmat . . .71

I stress once more the vivid description of alienation and the lack of meaningful human relations in the reports: young people “apathetically” play ping-pong; the only entertainment is to get drunk; there is a total lack of organic community and intimate space; temporariness and the tense feeling of being suspended is underlined (note the comparison with the military barracks). Home is associated with intimacy, private space, comfort, safety, and stability. Here everything is described as the exact opposite of a home. People feel essentially insecure and unstable in this environment; little wonder that they turn to drugs or alcohol. The feeling of alienation was manifest in several layers of the reports. Cultural workers were themselves alienated from the official Marxist-Leninist ideology: Marxist classics were increasingly replaced by Western soci-

69

 PIL XII, 14/8, 120. ő.e. 12–13, February 1986.  Csepel is a traditional working-class district in Budapest. 71  PIL XII. 14/8, 120. ő.e. 29–30, October 8, 1986, emphasis added. 70

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 188

2020.05.12. 19:27:53

“This Workers’ Hostel Lost Almost Every Bit of Added Value It Had”

189

ologists in the vocabulary, and presumably the libraries, of the country’s cultural elite (or at least those who claimed membership of it). But it was also a frequent critique that the “inmates” of the hostels were also alienated from the wider society and “high” culture, which the regime attempted to impose on them. Not even those who were sharply critical of the system’s wholesale paternalism could propose a new, socialist perspective: Informal or intimate talks at the hostel have immediately come to an end when officials appeared in the circle of speakers. I would compare the relationship between the cultural workers and the residents to that of a parent and a stupid kid. I was deeply annoyed by the paternalistic tone that the hostel officials used during their interaction with the residents. During the talks with the cultural workers, it became clear that their application to the contest contains several untrue statements. The youth club has no leader: two cultural workers volunteered for this task, but they are not very interested, so the club practically does not function. The hobby club of anti-alcoholics is at best formal; not even the club leader understands why the club should function. The hobby clubs of readers, language learners, and fishermen all failed. The women’s club is currently organized without much success. Self-organizing groups—in the opinion of cultural workers—cannot be formed. It is, however, worth noting that they stressed the importance of certain archaic hierarchical relations in some groups of Roma people (e.g., voivode).72

Again, this cannot be seen as a unique complaint: we can find the criticism in several reports that there is no intimate or close relationship between the residents and the cultural workers, thereby reinforcing the frequent stressing of alienation (even though we do not know the opinions of the residents). The critique of paternalism, however, can be translated into a wider criticism of a society where alienation has become a “common” social feeling. While I have already mentioned the gender bias (or outright conservatism) of authors such as Sulyok, Ember, or Mátyus—in whose writings the only option for working-class girls is to choose between prostitution (and moral decay) and a good marriage—cultural workers and officials were also not free of these biases. In this chapter I cannot undertake an in-depth analysis of gender at the hostels; I will, however, cite one example which demonstrates this bias. The cultural worker at the women’s hostel at Fehérvári út is described as a role model for her profession; her highly positive evaluation is 72

 PIL XII. 14/8. 120. ő. e. 56–58, November 27, 1986, emphases added. In this sense, voivode refers to a Roma leader.

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 189

2020.05.12. 19:27:53

190

Eszter Bartha

all the more striking in light of the overall criticism of other cultural workers. At the hostel she found room for an athletics club, she sold books and theater tickets for the residents, she organized evening courses for those who wanted to finish primary school, and she strongly encouraged the girls to finish their missing studies during a personal talk. The report describes her merits at length, and concludes with the argument that “it is a remarkable achievement from a female cultural worker.”73 The report contains further details of the internal hierarchy of the various ethnic groups of women who lived at the hostel: The admission of guests74 is rather discriminatory: Cuban girls75 can receive guests at a separate hall, whereas the Hungarian and Roma [cigány] women cannot unless the visitor is their husband. This forced the “other” visitors to gather at the street in front of the hostel where they ate their food from tin cans or chatted while sitting on the bare ground. Not even one bench can be found in the neighborhood. This is a fine example of the “cultivated reception of guests” as proposed by the house order of the hostel.76

Note again the distinction between the Hungarian and Roma women. “People of Roma ethnicity” was a favorite term of cultural workers; since they were usually associated with “trouble,” this suggests that an anti-Roma bias also existed among the contemporary cultural elite (or at least the lower strata of the intelligentsia).77 While the authors of the reports were inclined to boast of reading Western sociology, it is unlikely that they were sympathetic to the ideas of Western feminism. I have already observed that working-class girls, even in the ethnographies of female authors, could only choose between moral decline and marriage. Now we learn that female cultural workers were in a similarly poor position. Another report discusses the private problems of an excel-

73

 PIL XII. 14/8, 120. ő.e. 191–92, July 16, 1986, emphasis added.  We know from other reports that the strict surveillance of guests, and police raids to catch uninvited guests, were a frequent source of complaint at the men’s hostels as well. 75  Out of the 1,000 total residents, 150 were from Cuba. 76  PIL XII. 14/8, 120. ő.e. 191–92, July 16, 1986, emphasis added. 77  There is evidence that Roma women were also disadvantaged in the labor market. See Susan Zimmermann, “Gender Regime and Gender Struggle in Hungarian State Socialism,” Aspasia 4 (2010): 1–24; also Mátyás Binder, “Changes in the Image of ‘Gypsies’ in Slovakia and Hungary after the Post-Communist Transition,” in After Twenty Years: Reasons and Consequences of the Transformation in Central and Eastern Europe, ed. Krisztián Csaplár-Degovics et al. (Budapest: Terra Recognita Foundation, 2010), 307–36. 74

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 190

2020.05.12. 19:27:53

“This Workers’ Hostel Lost Almost Every Bit of Added Value It Had”

191

lent female cultural worker: “Zsófi78 has been working for ÉSZV for ten years. She, however, has only a small room of eight square meters, which she rents from ÉSZV. Her unsolved housing situation and private life has been increasingly influencing her general mood.”79 Later we learn that “private problems” refer to her being unmarried. It could be that the writer of the report (who happened to be a male) was well-meaning and wanted to urge the authorities to do something to solve Zsófi’s housing situation. However, while the only positive example of the cited ethnographies is a girl who succeeds in getting married, here we can see a similar conservative bias. Zsófi is an exemplary cultural worker unlike many of her coworkers, who have received very unfavorable evaluations in the reports. Despite the goodwill of the evaluators, however, the main justifications for her proposed award are that firstly, she needs encouragement because for ten years she could not manage to find a husband or buy a flat; and secondly, her exceptional performance should be evaluated in light of the fact that she is a woman. One might, indeed, assume that she devoted all her energy to the affairs of the hostel because she had no family to care for. I would not, of course, generalize this message; however, if one compares the tone of the reports with that of the sociography written ten to fifteen years prior, we can argue that the project of female emancipation had mental obstacles even in the circle of the (lower) intelligentsia, and that marriage remained a determining factor of women’s lives and perspectives.

Conclusion In the introduction I promised to link the criticism of workers’ hostels with a more general and far-reaching intellectual anti-systemic, or at best critical, discourse. Even though welfare dictatorships propagated the official Marxist-Leninist ideology, they in fact sought to win over the masses with the promise of ever-increasing consumer levels. The regime’s generous social policy brought some short-term results: in countries such as the GDR, Czechoslovakia, and Hungary we cannot speak of the formation of a substantial working-class resistance to the state. In the long run, however, the results were ambiguous because such policies triggered a consumerist turn in the consciousness of the people, whose consumer needs could not be satisfied within the framework of a planned economy—or at least not to the extent that developed capitalist countries such as West Germany could. In 78

 Name changed by the author.  PIL XII. 14/8, 120. ő.e. 191–92, July 16, 1986.

79

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 191

2020.05.12. 19:27:53

192

Eszter Bartha

Hungary, growing indebtedness and increasing economic difficulties forced the government to give further concessions to the West: in 1982 Hungary joined the IMF, and in 1984 a  substantial part of the second (informal) economy was legalized.80 Workers and other state employees received an opportunity to supplement their income through the second economy. At the cost of substantial overtime work, they could “constantly” increase their standard of living and acquire newer and newer consumer goods, which were considered to be status symbols. The products of socialist industry were not, however, as much desired as the products of advanced Western countries—the “admiration of the West” became a favorite slogan in Hungary—and shopping tourism (when it was allowed) made people realize that they could not compete with the consumer levels of Austria and West Germany, even in what the West termed the “happiest barrack” of the socialist bloc. Honecker’s dictatorship was obviously far more rigid than Kádár’s “goulash communism.” In addition, the GDR was in constant competition with West Germany, and both Germanies were engaged in an extensive ideological and propaganda war. While Honecker did his best to isolate GDR citizens from West German influences, he could not block communication with the West entirely. Even though Westfernsehen (the watching of West German TV channels) was considered to be an offence against “ideological watchfulness,” “behind the curtains” most East German families were familiar with the West German news. In the GDR, despite the functionaries’ persistent efforts to “fight for a satisfying provision of the people with all sorts of consumer goods” (a favorite euphemist phrase in party documents for addressing the problem of shortage), even party members would criticize the long waiting time for cars and the lack of adequate car services. By the 1980s, even in the GDR we can observe an increasing discontent with the shortage of various consumer goods and disillusionment with the propaganda directed against West Germany. Although discontent was silenced in the public forums of the GDR, in Hungary a critical intellectual discourse developed, which openly expressed the exhaustion of the regime’s ideological reserves and the crisis of its legitimacy based on increasing levels of consumption:

 On the social impacts of the second economy, see Tamás Kolosi, Tagolt társadalom. On the second economy, see R. István Gábor and Péter Galasi, A második gazdaság: Tények és hipotézisek [The second economy: Facts and hypotheses] (Budapest: Közgazdasági és Jogi Könyvkiadó, 1981); Ákos Róna-Tas, The Great Surprise of the Small Transformation: The Demise of Communism and the Rise of the Private Sector in Hungary (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, 1997).

80

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 192

2020.05.12. 19:27:53

“This Workers’ Hostel Lost Almost Every Bit of Added Value It Had”

193

This workers’ hostel lost almost every bit of added value it had. There is no legal consultation, the youth club has no leader, there are no more lectures on the history of rock music and the hobby group of photographers has ceased to function. No new programs were organized in their place. I almost forgot to mention: once a week the TV room is full when new or old horror films entertain the audience, who sit on the uncomfortable chairs and seek to forget where they are through the consumption of an impressive amount of alcohol.81

The writers of the reports sought to be part of this critical intellectual discourse by stressing the outdatedness of the “Marxism of the 1950s,” instead using Western sociologists as points of reference. Rather than propagating the noble goals of socialist education, they underlined the fact that, at the majority of the hostels, third-rate American movies and alcohol are the only source of public entertainment that help people forget “where they are.” The failure of the standard-of-living policy essentially triggered a crisis of legitimacy for the regime, while the dogmatic camp of “old communists” effectively prevented the propagation of a viable left-wing alternative to the masses.82 The criticism of the lack of self-governing groups and the failure of the hobby clubs can be interpreted as a  more far-reaching criticism of the deeply rooted paternalism of the regime, which was not interested in the democratization of the masses, let alone the hierarchical apparatus of the party. In the mid-1980s, it became fashionable amongst the reformers to “diagnose” the crisis of the system. The reports I have cited fit in well with this critical discourse because they depict an essential abnormality in the everyday life of the hostels. This is characterized not only by the young people who “apathetically order their next beer” and “wander aimlessly in the prison-like corridors,” or by the cultural workers, the best of whom is likewise desperate because she is single and has been living in a tiny room for ten years, but also by wider society. While in Hungary, “discourses of deviance” increasingly appeared in public forums thanks to the reformers, in the GDR ideological discipline was so strict that some overzealous functionaries even recommended censoring the Soviet media. In 1989 the party committee of the factory informed the district party leadership that on a Soviet cinema day, five movies were shown, but the audience criticized them for displaying a “negative” image of the Soviet Union: “One gets the impression that the state cannot

81

 PIL. XII. 14/8. 120. ő.e. 198, September 1986.  On the fight between the reformers and the orthodox communists, see Földes, Hatalom és mozgalom.

82

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 193

2020.05.12. 19:27:53

194

Eszter Bartha

maintain law and order and society has been penetrated by anti-Semitism and alcoholism. We therefore ask the comrades in charge not to show such movies in future.”83 In light of the above request, it is worth reevaluating the Hungarian situation, where in the mid-1980s we can observe the rise of an openly critical and increasingly anti-Marxist intellectual discourse even among low-level regime cadres. The regime did not collapse because it was officially recognized that “deviance” continued to exist under state socialism; rather, it collapsed because it unintentionally encouraged the rise of a consumer culture and a consumption-oriented, materialistic way of thinking and a corresponding set of values. The class-conscious worker, who had a central place in the regime’s ideology and self-representation, was increasingly transformed into a happy consumer, who measured the political achievement of the government against the rise of the standards of living. However, from the 1980s, even Hungary’s “goulash communism” failed to satisfy the increasing consumer needs. In the material contest with the West, the regime’s “other” social achievements—such as universal employment, free education and health care, the support of working-class culture and education—were increasingly downgraded and disregarded by the workers themselves. The widening gap between the ideology of welfare dictatorships and the consumer levels that the system could provide thus undermined the legitimacy of the regime and paved the way for a full-scale restoration of capitalism. The disappointment with the welfare dictatorships triggered a radical rupture with Marxist thinking in Hungary and contributed to the anti-communist mainstream intellectual climate after the change of regime.

83

 UACZ VA Nr. 4447, “Information über die Bearbeitung der Eingabe der Gewerkschaftsgruppe ‘Dr. Richard Sorge’ aus dem Betrieb Entwicklung wissenschaftlich-technischer Ausrüstungen,” January 5, 1989, emphasis added.

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 194

2020.05.12. 19:27:53

Discussing Women’s Double and Triple Burden in Socialist Yugoslavia: Women Working in the Garment Industry Chiara Bonfiglioli

Introduction Since 1945, the region of the former Yugoslavia has undergone profound economic, political, and social change. The new state-socialist regime led a fast process of industrialization and urbanization, developing its specific form of market socialism after its break with the Soviet Union in 1948–49. What used to be a mainly peasant country made its entry into the industrialized Second World, reaching unprecedented levels of growth. Access to consumer goods expanded considerably in the 1960s and 1970s.1 In the following two decades, however, the country was affected by an economic and political crisis that led to the violent break-up of the socialist federation. Economic decline and “de-development” started in the 1980s, when foreign debt, inflation, and unemployment skyrocketed, and austerity measures were applied in order to meet the conditions of new IMF loans.2 During the Yugoslav wars of the 1990s, economic decline, inflation, and unemployment rose even further, causing a widespread destruction of jobs and industrial development, and a process of “re-peripheralization” of the region vis-à-vis the West.3 Unemployment rates in the region are the highest in Europe, and social inequalities have risen in the last thirty years.4  Patrick Hyder Patterson, Bought & Sold: Living and Losing the Good Life in Socialist Yugoslavia (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2011). 2  Meurs and Ranasinghe define “de-development” as a reduction in physical, human, infrastructural, and social capital, typical of parts of Central and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union after 1989. See Mieke Meurs and Rasika Ranasinghe, “De-Development in Post-Socialism: Conceptual and Measurement Issues,” Politics & Society 31 (2003): 31–53; Susan L. Woodward, “The Political Economy of Ethno-Nationalism in Yugoslavia,” Socialist Register 39 (2003): 78–79. 3  Marija Stambolieva and Stefan Dehnert, eds., Welfare States in Transition: 20 Years after the Yugoslav Welfare Model (Sofia: Friedrich Ebert Foundation, 2011), 351; Carl Ulrik Schierup, “Quasi-Proletarians and a Patriarchal Bureaucracy: Aspects of Yugoslavia’s Re-Peripheralisation,” Soviet Studies 44, no. 1 (1992): 79. 4  Stambolieva and Dehnert, Welfare States, 351. 1

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 195

2020.05.12. 19:27:54

196

Chiara Bonfiglioli

Scholarly discussions on the violent breakup of Yugoslavia have tended to focus on the political and economic aspects of war and transition, overshadowing the social impact of these transformations on ordinary citizens both during socialism and in the post-socialist period, particularly when it comes to issues of social citizenship, labor, and gender.5 The last few years, however, have witnessed a return of scholars’ and activists’ interest in social inequalities and class, mainly due to the global economic crisis, but also as a result of the rise in workers’ struggles, students’ protests, and social movements against corruption, austerity measures, and privatization across South East Europe.6 New scholarly works are assessing the contradictions and ambivalences of self-management and market socialism in Yugoslavia and are investigating the issue of social inequalities in the socialist period.7 Renewed exchanges between scholars from different post-Yugoslav states have also led to an increased interest in the common legacy of socialism in everyday life, with new works exploring issues of consumption, tourism, leisure, and socialist popular culture.8 Workers’ lives during socialism, however, remain an under-researched theme. Although many studies on social differentiation were published during socialist times, very little exists when it comes to social history and labor

5

 Chiara Bonfiglioli, Katja Kahlina, and Adriana Zaharijević, “Transformations of Gender, Sexuality and Citizenship in South East Europe,” Women’s Studies International Forum 49 (2015): 43–47. 6  Srećko Horvat and Igor Štiks, Welcome to the Desert of Post-Socialism: Radical Politics after Yugoslavia (Brooklyn: Verso, 2015). 7  Gal Kirn, Partizanski prelomi in protislovja tržnega socializma v Jugoslaviji [Partisan fractures and contradictions of market socialism in Yugoslavia] (Ljubljana: Sophia, 2015); Vladimir Unkovski-Korica, The Economic Struggle for Power in Tito’s Yugoslavia: From World War II to Non-Alignment (London: I.B. Tauris, 2016); Rory Archer, Igor Duda, and Paul Stubbs, eds., Social Inequalities and Discontent in Yugoslav Socialism (Farnham: Ashgate, 2016). 8  On everyday life in socialist Yugoslavia, see Breda Luthar and Maruša Pušnik, eds., Remembering Utopia: The Culture of Everyday Life in Socialist Yugoslavia (Washington, DC: New Academia Pub., 2010); Lada Duraković and Andrea Matošević, eds., Socijalizam na klupi: Jugoslavensko društvo očima nove postjugoslavenske humanistike [Socialism on the bench: Yugoslav society views the new post-Yugoslav humanities] (Zagreb: Srednja Europa, 2013). On tourism, consumption, and leisure, see Igor Duda, U potrazi za blagostanjem: o povijesti dokolice i potrošačkog društva u Hrvatskoj 1950-ih i 1960-ih [In search for well-being: On the history of leisure and consumer society in Croatia in the 1950s and 1960s] (Zagreb: Srednja Europa, 2005); Igor Duda, Pronađeno blagostanje: svakodnevni život i potrošačka kultura u Hrvatskoj 1970-ih i 1980-ih [Well-being found: Everyday life and consumer culture in Croatia in the 1970s and 1980s] (Zagreb: Srednja Europa, 2010); Hannes Grandits and Karin Taylor, eds., Yugoslavia’s Sunny Side: A History of Tourism in Socialism (1950s–1980s) (Budapest and New York: Central European University Press, 2010).

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 196

2020.05.12. 19:27:54

Discussing Women’s Double and Triple Burden in Socialist Yugoslavia

197

history.9 As noted by Sabine Rutar, “the general predominance of political history, the enduring lack of attention to historical social agency, and the ideologized over-saturation of the history of the ‘working class’ in state socialist times largely account for the lacunae in the historiography of southeastern Europe.”10 Workers’ everyday lives in the socialist era—particularly women’s working lives—have generally been cast to the background in discussions of politics and economy during socialism. Recent scholarly works are addressing this gap, assuming the centrality of workers’ experiences during socialism and in post socialist times.11 The position of female workers is also increasingly explored, particularly in relation to post-socialist transition, nostalgia, and memory.12 In this chapter, I consider the position of female industrial workers in socialist Yugoslavia from the early 1960s to the mid-1980s. I concentrate on women working in the garment industry, a typical “women’s industry” which had a very significant role in the industrialization process, and which employed thousands of women across the country.13 The local garment industry also had the ideological function of promoting socialist modernity through fashion and consumption.14 Women’s access to the labor market under socialism has often been described by scholars as a form of emancipation from above, which increased women’s double burden of productive and

 Archer, Duda, and Stubbs, Social Inequalities and Discontent. See also Rory Archer, “Social Inequalities and the Study of Yugoslavia’s Dissolution,” in Debating the End of Yugoslavia, ed. Florian Bieber, Armina Galijas, and Rory Archer (Farnham: Ashgate, 2014). 10  Sabine Rutar, “Towards a Southeast European History of Labour: Examples from Yugoslavia,” in Beyond the Balkans: Towards an Inclusive History of Southeastern Europe, ed. Sabine Rutar (Vienna and Berlin: Lit Verlag, 2014), 327. 11  Andrea Matošević, Pod zemljom: Antropologija rudarenja na Labinštini u XX. stoljeću [Underground: An anthropology of mining in Labinština in the twentieth century] (Zagreb, Institut za etnologiju i folkloristiku, 2011); Goran Musić, Serbia’s Working Class in Transition, 1988–2013 (Belgrade: Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung, 2013); Tanja Petrović. “‘When We Were Europe’: Socialist Workers in Serbia and Their Nostalgic Narratives,” in Remembering Communism: Genres of Representation, ed. Maria Todorova (New York: Social Science Research Council, 2010). 12  Renata Jambrešić Kirin and Marina Blagaić, “The Ambivalence of Socialist Working Women’s Heritage: A Case Study of the Jugoplastika Factory,” Narodna Umjetnost 50, no. 1 (2013): 40–73; Nina Vodopivec, “Past for the Present: The Social Memory of Textile Workers in Slovenia,” in Todorova, Remembering Communism; Dijana Dijanić et al., Ženski biografski leksikon: sjećanje žena na život u socijalizmu [Women’s biographical lexicon: The memory of women living under socialism] (Zagreb: Centar za ženske studije, 2004). 13  Doris Hanzl-Weiss, “Enlargement and the Textiles, Clothing and Footwear Industry,” World Economy 27, no. 6 (2004): 923–45. 14  Djurdja Bartlett, “Žuži Jelinek: The Incredible Adventures of a  Socialist Chanel,” in Luthar and Pušnik, Remembering Utopia, 407–28. 9

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 197

2020.05.12. 19:27:54

198

Chiara Bonfiglioli

reproductive work.15 However, in the contemporary narratives of former textile workers, the socialist era is often remembered with fondness after the experience of post-socialist transition, characterized by neoliberal privatization, deindustrialization, and factory closures.16 In this essay I wish to complicate these representations and discuss how women coped with ambivalent experiences of equality and difference in socialist Yugoslavia. Through the analysis of women’s magazines, official reports, workplace periodicals, and visual material, I focus in particular on female workers’ difficulties in combining paid and unpaid work at different stages of state socialism, the so-called “double burden.” I  also discuss what has been termed women’s “triple burden” in socialist societies: that is, women’s difficulties in taking part in political activities within the factory, in this case decision-making activities within the framework of Yugoslav self-management. Class differences among women are also taken into account with respect to gender relations and the possibility to reconcile productive, reproductive, and political work. I believe that the lens of women’s labor can provide important insights on Yugoslav labor history after 1945, particularly with regard to the contradictions and ambivalences of socialist industrialization. While I concentrate here on the theme of female workers’ discontent during socialism, I am wary of reinstating the post–Cold War representation of socialism as “state patriarchy.”17 In this sense, I follow the recent scholarship that stresses individuals’ agency during socialism and that strives to overcome the totalitarian paradigm frequently used to interpret socialist societies.18 In socialist Yugoslavia as in other state-socialist countries, despite the shortcomings and limitations of the socialist policies of women’s emancipation, paid work was a source of self-respect and self-realization for many women. Furthermore, the postwar reconfiguration of gender relations provided new possibilities for women’s social mobility, particularly through education.19 15

 Ulf Brunnbauer, “From Equality without Democracy to Democracy without Equality? Women and Transition in South-East Europe,” South-East Europe Review 3 (2000): 151–68. 16  Chiara Bonfiglioli, “Gender, Labour and Precarity in the South East European Periphery: The Case of Textile Workers in Štip,” Contemporary Southeastern Europe 1, no. 2 (2014): 7–23; Bonfiglioli, “Gendered Citizenship in the Global European Periphery: Textile Workers in Post-Yugoslav States,” Women’s Studies International Forum 49 (2015): 57–65. 17  For ongoing discussions on state socialism and gender politics, see the Forum “Is ‘Communist Feminism’ a Contradictio in Terminis?” Aspasia 1 (2007): 197–246, as well as the Forum “Gendering the Cold War in the Region,” Aspasia 8 (2014): 162–90. 18  Breda Luthar and Maruša Pušnik, “The Lure of Utopia: Socialist Everyday Spaces,” in Luthar and Pušnik, Remembering Utopia, 1–36. 19  Susan Zimmermann, “Gender Regime and Gender Struggle in Hungarian State Socialism,” Aspasia 4 (2010): 1–24; Malgorzata Fidelis, Women, Communism, and Industriali-

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 198

2020.05.12. 19:27:54

Discussing Women’s Double and Triple Burden in Socialist Yugoslavia

199

The  Yugoslav self-management system, moreover, provided workers with some degree of decision-making power within factories.20 In my view, therefore, it is crucial to keep in mind the contradictions and ambivalences faced by working women, as well as female workers’ relative gains during socialism, particularly in comparison to the material losses, precarious labor, and extreme exploitation experienced by former industrial workers in post-socialist times.21

“From 3 am to 10 pm”: The Double Burden of Paid and Unpaid Work In 1966, filmmaker Krešimir Golik filmed a day in the life of Smilja Glavaš, a  twenty-three-year-old textile worker, married woman, and mother of a toddler, who resided in the suburb of Dubrava, near Zagreb, and worked at the Pobjeda factory in the city. The documentary, titled Od 3 do 22 (From 3 am to 10 pm), is considered a classic of social realism. It follows the protagonist as she endlessly runs from dawn to dusk in order to combine her work outside the home with her domestic obligations. The young worker wakes up at three in the morning, prepares breakfast for her child, her husband, and herself, then runs to the market in town before entering the factory. While Smilja and her husband are going to work, the child is left home unattended, locked in the small countryside lodging without running water or electricity. After work, the woman quickly catches the tram back to the suburb, comes home, tends to the child, and prepares lunch. Her husband rests after lunch, and then goes out, most likely to socialize with his friends, whilst the young worker continues her chores until ten in the evening, when she can finally rest. In Yugoslavia, women’s waged labor was presented as a  fundamental path towards women’s emancipation by the socialist regime. Women’s work experiences in the public and private sphere, however, were more complex zation in Postwar Poland (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010); Jill Massino, “Workers under Construction: Gender, Identity, and Women’s Experiences of Work in State Socialist Romania,” in Gender Politics and Everyday Life in State Socialist Eastern and Central Europe, ed. Shana Penn and Jill Massino (Basingstoke and New York: ­Palgrave Macmillan). 20  For discussions on workers’ and trade unions’ roles in self-management, see Unkovski-Korica, The Economic Struggle for Power in Tito’s Yugoslavia; see also Goran Musić, “The Self-Managing Factory after Tito: The Crisis of Yugoslav Socialism on the Shop Floor” (PhD diss., European University Institute, Florence, 2015). 21  Bonfiglioli, Women and Industry in the Balkans.

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 199

2020.05.12. 19:27:54

200

Chiara Bonfiglioli

than that portrayed in official representations. Women’s struggle to combine paid and unpaid work, the so-called “double burden,” became a characteristic feature of postwar socialist regimes, and Yugoslavia was no exception.22 In 1946, after the mass participation of women in the antifascist resistance, their political, social, and economic rights were inscribed in the Yugoslav Constitution for the very first time, following the extension of the franchise to women for the 1945 elections.23 During the postwar reconstruction and industrialization drive, women entered the fields of education and labor in unprecedented numbers, leading to a slow decrease in Yugoslavia’s high rates of illiteracy and infant mortality. Many of them also migrated from the countryside to the city during the rapid urbanization process that profoundly transformed the country.24 Women’s entry into the labor market— particularly in rural and underdeveloped areas—was presented as a factor of modernization by socialist authorities. Textile factories, in particular, were seen as having a modernizing impact on women’s lives, particularly when it came to women from ethnic minorities and less developed republics.25 Despite important gains in women’s access to education and the labor market, however, women’s employment rates in Yugoslavia in the 1970s and 1980s hovered around 33 percent, with significant differences between the country’s various regions.26 The figures for Yugoslavia, therefore, were closer to those of Southern Europe than to those of the Central and Eastern European socialist regimes. By way of comparison, women’s employment rates in Spain and Italy were around 30 percent in the late 1970s and early 1980s, while in Hungary, for instance, 83 percent of women between twenty and fifty years old were in the labor force by the early 1980s.27 In Yugoslavia the labor market remained segregated by gender, and women were mainly employed as unskilled workers or in “feminized,” low-paid professions, such as agriculture, education, social services, and labor-intensive branches such as

 Susan Gal and Gail Kligman, The Politics of Gender after Socialism (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000). 23  Barbara Jancar-Webster, Women & Revolution in Yugoslavia, 1941–1945 (Denver, CO: Arden Press, 1990). 24  Darko Suvin, “On Class Relationships in Yugoslavia 1945–1974, with a  Hypothesis about the Ruling Class,” Debatte 20, no. 1 (2012): 46–47. 25  Nina Vodopivec, “On the Road to Modernity: Textile Workers and Post-Socialist Transformations in Slovenia,” History 97, no. 4 (2012): 609–29. 26  Susan L. Woodward, “The Rights of Women: Ideology, Policy, and Social Change in Yugoslavia,” in Women, State, and Party in Eastern Europe, ed. Sharon L. Wolchik and Alfred G. Meyer (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1985), 245. 27  Éva Fodor, Working Difference: Women’s Working Lives in Hungary and Austria, 1945– 1995 (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2003), 81. 22

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 200

2020.05.12. 19:27:54

Discussing Women’s Double and Triple Burden in Socialist Yugoslavia

201

the textile industry.28 Women were also the most affected by shifts in productivity and unemployment rates.29 Their presence in executive positions was limited, and further differentiated according to ethnicity.30 Alongside their participation in paid work, women continued to carry out unpaid work, and the fast urbanization of the country was not sufficient to dispel patriarchal values and practices in the private sphere.31 Much like socialist elites in other countries, Yugoslav authorities did institute a number of welfare services such as longer maternity leave, childcare facilities, and shorter working hours to promote women’s entry into the labor market.32 At the same time, much like other socialist regimes such as Hungary, state socialism reinforced the vision of “unpaid housework as a female obligation.”33 Socialist policies did not put into question the traditional gendered division of labor within the family, and naturalized women’s role as mothers and caretakers, simultaneously devaluing domestic work.34 Moreover, due to the semi-peripheral and underdeveloped status of Central, Eastern, and Southeastern European socialist economies, welfare services such as health clinics and kindergartens could not keep up with the fast pace of industrialization, especially in smaller towns and villages.35 Ultimately, women in Yugoslavia had to bear the greatest burden for the shortcomings of the socialist economy. Important economic and social differences existed between the different regions that composed the multiethnic Yugoslav federation, as well as between rural and urban areas. These differences were further strengthened by socialist policies of decentralization,

28

 Silva Mežnarić, “Theory and Reality: The Status of Employed Women in Yugoslavia,” in Wolchik and Meyer, Women, State, and Party in Eastern Europe, 214–20. 29  Susan L. Woodward, Socialist Unemployment: The Political Economy of Yugoslavia, 1945– 1990 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995). 30  Joy B. Reeves, “Social Change in Yugoslavia and Its Impact on Women,” International Journal of Sociology of the Family 20 (1990): 125–38. 31  Garth Massey, Karen Hahn, and Duško Sekulić, “Women, Men, and the ‘Second Shift’ in Socialist Yugoslavia,” Gender & Society 9, no. 3 (1995): 359–79; see also Bette S. Denich, “Urbanization and Women’s Roles in Yugoslavia,” Anthropological Quarterly 49, no. 1 (1976): 11–19. 32  Fodor, Working Difference; Leontina M. Hormel, “A Case Study of Gender, Class, and Garment Work Reorganization in Ukraine,” GENDER: Journal for Gender, Culture and Society 1 (2011): 10–25. 33  Zimmermann, “Gender Regime and Gender Struggle,” 10. 34  Barbara Einhorn, Cinderella Goes to Market: Citizenship, Gender and Women’s Movements in East Central Europe (London: Verso, 1993); Beverly Dawn Metcalfe and Marianne Afanassieva, “Gender, Work, and Equal Opportunities in Central and Eastern Europe,” Women in Management Review 20, no. 6 (2005): 397–411. 35  Zimmermann, “Gender Regime and Gender Struggle”; Fidelis, Women, Communism, and Industrialization.

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 201

2020.05.12. 19:27:54

202

Chiara Bonfiglioli

as well as by the country’s openness to the world economic market, which exposed local production to global market competition and fluctuations.36 Women’s paid and unpaid labor was shaped not only by shifts in economic growth and welfare services, but also by conflicting discourses and messages over women’s proper role in society. Several authors have shown how the socialist press and popular culture reproduced a contradictory mix of traditional and progressive values with regard to women’s roles, located at the intersection between patriarchal hierarchies, socialist morality, and Western capitalist influences.37 Women were encouraged to be exemplary workers, enlightened mothers and housewives, and to manage consumption and domestic tasks in the most rational manner.38 They were also encouraged to be active citizens, and to participate in the work of social and political organizations at both local and federal levels. Urban, educated, middle-class femininity was presented as a key feature of modernity by official women’s organizations, who strived to emancipate the peasant, religious female population through literacy courses and political campaigns.39 The depictions of femininity that dominated women’s magazines, however, presented a reality that was far from achievable for most female industrial workers or for women living in rural areas. Female workers even sent letters of complaint to women’s magazines, questioning their choices of models.40 In the next section I will analyze how these conflicting expectations affected female workers in the garment industry in the Macedonian towns of Štip, Tetovo, and Titov Veles.

 Woodward, Socialist Unemployment; Vladimir Unkosvki-Korica, The Economic Struggle; Archer, Duda, and Stubbs, Social Inequalities and Discontent. 37  Jambrešić Kirin and Blagaić, “The Ambivalence of Socialist Working Women’s Heritage”; see also Lydia Sklevicky, Konji, Žene, Ratovi [Horses, women, wars] (Zagreb: Ženska Infoteka, 1996); Biljana Žikić, “Dissidents Liked Pretty Girls: Nudity, Pornography and Quality Press in Socialism,” Medijska Istraživanja/Media Research 16, no. 1 (2010): 53–71. 38  Patterson, Bought & Sold; Wendy Bracewell, “Eating Up Yugoslavia: Cookbooks and Consumption in Socialist Yugoslavia,” in Communism Unwrapped: Consumption in Cold War Eastern Europe, ed. Paulina Bren and Mary Neuburger (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012). 39  Chiara Bonfiglioli, “Women’s Political and Social Activism in the Early Cold War Era: The Case of Yugoslavia,” Aspasia 8 (2014): 1–25. 40  Patterson, Bought & Sold, 271. 36

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 202

2020.05.12. 19:27:54

Discussing Women’s Double and Triple Burden in Socialist Yugoslavia

203

“We Demand a Lot from Our Female Workers”: Between Discourse and Reality Reports, observations, and complaints about women’s “double burden” abounded in Yugoslavia during the socialist period as a result of the relatively open character of the social sciences, but also due to the fact that institutional reform was a constant feature of the system.41 As in other socialist regimes, “constructive criticism” was widespread.42 Many sociological inquiries investigated women’s position in the family, with quantitative data collected according to gender, ethnicity, and education. From 1961, the main socialist women’s organization, the Conference for the Social Activity of Women (Konferencija za društvenu aktivnost žena, KDAŽ), acted as a promoter of scholarly initiatives, investigating women’s position at the local, republican, and federal level. These sources can offer multiple insights into the position of women, particularly working mothers. Qualitative analyses are rare, but workers’ voices are often quoted in a wide range of published material, from factory newspapers to political magazines and official reports. In 1961, Vaska Duganova, Secretary of Labor and President of the Chamber for Social Affairs and Health of the Assembly of the People’s Republic of Macedonia, wrote a fourteen-page report titled “Problems of Female Workers in the New Industrial Settlements of the Processing Industry in Macedonia,” in which she discussed the situation in the newly created textile factories in Titov Veles, Štip, and Tetovo.43 The Republic of Macedonia was one of the most underdeveloped of the federation, and since the early 1950s it had been the focus of state investments in light industry, notably textiles. These investments, however, were limited by a lack of raw materials, outdated technologies, and poor infrastructure. Moreover, the authorities’ will to create new socialist workers, particularly female workers, clashed with local gendered values and traditions. According to Duganova, in order to increase women’s participation in paid work, three elements were necessary: first, better qualified women; second, women’s “liberation from superfluous tasks” in the home, giving them  Archer, Duda, and Stubbs, Social Inequalities and Discontent.  Paulina Bren and Mary Neuburger, “Constructive Criticism,” in Communism Unwrapped, 321–24. 43  Vaska Duganova, “Problemi zaposlene žene u novim industriskim naseljima preradjivačke industrije u Makedoniji,” Titov Veles, March 25, 1961, 14 pages, part of the Vida Tomšič collection, AS 1413, box 193, Archives of the Republic of Slovenia, Ljubljana. 41 42

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 203

2020.05.12. 19:27:54

204

Chiara Bonfiglioli

greater access to work as well as political organizations; and third, childcare, so that women could access employment, while their children could receive the education needed to become “future citizens of a socialist community.” Duganova stated: Upon her entry into the industry, regardless of the different views that exist in her immediate surroundings, and for her on a personal level, the woman worker [žena radnica] becomes an indivisible part of the work collective, an integral part of the democratic mechanism. Bearing in mind that the vast majority of women who will be included in the industry have low educational and professional qualifications, one can imagine how many efforts are required for them to overcome all the problems they face.44

Conflicts between the ideals of socialist equality on the one hand, and women’s low qualifications and traditional values on the other, were a constant of the postwar era. Local socialist activists often commented upon female workers’ backwardness, but they also had a strong belief in the possibility of social mobility and social change through education and labor.45 According to Duganova, women had to turn not only into workers, but also into selfmanagers, able to understand the whole economic process of production. In the towns of Titov Veles, Štip, and Tetovo, 80 percent of the workers were entering paid labor for the first time. New female workers were displaying “a lack of discipline and a lack of understanding about the problems of the factory, as well as a lack of understanding about their rights and responsibilities. Young village girls often have a distorted understanding of city life.” 46 The training of new employees, however, was improving, and workers were increasingly being given a detailed explanation of the technological functions of the factory and its decision-making bodies. Social workers were also taking care of new recruits, and the workers’ collective was in charge of welfare services, notably housing and “social nutrition.” These services, however, took time to develop: for instance, while in Tetovo all the workers’ meals were prepared by the collective restaurant, and workers could also take food home for the family, this did not happen in the other two cities.47 Female workers’ low qualifications were also limiting the effects of investment in the textile industry. Of all the female workers employed, less than 50 percent had finished compulsory school: 39 percent in Štip, 53 percent in Tetovo, and 37.6 percent in Titov Veles. In Tetovo, four women had 44

 Ibid., 1, emphasis added.  Bonfiglioli, “Women’s Political and Social Activism.” 46  Duganova, “Problemi zaposlene žene,” 3. 47  Ibid., 5. 45

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 204

2020.05.12. 19:27:54

Discussing Women’s Double and Triple Burden in Socialist Yugoslavia

205

finished university as engineers and economists, while five other women qualified as technicians and six finished high school. Eight women worked in management positions. In the Makedonka textile factory in Štip, two women had finished university and ten had a high school diploma. In order to improve female workers’ qualifications, a range of training was provided, and some women were sent to do internships in other parts of Yugoslavia. Basic alphabetization lessons were offered to workers with lower levels of education, together with technical courses. Vocational textile schools were also created in Štip and Tetovo. While some women were interested in the possibility of higher qualifications (and increased earnings), others did not attend the courses “for reasons of an objective nature: they worry too much about the problems of the family and the household.”48 In the last pages of her report, Duganova noted how women’s domestic obligations limited both their possibility to gain qualifications and their activism in the workers’ councils: “if we keep in mind how much female workers are engaged in carrying out their domestic work, we really cannot expect more of them.”49 In the three cities, an average of 68–75 percent of female workers carried out all domestic work alone, while 20–25 percent benefited from the help of other family members (most probably female relatives). 90 percent of these households, moreover, did not own any domestic appliance. Women’s unpaid labor had no end: to emphasize this, Duganova quotes a survey of thirty night shift workers carried out by the workers’ council in the Makedonka factory in Štip. Only one of these thirty workers had some rest after their shift, while the others took care of the laundry, cooking, cleaning the house, and so on. Furthermore, many women could not properly concentrate on work since they had to leave their children at home alone, or under the care of older children. The workers’ council had attempted to provide some solutions, and had organized childcare at the factory level. However, the factory management was not keen to use its funds for this, and demanded childcare instead be financed by municipal authorities; they, in turn, did not have sufficient funds for the necessary investments. Vaska Duganova, in her conclusion, expressed both her critique of socialist labor policies and her solidarity towards female workers: For years already, we have been talking of the problems of the female worker, particularly in the workplace. We expect her to develop her creative initiative to the greatest degree within the workers’ collective, to be-

48

 Ibid., 8.  Ibid., 11.

49

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 205

2020.05.12. 19:27:54

206

Chiara Bonfiglioli

come a managing expert of the machine on which she works, to frequently increase her qualifications, to understand all the changes imposed by social development, to understand economic problems, to be active in the self-managing organs and in other social organizations, to be an exemplary mother and a good housewife, etc. We demand a lot from our female workers. We should also ask the question, considering the social and economic development of our country, of what can be done by society in its entirety to help her. It is a fact that the Constitution and other legal provisions gave a number of rights to the Yugoslav woman, particularly to the woman in the workplace, and that such rights rarely exist for women in other countries. Still, the question remains as to how much the female worker is in the position to make use of her equality, and if women alone should fight with these problems.50

Duganova concluded that this issue was also the responsibility of each worker (including men), as well as of the residential community, the municipality, and society as a whole. She appealed for workers’ councils and municipal authorities to jointly create sustainable welfare services, and to guarantee childcare facilities to female workers. While female workers had to understand their responsibilities and turn into active socialist citizens, the factory management and local authorities also needed to help. This passage highlights the contradictory processes that were at stake during Yugoslavia’s industrialization, and how female workers fell under the pressure of conflicting discourses and expectations. Socialist authorities did introduce a number of mechanisms to favor women’s equal access to education, labor, and politics, and argued for the “socialization” of reproductive labor at the state level. In practice, however, social services were unevenly developed, both because of economic factors and because of the difficulty establishing responsibility in a highly decentralized and bureaucratized system. Moreover, these services were often distributed unequally, as in the case of social housing, which privileged highly-educated state functionaries over blue-collar workers.51 The idea that reproductive tasks were exclusively the responsibility of women remained unchallenged, and female workers had to face the “double burden” of paid and unpaid work, at a time in which unpaid work was extremely labor-intensive, since household appliances such as washing ma-

50

 Ibid., 13, emphasis added.  Brigitte Le Normand, “The House That Socialism Built: Reform, Consumption, and Inequality in Postwar Yugoslavia,” in Bren and Neuburger, Communism Unwrapped. See also Rory Archer, “‘Paid for by the Workers, Occupied by the Bureaucrats’: Housing Inequalities in 1980s Belgrade,” in Archer, Duda, and Stubbs, Social Inequalities and Discontent.

51

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 206

2020.05.12. 19:27:54

Discussing Women’s Double and Triple Burden in Socialist Yugoslavia

207

chines and fridges were not widespread outside the country’s urban centers and more developed republics.52 Difficulties in combining paid and unpaid work were frequently mentioned in workplace periodicals, particularly in relation to the issue of women’s political participation in factory decision-making. The expectation that female workers would attend self-management meetings at the factory level added further pressure, leading to the so-called “triple burden.”53 In the Macedonian town of Štip, the site of the report mentioned in the previous section, the Makedonka factory had published an internal workplace periodical for its workers since the early 1950s.54 The periodical often reported working mothers’ complaints about lack of free time, and women’s tendency to shun excursions, sports activities, and political meetings due to their family obligations. A survey published in 1959, when the factory had approximately 2,000 employees, reported that women needed on average one and a half hours for shopping, two hours for cleaning, one and a half hours for washing, one and a half hours for cooking, and three hours for childcare every day. The authors ended up wondering how women managed to show up for work at all.55 The childcare services on offer at Makedonka since the early 1960s were limited, and did not satisfy many working mothers. The workers complained that the crèche was too far away, and that it was cold and dirty. Childcare facilities were also understaffed according to workers, with only one crèche employee taking care of twenty children. Some workers found crèche employees to be arrogant, and retorted: “You have to serve me as I am the one paying you, otherwise you can go and work at the machine.”56 The factory social workers, in turn, tried to silence the complaints and reinstated the following principle: “If it suits you, bring the child—otherwise leave the child at home.”57 The lack of proper facilities and women’s primary role as caretakers also limited women’s access to self-management activities. In 1963, for instance, a female worker expressed her desire to be included once again in the factory’s party committee, from which she had been excluded in 1954 because of her inability to attend sessions. Since her child was sick at the time, she argued that she did not deserve to be excluded. The  Patterson, Bought & Sold; Isabel Ströhle, “Of Social Inequalities in a Socialist Society: The Creation of a Rural Underclass in Yugoslav Kosovo,” in Archer, Duda, and Stubbs, Social Inequalities and Discontent. 53  Einhorn, Cinderella Goes to Market. 54  Makedonka: bilten na Pamučna industrija “Makedonka,” 1955–1990, collection available at the National Library of Serbia, Belgrade, item no. 3829. 55  Makedonka, nos. 20–21, September 25, 1959, 4. 56  Makedonka, no. 114, November 1966, 6. 57  Ibid. The report on childcare facilities continues in no. 115, 4. 52

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 207

2020.05.12. 19:27:54

208

Chiara Bonfiglioli

reporter suggested her reintegration to the committee, and to let her organize the youth sections.58 Childcare remained a burning issue in 1976, when the factory had expanded to 4,500 employees, of which 2,300 were women. Although female workers were in the majority, only 25 to 30 percent of them took part in the workers’ councils. Among the 1,700 workers’ children, only 160 were of preschool age and could attend the crèche. The other children remained alone or were not properly cared for. Women encountered serious difficulties with childcare during their night shifts and on public holidays, when the crèche was closed. When the children were sick, they had to take them to the doctor, where the waiting time was endless. As such, even if they were interested in entering the self-management organs, many women were unable to do so; out of seventy to eighty management posts, only eight were filled by women.59 Several suggestions were made to solve these issues, such as improving childcare facilities and excusing women from working night shifts and public holidays. However, as the factory newspaper reported in the following years, adequate childcare facilities were never built for the factory, and many workers preferred to leave children with family members rather than in the factory crèche. The issue of women’s “double burden” was closely connected to women’s “triple burden,” namely their difficulty in taking part in politics and decision-making.

“Nobody Listens to Women”: Political Participation and the “Triple Burden” Discussions over women’s difficulties in combining paid work, unpaid work, and political participation were frequent both in workplace periodicals and in political publications. The magazine Žena, published by the socialist women’s organization KDAŽ, also dedicated several reports to the issue. In 1972, the magazine published the edited minutes of a roundtable with employees of the cotton factory in Duga Resa, a small town in the Republic of Croatia.60 The factory employed 2,113 women, out of a total of 3,600 workers. The discussion focused on women’s reasons for not attending political meetings and not engaging in self-management activities. Insufficient funds for childcare and women’s training were mentioned, as well

 Makedonka, no. 71, January 20, 1963, 6.  Makedonka, no. 180, April 1976, 2. 60  Žena, 1972, vol. 5. 58 59

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 208

2020.05.12. 19:27:54

Discussing Women’s Double and Triple Burden in Socialist Yugoslavia

209

as the shortcomings of the factory canteen. A social worker described the difficult working conditions in the factory, pointing to the high temperatures, the noise, and the fact that many women continued to perform night shifts even though Yugoslavia had signed international conventions against women’s night work. Due to the physical stress caused by the job, combined with the difficulty in reassigning older workers to lighter tasks, 75 percent of women stopped working earlier with a lower invalidity pension, rather than with a full pension after thirty years. Many reasons, therefore, led to women’s lack of political participation within the factory. Ljubica Vuković, a female engineer who was probably part of the management, argued: “in my opinion, a woman with low education and many family obligations, and with many other unsolved issues, cannot think of the development of self-management. That is an illusion.”61 A  female worker stressed that there was simply no time to attend meetings, especially for those 700 women who lived on the outskirts of town and commuted to work every day. Female workers also complained of losing working hours, and thus money, when attending meetings during their working hours. Another worker complained that political engagement in self-management was feasible only for women with a certain degree of education, and not for women with four years of school, as many workers had. The strongest complaint came from Zora Rakić, a weaver who worked three shifts, who testified to the degree of disillusionment of many workers within the factory: I would like to speak, and to say that it’s not correct to say that women are not interested. That hurts me and disturbs me very much. Women are interested, only nobody listens to women. They, so to say, have no right to vote [pravo glasa]. No one listens to what they say. I have already been working for ten years in the weaving mill, and for six years I have been in the selfmanaging organs and in different commissions. From my first day at the weaving mill, I have been a member of the League of Communists. This year we even revived the work of the Conference for the Social Activity of Women, which until now had been deadlocked. We did the same with the League of Communists. People have lost trust. I tried to influence the young women, suggesting that they become members of the League of Communists. Some replied: “Comrade, what do you get from being a member of the League of Communists, and who listens to you at all?” [Što ti drugarice, imaš od toga što si član Savez komunista, i tko tebe uopšte sluša]62

61

 Ibid., 18.  Ibid., 29, emphases added.

62

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 209

2020.05.12. 19:27:55

210

Chiara Bonfiglioli

As we can see from the report about Duga Resa, and from this quote, women’s “triple burden”—the expectation for women to take part in selfmanagement organs—cannot be understood as a  simple state imposition towards female workers, but must be analyzed in a more complex manner. Due to the state’s recognition of women’s domestic tasks, it was relatively easy for women to avoid taking part in such meetings, particularly in the late socialist period. Some women were not interested, or did not feel entitled to take part because of their skills or education. Other workers were interested, but could not take part in decision-making bodies because of the difficulty they had juggling between paid and unpaid work. Others, such as Zora Rakić, genuinely engaged in the political process, but lost their faith in the system when they saw that the principles of socialist equality were not respected, and that women were not being listened to. After the mass participation of women in both the antifascist resistance and postwar reconstruction, a patriarchal backlash had occurred since the 1950s: the numbers of women elected to republican and district committees rapidly decreased, as did the number of women employed in industry. Women were often fired by factory management in search of profitability and became a characteristic “reserve army” of labor, whose work was seen as less productive and valuable, due to the social costs associated with female workers.63 Similar conclusions emerged from a sociological survey conducted among female workers in different industrial sectors of Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1971.64 Besides Bosnia’s strong patriarchal traditions, the authors blamed a “technocratic mentality” which saw female workers as inferior and less productive. Furthermore, the decentralization of the Yugoslav system to local living and working communities meant that many city councils and factories tended to reduce social services due to their costs. Women’s lack of political participation, moreover, was not only a  result of the “double burden,” but also a consequence of male domination in decisionmaking institutions, which increased women’s feelings of resignation and mistrust towards politics. Despite female workers’ disillusionment, however, the domination of male managers did not always go uncontested, as shown by a documented workers’ strike in the textile factory “Trudbenik” in Banja Luka, Bosnia and Herzegovina, in February 1969. After complaints of excessively low wages, unlawful procedures, corruption, and harassment towards female workers by the male factory director and his collaborators, the 220 workers were successful in having all the management removed  Woodward, Socialist Unemployment.  Franjo Kožul, Žena u samoupravljanju: Samoupravni i radni status žene u Bosni i Hercegovini [Woman in self-management: The self-governing and working status of women in Bosnia and Herzegovina] (Sarajevo: Fakultet Politički Nauka, 1973).

63 64

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 210

2020.05.12. 19:27:55

Discussing Women’s Double and Triple Burden in Socialist Yugoslavia

211

from the factory. The workers’ assembly, in this case, could make use of selfmanagement provisions and reclaim workers’ rights against local abuses of power.65 Such instances of workers’ revolt were not uncommon in socialist Yugoslavia. Nonetheless, female workers’ participation and power on the shop floor was generally limited by differences in class and education, not just between men and women, but also between women themselves. Skilled and white-collar female workers, along with men, were more likely to be part of management structures and party structures in the factory, and consequently able to take advantage of social mobility in late socialism. Throughout the above-mentioned survey on Bosnia and Herzegovina, female workers singled out differences in education (88.4 percent), wealth (41 percent), and social origin (36.9 percent) as decisive elements that influenced their political participation, while religious and ethnic identities were seen as less relevant by the interviewees (19.6 percent and 18.8 percent, respectively). In general, skilled and white-collar workers generally felt less oppressed at work than in the private sphere, while unskilled workers felt more oppressed in the sphere of labor rather than in the family, possibly because of harsher piece rate working conditions, but also because of their feeling of exclusion from decision-making structures.66 The impact of class differences on women’s productive and reproductive labor was documented in detail in another Yugoslav-wide survey on the theme of women “between work and the family,” which was carried out in 1975.67 Social differences among women definitely played a  role when it came to accessing welfare services and reconciling paid and unpaid work. 62 percent of the women surveyed did not make use of public childcare facilities, which could indicate a lack of material services, but also strong traditional values. Women with higher incomes, however, were twice as likely to make use of such facilities, because they often resided in bigger cities with 65

 Vladan Vukliš, “Štrajk tekstilnih radnica 1969. u retrospektivi” [The textile workers’ strike of 1969 in retrospect], Glas Srpske, February 28, 2015. 66  Kožul, Žena u samoupravljanju. 67  Miro A. Mihovilović, Ruža First-Dilić, and collaborators, Žena između rada i porodice: utjecaj zaposlenosti žene na strukturu i funkciju porodice [Women between work and family: The impact of women’s employment on the structure and function of the family] (­Zagreb: Institut za Društvena Istraživanja Sveučilišta u Zagrebu, 1975). The sample included 1,544 female workers, living in urban centers as well as in smaller towns, from different educational backgrounds, professions, religions, and nationalities. The interviewees were asked to fill in a survey with different questions, to keep a twenty-four-hour diary that calculated their time budget, and to go through a qualitative interview. According to 1971 data, 31.59 percent of the female population in Yugoslavia was engaged in formal employment, of which 38.3 percent were working in industrial jobs.

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 211

2020.05.12. 19:27:55

212

Chiara Bonfiglioli

more welfare facilities available.68 While leisure time was almost nonexistent for many women with lower qualifications and skills, who dedicated more time to both paid and unpaid work, middle-class women were more likely able to afford the luxury of having some free time from domestic tasks. Only a minority of urban middle-class women took part in concerts, art, exhibitions, and regularly attended movie screenings and theatre shows.69 Overall, only 15–20 percent of the women were engaged in self-management organs and local associations, or in other activities within cultural, sport, or women’s associations.70 After their analysis of women’s time budget, the authors of the study concluded that the majority of Yugoslav women’s schedules did not conform in any way to the ideal Marxist vision of the working day: eight hours of work, eight hours of sleep, and eight hours of free time. Women’s roles as caretakers within the family remained central, and their “second shift” occupied a great part of their day. A similar conclusion was reached by Karen Hahn, Garth Massey, and Duško Sekulić in their analysis of a survey carried out in 1989–1990 across Yugoslavia, which highlighted the prevalence of women’s “second shift” across social differences, alongside men’s privilege and “structural advantage” when it came to the decision of whether to engage in childcare and domestic tasks.71 The problem of women’s double burden was often denounced by women active in work collectives. For instance, Pavica Obad, a  working mother from the Kamensko textile factory active in political organizations, was interviewed by the workplace periodical for the March 8 celebration in 1980. She declared then that she did not feel unequal to men (neravnopravna), despite the fact that she carried a  “big burden” (veliki teret) as a mother, housewife, and worker. Obad complained openly about discrimination against women in decision-making processes, arguing that women’s inferiority in self-management institutions was a  direct consequence of women’s oppression in the domestic sphere, and of men’s privilege with respect to education and social mobility: In general, I  think that in our collective there is little trust in women when it comes to managerial positions. Maybe it’s because men are able to achieve qualifications before women. See our male colleagues, many of them gained education in the course of their work. Fewer women had that luck. Despite the good climate, which is conducive to making men and women more equal, men are in a better position than us. They are the 68

 Ibid., 69, 76.  Ibid., 144, 172–74. 70  Ibid., 113–20. 71  Massey, Hahn, and Sekulić, “Women, Men, and the ‘Second Shift’.” 69

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 212

2020.05.12. 19:27:55

Discussing Women’s Double and Triple Burden in Socialist Yugoslavia

213

leaders, they are the experts, because we make it possible. We, the housewives, the wives. We cook for them, we iron, we raise children while they are studying. We can practically say that many men receive a scholarship from their wives [Gotovo da se kaže da su mnogi muževi stipendisti svojih žena]. It makes me angry. There should be more confidence in women and less flowers.72

Education and access to decision-making, therefore, were highly differentiated by gender, and the gendered division of work and leisure time meant that women were mostly excluded from higher working and decision-making positions. Even women’s voluntary associations within textile factories (such as sports associations and voluntary firefighting brigades), as different workplace periodicals attest, mainly incorporated unmarried young women. Women with a family, on the other hand, generally expressed their lack of time for leisure, voluntary meetings, or political engagement. One worker named Ružica, for instance, testified that she gave up the theater and the cinema to take care of her family, while her husband only helped with “male jobs” (most probably house repairs).73 Another textile worker, Marija, also said that she could not participate enough in working collectives because she had two children and the husband as a “third child,” as she defined him.74 A notable exception was a young married woman who nonetheless continued to train with the handball team. The newspaper’s interviewer asked her explicitly why she wouldn’t leave the team to be with her family, and she replied that she saw no reason to do so. She also added that many married women brought their husbands and children to handball matches.75 This may hint at relative generational change in gender relations by the 1980s among young educated female workers. Such instances, however, are rarely portrayed in textile factory periodicals, while women’s sacrifices for work and family are a regular feature of workers’ interviews between the 1960s and the 1980s. Finally, when discussing women’s reluctance to take part in socialist selfmanagement, one should also take into account the general disillusionment of both male and female workers toward the increasingly bureaucratized self-management mechanisms, a phenomenon that was characteristic of late socialism. As early as 1971, Ichak Adizes reported workers’ and manage Glasnik–List Radnika RO Kamensko Zagreb, no. 15, 1980, 7. Collection from 1978 to 1990 available at the National Library of Serbia, Belgrade, item no. 15762. 73  Nada—Glasilo Zagrebačke trikotaže i pozamanterije Nada Dimić, no. 1, 1981. Collection from 1981 to 1989 available at the National Library of Serbia, Belgrade, item no. 18446. 74   Glasnik, no. 9, 1979. 75   Glasnik, no. 57, 1983. 72

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 213

2020.05.12. 19:27:55

214

Chiara Bonfiglioli

ment’s weariness at meetings, after having observed decision-making procedures in two unnamed textile factories near Belgrade.76 This feeling was also expressed in the factory newspapers of the period, which acknowledged the complexity of self-management procedures. One report from the Nada Dimić textile factory, after explaining the mechanisms used for salary calculations and redistribution of profits among workers, noted ambivalently: “One gets a headache by trying to fit all of this in one’s head, but it is still better than someone else deciding your destiny. The most beautiful thing in self-management is that each worker must tailor his or her own destiny.”77

Conclusions While workers’ discontent was commonplace in socialist Yugoslavia, the way of life created by socialism also created a specific “structure of feeling,” which was “grounded in the everyday, the rigid and habitual, in the mundane details of the ordinary life, and in the gray zone of semi-official practices.”78 For female industrial workers, such as the garment workers studied in this essay, socialist factories provided a certain degree of equality and workplace security in exchange for hard work, but also a recognition of their everyday experiences as wives, mothers, and main caretakers in the family, which entailed specific welfare services and provisions. While often discussed by sociologists and policy makers, women’s double burden of paid and unpaid work was somehow seen as a by-product of modernization, and was also generally taken for granted by women themselves. Women’s labor served as a buffer when it came to the economic shifts, social inequalities, and political shortcomings that characterized the system. As a result, women’s political participation was necessarily limited, not just because of their difficulty in finding free time for politics, but also because of women’s perception of male domination when it came to decision-making in the workplace. Women’s labor outside the home and women’s domestic responsibilities were integrated in the “‘working-mother’ gender contract” of the socialist gender regime(s), which was without doubt a patriarchal one.79 Nonetheless, the discourse of gender equality and the value given to women’s labor  Ichak Adizes, Industrial Democracy: Yugoslav Style (New York: The Free Press, 1971).  “Čovjeka glava zaboli kad to mora premetati po glavi ali—zar to nije bolje od toga da ti netko drugi kroji sudbinu. Najljepše je u samoupravljanju upravo to što svaki radnik može krojiti svoju sudbinu…” Nada, no. 1, 1981. 78  Breda Luthar and Maruša Pušnik, “The Lure of Utopia: Socialist Everyday Spaces,” in Luthar and Pušnik, Remembering Utopia, 15. 79  Hormel, “A Case Study of Gender, Class, and Garment Work Reorganization in Ukraine.” 76 77

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 214

2020.05.12. 19:27:55

Discussing Women’s Double and Triple Burden in Socialist Yugoslavia

215

inside and outside the home differentiate the socialist system from interwar Yugoslavia80 and from contemporary post-socialist, re-traditionalized gender regimes in post-Yugoslav states.81 Rather than presupposing a continuous and uniform “state patriarchy” stretching from the 1950s to the 1990s, as many current interpretations do, I  believe it is necessary to investigate further the complex and changing character of women’s working lives and how they differed according to generation, geographical location, ethnicity, education, and professional sector. This would allow us to understand how female workers coped with the contradictory gendered discourses of tradition and modernization, as well as with the differential access to labor, social mobility, consumption, and citizenship rights that characterized Yugoslav socialism. The theme of women’s paid and unpaid labor in socialism, as shown in this chapter, deserves to be explored in more detail and to become an integral part of post-Yugoslav social and labor histories.

 Vera St. Erlich, Family in Transition: A  Study of 300 Yugoslav Villages (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1966). 81  Bonfiglioli, Women and Industry in the Balkans. 80

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 215

2020.05.12. 19:27:55

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 216

2020.05.12. 19:27:55

PART III WORKERS, SAFETY, AND RISK

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 217

2020.05.12. 19:27:55

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 218

2020.05.12. 19:27:55

Governing the State of Emergency: Large Industrial Accidents in Communist East Germany *

Thomas Lindenberger

P

rofessional diseases, work accidents, and large industrial disasters in plants and mines were, and still are, an all too familiar scourge in working lives since the start of the Industrial Revolution. They figure prominently among those risks1 that threaten both the body and soul of laborers in the social universe of modern industry, adding to their constitutive vulnerability compared with those working in the middle and upper levels of the hierarchy.2 These risks persisted, though at a lower level, during the highly industrialized economy of Fordist mass production. After World War II, the GDR’s new communist rulers claimed to take a  different approach to health and safety protection compared to their capitalist predecessors. Nevertheless, a  long series of disturbances and breakdowns, ultimately leading to fatal mass accidents, remained a feature of industrial production in centralized planned economies as well.3

*

 Research for this article was funded by the European Research Council (ERC) in the framework of the project “Regime and Society in Eastern Europe (1956–1989): From Extended Reproduction to Social and Political Change (RESOCEA),” principal investigator Ivajlo Znepolski (University of Sofia). 1  Ulrich Beck, Risk Society: Towards a New Modernity (London: Sage, 1992). 2  Malcolm Sargeant and Maria Giovannone, eds., Vulnerable Workers: Health, Safety and Well-Being (Farnham: Gower, 2012). 3  For the history of health and safety policies in East Germany, see the rich, but rather descriptive work of a former safety engineer, Lutz Wienhold, Zwischen Anspruch und Wirklichkeit: Historischer Abriss zum Arbeitsschutz in der SBZ/DDR (Cologne: Grin Verlag, 2011); for more recent perspectives on the Soviet experience, see Paul R. Josephson, “No Hard Hats, No Steel-toed Shoes Required: Worker Safety in the Proletarian Paradise,” in Would Trotsky Wear a Bluetooth? Technological Utopianism under Socialism, 1917–1989 (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2010), 233–63; and Lewis Siegelbaum, “Industrial Accidents and Their Prevention in the Interwar Period,” in The Disabled in the Soviet Union: Past and Present, Theory and Practice, ed. William O. McCagg (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1989), 85–118. See also Catherine Omnès and Laure Pitti, eds., Cultures du risque au travail et pratiques de prévention au XXe siècle (Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2009).

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 219

2020.05.12. 19:27:55

220

Thomas Lindenberger

Havarien—a popular term in state-socialist countries used to designate any major interruption of production—were often mass accidents (with more than two persons killed or injured). As such, they represent a temporary breakdown of occupational health and safety (OHS) protection, affecting not just individual workers at their respective work places, but also larger collectives working together in workshops, production lines, or even large compounds integrating several factory buildings, stockyards, office buildings, and shared infrastructure. An explosion or fire killing and injuring dozens, if not hundreds, of people in one moment is a severe (though locally contained) challenge to the regime of labor and social relations, framing and conditioning the very existence of that production unit. These relations are informed by a set of rules and practices designed to keep production goals, incomes, and profits on the one hand, and the safety of workers and the environment of the production unit on the other, in a sustainable balance. Squaring OHS with economic efficiency and social stability was a practical challenge intrinsic to industrial labor from its historical beginnings in Europe and North America; indeed, if we look at countries around the globe undergoing industrialization today, it still is. The new managers and general directors of state-socialist economies inherited this challenge, along with the institutions, legal and technical standards, and professional expertise pertaining to OHS matters, when communist state planning substituted capitalist markets. Of course, the sophistication and extent of OHS regulation and knowledge attained prior to the communist takeover of the economy differed considerably from country to country.4

The Global Labor Context of Industrial Disasters in a Small State-Socialist Country Despite their generic occurrence in the history of industrial labor, large industrial accidents do not figure prominently in recent international historiography on labor in a global perspective. At first sight this seems rather paradoxical, since unsafe work conditions are an endemic by-product of the exploitation of cheap labor in the global South by “Northern” multinationals. News about collapsing factory buildings and toxic waste killing and injuring thousands of workers at production sites in developing countries continues to catch the attention of ethically concerned consumers in affluent societies. 4

 These considerations have to remain impressionistic in view of the lack of comparative studies on this aspect of the history of state-socialist economies. They are based, among others, on Wienhold, Zwischen Anspruch und Wirklichkeit; and Josephson, “No Hard Hats.”

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 220

2020.05.12. 19:27:55

Governing the State of Emergency

221

But within global labor historiography, the issue of occupational hazards and industrial accidents seems broadly to be as marginal as in labor historiography more generally. Although the dire consequences of accidents have been a tragically common feature of working people’s lives from the earliest beginnings of industrialization,5 and although the improvement of work conditions was an early core demand of union movements and social reformers, these issues are rarely objects of labor historiography in their own right.6 This might be a consequence of the obvious fact that practical solutions in this realm were always contingent on intervention and legislation by the state. Without the “bourgeois” state intervening—directly or indirectly—in the manner of Marx and Engels’ proverbial ideeller Gesamtkapitalist (literally “the ideal universal capitalist”),7 mandatory standards of OHS, and their systematic surveillance through insurance and compensation programs, would never have materialized. In today’s neoliberal era, with its rejection of state intervention, this crucial field of state activity has disappeared from sight. Even in the international forum of labor-related social reform par excellence, the International Labour Organization (ILO), OHS now ranks low among the canonical objects of debates, declarations, and international “covenants.” The latter focus instead on four core items defined as both human and labor rights, namely: (1) the interdiction of slave labor; (2) the protection of children; (3) the freedom of association (that is, unionizing); and (4) the ban on sexual, religious, ethnic, or other forms of discrimination in employment. Protection against work hazards is not included among these four universal “core rights.” According to labor law expert Emily Spieler, this second-rank status afforded to OHS corresponds both to the neoclassical dogma of furthering functional labor markets based on the employment-at-will model, and to the existential interests of developing countries in undercutting the  Sarah F. Rose, “‘Crippled’ Hands: Disability in Labor and Working-Class History,” Labor: Studies in Working-Class History of the Americas 2, no. 1 (2005): 27–54. 6  Notable exceptions are histories of specific institutions, but they tend to focus instead on legal and ideological aspects of OHS than on workers’ agency in specific working environments; see, for instance, Wolfgang Ayass, “Regulierte Selbstregulierung in den Berufsgenossenschaften der gesetzlichen Unfallversicherung,” in Moderne Regulierungsregime/Regulierte Selbstregulierung im frühen Interventions- und Sozialstaat, ed. Peter Collin (Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann, 2012), 123–45. 7  “Karl Marx und Friedrich Engels vertraten die Auffassung, dass der Staat angesichts grundsätzlicher und zunehmender Widersprüche des kapitalistischen Systems gezwungen war, immer stärker im Interesse des ‘Kapitals’ in den Produktionsprozess einzugreifen als ‘ideeller Gesamtkapitalist’ zur Schaffung entsprechende ordnungspolitischer und regulativer Rahmenbedingungen, als ‘wirklicher Gesamtkapitalist’ zur Sicherung der materiellen Grundlagen über öffentliches Produktivvermögen.” Gerold Ambrosius, Hybride Eigentums- und Vermögensrechte: Öffentlich-private Kooperationen in systematisch-theoretischer und empirisch-historischer Perspektive (Berlin: Berliner Wissenschaftsverlag, 2012), 64. 5

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 221

2020.05.12. 19:27:55

222

Thomas Lindenberger

wage levels of advanced economies.8 According to Jeffrey Hilgert, the epochal rise of human rights as a  cornerstone of international conventions contributed to establishing the individual right to refuse hazardous work as guaranteed by the state while undermining the power position of collective actors, namely unions. Existing OHS standards were thus actually made “safe” for the management (against intrusion from workers) rather than enabling employees to work in a safe environment.9 Such accounts, however, suffer severely from an Anglo-Saxon bias with regard to the long-term development of OHS policies and their implementation. Although neoliberal deregulation has also become the preference of several of today’s democratic welfare states on the European continent, it could not entirely substitute individual responsibility for centuries-old programs of mandatory collective responsibility. The matter becomes even more complex when taking into consideration those industrial societies which had inherited this tradition prior to 1945 but ended up on the Eastern side of the Iron Curtain. They had to adapt to the all-embracing statism of the Soviet model of socialism, a model which had been designed to industrialize one of Europe’s most backward societies within a few decades. Accordingly, this model would never match the industrial and administrative culture of countries like the ČSSR or the GDR. The latter state’s policy can be seen as a case of hybridization between typically Central European governance practices marked by the interplay of market forces and state regulation on the one hand, and an attempt to import and implement totalitarian rule with proverbial German thoroughness on the other. The result was an unwieldy paradox, exacerbated further by the declared goal of creating the “first workers’ paradise” on German soil to outdo their powerful capitalist rival in West Germany. Consequently, the story told in this chapter details a double exceptionality with regard to the concerns of current global labor historiography. The case of the OHS regime of the GDR pertains to a specific long-term regional tradition of state-mandated self-regulation of risk, even if adapted to the state-socialist framework, which sets it apart from those latecomers in the “bloc” for whom industrial development and communist nation-building were one and the same. This story is, however, pertinent for the whole of Europe, as a theatre of the Cold War with a specific agenda lurking behind the universal, “big” issue of democracy versus dictatorship, namely the feasibility of “social democracy” (in the broad sense of the term) in a Fordist or 8

 Emily A. Spieler, “Risks and Rights: The Case for Occupational Safety and Health as a Core Worker Right,” in Workers’ Rights as Human Rights, ed. James A. Gross (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2003), 78–117. 9  Jeffrey Hilgert, Hazard or Hardship: Crafting Global Norms on the Right to Refuse Unsafe Work (Ithaca, NY: ILR Press, 2013).

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 222

2020.05.12. 19:27:55

Governing the State of Emergency

223

post-Fordist society.10 Although citizens’ rights as defined by the GDR constitution were systematically curtailed as a consequence of subordinating the legal system to communist rule, labor law (Arbeitsgesetzbuch) and OHS regulations stipulated the obligatory participation of workers and union functionaries as “OHS inspectors” on the shop floor. At the same time, the state institutions’ venerable inspection schemes focusing on hygienic conditions (Hygieneinspektion) and the technical safety of dangerous machinery such as steam generators and chemical reactors (Technische Überwachung) were continued and elaborated. The most important break from prior practice under capitalism “made in Germany” consisted in the abrogation of the principle of mutuality among private employers, dating to Bismarck’s pioneering reforms in 1884. Under these reforms, private employers had been obliged to form insurance cooperatives to meet workers’ compensation claims (Berufsgenossenschaften), which in turn were given vast regulatory powers to prescribe OHS policies and control their adherence by individual members.11 The void created by this abrogation was filled by the centralist party-state, rather than by alternative institutions of civic self-regulation. In the German Democratic Republic, the numerous so-called Havarien12 were examined by several authorities, most scrupulously by the 10

 Regarding the GDR as a variant of state-socialist Fordism, see Ulrich Busch and Rainer Land, “Ostdeutschland: Vom staatssozialistischen Fordismus in die Entwicklungsfalle einer Transferökonomie,” in Berichterstattung zur sozioökonomischen Entwicklung in Deutschland, ed. Peter Bartelheimer, Sabine Fromm, and Jürgen Kädtler (Wiesbaden: VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, 2012), 153–83, available online at http://dx.doi. org/10.1007/978-3-531-94197-4_5. For the concept of “social democracy” in the broader sense of a variant of liberal governance, see Thomas Meyer and Lewis P. Hinchman, The Theory of Social Democracy (Cambridge: Polity, 2007). 11  See Michael Stolleis, History of Social Law in Germany, trans. Thomas Dunlap (Berlin and Heidelberg: Springer, 2013). Wienhold’s extensive study on OHS in the GDR, Zwischen Anspruch und Wirklichkeit, also contains an instructive overview of its historical origins since the beginnings of industrialization in Germany. 12  A short note on the etymology of this term: originally the meaning of the German word Havarie, derived from the French avarie, was—and for West German speakers still is—limited to interruptions in the functionality of vessels, in particular ships and airplanes, causing their total immobility. By the late 1950s, however, Havarie and its homonyms in several East European languages had acquired the meaning of any accident involving vessels (including cars), machinery, and in particular, industrial plants. According to our preliminary lexicographic searches, the semantic expansion from ship and air vessels to cars and machines can already be noted in Russian and Czech in the 1930s, while the expansion to the field of technology-based production in big enterprises seemingly took place in the Soviet Union during the following decades. It was then exported to countries under Soviet influence and adopting its economic system after 1945, including the GDR. In German, the connotation of Havarie with “industrial accident” or “hazardous incident” remained strictly limited to GDR vocabulary. Only in April 1986, when official Eastern mass media designated the Chernobyl nuclear disaster as a Havarie, did this meaning also come to be noted by a West German audience.

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 223

2020.05.12. 19:27:55

224

Thomas Lindenberger

secret police (the Stasi), but also in parallel by the state planning administration and trade union inspectors. Together with the communist party, the SED (Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands), these authorities left behind ample sources outlining endemic problems in dealing with sophisticated technology, strict observation of basic safety rules, and effective mechanisms of accountability. Due to the extraordinary nature of these incidents, such sources also yield insights into the interaction between the different status groups and classes populating the social universe of “actually existing socialism.”13 This chapter will begin by describing three cases of Havarien taken from the middle phase of the GDR’s existence, a period marked by a policy of rapid expansion of production facilities and the increased sophistication of its technological base, particularly in the chemical sector.14 These examples allow for the phenomenological discussion of three characteristics of the socialist state’s reaction to such disasters: the primacy of social assistance in the face of a collective calamity, showing the “welfare dictatorship”15 in its element; the combination of political remobilization and surveillance in order to contain disenchantment and foster loyalty; and the construction of a virtual community (Gemeinschaft) through political liturgy. During this period, large industrial disasters functioned as limited states of emergency, which the communist leadership used as opportunities to reimplement the party-state’s sovereignty in the realm of industrial relations. Such exceptionally violent industrial accidents were selected for this purpose because, thanks to their relevance for the national economy, they immediately attracted the attention of the top party leadership. 13

 The sources on the central level for GDR state institutions (in particular the State Planning Commission and the Minister of the Interior) are accessible in the Bundesarchiv (Federal Archives), section Berlin (BAB); the sources of the SED and the trade union for the same level belong to the Stiftung Archiv der Parteien und Massenorganisationen der DDR (Foundation for the archives of the parties and mass organizations of the GDR), also accessible at the Bundesarchiv in Berlin (hereafter BArch-SAPMO). Staatsarchiv Leipzig (hereafter StA Leipzig) and Landeshauptarchiv Sachsen-Anhalt, Abteilung Merseburg (hereafter LSA Merseburg) hold the collections for the regional level of these institutions, in addition to the archives of the companies involved. The Bundesbeauftragter für die Unterlagen des Staatssicherheitsdienstes der ehemaligen Deutschen Demokratischen Republik (Federal commissioner for the archives of the Ministry for State Security [i.e., the Stasi] of the former GDR, hereafter BStU) in Berlin provides access to secret police files on both the central and regional levels. Oral testimonies will be gathered at a later stage of my research. 14  André Steiner, The Plans That Failed: An Economic History of the GDR (New York: Berghahn Books, 2010). 15  Cf. Konrad H. Jarausch, “Care and Coercion:  The GDR  as Welfare Dictatorship,” in Dictatorship as Experience: Towards a Socio-Cultural History of the GDR, ed. Konrad H. Jarausch (New York: Berghahn, 1999), 47–69.

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 224

2020.05.12. 19:27:55

Governing the State of Emergency

225

Three Case Studies CASE STUDY ONE: THE BLAST OF STEAM GENERATOR 13 AT THE ESPENHAIN POWER PLANT, JULY 24, 195916 On July 24, 1959, at 10:29 a.m., one of the fourteen huge, nineteen-meterhigh boilers in power plant II of the Kombinat Espenhain in the county of Borna, near Leipzig, exploded. The explosion released an enormous pressure wave of steam as hot as several hundred degrees Celsius, throwing around brick stones and pieces of coal ash, and destroying platforms, staircases, and windows. The boiler was razed to the ground. Two workers were killed immediately; about forty more were injured and hospitalized. Within a few days nine workers had died from their injuries; later on another two would follow, bringing the death toll to thirteen, while twenty-six survivors would be classified as severely injured. Due to the interruption of the highly integrated production lines, both power plants had to stop producing energy for the public and the company network less than thirty minutes after the accident. The other production lines, including the open pit mining for brown coal, the tar processing and the chemical production, as well as the briquette production, also had to stop working. At the time, Kombinat Espenhain was the largest single producer of electricity in the GDR, its two power plants employing almost 1,400 people and delivering 8 percent of the country’s electricity. The entire Kombinat employed nearly 10,000 workers. While energy delivery at power plant I  had already resumed around noon, and the other production lines slowly resumed activity during the next week, power plant II took longer to recover. Not only was the exploded boiler no. 13 totally destroyed, but several boilers next to it, along with parts of the walls and windows of the huge production hall, had also been severely damaged. It took more than three years to install a new boiler which had to be imported from an AEG subsidiary in West Germany. The total damage was assessed at eight million Marks. 16

 See the expert commission reports “Auswertung der Havarie des Dampferzeugers Nr. 13 Kraftwerk II des VEB Kombinat Espenhain am 24.7.59. Im Auftrag der Staatlichen Plankommission vom Institut für Energetik—Abt. Elektroenergieerzeugung—Leipzig,” Leipzig, March 10, 1960, BArch-SAPMO, DY30/IV 2/6.03/58, fol. 169–80; and “Bericht der Regierungskommission zur Einleitung der Hilfsmaßnahmen und zur Untersuchung der Ursachen der Explosion im Kraftwerk Espenhain,” n. d., BArch-SAPMO, DY30/ IV 2/2.029/46.

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 225

2020.05.12. 19:27:55

226

Thomas Lindenberger

Both the scale of the accident and the importance of the power plant prompted an immediate reaction from the top level of all political institutions in the GDR. The First Secretary of the SED, Walter Ulbricht, and the young top functionary in charge of the economy, Günter Mittag, were informed several times a day about the developments.17 Within hours Prime Minister Willi Stoph had appointed a governmental commission led by Minister of the Interior Karl Maron, and including several top level government officials, among them leading functionaries from the state planning commission, and the president of the miners’ trade union (IG [Industriegewerkschaft] Bergbau).18 The commission was tasked to go immediately to Espenhain to coordinate assistance and care for the families of the killed and hospitalized workers, and to lead an inquiry into the causes of the accident. At the same time, the ministry of state security, the Stasi, was forming a special operative group to be installed in Espenhain, headed by the deputy head of the regional Stasi authority in Leipzig.19 The Stasi was also putting together its own special enquiry commission, staffed with experts from the Forensic Science Institute (Kriminaltechnisches Institut) of the People’s Police (Volkspolizei), to investigate the causes of the accident.20 Finally, the miners’ trade union also set up its own inquiry commission to deal with the case.21 CASE STUDY TWO: THE EXPLOSION OF A HOT OIL RESERVOIR IN THE STATE-OWNED TAR PROCESSING WORKS OF ROSITZ, MAY 22, 1962 On May 22, 1962, at 16:45, a huge hot oil reservoir (Heißölvorlage) in a petrol cracking plant (Spaltanlage) exploded in the state-owned tar processing works (VEB Teerverarbeitungswerk) of Rositz, a  little industrial village in the county of Altenburg neighboring the aforementioned Espenhain, south of Leipzig. Hot oil reaching nearly 300 degrees Celsius spilled, setting fire to 17

 See short notes and telephone messages in Mittag’s records on the disaster, BArch-SAPMO, DY30/IV 2/2.029/46, fol. 12, 12v, 14, 15. 18  Ministerrat der DDR, “Verfügung,” July 24, 1959, BAB, DC20/21215 (no pagination). 19  See the reports of the “Op.-Gruppe Espenhain,” BStU, Außenstelle Leipzig, BVfS Leipzig/00572. 20  MfS—Einsatzleitung Espenhain—July 30, 1959, “Bericht über das Ergebnis der bisherigen Untersuchungen der Katastrophe im Kraftwerk II des VEB Kombinat Espenhain,” BStU, MfS-HA XVIII, Nr. 18768, fol. 8. 21  [Lucas, trade union president], July 27, 1959, “Hinweise für die Gewerkschaftskommission zur Untersuchung der Ursachen des Unglücksfalles im Kraftwerk II des VEB Kombinates Espenhain und der Arbeit der BGL,” BArch-SAPMO, Dy37/1095, fol. 12–13.

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 226

2020.05.12. 19:27:55

Governing the State of Emergency

227

the whole cracking unit and crushing the measuring and pumping stations, which were protected by a two-layer brick wall, as well as the working platforms. Eight of the ten members of the team on shift were killed immediately by the flames; the remaining two suffered no physical injuries because they were working at another part of the production site. By closing critical valves and feeders, workers were able to prevent the fire spreading to the rest of the production site. It took the company’s fire brigades, in conjunction with local voluntary firefighters, over an hour to extinguish the fire. Large parts of the cracking plant were destroyed, causing damage of approximately one million Marks.22 The steel coat of the hot oil reservoir— measuring 3.6 meters in perimeter and nearly eight meters in height—had detonated, most probably under the pressure of a hydraulic shock triggered by evaporating water in the reservoir. The extreme pressure of the detonation caused connecting tubes and valves to be propelled up to forty meters away. 23 Compared to the steam generator explosion at Kombinat Espenhain three years earlier, the economic relevance of this incident was limited because the GDR economy was not heavily dependent on the output of this particular cracking unit, one of four in the Rositz plant. However, it was by far the most productive and modern one, and covered approximately half of its production, which consisted of creating a number of generic chemical products from petrol refining processes (gasoline, diesel oil, tar pitch) which were relevant for the GDR’s export activities. The somewhat lesser economic significance of the event is also demonstrated by the fact that it was not the head of the Politburo’s Economic Commission, Erich Apel, who informed the top leadership on the day after the disaster, but rather the head of the Central Committee’s department for primary industry (Abteilung Grundstoffindustrie), Günther Wyschofsky. An expert commission directed by the head of the “main chemistry department” of the People’s Economic Council (Volkswirtschaftsrat),24 comrade and Secretary of State (Staatssekretär) Hans Adler, had already been formed and sent to the site while another team had been commissioned to organize the transfer of production to other companies and the rebuilding of the produc-

22

 Industriegewerkschaft Chemie, Zentralvorstand, June 7, 1962, “Einschätzung der Situation im VEB Teerverarbeitungswerk Rositz nach der Havarie vom 22.5.1962,” BArch-SAPMO, DY38/3148, fol. 330, 334. 23  [n.a., n.d.], “Untersuchungsbericht über die schwere Havarie am 22.5.1962 in der Spaltanlage IV des VEB Teerverarbeitungswerk Rositz,” BArch-SAPMO, DY30/IV 2/6.03/16/ fol. 212f. Due to the lack of surviving witnesses, this expert commission’s report found the hydraulic shock theory the most probable one without being able to offer definitive proof. 24  This body existed from 1961 to 1965: it was put under direct government control, charged with coordinating the supervision of industry throughout the entire GDR.

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 227

2020.05.12. 19:27:56

228

Thomas Lindenberger

tion line.25 Furthermore, the central board (Zentralvorstand) of IG Chemie immediately sent its vice president and an Instrukteur from its OHS department to help the Rositz plant workers come to terms with the catastrophe. CASE STUDY THREE: THE “TRAGIC DISASTER AT THE ELECTROCHEMICAL COMBINE BITTERFELD,” JULY 11, 1968 On July 11, 1968, at 13:57, during a shift change, a huge gas detonation destroyed a complete factory building and severely damaged several adjacent buildings in one of the largest compounds of the GDR’s chemical industry, the Elektrochemisches Kombinat Bitterfeld in the district of Halle. With regard to the number of dead and injured, this was the largest accident in the history of the GDR’s chemical industry. At 14:40, the local authorities issued a red alert and convened the County Emergency Commission. Between 3 and 4 p.m., Prime Minister Willi Stoph was officially informed in Berlin. He immediately appointed a  government commission to coordinate the emergency measures in Bitterfeld, headed by the acting Minister of Chemical Industry. The commission included the Deputy Minister of the Interior and chief of staff of the Volkspolizei, the Deputy Minister of Health, and the acting President of the Regional Soviet of the district of Halle, to which the county of Bitterfeld belonged. During the next four days the death toll rose to thirty-two, and the number of injured increased to 208. The swift recovery of buried bodies was complicated not only by the enormous remains of the demolished building—which had been one hundred meters long, forty meters wide, and twenty meters high—but also by damaged tanks leaking highly inflammable chemicals, making welding and cutting work impossible.26 During the afternoon of the same day, the District Emergency Commission of Halle had taken over the coordination of the rescue operation, commanding several units from the army, the regional riot police, the police academy, the Red Cross, and civil protection units, not to mention several

25

 [ZK-Abteilung für] Grundstoffindustrie, May 23, 1962, to Ulbricht, Honecker, Dr. Apel, Abt. Parteiorgane, Abt. Sicherheitsorgane, Explosion im VEB Teerverarbeitungswerk Rositz Kreis Altenburg, BArch-SAPMO, Dy30/IV 2/6.03/16, fol. 37. 26  The basic facts about the Bitterfeld disaster are reconstructed from a series of daily telegrams between police officers and the Zentrale Katastrophenkommission in the Minister of the Interior between July 11 and 23, 1968, BAB, DO1/2.1/3182, fol. 38–82; see also “Niederschrift zu Tagesordnungspunkt 1 der Ministerratssitzung v. 17.7.68 - Bericht über die Explosion im ECK Bitterfeld,” BAB, DC20/I/3/684, fol. 166–94.

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 228

2020.05.12. 19:27:56

Governing the State of Emergency

229

fire departments, both professional and voluntary: altogether, nearly 3,000 persons were involved in the rescue. The injured were distributed among four hospitals in Bitterfeld, Dessau, and Halle. Meanwhile, the government in Berlin, in cooperation with the Central Committee of the SED, coordinated a proactive information policy: the press and mass media were ordered to send journalists to Bitterfeld to cover the rescue activities, with an emphasis on the social assistance given to the bereaved and the severely injured. As such, within approximately six hours, a complete machinery of professional emergency management was put in place, which kept operating at a high level until around July 14—the third day after the explosion—when the bodies of the last three missing persons were recovered and identified. With the official mourning ceremony on Monday, July 15, the state of emergency came to a symbolic conclusion and the government commission returned to Berlin, giving a preliminary report to the council of ministers on July 17. During the following weeks and months, another eleven persons would succumb to their injuries. Aside from the human loss, the economic damage of this disaster also reached new dimensions: the completely destroyed polyvinylchloride production site alone accounted for eighty to one hundred million Marks. In addition, the production line for the insecticide Bi58 was destroyed. The GDR, which at that time held the Comecon monopoly on this very effective and widely used insecticide, thus risked losing an important export item vital to its trade relations with the Soviet Union.

Governing the State of Emergency Once the initial largely uncoordinated rescue and medical aid, and ad hoc physical control of the accident sites—that is, the eventual extinguishment of fire and closing down of critical production processes—had begun, they were soon complemented by a  set of well-coordinated activities through which the disaster was ended, socially communicated, and encoded. Under the guidance of the party-state it was transformed into a social fact, evident and plausible to a heterogeneous mixture of agents: workers and the local population, managers and engineers, regular and secret police officers, and bureaucrats, experts, and party and trade union functionaries from all levels of the political hierarchy. These three activities were social assistance, political remobilization, and surveillance, including the search for the “enemy’s hand.” Some days after the accident, the state of emergency would come to a preliminary symbolic conclusion with the state-sponsored obsequies.

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 229

2020.05.12. 19:27:56

230

Thomas Lindenberger

Social Assistance Taking care of the families of the deceased in a  demonstrative and visibly compassionate way was considered a top priority. All relevant actors except the secret police and the external technological experts actively contributed to this care in one way or another, and the secret police, of course, monitored this activity through unofficial sources. As a rule, a special commission for social assistance (Soziale Betreuung), consisting not only of the company’s social workers but also of members of the company’s party committee and trade union activists, was set up once it became obvious that several workers had been killed, and therefore several families were in need of help. Initially, one or two so-called “godfathers” or “godmothers” were assigned to each bereaved family. They were charged with assisting the family from the difficult first moment of learning about the death of their father, husband, son, mother, wife, or daughter, and continuing to assist until issues regarding widow and orphan pensions and the income situation of the family had been settled.27 Assistance included a broad range of material and psychological measures, which were both swift and visible. Since the Espenhain accident had happened on a Friday, the families were first given the complete weekly salary of the deceased or injured, plus an additional emergency allowance. Family members were also given money to purchase mourning clothes for the funeral. Another standard measure involved providing the entire family of the bereaved a free two-week stay in a trade union holiday resort. Each family was visited several times by their “godparents.” They would tactfully inspect the family’s living conditions and ask questions about their overall income situation: if they had close relatives, if there were problems with childcare, work, and so forth. They would duly report their observations to the social commission and write a report of every visit. An important element in this practice of family visits consisted in the active participation of members of the government commissions sent from 27

 For Espenhain, see the final report of the permanent commission for social assistance from July 31, 1959, StA Leipzig, 20681/344 (VEB Braunkohleveredlung Espenhain, Werkdirektor); for Rositz, see the minutes of the social commission and reports by a Trade Union safety inspector, BArch-SAPMO, DY38/3148; for Bitterfeld, “Beschluß des Sekretariats des FDGB-Bezirksvorstandes 12.7.68: Betreuung und Versorgung der Werktätigen und ihrer Angehörigen mit Leistungen der Sozialversicherung, die vom Explosionsunglück im VEB EKB betroffen wurden,” BAB, DO1/2388 (Ministerium für Gesundheitswesen), fol. 31–33; and Rat des Kreises Bitterfeld, Der Vorsitzende, July 18, 1968, “Maßnahmen der staatlichen Organe des Kreises Bitterfeld zur Sicherung der Überwindung der Folgen des Explosionsunglücks im PVC-Betrieb des VEB Elektrochemisches Kombinat Bitterfeld,” LSA Merseburg IV/B-4/04/25.

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 230

2020.05.12. 19:27:56

Governing the State of Emergency

231

Berlin. Among the tasks enumerated in the council of ministers’ nominations of committee members, coordinating onsite social assistance always ranked among the most important. This meant that every bereaved family received at least one visit from a top representative of the GDR power hierarchy: a deputy minister or a state secretary, a member of the federal trade union presidency, or a representative of the regional soviet (Rat des Bezirks). They would personally communicate their condolences on behalf of the GDR supreme authorities and attempt to ascertain the material needs of the family. Like everyone else involved in “social assistance,” they also wrote down their observations for the social commission. The family members of the numerous critically injured and hospitalized workers were assisted in a similar way. Companies would organize an around-the-clock car service to bring family members to the hospital and eventually to the funeral. The company would cover any lost salary if a wife had to stay away from work for a week or so to visit her hospitalized husband. They would ensure that any family whose wage earner had been killed would not have to give up their company-owned apartment. Families of killed or injured workers were also assisted with smaller domestic chores such as harvesting and wood cutting. In every case the individual situation of the family was painstakingly assessed. After the Rositz disaster, the commission sent a doctor to the pregnant wife of a deceased worker to ensure that she would take her maternal leave immediately. Another family with financial problems, which included two boys, eleven and thirteen years old, “with educational difficulties,” would be helped by “clarifying” an impending attachment of wages, and through a conversation between commission members and the boys’ school director. These ad hoc measures were immediately met by formal decisions of the bodies charged with handling pension payments: the trade unions.28 In the case of Bitterfeld, the board of the regional trade union federation decided, just one day after the accident, on a plan of material measures that all went beyond the legal minimum of payments and health provisions. It included a 1,000 Mark allowance for every family of a deceased worker (the average monthly salary of an industrial worker at that time was around 700 Mark) and widow pensions of 40 percent (instead of the legal 20 percent) of the net income of the deceased family member for the following two years. A week later the county soviet of Bitterfeld complemented these ad hoc measures with a bundle of further precautions regarding the reintegration 28

 Since 1951, the administration of the mandatory social insurance had been integrated into the Trade Union bureaucracy.

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 231

2020.05.12. 19:27:56

232

Thomas Lindenberger

of the family. These included financing the medical treatment of recovering workers and granting their children preferential access to childcare and school institutions, including stipends payable until they acquired a  high school diploma (Abitur). Families were allowed to interrupt their mortgage payments on consumer loans or were supported to get new ones at highly favorable interest rates. In Rositz, the eight families of the deceased workers were given the possibility to purchase TV sets and other household appliances without having to register on a waiting list. While the socialist state did, as expected, make efforts to organize social assistance efficiently, they also made sure to publicize their assistance to everyone familiar with the accident. Depending on the range of communication about the accident itself, this could entail specific information— for instance, in the company weekly edited by the party organization—or more laconic statements in the short press notices which were published in the national newspapers after the accidents in Espenhain and Rositz. Any public mention of such a mass accident highlighted that the families of the killed and severely injured workers would be given every imaginable assistance (jede erdenkliche Unterstützung). In the case of Bitterfeld, the party practiced a proactive communication strategy carefully orchestrating daily reports about the rescue and recovery operations in all nationwide dailies and magazines.29 These reports were duly stylized as “boundless engagement” with workers “heroically” sacrificing their free time and risking their lives in order to save their missing colleagues while also reporting the immediate social measures undertaken to help the bereaved, the injured, and their families.

Political Remobilization and Surveillance “NOW, MORE THAN EVER!” The social assistance measures and their paternalistic rhetoric remained basically the same throughout the GDR’s existence. By contrast, the campaigns of political orientation and mobilization, which were launched by the company’s party organization immediately after the disasters, underwent significant changes in content and style. Their purpose was evident: to reclaim the party’s leading role against a backdrop of insecurity and trauma; to channel eventual criticisms and skeptical attitudes, if not silence them altogether; 29

 See the collection of clippings in BAB DO1/2.1/31821, fol. 110–42.

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 232

2020.05.12. 19:27:56

Governing the State of Emergency

233

and to reinstate the political actuality as defined by the current line of the party leadership while delegating, and thereby delaying, the issue of the actual causation of the Havarie and the personal responsibility for it to the investigations of experts. The experts’ reports, however, were always treated as confidential and therefore never published. Together with the absence of any effective legal recourse for the bereaved, injured claimants, or other individuals negatively affected by Havarien, this strict secrecy constitutes the most obvious difference to the rule-of-law-based conditions under which similar disasters were handled in open “Western” societies. “Kumpel nun erst recht!” (Fellow miners, now more than ever!30) ran the headline of a  leaflet issued by the company’s party organization, the company management, and the company trade union committee in Espenhain on the day after the disaster. This slogan was integrated in a rather clumsy drawing on the front page of the leaflet, written on a  flag whose pole is held in the middle by three strong workers’ fists, while the lower end is stuck in the backs of two small mean-looking creatures representing West Germany’s Chancellor Konrad Adenauer and Foreign Minister Heinrich von Brentano. The Adenauer character is holding a small paper roll with the inscription “sabotage.” The slogan “Fellow, now more than ever” is continued with “This is our answer to the Havarie in the power plant!,” followed by appeals to fulfill the plan, form even more “brigades of ‘socialist work,’” and raise “class vigilance.” The final appeal of the leaflets points to the future, urging colleagues to put all their efforts into reaching the goals of the plan, despite the damage, in time for the GDR’s tenth anniversary (on October 7 of that year).31 At the tar processing works of Rositz such a  direct association with West Germany, the most important “other” in the political psyche of the GDR, was avoided. Instead, resuming production was firmly set in the context of the ongoing so-called Produktionsaufgebot, or production mobilization.32 This was a campaign launched immediately after the construction of the Berlin Wall in order to freeze workers’ wages, which had previously risen under the pressure of increased emigration. It was part of the rather unpopular campaign through which the SED tried to legitimize sealing off the GDR from the West to protect against its interference.33 30

 In the German miner sociolect, “Kumpel” is used as a familiar form of address, connoting the meaning of “pal” or “fellow.” 31  StA Leipzig 20681-345, n.p. 32  See leaflets by the company’s management, TU, and party committee in LSA Merseburg, 20723/20. 33  Christoph Kleßmann, Arbeiter im “Arbeiterstaat” DDR: Deutsche Traditionen, sowjetisches Modell, westdeutsches Magnetfeld (1945 bis 1971) (Bonn: Dietz, 2007), 554–57.

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 233

2020.05.12. 19:27:56

234

Thomas Lindenberger

Six years later, in Bitterfeld, not even such an indirect reference to the class enemy made it into the company’s party newspaper. The whole event was presented as an exclusively intra-systemic affair, a “tragedy” to be dealt with by and among the members of the GDR’s self-sufficient Sozialistische Menschengemeinschaft (socialist human community). The most important political agenda during the summer of 1968 was entirely different: it was the strained relations between Moscow and the Czechoslovak reform communists which actually occupied the full attention of the SED’s top leadership during these weeks. But this issue was never mentioned in direct connection with the disaster (in the way that current political agendas had been invoked in the aftermath of earlier mass accidents such as Espenhain and Rositz). Two weeks after the Bitterfeld disaster, concerns about the Czechoslovak “revisionists” even began to supersede the accident in the newspaper of the company’s party organization, not to mention the national newspapers.34 After the Warsaw Pact intervention of August 21, a wave of harsh domestic repression against anyone showing the slightest signs of sympathy for the GDR’s unruly neighbors would displace any other current affairs. Otherwise, political communications connected to the abundant press coverage of the rescue efforts were much more restrained and generic in content compared to earlier instances. So far, the explicit and official reactions to the disasters served to actualize and reinstate the political agenda of the day according to the current party line. These explicit acts of communication went hand in hand with unofficial ones: for each of the three cases in this chapter, extensive mood reports were compiled by the party and the Stasi. They were derived from shop floor meetings and personal conversations between party members and individual workers, from monitoring private mail, especially that to West Germany, and above all, from reports by “unofficial informers” of the Stasi. These reports testify to both the party’s and the Stasi’s perception of such incidents as a potential threat to their control over the workforce and the company, as well as to the GDR’s sovereignty in general. They also show that the party used such situations as opportunities to gain access to manifestations of attitudes and opinions at the lowest level of society which, under “normal” circumstances, tended to remain unarticulated and censored.

 See Fortschritt: Organ der Betriebsparteileitung der SED des VEB Elektrochemisches Kombinat Bitterfeld, 21 (1968).

34

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 234

2020.05.12. 19:27:56

Governing the State of Emergency

235

THE ENEMY’S “FINGER IN THE PIE”? In the case of Espenhain, the grassroots party functionaries, as well as the secret informers of the Stasi, wrote daily information reports to their local superiors. Some initial reactions contain abundant talk of “sabotage,” the code word showing up in the clumsy Adenauer caricature. Statements like “this must be sabotage” or “this shows the activity of the enemy” were reported as standard reactions. A second strand of arguments highlights a more critical stance, suggesting that something like this “had to happen sometime”: both because of the long record of technical breakdowns within the power plant in general, and in particular with regard to this particular steam generator. Some workers even gave relatively precise estimates as to what the technical cause might have been, as the expert inquiries would later prove. In general, the local party organization could state that “among the majority of the workforce there are no voices directed against the party and the government.” On the contrary, it was asserted that the prevailing opinion was that the class enemy had a “finger in the pie,” and that the answer could only be the “fulfillment of the plans and commitments by the tenth anniversary of the republic.”35 This sounds merely like a  docile echo of what had been propagated through the aforementioned leaflet. It was familiar to everyone that “sabotage,” as the first explanation for things going wrong, was an obsession among party functionaries and Stasi officers alike, in particular during these years of the second Berlin crisis.36 Conversations overheard by unofficial informers, however, give the impression that at least some among the local population took the sabotage thesis seriously and at face value. In all the cases of Havarien I have studied so far, “sabotage” was ruled out as a realistic explanation within a day or less of the disaster. In spite of this, throughout the Stasi’s existence it was invariably suspected—but never confirmed—in every single case. On the other hand, some other statements sounded rather disturbing to the authorities: “There are general discussions about the non-granting of the miners’ standard wages and bonuses. On a general note it is discussed that some colleagues want to change their workplace or leave the company

35

 “Bericht der Regierungskommission…,” n. d., BArch-SAPMO, DY30/IV 2/2.029/46, fol. 21. 36  Cf. Rolf Steininger, Berlinkrise und Mauerbau 1958 bis 1963: Mit einem Kapitel zum Mauerfall 1989, 4th, rev. ed. (Munich: Olzog, 2009).

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 235

2020.05.12. 19:27:56

236

Thomas Lindenberger

altogether.”37 These, of course, were moods and reactions which the party leadership feared, but which were generally rather rare. THE GRUMPY LOYALTY (MISSMUTIGE LOYALITÄT) OF THE WALLED-IN WORKFORCE38 In Rositz, too, the mood among the workforce was of primary concern for the party committee meeting only hours after the accident. According to initial observations it was marked by “true calm. In particular with women ‘some arguments occurred’ [traten einige Argumente auf] but they were nevertheless prepared to assist us and the state organs,” stated the report of the party secretary.39 The county trade union league president quoted some “information” he had already received about “arguments” in the county and in other companies. “It is now crucial that in their neighborhoods, the colleagues take the sting out of those bad discussions immediately.”40 In a  session held two days after the disaster, he still saw the “positive side” prevailing. He had to concede, however, that from time to time “negative discussions” also came up, though more commonly in other local companies than in the Rositz plant. For instance, a certain comrade was quoted saying that “as long as there is technology there will also be accidents,” a statement much less innocuous than it looks, because “it is practically arguing against our modern technology.” As for the alleged causes of the explosion, some voices also raised the issue of new technology and the unpopular “production mobilization” (Produktionsaufgebot). In comparison to the aftermath of the Espenhain accident three years earlier, the party and union organizers were obviously more worried about critical reactions among the local public. All leading members of the party 37

 KD Borna, Op. Gruppe Espenhain, July 25, 1959, “Informationsbericht, BStU, Außenstelle Leipzig,” BVfS Leipzig/00572, fol. 21. Although they worked in a company belonging to the mining sector, the Espenhain power plant workers did not earn the standard wages of their miner colleagues. 38  “Missmutige Loyalität” (grumpy loyalty) was introduced into the debates about East German workers’ attitude towards their authority by Alf Luedtke, “‘Helden der Arbeit’ Mühen beim Arbeiten: Zur missmutigen Loyalität von Industriearbeitern in der DDR,” in Sozialgeschichte der DDR, ed. Hartmut Kaelble, Jürgen Kocka, and Hartmut Zwahr (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1994), 188–213. Also compare Andrew Port’s notion of the “gruntling society,” in Andrew I. Port, Conflict and Stability in the German Democratic Republic (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007). 39  See “Protokoll über die am 23.5.62 durchgeführte Leitungssitzung in Verbindung mit Wirtschaftsfunktionären und den Sekretären der APOen im VEB TVW Rositz,” BArch-SAPMO, Dy30/IV 2/6.03/16, fol. 33–35, here 35. 40  Ibid.

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 236

2020.05.12. 19:27:56

Governing the State of Emergency

237

organization had to participate in extra “clarification” (Aufklärung) among the workforce, highlighting the importance of work discipline and morale, and of strict observance of the health and safety regulations. After a  few days, however, discussions intensified, focusing on what caused the accidents and who was to be blamed. While an “objective atmosphere prevailed in these discussions,” there were “hostile arguments,” such as that “the consequences of the explosion will be larger if the truth is not told, the production mobilization [Produktionsaufgebot] is vilified, and the project of socialist construction is ‘calumniated,’ with workers saying ‘they [i.e., those in power] simply could not have enough of it.’” Fortunately, the party secretary could report, these “discussions” did not continue. However, several colleagues had asked for their transfer to other—presumably less dangerous—departments, requests which had to be “clarified” in the department’s party organization. Other workers would try to avoid the specific work procedures required to run the damaged distillation unit.41 Thereafter, such open challenges to the party’s course were not voiced. With a  third of the Rositz plant’s workforce being party members (compared to an average of less than one fifth in the chemical industry), it was easy for the party to get things under control and instill a “healthy optimism for the reconstruction of the destroyed production line,” as a Central Committee instructor would report just three days after the disaster.42 At first sight, then, this disaster seemingly offered the party an opportunity to construct its own success story: one where the party led a workforce of classconscious workers and their intelligentsia allies through the tragic loss of eight colleagues towards a brighter future. “PROLETARIAN INTERNATIONALISM” Six years later, the situation had changed significantly in the wake of the Bitterfeld disaster. Police reports underlined a disciplined response, and a willingness from both the workforce and the population to accept the authorities’ instructions; in particular, the active information policy was regarded as a successful strategy to foster trust in the government. The fast and effective work of the rescue teams and the numerous police units was also ap41

 [Betriebsparteiorganisation der SED, VEB Teerverarbeitungswerk Rositz], n.d., “Einschätzung der id.-polit. Situation nach der Havarie am 22.5.63 und Schlußfolgerungen für die weitere Arbeit,” BArch-SAPMO, DY38/3148, fol. 17f. 42  Abt. Grundstoffindustrie, May 25, 1962, “Information über die Explosion im VEB Teerverarbeitungswerk Rositz am 22. Mai 1962,” Dy30/IV 2/6.03/16, fol. 46–48.

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 237

2020.05.12. 19:27:56

238

Thomas Lindenberger

preciated. Naturally there was a widespread understanding that the causes must be found, because, as a report from two days after the accident stated, “this must not happen again” (das darf nicht wieder vorkommen). But interestingly enough, the same report explicitly mentioned that there would be “no search for guilt in the direction of planning or above or the obsolete structure [of the Bitterfeld works],” indicating—with some justification— from which direction the top leadership expected undesirable comments. Only the fatalistic statement that there had always been “deflagrations” in the chemical industry, and the fear that annual bonuses might now be lost, represented what few more reserved attitudes existed. The inhabitants of Bitterfeld were also positively acknowledging the repair of all the damage to roofs and windows, achieved through the mobilization of 250 extra craftsmen within two days. The district department for retail trade and provisions further fostered this positive mood by organizing additional provisions of exotic fruits and non-alcoholic beverages.43 However, the Bitterfeld county police’s monthly report, looking back on the whole month of July, clearly shows that even at the site of the accident, the actuality of the disaster had already been replaced by the far more pressing agendas of big politics seemingly disconnected from industrial life at home. Opinions about the simmering crisis in Czechoslovakia figure prominently, while attitudes in the wake of the industrial “tragedy” are already summarily described as positive without further elucidation.44

“Our Dear Dead”: The Symbolic Closure of the State of Emergency The immediate post-disaster phase came to a close with formal obsequies organized by the enterprises on behalf of the GDR government. As large “people-owned enterprises” (volkseigene Betriebe), the companies were able to hold the public commemorations in their own cultural houses or palaces. Kulturhaus or Kulturpalast buildings served as the centers of social life and leisure for the workforce and the local community. Most had been erected

43

 See the series of daily telegrams between police officers and the Zentrale Katastrophen­ kom­mission in the Minister of the Interior between July 11 and 23, 1968, BAB, DO1/2.1/3182, fol. 38–82. 44  See reports in VPKA Bitterfeld, Beurteilung der Lage, Einschätzungen 1965–1968, LSA Merseburg 19.1/0544.

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 238

2020.05.12. 19:27:56

Governing the State of Emergency

239

during the early 1950s, the short period of actual Stalinism in the GDR, and were thereby emblematic of the political-ideological claims of the communist utopia.45 The Rositz commission in charge of preparing the obsequies in May 1962 was assisted by Espenhain’s company director, who, drawing from his own experience three years before, offered his advice on how to organize such an event. There would be classical music at the beginning and the end. The families would be provided with identical grave stones. When the dead were cremated, the VEB Burial Services (Bestattungswesen) would use “only the best” decoration and utensils. Further details regarded the ornamentation of the hall and where to put the numerous wreaths sent by the government, the company and other institutions. “The bereaved will be picked up at their apartments in black cars. In front of the cultural center the representatives of the government and the company management will express their condolences to the families with a silent handshake. . . . The families will be the first to leave the hall while the members of the company will rise from their seats.”46 In the case of Bitterfeld, it was the protocol department of the GDR government in Berlin who determined the details of the ceremony down to the smallest minutiae. It followed more or less the same principles, though on a larger scale, and it ended with the playing of the East German national anthem.47 The demonstrative “social assistance” measures offered to the families of the bereaved reveal a specific script to commemorate the workers’ state (Arbeiterstaat), which had to be followed on such occasions. The symbolism in this public commemoration visibly combines features of regular mourning rituals with those used to commemorate the death of soldiers: black limousines, uniform state-sponsored tombstones, specific endowments and privileges for the families left behind. The notion of sacrifice is omnipresent. “Our sorrow is a proud sorrow. Our dear dead have given their lives for the greatest cause in the world, for the preservation of life and the happy future of our children,” went the funeral speech of comrade Adler, head of the “main chemistry department” of the People’s Economic Council (Volks-

 Ulrich Hartung, Arbeiter- und Bauerntempel: DDR-Kulturhäuser der fünfziger Jahre – ein architekturhistorisches Kompendium (Berlin: Schelzky & Jeep, 1997). 46  VEB Teerverarbeitungswerk Rositz, n.d., “Protokoll der Sozial-Kommission über die ersten eingeleiteten Maßnahmen zur Betreuung der Angehörigen,” BArch-SAPMO, Dy30/ IV 2/6.03/16, fol. 42f. 47  See the file Trauerfeier anlässlich des Explosionsunglücks im Elektrochemischen Kombinat Bitterfeld 1968, BAB DC20/21000.

45

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 239

2020.05.12. 19:27:56

240

Thomas Lindenberger

wirtschaftsrat), during the commemoration ceremony in Rositz. “We promise you we will not rest until we have completed the mission for which you worked until the untimely end of your lives.”48 In Bitterfeld, it was Max Sefrin, Minister of Health and a  Christian Democrat, who delivered the funeral speech. In respect and veneration we bow to the beloved victims. Consciously contributing through their own hands’ work to the construction of our workers’ and peasants’ state, they invested all their energies for the fulfillment of our national economic tasks. Equally so on this day, when this tragic accident occurred. . . . Our final farewell goes to you who departed so unexpectedly from your families, the collective of the Kombinat Bitterfeld and from our sozialistische Menschengemeinschaft. Thanks to you, who worked so actively for our common goal, the perfection of socialism.49

It must be stressed that sozialistische Menschengemeinschaft was, in 1968, a highly charged, quintessential term in the official communist rhetoric to represent the GDR’s allegedly advanced development toward a communist society. It was part of Ulbricht’s highly idiosyncratic concept of reforming and modernizing East German society without compromising the power position of the party leadership.50 To some extent, it was the domestic alternative offered by the SED to the “socialism with a human face” rhetoric of their “revisionist” comrades in Czechoslovakia. Though a clear case of political instrumentalization, this postmortem transformation of the workers into economic soldiers, fallen in the secular battle for a bright socialist future, was articulated in a prudent and inoffensive way, particularly in the case of Bitterfeld, where any references to the wider cause were couched in very general terms. It is certainly not by accident that in all the cases studied so far, the funeral speeches were given by leading state functionaries and not by top party functionaries. Although the SED’s backstage coordination clearly emanates from the sources, the outer appearance is one of a state claiming to represent the broad community of people, integrating party members and non-party members, workers and intelligentsia, old and young, Christians and atheists. Though it largely oc-

 “Zum ehrenden Gedenken,” in Der Aufbau: Betriebszeitung der Belegschaft des VEB Teerverarbeitungswerk Rositz, ed. Betriebsparteiorganisation der SED, May 29, 1962, p.1, BArch-SAPMO, DY38/3148, fol. 292. 49  BAB DC20/21000, note 43. 50  Cf. Sigrid Meuschel, Legitimation und Parteiherrschaft: Zum Paradox von Stabilität und Revolution in der DDR 1945–1989 (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1993), 189–91. 48

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 240

2020.05.12. 19:27:56

Governing the State of Emergency

241

curred in a discrete and restrained manner, the commemoration rhetoric of the workers’ state was always articulated at the specific political conjuncture in which the accident happened to take place.

Looking Beyond Disaster: Preliminary Theses about the Long-Term Significance of Havarien in Communist East Germany These close-ups of three Havarien as emergency situations generating locally bounded collective trauma must be complemented with scrutiny of the political measures taken after the dead were buried, production resumed, and the rehabilitation and reintegration of the severely injured had ended. Now came the experts engaged by the government, the trade union, and the secret police, the latter having unofficial collaborators in all of the commissions charged with ascertaining the technical causation of the Havarie. The commissions were expected to offer an explanation for the disaster and suggestions for the modification of health and safety rules, both in the particular plant and more generally. In the current stage of my research, I can formulate the three following, preliminary theses derived from these expert discourses.51 The first impression from these expert discourses is that, in contrast to the sources emanating from the short-term period of immediate disaster management, workers (as a  status group, rather than individual witnesses interrogated by the police) are far less present and are not given any “voice” in these reports (with the occasional exception of those reports commissioned by trade unions). Instead it is through the rivalries and antagonisms among the GDR’s different societal and economic elites that the “meanings” of such disasters, and the consequences to be drawn from them, are assessed and negotiated. A core feature of this infighting was the systematic suspicion by the party and the Stasi that engineers (holding polytechnic or university diplomas) constituted a permanent risk to state security. This may seem understandable with regard to those “old” cadres who were previously in charge of capitalist companies. However, the same suspicion was also extended to the new generation of “home-grown” engineers, probably as a result of their frequent business contacts with West German firms, which remained indispensable for maintaining the competitiveness of technologi-

51

 Cf. Thomas Lindenberger, “Havarie,” unpublished Research Report, Sofia, 2016.

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 241

2020.05.12. 19:27:56

242

Thomas Lindenberger

cally intensive sectors such as chemistry. At the same time, this fundamental suspicion was most probably sustained and rendered plausible by the Stalinist legacy of a deeply ambivalent attitude toward technical cadres and their unintelligible knowledge and competences.52 Secondly, the Bitterfeld disaster effected a change in the GDR’s industrial safety culture. The neglect of safety guidelines and legal prescriptions had been an endemic source of occupational accidents throughout the 1950s and 1960s. Such neglect had been repeatedly criticized and exposed by the small, but highly motivated and—by contemporary international standards—innovative group of East German university experts for health and safety protection (Arbeitsschutzwissenschaft).53 After Bitterfeld, the discrepancy between design and practice began to diminish, at least temporarily. Campaigns for “Sicherheit, Ordnung und Sauberkeit” (safety, orderliness, and cleanliness) following Soviet models were launched, and frequent periodic “Antihavarietraining” became a  self-evident feature of work in a large industrial production site. Meanwhile, the 1970s saw also some demonstrative, if not “show,” trials against individual engineers for “diversion” after minor Havarien: until then, authorities had avoided juridical sanctions against workers, engineers, or managers. Nevertheless, it must remain open for the moment whether East German industrial disasters—and in particular their endemic character the longer the regime endured—brought about social change, to mention a classic topos of sociological disaster research.54 The strategies through which the communist state could exploit the “state of emergency” in order to reimpose itself as the authoritative exemplar of immediate relief and order, of due compensation and moral reorientation, not only served to consolidate its grip on society. It also removed any incentives to launch an open-ended search for substantive changes in the field of risk management. Despite their revolutionary rhetoric with regard to science and technology, cybernetics, and the “fully developed socialist personality,” communist  For the Soviet Union under Stalin, see Susanne Schattenberg, Stalins Ingenieure: Lebenswelten zwischen Technik und Terror in den 1930er Jahren (Munich and Frankfurt [Oder]: Oldenbourg, 2002); for the GDR, see Dolores L. Augustine, Red Prometheus: Engineering and Dictatorship in East Germany, 1945–1990 (Cambridge: Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2007); and Georg Wagner-Kyora, Vom “nationalen” zum “sozialistischen” Selbst: Zur Erfahrungsgeschichte deutscher Chemiker und Ingenieure im 20. Jahrhundert (Stuttgart: Steiner, 2009). 53  Cf. Wienhold, Zwischen Anspruch und Wirklichkeit. 54  Samuel Henry Prince, Catastrophe and Social Change: Based Upon a Sociological Study of the Halifax Disaster (Ph.D. diss., Columbia University, Faculty of Political Science, 1920 [repr. New York: Hardpress Publishing, 2013]). 52

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 242

2020.05.12. 19:27:56

Governing the State of Emergency

243

rulers missed numerous opportunities to modernize their methods of governance. Dealing adequately with industrial disasters was certainly one of them. In other societal environments, the repeated experience of crisis and existential insecurity may provoke creative solutions to the benefit of the system. In state socialism, the endemic failure of technology reported as Havarien became metaphors for the fate of the polity as a whole, cementing its status as a dependent, “cheap” economy within the emerging global regime of post-Fordist production.

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 243

2020.05.12. 19:27:56

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 244

2020.05.12. 19:27:56

Labor’s Risks: Work Accidents, the Industrial Wage Relation, and Social Insurance in Socialist Romania Adrian Grama

Introduction “It is abnormal,” Nicolae Ceauşescu explained in early September 1977, “to have 340,000 pensioners receiving sickness benefits, only 130,000 of whom are registered with disability of the first degree—that is to say, people who are really ill—and some 39,000 pensioners retired due to work accidents and occupational illness; the rest, however, are neither of these, they suffer from types of illness not related to productive activity.”1 Ceauşescu was commenting on the new pension law, adopted during the summer of 1977, which was intended to remedy some of the major problems that had long plagued the Romanian social insurance system. The “abnormal” situation singled out for critique by the President of the Socialist Republic of Romania was the entrenched collusion between the Ministries of Labor and Public Health and employees seeking early retirement. The perceived leniency with which office clerks and medical doctors granted disability pensions was supposedly matched only by the workers’ cunning ability to feign their symptoms: With the exception of those who suffer from disability of the first degree, all the other pensioners are just recovering their work capacity . . . they are just recovering, and they did not become pensioners of the state for life. This should be clear for all! We cannot accept this state of affairs; just because they say their back hurts, that they suffer from rheumatism, this doesn’t mean they are entitled to pensions for life! We now have 40,000 people retired due to rheumatism and another 40,000 due to mental disorders.2

1

 Arhivele Naţionale ale României (hereafter ANR), Comitetul Central al Partidului Comunist Român (hereafter CC al PCR), Secţia Cancelarie, 49/1977, 42. 2  Ibid., 44.

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 245

2020.05.12. 19:27:57

246

Adrian Grama

One immediate goal of the pension reform, therefore, was to put an end to the regime of complicities that allegedly made it possible for a rather large number of workers to secure disability pensions in cahoots with the institutions entrusted to run the social insurance system. Predictably, newspaper articles published over the summer of 1977 presented the reform as a social policy born out of an “objective” necessity to increase the percentage of the active workforce in the country’s overall population.3 It was estimated that no less than 108,930 retired persons had to reenter the labor market by the end of the year. By December 1977, newly created expert commissions were busily reviewing the health status of the undeserving retired, and successfully managed to return 59.8 percent of the targeted population to work—an impressive figure given the short time span—while more than 43,000 pensioners were still expected to undergo medical assessment in the future. The whole process unleashed waves of localized protest, particularly in labor-intensive industries such as mining, where working conditions were harsher and occupational hazards abounded. However, an internal party report noted with some concern that many other retired persons across the country, once deprived of their pensions, started to “grumble” (vociferează) and even “verbally assaulted” the members of the expert commissions.4 The 1977 pension reform, and the myriad protest outbursts that accompanied it, should be placed in the larger context of the manifold economic crisis that hit both the socialist East and the capitalist core countries during the long 1970s. On the one hand, the timing of the reform suggests that the domestic impact of the emerging global crisis in socialist Romania was initially mediated through the readjustment of national labor markets and the realignment of state spending on pension benefits. For party and state authorities alike, the pension reform was an explicit attempt to free the budget of an important fiscal burden and to return to work, or “reactivate,” many of the retired Romanian citizens who managed to obtain mild disability pensions. For Ceauşescu, restructuring welfare by reforming social insurance was a policy designed to regulate labor supply by way of hindering the early— and purportedly fraudulent—exit from the labor market. As he put it during a meeting of the Central Committee in early August 1977: “Those suffering from mild disability say they experience pain here and there, but you cannot possibly evaluate them. I have been recently told that people traveled for six months in foreign countries saying they are ill. We should eliminate the category of mild disability. This is a temporary condition, of no more than three, four, or six months. Mild disability pensions should not exist.”5  See, for instance, România Liberă, June 23, 1977, 1–2.  ANR, CC al PCR, Secţia Economică, 24/1977, 109–10. 5  ANR, CC al PCR, Secţia Cancelarie, 91/1977, 5. 3 4

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 246

2020.05.12. 19:27:57

Labor’s Risks

247

On the other hand, such public denunciation of the regime of complicities between overindulgent state institutions and ordinary citizens feigning injury and illness was hardly new: it was a practice that had permeated the expansion and consolidation of the social insurance system in postwar socialist Romania. Nor was it a specifically state-socialist phenomenon characteristic of Eastern Europe: the disabled body of the retired worker had been the object of suspicion and surveillance under a multitude of welfare arrangements throughout the twentieth century. As Christoph Conrad ­argued, social insurance was the key institutional mechanism through which the boundaries between work and non-work, health and illness, “retired” and “active” persons were produced and contested.6 What was striking in the context of the 1977 pension reform in Romania was the manifest intention of the ruling communist authorities to outright deny some injured or ill workers the possibility to take retirement on the basis of mild disability, claiming so-called “third group” pensions (grupa III). Ceauşescu’s statements quoted above should arguably be read as an effort to subject tens of thousands of pensioners to the actuarial valuation practice informing workers’ provisory compensation. Just like short-term disablement caused by work accidents, mild disability was deemed a “temporary condition” that should lead neither to demanding nor to securing pension rights. Rather, the injured and the ill would be entitled only to a period of compensated recovery that would facilitate their eventual return to work. In this context, abolishing the right to mild disability pensions by classifying an array of injuries and illnesses as “temporary” aimed to transform the conditions under which workers could decide to opt out of the labor market. In order to better understand why workers’ provisory compensation was established as a method for cutting back pension rights in 1977, this chapter explores the relationship between work accidents, disability pensions, and the development of the social insurance system during the preceding three decades of state socialism in Romania. In the first part, I trace how work accidents came to be problematized in relation to labor productivity, the consolidation of a  national budget for social insurance, and the emergence of a discourse of suspicion regarding welfare beneficiaries. How were statistics of work accidents compiled? What cluster of social policies did they inform? How was the notion of “professional risk” used to depict and shape work relations? Like most social insurance systems set up during the twentieth century, socialist welfare in Romania was premised on discouraging workers from exiting long-term employment. In examining how pensions, sickness benefits, 6

 Christoph Conrad, “Was macht eigentlich der Wohlfahrtsstaat? Internationale Perspektiven auf das 20. und 21. Jahrhundert” [What does the welfare state actually do? International perspectives on the 20th and 21st centuries], Geschichte und Gesellschaft 39, no. 4 (2013): 574–78.

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 247

2020.05.12. 19:27:57

248

Adrian Grama

and workers’ compensation following work accidents all aimed to further wage dependence, I argue that the socialization of labor’s risks was the key institutional mechanism through which the socialist state attempted to reduce contingent work and produce stable, skilled, and productive workers. In the second part I examine some of the ways in which injured workers struggled to have their injuries recognized as work accidents and pursued strategies to secure disability pension rights. How was a right predicated on actuarial valuation, assessed through statistical methods, and dependent on medical certificates experienced under state socialism? What forms of consciousness did this complex institutional assemblage generate among workers? Following Rémi Lenoir, I  show that the registration of a  work accident was riven with tensions and often pitted workers against one another in a process involving managerial authorities, the medical office, the accounting office, the labor inspectorate, and various representatives of the trade unions.7 By examining some of the issues raised by work accidents, I argue that workers’ bodies—caught between the logic of productivity and the social insurance system—served as “zones of contention”8 in socialist Romania. The ensuing struggles were molecular and often muted, but they did play an essential role in articulating a sense of social justice among the workers. In the concluding remarks I place this narrative into a global context by briefly exploring how the state-socialist example of East Central Europe might shed light on a specific historical moment in the history of the twentieth-century working classes, an epoch when the state’s regulation of labor’s risks, both inside and outside of the workplace, seemed to require the extension of social insurance to a vast population of wage earners.

Labor Productivity, Contingent Work, and the Calculus of Loss At the request of the party, in July 1949 the General Confederation of Labor (Confederaţia Generală a Muncii, or CGM) issued a policy draft to assist the reform of work safety in the newly proclaimed People’s Republic of Romania. The nationalization of private insurance companies the previ7

 Rémi Lenoir, “La notion d’accident du travail: un enjeu de luttes” [The notion of an accident at work: An issue of struggles], Actes de la recherche en sciences sociales 32–33 (1980): 77–88. 8  I borrow this expression from David Kideckel, Getting By in Postsocialist Romania: Labor, the Body, and Working-Class Culture (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2008), 47.

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 248

2020.05.12. 19:27:57

Labor’s Risks

249

ous summer and the restructuring of the Central Social Insurance Office in early 1949 had a profoundly destabilizing effect on labor inspection, leaving a poorly staffed Labor Ministry in charge of supervising working conditions across the country.9 The absence of a Labor Code greatly contributed to a sense of diffuse responsibility for the regulation and financing of work safety. The CGM’s report exposed this bureaucratic vacuum by insisting that faced with dangerous working environments, workers took it upon themselves to develop safety devices: a  machine to handle hot pipes, an oxaloacetic acid installation for welding, protective curtains for glass melting ovens, and so forth. Nonetheless, this burst of shop floor inventiveness could not hope to diminish the burgeoning number of work accidents: Statistics reveal this difficult situation. The Statistics Department of the State Insurance Office provided us with data showing that between 1947 and 1948, for a total number of 771,000 insured persons, there were 24,177 suffering from work disablement as a result of work accidents, which makes for a percentage of 3.13 percent. During the same time span, compensation for work accidents reached a total of 97,920,000 lei, and 462,252 working days were lost. For the first semester of 1948/1949, we spent 63,803,460 lei for work accidents and we wasted 303,826 working days. We do not have statistics for work-related illness because we lack trained medical personnel and an adequate legal framework. Important sums of money which could have been put to use for the working people; hundreds of thousands of lost working days on a yearly basis; and countless sufferings—these are the consequences of a lack of real and efficient work safety.10

The type of calculation displayed by the report was arguably not new. The interwar state insurance spokesmen would regularly point out the financial burden work accidents imposed on the distribution of the overall social insurance budget.11 However, what is most striking here is the equivalence  Legea şi regulamentul pentru organizarea asigurărilor sociale de stat [Law and regulation for the organization of state social insurance] (Bucharest: Editura Confederației Generale a Muncii, 1949). 10  ANR, CC al PCR, Secția Organizatorică, 81/1949, “Proiect pentru organizarea protecției muncii în Republica Populară Română,” 32. 11  See, for instance, I. Argeşeanu, Accidentul în legea de unificare a asigurărilor sociale [Accident in the law on the unification of social insurance] (Bucharest: Tiparul Românesc, 1938); P. P. Dulfu, Cum trebuie organizată prevenirea accidentelor în interiorul întreprinderilor [How should prevention of accidents be organized within enterprises] (Craiova: Scrisul Românesc, 1939); and the various issues of Securitas: publicație technică lunară pentru igiena muncii şi combaterea accidentelor [Securitas: Monthly technical publication for occupational hygiene and accident prevention], published between 1935 and 1943. 9

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 249

2020.05.12. 19:27:57

250

Adrian Grama

drawn between occupational disability (i.e., the temporary loss of work capacity) and wasted working days. Subsequent reports on work accidents would push this logic further by linking temporary disability to absenteeism. In the petroleum industry, it was noted that for the last trimester of 1950, absences from work amounted to 458,440 lost working days due to paid holidays and medical leave following work accidents and illness. Out of these, however, 125,720 lost days were discovered to be simply unexcused absences not covered by any medical papers which led to a loss of 4,000 tons of oil per month.12 Similarly, the number of working days wasted due to occupational invalidity during 1951 in the Jiu Valley mining industry equaled the total shut down of the Lupeni mine for eighty-five days, while for the two largest steel mills—Reşiţa and Hunedoara—the loss of work capacity caused by work accidents was equivalent to their complete idleness for more than ten full working days per year.13 The attempt to account for work accidents in terms of wasted working days should be viewed in relation to the emergence of the socialist planned economy. Economic historians have justly argued that one of the main growth strategies deployed by the Romanian state throughout the first half of the 1950s was the effort to enlarge its capital stock, boost the utilization of already existing industrial capacities, and keep consumption to a  minimum.14 Moreover, the “transition from the war to the peace economy,” which defined the economic agenda of the immediate postwar period, strived to adjust wages to increased productivity through the extension of piecework.15 The short-term effect of this combined strategy at the factory level was twofold: on the one hand, it allowed management to tighten its grip over the length of the working day, not least by severely reducing the amount of paid extra hours expended in production; on the other hand, it created a strong demand for workers, skilled and unskilled alike. It was in this context that the practice of counting wasted hours was initially undertaken in order to better determine labor productivity and enforce discipline on the shop floor.16 In the longer run, the hunger for labor and the impera12

 ANR, CC al PCR, Secția Cancelarie, 6/1951, “Referat cu privire la accidente tehnice şi umane şi absențele de la lucru din industria petroliferă pe anul 1950,” 3. 13  ANR, Preşedinția Consiliului de Miniştrii (PCM), 282/1952, “Bugetul sindicatelor şi asigurărilor de stat pe 1952,” 45. 14  John Michael Montias, “Unbalanced Growth in Romania,” The American Economic Review 53, no. 2 (1963): 565–66. See also Adrian Grama, Laboring Along: Industrial Workers and the Making of Postwar Romania (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2018), 213–56. 15  The strategy of linking wages to growth characterized Western and Eastern Europe alike, the former arguably after 1948. See Charles S. Maier, “The Postwar Social Contract: Comment,” International Labor and Working-Class History 50 (1996): 148–56. 16  For example, see Hillel Kohn, Productivitatea muncii în atelierele CFR din Cluj: Contri­bu­

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 250

2020.05.12. 19:27:57

Labor’s Risks

251

tive to keep it “cheap” did not only trigger a fierce competition among factories to attract workers; it also initiated the development of a large pool of workers that opted for contingent employment and regular job switching. But what was the relationship between translating work accidents into lost working days, the planned economy, and the socialist understanding of labor productivity? Socialist planners calculated labor productivity by dividing the total output of a production unit at constant prices within a given time frame into the total number of hours effectively spent realizing it.17 However, what made this calculation exceedingly difficult in a centralized economy was the fact that wasted hours had to be carefully estimated and factored into the process of establishing the efficiency of labor. On this basis, management would then decide both the number of required workers (muncitori scriptici) and the amount of money allocated to wages. Much like in the Soviet Union,18 the problem Romanian planners faced was how to ascertain the precise amount of time devoted to work on the shop floor. Their concern went well beyond controlling the labor process and checking the punching cards, since working hours could be affected by everything from power outages and shortages of raw materials to medical leave, holidays, breastfeeding, “revolutionary days,” and most importantly labor fluctuation (or turnover). For instance, because metal workers benefited from supplementary paid holidays due to special working conditions, management hired an ever-larger contingent of workers in order to avoid any sudden drops in productivity over the summer.19 Employing the exact number of required workers always impinged upon the plan, particularly in those industrial regions such as the Jiu Valley and the Banat where labor was somewhat scarce. When 2,000 miners went on vacation in the summer of 1951, Sovromcărbune found itself forced to recruit members of the communist youth organization to temporarily replace them.20 Even more than absenție la problema productivității muncii în Republica Populară Romană [Work productivity in the CFR workshops in Cluj: A contribution to the problem of labor productivity in the Romanian People’s Republic] (Cluj: Minerva, 1948), 46. Kohn estimated that in the CFR workshops in Cluj, a total of 80,000 hours were lost every month due to various forms of indiscipline on the shop floor. 17  Manea Mănescu and I. Marcus, “Pentru o justă planificare a  creşterii productivității muncii” [For a proper planning of the increase in labor productivity], Probleme Economice 3–4 ( July–October 1949): 37–38. 18  Walter Galenson, “Russian Labor Productivity Statistics,” Industrial and Labor Relations Review 4, no. 4 (1951): 499. 19  Arhivele Naţionale Caraş Severin (hereafter ANCS), Combinatul Metalurgic Reşita, 25/1950, “Metode pentru planificarea muncii şi salariilor,” 18­–22. 20  ANR, CC al PCR, Secția Economică, 17/1951.

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 251

2020.05.12. 19:27:57

252

Adrian Grama

teeism, work accidents demonstrated to planners the factories’ inability to fulfill production quotas and forced management to justify its underperformance. The state’s concern with work safety reforms must be placed against this background. As one state official put it during the ministerial meeting that debated the question of work safety in April 1950: “[the] Work and Wages Department of the Planning Commission is concerned with work safety because it regards it as conducive to increased labor productivity for the whole of the national economy, and hence to the building of socialism.”21 Trumpeted as the “struggle for reducing work accidents and occupational hazards” on the shop floor, work safety policies during the 1950s responded to a perceived crisis of labor productivity and targeted aspects deemed essential for its improvement: the need for mechanization, the management’s duty to procure working equipment, and the trade unions’ role in better organizing the labor process. Yet, as I shall discuss in more detail below, the implementation of work safety policies equally aimed to reinforce factory discipline by clearly delineating responsibilities between those who controlled the labor process and those who merely performed work. Starting in 1950, factories and institutions had to set up Work Safety Offices (Servicii pentru protecţia muncii şi tehnica securităţii) that brought together the head engineer, the medical doctor, and members of the technical personnel. By the mid-1950s, these factory offices received instructions and safety norms developed by the Institute for Scientific Research on Work Safety, a planning agency associated with the Central Trade Union Council (the institutional heir of the CGM). Labor inspection, still coordinated by the Labor Ministry, was reshuffled at the local administration level and was often carried out under the guidance of trade union officials.22 Work safety reforms went hand in hand with the nationwide effort to standardize the paperwork used to assess work accidents. This process can be followed on two complementary levels. At the factory level, forms registering work accidents were codified in order to specify not only the total number of dead and injured workers, but also the number of days needed for recovery in cases of occupational disability.23 In order to track in greater detail the evolution of work accidents over time, factories now calculated the frequency and severity rates of accidents.24 Moreover, the forms compiled by enterprises had to specify the type of disability incurred and had 21

 ANR, Ministerul Muncii şi Prevederilor Sociale, 266/1950, 23.  Călăuza inspectorului obştesc de protecția muncii [Guide of the Labor Inspectorate] (Bucharest: Editura tehnică, 1951). 23  ANCS, Uzina Constructoare de Maşini Reşița, 7/1954, 50. 24  ANR, PCM, 18/1951, 41–46. This report concerns the “August 23” Plant in Bucharest. 22

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 252

2020.05.12. 19:27:57

Labor’s Risks

253

to record only accidents affecting workers available on their payroll (ştate de plată). At the national level, the Statistics Office used the frequency and severity rates to determine which branch of industry and what types of work had higher risks of work accidents. In principle, this assessment singled out those industries in urgent need of work safety regulation and allowed a better grasp of the evolution of labor productivity. It was noted that a decrease in the frequency rate alone had almost no impact on labor productivity if it was not accompanied by a parallel drop in the severity rate.25 In addition, reports on work accidents had to establish disablement rates and translate them into lost man-days (om-zile). For instance, during the first trimester of 1953, a sample of 1,000 workers in the mining industry found no less than 402.6 man-days were lost due to work accidents, almost twice as much as in metallurgy.26 Work accident dossiers had to collect the signature of the head engineer, the medical certificate, the age and professional status of the worker, their total years of service (vechimea în câmpul muncii) and in their specialized line of work (vechimea în specialitate). By the mid-1950s, reports on work accidents came to incorporate a more complex notion of disablement. One such account, issued for 1957, noted that while the number of deadly accidents remained virtually the same compared to 1956, work accidents causing more than four days of disablement surged to 37,062, of which 12.5 percent required more than thirty days of recovery. Additionally, a total of 11,481 work accidents caused between one and three days of disablement. Much like earlier reports, this too was produced to convey the socialist understanding of labor productivity. Yet once occupational disablement was turned into a more rigorous statistical category, a new type of denunciatory discourse slowly emerged around the working body and medical expertise. It was not the suffering of the injured worker that was now bemoaned, but the propensity of workers to feign a temporary loss of work capacity: Following the increase in the number of accidents and the lengthening of the recovery period in cases of work disablement, there was an increase in the total number of lost days [zile pierdute] at the level of the national economy. Accordingly, the number of lost days caused by work disablement rose to almost 680,000, with nearly 24,000 more man-days lost compared to 1956. On the whole, medical leave for three million employees rose from 16.9 million days in 1952 to 22.9 in 1957. Here we should

25

 M. Pîrjol, “Protecția muncii în industria carboniferă” [Protection of work in the mining industry], Probleme Economice, no. 9 (September 1954): 129. 26  ANR, PCM, 88/1953, 18.

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 253

2020.05.12. 19:27:57

254

Adrian Grama

take into account the doctors’ complicity, abuses, and truancies. For the national economy, this means that one million lost working days equals roughly a quarter of a billion lei in industrial output.27

These reports, however, should be read alongside the socialist state’s obsession with reducing contingent work. Often represented as labor fluctuation or turnover in factory and party documents, contingent work was an endemic phenomenon during the early stages of socialism in Romania. Much of it was caused by two factors: on the one hand, the territorial distribution of industry in several highly concentrated areas;28 on the other hand, the haphazard evolution of norms and the relative autonomy factories enjoyed in implementing them. This combination produced volatile local labor markets within which factories could—and did—compete for workers. Two complementary administrative measures were devised in the early 1950s to deal with this situation. The first was the introduction of the work booklet (carnet de muncă) in 1950; the second came to be known as “Decree 207,” a law issued in November 1951 that strictly regulated the employment and transfer of workers and technical personnel. Understandably, both policies were met with indifference, and occasionally resistance, by management and workers alike. The work booklet had to record workers’ total years of service (vechimea în câmpul muncii), which was essential for determining both the size of the pension and the actual age of retirement. From very early on, however, its use proved deeply problematic, not least because many factory archives were destroyed during the war or lost immediately after the nationalization of industry in June 1948. This lack of archival evidence made ascertaining workers’ length of service virtually impossible and forced the state to decentralize the allocation of pension rights by making factory managers, trade union representatives, and local officials set up ad hoc commissions to decide over the retirement of workers. As a result, throughout the 1950s nearly 100,000 disgruntled workers went to court over their pension rights, striving to prove their length of service with the help of witnesses.29 The Labor Ministry ran its own medical expertise offices in parallel and came under constant pressure to cut spending on social insurance, particu27

 ANR, CC al PCR, Secția Economică, 3/1958, “Informare asupra accidentelor de muncă din anul 1957 (strict secret),” 1. 28  For a map of Romanian industry in the 1940s, see Liliana Georgescu, Localizarea şi structura industriei româneşti [Location and structure of Romanian industry] (Bucharest: Tiparul Românesc, 1941). 29  ANR, CC al PCR, Secția Economică, 24/1960, “Referat cu privire la introducerea carnetului de muncă,” 4–6.

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 254

2020.05.12. 19:27:57

Labor’s Risks

255

larly disability pensions and sickness benefits. In this context, many workers struggled to have their disability pensions recorded as being caused by work accidents or occupational illness which did not require proof of length of service. One investigation conducted in 1954 revealed that during the preceding year, nearly 30,000 workers were retired with so-called mild or “third degree” (grupa III) disability pensions, while many other old-age pensioners faked their papers or brought in unreliable witnesses to testify to their length of service: “The medical expertise offices, which are coordinated by the Labor Ministry [Ministerul Prevederilor Sociale], function according to their own rules; too easily they give away disability pensions and remove workers from production, often unjustly, thereby spending important sums of money from the state budget.”30 On the ground, the workings of the medical expertise offices made plain the contradiction between the social insurance law amended in 1953 and the Labor Code adopted two years previously: whereas the latter allowed factories to fire workers after three months of absence due to illness, the social insurance law instituted a special category of disability pensions (third degree) for workers with reduced work capacity who could still be maintained in less demanding jobs. Factory managers, however, preferred to have their sick workers—notably those suffering from tuberculosis—fired rather than treated, and refused to redeploy them to more suitable jobs. Given the low value of the disability pension, which was specifically designed to allow disabled workers to retain their employment status, these pensioners found themselves neither capable of sustaining their households, nor able to receive adequate medical treatment. Obliged on paper to undergo retraining sessions, the “unproductive pensioners”—as they were often dubbed in official reports—seldom returned to the labor market. “[T]he efforts they themselves make to find employment are burdensome and unsuccessful; factories—due to a lack of regulation—refuse to hire them to perform special tasks or part-time jobs.”31 The implementation of Decree 207 was an opportunity for the party to gather a  multitude of angry opinions. Indeed, many workers felt this measure limited their freedom to choose a cheaper life somewhere else and refused to sign the collective labor contracts for a period longer than two years.32 Certainly many of them were thinking—as one worker from Sovromtractor in Braşov was reported saying—that Decree 207 reflected the “First Five Year Plan of serfdom.” However, the law was arguably a “Winter’s

30

 ANR, PCM, 177/1955, 47.  Ibid., 58. 32  The party collected samples of negative opinions, ANR, PCM, 54/1952. 31

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 255

2020.05.12. 19:27:57

256

Adrian Grama

Tale” with few, if any consequences in the long run. Tellingly, a 1954 report on labor transfers complained that workers obstinately refused to take up their newly allocated jobs in different regions of the country because they still benefited from ration cards and medical assistance at their current place of employment.33 Management knew well enough that having a work contract, whatever its duration, did not make one a stable worker. Mining companies, for example, offered refundable advance payments to their newly employed workers, and even assisted them in building their own houses.34 The failure of these measures was to be expected. As early as 1951, party boss Vasile Luca alluded to a much more rewarding set of policies: “Workers have to be tied to their factories through various methods: paid holidays, pensions, social insurance, etc.”35 It was this understanding of welfare that framed the way in which the Romanian Communist Party conceived of its first major pension reform implemented in 1966. During the debates in preparation of the draft law, Anton Breitenhofer—a novelist and notable party member from the industrial city of Reşiţa—argued that: Bonuses for hard work are necessary, because even with all the technical progress and automatization in metallurgy, mining, and chemical industry, work in these industries is hard and harmful, and it shall remain so in the future. It is good that we stimulate the stabilization of workers in factories because the fluctuation of workers, technicians, and engineers is currently high, particularly in these industries. Work continuity within the same factory is very important for acquiring skills, for the quality of the goods produced, for labor productivity, and for avoiding work accidents.36 The 1966 pension law directly correlated pensions and wages, so that wage levels at the age of retirement would determine the value of the pension. Moreover, by linking wages and pensions within an overall incentive scheme based on the time spent in service at the same workplace, Romanian social planners fine-tuned their strategy of “mutual material incentives” (coninteresare materială)37 in the hope that this reform would finally encourage workers to settle at their current place of employment. The immediate goal of these insurance policies might have been, as Stephen Kotkin wrote of the 33

 ANR, CC al PCR, Secția Economică, 45/1954, 70.  ANCS, Trustul Minier Banatul-Anina, 173; and Ibid., 32/1955, 3. 35  ANR, CC al PCR, Secția Cancelarie, 105/1951, 19. 36  ANR, CC al PCR, Secția Cancelarie, 136/1966, 40. 37  I. Blaga and F. Burtan, Principiul leninist al cointeresării materiale [The Leninist principle of material cointegration] (Bucharest: Editura Politică, 1961). 34

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 256

2020.05.12. 19:27:57

Labor’s Risks

257

Soviet Union under Khrushchev, to secure higher levels of productivity and better control over the mobility of labor.38 The less explicit impulse of the reform, however, was to organize a more differentiated space of experience beyond the horizon of wage-earning life. It was not simply the right to oldage retirement that was reformed in 1966, but also the quality of life that the vast majority of workers could expect. By changing the relationship between the present and the future, the pension became not just the material support of the wageless elderly body, but the principle of a “good life” at the end of one’s career. Nevertheless, compensation for work accidents, though part of the same social insurance budget, could not be easily integrated into this overarching stabilization policy. The temporality of the work accident could hardly be fashioned along the lines of a deferred future awaiting the ageing working body; on the contrary, the statistical regularity of work accidents pointed to an infinite present of impermanent disability. This temporality properly belonged to what Michel Foucault famously called the “endemic”: a type of irradicable illness that constantly “sapped the population’s strength, shortened the working week, wasted energy, and cost money, both because [it] led to a fall in production and because treating [it] was expensive.”39 In the early 1950s, almost half of the total social insurance budget was spent on pensions and one third on compensation for work accidents and occupational hazards. The 1952 budget, for instance, allocated 43.83 percent for the former and 32.86 percent for the latter. Money allocated to dealing with work accidents was increased by more than 4 percent compared to 1951, but this only raised the question of estimating the number of work accidents likely to occur during the whole upcoming year, a rather unlikely endeavor.40 Somewhat predictably, at factory level the budget for work accidents was regularly overstretched. When money ran out, medical doctors preferred to register injured workers as simply sick, hiding the real causes of their absenteeism and thus avoiding their payment.41 In many other cases, it is safe to assume that unions and management would jointly attempt to divert parts of their insurance budget to cover work accidents.

 Stephen Kotkin, “Modern Times: The Soviet Union and the Interwar Conjuncture,” Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History 2, no. 1 (2001): 146n123. 39  Michel Foucault, “Society Must be Defended”: Lectures at the Collège de France, 1975–76, trans. David Macey (New York: Picador, 2003), 244. On the “temporalities of the endemic” I was inspired by Lauren Berlant, “Slow Death (Sovereignty, Obesity, Lateral Agency),” Critical Inquiry 33, no. 4 (2007): 754–80. 40  ANR, PCM, 282/1952, “Bugetul sindicatelor şi asigurarilor de stat pe 1952,” 18–22. 41  For some examples of overspending on work accident compensation, see ANR, CC al PCR, Secția Economică, 53/1952, 12–13. 38

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 257

2020.05.12. 19:27:57

258

Adrian Grama

Furthermore, as the state plan for the 1954 social insurance budget pointed out, compensation for work accidents was directly related to wages. Firstly, the increase in the number of insured wage earners should necessarily have resulted in a corresponding raise in budgetary resources. Secondly, as the amount of compensation depended on wage levels, higher wages should have resulted in higher compensation. This, however, did not happen. On the contrary, even though some 63,000 wage earners were included in the social insurance system in 1954—a nearly 2.5 percent increase compared to 1953—and the average wage grew by 2.1 percent, the budget allocated for work accident compensation went up only by 0.7 percent.42 Well aware of the complicities between social insurance representatives, doctors, managers, and workers, socialist planners strongly argued against a larger budgetary share for work accident compensations. In their view, what was actually needed was more control over processing work accident dossiers at the factory level. Social spending on workers’ compensation did increase considerably over the second half of the 1950s, as did the rate of accidents requiring more than four days of recovery (see Tables 10.1 and 10.2). Table 10.1: Rate of workplace injuries and time taken to recover, 1955–1959 Year

Injured

Needing 1–3 days of recovery

Needing over 4 days of recovery/all employees

Needing over 4 days of recovery/ manual workers only

Deceased

1955

50,027

12,485

36,809

36,383

733

1956

49,592

11,983

36,883

36,311

726

1957

49,221

11,481

37,062

36,600

678

1958

49,567

10,487

38,387

37,782

693

1959

48,953

8,125

40,196

39,542

632

Total

247,360

54,561

189,337

186,618

3,462

Source: ANR, CC al PCR, Secţia Economică, 24/1960 “Informare privind accidentele de muncă în perioada 1955–1959,” 40.

42

 ANR, CC al PCR, Secția Economică, 37/1954, “Proiectul de buget pe anul 1954 al asigurărilor sociale de stat,” 18.

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 258

2020.05.12. 19:27:57

259

Labor’s Risks Table 10.2: Social spending on workers’ injury compensation, 1955–1959 Year

Lei (millions)

1955

11.6

1956

10.7

1957

13.1

1958

14.4

1959

17.5

Source: ANR, CC al PCR, Secţia Economică, 24/1960, 43.

Whatever the accuracy of these statistics may be, it is not the figures themselves that need interpretation, but the snapshots of social life they displayed. Reports on work accidents articulated a notion of common interest not in terms of incentives—the backbone of the pension reform—but in a more ambiguous language of negative utilitarianism. Firstly, these reports showed that workers had no explicit interest in injuring themselves. Even though the compensation for work accidents amounted to 90 percent of one’s wage, irrespective of the length of service or the type of work contract, this percentage was in fact calculated on the tariff wage. Workers’ take-home pay was much higher because it included an array of bonuses for fulfilling work norms. Accordingly, the compensation commonly represented between 40 percent and 60 percent of the total wage. Secondly, the calculation of wasted working hours indicated that all parties would lose out when work accidents occurred: the national economy, the factory, and the worker.43 This understanding of the common interest imparted a particular dynamic on work relations at the factory level and produced a moralizing discourse that simultaneously emphasized responsibility and discipline. As one labor inspector put it with respect to the dossiers compiled for work accidents: “Seldom can one read, alongside the name of the injured, his colleagues’ names; and very rarely indeed the name of a work unit leader or a foreman, to say nothing of the names of those in charge of the work section or the whole workshop.”44

43

 Ilie Olaru, “Cît costă un accident de muncă?” [How much does a work accident cost?], Protecția Muncii (May–June 1968): 36–37. 44  M. Druțu, “Nu din neatenția accidentatului” [Not from the inattentiveness of the injured], Protecția Muncii (May–June 1966): 44.

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 259

2020.05.12. 19:27:57

260

Adrian Grama

Chains of Responsibility This increase in spending on social insurance was accompanied by the emergence of a  discourse that emphasized how work accidents forced a  large number of workers out of employment, or significantly reduced their capacity to work. According to the Ministry of Labor, the national economy recorded 18 million disability days in 1955 which resulted, at the end of that year, in no less than 15,418 workers retiring with disability pensions.45 By that point in time it was not necessarily the ability of workers to feign disability that was criticized, but the work methods imposed by management, particularly the lengthening of the working day and the so-called “shock work” (munca în asalt). The number of extra hours expended in production, one report explained, was the main cause of work accidents and could even endanger the ILO protocols which Romania had agreed to observe. Work accidents revealed to planners, factory managers, and labor inspectors the interdependence between social insurance, labor markets, working conditions, and production practices. It was this very interdependence that generated parallel denunciatory discourses, which targeted: (1) the leniency of medical doctors in giving out medical certificates; (2) the disposition of workers to feign illness or injury and disregard work safety; (3) “socialist productivism” and the temptation of management to exhaust workers through overtime and other allegedly nefarious production practices. In the late nineteenth century, François Ewald argued, the notion of professional risk instituted a new type of right that bypassed due process: workers’ compensation was no longer decided in the courts—where capital and labor opposed each other in the language of civil law—but became a matter of risk allocation.46 Just like Taylorism and other managerial technologies that transformed the labor process in the first half of the twentieth century, the notion of professional risk travelled across the industrializing parts of the globe at varying speeds only to be adapted to local specificities and integrated into national trajectories.47 This historical mutation, how45

 ANR, PCM, 28/1956, 17.  François Ewald, L’état providence [The welfare state] (Paris: Grasset, 1986), 275. See also Jacques Donzelot, L’invention du social: Essai sur le déclin des passions politiques [The invention of the social: An essay on the decline of political passions] (Paris: Seuil, 1994), 121–57. 47  John Fabian Witt, The Accidental Republic: Crippled Workingmen, Destitute Widows, and the Remaking of American Law (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004); Martin Lengwiler, Risikopolitik im Sozialstaat: Die schweizerische Unfallversicherung 1870–1970 [Risk policy in the welfare state: The Swiss accident insurance, 1870–1970] (Cologne: Böhlau, 2006); Jamie Bronstein, Caught in the Machinery: Workplace Accidents 46

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 260

2020.05.12. 19:27:57

Labor’s Risks

261

ever, deeply affected labor relations: it brought actuarial and insurance strategies onto the shop floor and altered the nature of the wage relationship by formally making the body of the worker, rather than labor power, the object of the employment contract.48 Indeed, it is no surprise that Romanian socialist legal commentators found themselves in agreement with their more progressive bourgeois predecessors on this point. Discussing work accident legislation in late 1950s Romania, M. Witzman approvingly quoted an interwar law treaty that showed how the employment contract was not just about remuneration for work, but equally about protection of the worker’s life.49 Another legal scholar writing about social insurance and work accidents during the 1970s found little difference between the actuarial practices in place under state socialism and those at work in advanced capitalist democracies: both systems were predicated on juridical notions erected around the protection of the insured working body.50 Let us explore in some detail a work accident case and the type of contentious gestures involved in legitimizing the injured body. Elena was an unskilled worker employed at I.C.M. “May 1” Bucov, somewhere on the oilfields surrounding the southern city of Ploieşti. On January 25, 1971, she was up on a ladder cleaning the inside of an unventilated shed. And then she fell, intoxicated: “I was taken to the dispensary where I received medical assistance. When I fell, I injured my spine, and both of my legs were paralyzed.”51 Elena was immediately carried to the local Ploieşti Clinic and hospitalized for six weeks. In early March she was sent home for eighteen days on medical leave. She was then taken to and Injured Workers in Nineteenth-Century Britain (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2008); Gerhard A. Ritter, Soziale Frage und Sozialpolitik in Deutschland seit Beginn des 19. Jahrhunderts [Social question and social policy in Germany since the beginning of the 19th century] (Opladen: Springer, 1998); Roger Cooter and Bill Luckin, eds., Accidents in History: Injuries, Fatalities and Social Relations (Atlanta: Rodopi, 1997); and Daniel T. Rodgers, Atlantic Crossings: Social Politics in a  Progressive Age (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1998), chapter 6. For the Soviet Union, see Lewis Siegelbaum, “Industrial Accidents and Their Prevention in the Interwar Period,” in The Disabled in the Soviet Union: Past and Present, Theory and Practice, ed. William O. McCagg (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1989), 85–119. 48  Alain Supiot, Critique du droit du travail [Critique of the labor law] (Paris: PUF, 2011), 70. 49  M. Witzman, “Natura răspunderii întreprinderilor şi instituțiilor pentru accidente de muncă” [The nature of the liability of enterprises and institutions for work accidents], Justiţia Nouă, no. 7 (1957): 47. 50  Şerban-Viorel Stănoiu, Accidentele de muncă și bolile profesionale în legislația R.S. România [Work accidents and occupational diseases in the legislation of the Socialist Republic of Romania] (Bucharest: Editura Academiei RSR, 1977). 51  ANR, CC al PCR, Secția Cancelarie, 179/1972, 18.

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 261

2020.05.12. 19:27:57

262

Adrian Grama

the Municipal Hospital in Bucharest, where she remained for another two months. I was retired with a pension for natural illness, not for the work accident that happened. When I received medical assistance at the factory dispensary, I  was recorded as suffering from a  work accident; on the medical certificate issued by the Ploieşti Clinic, it also reads “work accident.” But when a factory committee visited me at the hospital and asked what happened, I was given certificates for normal illness. The Bucharest hospital also gave me papers attesting that I had suffered a work accident and so did the Ploieşti Clinic in the month of May when I returned.52

When Elena received her first payment she was indeed shocked to discover she was given a pension for natural illness: I went to see comrade Diaconu who is responsible for work safety in our factory and I  asked him what my situation was; he told me it was not a work accident and I should not complain because he fears nobody. I then went to comrade Vasiliu, the head of the factory, and he told me to be happy I receive a pension because I had always been ill. I told him that if what he says is true, why didn’t he just put me in a different workplace and he replied that there was no other workplace for me. When I saw I could not get justice done, I started to knock on all doors: the County Council, the County Party Organization, the Pension Office and the Office for Work Safety. They all advised me to sue the factory, but I lacked the means to do so. When comrade Vasiliu heard that I intend to write to you, comrade General Secretary, he called my husband and promised to give us another 300 lei if we kept our mouths shut. My husband refused.53

Elena’s petition was indeed addressed to Nicolae Ceauşescu, the General Secretary of the Romanian Communist Party. And it was a desperate, lastditch gesture: I respectfully ask you, comrade General Secretary, to help me solve this problem. I now receive a pension of 581 lei, which is not enough to support my family. I  cannot move around, I  cannot wash, I  cannot cook. I have no other income and three children. Because they were not honest

52

 Ibid.  Ibid., 19.

53

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 262

2020.05.12. 19:27:57

Labor’s Risks

263

people [oameni cinstiţi], I demand my factory pay compensation for my health. That shed where the accident took place still exists to this day.54

1971 was perhaps one of the better years to write petitions, at least for people like Elena who could not secure their rights at the factory level. In October of that year, the Letters and Hearings Section of the Central Committee undertook an investigation in the county of Braşov to expose those who failed to obey the law on work accidents.55 What inspectors found was predictable enough: although severe work accidents were acceptably recorded, those that caused only temporary loss of work capacity were left at the mercy of foremen and workshop masters who, for fear of being sanctioned, very often coerced workers into distorting the facts.56 Most commonly, workers were forced to declare that they suffered their injuries at home, so that foremen could easily paper over the causes of scalded skin, burnt limbs, and wounded eyes.57 In these cases, medical doctors would issue certificates for natural illness which protected foremen from additional sanctions. There were also many cases when workers suffered accidents neither at home nor inside the factory, but on the road, due to a vast assortment of reasons. These incidents were also considered work accidents and compensated accordingly, even though some of them were allegedly caused by drunkenness and disorderly conduct. One worker from the town of Făgăraş was injured in a pub brawl and received five days of medical leave and 211 lei in compensation. One of his colleagues, a leading foreman from the Făgăraş Chemical Plant, broke his leg during a bus trip home, but was recorded as having a natural illness and paid only 65 percent of his wage.58 Retributions for natural illness were heavily dependent on length of service and could amount to as much as 85 percent of wages, though this rarely happened since few workers could claim the maximum pay. In cases of work accidents, the injured received more money, but somebody was likely to be held accountable and even made to pay compensation.59 Management was legally allowed to demand payments from foremen and higher staff when work accidents happened, and this was indeed a common practice to make up some of the money factories paid to the social insurance office. By 1966, 54

 Ibid.  H.C.M. 2896/1966. 56  Nicolae Dup, “De ce nu vor unii să se înregistreze cu accidente de muncă?” [Why some do not want to register with work accidents?], Protecția Muncii ( June 1974): 9. 57  M. Druțu, “‘Să declari că te-ai accidentat acasă!’” [Declare yourself to be injured at home!], Protecția Muncii ( July–August–September 1976): 9. 58  ANR, CC al PCR, Secția Cancelarie, 167/1971, 24. 59  Livia Nemțeanu, “Răspunderea materială ca urmare a unui accident de muncă” [Material liability as a result of an accident at work], Protecția Muncii (April 1973): 25. 55

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 263

2020.05.12. 19:27:58

264

Adrian Grama

no less than 90 percent of the litigations between workers and management concerned demands for payment, though it is not clear how many of them were sanctions following work accidents.60 Social insurance, Robert Castel wrote, might be understood as a “democratic technology” to the extent that it integrates individuals interchangeably into a larger anonymous community, within which risk is equally distributed among its members, first as mandatory contributors and then as possible beneficiaries.61 In Romanian state socialism, however, this “democratic technology” was partially in the hands of the workers, for no matter the nature of the compensation, the status of the beneficiary was almost always decided on the shop floor. The difference between injuries induced by work accidents, occupational diseases, and natural illness was a major bone of contention at the factory level, and Elena’s case was in no way exceptional for this subterranean, manifold, and bitter struggle. First and foremost, victims fought to have their work accident acknowledged among their fellow workers. Still, even the ability to convince one’s workmates to recognize the work accident did not guarantee one’s rights. The injured workers then had to artfully navigate a minefield mapped by the medical office, the accounting office, the labor inspectorate, and the various representatives of the trade union before they could obtain the manager’s signature, which finally settled the dispute one way or the other.62 The Letters and Hearings Section’s report did not limit itself merely to signaling all these “abuses,” but went on to mount a full-scale attack on management. In this sense, the report exemplified a slow, if somewhat contradictory, transformation in the administration of work accidents launched during the mid-1960s. On the one hand, one could clearly see a professionalization of both work safety and social insurance following the 1966 pension reform: firstly through the creation of a self-standing State Committee for Work Safety, and secondly through the efforts of the Ministry of Public Health to compile industry-specific morbidity statistics to account for spending on sickness benefits and medical leave, as well as the relationship between working conditions and workforce health.63 On the other hand, a decision was taken at the Tenth Congress of the Romanian Communist

60

 ANR, CC al PCR, Secția Cancelarie, 149/1966, 15.  Robert Castel, Les métamorphoses de la question sociale: Une chronique du salariat [The metamorphoses of the social question: A chronicle of the wage earner] (Paris: Gallimard, 1995), 480. 62  ANR, CC al PCR, Secția Economică, 63/1979, 19. 63  Ministerul Sănătății, Centrul de calcul şi statistică sanitară, Studiul morbidității cu incapacitate temporară de muncă din România, 1964–1976 [Morbidity study with temporary labor incapacity in Romania, 1964–1976] (Bucharest, 1977). 61

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 264

2020.05.12. 19:27:58

Labor’s Risks

265

Party in August 1969 to downsize a number of state institutions. In just over two years, the number of labor inspectors at the national level dropped from 504 in 1968 to 360 in 1972. Poorly paid and untrained, many of them were constantly threatening to leave for better jobs and higher wages in the factories. Moreover, by 1972 the territorial labor inspectorates were deprived of their automobiles, which forced inspectors to use public transportation in order to move from one factory to another. Without adequate transportation, labor inspectors could not be present in time to record work accidents, a fact that only reinforced the practice of negotiating compensation entitlements exclusively at the factory level. However, when the Minister of Labor demanded cars during a party meeting, Ceauşescu instead reminded him of the joys and benefits of riding a bike: “In any case, I do not approve of cars. Let the comrades buy them themselves, let’s help them buy cars; they can even buy motorcycles on credit. You should know that everywhere in the world people use bikes; with a bicycle you move around easily, and it does you good too because it is very healthy to ride one.”64 The most significant criticism of managerial work safety practices occurred in the context of the first large-scale mining accident to take place in socialist Romania. On February 24, 1965, a  total of forty-one miners died and many more were gravely injured at the Uricani colliery in the Jiu Valley. The party’s assessment of the event marked a  shift away from the common attribution of work accidents to workers’ indiscipline. The management of the Petroşani Mining Company, the investigation commission observed, was seized by the “mentality” of overfulfilling the plan at all costs, ignoring all safety measures and overworking the miners in their struggle to meet production quotas handed down from Bucharest. In order to fulfill the plan, miners were called to work on their legally enshrined resting days, which were then “illegally” recorded as normal working days. It was equally observed that fatigue contributed to lowering the rate of labor productivity and ultimately produced even more exhaustion. The assessment concluded that workers did indeed disregard work safety, but only because an overzealous management encouraged them to do so. Once the accident took place, the head of the Jiu Valley Mining Company tried to place full responsibility on the workers, rather than on those who “organize and control the production process.”65

64

 ANR, CC al PCR, Secția Cancelarie, 33/1972, 24–25.  ANR, CC al PCR, Secția Economică, 26/1965, “Notă privind constatările comisiei care a efectuat analiza cauzelor şi răspunderilor ce revin Combinatului Carbonifer Valea Jiului şi Ministerului Minelor şi Energiei Electrice în legatură cu producerea accidentului colectiv de la EM Uricani,” 19.

65

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 265

2020.05.12. 19:27:58

266

Adrian Grama

Following the Uricani mining accident, fatigue became a constant matter of concern in reports on work accidents, particularly in relation to the lengthening of the working day.66 However, the most significant outcome of the accident was a subtle redefinition of the notion of workers’ indiscipline. On November 2, 1972, another forty-six miners died in a collective work accident at the same Uricani colliery. In this case too, the management double bind was obvious: to enforce work safety and undertake regular inspections for underground methane gas leaks, the Petroşani Mining Company needed to hire an estimated 1,155 technical employees. However, the new staff had to be remunerated in such a way as not to deleteriously effect the rate of productivity, the allocated workforce, and the general budget for wages. Otherwise, due to the logic of productivity, management would dutifully succumb to the temptation of fulfilling the plan and would immediately relocate these technical employees to the production line.67 Nonetheless, rather than discussing the causes of the accident in a secret party meeting, this time the tragedy was advertised as an opportunity to learn from the mistakes of management: The majority of severe work accidents that happened over the last seven to eight years in the Jiu Valley, or in other mining regions of the country, were caused by indiscipline and a lack of safety measures. This state of affairs is produced by the people who manage the production process [cadrele de conducere a procesului de producţie], who believe they fulfilled the plan irrespective of whether they eliminated the dangers specific to underground work.68

It would be facile to dismiss these statements as evidence of party rhetoric, an “ideology” deployed in order to cover up the nasty reality of the plan and the horrendous working conditions that miners faced on a daily basis. This perspective would necessarily have to ignore the fact that a  discursive regime, such as that which emerged in the aftermath of the Uricani accidents, solicits—rather than reflects—interests, expectations, and needs. Its relation to social life is didactic, or as Gareth Stedman Jones once put it, pre-figurative, with the aim to “change the self-identification and behavior of those addressed.”69 Indiscipline ceased to be depicted as the natural propensity of 66

 ANR, CC al PCR, Secția Cancelarie, 115/1966, 24.  ANR, CC al PCR, Secția Economică, 31/1973, 15. 68  L. Berceanu, “Explozia şi accidentul colectiv de la exploatarea minieră Uricani din Noiembrie 1972” [Explosion and collective accident from the Uricani mining operation in November 1972], Protecția Muncii (March 1973): 19. 69  Gareth Stedman Jones, Languages of Class: Studies in English Working Class History, 1832–1982 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 24. 67

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 266

2020.05.12. 19:27:58

Labor’s Risks

267

workers to behave irrationally, and was redescribed as the failure of management to act meaningfully; it was no longer something that workers did, but rather something that management did not do. This reversal allowed for negligence, rather than bad faith, to become a legitimate category of analysis of work accidents, irrespective of the branch of industry in which they occurred: This is a  typical case: the work accident happened one week after the woman was hired. The accident was caused not by her failure to observe work safety norms, but by her lack of knowledge of those norms. We do not discount the fact that she carries some of the blame. However, sanctioning only the victim has become a widespread phenomenon in many factories. Those who have the duty to instruct and monitor workers during the working day, are they not guilty as well?70

Negligence among managers and engineers was even more frowned upon, because it was judged to have severe consequences outside the factory walls. “Work accidents are not stupid,” wrote a  labor inspector after an investigation at Reşiţa Metalworks: “Each and every leader of the labor process should know that while deficiencies in professional training can be remedied through further study, the failure to apply work safety norms leads to work accidents which cannot be repaired, and they affect not only the injured, but also his family and society at large.”71 There is no simple way to evaluate the effects of this new discourse of responsibility and discipline. Following Clifford Geertz, one might argue that the repeated emphasis on negligence, fatigue, and the need for managers to strictly control the production process only served to reinforce “the truth claims of colloquial reason,”72 namely that work accidents did not always, nor even predominantly, happen because workers were insubordinate. In the late 1960s, the obsession with workers’ indiscipline—so ubiquitous during the previous decade—petered out, but this only made it plain that accidents will not go away. If anything, the redefinition of discipline signaled to workers that it was worthwhile to struggle for compensation and pensions, even in those cases in which management had every reason to deny it. One final example, taken from a set of petitions that reached the Central Committee in 1972, might prove this point.  St. I., “Sancționată şi . . . accidentată” [Penalized and . . . injured], Protecția Muncii (December 1970): 36. 71  Ion Mirulescu, “Accidentele de muncă nu sunt ‘stupide’” [Work accidents are not “stupid”], Protecția Muncii (October 1971): 11. 72  Clifford Geertz, “Common Sense as a Cultural System,” in Local Knowledge: Further Essays in Interpretative Anthropology (New York: Basic Books, 1983), 78. 70

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 267

2020.05.12. 19:27:58

268

Adrian Grama

On October 14, 1967, an unskilled worker named Grigore maneuvered a pickax on a construction site in Bucharest, when something buried deep in the ground suddenly exploded. Grigore lost three of the fingers on his left hand, and pieces of shrapnel penetrated his chest. Hospitalized for more than four months, Grigore was then retired with a regular disability pension which amounted to 342 lei. Born in 1914 in a village, Grigore had only accumulated sixteen years of service and received a wage of 692 lei at the time of the accident. His case, however, did not constitute a work accident: at least, not according to the management, who ordered a pyrotechnic investigation and found out that Grigore had in fact tried to open a bombshell detonator using a nail. The management consequently refused to acknowledge the work accident, arguing that all workers were instructed to immediately report explosive devices uncovered on the perimeter. Grigore was unhappy with this verdict and petitioned the Labor Ministry in order to receive a work accident pension. In early 1971, almost three years after the incident, the Labor Ministry recognized the work accident: not because Grigore was not guilty, but because the accident happened during working hours. Consequently, Grigore received an additional 88 lei to his pension and then began to petition the Central Committee, this time asking for 88 lei for each of the thirty-six months during which he received only a normal disability pension.73

Conclusion My investigation unfolded on two interrelated levels. Firstly, I  strived to show that labor productivity was an official barometer of the socialist economy to the extent that it established time expenditure as an abstract measure of labor activity.74 In so doing, labor productivity determined the shape and content of reports on work accidents which conveyed a notion of wasted time and assigned it a  monetary value. Moreover, at the factory level the logic of productivity was simultaneously enabling and constraining: on the one hand, it indicated the need for work safety; on the other hand, it made its implementation highly unlikely. Yet this was an unquenchable tension inherent to the interplay between the drive for higher rates of productivity and overwhelmingly labor-intensive industries.

73

 ANR, CC al PCR, Secția Cancelarie, 179/1972, 69–73.  I rely here on Moishe Postone, Time, Labor and Social Domination: A Reinterpretation of Marx’s Critical Theory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 214–15.

74

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 268

2020.05.12. 19:27:58

Labor’s Risks

269

Secondly, I proposed that social insurance is constitutive of, rather than external to, the industrial wage relation under state socialism. In this view, workers’ compensation and pension rights under Romanian socialism appeared to have functioned (and were believed to function) as regulatory mechanisms of the labor market. This explains why reform of the pension system during the late 1970s, particularly with regard to mild disability pensions, was thought to allow for a restructuring of the labor supply. However, the social insurance system turned the body of the worker into a claim-making device, which could—and had to be—mobilized in order to access either compensation following work accidents or disability pensions. The dividing line between the two was always blurry and was constantly contested at the factory level, in the courts, or in the offices of the social insurance system. This ceaseless struggle produced a double discourse on the part of the authorities: on the one hand, workers and state functionaries were relentlessly suspected of sub-rosa deals and fake arrangements; on the other hand, managerial authority, working conditions, and the organization of the labor process slowly became legitimate objects of critique and public denunciation for work safety inspectors, union officials, and sometimes even for the workers themselves. In these concluding remarks I  would like to suggest that the story of work accidents, social insurance, and disability pension rights under state socialism in East Central Europe should be integrated into a larger narrative about the experience of wage labor during the global twentieth century. Labor historians of state socialism have devoted considerable attention to exploring the specificities of the industrial wage relation that was imposed in postwar East Central Europe. This scholarship usually focuses on two distinct social processes: the spread of piecework (payment by results) in most industrial branches and the commodification of labor power. Both processes are justifiably taken to have had tremendous consequences for the development of the industrial wage relation under state socialism. According to Mark Pittaway, piecework fundamentally transformed working-class solidarities, altered inherited notions of hierarchy, and deeply reshaped the very meaning of skilled and unskilled work on the shop floors.75 Commodification implied not only the emergence of various cultural dispositions among wage earners, but also the unfolding of a type of social domination mediated by categories reminiscent of capitalism. As Martha Lampland argued for socialist Hungary: “No matter how personal are the bonds of Communist

75

 Mark Pittaway, “The Social Limits of State Control: Time, the Industrial Wage Relation, and Social Identity in Stalinist Hungary, 1948–1953,” Journal of Historical Sociology 12, no. 3 (1999): 271–301.

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 269

2020.05.12. 19:27:58

270

Adrian Grama

party rule, the lives of Hungarians in the late socialist period are nonetheless dominated by the abstract qualities of utility, time, and money.”76 Though both perspectives carry the potential to illuminate global developments such as the worldwide expansion of Taylorite pay schemes or the formalization of labor’s exchange-value in non-capitalist contexts, they both fail to fully account for the experience of wage labor under state socialism. In this chapter I argued that, as sellers of labor-power, workers’ bodies were exposed to an entire array of risks inherent to the performance of wage labor: disablement, accidents, sickness, old age, and so forth. The emergence of national insurance systems across the industrializing parts of the globe in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century deeply shaped the experience of wage labor. Firstly, social insurance translated injuries affecting the working body into the idiom of risk allocation. Workers’ compensation following a work accident came to be grasped through the notion of occupational hazard (risque professionnel), which automatically entitled the disabled worker to a certain amount of money. Secondly, national insurance systems turned medical expertise into the cornerstone of the labor market: medical certificates mediated not only the distribution of sickness benefits and medical leave, but also the right to disability pensions and various forms of medical assistance.77 In order to grasp the historical specificity of this type of wage labor, it will suffice to reference a report issued by the ILO in 2006 on the conditions of “decent work” on a global scale. On page four it reads: The economic (and human) burden on injured workers and their families is very great. Only a small fraction of the world’s workforce is covered by compensation systems, so most workers receive no income during absences from work. Workers suffering long-term disability may also lose important skills and thus find it harder to find future work or at least to continue in the work for which they have been trained.78

 Martha Lampland, The Object of Labor: Commodification in Socialist Hungary (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995), 13. 77  Daniel Defert, “‘Popular Life’ and Insurance Technology,” in The Foucault Effect: Studies in Governmentality, ed. Graham Burcell, Colin Gordon, and Peter Miller (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1991). Recent studies of commodification in conditions of market capitalism grasp risk management and actuarial valuation as key aspects of the process through which labor is assigned a monetary value; for a summary of this literature, see Matthew Garrett, “History with a Capital H,” Radical History Review, no. 118 (2014): 197–203. 78  ILO, “Occupational Safety and Health: Synergy between Security and Productivity” (Geneva: 2006), available online at http://www.ilo.org/wcmsp5/groups/public/@ ed_protect/@protrav/@safework/documents/meetingdocument/wcms_110380.pdf, accessed August 28, 2015, emphasis added. 76

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 270

2020.05.12. 19:27:58

Labor’s Risks

271

How should we interpret this fragment? It is, of course, a  description of the present global condition: a precarious present in which wage labor and social insurance no longer go together.79 More and more people work for wages in many parts of the world, but this does not necessarily imply any kind of insurantial protection for their bodies. Yet the fragment should also provide a vantage point from which the labor historian may look back at the twentieth century; for if it is true that today only a small fraction of the world’s workers is covered by compensation systems (i.e., various forms of social insurance), we should then ask when, how, and why this minority of workers come into being and where it might be historically located. When, how, why, and where did wage labor go hand in hand with social insurance? When, how, why, and where were wage workers covered by compensation systems during the twentieth century? This chapter aimed to show that a minority of the global minority of workers covered by compensation schemes during the mid-twentieth century was located in state socialism. Or, to put it differently, state socialism in East Central Europe generalized a particular type of wage labor that included workers’ compensation: that is, a right predicated on actuarial valuation, assessed through statistical methods, and dependent on medical certificates. On a global scale, this historically specific experience of wage labor remained marginal throughout the twentieth century, and ought to be studied today as a surviving relic of the recent industrial past. This observation should also push labor historians to historicize, provincialize, and arguably rethink some of the basic analytical categories of both state socialism and global labor history, particularly the transhistorical notion of “wage labor” and the sort of lived experience it brought about in various national contexts across the globe.

79

 Tellingly, contemporary sociological studies on the relationship between work accidents, worsening working conditions, disability, and social insurance hardly look beyond core capitalist countries. For one such example restricted to France and the US, see Philippe Askenazy, Les désordres du travail: Enquête sur le nouveau productivisme [The disorders of work: Investigation of the new productivism] (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 2004).

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 271

2020.05.12. 19:27:58

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 272

2020.05.12. 19:27:58

Nuclear Yutopia: The Outcome of the First Nuclear Accident in Yugoslavia, 1958* Marko Miljković

Introduction The first nuclear accident in Yugoslavia in 1958 was among the first accidents of its kind in the world, and the only one of any significance in the country. This suggests that Yugoslav authorities either took the safety of workers in nuclear facilities very seriously, or that the Yugoslav nuclear program was not very developed in the first place. However, neither statement is completely true. This chapter presents the anatomy of a dynamic and complex relationship between the management and workers in the nuclear industry, through the lens of the state-socialist system which was often promoted as a homogenized, stable, and uniform workers’ utopia. One of the main arguments of this chapter is that due to the rush for results, intense secrecy, and the overall importance of nuclear programs, the status of workers in the nuclear industry in Yugoslavia—or indeed any other political or social system—is always somewhat different than in more conventional industrial sectors. Placed in an intricate, often contradictory framework of different agents, motives, and expectations, the workers’ voice is too often silent or silenced, while their desired and promised well-being may be betrayed in equal measure. Yugoslavia emphasized its independent road to communism and, at the same time, advertised and practiced workers’ self-management of factories, highlighting its original and presumably more worker-friendly political and social system. It could therefore be expected that workers in the Yugoslav *

 This work was partially supported by the International Visegrad Fund/V4EaP Scholarship [grant number 51701420] (www.visegradfund.org), and the IAEA History Research Fellowship of the Vienna University, organized in partnership with the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, Nuclear Proliferation International History Project (NPIHP), (https://www.wilsoncenter.org/program/nuclear-proliferation-international-history-project). The author wishes to thank Marsha Siefert and Susan Zimmermann for comments on an earlier version of this chapter.

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 273

2020.05.12. 19:27:58

274

Marko Miljković

nuclear industry actually lived in a true “nuclear Yutopia.” However, as this chapter shows, these great promises and expectations did not reach the desired level, and in certain aspects even resulted in workers’ disillusion and disappointment. The following analysis is based on multi-archival research conducted in the archives of former Yugoslavia and the International Atomic Energy Agency, using recently declassified documents. Besides their novelty on the informative level, these documents present a veritable treasure trove of opportunities to pursue a more dynamic and comprehensive analysis of labor relations in this specific niche of Yugoslav industry.

Health or Wealth? Contemplating Workers’ Status in the Nuclear Industry In comparison to conventional industrial accidents, nuclear accidents are singular. For example, Lorna Arnold argues that “technologies learn from mistakes and accidents,” but nuclear technology “could not afford accidents” and had to learn without them,1 as the disasters at Chernobyl and Fukushima attest. Furthermore, in the 1950s nuclear accidents had no obvious precedent,2 and the novelty of the technology meant that nuclear reactors—regardless of their original purpose—were simultaneously used as scientific research machines, labor training facilities, and in their more conventional role of industrial producing facilities.3 On a practical level this translated into a very limited ability, even among top-ranking scientists and engineers, to predict nuclear accidents or accurately estimate their impact on workers’ health and the environment. As such, at the dawn of the atomic age nuclear reactors and research facilities simultaneously represented both well-regulated workspaces, in an effort to avoid nuclear disasters, and technologically advanced, complex environments in which minor incidents or accidents were almost unavoidable. This contradictory framework is further complicated for secret nuclear facilities. In her groundbreaking comparative analysis of nuclear disasters  Lorna Arnold, Windscale 1957: Anatomy of a Nuclear Accident (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), xxii. 2  Ibid. 3  For example, nuclear reactors can be used as sophisticated instruments for fundamental scientific research, producing new knowledge that can be applied in material production. Those reactors that were used for production of electricity or plutonium (the explosive component in atomic bombs) are much easier to categorize as industrial facilities. 1

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 274

2020.05.12. 19:27:58

Nuclear Yutopia

275

in American and Soviet plutonium-producing factories and their impact on the creation of workers’ nuclear societies, Kate Brown argues that the authorities made a  successful bargain with workers, offering “visions of middle-class prosperity” to ordinary working-class people, who exchanged “their civil and biological rights for consumer rights.”4 This “Plutopia,” as Brown calls it, provided safety, security, medical care and full employment for families that inhabited it. At the same time, however, it knowingly created a division between “clean” zones and nuclear “hot spots,” which were not monitored for radiation and eventually became a  living environment for less affluent or less important workers. Furthermore, both Brown and Arnold agree that in this kind of environment, a constant race with tight deadlines and ambitious production plans overstretched the entire system, making it even more liable to serious error and sacrifice of its non-critical workforce.5 In other words, the authorities made a clear distinction between those workers who were essential for the uninterrupted production of plutonium, and low-level workers who were expendable.6 More importantly, this concept did not differ significantly on either side of the Cold War divide, although each political system had its own specific features. This created fertile ground for a living space occupied by, and designed for, workers who were “more equal” than others, and in which health rather than wealth became the symbol and standard of social status. State-socialist countries in general stressed the importance of the working class as a revolutionary agent. However, while the officially proclaimed ideal type emphasized a  skilled and class-conscious workforce, in reality this “imagined working class” was highly diversified, both regionally and at the factory level, making it more suitable to speak of a “complex spectrum of worker identities” rather than one single identity.7 The sociocultural division among workers reached across generation, gender, the rural– urban divide, educational achievement, and political commitments, all of which the party and government had to negotiate on an everyday basis in its communication with the workers.8 Kornai suggests that this heterogeneous working class was further divided between employees and management. While workers in the classical socialist system had much more space

 Kate Brown, Plutopia: Nuclear Families, Atomic Cities, and the Great Soviet and American Plutonium Disasters (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2013), 4–5. 5  Arnold, Windscale 1957, 28–29; Brown, Plutopia, 4, 6. 6  Brown, Plutopia, 5–7. 7  Mark Pittaway, The Workers’ State: Industrial Labor and the Making of Socialist Hungary, 1944–1958 (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2012), 14–15. 8  Ibid., 13–16; Padraic Kenney, Rebuilding Poland: Workers and Communists, 1945–1950 (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1997), 6–12. 4

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 275

2020.05.12. 19:27:59

276

Marko Miljković

to negotiate their terms of employment with the management than their capitalist counterparts, management also had the authority to perform a variety of functions that allowed them a certain degree of control over their employees. Being pressured for results by their own superiors, socialist managers would often use this power to supervise and steer the work process. This often left workers “at the mercy of their bosses,” while those closer to the power structure could enjoy certain “privileges that the bureaucracy extends via the firm to certain strata in society,” thus turning a socialist company into “a cell of totalitarian power.”9 At the same time, it may be argued that the Yugoslav socialist system differed significantly from Kornai’s classical model, most visible in the Yugoslav concept of workers’ self-management. However, Kornai’s arguments are relevant here since the first self-management organ of the nuclear industry was founded only in 1965, more than a decade after the self-management system was established in conventional industrial sectors.10 As such, it may be argued that in a socialist system, and within the confines of a nuclear installation working on top secret projects, features like safety, security, medical monitoring and care, benefits, and privileges are further enhanced; however, so is the gap between the essential and expendable workforce. This model for a  working environment of secret nuclear facilities in a socialist system provides a theoretical framework for this case study. Fernand Braudel once compared models in social sciences with a  ship: once made, it first must be tested for leaks, but “the moment in which it is wrecked is the most important.”11 Using this approach, I will test if the 1958 leaks in a Yugoslav nuclear reactor may also prove fatal for the imaginary picture of the country as a safe haven of social rights.

 János Kornai, The Socialist System: The Political Economy of Communism (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992), 200–222. 10  Arhiv Jugoslavije (hereafter AJ), fond 177 Savezna komisija za nuklearnu energiju, f. 29, Organi i tela SKNE. Organi samoupravljanja SKNE, 1965–1971 [Archive of Yugoslavia, collection 177 Federal Nuclear Energy Commission, box 29, Organs and departments of the SKNE. Self-management organs of the SKNE; in further reference AJ, 177 SKNE, f. 29]. Minutes from the Workers’ Council meeting, May 28, 1965. The first Workers’ Council of the SKNE was established on April 4, 1965. The SKNE had full control over all nuclear institutes in the country, distributing research projects and funds, but it was also directly involved in the constitution of all managing bodies of institutes (the SKNE appointed and deposed directors, scientific and management councils, and so forth). 11  Fernan Brodel, Spisi o istoriji [On history] (Belgrade: Srpska književna zadruga, 1992), 123–24. 9

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 276

2020.05.12. 19:27:59

Nuclear Yutopia

277

The Vinča Accident of 1958 The workday on October 15, 1958, in the Boris Kidrič Institute for Nuclear Sciences in Vinča, near Belgrade, started just like any other day, with employees and staff arriving early in the morning on the Institute’s buses. After the quick security check at the gate, they all proceeded to their workplaces. Among them was a team of six students and technicians12 who were supposed to perform experiments on the newly-built nuclear reactor: the first in the country, the pride of the engineers who designed and constructed it, and the crown jewel in the Institute’s first decennial celebrations. The day was especially important for Života Vranić, a promising young student of the Faculty of Natural Sciences and Mathematics in Belgrade and an adjunct researcher at the Institute, who was supposed to lead the team that day in conducting experiments. However, by the early afternoon all six had been rushed to the Center for Occupational Health in Belgrade (Centar za profesionalne bolesti, or CPB) after receiving lethal doses of radiation.13 Concerned about the causes of the accident, the Yugoslav Federal Nuclear Energy Commission (Savezna komisija za nuklearnu energiju, SKNE) had already established a special subcommission of leading scientists and security officers on October 17, only two days after the accident. In less than a week, on October 23, the subcommission concluded its inquiries and filed its final report on the causes of the accident.14 According to this report, based on interviews with employees of the Institute, around noon on October 15, 1958, six workers rushed out of the reactor hall and started yelling for help. Their cries were heard by Nenad Raišić (Deputy Chief of the Laboratory) and Dragoslav Popović (Chief of the Department for Reactor and Nuclear Physics), who first checked if the reactor was shut down properly.

12

 AJ, fond 177 Savezna komisija za nuklearnu energiju, f. 4, Dosije RB reaktora [Archive of Yugoslavia, collection 177 Federal Nuclear Energy Commission, box 4, RB Reactor Files; in further reference AJ, 177 SKNE, f. 4]. Official Report of the Federal Nuclear Energy Commission on the Causes of the Accident, October 24, 1958. Života Vranić, Radojko Maksić (graduate students), Rosanda Dangubić, Živorad Bogojević, Stjepo Hajduković, and Draško Grujić (technicians). 13  Ibid. 14  Ibid. The commission members were Prof. Pavle Savić (president of the Scientific Council of the Institute in Vinča), Slobodan Nakićenović (secretary of the SKNE), Dr. Dragomir Karajović (director of the Center for Protection of Radiation), Dr. Eng. Toma Bosanac (member of the SKNE), Mile Arsenović (associate researcher of the Institute), and Mato Radulović (director of the Department of the State Secretariat for Internal Affairs).

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 277

2020.05.12. 19:27:59

278

Marko Miljković

After that, they ordered everybody to leave the reactor building and sent workers immediately to the Institute’s Emergency Center.15 The “abnormal radiation” occurred when the nuclear reactor became “supercritical,” and the instruments in the buildings next to the reactor registered that the whole event lasted around eight and a half minutes. Inside the reactor hall workers became alarmed only when they noticed the smell of ozone, an indisputable proof that very high levels of radiation were leaking from the reactor.16 The radiation levels were high indeed: the “zero power reactor” was intended to operate within the power range of milliwatts, but reached a  maximum power of 2.5 megawatts at the peak of the accident, about one billion times higher than it was designed for.17 According to the medical report on the accident, the “group of five comrades . . . and one female comrade”18 who were working that day in the nuclear reactor hall came to the Emergency Center and asked for medical assistance for being “over-irradiated.”19 Upon their arrival the workers were immediately sent to take a  shower, then given new clothes and a  liter of milk each, along with some sedatives since they were “very scared.” The radiation level of the workers was also measured before and after the shower, and when it was realized that their “radioactivity was unabated,” they were sent to take another shower, this time with a potassium permanganate solution. Finally, blood samples were taken from the workers, and at 14:30 they were sent to the Center for Occupational Health.20 The rest of the report shows that after their arrival at the CPB around 15:00, the irradiated workers were given further attention and more elaborate therapy. They were also visited by the Institute’s leading scientists and the management of the SKNE, and less than twenty-four hours after the accident they were flown to the Fondation Curie hospital in Paris, one of the leading medical centers for radiology.21

15

 Ibid.  Ibid. 17  Milan Pešić, “Estimation of Doses Received by Operators in the 1958 RB Reactor Accident Using the MCNP5 Computer Code Simulation,” Nuclear Technology & Radiation Protection 27, no. 3 (2012): 199. 1 MW= 1,000,000,000 mW. 18  In the Serbian language the word “comrade” has both masculine and feminine forms (drug and drugarica), and this distinction was stressed in the report. For the lack of better translation, I use the term “female comrade.” 19  AJ, 177 SKNE, f. 4. The Medical Report of the Emergency Center and the Centre for Occupational Disease, October 23, 1958. 20  Ibid. 21  Ibid.; “Institut Curie: Our History,” http://www.institut-curie.org/foundation/our-history, accessed on July 29, 2016. 16

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 278

2020.05.12. 19:27:59

Nuclear Yutopia

279

Nuclear Yutopia It is somewhat surprising how swiftly Yugoslav authorities responded to this very complex and unprecedented calamity in an effort to help the irradiated workers. Besides the immediate medical treatment in the Emergency Center and later in the CPB, the Yugoslav medical team, comprising five doctors of different specializations, followed the irradiated workers to Paris where they actively participated in all elements of the medical treatment provided to them. One doctor even stayed there for several weeks after the treatment, trying to arrange and collect the extensive documentation, while an additional two doctors were sent to the French Saclay Nuclear Research Centre to examine whether it offered any specialist courses in decontamination and biochemistry that could be useful for the future training of Yugoslav scientists.22 The six irradiated workers were provided with the best possible care in Paris and eventually became the first humans in Europe to successfully receive bone marrow transplantation, a revolutionary treatment at that time. The procedure was actually so novel, advanced, and groundbreaking that its ultimate success was little short of a miracle. Unfortunately, Života Vranić, the student who led the team in its experiments with the nuclear reactor, died in Paris a month after the accident and became one of the world’s first victims among the reactor operators. However, the rest of the irradiated workers survived and went on to live normal lives after the accident.23 The surviving scientists returned to Yugoslavia on February 15, 1959, where they were first accommodated in the country’s leading medical institution, the Military Medical Academy (Vojno-medicinska akademija), where their recovery was monitored by the Yugoslav doctors who treated them in Paris.24 After a little more than a month there they were transferred to a recovery center just outside of Belgrade, where they spent a further three months, after which they were finally released home.25 Besides these six workers whose life was obviously in danger, immediately after the accident the CPB personnel screened an additional sixty-nine Institute workers for 22

 AJ, 177 SKNE, f. 4. Report of Dr. Borivoje Damjanović about his stay in Paris, January 22, 1959. 23  Spencer R. Weart, The Rise of Nuclear Fear (Cambridge and London: Harvard University Press, 2012), 166; Pešić, “Estimation of Doses Received by Operators,” 199; Interview with experts of the Radiation Protection Center, Serbian Institute of Occupational Health “Dr. Dragomir Karajović” in Belgrade, August 15, 2016. 24  AJ, 177 SKNE, f. 4. Letter from the SKNE Secretary Slobodan Nakićenović to the Commander of the Yugoslav People’s Army Medical Directorate, February 2, 1959. 25  Arhiva Radio Beograda (hereafter ARB), U-SY-34, Naučni insitut Vinča, “Prvo proleće,” Dnevnik, March 22, 1959.

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 279

2020.05.12. 19:27:59

280

Marko Miljković

any signs of radiation exposure and, aside from two who were kept for monitoring in the CPB, the rest of them were lucky enough to be completely unharmed.26 The SKNE seems to have done everything possible to save the lives of its workers, even helping doctors to make an important medical breakthrough in treating irradiated people. However, what is surprising is that these scientists worked in the nuclear industry, which was under strict security regulations and supervision by the Yugoslav secret police.27 It goes against their logic of secrecy that the surviving scientists were quickly turned into popular heroes, the 1950s equivalent of reality show superstars. Kornai’s discussion analysis is suggestive, in that the “war consciousness” of official ideology in socialist systems expects “willing sacrifice” from the “heroes of socialist labor.”28 The sad destiny of Života Vranić fits perfectly into this framework and he was eventually raised to the level of national hero. The story of his last day in the reactor hall on October 15, 1958, was indeed transformed into a myth of his “willing sacrifice” for scientific development, when he allegedly climbed on top of the reactor in order to shut it down, thus saving his colleagues from certain death. However, in reality it was the “female comrade” Rosanda Dangubić who took the initiative to shut down the nuclear reactor, which was crucial in saving her colleagues’ lives and preventing a bigger disaster.29 The surviving scientists were also publicly monitored, their recovery in Paris continuously covered by the Yugoslav press. On January 30, 1959, the first photograph was published in the party daily Borba, showing Yugoslav scientists and the medical team enjoying themselves at a lunch in the Yugoslav Embassy in Paris.30 The public would learn more in the following 26

 AJ, 177 SKNE, f. 4. Medical Report of Dr. Dragoslav Karajović, October 23, 1958.  Uprava državne bezbednosti—UDB (State Security Administration), also known as UDBA. 28  Kornai, The Socialist System, 58–59. 29  N. Janković, “Kako je ‘Vinča’ promenila svet” [How Vinča changed the world], Večernje novosti, May 12, 2012, http://www.novosti.rs/vesti/naslovna/reportaze/aktuelno.293. html:379506-Kako-je-Vinca-promenila-svet, accessed on August 3, 2016; AJ, 177 SKNE, f. 4. Official Report of the Federal Nuclear Energy Commission on the Causes of the Accident, October 24, 1958. When the reactor became supercritical, Rosanda was the only person composed enough to go right beneath the reactor, check the heavy water pump, manually insert the cadmium rods in the reactor and open the valve to release the heavy water, thus completely shutting down the nuclear reactor. The reason she was not given any credit for her “willing sacrifice” may be found in the fact that in the final report she was indirectly accused of negligence, since her English language textbook, dictionary, and two notebooks were found “open on the control panel of the reactor.” 30  ARB, U-SY-34. “Oboleli jugoslovenski naučnici osećaju se dobro” [The injured Yugoslav scientists feel good], Borba, January 30, 1959. 27

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 280

2020.05.12. 19:27:59

Nuclear Yutopia

281

weeks, months, and even decades about their lives, their friendship and regular meetings with the French bone marrow donors, the moment when they became eligible to become blood donors, the dates of their marriages, and many other details from their lives.31 The TV drama Ozračeni (The Irradiated) was produced and screened on Yugoslav national television in 1976, focusing heavily on the heroism and humanism of the Yugoslav and French scientists, doctors, and bone marrow donors.32 The propaganda and publicity given to these Yugoslav pioneers of nuclear exploration is comparable to that given to American astronauts and Soviet cosmonauts in their own countries.33 Not to be outdone in heroism by her male colleagues, and perhaps as a gesture of belated recognition of her own heroism during the accident, the only “female comrade” Rosanda Dangubić became a superstar in her own right. She was the first woman in the world to give birth to a healthy child after being irradiated by a lethal dose of radiation and after receiving a bone marrow transplant, with the feat soon followed by a second child two years later.34 Although not publicized to the same extent, Rosanda’s achievements made her a Yugoslav counterpart to Valentina Tereshkova, the first woman cosmonaut, at roughly the same time.35 Many young women in Yugoslavia must have been impressed by Rosanda’s life story, soon joining their male colleagues in the secret and dangerous research of the Yugoslav nuclear industry. According to a detailed report by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) about the safety regulations in the Boris Kidrič Institute for Nuclear Sciences in Vinča, by 1967 around 40 percent of the Institute’s 1,100 employees were women.36 This, perhaps, was not that surprising considering that women’s emancipation was high on the list of priorities in socialist countries, but this elaborate 31

 ARB, U-SY-34. This collection holds dozens of press clippings covering this topic until 2012. 32  Ozračeni, Gérard Poteau (dir.), Radio-Televizija Beograd and Office de Radiodiffusion Télévision Française (ORTF), 1976. 33  Radina Vučetić, “Soviet Cosmonauts and American Astronauts in Yugoslavia: Who Did the Yugoslavs Love More?,” in Soviet Space Culture: Cosmic Enthusiasm in Socialist Societies, ed. Eva Maurer et al. (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), 188. 34  ARB, U-SY-34. “Kompetentni naučnici pratiće zdravstveno stanje Rose Dangubić i njene ćerke” [Competent scientists will monitor the health of Rose Dangubić and her daughter], Politika, March 24, 1965; “Rosanda Dangubić dobila i drugo dete” [Rosanda Dangubić had another child], Politika, March 3, 1967. 35  Valentina Tereshkova became the first woman cosmonaut in 1963. Rosanda gave birth to her first child in 1965. 36  IAEA Archives, SC/512-YUG-2. Agency Participation in and Assistance to Reactor Projects in Member States. Yugoslavia. General Review of the Safety Measures of Yugoslav Reactors and Cyclotron (1967–1970). Information about the Heavy Water RA Reactors, August 1967, 14.

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 281

2020.05.12. 19:27:59

282

Marko Miljković

propaganda may have been the prime reason for the important position of women in the Yugoslav nuclear industry. Although they may have been heroes that inspired popular imagination, the Yugoslav nuclear establishment had to take some concrete measures to avoid a similar scenario happening again. The Boris Kidrič Institute for Nuclear Sciences had already established the Department for Radiological Protection in April 1959, swiftly followed by an additional Department for Medical Protection that focused exclusively on medical care and related precautionary measures. These two departments were established in accordance with the Law on Ionizing Radiation Protection that was passed in the National Assembly only a week earlier, making Yugoslavia one of the first countries in the world to implement such legislation.37 It is important to stress for comparative purposes that the United States’ Federal Radiation Council was established at approximately the same time, even though no proper laws related to radiation protection would be instituted for more than a decade afterward, while the International Commission on Radiation Protection (ICRP) was fully reconstituted and attuned to the demands of the emerging “Atomic Age” only in 1962.38 At the time, French experts also considered that “it was too early for a single law,” although they already had several regulations, decrees, and recommendations that were “still covering all the needs.”39 These two departments of the Boris Kidrič Institute for Nuclear Sciences were given jurisdiction over all projects which involved the use of radioactive material in Yugoslavia, together with the power to halt the work of any nuclear facility and forbid any experiments throughout the country which could be dangerous to workers, the general population, or the environment.40 As a result, workers in Yugoslav nuclear facilities were eventually provided with adequate medical protection and safety regulations. However,  Pola veka Instituta Vinča (1948–1998) [Half a  century of the Vinča Institute (1948– 1998)] (Belgrade: Institut za nuklearne nauke Vinča, 1999), 194–96. 38  U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, “History of Radiation Protection,” http://www. epa.gov/radiation/understand/history.html, accessed August 6, 2016; Judson MacLaury, “The Job Safety Law of 1970: Its Passage Was Perilous,” United States Department of Labor, http://www.dol.gov/dol/aboutdol/history/osha.htm, accessed August 6, 2016; R. H. Clarke and J. Valentin, “The History of the ICRP and the Evolution of its Policies,” Annals of the ICRP, Publication 109 (2009): 79–81. The ICRP was founded in 1928, and the first Recommendations of this institution related to radiation protection were published in 1958 as “Publication 1.” By that time it was cooperating with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the World Health Organization (WHO), the International Labour Organization (ILO), etc. 39  AJ, 177 SKNE, f. 4. Report of Dr. Borivoje Damjanović about his stay in Paris, January 22, 1959. 40  Pola veka Instituta Vinča, 194–96. 37

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 282

2020.05.12. 19:27:59

Nuclear Yutopia

283

this was in effect a compromise by the Yugoslav nuclear establishment. They could not offer continuous material compensation to workers comparable to either the American or the Soviet experience, where workers in nuclear facilities were artificially raised to the level of an ideal or even imaginary middle class, living much better lives than the rest of the population while suffering incomparably higher levels of radiation exposure.41 At the same time, their Yugoslav counterparts were offered better legal protection in the workplace after 1959, which was in accordance with the Yugoslav official policy and propaganda of creating a democratic socialist society with workers as the formal decision-makers.42

Nuclear Yutopia’s Meltdown A short overview of “safety culture”43 in the Boris Kidrič Institute for Nuclear Sciences reveals a number of different layers to the story of the Yugoslav nuclear establishment’s motives for implementing regulations and legal procedures for workers’ safety in a radioactive environment. Ever since its establishment in 1948, the Institute operated with radioactive materials. Still, in the early 1950s very few scientists had any experience of working in such an environment, and despite their precautions “incidents happened several times,” mostly because of the length of experiments during which it was “impossible to establish adequate protection measures.” As a  result, “very high radiation occurred” often within laboratories, and was transferred to other buildings through the ventilation system, leading eventually to “consequences . . . that were evident.”44 In the following years, as the number of experiments and radiation-emitting equipment increased, these problems were exacerbated, but at the time of the accident in 1958 the “activity in the field of radiation protection . . . had an exclusively routine character,” which meant that scientists individually monitored their exposure to radiation through personal dosimeters, combined with periodical workers’ health screenings.45 Similar minor accidents happened outside nuclear institutes’ laboratories, thus reflecting the problem of generally inadequate or inef Brown, Plutopia, passim.  Lenard J. Cohen, The Socialist Pyramid: Elites and Power in Yugoslavia (London: Tri-Service Press Limited, 1989), 440–41. 43  “Safety culture” can be defined as “[t]he concept that the organization’s beliefs and attitudes, manifested in actions, policies, and procedures, affects its safety performance.” More in Frank W. Guldenmund, “(Mis)understanding Safety Culture and Its Relationship to Safety Management,” Risk Analysis 30, no. 10 (2010): 1466–80. 44  Pola veka Instituta Vinča, 193–94. 45  Ibid., 194. 41 42

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 283

2020.05.12. 19:27:59

284

Marko Miljković

fective procedures for handling radioactive materials. On one occasion in 1957, it was reported that a  full 300 kilograms of highly toxic beryllium “disappeared” during its transport to the Institute.46 The fact that Yugoslavia introduced legislation far earlier than many countries with more developed nuclear programs, combined with the obvious lack of experience in this field, raises suspicion that this law was perhaps designed more to appease workers, rather than being carefully crafted legislation to offer better protection to workers in the nuclear industry. Careful analysis of the 1959 Law on Ionizing Radiation Protection reveals that it provided only an overarching legal framework, rather than more practical rules and recommendations for the safe handling of radioactive materials. Furthermore, in many provisions of the law it is clearly stated that in terms of general regulations, supervision, personal protection, or penal regulations it should be supplemented by additional laws, decrees, or regulations.47 However, while these additional legal acts were issued in the following years, they once again provided more “legal frameworks” than clear procedures. For example, there was a clear division between different types of laboratories that worked with radioactive isotopes, established maximum levels of radiation in the air, water, or ground, or the maximum permitted annual doses of radiation a single worker may be exposed to; however, there were no clear instructions for distributing either supervision or responsibility between various agents covered by the law and regulations in case of damage or accidents.48 Moreover, these additional decrees and regulations were issued several years after the basic law, which strongly suggests that the law was, at best, insufficient. Focusing exclusively on the fate of irradiated workers, the 1964 SKNE report reveals some major problems and loopholes in the existing Law on Ionizing Radiation Protection and related decrees and regulations. The re46

 AJ, 177 SKNE, f. 28. Conclusions of the Collegium of the SKNE, May 13, 1957. Beside this single reference, I was not able to find any other documents that mention this serious incident or its outcome. Beryllium is a toxic industrial metal that has many interesting properties which make it ideal for several applications in aircraft and space vehicle structure, X-ray machines, but also in nuclear technology, including reactors and weapons design. More in “Beryllium,” GlobalSecurity.org, https://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/ intro/beryllium.htm, accessed April 2, 2018. 47  IAEA Library, REF 349.7 (497.1) B36 v. 2. Yugoslavia. Nucl. Decree on the Proclamation of the Law on Ionizing Radiation Protection, April 22, 1959. After the 1959 Law on Ionizing Radiation Protection, Yugoslavia introduced Regulations Concerning Protection against Ionizing Radiations (1962), Basic Law on Protection against Ionizing Radiations (1965), Control of Water Pollution (1965), Health Control and Conditions for Persons Working with Source of Ionizing Radiations (1965), Operations and Utilization of Radioactive Materials (1965), etc. 48  Ibid.

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 284

2020.05.12. 19:27:59

Nuclear Yutopia

285

port emphasizes that “our [Yugoslav] legislation does not regulate specifically” the injuries and related problems of persons exposed to ionizing radiation, and that they are treated “considering social insurance regulations in the same way as any other employees.”49 It also appears that after 1961, the SKNE did try to extend some additional social benefits to the irradiated workers, such as “a second holiday, shorter working hours, and early retirement for persons working with sources of ionizing radiation,” but the Federal Executive Council (the Yugoslav federal government) “removed” this request from its working agenda and never considered it again. Furthermore, four out of five workers who survived the accident were fired from the Boris Kidrič Institute for Nuclear Sciences immediately after their return from Paris, since their employment overlapped with the prequalification stipends they received from the Institute. This was a necessary move, since the doctors at the Military Medical Academy that monitored their health insisted that they should never again work in a radioactive environment. However, without formal employment they lost all the benefits even regular employees had: “they did not receive any financial support” until 1964 and could not even hope for a pension in the future.50 The SKNE eventually decided to finance additional holidays and to secure the five workers employment in the SKNE after their prequalification. However, the fact remains that all of these humane decisions were delivered on an ad hoc basis, after complaints from the irradiated workers, and were not based on the existing legislation. The most embarrassing fact revealed in this report was that Života Vranić, one of the first victims among reactor operators in the world, was as good as forgotten: “except the irradiated who, every year on the date of Vranić’s death, visit his parents, nobody else ever visited them or in any other way showed respect.” 51 Again, this admission came only after the complaint sent by Vranić’s father directly to the secretary of the SKNE, Slobodan Nakićenović, in which he asked for minimal financial support and “health insurance” for him and his wife: This was promised by your people at the funeral of our son and again a little later. I have to tell you that I, father of late Života, came several times to the Institute in Vinča four years ago, but have not been met with any understanding . . . and sometimes I have been even rather rudely received, 49

 AJ, 177 SKNE, f. 11. Secretariat of the SKNE. Information about the problems of the irradiated associates of the Boris Kidrič Institute for Nuclear Sciences, February 12, 1964. 50  Ibid.; AJ, 177 SKNE, f. 3. Secretariat Files. Minutes from the Consultative Meeting at the Vojno-medicinska akademija, March 6, 1959. 51  AJ, 177 SKNE, f. 11. Secretariat of the SKNE. Information about the problems of the irradiated associates of the Boris Kidrič Institute for Nuclear Sciences, February 12, 1964.

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 285

2020.05.12. 19:27:59

286

Marko Miljković

but I never went further than the reception desk at the entrance. After this outcome, we have reached the decision not to approach anybody and to suffer what has come upon us, but we cannot do it anymore since our living conditions do not allow it.52

The SKNE eventually paid Vranić’s parents a  rather large sum, although the documents do not reveal if their actual demands were ever met.53 Nevertheless, this was yet again an ad hoc response to a complaint, and no matter how humanitarian it may have been, this response was not provided by standing laws and regulations. All of these problems were finally officially admitted in 1967, when the SKNE approached the IAEA with a request for assistance in undertaking a general review of the status of Yugoslavia’s nuclear equipment (three experimental reactors and one cyclotron) and “all the so far administrated safety measures, both from the technical and the legal point of view.”54 Among proposed tasks, the IAEA’s experts were supposed to assist in “the initiation of necessary measures for a complete formulation of the legal aspects involved, and for determining the scope of competence of the different administrative organs . . . all aimed at bringing up-to-date the existing Yugoslav regulations in the light of the latest achievements in the field of reactor safety.”55 Although the SKNE’s request for assistance was made as a part of far larger preparations for the construction of Yugoslavia’s first nuclear power plant, the fact remains that even if the 1959 Law on Ionizing Radiation Protection met the highest standards at the time, in the following years the SKNE was slow to operationalize and update its provisions. Once the need for new legislation or procedures in the rapidly evolving nuclear industry became evident, assistance was requested from the IAEA. This request confirms that the Law on Ionizing Radiation Protection was still inadequate for workers’ protection, but the eight-year gap in requesting assistance also suggests that workers’ health was not particularly high on the SKNE’s list of priorities. Whether due to bureaucratic ineffectiveness or a lack of urgency, the fact that the SKNE and other authorities were slow to fully implement the main law suggests that protection of workers from the effects of radia52

 AJ, 177 SKNE, f. 11. Secretariat of the SKNE. Letter of Ilija Vranić to Slobodan Nakićenović, January 4, 1967. Vranić’s parents were simple peasants from central Serbia. 53  AJ, 177 SKNE, f. 11. Secretariat of the SKNE. Information about the problems of the irradiated associates of the Boris Kidrič Institute for Nuclear Sciences, February 12, 1964. 54  IAEA Archives, SC/512-YUG-2, Agency Participation in and Assistance to Reactor Projects in Member States; Yugoslavia; General Review of the Safety Measures of Yugoslav Reactors and Cyclotron (1967–1970). Letter of the SKNE’s Director Vojin Guzina to the IAEA’s Director General Sigvard Eklund, February 17, 1967. 55  Ibid.

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 286

2020.05.12. 19:27:59

Nuclear Yutopia

287

tion was not a major concern of the Yugoslav nuclear establishment. Similarly, the assistance requested from the IAEA in 1967 aimed more at the safe and efficient use of nuclear equipment, thus dealing only indirectly with workers’ safety and protection. The organization of medical care was consequently on an even more rudimentary level. The Institute’s Emergency Center was founded in 1949 but it offered only basic health protection to workers of the Institute, construction workers, and the inhabitants of the nearby village. The situation did not change considerably in the following decade and at the time of the accident in 1958, while there were enough doctors who could provide immediate assistance to irradiated workers, medical procedures and regulations were inadequate: the Institute’s Department for Radiation Protection “started its development practically from zero” only after the accident.56 According to one member of the Yugoslav medical team in Paris, “everything that happened [the accident] is a consequence of the current state, and we [the Institute] wasted a lot of time sitting idle, the Institute has existed ten full years and there is no protection . . . ”57 At first glance, the immediate medical treatment provided to the six irradiated workers on site seems conventional. On the other hand, a proper treatment for radiation sickness did not exist at the time, not much information was available in the medical literature, and even the most developed countries did not have proper regulatory institutions for this type of contingency. In fact, the IAEA and World Health Organization (WHO) first started publishing manuals with procedures for the treatment of irradiated persons only in the 1980s, after the Chernobyl accident. In the 1950s, the only materials available were occasional reports about particular accidents, and in most cases even those were classified. In that respect, the treatment provided to the six irradiated workers by the Emergency Center personnel was actually quite elaborate, and covered everything that was known, available, and effective in medical practice at the time.58 At least at the site of the accident, any potential human error or inadequate preparation for similar scenarios was supplemented by the training and dedication of the Emergency Center’s personnel. However, the report from the Center for Occupational Health adds additional detail to what was going on at the Institute’s Emergency Center. The physician in attendance in the CPB received a phone call from the  Pola veka Instituta Vinča, 205.  AJ, 177 SKNE, f. 4. Personal letter from Dr. Zoran Đukić to his friend (unnamed), December 5, 1958. 58  Interview with experts of the Radiation Protection Center, Serbian Institute of Occupational Health “Dr. Dragomir Karajović” in Belgrade, August 15, 2016. 56 57

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 287

2020.05.12. 19:27:59

288

Marko Miljković

Emergency Center at 12:45 with a single question: “What should we do?”59 They were informed to send the workers immediately to the CPB, and the physician in attendance started preparing beds and personnel for their arrival. The workers did not arrive for another hour, but there was another call from the Emergency Center, which notified the CPB that “one of the workers had started to vomit and that they started sending them to shower,” while also taking their personal data and blood samples.60 Even though it is difficult to compare, the reaction of doctors in the Emergency Center was quite similar to that of doctors in Hiroshima in 1945; puzzled by the symptoms they encountered, they could not distinguish completely if they were the result of “the radiation or nervous shock.”61 This partly explains the decision of Emergency Center doctors to give sedatives to the irradiated workers, at least relieving their anxiety. Their confusion was once again proved when Dr. Dušan Kanazir, the chief of the Laboratory for Molecular Biology and Endocrinology in the Institute, arrived at the Emergency Center and insisted that the workers should immediately receive a gram of streptomycin, a powerful dose of antibiotics. As a molecular biologist he must have been quite aware of the effects of radiation on the workers’ health, but the treatment he prescribed was approved only after a couple of his senior colleagues supported him.62 Besides the immediate assistance provided on site, it took an hour and a half for the workers to develop unquestionable symptoms of heavy radiation exposure, after which the Institute’s management reacted accordingly. The most probable cause for the delay was the highly confidential status of the Institute’s work, which could have prevented medical personnel from taking any kind of action until the management understood what was going on and gave necessary approval. The confusion ended when the Institute’s management and the SKNE took control of the situation, and work59

 AJ, 177 SKNE, f. 4. The Medical Report of the Emergency Center and the Centre for Professional Disease, October 23, 1958. 60  Ibid. 61  John Hersey, Hiroshima (New York: Random House, 1985), 77. It is an interesting coincidence that in his book, Hersey follows the destiny of six Hiroshima residents after the atomic bomb explosion. The symptoms included nausea, vomiting, headache, alopecia, overall weakness, etc. 62  AJ, 177 SKNE, f. 4. The Medical Report of the Emergency Center and the Centre for Professional Disease, October 23, 1958; Interview with experts of the Radiation Protection Center, Serbian Institute of Occupational Health “Dr. Dragomir Karajović” in Belgrade, August 15, 2016. Dušan Kanazir (1921–2009) was a pioneer in this field of study in Yugoslavia and an internationally recognized expert. He held this position in the Institute between 1956 and 1973, and later became the president of the Serbian Academy of Science between 1981 and 1994. More at http://www.sanu.ac.rs/sanunov/predsednici_dusan_kanazir.asp, accessed July 28, 2016.

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 288

2020.05.12. 19:27:59

Nuclear Yutopia

289

ers were indeed provided with the best possible treatment, eventually being sent to Paris. The SKNE’s control was substantial. One personal letter reveals the complexity of the relationships among the Yugoslav doctors in Paris, who were in conflict most of the time and in a race to gather all the necessary documentation about the groundbreaking treatment, so as to be the first to publish it. In this letter, a young doctor complained to his friend in Belgrade about the behavior of Branislav Pendić, the leading doctor in the Yugoslav team, saying that “[i]t is horrible,” that he acted as though all documents about the treatment were “his personal property,” and that he wanted to use Vranić’s case for his habilitation thesis and his application for the position of assistant professor at the Military Medical Academy in Belgrade, among other things.63 The conflict was eventually solved by the SKNE, which sent one of its members to gather all the documentation. In the SKNE report, it was suggested that all the material should be first published “under the supervision of the Federal Nuclear Energy Commission—without an author,” and that “nobody should use this material for information processing and publications” without permission of the SKNE.64 Not surprisingly, these documents remained buried in the SKNE’s archives and Yugoslav medical experts could not publish anything or continue any research based on this documentation for almost twenty years after the accident. Even congresses organized in the country during the 1960s on the medical treatment of the irradiated scientists did not produce any published scientific papers.65 The scientific competition among the Yugoslav medical team in Paris to publish the groundbreaking research and treatment of the irradiated workers may not be that surprising. However, the important thing to note from these two episodes is that the SKNE controlled all activities and information related to the treatment of the irradiated Yugoslav scientists, as confirmed by the fact that one personal letter revealing problems among the Yugoslav medical team in Paris ended up in the SKNE’s archive. This, however, should not be surprising given the fact that the Director of the SKNE was Aleksandar Ranković, who was also the Director of the Yugoslav secret 63

 AJ, 177 SKNE, f. 4. Personal letter from Dr. Zoran Đukić to his friend (unnamed), December 5, 1958. 64  AJ, 177 SKNE, f. 4. Report of Dr. Borivoje Damjanović about his stay in Paris, January 22, 1959. 65  Interview with experts of the Radiation Protection Center, Serbian Institute of Occupational Health “Dr. Dragomir Karajović” in Belgrade, August 15, 2016; XXVII Simpozijum Društva za zaštitu od zračenja Srbije i Crne Gore [Twenty-seventh Symposium of the Radiation Protection Association of Serbia and Montenegro] (Belgrade: Institut za nuklearne nauke Vinča; Društvo za zaštitu od zračenja Srbije i Crne Gore, 2013), 14.

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 289

2020.05.12. 19:27:59

290

Marko Miljković

police at the time—not unlike his Soviet counterpart Lavrentiy Beria, who headed both the Soviet nuclear program and the NKVD.66 Consequently, this control over the flow of information stopped any opportunity for Yugoslav medical experts to expand their knowledge about the treatment of irradiated people.67 The general behavioral pattern of the SKNE administration can be established at this point. In September and October 1961, after the USSR abrogated the moratorium on nuclear testing signed with the US in 1958 and conducted a series of nuclear weapons tests, the equipment for measuring atmospheric radiation detected a level of radiation up to 600 times higher than average in different parts of Yugoslavia, identifying the chemical footprint of nuclear weapons testing at the same time. However, according to a top secret document, the SKNE’s biggest concern was that if it warned the public, it would reveal that Yugoslavia “has in operation stations for measuring atmospheric radiation,” which translates into a Yugoslav ability to detect nuclear explosions from analysis of the atmospheric fallout.68 It may be argued that in the case of the advanced medical procedure for treating irradiated people, the same logic applied. Perhaps somewhat naively, it seems that the SKNE did not want to publicize the fact that Yugoslav doctors had some advanced training in this field, which in this case translates into the country’s enhanced ability to survive a potential nuclear holocaust, or minimally as a valuable trading item in negotiations with superpowers or other interested parties. In both of these cases, maintaining the confidential nature of such expertise and knowledge deemed important for Yugoslav defense and safety did not help to advance the well-being of the Yugoslav population during peacetime. Besides the secrecy enforced by the SKNE, it is more surprising to discover that Yugoslav authorities also made a  distinction between essential and expandable workforce, much like Kate Brown found for Soviet and American nuclear workers. Many years after the accident in the Boris Kidrič Institute for Nuclear Sciences, miners from the only uranium mine in Yugoslavia filed a complaint to the Director of the SKNE. According to 66

 More about Beria’s involvement in the Soviet atomic bomb project in David Holloway, Stalin and the Bomb: The Soviet Union and Atomic Energy, 1936–1956 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1994). 67  During my research I have not found a single document related to the groundbreaking medical treatment in the archive of the SKNE. They most likely ended up in the archives of the Yugoslav secret police or the Yugoslav Peoples’ Army, neither of which are open to researchers. However, this fact indirectly confirms my statements about the level of importance of this information and the secrecy surrounding it. 68  AJ, 177 SKNE, f. 1. Top Secret Archive. A series of top secret reports and documents issued by various sections of the SKNE, September 22–November 18, 1961.

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 290

2020.05.12. 19:27:59

Nuclear Yutopia

291

this letter, “disabled workers of the II and III categories” complained that since 1950, they worked as SKNE employees “in underground mine shafts directly on production of uranium . . . for many years” and “without any kind of protective equipment,” which caused many of them serious illness. After a series of promises from the SKNE that they would receive proper pensions, even a full year after the mine was formally closed they were still working at the heavily-polluted mine site as security personnel, and by the end of 1967 they were informed that they would simply be fired without any kind of pension or compensation.69 The miners’ own words are both shocking and instructive: “Comrade Director, is this the limit of human compassion towards us, are our days numbered? Does this mean that we who sacrificed our own health for the development of science in socialist Yugoslavia should live only until December 31, 1967? Is there any moral obligation of the wider community to solve our problem? Or were we just an experiment in the development of Kalna [the uranium mine] and Yugoslavia?”70 As SKNE employees in the uranium mine—inconspicuously named “Enterprise No. 3 for Exploratory Research”—the miners’ work was obviously an essential cog in the large wheel of the Yugoslav nuclear industry, but the miners themselves were expendable, as shown by their summary dismissal without any compensation for their hazardous work. Even if they did eventually receive pensions, without their complaints they would simply have been discarded as redundant workforce or transferred to other mines, “taking with them the radioactive isotopes they had ingested and any subsequent health problems that might leave an epidemiological trace.”71 The sheer similarity of this episode with the problems faced, and the actions taken, by the irradiated scientists reveals additional flaws of the Law on Ionizing Radiation Protection which seemingly failed to provide adequate protection for either expendable or essential workforce, at least until 1967, when the IAEA provided expert assistance in this field. Considering a much wider field of labor relations in Yugoslavia, the next logical step is to question the effectiveness of the entire system of workers’ benefits and legal protection, or to contrast Yugoslav legislation with practice, since in the case of the nuclear industry even the general labor legislation obviously could not completely compensate for the loopholes in the Law on Ionizing Radiation Protection on work-related injuries. This question, however, cannot be answered in this case study. Finally, while the most elaborate medical treat69

 AJ, 177 SKNE, f. 13. Correspondence of the Director of the SKNE. Complaint of the former miners of the Kalna uranium mine, June 4, 1967. 70  Ibid. 71  Brown, Plutopia, 7.

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 291

2020.05.12. 19:27:59

292

Marko Miljković

ment in foreign institutions was obviously not open for Yugoslav miners, it is somewhat surprising that they were left to work in dangerous conditions without any kind of protection, because such protection was available in Yugoslavia at the time and consistently used in nuclear institutes. Evidently miners were easier to replace than scientists, whose training and education cost a lot of money and lasted several years. The heroization of the six irradiated workers and their extensive coverage in the press was not planned by the Yugoslav authorities. The SKNE was initially quiet about the accident and the only information in the Yugoslav press was published in a short article a couple of days after the accident, with very limited information about it and only the superficial mention that workers “irradiated over the acceptable level were provided with timely medical assistance.”72 After that short article, there was a period of almost forty days of complete silence, in an obvious attempt to keep control of information about the accident.73 However, the SKNE’s control seems to have ended at the Yugoslav borders. Once the Yugoslav scientists were in Paris, there were many “leaks” of information about them and their treatment in the Fondation Curie in both French and other European press. The French press started writing about the irradiated Yugoslav workers two days after their arrival in Paris and continued to follow their recovery in the following months. Eventually the story was picked up by many other European news agencies.74 The turning point in the SKNE’s behavior was the death of Života Vranić, when a couple of articles were published in France and other countries about the death of not one, but two Yugoslav workers.75 The SKNE invested a lot of energy in clearing up this confusion, but faced even greater embarrassment when one Swiss newspaper wrote that the accident was a consequence of a great rush to meet Tito’s “secret desire to have his own atomic bomb.”76 It seems likely that the SKNE decided to publicize information about the irradiated scientists only as a consequence of these continuous embarrassments, while exerting a high degree of control over the information: the irradiated workers were not allowed to discuss the accident in public for many decades after.77 However, soon after their recovery was certain, they were

72

 ARB, U-SY-34. “Utvrđeno kako je došlo do prekomernog zračenja nultog reaktora” [It has been established, how the excessive radiation of the zero power reactor occurred], Politika, October 26, 1958. 73  AJ, 177 SKNE, f. 4. Press-clipping archive about the accident. 74  Ibid. 75  Ibid. Reuters Report, November 20, 1958. 76  Ibid. Die Weltwoche, December 12, 1958. 77  Pešić, “Estimation of Doses Received by Operators,” 202.

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 292

2020.05.12. 19:27:59

Nuclear Yutopia

293

turned into somewhat unexpected national heroes, albeit with a limited opportunity to speak about their ordeal. In that respect, the SKNE successfully managed information flow to the public, both in Yugoslavia and beyond. A much bigger problem for the SKNE was to discover the causes of the accident, establish responsibility, and reveal and punish the “anti-hero.” According to the “conclusions” in the final report about the accident, four groups of problems were discovered and presented in a clear hierarchy: “lack of automatic shut-down and signaling devices; lack of attention among the chiefs of the departments responsible for the reactor operation and for people working on it; lack of training for the independent work of the personnel who operated the reactor that day; lack of attention of the personnel who operated the reactor that day.”78 Reading between the lines, the commission realized that the entire system had failed at every level, from basic training to the decision-making mechanisms. They therefore described the problem as a  “lack” of everything, rather than a  failure of the system itself. The research at the Institute was too important and expensive to be jeopardized in any way, and the SKNE seemingly decided to somewhat dilute the organizational problems and oversights, thus saving the whole Institute and its projects from being halted temporarily or even stopped completely. How far did this explanation actually go? Who or what was actually protected by this report? And what was the role of the irradiated workers in the accident? The final report also reveals an important prehistory of the accident. Graduate student Života Vranić actually had some experience in working with the nuclear reactor. During July 1958, he performed similar experiments with Dr. Dragoslav Popović, Chief of the Department for Reactor and Nuclear Physics and main designer of the reactor, but “during the vacation period in September and October he [Života Vranić] mostly performed measurements alone,” and for that period “it could not be determined who, if anyone, had direct supervision” over his work.79 Furthermore, none of the senior scientists and engineers were able to confirm which safety and measuring instruments were connected to the reactor on the day of the accident “or several days before the event,” or even if the existing instruments were working properly.80 The commission also acknowledged “without any doubts” that the automatic control mechanism of the reactor—which could shut it down “without human interference” in cases of high radiation—was disconnected on the day of the accident, but 78

 AJ, 177 SKNE, f. 4. Official report of the Federal Nuclear Energy Commission on the causes of the accident, October 24, 1958. 79  Ibid. 80  Ibid., 5.

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 293

2020.05.12. 19:27:59

294

Marko Miljković

also that this disconnection had been approved several months earlier by Dragoslav Popović since “it was interfering with experimentation.”81 Signaling devices were also disassembled “one by one” months before the accident, and on the day of the disaster “only one was still in the [reactor] hall, but it was not switched on.”82 Finally, even the main key for starting the nuclear reactor control panel was kept in one of the office drawers, from where basically anybody could take it and start the reactor without any procedure or data about who held the key at any given moment.83 Dragoslav Popović’s responsibility for the accident seems obvious, even though the commission established only his indirect culpability for the accident, defining it as a “lack of attention among the chiefs of the departments.” One of the brightest nuclear physicists in the country and the Institute’s “superstar,” as well as one of the first employees to receive his doctorate in physics, Popović was difficult to replace.84 However, he was eventually forced to leave the Institute in 1959 and continue his career as a professor at the Faculty of Electrical Engineering in Belgrade, while the director of the Institute was also deposed in the same year.85 In his analysis of the impact of brain drain from Yugoslav nuclear institutes on the country’s nuclear program, Jacques Hymans mentions this episode and concludes that Popović left the country in 1961 in a wave of “ambitious departures,” and took up a position in the International Atomic Energy Commission as director of safeguards, a highly prestigious and important position in the budding global nonproliferation regime, and better suited to his level of expertise.86 However, the facts tell a different story. Popović never returned to the Institute, but in 1960 he became the Secretary of the Expert Council of the SKNE, a position that he occupied for 81

 Ibid., 5–6.  Ibid., 7. 83  AJ, 177 SKNE, f. 4, Official report of the Federal Nuclear Energy Commission on the causes of the accident, October 24, 1958. 84  Pola veka Instituta Vinča, 330. In 1954, he even created a small scientific sensation when he published a paper with the fission cross section of the uranium isotope U-235, information which was considered highly classified by the nuclear weapon states. Dragoslav Popović, “Validity of the Inverse Velocity Law for the Fission Cross Section of U-235,” Physica 20, no. 6 (1954): 406–12; more in Jacques E. C. Hymans, “Proliferation Implications of Civil Nuclear Cooperation: Theory and a Case Study of Tito’s Yugoslavia,” Security Studies 20, no. 1 (2011): 73–104. 85  Pola veka Instituta Vinča, 16; “Preminuo profesor Dragoslav Popović, pionir srpske nuklearne fizike” [Professor Dragoslav Popović, the pioneer of Serbian nuclear physics, has passed away], Blic, April 21, 2013, http://www.blic.rs/Vesti/Drustvo/378919/Preminuo-profesor-Dragoslav-Popovic-pionir-srpske-nuklearne-fizike, accessed August 2, 2016. 86  Hymans, “Proliferation Implications of Civil Nuclear Cooperation,” 93. 82

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 294

2020.05.12. 19:27:59

Nuclear Yutopia

295

many years. After his work at the IAEA which lasted until 1964, and after several other projects he worked on as a United Nations expert in nuclear technology, he returned to Yugoslavia where even in the 1980s he worked on the development of various nuclear technologies in the Energoinvest company based in Sarajevo.87 This is equally true for Nenad Raišić, the Deputy Chief of the Laboratory and in effect Popović’s deputy, who was actually the Yugoslav People’s Army (Jugoslovenska narodna armija, JNA) scientist delegated to work in the Institute, one of the engineers who designed the first Yugoslav nuclear reactor, and the person with the most experience in its operation.88 In the final report he was also indirectly mentioned as one of the responsible persons (“lack of attention among the chiefs of the departments”), but he suffered no consequences, most likely being protected by the Yugoslav People’s Army. Therefore, except for the symbolic punishment, Popović remained one of the most important and trustworthy figures in the Yugoslav nuclear establishment in the following decades. Similarly, Raišić’s career continued uninterrupted; he continued his work in the Institute as Director of the Laboratory for Physics and Reactor Dynamics until 1973, when he took up a position at the IAEA, somewhat paradoxically, as an expert on the security of nuclear power plants.89 Moreover, many of Popović’s subsequent positions, including in the IAEA and as a Secretary of the Expert Council of the SKNE, seem more like rewards than sanctions, or at least clever moves to allow the important scientist to continue his professional development by removing him from the Institute, where he might not be greeted with much enthusiasm. Many years later, one of the surviving scientists of the Vinča accident publicly and directly accused Popović and his closest associates of being responsible for the accident.90 Taking all different groups of workers into consideration—expendable miners, unexpected heroes, and at least one “anti-hero”—and analyzing their fates after the accident, it seems that the SKNE was interested first and foremost in the country’s nuclear program, rather than any category of its 87

 AJ, 177 SKNE, f. 25. Letter of Ivan Supek to Dragoslav Popović, Secretary of the Expert Council of the SKNE, October 28, 1960; Pola veka Instituta Vinča, 256. 88  AJ, 177 SKNE, f. 4. Statement of Nenad Raišić to the Commission for establishing the causes of the accident, October 17, 1958. Raišić started working in the Institute in 1951, but he remained a JNA member, although there is no information about his legal status in the following years. 89  Pola veka Instituta Vinča, 258. 90  ARB, U-SY-34. “Misterija ‘Vinča akcidenta’” [The mystery of the “Vinča accident”], Danas, May 18, 2012. In addition to Popović, Stjepo Hajduković also named Nenad Raišić (Deputy Chief of the Laboratory), Stevan Takač, and Hranislav Marković as people who were responsible for the safe operation of the nuclear reactor.

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 295

2020.05.12. 19:28:00

296

Marko Miljković

workforce. The irreplaceability of certain categories of workers or individuals was obvious, but the country’s nuclear program was considered far more important than any individual. Those who were eventually absolved of responsibility were leading scientists, like Popović and Raišić, whose expertise was considered absolutely essential to the Yugoslav nuclear program.

The “Dark Side” of Nuclear Yutopia: A Hypothesis This situation and relationship toward the nuclear program in Yugoslavia is comparable with those of secret institutes and cities in the USSR, where the nuclear establishment worried more “about the equipment and the final product than they did about the people.”91 In its concern for workers it also resembled the wartime Manhattan Project in the United States. That project’s director, General Leslie Groves, did set up a Medical Section in 1942 but his prime interest was “to maintain the health of the operators at a level which will in no way interfere with operations.”92 Consequently, the Medical Center was continuously understaffed, while the results it did manage to gather could not be published, discussed, or even used to solicit help from other scientists involved in the Manhattan Project. Instead, “Groves was more worried . . . about security and retaining workers” and focused only on the final goal of the project, while the Medical Center experts were forced to submit highly cleansed reports in order “to protect the interest of the Government and Contractor against possible claim for compensation.”93 Here a comparison is more difficult, since both the United States and the Soviet Union were fully engaged in the atomic bomb project, and the question of whether Yugoslavia was trying to build an atomic bomb lies outside the scope of this analysis. However, the rush, secrecy, and importance of the work in the Institute were similar, since it was necessary to train enough young scientists and technicians in a short period of time to successfully operate a much larger reactor. Such a reactor was already under construction at the time of the accident and officially started up on December 28, 1959.94 On the other hand, there may have been a darker backdrop to the accident in the Boris Kidrič Institute for Nuclear Sciences. Although the following analysis will not be able to provide a definite answer, firm evidence shows that in the late 1950s the SKNE, in close cooperation with the Yugoslav People’s Army, was investing a lot of time and energy to investigate the  Brown, Plutopia, 119.  Ibid., 51. 93  Ibid., 52, 55, 66–67. 94  Pola veka Instituta Vinča, 265. 91 92

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 296

2020.05.12. 19:28:00

Nuclear Yutopia

297

ways in which people responded to, and could be successfully treated for, radiation. In October 1957, the JNA representatives provided the SKNE with a detailed Draft of the Plan of Nuclear Research for the People’s Defense in 1958 (Projekt plana nuklearnih istraživanja za potrebe narodne odbrane u 1958. godini), which was a shopping list of instruments, equipment, and medical procedures that the SKNE was supposed to develop and manufacture for the JNA.95 Part of this elaborate plan was dedicated to “problems of medical protection.” The plan acknowledges that at the time, even much more developed countries than Yugoslavia, “including those that have atomic weapons,” did not have a practical solution for the treatment of irradiated people.96 This, however, did not discourage the JNA. In 1958, the Army demanded that the SKNE should “investigate and determine the impact of radiation on living organisms, the choice of suitable pharmacological substances for prevention and treatment of people and animals against nuclear radiation, and the choice of suitable methods and resources for the early and quick diagnosis and prognosis of radiation sickness in people and animals.”97 The medical part of the plan was further divided into twelve smaller tasks, from which ten most important were supposed to be performed by the Boris Kidrič Institute for Nuclear Sciences.98 Without many changes, this plan was finally accepted by the SKNE in January 1958 and sent to the institutes under its supervision.99 The choice of France and the Fondation Curie as an institution that could offer treatment to irradiated people was based on earlier relationships and could also be understood in terms of a contingency plan in case of a nuclear accident. Pavle Savić, the leading Yugoslav nuclear physicist and the person on whose initiative the Boris Kidrič Institute for Nuclear Sciences was established in 1948, had strong professional and personal connections with French scientists. In the late 1930s, Savić undertook research in Paris with Pierre and Irène Joliot-Curie where he managed to confirm nuclear fission through chemical experiments, which at the time was a groundbreaking discovery. As such, it is not surprising that Savić personally requested the six irradiated Yugoslav scientists should be sent to Paris. In his own words, Savić chose Paris because “at the time, the French had an elaborate method 95

 AJ, 177 SKNE, f. 1. Top Secret Archive. Draft of the Plan of Scientific and Research Tasks for the People’s Defense in 1958, October 7, 1957. 96  Ibid. At the time, only the United States, the Soviet Union and the United Kingdom had atomic weapons. 97  Ibid. 98  Ibid. 99  Ibid.

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 297

2020.05.12. 19:28:00

298

Marko Miljković

for treating irradiated people.”100 In the late 1940s, Savić had reestablished his connections with Paris and the Institut Curie, from where he managed to secure the arrival of Robert Walen to Yugoslavia, another of the crucial figures, alongside Savić, in establishing the Boris Kidrič Institute for Nuclear Sciences and training the first generation of Yugoslav nuclear scientists. Savić’s personal touch and connections with Paris were so deep that one of his students would comment many decades later that “everything [in Vinča] looked like a  small affiliate of the Institute for Radium in Paris [Institut Curie],” and even the primary language of communication between scientists was French.101 Coincidentally, Professor Jamet, the French scientist who had designed and carried out the successful bone marrow transplant on the Yugoslav scientists, visited the Boris Kidrič Institute for Nuclear Sciences in March 1958.102 At the time, not much was happening in the Institute regarding the medical protection and treatment of irradiated people that would have necessitated a visit by a doctor of Jamet’s rank. In fact, the Institute’s Department for Radiation Protection was established only after the accident. On the other hand, the first Yugoslav nuclear reactor was in the final stages of construction, achieving criticality on April 29, 1958.103 The visit does raise the question about whether a potential accident and its treatment could have been discussed, or even a precautionary plan put in place. The fact that the young Yugoslav students and technicians were employed by the leading nuclear institute in the country, engaged in the top-secret project, and found themselves in Paris less than twenty-four hours after the accident, suggests minimally that their transfer may have been prearranged in the case of a disaster. The role of Dragoslav Popović, the Chief of the Department for Reactor and Nuclear Physics and the main designer of the country’s only nuclear reactor at the time, has also been called into question. He was nowhere near the reactor hall when the reactor became supercritical and did not suffer any direct exposure to radiation; none of the leading scientists did. Popović was responsible for the removal of almost all safety equipment and warning instruments from the reactor, as was established by the SKNE’s commission. He left undergraduate students and technicians to perform complicated ex Pavle Savić, Nauka i društvo: Izabrani radovi; Prilozi životopisu [Science and society: Selected works; Biographical attachments], ed. Milica Mužijević and Vladimir Dedijer (Belgrade: Srpska književna zadruga, 1978), 304–7. 101  Miloš Jevtić, Razgovori sa Vinčancima [Conversations with Vinča workers] (Belgrade: Institut za nuklearne nauke “Vinča,” 1998), 97. 102  AJ, 177 SKNE, f. 28. Minutes of the SKNE Collegium Meeting, March 5, 1958. 103  Pola veka Instituta Vinča, 205, 261. 100

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 298

2020.05.12. 19:28:00

Nuclear Yutopia

299

periments with the reactor without any supervision. He did not suffer any consequences for what, in a best case scenario, could be considered serious negligence: Stjepo Hajduković, one of the irradiated scientists, continued to blame him as the prime culprit for the accident several decades later.104 Furthermore, even the most talented student could not have designed experiments for the reactor independently, and it is not impossible that Vranić was only following some verbal instructions Popović had given him at some point prior to the accident; indeed, this was a common practice at the Institute. Hajduković revealed many years later that leading scientists were “giving us tasks, and we were executing them in a disciplined way.”105 According to Popović’s own words, he “personally led him [Vranić] through the readings,” gave him literature and “discussed certain problems with him,” which was essential since there were no written manuals or regulations for operating the reactor.106 Furthermore, on that fateful day Vranić was conducting experiments at the very edge of the reactor’s criticality and without alarm systems, safety equipment, or adequate measuring instruments, so he was in effect completely “blind” to what the reactor was doing.107 This is proven by the fact that the only indicator revealing that the reactor was out of control was the smell of ozone in the air. Therefore, Popović was responsible for removing most of the reactor’s safety equipment, he was personally giving instructions to Vranić about experiments, and, as a chief designer of the reactor, he was in a position to predict its behavior. During the investigation into the causes of the accident, Nenad Raišić confirmed that the reactor could easily have been pushed to a supercritical level that would release dangerous doses of radiation, “if somebody wanted to.”108 Why would the SKNE use such young workers in this scenario? The team that operated the reactor on the day of the accident was composed of technicians and undergraduate students, just starting their specialized train ARB, U-SY-34. “Misterija ‘Vinča akcidenta,’” Danas, May 18, 2012.  Ibid. 106  AJ, 177 SKNE, f. 4. Statement of Dragoslav Popović to the Commission for establishing the causes of the accident, October 17, 1958. 107  Ibid. The accident happened on the so-called RB reactor, which was a non-reflected, natural uranium-heavy water critical assembly, designed and constructed in Yugoslavia. The reactor first went critical on April 29, 1958. More about the RB reactor in Pešić, “Estimation of Doses Received by Operators,” 199. According to Raišić’s statement, the RB reactor operated in the critical zone (self-sustaining fission chain reaction) at the heavy water level in the reactor tank, in a range between 177 and 178.5 centimeters, depending on the temperature. On October 15, 1958, Vranić operated the reactor at a level of 177 centimeters, but with an additional neutron source in the reactor, which may have pushed the reactor to the supercritical level (self-sustained fission chain reaction with an increasing rate of fission). 108  Ibid. 104 105

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 299

2020.05.12. 19:28:00

300

Marko Miljković

ing in the field. After receiving and surviving lethal doses of radiation, any additional exposure would have meant certain death. The report from the Military Medical Academy confirms that, and after their recovery surviving workers were transferred to other positions with their status defined as “permanently disabled to work in any workplace with even the slightest amounts of radiation.”109 How important was the successful treatment of irradiated personnel to the JNA or the SKNE? At the time, as the JNA’s “shopping list” clearly explains, not much was known about such treatment. On the other hand, at least from the perspective of superpowers, such a groundbreaking treatment could have given an advantage to the side that had developed it: if the survivability of the majority of irradiated people after a nuclear explosion was somewhat ensured, the side that possessed that knowledge would most likely be the winner in a future nuclear conflict, or could even be more relaxed about starting one. The concept of survivability as one of the key components of a successful nuclear attack was in fact analyzed in depth by a  number of American scholars in the late 1950s and early 1960s. While these analyses did not directly include a possibility for the successful treatment of an irradiated population, it is easy to see how such treatment would fit the cold-blooded calculations presented in these analyses.110 Yugoslavia was nowhere near these calculations. However, the fact remains that the JNA was seriously preparing for a nuclear holocaust scenario, in which the survivability of people and army personnel was crucial. In one of the very few top secret documents that analyze the problem, it is emphasized that “the [radiation] protection is one of the very important components of the country’s defense in peace and war,” and that both military and civilian aspects of radiation protection should be treated simultaneously.111 Besides the task of providing proper treatment for irradiated people, the JNA’s 1958  AJ, 177 SKNE, f. 3. Secretariat Files. Minutes from the Consultative Meeting at the Vojno-medicinska akademija, March 6, 1959. 110  Some of the most notable analyses from the period are Albert Wohlstetter, “The Delicate Balance of Terror,” Foreign Affairs 37, no. 2 ( January 1959): 211–34; Herman Kahn, “The Nature and Feasibility of War and Deterrence,” P-1888-RC, The Rand Corporation Paper ( January 20, 1960): 1–46; Herman Kahn, On Thermonuclear War (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1960). Kahn dedicates dozens of pages to the analysis of acceptable doses of radiation in a thermonuclear war and in relation to the number of victims, accounted in percentages of the population, often reaching tens of millions, something he defines as “acceptability of risks.” His question “will the survivors envy the dead?” was sarcastically invoked, albeit indirectly, in the movie Dr. Strangelove, or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (Stanley Kubrick, dir., 1964). More in Kahn, On Thermonuclear War, 40–95. 111  AJ, 177 SKNE, f. 3. Federal Office for Ionizing Radiation Protection. Top secret document about the establishment of radiation protection in the country, March 1959. 109

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 300

2020.05.12. 19:28:00

Nuclear Yutopia

301

plan also demanded: portable Geiger–Müller counters for ships, airplanes, and tanks; detectors for measuring radiation levels in food; a “station for detecting atomic explosions in the world and control of the contamination of the atmosphere”; personal dosimeters for soldiers; gas masks resistant to radioactive dust; protective uniforms, gloves, boots, and socks; designs for field shelters offering protection from atomic explosions of several different levels; procedures and substances for decontamination of personnel, weapons, equipment, and animals; and so on.112 The JNA was actually spending a great deal of money preparing for a potential nuclear attack on the country. Among other things, between 1953 and 1979 the JNA invested an estimated 4.6 billion US dollars in constructing an underground nuclear bunker for Tito and up to 350 top-ranking state functionaries.113 These were serious preparations for a nuclear war, and the JNA’s demands did not leave much to chance or good fortune; they covered practically every important aspect of the Army’s eventual survival as a credible force in case of nuclear war, and the successful treatment of irradiated people (or at the very least soldiers) was an important component. Evidence presented here is circumstantial and inconclusive, and many questions will remain unanswered. However, taken together the evidence does implicate the top brass of the Yugoslav nuclear establishment, the JNA, and the state in minimally being negligent toward the student workers and technicians, and in setting themselves as the only essential workforce.

Conclusion The Gilpatric committee created by President Johnson’s administration in 1964 put Yugoslavia on a list of eleven countries in the world that “have or will soon have the capability of making nuclear weapons, given the requisite national decision.”114 Even without this estimate, the analysis presented in this chapter shows the importance of the nuclear program in Yugoslavia, a  country wedged between East and West in a  period of deeply complex political and ideological conflict. However, despite all the time, resources, and workforce invested into its nuclear program, Yugoslavia never independently constructed any nuclear power plants or atomic bombs, suggesting 112

 AJ, 177 SKNE, f. 1. Top Secret Archive. Draft of the Plan of Scientific and Research Tasks for the People’s Defense in 1958, October 7, 1957. 113  “Titov bunker ARK Do,” Službene stranice općine Konjic, http://www.konjic.ba/index. php/press/item/322-titov-bunker-ark-d0, accessed August 19, 2016. 114  Francis J. Gavin, Nuclear Statecraft: History and Strategy in America’s Atomic Age (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2012), 78–79.

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 301

2020.05.12. 19:28:00

302

Marko Miljković

that all the effort and sacrifices were in vain. Nevertheless, based on Brown’s results for the “Plutopias” of the US and the USSR, it could be expected that the Yugoslav authorities eventually created some sort of “nuclear Yutopia” for the workers involved in the project who were continuously on their specific nuclear frontline. The aftermath of what happened in Vinča on October 15, 1958, shows that it is very difficult to distinguish between scenarios of sloppiness or system failure on the one hand, and a more intentional testing on the other. What is immediately clear, however, is that in either case it is difficult to find the characteristic social contract between the workers and the country’s nuclear establishment, at least in Brown’s terms. In my conclusion I will focus on the brighter option. Yugoslavia seems to have made a clear distinction between its essential and expandable workforces. Furthermore, taking into consideration the eventual fates of the Boris Kidrič Institute for Nuclear Sciences’ workers, the miners employed in the uranium mine, and the attention given by the SKNE to each of these groups, it also seems that the gap in perceived worth between them was huge. The fortunes of Dragoslav Popović and Nenad Raišić also confirm that those among the SKNE’s workforce who were absolutely essential to the country’s nuclear program were untouchable in the same measure. The Yugoslav experience with all three main groups of workers in the nuclear industry (miners, students and technicians, and essential scientists) follows the general pattern suggested in the theoretical framework. However, the specific Yugoslav feature was the focus only on scientists essential to the nuclear program. Yugoslavia was not an industrial or economic powerhouse able to provide an imaginary middle-class lifestyle to a much larger group of workers also including students, young scientists, and technicians, as the US or the USSR were. This could also be a consequence of the lack of understanding within the Yugoslav nuclear establishment about the necessary preconditions for the successful development of a nuclear program, or at least the specific labor relations required. In either case, or perhaps in a combination of both, the eventual price was very dear. The Yugoslav nuclear establishment paid no attention to the miners in the country’s only uranium mine. Existing documents do not detail their destiny, but even if they eventually received their pensions, this was achieved only after their fight for simple biological survival, not for any benefits. On the other hand, the workers irradiated in the accident suffered even greater damage to their health, although they were provided with state-of-the-art medical treatment and care, were turned into unexpected heroes of socialist labor, and were ultimately kept in the Institute’s workforce until their retirement. This may seem to be the standard of benefits that Yugoslavia was able

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 302

2020.05.12. 19:28:00

Nuclear Yutopia

303

to provide to regular workers in the nuclear industry. It may also be argued that from the perspective of the SKNE, they became essential workers, at least to the extent that their fate could have had an impact on the rest of their colleagues in the Yugoslav nuclear program. The attention provided to the irradiated workers, therefore, was most likely accidental, or possibly even a result of some forward thinking by Pavle Savić. He was actually one of the very few “bright” stars in the entire Yugoslav nuclear establishment. Besides his precautionary personal contact with French experts at the Fondation Curie, on one occasion during the investigation on the causes of the accident he made an angry comment about the accident being an “experiment on human beings.”115 Although this statement was not elaborated upon and was directed to Nenad Raišić, alongside the fact that, as one of designers of the “experimental machine” (nuclear reactor), he did not predict the installation of a number of safety mechanisms, in effect Savić’s words were very close to the truth, even if the JNA generals or the SKNE chief executives had no ill intentions.116 During the investigation, Savić also demanded that in future the SKNE should prepare a detailed medical file on every employee, “regardless of their category.”117 The outcome of this initiative is unknown, but the fact remains that Savić eventually resigned all of his positions in the Yugoslav nuclear establishment in 1960 and continued his career as a university professor, at the very least disappointed by the way the Yugoslav nuclear program was managed.118 The complicated delivery of the adequate legislation and regulations that would have enhanced the workers’ safety, combined with its ineffectiveness, the rudimentary safety culture in the Boris Kidrič Institute for Nuclear Sciences, and the secrecy attached to the medical documentation that could have at least expanded the country’s capabilities in dealing with similar situations, all point to the conclusion that even what had been done for the workers irradiated in the accident was more of a propaganda stunt, aimed at both domestic and foreign observers, and a clever move from the Yugoslav nuclear establishment to keep workers silent and obedient. Silence and obedience from the workforce is a necessary precondition for the efficient operation of any type of industry, and it was the main result of policies both in the United States and the Soviet Union directed at its workforce in the nuclear industry. In Yugoslavia, this was achieved with 115

 AJ, 177 SKNE, f. 4. Statement of Nenad Raišić to the Commission for establishing the causes of the accident, October 17, 1958. 116  Ibid. 117  AJ, 177 SKNE, f. 4. Sixth day of the work of the Commission for establishing the causes of the accident, October 23, 1958. 118  Savić, Nauka i društvo, 308.

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 303

2020.05.12. 19:28:00

304

Marko Miljković

a combination of some clever propaganda, a few benefits, and some pressure. Hajduković, one of the workers who survived the accident, claimed many years later that soon after his recovery Aleksandar Ranković, the Director of the SKNE and the Yugoslav secret police, told him that “publication of any information about it [the accident] would damage the image of Yugoslavia and would be considered a hostile act,” and that he can “comment after thirty years, but for now it would be better to be silent.”119 This secrecy was part of the Yugoslav nuclear program even in cases of common practices, as was established in examples of medical documentation and the radiation fallout monitoring system. Even though Yugoslavia was not the Soviet Union, and Ranković was not Beria, this suggestion was taken very seriously; Hajduković only published his account of the accident posthumously.120 The stories of Dragoslav Popović and Nenad Raišić put these conclusions in a slightly different perspective. The lack of any serious punishment seems to point to the conclusion that they were among the very few essential workers. However, their importance was related only to the importance of the nuclear program and their own place in it. This confirms again that for the SKNE, the most important thing was the program itself, while the people working on it were important only to the extent they could service it and produce results. This operational framework was eventually transferred down the line of command to the rest of the essential workers. Both Popović and Raišić were willing to let young workers perform experiments with the reactor completely unsupervised, in an effort to receive the results more promptly. Hajduković’s comment about the disciplined way they performed their duties is quite similar to a military or any other command system. The Yugoslav medical team in Paris acted in a similar fashion, with leading doctors in a rush to gather information about groundbreaking medical procedures which could have advanced their careers. This behavior seems to be a reflection of the general attitude within the Yugoslav nuclear establishment. This attitude is surprisingly similar to the behavior of the American leadership during the Manhattan Project, in which the importance of being first in a nuclear arms race with Nazi Germany—however imaginary it may have been—overshadowed any respect for the workers’ health, who were basically kept alive for as long as the project needed them. It is also similar to the Soviet experience in the late 1940s, when the USSR was trying to break the political deadlock and the nuclear monopoly of the United States. The  ARB, U-SY-34. “Misterija ‘Vinča akcidenta’,” Danas, May 18, 2012.  Ibid.

119 120

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 304

2020.05.12. 19:28:00

Nuclear Yutopia

305

proper “Plutopia” Brown writes about was created only later, when the nuclear arms race between the two superpowers was largely stabilized. In the Yugoslav case, it may be argued that the rush, secrecy, and importance attached to the nuclear program were comparable, as was the attitude towards the workforce in the nuclear industry. A surprising discovery is that this was happening at a time when Yugoslavia’s political position in the global community was rather stable and when there were no credible threats to the country’s security. This points to the conclusion that Yugoslav authorities were somewhat overwhelmed by the fear of an imaginary threat to the country’s safety, or their own. This imaginary fear thus produced an unnecessary rush that led to the accident and many other mistakes, expenditures that overburdened an already thin budget, and ultimately a near-total lack of interest for the safety of workers in the nuclear industry. Nenad Raišić expressed the same warlike mentality, stating that “the safety equipment is not there for fools, but for those who are familiar with instruments and know what they do,” thereby showing little (if any) compassion to the irradiated workers.121 In one of his speeches, President Tito captured that paranoia which was raised to the level of a  state policy: “Let us work as if peace is going to last one hundred years, but let us prepare as if the war is going to start tomorrow.”122 In this specific Yugoslav type of “war communism,” there was little space left for the “nuclear Yutopia.” Within this framework, or indeed this frame of mind, it would be expected that other branches of Yugoslav industry considered crucial for national defense might have had a similar history, which dramatically changes the perspective for any future research on Yugoslav labor history.

121

 AJ, 177 SKNE, f. 4. Statement of Nenad Raišić to the Commission for establishing the causes of the accident, October 17, 1958. 122  Rahmija Kadenić et al., eds., Za pobedu i slobodu: Završne operacije za oslobođenje Jugoslavije [For victory and freedom: The final operations for the liberation of Yugoslavia] (Belgrade: Centar oružanih snaga za strategijska istraživanja i studije “Maršal Tito”, 1986), 27.

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 305

2020.05.12. 19:28:00

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 306

2020.05.12. 19:28:00

PART IV WORKERS, PROTEST, AND REFORM

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 307

2020.05.12. 19:28:01

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 308

2020.05.12. 19:28:01

Strikes in Czechoslovakia, 1945–1968: Systems Analysis and the Debate over the Causes of the Collapse of State Socialism Peter Heumos

T

he following essay examines the historical and sociopolitical conflicts that triggered worker strikes and/or created the preconditions for such strikes in Czechoslovakia between 1945 and 1968. Even before the communist takeover in February 1948, the rules governing labor disputes—including the legal foundations for such disputes—had eroded so much that from this perspective, the Prague coup cannot be considered a turning point in Czechoslovakian history. In fact, the causes of labor unrest before and after February 1948 are entirely indistinguishable. The first communist constitution in Czechoslovakia, adopted in May 1948, did not explicitly forbid strikes; even the constitution of 1960, which officially proclaimed the transition to communism, included no such prohibition. In fact, the legality of strikes had been revoked as a result of industrial conflicts before 1948, because the authorities had to make up for downtime due to labor disputes whose aims did not lie within the boundaries of the state’s wage and general social policy.1 After the communist takeover, party jargon equated strikes with “terrorist actions” and “bloody deeds” while evoking the semantics of the “class enemy” and “imperialist agents.”2 Until 1953, the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia (Komunistická strana Československa, or KSČ) was quick to take repressive actions against labor disputes, intervening with overwhelming force when strikes garnered public support and generated widespread unrest. In such cases, the party relied on the police and armed militias. When a demonstration in

1

 Všeodborový archiv (hereafter VOA), Prague, ÚRO-Org., box 28, no. 125. Compilation of strikes in the area of individual district union councils for the period October 1–December 31, 1947. 2  Národní archiv (hereafter NA), Prague, 100/24, vol. 59, no. 927, 1948. Overview of strikes, acts of terrorism and murder, subversive activities and sabotage, rumors and graffiti, July 1–September 6, 1948.

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 309

2020.05.12. 19:28:01

310

Peter Heumos

Plzeň spread beyond the industrial sector in early June 1953, the party even called up units from the border guard and army.3 Nevertheless, many questions concerning strikes remain unanswered, especially with reference to sanctions against striking workers. For example, it is still unclear how many striking workers were sent to forced labor camps, where roughly 10,000 workers had been imprisoned between 1948 and 1954.4 It is estimated that workers accounted for 25–30 percent of the approximately 30,000 individuals prosecuted in the state courts in Prague and Brno for political crimes between 1948 and 1952. However, the number prosecuted for strike participation cannot be definitively determined,5 although the disturbances and strikes in Brno in November 1951, as well as the strikes that followed the radical currency reform of early June 1953, have been thoroughly scrutinized.6 Judicial terrorism against strike participants was not uncommon during this period. For example, a  machine worker who helped to organize the 1953 Plzeň strike was sentenced that summer by a local court to fourteen years in prison.7 In the years following the 1953 currency reform, however, such extreme measures were clearly in decline. This transformation is also evidenced by the calmer tone adopted in internal party reports on strikes after 1954.8 For this essay on strikes, the term “state socialism” will also be utilized when speaking of the democratically constituted Third Republic (1945– 1948).9 Three work stoppages in 1946, 1948, and 1949 had implications for several labor issues that persisted until 1968, in particular the relationship between the factory councils and the trade unions, and how workers tried to influence this relationship. These three examples also highlight shared characteristics of industrial conflicts between state-socialist and Western societ3

 Kevin McDermott, “Popular Resistance in Communist Czechoslovakia: The Plzeň Uprising, June 1953,” Contemporary European History 19, no. 4 (2010): 287–307. 4  No references are made in the literature. See Mečislav Borák und Dušan Janák, Tábory nucené práce v ČSR 1948–1954 [Forced labor camps in Czechoslovakia, 1948–1954] (Šenov: Tilia, 1996). 5  This estimate is based on a survey of the registries of both state courts. 6  On the November 1951 disturbances, see Jiří Pernes, Brno 1951: Příspěvek k  dějinám protikomunistického odporu na Moravě [Brno 1951: A  contribution to the history of ­anti-Communist resistance in Moravia] (Prague: Ústav pro soudobé dějiny, 1997). On the 1953 strikes, see McDermott, “Popular Resistance in Communist Czechoslovakia.” 7  Archiv ministerstva vnitra (hereafter AMV), Prague. Měnová reforma, H-193. Reports of the district administration of the State Security Service in Plzeň to the head office of the State Security Service in Prague concerning the trials against demonstrators from July 13–17, 20–21, and 22, 1953. 8  NA, 19/13, vol. 3, no. 17, 1954. Report on three construction workers’ strikes in Prague, October 14, 1954. 9  Supporting documents are available from the author.

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 310

2020.05.12. 19:28:01

Strikes in Czechoslovakia, 1945–1968

311

ies, which this essay in turn will address against the backdrop of the debate over the causes of state socialism’s demise.

Socialist Competition and the Postwar Industrial Offensive The first example of industrial conflict, a strike at the Plzeň Škoda Works in September 1946,10 is linked to the postwar economic reconstruction of Czechoslovakia. During this rebuilding process, the KSČ—although not yet in power—succeeded in introducing elements of industrial “socialist organization.” This primarily entailed the immediate politicization of the production process with the aim of improving work performance. Its introduction sparked mass resistance, and in the wake of the 1948 coup this resistance turned into a nationwide boycott. Workers’ protests predominantly derived from the fact that the introduction of higher production targets frequently meant an increase in hard physical labor.11 The political dramatization of the “Labor Front,” which peaked with the onset of the Cold War in the early 1950s, has been represented in great detail elsewhere, such as in studies on socialist competition, the shock labor movement, the coalfield and harvesting brigades, and the Subbotniks.12 Consequently, a few summary remarks will suffice here.

10

 NA, MPSP, A II, A III/dův. 1946–1950 (transcript).  In 1961, 47 percent of all Czechoslovak industries still relied on manual labor; in the mining industry, the percentage was 55 percent, and in machine shops it was 65 percent. See Peter Heumos, “Grenzen des sozialistischen Produktivismus: Arbeitsinitiativen und Arbeitsverhalten in tschechoslowakischen Industriebetrieben in den fünfziger Jahren” [Limits of socialist productivism: Work initiatives and labor behavior in Czechoslovak industrial enterprises in the 1950s], in Arbeit im Sozialismus—Arbeit im Postsozialismus: Erkundungen zum Arbeitsleben im östlichen Europa [Work in Socialism—Work in Post-Socialism: Exploring the working life of Eastern Europe], ed. Klaus Roth (Münster: LIT Verlag, 2004), 211. 12  See Peter Heumos, “Wenn sie sieben Turbinen schaffen, kommt die Musik: Sozialistische Arbeitsinitiativen und egalitaristische Defensive in tschechoslowakischen Industriebetrieben und Bergwerken 1945–1965” [When you create seven turbines, the music comes: Socialist work initiatives and egalitarian defense in Czechoslovak industrial plants and mines, 1945–1965], in Sozialgeschichtliche Kommunismusforschung: Tschechoslowakei, Polen, Ungarn und DDR 1948–1968; Vorträge der Tagung des Collegium Carolinum in Bad Wiessee vom 22. bis 24. November 2002 [Social-historical communism research: Czechoslovakia, Poland, Hungary, and the GDR, 1948–1968; Lectures at the meeting of the Collegium Carolinum in Bad Wiessee, November 22–24, 2002], ed. Christiane Brenner and Peter Heumos (Munich: Oldenbourg 2005), 133–77. 11

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 311

2020.05.12. 19:28:01

312

Peter Heumos

The strike at the Plzeň Škoda Works highlights just how controversial the politicization of industrial work was. Unlike in Plzeň, the labor front at the national level did not divide along party lines between communist and non-communist workers. For example, in forty-three precision engineering factories, accounting for almost 70,000 employees, only half of the workers organized into communist labor cells in late 1949 participated in socialist competitions.13 As such, rather than adherence or non-adherence to the party position, what is key for understanding worker resistance to state-organized production quotas is the KSČ’s adherence to the slogan, “Socialism means much work,” which since the Russian Revolution had become the prevailing representation of the socialist agenda. As early as 1946, factory workers had abandoned the optimistic assumption that piecework would be abolished in the new postwar era.14 This was also true for miners, who wryly noted in 1946 that the “old broom” had not gone away, but had merely changed hands; the trade union bosses had become the “new bourgeoisie.”15 As one factory director explained in January 1948, workers still perceived supervisors, industrial organizations, and government institutions as “exploiters.”16 In 1949, when the textile industry began requiring workers to operate multiple machines, workers balked at the demand, exclaiming that they had already fought against “profiteering” during the “era of private capitalism.”17 With the transition to economic planning measured in physical units (accounting for roughly 80 percent of industrial production until 1952), there was increased criticism of socialist work initiatives because they prioritized gross production at the expense of quality. Work competition statutes maintained the demand for shorter production times.18 The Škoda Works factory council objected to the use of shock workers in 1950 on the grounds that their work was “substandard”; they preferred those who did their jobs more slowly but delivered higher quality work.19 A year later, this objection

13

 NA, 014/11, vol. 6, no. 5, 1950/2. Socialist competition in precision engineering.  VOA, ÚRO-Soc., box 7, no. 7/6 d. Statement of the Prague Institute for Labor Standards. 15  VOA, NHK, box 33, no. 101. Investigation into social, labor-organizational, and labor-economic conditions in the František mine in Přívoz, near Ostrava (1946). 16  Státní oblastní archiv (hereafter SOA), Prague, ČKD-Ú, box 5, fascicle 59. Director of a machine-building factory in Modřany to the general director of the Bohemian-Moravian Engineering Works, January 22, 1948. 17  VOA, ÚRO-Před., box 5, no. 17. Report on the activities of the Textile and Leather Workers’ Union for the Board of the Central Council of Trade Unions, June 1, 1949. 18  VOA, Strojírenství, box 4 A, fascicle 8. Principles of socialist competition in heavy engineering. 19  Škoda-Archiv, Plzeň. ZVIL 1515, PV 1287. Minutes of the meeting of the workers’ council and the ROH group with the instructors of the individual workshops, February 1, 1950. 14

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 312

2020.05.12. 19:28:01

Strikes in Czechoslovakia, 1945–1968

313

took on a more concrete form when a socialist competition champion was removed from the list of candidates for upcoming elections to the Škoda factory council.20 In the mining industry, clashes over competition also assumed concrete forms.21 Miners were outraged by the fast work pace, which resulted in the neglect or even complete abandonment of basic security measures, often with disastrous consequences.22 Such reservations about faster work pace and compromised work quality largely emanated from the ranks of skilled workers.23 Introducing competitions and importing work methods from the Soviet Union in order to create a devoted “producer class” flew in the face of traditional training, experience, and skill sets.24 Nonetheless, not all workers objected to the new methods. Between 1948 and 1960, an estimated half million workers with minimal industrial background had flocked to the factories.25 Many of these less skilled workers supported the socialist competition, because for the first time they saw members from their ranks being honored for their work. For example, when accepting her medal for outstanding work performance at the 1953 Congress for the Defenders of Peace, pig feed farmer Podařilová told the delegates that “no one” in the past had “noticed” her work.26 The conflict in factories over the restructuring and redeployment of labor collectives in connection with socialist competitions did not only take place behind the scenes. While the proponents of work initiatives triumphantly made it known that they had successfully entered and estab-

 Peter Heumos, “Works Council Elections in Czechoslovakia, 1948–1968,” in Voting for Hitler and Stalin: Elections under 20th Century Dictatorships, ed. Ralph Jessen and Hedwig Richter (Frankfurt and New York: Campus, 2011), 191. 21  VOA, ÚRO-Soc., box 109, fascicle 109/2. Report on the voluntary miners’ brigade in the Sokolov mine in Ostrava (1950). 22  VOA, ÚVOS-Horníci, box 59, 1956, fascicle 1. Report by the delegation of Comrade Krpec from the Ostrava-Karviná district, July 23–28, 1956. 23  There is no exact proof of this. To date, the statistic could only suggest that the shock workers were recruited to some degree from skilled workers. Of 602 shock workers between the Ninth Congress of the KSČ (May 1949) and June 1950, skilled workers comprised around 54 percent. NA, 100/1, vol. 14, no. 96. 24  VOA, NHK, box 33, no. 101. Investigation into social, labor-organizational, and labor-economic conditions in the František mine in Přívoz, near Ostrava (1946). 25  There is little comprehensive research on the qualification level of the industrial workforce. For an introduction, see Lenka Kalinová, “Vývoj struktury a postavení čs. průmyslových dělníků a hospodářsko-technických pracovníků v 50. letech” [Development of the structure and situation of Czechoslovak industrial workers and economic-technical personnel in the 1950s], Revue dějin socialismu (special issue 1968): 1025–62. 26  VOA, ÚRO-Org., box 137, no. 441. Report to the Board of the District Trade Union Council Liberec on the plenary sessions of the District Trade Union Councils and their dissolution, February 6, 1953. 20

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 313

2020.05.12. 19:28:01

314

Peter Heumos

lished themselves in the ranks of long-established worker cadres,27 their adversaries publicly denied their right to claim traditional job titles. For example, when Soviet Stakhanovite workers visited Czechoslovakia in 1951, the experienced metal workers told their Soviet visitors that a worker named Svoboda, although he had broken every speed record for turning, was no turner.28 There is some evidence that the postwar industrial offensive, which involved the accelerated expansion of the armament industry, had already begun to wane during the first Five-Year Plan (1948–1953).29 The distribution of shock worker identification cards, which since 1949 had allowed holders to receive extra ration cards, was discontinued in March 1951. This was due to the fact that the number of ration cards had multiplied exponentially, as factory councils distributed them to shock workers as well as other workers.30 When party leaders became aware of this practice, they condemned the desecration of an honorable award. Realizing that its abuse jeopardized general provisioning, they terminated the program.31 The waning of the industrial offensive also meant fewer opportunities for upward mobility in the factory, which in practice meant shock workers moving into management positions based on their performance in socialist competitions. By 1952, this practice was no longer a mass phenomenon.32 Although “political control of the production process” sparked fewer public conflicts by the early 1950s, criticism of the politicization of production

27

 Škoda-Archiv, PV KSČ 2/238. Report on the socialist competition in the Lenin works [Škoda works] in Plzeň for the municipal committee of the CPT, April 1, 1958. 28  VOA, ÚRO-Před., box 9, no. 126/2/8. Speeches of the Soviet Stakhanovite workers at the extraordinary meeting of the board of the Central Council of Trade Unions on May 7, 1951. 29  Neither the number of socialist competitions nor the number of workers who participated in them can be verified, because it is unclear to what extent the relevant statistics were faked. The internal correspondence between union officials suggests that the faking of statistics was generally taken for granted. VOA, ÚVOS-Horníci, box 10, section 2, 1949. Activity of union mining groups. 30  VOA, ÚRO-Org., box 103, no. 353. Extract from the reports of the instructors of the district union councils, February 23, 1950. 31  NA, 02/4, vol. 27, no. 163. Report on the Development of Socialist Competition, December 19, 1950. 32  The sources on this point are sparse. Between 1949 and 1951, the number of workers (male and female) in mid-level technical and administrative positions rose to 1,627; an additional eighty-two workers undertook “responsible managerial positions.” Škoda-Archiv, box 457, no. 432. From 1952 to 1968, one finds in the archives only irregular evidence of isolated cases where workers advanced internally based on their outstanding achievements in socialist competitions.

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 314

2020.05.12. 19:28:01

Strikes in Czechoslovakia, 1945–1968

315

remained virulent.33 To this end, in 1968 trade unions demanded that the reformed KSČ henceforth refrain from any direct intervention in the production process.34

The Factory Councils and the Party The second example begins with a strike that took place at the end of September 1948 at the Bohemian-Moravian Glassworks, located in the village of Krásno nad Bečvou.35 It can be classified as an offshoot of the 1947 wave of strikes, when approximately half of the 103 strikes were responses to the conversion of the wage and labor system. To this end, workers at the Krásno nad Bečvou factory had stopped production because their trade union representatives had not been allowed to participate in the restructuring of the wage and labor system.36 As early as December 1945, the worker representatives knew from firsthand experience that neither party leaders nor top officials in the unified trade union organization were responsive to their concerns. When they demanded access to the deliberations on wage brackets of the Revolutionary Trade Union Movement (Revoluční odborové hnutí, or ROH), the national unified trade union organization, the worker representatives were immediately dismissed.37 Party and state security officials did not attend the second round of negotiations; whether their absence stemmed from the fact that they had already ensured that no explosive issues would be on the table cannot be de33

 In addition to these arguments, it should be noted that both plant management and workers were notorious for exploiting material shortages and supply problems to avoid holding socialist competitions. VOA, ÚRO-VMP, box 2, 1953. Reports of the brigades and reports on socialist contests; Škoda-Archiv, ROH 16, PV 164. Meeting of the works committee of the ROH (smithy), February 22, 1957. 34  See Peter Heumos, “Arbeitermacht im Staatssozialismus: Das Beispiel der Tschechowakei 1968” [Workers’ power in state socialism: The example of Czechoslovakia 1968], in Die letzte Chance? 1968 in Osteuropa [The last chance?: 1968 in Eastern Europe], ed. Angelika Ebbinghaus (Hamburg: VSA, 2008), 59. 35  Two letters from the Central Directorate of the National Association of Glass Works to the Office of the President of the Republic concerning a  strike at the plant in Krásno nad Bečvou that took place at the end of September 1948. Archiv Kanceláře presidenta republiky, Prague, no. 2339/C. 36  See Peter Heumos, “Zum industriellen Konflikt in der Tschechoslowakei 1945–1968” [On industrial conflict in Czechoslovakia, 1945–1968], in Arbeiter im Staatssozialismus: Ideologischer Anspruch und soziale Wirklichkeit [Workers in state socialism: Ideological claim and social reality], ed. Peter Hübner, Christoph Kleßmann, and Klaus Tenfelde (Cologne, Weimar, and Vienna: Böhlau, 2005), 475–76. 37  VOA, ÚRO-Soc., box 3, no. 2/9/2, 1945. District Trade Union Council Brno to the Central Council of Trade Unions, December 13, 1945.

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 315

2020.05.12. 19:28:01

316

Peter Heumos

termined from the two reports on the Krásno nad Bečvou strike. However, those reports do indicate that no efforts were made at that time to normalize the regulation of strikes. The role of state security organs, whose local representative in Krásno nad Bečvou led the first round of negotiations, shows that chaos prevailed when dealing with strikes. In the fall of 1947, state security representatives had told construction workers in Žilina to push for their strike demands.38 But after 1948, the state security intervened in labor disputes so vigorously at times that the KSČ leadership claimed the security organs demonstrated too little “class consciousness.”39 In early summer 1953, party leaders again demanded that the state security more closely toe the party line, claiming that in its regulation of strikes it disregarded political aspects and merely addressed “administrative” measures.40 In spite of this claim, the KSČ itself had no idea how to handle worker protests. Between 1948 and 1953, the party largely relied on repressive measures. But their heavy-handed tactics, as party officials learned, were ineffective in quelling workers’ desire to strike; of the 401 verified strikes between 1945 and 1968, over half (215) occurred between 1948 and 1953.41 During this period, the KSČ also tried employing “soft” strategies, which included dispatching high-ranking party functionaries to negotiate directly with striking workers.42 However, the paternalistic self-fashioning of the KSČ during these on-site negotiations inadvertently gave a  higher value to strike activity, one that could not be confined to the particular place or incident. Consequently, in the early summer of 1957, top members of the KSČ asked the communist leadership in Beijing how it handled strikes. Their Chinese comrades advised them not to intervene too early, but to wait until the concerns and needs of the striking workers had crystallized.43 At this time, the KSČ leadership was already following a strategy similar to the Chinese formula. 38

 VOA, Organizační oddělení, box 28, no. 125. Letter from the District Trade Union Council Žilina to the Central Council of Trade Unions, December 31, 1947. 39  Peter Heumos, “Industriearbeiter in der Tschechoslowakei 1945–1968: Ergebnisse eines Forschungsprojekts” [The industrial worker in Czechoslovakia, 1945–1968: Results of a research project], Bohemia 44 (2003): 163. 40  NA, 02/3, vol. 40, no. 224, June 22, 1953. Report on the investigation of the work of the company party organization in the workshops of the Czechoslovak State Railways in Česká Lípa on May 21 and 22, 1953. 41  Heumos, “Zum industriellen Konflikt,” 476. Given the state of current research on strikes in Czechoslovakia, these statistics will soon be obsolete, especially for the period of the first Five-Year Plan. 42  NA, 014/12, vol. 24, no. 869, 1956/10. Report on the situation in the North Bohemian lignite mining area. 43  NA, 02/2, vol. 143, no. 188. Guidelines of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China to settle the question of workers’ and students’ strikes, June 18, 1957.

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 316

2020.05.12. 19:28:01

Strikes in Czechoslovakia, 1945–1968

317

On July 6, 1953, a few weeks after the strike wave that followed the currency reform, both the trade union and party leadership agreed that in future trade union leaders should assume full responsibility for addressing the two central issues plaguing industry: absenteeism and work fluctuation.44 What this meant, it soon transpired, was that henceforth the trade unions had to settle their own labor disputes. The trade unions should “hammer into the heads” of the workers that they were not allowed to strike “without the unions.”45 In 1946, experienced trade unionists already doubted that the ROH, established a year earlier, was a viable solution. They worried that different worker subcultures and occupational identities46 could not be reconciled within a new organization dedicated to socialist values.47 In fact, “attachment” to the unified workers’ organization remained low because, as in other socialist nations, it did not offer institutionally governed interest mediation. Instead, it primarily served as a means of politically indoctrinating workers and upholding the legitimacy of the system. Until 1953, trade union leaders would not openly acknowledge this organizational shortcoming,48 even though the negative consequences of fusing the trade union apparatus with its grassroots organizations had been apparent long before then.49  On the dispute between the KSČ and ROH, see Dalibor Státník, Sankční právo v padesátých letech: Vládní nařízení o opatřeních proti fluktuaci a absenci č. 52/1953 Sb. [Legal sanctions in the fifties: The government regulation on measures against fluctuation and absence no. 52/1953] (Prague: Ústav pro soudobé dějiny, 1994). 45  Quotation from President Zápotocký’s speech on June 11, 1953. For the complete text of the speech, see Dana Musilová, Měnová reforma 1953 a její sociální důsledky: Studie a dokumenty [The currency reform of 1953 and its social consequences: Study and documents] (Prague: Ústav pro soudobé dějiny, 1994), 123–38. 46  See Peter Heumos, “Die Arbeiterschaft in der Ersten Tschechoslowakischen Republik: Elemente der Sozialstruktur, organisatorischen Verfassung und politischen Kultur” [Workers in the First Czechoslovak Republic: Elements of social structure, organizational constitution, and political culture], Bohemia 29 (1988): 58. 47  VOA, ÚRO-Soc., box 7, no. 7/12 h. Letter from the CC of the Association of Healthcare Workers to the Central Social Policy Commission of the Central Council of Trade Unions, June 11, 1946. 48  It was stated at the board meeting of the Central Committee of Trade Unions on May 28, 1953, that they had control over “broad trade union activity in the factories”; however, this position of power is “unfortunately formal.” VOA, ÚRO-Před., box 16, no. 177. Minutes of the meeting of the Board of the Central Council of Trade Unions, May 28, 1953. 49  See Peter Heumos, “Betriebsräte, Betriebsausschüsse der Einheitsgewerkschaft und Werktätigenräte: Zur Frage der Partizipation in der tschechoslowakischen Industrie vor und im Jahr 1968” [Workers’ councils, workers’ councils of the unified trade union, and working people’s councils: On the issue of participation in Czechoslovak industry before and in the year of 1968], in 1968 und die Arbeiter: Studien zum “proletarischen Mai” in Europa [1968 and the workers: Studies on the “proletarian May” in Europe], ed. Bernd Gehrke and Gerd-Rainer Horn (Hamburg: VSA, 2007), 131. 44

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 317

2020.05.12. 19:28:01

318

Peter Heumos

When the Nazi occupation regime began to collapse, the worker factory councils that had been driven underground resurfaced. With their calls for a level of worker participation that far exceeded the provisions of the interwar republic, they garnered the support of most workers. The factory council movement supported radical democracy in factories, meaning equal decisionmaking power for workers and managers. On the question of distribution of power in the workplace, the works councils adopted cooperative socialist ideas that had already incorporated strong anti-state sentiment under Austro-Hungarian rule. After World War I, these ideas led to a wave of industrial socialization in Czechoslovakia, and during the interwar era, cooperative socialism remained the decisive programmatic element of workers’ actions, especially in industrial disputes. With the goal of overthrowing the “capitalist classes,” the factory councils allied early on with the KSČ, which they regarded as the guarantor of social emancipation and justice.50 For their part, the KSČ and the ROH did everything in their power to bring this factory council movement under their influence. In the factories, the unified trade union organization established co-rule with their trade union groups, which formally ensured the dominance of their recognized alliance over the factory councils. This system of co-sovereignty officially lasted until 1959; in actuality, however, the trade union groups were toeing the line of the factory councils by the beginning of the 1950s at the latest.51 In the presidential decree on factory councils from October 24, 1945, which established the exclusive responsibility of the managing director, the trade unions’ claim to participation in factory councils was limited to “productive” participation, and trade union leadership was subjected to the principle of collective responsibility. Although the factory council movement signaled from the outset that their goals were at cross-purposes with those of state socialism, the movement nevertheless matured under communist rule. Their recipe for success simply entailed taking charge in the various factory institutions, building both formal and informal structures aimed at protecting the factory from centralist intervention. As already noted, the factory councils’ strategy included supporting resistance to socialist competition. Linked to this strategy was an emerging development at the shop floor level that encapsulated the prevailing industrial dispute: namely the normalization of operating 50

 See the protocol of the constituent meeting of the Revolutionary Factory Council of the Škoda-Works in Plzeň on May 10, 1945. Škoda-Archive, Plzeň 503, 45 A. 51  See Peter Heumos, “Zum Verhalten von Arbeitern in industriellen Konflikten: Tschechoslowakei und DDR im Vergleich bis 1968” [On the behavior of workers in industrial conflicts: Czechoslovakia and the GDR compared to 1968], in Kommunismus in der Krise: Die Entstalinisierung 1956 und ihre Folgen [Communism in crisis: The de-Stalinization of 1956 and its consequences], ed. Roger Engelmann, Thomas Großbölting, and Hermann Wentker (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2008), 412.

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 318

2020.05.12. 19:28:01

Strikes in Czechoslovakia, 1945–1968

319

processes and compensation. This development revealed that the centralized control of industrial production had failed. Workers made the most of their position of power in factories: for example, if good cheap bread was not available, a chemical worker in Ústí nad Labem explained that it would impact the planned increase of labor standards.52 With their growing influence over factory disciplinary commissions, the factory councils curtailed the criminal prosecution of workers. When the factory councils wanted to set an example after the June 1953 strikes, they rejected the establishment of Soviet-style honor courts, or were so dilatory in establishing such courts that their response could be termed a boycott.53 The 1961 law governing people’s courts in the plants, which aimed to raise the work ethic by encouraging denunciations from fellow workers, foundered due to opposition by the new trade union committees that had emerged from the Association of Factory Councils and Factory Unions in 1959.54 For the factory councils, it appeared a matter of urgency to limit the influence of communist cells in the factory, which until 1953 had endeavored to enforce their claim to leadership.55 Factory councils protested against the “leading role of the party” in the factory, and these protests occasionally garnered support from factory management: for example, at the United Steelworks in Kladno in 1949.56 Over the course of this conflict between factory councils and communist cells, the advantage slowly shifted in favor of the factory councils. Consequently, until mid-1953 they succeeded in limiting the communist cells’ claim to power at the Plzeň Škoda Works to their constitutionally assigned task: management control.57

52

 NA, 014/11, vol. 6, no. 70, 1950/12. Information Service 46/1950, 3.  VOA, f. f. Minutes of the Central Committee of the Trade Union Federation for Heavy and General Machinery, September 1–December 12, 1953 (for the meeting of the Central Committee of the Union on September 1, 1953). 54  Peter Heumos, “Aspekte des sozialen Milieus der Industriearbeiterschaft in der Tschechoslowakei vom Ende des Zweiten Weltkrieges bis zur Reformbewegung der sechziger Jahre” [Aspects of the social milieu of industrial workers in Czechoslovakia from the end of World War II to the reform movement of the sixties], Bohemia 42 (2001): 341–42. 55  See the report of the Olomouc District Trade Union Council to the Central Council of Trade Unions about the conditions in the Moravian county of Jeseník, April 4, 1950. VOA, KOR, box 14/1950, no. 59. 56  SOA, SONP Kladno, 1949–1960, no. 10. Minutes of the conference of the cadre and social policy department [of the United Steel Mills Kladno] on the board of the company, March 15, 1949. 57  Škoda-Archiv, ZVIL 945/ZU 507. Investigation in the Blechpress factory ( June 1953). As a general rule, this limitation on the influence of communist factory cells ended with the Tenth Congress of the KSČ in 1954. See Karel Kaplan, Proměny české společnosti 1948–1960: Část první [Changes in Czech society, 1948–1960: Part 1] (Prague: Ústav pro soudobé dějiny, 2007), 203. 53

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 319

2020.05.12. 19:28:01

320

Peter Heumos

Factory councils and workers criticized the unified trade union organization, ROH, as a colossus that had lost touch with the reality of the industrial workplace.58 “Your policies are worthless,” a factory council chairman in Ružomberok complained in November 1951 to an instructor for the Žilina District Council of Trade Unions; “here in the factory, we need to do things in a way that reflects our conditions.”59 In the long run, any change in dealing with industrial conflicts had to be aligned with the insistence on grassroots regulations. As the KSČ withdrew from the strike issue as a result of the aforementioned agreement of July 6, 1953, the intervention of high-level trade union bodies also became rare, with a tendency toward finding in-house solutions. In October 1953, strike negotiations recovered a  traditional method of resolution by introducing the implicit acceptance of collective bargaining methods.60 In June 1957, the appropriate trade union officials successfully conducted strike negotiations without any KSČ involvement for the first time.61 This progress, however, was not linear; when another industrial dispute erupted a few months later, the state security attempted to exploit the conflict for its own purposes, in much the same way as it had in previous years.62 Finally, in March 1960, a trade union at a factory in eastern Bohemia was in a position to pull all the strings and negotiated a settlement with management without involving high-ranking trade union organs.63 In 1968, factory committees wanted to formalize this informal acquisition of power and called for the Central Council of Trade Unions (Ústřední rada odborů, or ÚRO) to intervene in favor of a statutory right of veto. In addition, they argued that the trade union’s right to call a strike without the approval of higher-ranking trade union bodies should be firmly entrenched in the collective contract.64 58

 As an example, see the records for both meetings of the board of the factory council of Gottwaldov District on May 7–8, 1956. VOA, ÚRO-Org., box 159, no. 530/1, supplement 1. 59  VOA, ÚRO-Org., box 105, no. 382. Report of the instructor of the county union council Žilina Pistovčák, November 1951 (no date). 60  On a strike in the mining industry in Rožňava, see NA, 014/12, vol. 10, no. 132, 1953/10. 61  VOA, ÚRO-PaM, box 8. Reports of the payroll department. Record for Comrade Hnilička, June 20, 1957. Work stoppage in the foundry of the national company Agrostroj Jičín. 62  NA, 014/12, vol. 31, no. 92928, 1958/2. Walkout in the Defenders of Peace mine in Hovorany. 63  VOA, Strojírenství, box 49, 1960, fascicle 3. Report on the investigation of the reasons for the stoppage in the processing workshops of the national company THZ Výsoké Mýto, Slatiňany, March 4, 1960. 64  On these two demands, see VOA, ÚRO-Sekr., box 357, no. 1390 VII. Suggestions and topics from the letters and resolutions of the organizations and members of the ROH (edited until April 3, 1968).

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 320

2020.05.12. 19:28:01

Strikes in Czechoslovakia, 1945–1968

321

The gradual “decentralization” of the labor dispute raises multiple questions. It is generally assumed that in the wake of the convulsions of 1953, Moscow—with its so-called New Course, the liberalization of state socialism—had decreed a type of civilizational turning point.65 Apart from the fact that this assumption is untrue—at least for the German Democratic Republic (GDR), and its factory conditions in particular66—the assumption is once again made with regard to Czechoslovakia that social change in state socialism was dependent on the party’s decisions. If one considers that strike frequency in Czechoslovakia fell rapidly after 1953, from 218 strikes between 1948 and 1953 to seventy-two strikes between 1954 and 1959,67 then the logical assumption is that the drop in the frequency of strikes correlates with the transfer of sole responsibility for governing strikes to the factories.68 Accordingly, the convergence of several developmental strands made the factory a bastion against the power apparatuses of both the party and the trade unions. The anti-centralist and anti-bureaucratic strategies employed, which zeroed in on the “lack of productivity” and the “degeneration” of high-level institutional arrangements,69 suggest that the factory councils wanted to transform the industrial sector into a network of state-free enclaves that could serve as models of operational autonomy.70 The libertarian socialist concept of factory councils was associated with the aforementioned right to participation, first formulated in Ostrava in 1947, which aimed at eliminating the divide between “management and execution.”71 The party

 For an example of this argument, see Joseph Rothschild, Return to Diversity: A Political History of East Central Europe since World War II (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989). 66  See Renate Hürtgen, “Konfliktverhalten der DDR-Arbeiterschaft und Staatsrepression im Wandel” [Conflicting behavior of the GDR workers and state repression in transition], in Hübner, Klessmann, and Tenefelde, Arbeiter im Staatssozialismus, 383–403. 67  Heumos, “Zum industriellen Konflikt,” 476. 68  Here, possible effects of the arbitration proceedings introduced in 1959 can be understood as a move from collective conflict resolution to individual conflict resolution. 69  Heumos, “Zum Verhalten von Arbeitern,” 427. 70  Peter Heumos, “Betriebsräte, Einheitsgewerkschaft und staatliche Unternehmensverwaltung: Anmerkungen zu einer Petition mährischer Industriearbeiter an die tschechoslowakische Regierung vom 8. Juni 1947” [Works councils, the unified trade union, and state enterprise administration: Notes on a petition by Moravian industrial workers to the Czechoslovak government of June 8, 1947], Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas 29 (1981): 215–45. 71  VOA, KOR Moravská Ostrava, box 1/1947, no. 13. Minutes of the working session of the board of the county trade union council on August 26, 1947, in Ostrava. 65

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 321

2020.05.12. 19:28:01

322

Peter Heumos

and trade unions identified this as “syndicalism,”72 which was true insofar as the factory councils rejected political parties, appreciated trade unionist-run educational work, and emphasized the equality of every type of “productive” work. If the factory councils became too rebellious, then talk within the party about “anarcho-syndicalist tendencies”73 was not unfounded: both the factory councils and the anarchists placed very little emphasis on policy statements or esoteric theories, rather working toward creating a new society within “the old enclosure.”74 The factory councils’ successes can also be seen in the denunciations of syndicalist actions by party and union officials, when factory councils in the 1950s started making the place and form of factory management a topic of debate. A trade union official in Lutín complained in 1950 that “[q]uestions of production were settled at factory council meetings.”75 By 1951, in the Prague District Trade Union Council’s sphere of influence, it was commonplace for factory councils “to have taken over the tasks of management.”76 In early 1956, the České Budějovice District Trade Union Council explained that throughout southern Bohemia, factory economists had been replaced by members of factory union organizations.77 In their dealings with management, factory councils benefited from the fact that by 1950, one-third of all plant directors were workers who had been promoted in the postwar era.78 Without this proximity in social status, the oft-cited planned production pacts—which compensated for the 72

 VOA, ÚRO-Před., box 21, no. 212/2/1. Appraisal of the annual general meetings of the Board of the Central Council of Trade Unions, January 13, 1955. The Reformed KPT of the Prague Spring also kept this name. Komunistická strana Československa: Pokus o reformu (říjen 1967—květen 1968) [The Communist Party of Czechoslovakia: Attempt at reform, October 1967–May 1968], ed. Jitka Vondrová et al. (Prague and Brno: Doplněk, 1999), document no. 76. 73  NA, 02/4, box 93, no. 105. Report of the Department of the CPC Central Committee for Party Organs, Trade Unions, and Youth on the Work of the Party in Mechanical Engineering of the District of Prague and Draft Decision of the Central Committee of the CPT, February 20, 1956. 74  Quoted in David Graeber, Frei von Herrschaft: Fragmente einer anarchistischen Anthropologie [Free from domination: Fragments of an anarchist anthropology] (Wuppertal: Peter Hammer Verlag, 2008), 31. In the mining industry of Czechoslovakia, especially in the north Bohemian area, the anarchists traditionally had strong support. 75  VOA, KOR, box 14/1950, no. 59. Report on the study of socialist competition. 76  VOA, ÚRO-Org., box 112, no. 392/21. Report on the work of the instructors of the District Trade Union Council [Prague], December 12, 1951. 77  VOA, KOR, box 75/1956, no. 138/3. Minutes of the Plenary Session of the District Trade Union Council, České Budějovice, May 18, 1956. 78  Lenka Kalinová, “Ke změnám ve složení hospodářského aparátu ČSR v 50. letech” [On the changes in the composition of the economic apparatus of the Czechoslovak Republic in the 1950s], in Stránkami soudobýchdějin: Sborník statí k pětašedesátinám historika

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 322

2020.05.12. 19:28:01

Strikes in Czechoslovakia, 1945–1968

323

impositions of socialist “productivism” by making concessions on wage and work standards79—could hardly have worked.80 All in all, the position of the management was weak; its members could never be sure if they would survive the next political purge.81 Many strikes were aimed directly at management; for instance, in cases when measures were implemented without prior consultation with workers. Such examples include, but are not limited to, the strikes in Chomutov in 1950, Hostivař in 1951, Plzeň in 1953, and both Znojmo and Vsetín in 1956.82 Notwithstanding the disputes, the recurring theme of this power struggle was the assertion of egalitarian objectives by factory union councils or their successor organizations. Far more than the KSČ—which repeatedly deferred its egalitarian goals in favor of differentiating performance and wage levels for the workforce—factory councils remained focused on the elimination of injustice, “which to date has been committed above all against the most vulnerable workers.”83 Factory councils first turned their attention to the issue of supplemental wages. Until the mid-1950s, supplemental wages—such as premiums, bonuses, and overtime—accounted for roughly 50 percent of total wages. Since the distribution of supplemental wages was decided at the factory level, it was an obvious starting point for the battle against wage inequality.84 The growing control exercised by factory councils over the organization of labor, as well as the increased cooperation between factory council wage commissions and plant compensation Karla Kaplana [Scroll through the history of the times: Anthology for the 65th birthday of the historian Karel Kaplan], ed. Karel Jech (Prague: Ústav pro soudobé dějiny, 1993), 149–57. 79  Peter Heumos, “Der Himmel ist hoch, und Prag ist weit!: Sekundäre Machtverhältnisse und organisatorische Entdifferenzierung in tschechoslowakischen Industriebetrieben 1945–1968” [The sky is high, and Prague is far!: Secondary power relations and organizational de-differentiation in Czechoslovak industrial enterprises, 1945–1968], in Vernetzte Improvisationen: Gesellschaftliche Subsysteme in Ostmitteleuropa und in der DDR [Connected improvisations: Social subsystems in East-Central Europe and the GDR], ed. Annette Schuhmann (Cologne, Weimar, and Vienna: Böhlau, 2008), 22–24. 80  VOA, KOR, box 75/1956, no. 138/1. Assessment of the all-union activists of the district officials from July 6–20, 1956, in all districts of the České Budějovice district. 81  On this, see Kalinová, “Ke změnám ve složení hospodářského aparátu ČSR v 50. letech.” 82  VOA, ÚRO-Org., box 103, no. 353. Excerpt from the reports of the instructors of the district trade union councils (Kreisgewerkschaftsrat Prag); VOA, ÚRO-Org., box 105, no. 382. Report of the instructor of the District Trade Union Council Prague, January 1951; Škoda Archive, ZVIL 1452/PV 382. Report on the progress of the review of standards, January 1953; VOA, ÚRO-PaM, box 8. Reports from the wages department. 83  VOA, ÚRO-Soc., box 1, no. 1/6, 1945. Resolution of the trade union organizations in the Brno Arms Works, July 12, 1945. 84  VOA, ÚRO-Sekr., box 76, no. 672. Report on measures to remedy deficiencies in pay (1955).

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 323

2020.05.12. 19:28:01

324

Peter Heumos

departments, facilitated the leveling of income differences. Overtime, accrued primarily during šturmovština—recurrent, regular forced accelerated work actions instituted to meet planned targets—was reserved for those workers who had to get by with “starvation wages.” Assigning easier performance targets to lesser-qualified workers served to bolster their wages. Premiums also counterbalanced differences between wage brackets.85 In this context, protests against the higher salaries of industry management were common. Accordingly, selecting a “second capitalist” as a plant director was declared undesirable in 1958 at the Plzeň Škoda Works.86 The trade unions rallied against the “unhealthy and petty bourgeois tendencies” of factory wage policy more vehemently than the KSČ;87 nevertheless, they could do little about it. The conflict between the trade unions and the factory councils initially became acute in 1965 with the introduction of economic reforms that were tied to the wage differentiating policy.88 Workers criticized the proposed reforms because they clearly favored management in the distribution of factory profits.89 Workers in Bratislava were the first to protest,90 followed by a large wave of protests prior to 1967 in eastern Slovakia,91 which then spilled over into Bohemia and Moravia.92 At the factory, the new wage concept submitted to grassroots union or-

85

 VOA, ÚRO-Sekr. II, box 66, no. 215/1. Report on the progress of the activity of the chairman of the wage commission at the works committees of the Trade Union of employees of the smelters and ore mines and the head of the wages department of the smelter in Ostrava county, September 14, 1956; VOA, Fascicles Standards Review on the basis of the Government Decision of July 14, 1950 (without archival signature). Report from the Department of Wages and Labor of the County Trade Union Council Liberec for the Central Council of Trade Unions of January 26, 1951; VOA, ÚRO-Před., box 56, no. 355 III/3. Materials for the meeting of the Board of the Central Council of Trade Unions, October 31, 1961. 86  Škoda-Archiv, ROH 4/PV 696. Minutes of the plenary session of the Corporate Committee and the chairmen of the ROH committees, July 1, 1958. 87  See Report from the Department of Wages and Labor of the County Trade Union Council Liberec for the Central Council of Trade Unions of January 26, 1951. 88  VOA, ÚRO-Před., box 77, no. 424 I/2. Report on the course of experimental testing of the perfected system of economic steering in selected enterprises (for the meeting of the Board of the Central Council of Trade Unions on November 17, 1965). 89  Ibid. 90  Ibid. 91  VOA, ÚRO-Před., box 88, no. 453. Evaluation of the Annual General Meetings of ROH’s Enterprise Organizations in 1967 (for the meeting of the Board of the Central Council of Trade Unions on June 15, 1967). 92  VOA, ÚRO-Před., box 94, no. 450/1. Information for members of the Board of the Central Council of Trade Unions on the current situation in some trade union bodies and factories (April 20, 1968).

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 324

2020.05.12. 19:28:01

Strikes in Czechoslovakia, 1945–1968

325

ganizations often had not been negotiated.93 The KSČ had thought that skilled workers would be pleased with the new wage policy: this assumption proved to be wrong. However, even skilled workers such as the violin makers in Malešov clung to their egalitarian orientation, viewing the 1966 change in the wage policy as an “action against the workers.”94 During the Prague Spring, the tone of the debate on wage policy became more raucous. The KSČ action program from April 5, 1968, abandoned all pretenses of diplomacy, labelling the egalitarian wage policy as the decisive brake on economic growth and productivity. 95 “Egalitarianism,” according to the KSČ, favored “slobs” and “slackers” over the “self-sacrificing” workers, and “busy” lower-skilled workers over more skilled ones. The change in the wage policy reflected a growing belief within the KSČ that industrial management should be assigned a higher value. In 1964, the State Wage Commission began to discuss whether economic reform required strengthening the “authority of plant directors.”96 A year later, the KSČ Central Committee strongly advocated increasing the competencies of plant management personnel.97 The workers’ councils, whose founding in 1968 was spurred by the anticipated social implications of economic reform, were offered some degree of participation in factory decisions.98 However, the KSČ leadership made it clear that factory councils changed “nothing about the indivisible authority and legal power” of the plant management.99 Industrial management immediately took steps to reduce, or remove completely, the councils’ role as advisory organs for plant management.100 One of the typical workers’ complaints was the “dominance of technocratic management at the ground level of socialism.”101 In March 1968, the Avia air93

 VOA, ÚRO-Před., box 88, no. 451. Lessons learned from the work of the trade union organizations in carrying out pay leveling in the consumer goods industry (for the meeting of the Board of the Central Council of Unions on June 1, 1967). 94  VOA, ÚRO-Před., box 84, no. 440 II/1 (emphasis added). 95  Reproduced in Komunistická strana Československa, document no. 50. 96  VOA, ÚRO-Před., box 70, no. 405 I/5. Report of September 22, 1964, on the present forms of involvement of the trade union organs in awarding extraordinary wages. 97  VOA, ÚRO-Sekr., box 359, no. 1399 I/3. Suggestions for changes to the Labor Code due to resolutions of the Central Council of Trade Unions ( July 1968). 98  See Vladimír Fišera, ed., Workers’ Councils in Czechoslovakia, 1968–9: Documents and Essays (London: Allison & Busby, 1978). 99  For the actions program of the KSČ, see Komunistická strana Československa, document no. 50. 100  “První zkušenosti rad pracujících” [First experiences of the workers’ councils], Odborář 21, no. 23 (1968): 8. The contributor is not named, but was probably a union official. 101  From a declaration made by a North Moravian KSČ County Council Committee on the political situation, May 22, 1968, see Komunistická strana Československa, document no. 72.

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 325

2020.05.12. 19:28:01

326

Peter Heumos

craft factory in Prague demanded veto power for factory committees should the decisions of management infringe upon the rights of workers.102 That same month a  nationwide campaign began which, within a  few weeks, offered evidence of the unified trade union organization having “lost touch” with workers’ reality. By the end of May, the ROH collapsed under pressure from its factory organizations, disintegrating into twentyfive separate unions, which in turn faced increasing pressure to subdivide further into professional associations.103 In terms of participation, the Prague Spring did little for laborers. While the reformed KSČ announced that under its leadership the transition to “real working class power” had been completed,104 skepticism prevailed among workers. The reform movement did not give the impression, one unionist wrote in the fall of 1968, that it was serious about the question of “humanizing work” or “overcoming alienation.”105

Strikes, Participation, and Violence Our third example, beginning with the 1949 strike in Čadca, demonstrates that it was not only the state that resorted to the use of violence in strikes.106 Negotiations with union and party functionaries became occasions for violent action by striking workers.107 In fact, until the 1960s, violence remained an integral part of the “construction milieu” of large industrial projects. During the construction of the East Slovakian Iron Works in Košice, social conditions were “boiling over,” leading to thousands of workers repeatedly engaging in violent confrontations that quickly spread to other social milieus.108  Open letter of the aircraft factory from March 13, 1968, reproduced in Odborář 21, no. 7 (1968): 19. 103  VOA, ÚRO-Před., box 95, no. 471/5. Annex I to the report on the status of the negotiations and preparations for the distribution of trade union confederations (for the meeting of the Board of the Central Council of Trade Unions on June 3, 1968). 104  The citation is from a draft position of a KSČ city committee (Prague) on KSČ policy (May 11, 1968). The completed text is printed in Komunistická strana Československa, document no. 63. 105  Open letter of the aircraft factory from March 13, 1968, reproduced in Odborář 21, no. 7 (1968): 19. 106  NA, 100/24, vol. 59, no. 927, 1948–1949. 107  See the trade union report about negotiations with striking brickworkers in southeastern Moravia from July 18, 1951. VOA, ÚRO-Org., box 110, no. 385 b. 108  VOA, ÚRO-Před., box 54, no. 349 I/9. Report on the implementation of the resolutions of the Board of the Central Council of Trade Unions of February 21, 1961, on the tasks of the ROH in the construction of the East Slovak Ironworks, Košice. 102

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 326

2020.05.12. 19:28:02

Strikes in Czechoslovakia, 1945–1968

327

Before the 1960s, the KSČ had learned that strikes could lead to the mobilization of the local population.109 In 1949 in Čadca, workers from different factories joined forces to protest, and an estimated 1,000 residents of the city took to the streets to support them. In response, the party called on units of the state security and the People’s Militia (Lidové milice) to cordon off roads leading to the protest site, in order to prevent news of events in Čadca from reaching other areas. The strike had broken out after a union official had made disparaging remarks in front of workers about the Catholic Church. The living environment of state socialism thus catalyzed the transformation of the work environment. Another example of the work environment being shaped by the living environment involves shift work. Here, the factory confronted the everyday needs of workers head on. A 1965 survey carried out by the Central Council of Trade Unions found that efforts to promote night shift work dating back to 1948 had been unsuccessful.110 Consequently, as late as 1966, large companies such as the Plzeň Škoda Works had 80 percent of its workers scheduled for the morning shift, while the night shift accounted for less than 4 percent of workers.111 The workers’ attitude on this point was clear: you cannot “sacrifice social and family life for shift work.”112 Factory bodies, as a matter of course, were to take over the life-world of the workers. Clubs inside the factory, designed to facilitate a work culture of increased productivity, became somewhat popular, as evidenced by the union leaderships’ temperance campaigns directed against drinking in the clubs.113 The appropriation of factory facilities, the KSČ suggested, could also be used as an impetus for an effective bond to the workplace: that is to say, it should create a system-supported life-world that would safeguard workers’ readiness to perform. In the Kladno Steelworks, when worker en-

109

 VOA, ÚRO-Org., box 47, no. 173. Report of the Secretary of the District Trade Union Council Místek on the causes, course, and resolution of the strike in Frýdek-Místek, August 15, 1948. During this three-day strike, the factory buildings were besieged by hundreds of locals fueled by the conflict. 110  VOA, ÚRO-Před., box 73, no. 415 I/3. Report on the commuter traffic and documents for the presentation and the decisions of the national all-union conference for the meeting of the board of the Central council of the Trade Unions on April 21, 1965. 111  VOA, ÚRO-Před., box 82, no. 435 I/2. Report on services for employees in the factories and places of residence for the meeting of the Board of the Central Council of Trade Unions, July 28, 1966. 112  Quoted in Miloš Pick, “Proč zvyšovat směnnost?” [Why should the shift work be extended?], Odborář 18, no. 26 (1965): 1261–66. 113  VOA, ÚRO-PŘ, box 62, no. 376 I/2, supplement II. Report on the annual conferences of the corporate clubs in 1962 for the meeting of the Board of the Central Council of Trade Unions.

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 327

2020.05.12. 19:28:02

328

Peter Heumos

thusiasm for socialist competitions was lacking, the children of steelworkers were called upon to ask their fathers why they had not yet been named the “best worker.”114 Similarly, when the work ethic declined in the Ostrava coalfields, the wives of miners were invited to production consultations at the request of party officials.115 Everyday life stimuli often triggered protests and strikes. In October 1953, night shift workers at a textile factory in Hořice skipped work in order to attend a dance at a nearby village fair. The next morning, they went on strike to protest night shift work.116 The backdrop of daily life explains the arbitrariness of industrial conflicts and probably also, in this case, worker behavior. As a  rule, strikes were limited to a  particular factory department or manufacturing sector; this remained the case even when it seemed like the floodgates had opened. During the large wave of strikes that began in June 1953, armament plants in Strakonice accounted for over one-fourth of the 6,000 strikers.117 For the pre-1953 era, it is generally assumed that fear of reprisals did not limit participation, because in the post-1953 era the decline in the political criminalization of labor disputes did not result in higher participation. In some cases, striking still required courage. Prior to a 1957 strike at a  textile factory in Šumperk, workers had to reassure themselves that “nothing bad could happen” as a general amnesty had been issued some days before.118 However, against a backdrop of broadly inconsequential responses from the authorities, confidence in protesting emerged all the more clearly. Strikes were often used to provoke the party. Metalworkers who went on strike in Strakonice in June 1953 demanded “strike pay.” Striking workers agitated party officials by mocking party jargon, and in Hostivař strikers walked down the streets singing satirical songs poking fun at the party.119 The provocative inversions of prevailing norms and official values were an element of everyday behavior. At a Moravian sawmill in the spring of 1956, workers grumbled about the “best workers” and argued that publicly displaying the victor of a socialist competition should be considered

114

 VOA, ÚRO-Org., box 105, no. 382. Report of the instructor of the District Trade Union Council Prague, January 1951. 115  VOA, ÚVOS-Horníci, box 100, fascicle 6. Delegation report by comrade Mertl from the Ostrava-Karviná district, January 4–8, 1960. 116  NA, 014/12, vol. 15, no. 381. Report on the strike in the national company Mileta 01, Hořice, and the situation of the implementation of the order of the Minister of Fuel and Energy, October 8, 1953. 117  AMV, no. 310-72-30. Compilation of the strikes after the currency reform in the České Budějovice district. 118  NA, 014/12, vol. 29, no. 1165, 1957. Strike in the Moravolen factory in Horní Libina. 119  Heumos, “Industriearbeiter,” 164; Musilová, Měnová reforma, 7.

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 328

2020.05.12. 19:28:02

Strikes in Czechoslovakia, 1945–1968

329

part of the “cult of personality.” The factory council discontinued socialist competitions.120 Throughout Czechoslovakia, differentiation between workers based on performance in competitions was replaced by the principle of egalitarian distributive justice. Ironworkers in Kunčice mandated that every worker be allowed to win the competition once,121 while the employees of the waterworks in Tvržice all took turns at being “the best worker,” so that everyone received the monetary prize.122 Such daily life impulses strengthened the rejection of competitions at the plant level and promoted the appeal of the factory milieu. When workers who had moved up within the party and state apparatus returned to their former work sites, all agreed that the plant was the best of all possible worlds.123

Strikes and the Collapse of State Socialism The yield of historiographical research work on state socialism has been significant. Originally, the factory was described as a  place subjected to complete communist control, where “[w]orkers and managers were tightly bound into a  system of political command over all aspects of economic and working life.”124 Since then, the view that the state-socialist command economy never achieved lasting penetration of the “organization of the production process” at the shop floor level has permeated scholarship on state socialism,125 raising the question: how was this free space utilized? The answer that is typically given is problematic, in that it assumes the theory and methodology of functionalism as a key concept in the debate on the causes of state socialism’s collapse. For functionalists, the “informal subcontinent” 120

 VOA, KOR, box 78/1956, no. 141. Report of the District Committee of the Union of Timber Industry on the implementation of the theses of the Central Committee of the CPT on further technical development in the factories, June 14, 1956. 121  VOA, ÚRO-Org., box 138, no. 467. Report of the Nová Huta political brigade in Kunčice, April 1953. 122  VOA, ÚRO-VMP, box 2, 1953. Reports of the brigades and reports on socialist contests. 123  See summary of the speech of a blacksmith from Litomyšl before the local party organization on his years of services in the school and cultural ministry, October 1954. NA, 014/12, vol. 15, no. 381. 124  Quoted in Mark Pittaway, “Workers, Management and the State in Socialist Hungary: Shaping and Re-shaping the Socialist Factory Regime in Újpest and Tatabánya,” in Sozialgeschichtliche Kommunismusforschung, 105. 125  On the GDR, see Ulrich Voskamp and Volker Wittke, “Aus Modernisierungsblockaden werden Abwärtsspiralen: Zur Reorganisation von Betrieben und Kombinaten in der ehemaligen DDR” [Modernization blocks are turning downwards: For the reorganization of companies and combines in the former GDR], SOFI-Mitteilungen 18 (1990): 12–30.

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 329

2020.05.12. 19:28:02

330

Peter Heumos

of the industrial sector outlined in this essay with reference to reasons for striking is little more than a thicket of “quasi-legal,” “diffuse,” and “premodern” behaviors and actions that appear almost indistinguishable from corruption and crime. All these informal arrangements, they claim, do not add up to stable patterns of action that could be used to reduce subjugation or catalyze self-organization.126 The examples provided in this essay clearly indicate that the factory was a lively hub of political activity. Likewise, it is clear that the flipside of “organized disorder”127 was a process of democratization led by the factory councils, whose goal was the dismantling of power relations and the building up of worker-controlled organizations. Functionalism, however, assigns no significance to this process. A central theoretical concept of systems theory is the functional differentiation of structural subsystems and value spheres within a social system as a precondition for its performance- and problemsolving capabilities.128 If one applies this concept to our topic, then work undertaken during state socialism cannot be considered productive. For systems theory, the “inclusion of a human’s full complexity” in labor exchanges is a “disturbance factor.”129 The influence of this “disturbance factor” in the factory behavior discussed here was not completely suppressed; the politicization of the production process could not be contained by the KSČ. Factory councils also succeeded in placing their political stamp on production, and their egalitarian program for the organization of labor permeated factories. In the mining industry, coal digging groups were often manned in such a way that the group’s overall performance compensated for that of its weaker members (including the elderly and sick).130 On a large scale, it shows the advantage 126

 On the GDR, with a  claim to more general validity for state-socialist societies, see Richard Rottenburg, “Der Sozialismus braucht den ganzen Menschen: Zum Verhältnis vertraglicher und nichtvertraglicher Beziehungen in einem VEB” [Socialism needs the whole person: On the relationship between contractual and non-contractual relationships in a VEB], Zeitschrift für Soziologie 20 (1991): 305–20; Ilja Srubar, “War der reale Sozialismus modern? Versuch einer strukturellen Bestimmung” [Was real socialism modern?: An attempt at a structural determination], Kölner Zeitschrift für Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie 43 (1991): 415–32. 127  VOA, ÚRO-Org., box 126, no. 436. Report on the activity of the factory council at the Kovosvit firm in Třebíč, September 3, 1952. 128  For a general representation of systems theory, see Talcott Parsons, Structure and Process in Modern Societies (Glencoe, IL: Free Press, 1960); Seymour M. Lipset, Soziologie der Demokratie [Sociology of democracy] (Neuwied: Luchterhand, 1962). 129  Quoted in Niklas Luhmann, Soziale Systeme: Grundriss einer allgemeinen Theorie [Social systems: Outline of a general theory] (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1987), 324. 130  See VOA, NHK, box 33, no. 101. Investigation into social, labor-organizational, and labor-economic conditions in the František mine in Přívoz, near Ostrava (1946).

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 330

2020.05.12. 19:28:02

Strikes in Czechoslovakia, 1945–1968

331

of creating an amalgam of work and political value orientations from socialist competitions and “collective distributive justice in practice.” Since functionalist interpretations are dominant in the discussion of strikes and workers’ behavior more generally, socialist alternatives to state socialism, like the factory council movements, have only been discussed within the context of the history of state-socialist reform, despite their democratic potential.131 To put it another way, questions concerning economic performance rank much higher on the value scale of systems theory than questions concerning the social construction of meaning. Egalitarian programs can also be added to this list of topics with lower priority for functionalists. Systems theory can do nothing with egalitarian objectives, because it treats hierarchy as “functionally irreplaceable.”132 Egalitarian wage policies, in particular, draw harsh criticism from systems theorists. In their interpretation, such policies stand for primitive backwardness133 and for low labor productivity in state socialism, just as it did in the KSČ’s 1968 declaration.134 However, simply equating egalitarian wage policy with low productivity is not accurate. Correlating work productivity with income distribution in state-socialist countries demonstrates that equality in wage distribution is not synonymous with a low level of productivity. Among Comecon countries, Czechoslovakia and East Germany were ranked at the top for both labor productivity and for having the most even income distribution. Conversely, in Poland and the Soviet Union where income distribution was the most unequal, one also found the lowest productivity levels.135 The price of an empirically unfounded argument is thus not too high if it guarantees “proof ” that the concept of work can only be “purified” if “disturbance factors” are agreed upon in advance and eliminated.136 The example 131

 Christoph Boyer, “Sozialgeschichte der Arbeiterschaft und staatssozialistische Entwicklungspfade: Konzeptionelle Überlegungen und eine Erklärungsskizze” [Social history of the working class and state-socialist development paths: Conceptual considerations and an explanatory sketch], in Hübner, Klessmann, and Tenefelde, Arbeiter im Staatssozialismus, 79. 132  Luhmann, Soziale Systeme, 462. 133  See, for example, Pavel Machonin, “The Social Structure of Soviet-type Societies, Its Collapse and Legacy,” Czech Sociological Review 1 (1993): 231–49. 134  See Anthony B. Atkinson and John Micklewright, Economic Transformation in Eastern Europe and the Distribution of Income (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992); Jiří Večerník and Petr Matějů, eds., Ten Years of Rebuilding Capitalism: Czech Society after 1989 (Prague: Academia, 1999). 135  See André Steiner, “Einkommen in den Ostblockländern. Annäherungen an einen Vergleich” [Income in the Eastern Bloc countries: Approaches to a comparison], in Hübner, Klessmann, and Tenefelde, Arbeiter im Staatssozialismus, 227–47. 136  For this reason, some authors criticize systems theory for its “normative excess.” See Michael Keren, “Ideological Implications of the Use of Open Systems Theory in Political Science,” Behavioral Science 24 (1979): 311–24.

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 331

2020.05.12. 19:28:02

332

Peter Heumos

of labor productivity suggests further objections to these categories in systems theory. Labor productivity, along with various social structures and activities in the workplace, is part of what is called the work sphere. From the systems theory perspective, this is a primary reason for the collapse of real socialism. The transformation of the work environment inevitably resulted in the collapse of the system because it undermined the basic patterns and virtues of industrial culture, upon which a society based on the division of labor depends.137 Yet at the time the above opinion was written, the blurring of the boundaries between work and living environments in Western-type societies had already been a topic of discussion for years.138 However, apart from a few passing remarks, the debate over the causes of the collapse of state socialism does not address this issue. The reason for this silence is easy to identify: Fordism—that is to say, mechanized production, instrumental rationalization of social relations, the separation of work and living environs, and so on139—is the critical benchmark that systems theory has found state socialism to be lacking. Post-Fordism—that is, the “subjectification” of labor supported by microelectronic technology, cooperative management strategies, the blurring of home and work domains, the mobilization of creative potential, the de-standardization of work norms, and so on—has found no place in the functionalist critique of state socialism, despite the fact that this model of production has been recognized for two or three decades.140 If one were to include post-Fordism, one would have to acknowledge a quandary: both the separation and blurring of 137

 Quoted in Ralph Jessen, “Die Gesellschaft im Staatssozialismus: Probleme einer Sozialgeschichte der DDR” [Society in state socialism: Problems of a social history of the GDR], Geschichte und Gesellschaft 21 (1995): 96–110. 138  See Daniel Bell, Die nachindustrielle Gesellschaft [The post-industrial society] (Frankfurt and New York: Campus, 1985); Peter Drucker, Post-Capitalist Society (New York: Harper, 1993); Nick Kratzer, Arbeitskraft in Entgrenzung: Grenzenlose Anforderungen, erweiterte Spielräume, begrenzte Ressourcen [Work capacity in dissolution: Boundless demands, expanded scope, limited resources] (Berlin: Edition Sigma, 2003); Birgit Huber, “Entgrenzung von Arbeit und Leben im Postfordismus und (Post)-Sozialismus: Subjektivierung als Ansatz für vergleichende Forschung” [Dissolution of work and life in post-Fordism and (post-)socialism: Subjectivization as an approach for comparative research], in Arbeitswelt—Lebenswelt: Facetten einer spannungsreichen Beziehung im östlichen Europa [Working world—lifeworld: Facets of a  tense relationship in Eastern Europe], ed. Klaus Roth (Berlin: LIT Verlag, 2006), 121–40. 139  See Joachim Hirsch and Roland Roth, Das neue Gesicht des Kapitalismus: Vom Fordismus zum Post-Fordismus [The new face of capitalism: From Fordism to Post-Fordism] (Hamburg: VSA, 1986). 140  See Thomas Atzert, ed., Umherschweifende Produzenten: Immaterielle Arbeit und Subversion [Wandering producers: Intangible work and subversion] (Berlin: ID-Verlag, 1998).

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 332

2020.05.12. 19:28:02

Strikes in Czechoslovakia, 1945–1968

333

living and work environments can act as guarantors of work performance since even the workplace under post-Fordism is primarily subject to principles of economics.141 Taking a present-day example relevant to state socialism, discussions in IT companies show that work is perceived as extraordinarily flexible, insofar as structures aimed at advancing teamwork are replacing those aimed at stimulating individual performance through in-house competition.142 The fact that research utilizing a systems theory approach critically applies de-differentiation of work and living environments to state socialism, while tacitly ignoring this fact in reference to capitalism, means that it ends up avoiding systemic comparison on this very point. Instead, systems theorists argue that the causes, manifestations, and effects of this phenomenon on daily life in the two systems are so different that they are beyond comparison.143 Considering that dominant political or economic interests take control of removing the boundary between work and living spaces, the end goal is the intensive utilization of the workforce—a process that tends toward the appropriation of the entire personality.144 From this perspective, no fundamental difference exists between the various policies of the KSČ and today’s IT companies. By clinging to an outdated production model, systems theory’s concept of rationality becomes brittle. These comments have a direct bearing on strike research. Strike research drawing on systems theory emphasizes that the development of labor disputes and the behavior of workers is accompanied by increased rationalization. The organization, formalization, and institutionalization of the labor dispute, as well as the growing predictability of company social relations and the increasing perfection of collective bargaining, are the conditions of rationalization and the efficient regulation of industrial conflict.145 This approach depends on the concept of performance-oriented 141

 Klaus Roth, “Arbeitswelt—Lebenswelt: Zu einer spannungsreichen Beziehung im sozialistischen und postsozialistischen Osteuropa” [Working world—lifeworld: To a tense relationship in socialist and post-socialist Eastern Europe], in Arbeitswelt—Lebenswelt, 14. 142  On Microsoft’s abandonment of its stacked ranking system, see Julia Graven, “Microsoft kippt Bewertung von ‘Minderleistern’” [Microsoft tilts rating of “shortage workers”], Spiegel Online, November 13, 2013, http:/www.spiegel.de/karriere/berufsleben/minderleister-microsoft-schafft-bewertungssystem-ab-a-933372.html, accessed February 28, 2014. For this source, I thank Katherine Heumos (Berlin). 143  Roth, “Arbeitswelt—Lebenswelt,” in Arbeitswelt—Lebenswelt, 22. 144  See in particular Kratzer, Arbeitskraft in Entgrenzung. 145  See Heinrich Volkmann, “Modernisierung des Arbeitskampfes?: Zum Formwandel von Streik und Aussperrung in Deutschland 1864–1975” [Modernization of the labor dispute?: On the formal change of strike and lockout in Germany, 1864–1975], in Probleme der Modernisierung in Deutschland: Sozialhistorische Studien zum 19. und 20. Jahrhundert [Problems of modernization in Germany: Social history studies of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries], ed. Helmut Kaelble et al. (Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag, 1978), 110–170.

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 333

2020.05.12. 19:28:02

334

Peter Heumos

conflict behavior, which is purged of all “disturbance factors” and thereby draws its rationality. However, for some years now, an empirically based opposition to this approach has been growing. The rise of instrumentalrational performance, like the argument, was quite simply based on limited research on West Germany in the 1970s that underestimated the ratio of wildcat strikes to total strikes.146 The ambivalent, bizarre, and chaotic moments of strike behavior move to the foreground if these wildcat strikes are factored in. Efforts to unpack the conceptual consequences of these types of strikes have coincided with a paradigm shift in international research on strikes since the 1990s. A starting point for this reorientation is the shrinking of “classic” industries—related in part to globalization—since the 1990s, together with the disappearance of traditional forms of work conflict. The focal point of labor disputes has shifted from the manufacturing industry to the service sector, which in turn has meant a move toward “small scale” strikes. These types of strike are more limited in scope, making it more difficult to generalize strike demands. Strikes in the service sector last longer on average than those in other business sectors and are relatively open to political impulses.147 The analysis of connections between local labor disputes and the global economy—another essential element of this new research orientation—is in its infancy.148 It is still unclear how global cycles of labor unrest are mediated by conflicts at lower levels.149 Nevertheless, the global entanglement of labor disputes requires strike research that concentrates on business enterprises, and thus on the local milieu, in order to determine the preconditions of global “locatedness.”150 From this emerges a research agenda that can be summed up as the sociocultural “decentralization” of the study of labor disputes. It encompasses the dense description of the workforce, including its cultural heritage (for instance, with regard to migration); the  Peter Birke, Wilde Streiks im Wirtschaftswunder: Arbeitskämpfe, Gewerkschaften und soziale Bewegungen in der Bundesrepublik und Dänemark [Wildcat strikes in the Economic Miracle: Labor disputes, trade unions, and social movements in the Federal Republic and Denmark] (Frankfurt: Campus, 2007). 147  Hagen Lesch, “Strukturwandel des Arbeitskampfes: Deutschland im OECD-Ländervergleich” [Structural change of the labor dispute: Germany in OECD comparison], IW-Trends 42 (2015): 3–21; Peter Renneberg, Die Arbeitskämpfe von morgen?: Arbeitsbedingungen und Konflikteim Dienstleistungsbereich [The labor disputes of tomorrow?: Working conditions and conflicts in the service sector] (Hamburg: VSA, 2005). 148  See, in particular, Beverly J. Silver, Forces of Labor: Workers’ Movements and Globalization since 1870 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003). 149  See Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Empire: Die neue Weltordnung [Empire: The new world order], trans. Thomas Atzert and Andreas Wirthensohn (Frankfurt and New York: Campus, 2003), 62–72. 150  Silver, Forces of Labor, passim. 146

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 334

2020.05.12. 19:28:02

Strikes in Czechoslovakia, 1945–1968

335

cancellation of traditional conflict models due to post-Fordism; the integration of the company’s social environment and the workers’ living conditions into the causal explanation of labor disputes; the linking of wildcat strikes with the so-called new social movements (for example, the Occupy movement); the changing course and expressive forms of strikes as a result of the new social movements; and finally the extensive reworking of all facets of labor unrest.151 In the framework of this new orientation, which draws extensively on “lived experience” to analyze structural causes, the jovially striking textile workers of Hořice become an acceptable subject for mainstream strike research. First, the actions in Hořice—as well as those in countless other similar events—illustrate the playful subversive moment in the social collective of the plant. The most important precondition for such actions was that the prevalent methods of state socialism were sufficiently flexible in order to liberate a “deviant” social action context from political pressure for conformity and thereby channel it. This pattern is no different from techniques of social engineering found in Western societies.152 Second, actions inspired by lived experience, such as in Hořice, were not fleeting phenomena. The experience of factory culture under state socialism—for example, in the Soviet Union—was carried over into the post-socialist era and thus has been

151

 See Christiane Eisenberg, “Die Arbeiterbewegungen der Welt im Vergleich: Methodenkritische Bemerkungen zu einem Projekt des Internationalen Instituts für Sozialgeschichte” [The labor movements of the world in comparison: Methodical comments on a project of the International Institute of Social History], Archiv für Sozialgeschichte 34 (1994): 397–410; Bernhard Ebbinghaus and Jelle Visser, “Der Wandel der Arbeitsbeziehungen im westeuropäischen Vergleich” [The change in industrial relations in Western European comparison], in Die westeuropäischen Gesellschaften im Vergleich [The Western European companies in comparison], ed. Stefan Hradil and Stefan Immerfall (Opladen: Leske & Budrich, 1997), 333–76; Irene Götz, Unternehmenskultur: Die Arbeitswelt einer Großbäckerei aus kulturwissenschaftlicher Sicht [Corporate culture: The working world of a wholesale bakery from a cultural science perspective] (Münster: Waxmann, 1997); Klaus Weinhauer, “Konflikte am Arbeitsplatz und im Quartier: Perspektiven einer sozialgeschichtlichen Erforschung von Arbeitskämpfen und Konsumentenprotesten im 20. Jahrhundert” [Conflicts in the workplace and in the neighborhood: Perspectives of social-historical exploration of labor struggles and consumer protests in the twentieth century], Archiv für Sozialgeschichte 38 (1998): 337–56; Sam Davies, ed., Dock Workers: International Explorations in Comparative Labour History, 2 vols. (Farnham and Burlington: Ashgate, 2000); Marcel van der Linden, Transnational Labour History: Explorations (London: Routledge, 2003). 152  See Peter Heumos, “Stalinismus in der Tschechoslowakei: Forschungslage und sozialgeschichtliche Anmerkungen am Beispiel der Industriearbeiterschaft” [Stalinism in Czechoslovakia: Research situation and social-historical comments on the example of industrial workers], Journal of Modern European History 2 (2004): 96.

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 335

2020.05.12. 19:28:02

336

Peter Heumos

formative in shaping the everyday behavior of workers not socialized under communism.153 Yet in the face of an example such as Hořice, system theorists want nothing to do with the first point and would exclude it from mainstream research. They also frown upon the second point, as experience is a low-level mental activity and can produce only the crudest “common sense.” But it is not that simple. Experience is effective within certain boundaries, as this research on strikes in Czechoslovakia has shown. The sailor may have mystical ideas about the universe, but he also knows his seas.154

153

 Vjačeslav Popkov, “Alltagskommunikation in ‘zivilen’ und ‘geschlossenen’ Betrieben der Sowjetunion: Ein Vergleich” [Daily communication in “civilian” and “closed” enterprises of the Soviet Union: A comparison], in Arbeitswelt—Lebenswelt, 49. 154  On categories of “experience” in the social theoretical discussion, see Edward P. Thompson, Das Elend der Theorie: Zur Produktion geschichtlicher Erfahrung [The misery of theory: For the production of historical experience], trans. Peter Huth (Frankfurt and New York: Campus, 1980): 44–49.

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 336

2020.05.12. 19:28:02

“It Shall Not Be a Written Gift, but a Lived Reality”: Equal Pay, Women’s Work, and the Politics of Labor in State-Socialist Hungary, Late 1960s to Late 1970s1 Susan Zimmermann

I

n the late 1960s, Women of the Whole World, the journal of the communist-led Women’s International Democratic Federation (WIDF), repeatedly discussed gendered wage discrimination. At the time the WIDF, a large organization advocating women’s rights and equality worldwide, was preparing for the 1969 World Congress of Women it was convening in Helsinki, where “Women at work” would feature as one major theme. There was no hint on the pages of Women of the Whole World that unequal pay existed in state-socialist countries. Under the heading “One Woman = …%?” a series of reports on Argentina, France, the United Kingdom, Japan, the Federal Republic of Germany, Sweden, and the US documented pervasive and large-scale gendered wage discrimination—exclusively in capitalist countries.2 The omission of the state-socialist countries—even whilst it confirms stereotypical views on WIDF biases in general3—is remarkable when read against the fact that WIDF and Women of the Whole World regularly discussed the need for “further” improvement of working women’s situation in state-socialist countries. If unequal pay under state socialism was even a taboo for Women of the Whole World, the same was all the more true for 1

 The IGK Work and Human Life Cycle in Global History (re:work), gave fabulous support as I wrote this study during my fellowship period. I am grateful for the valuable comments by several readers on an earlier draft, to Marsha Siefert for her invaluable support in polishing the final draft, and to Francisca de Haan who shared the relevant issues of the journal Women of the Whole World (originally, I had used the German version). I am particularly indebted to my interview partners. 2  See Women of the Whole World (1968), no. 3. 3  On these views, see Francisca de Haan, “Continuing Cold War Paradigms in Western Historiography of Transnational Women’s Organisations: The Case of the Women’s International Democratic Federation (WIDF),” Women’s History Review 19, no. 4 (2010): 547–73.

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 337

2020.05.12. 19:28:02

338

Susan Zimmermann

official state socialism. Women’s wage discrimination, in other words, was a non-issue in the state-socialist world of the 1960s. Everywhere, violations of the equal pay principle were deemed scattered instances of local mismanagement and subject to immediate and local rectification, which as a rule had been already completed by reporting time. In Hungary, for instance, the Trade Union of Workers of the Building, Wood, and Construction Materials Industries (Építő-, Fa-, és Építőanyagipari Dolgozók Szakszervezete, ÉFÉDSZ) in 1968 described the problem of unequal pay as an “isolated” phenomenon addressed by local trade union bodies on a case-by-case basis.4 And yet, systematic gendered wage inequality and discrimination constituted a pervasive feature of the world of work in state-socialist Hungary. One exemplary 1970 survey, carried out in four milk-producing enterprises in urban and rural settings across Hungary for presentation to the branch Trade Union Council, gave data on 544 women workers, 47 percent unskilled and 33 percent semi-skilled (betanított). The report examined one key element of how unequal pay was generated and could be captured quantitatively: the average hourly wage grades (átlagos besorolási órabér) of male and female workers. The gender comparison did not give a “reassuring picture.” The biggest difference was “found in category 13, comprising the single largest group of the women workers; no skill whatsoever is required for this work and it comes with a strong physical burden.” The women’s wage grading lagged far behind: “1.79 [Hungarian Forint], 20 percent.”5 The report was signed by Mrs. Géza Reiner6 and Mária Bánfalvi, two women visibly involved in what can be identified as a  campaign against unequal pay which began to unfold in Hungary at the time. Trade union women, including female trade union functionaries at all levels and some academic allies, played an important role in generating and sustaining the campaign, which developed against the backdrop of a series of top-level decisions

4

 “Az építő-, fa-, és épitőanyagipar területén foglalkoztatott nődolgozók élet és munkakörülményei javításának feladatai” [The tasks for improvement of the living and working conditions of the female workforce employed in the building, wood, and building material industries], Politikatörténeti Intézet Levéltára [Institute of Political History, Archives, hereafter PIL], Szakszervezetek Központi Levéltára [Central Trade Unions’ Archive, hereafter SZKL] 2. f. 19 / 1968–1969 / 1 doboz / 1 ő.e., November 11, 1968. 5  In the highest two categories populated by women, the lagging-behind was around 13 percent. “Előterjesztés a [Tejipari] Szakszervezeti Tanács 1970. október 6-án tartandó ülésre” [Submission to the meeting of the Trade Union Council (of the milk-producing industries) to be held on October 6, 1970], PIL, SKZL 2. f. 19 / 1970 / 1 doboz, September 23, 1970. 6  The name of married women in Hungary at the time was given as composed of “Mrs.” and the given name, as well as the family name, of their husband. In foreign languages the trade union women used to give their husband’s family name and their own given name. Whenever I know the given name of a woman, I will use this foreign language version.

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 338

2020.05.12. 19:28:02

“It Shall Not Be a Written Gift, but a Lived Reality”

339

in 1970. These decisions triggered major reform and institutional restructuring, altering and broadening the mandate of women’s politics pursued by the state-socialist regime in Hungary. A directive issued in February 1970 by the Hungarian Socialist Workers’ Party (Magyar Szocialista Munkáspárt, MSZMP) spearheaded the chain of decisions. The follow-up government decision 1013/1970 (May 10) codified the distribution of responsibilities and tasks to the various actors and institutions concerned. The MSZMP directives charged the National Council of Hungarian Women (Magyar Nők Országos Szövetsége, MNOT) of many of its earlier responsibilities in Hungarian women’s politics, reassigning these responsibilities to the trade unions and other “mass organizations” instead. The enhancement of the trade unions’ role came as a response to the steady rise in women’s participation in the labor force, together with strongly felt tensions concerning both the condition of women at the workplace and the involvement of working women in childcare and family work. The latter, construed as a gender-specific given and labeled the “second shift,” put a heavy burden on working women. The National Federation of Trade Unions (Szakszervezetek Országos Szövetsége, SZOT) duly followed up on these decrees with its own foundational directive concerning the trade union contribution to the new women’s policies. SZOT decreed a major organizational overhaul of trade union women’s policies, including: the establishment of a Central Women’s Committee (Központi Nőbizottság) of SZOT, known as SZOTNB, working alongside the SZOT leadership; a small apparatus which, under the direct leadership of the responsible SZOT secretary, would be responsible for women’s politics; and the establishment of a network of trade union representatives—in reality women in most cases—in charge of all issues related to women (the function was called the nőfelelős, which literally translates into “women responsible,” and will be given in the following as “trade union representative responsible for women’s issues”)7 within the national trade unions and the Trade Union County Councils (Szakszervezetek Megyei Tanácsa, SZMT).8 7

 The function of the trade union representatives responsible for women’s issues became ubiquitous at various levels of the trade union hierarchy, as well as in factories and other institutions after 1970, though it had also existed previously. The trade union representative responsible for women’s issues was an individual appointed to take responsibility for all matters related to women in a given setting (such as a factory division, a local trade union branch, etc.) especially in those cases when there was no formal women’s committee. 8  Dokumentumok a  nők gazdasági és szociális helyzetének megjavításáról [Documents on the improvement of the economic and social position of women] (Budapest: Kossuth Könyvkiadó, 1971). The party directive issued in February 1970, other related original material, and the follow-up directives and resolutions can be found in this publication. The territorial council covering Budapest, the capital city, carried a different name; I include it here and in the following under the label SZMT.

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 339

2020.05.12. 19:28:02

340

Susan Zimmermann

These 1970 directives, regulations, and accompanying official statements which soon were collectively referred to as nőhatározat (literally “women directive,” translated in the following as “Directive(s) on women’s issues”) were issued in the context of decentralizing economic reform, the New Economic Mechanism (Új gazdasági mechanizmus) introduced in 1968, and a climate—according to historian Eszter Bartha—of rather open political exchanges on social and economic tensions, supported by dialogue between the working class and the regime, including the trade unions.9 They also came after the introduction of extended paid maternity leave in 1967, which was to form a core element of an emerging politics designed to ease the burden which the labors of social reproduction put on working women.10 The directives on women’s issues also involved a strong focus on increasing material and institutional support for raising children. The scholarship on working women and gender regimes in state-socialist countries after 1953/1956 has focused on these changes. The historian Donna Harsch, who studied this evolution in the GDR, argues that measures like those undertaken in Hungary, aiming to alleviate the burden of maternity and childcare while not directly tackling paid work, reflected the increasing dependence of the state-socialist economy on the female labor force.11 In institutional terms, the Directive(s) on women’s issues moved the center of state-socialist women’s politics to the workplace.12 The institutional overhaul of central trade union women’s politics brought about by these directives triggered concomitant changes down to the factory level. Together, these changes created much greater room for an emerging network of trade union women dedicated to promoting working women’s interests as construed at the time. The inclusion of a proactive politics of equal pay—described in this chapter as a campaign for equal pay—which formed part of these unfolding women’s policies had been triggered by  Eszter Bartha, Alienating Labour: Workers on the Road from Socialism to Capitalism in East Germany and Hungary (New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2013), ch. 1. 10  Mária Adamik, “Supporting Parenting and Child Rearing: Policy Innovation in Eastern Europe,” in Child Care, Parental Leave, and the Under 3s: Policy Innovation in Europe, ed. Sheila B. Kamerman and Alfred Kahn (New York: Auburn House, 1991); András Gábos and István György Tóth, “A gyermekvállalás támogatásának gazdasági motívumai és hatásai” [Economic motivations and results of the support for having children], Századvég. Új folyam 5, no. 19 (2000): 87–92. 11  Donna Harsch, Revenge of the Domestic: Women, the Family, and Communism in the German Democratic Republic (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2007). 12  Similar processes also took place in other state-socialist countries. For the GDR, see Hertha Kuhrig, “‘Mit den Frauen’—‘Für die Frauen’: Frauenpolitik und Frauenbewegung in der DDR” [“With the women”—“for the women”: Women’s politics and the women’s movement in the GDR], in Geschichte der deutschen Frauenbewegung, ed. Florence Hervé, 6th ed. (Cologne: PapyRossa, 1998), 218–19, 222. 9

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 340

2020.05.12. 19:28:03

“It Shall Not Be a Written Gift, but a Lived Reality”

341

SZOT’s 1969 report issued in preparation of the Directive(s) on women’s issues. SZOT declared that it was the task of the trade unions “to effectuate the effective implementation of the ‘principle of equal pay for equal work.’ The trade union organs shall regularly control women’s remuneration, and call upon the competent authorities to correct the observed shortcomings.”13 The 1970 MSZMP and government decrees duly included related demands and measures. The publicized rationale for the decision to pursue a more proactive politics of equal pay focused on political considerations alone. In his speech introducing the related measures, Árpád Pullai, the Central Committee secretary responsible for party issues and mass organizations, argued that in a state-socialist society, as a “society based on work” (munka társadalma), equal pay “is an accepted principle and practice, and also meets people’s sense of justice.”14 In this chapter I explore the politics of (un)equal pay in Hungarian state industries as unfolding against these backgrounds. In the first section I present evidence on women’s work and wage policies in state-socialist Hungary to explain how the politics of (un)equal pay were construed at the time. In the second section I describe the argument and action that constituted the campaign for equal pay, spearheaded by the Directive(s) on women’s issues, unfolding within this context. I also detail how this campaign was systematically tied to references to various political and economic characteristics and tensions of the state-socialist project. Taken together, these references can be categorized as falling into two larger framings, “the politics of women’s work in the macro-economy” and the “politics of labor.” In the third and fourth sections of the chapter I examine how argument and action intended to narrow or reify the gender wage gap were tied into and influenced by these larger framings. The actors themselves, as they referred to these framings and discursively construed them, situated the gendered politics of labor within the state-socialist project as a whole. Consideration of these framings and, more generally, an inclusive approach to the history of the politics of women’s work under state socialism allows the history of labor and gender 13

 “Jelentés a  dolgozó nők társadalmi, gazdasági, szociális helyzetéről és közöttük végzett szakszervezeti munkáról” [Report on the societal, economic, and social condition of the working women, and the trade union work carried out amongst them], SZOT Division for organizational and cadre work, PIL, SZKL 2. f. 3 / 416 ő.e., May 26, 1969. In the draft version of the Report the formula had not yet been used. 14  Trade union women and their allies had played a visible role in bringing about the inclusion of a focus on equal pay into the “women directive”–a finding not discussed in this chapter. Pullai’s speech is given in A nők politikai, gazdasági és szociális helyzete: Az MSZMP Központi Bizottságának 1970. február 18–19.-i ülése [Women’s political, economic and social position: The February 18–19 session of the Central Committee of the MSZMP] (Budapest: Kossuth Könyvkiadó, 1970), 8–9.

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 341

2020.05.12. 19:28:03

342

Susan Zimmermann

under state socialism to be conceived as part and parcel of an overarching political history of gender, class, and economic development. Focusing on one particular element of gendered labor policies, such as equal pay, can contribute to developing a more satisfactory understanding of gender and labor within the project of state socialism. In the concluding section I discuss the relevance of some of my findings for the larger contexts of the history of labor under state socialism, the gender regime and women’s politics under state socialism, and for situating state socialism within the larger context of the history of labor and gender in the twentieth century.

Conceiving of the Politics of (Un)equal Pay in a State-Socialist Context In state-socialist Hungary unequal pay between women and men was a phenomenon embedded in a  highly complex, multilayered, state-led system of wage policies. In turn, the politics of equal pay could be conceived as a broadly defined and manifold policy agenda, and indeed were conceptualized and pursued this way in the 1970s. As the campaign for equal pay unfolded, (un)equal remuneration of women and men was captured in relation to four different criteria, namely: industrial branch or industry; skill level or grading; difference between enterprises; and intra-enterprise wage differentials. In addition, wage differentials between women and men of similar standing doing identical work—the classical, and simultaneously narrowest, definition of unequal pay—were discussed with reference to the situation at particular workplaces. Reference to these four different criteria provided an inclusive framing of the politics of equal pay, against the background of both various gendered characteristics of industrial work at the time and a  number of particular characteristics of state-socialist wage policies. Important features of these wage policies relevant for the politics of retaining and challenging unequal pay remained in substance—notwithstanding all the reform measures and changes—both before and after the introduction of the New Economic Mechanism in 1968 and through its subsequent alterations. In state-socialist Hungary, women constituted an ever-growing proportion of industrial labor. In 1949, 21.7 percent of the industrial labor force had been female; by 1975 the figure had risen to 44.9 percent.15 From the  Júlia Turgonyi and Zsuzsa Ferge, Az ipari munkásnők munka- és életkörülményei [The work and life circumstances of industrial women workers] (Budapest: Kossuth Könyvki-

15

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 342

2020.05.12. 19:28:03

“It Shall Not Be a Written Gift, but a Lived Reality”

343

1960s onwards it was public knowledge that the unceasing demand for additional industrial labor could only be satisfied by drawing even more women into paid work. The female labor force in industry was unevenly distributed amongst the various branches, and the “feminized” industries tended to be characterized by a  low overall wage level in comparison to more male-dominated and mixed branches. In 1970, the average wages in light industry reached a  level of 87.8 percent of the wages in industry as a  whole.16 In all industries taken together, the proportion of women was much higher among the large group of unskilled and semi-skilled workers than among skilled industrial workers. In 1975, only 15.4 percent of all skilled workers were female. In 1984, 19.7 percent of all women workers worked at the assembly line as opposed to 3.7 percent of the men.17 A deliberate policy of decentralizing industrialization aimed to capture the “scattered remaining reserves” of female labor,18 often with extremely low wages and miserable labor conditions.19 In sum, the data indicate that women workers formed a  large stratum of underprivileged and often harshly exploited industrial “mass workers.” The broadly conceived politics of equal pay explicitly related to these characteristics of women’s industrial work. Branch-specific special wage policies and special wage increases for “feminized” industries could be defined as elements of the politics of narrowing the gender wage gap. The relevant basic decisions were made at the national level or within individual ministries which could decide on differential wage allocation between the industries or branches they supervised. SZOT and each individual national trade union had to be fully involved in these processes, since they enjoyed adó, 1969), 17; Júlia Turgonyi and Mrs. Sándor Garai, “Összefoglaló tanulmány a SZOT nőpolitikai állásfoglalása és határozata (1970. július 2.) alapján végzett szakszervezeti munkánkról (Különös tekintettel a foglalkoztatás és a szakképzés kérdéseire)” [Summary study on the work we have carried out on the basis of the SZOT Women Statement and Directive ( July 2, 1970) (With a special focus on the questions of employment and vocational training)] (no publisher, no publication date given). 16  Data for the socialist sector, i.e., including the cooperatives. Data appendix in “Jelentés a dolgozó nők társadalmi, gazdasági, szociális helyzetéről . . . Tervezet” [Report on the societal, economic, and social condition of the working women . . . Draft], SZOTNB, PIL, SZKL 2. f. 19 / 1980 / 1 doboz / 4 ő.e., April 25, 1980. 17  Judit Lakatos, “A fizikai foglalkozásúak munkakörülményei az iparban” [Labor conditions of manual workers in industry], Statisztikai Szemle, no. 7 (1986): 715–16. 18  Quoted in Susan Zimmermann, “Gender Regime and Gender Struggle in Hungarian State Socialism,” Aspasia: The International Yearbook of Central, Eastern and Southeastern European Women’s and Gender History 4 (2010): 3. 19  Statements of Mrs. Bodor and Mrs. Valu, among others, Combined minutes January 18, 19, 29, 1971, “Nőfelelősi értekezlet” [Conference of the trade union representatives responsible for women’s issues], SZOTNB, PIL SZKL 2. f. 19 / 1971 / 3 doboz / 7 ő.e.

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 343

2020.05.12. 19:28:03

344

Susan Zimmermann

the “right of consent” (egyetértési jogkör) in all decision-making impacting the work and life circumstances of the working population.20 In addition, the politics of equal pay strongly focused on wage differences between enterprises, and even more so on intra-enterprise wage differentials. This focus of attention, again, followed directly from characteristic features of wage policies in state-socialist Hungary. In the 1970s (and beyond) two different wage distribution systems were applied simultaneously. Both were built around the allocation of a given sum for wages to each enterprise, yet calculated with reference either to the average “wage level” or the overall “wage mass” of a given enterprise. The ministries, which were typically responsible for a number of industries, allocated the wage sum for each enterprise under their control.21 In addition, the “central fund” could grant individual enterprises special treatment and finances to “develop” their wages.22 The enterprises enjoyed considerable freedom with regard to intraenterprise distribution of the wage fund, the determination and development of the wage spread, and so on. Moreover, there were no nationwide collective agreements unifying the standard wages in a given industry.23 Instead, the Ministry of Labor issued general tables decreeing the “base wage” (alapbér), with reference to skill, labor conditions, and the normal or heavy character of the work done.24 Within the enterprises, the “job-grading” (besorolás) of individual workers, taking into consideration the established wage system, constituted the crucial point of reference for generating actual monthly take-home pay. With regard to job-grading the enterprise trade union bodies exercized the “right of consent,” meaning that their agreement  Márton Buza and Tibor Simó, eds., Szakszervezeti lexikon [Trade union encyclopedia] (Budapest: Népszava, 1986), 124; Politikatörténeti Intézet (PTI), ed., Érdekegyeztetés Dokumentumok 1966–1975 [Documents on the coordination of interests, 1966–1975], 29–30, available online at http://polhist.hu/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/erdekegy_ dok_1956_1965.pdf, accessed October 14, 2015. 21  The 1970 Regulation is given in A SZOT határozatai és a szakszervezeti mozgalmat érintő állami jogszabályok [The SZOT decisions and the state regulations concerning the trade union movement], vol. 2 (Budapest: Táncsics Könyvkiadó, 1973), 291–328; Donát Bonifert, A  bérszabályozás: Hogyan kezdődött? Hová jutott? Merre tart? [The wage regulation: How did it begin? What are the results? In which direction does it go?] (Budapest: Közgazdasági és Jogi Könyvkiadó, 1987), 65–73, 81–85, 91–92, 144–45. 22  “KNEP Útmutató” [KNEP Guide…], PIL, SZKL 2. f. 19 / 1971 / 3 doboz / 4 ő.e., June 26, 1971. 23  The National Branch Wage Tables introduced in 1975 did not replace these general Tables. Bonifert, A bérszabályozás, 58, 85, 143–44. 24  A SZOT határozatai, 2:332–40. The ranges had not been substantively narrowed in the early 1980s: see Géza Bogyai, Jogi ismeretek szakszervezeti tisztségviselőknek [Legal knowledge for trade union functionaries] (Budapest: Táncsics Könyvkiadó, 1981), 201. 20

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 344

2020.05.12. 19:28:03

“It Shall Not Be a Written Gift, but a Lived Reality”

345

was necessary.25 The given annual wage sum for any enterprise was distributed amongst the employees through collective agreements concluded between the economic management and the enterprise’s trade union representatives. These collective agreements had to include detailed regulations about grading principles and other elements of the wage system.26 Payment by result, generated according to the labor norms and job-grading of the individual worker, was to be preferred whenever economically rational. The enterprises were responsible for setting the norms. If the director of a given enterprise had approved a  given norm or a  change thereof, then the employee had no right to challenge the decision.27 Taken together, the wage system described here in broad strokes28 was driven by a centrally decreed framework and included national and branchspecific wage polices, enterprise-level policies, and intra-enterprise bargaining. This allowed for considerable wage divergence between different industries, enterprises, and factories. As would become blatantly visible during the campaign for equal pay, these defining features of the wage system tended to work against wage equality between men and women in many ways. Campaigning for equal remuneration of men and women under these circumstances would focus on enterprise-level wage policies, national wage raises for certain branches, and one-time ministerial allocations for certain factories or enterprises, or groups of workers within these settings. Trade unions were required to cooperate in national planning, the policies of the branch ministries, and within the enterprises. Because of this multi-level and cooperative—if hierarchical—character of wage policies, the campaign for equal pay can be characterized as a multi-actor campaign in which the trade unions played a key role.

The Campaign for Equal Pay The 1970 Directive(s) on women’s issues triggered a wave of organized action and policy-making in favor of equal pay. While shaped by the overall framings of the politics of women’s work and labor policies in general, the  Buza and Simó, Szakszervezeti lexikon, 72–73, 124.  A SZOT határozatai, 2:538–55, 576–77. 27  The norms were to be set with reference to general guidelines issued jointly by the Minister of Labor and SZOT, and possibly industry-specific guidelines: see A SZOT határozatai, 2:360–63; Bonifert, A bérszabályozás, 58; Bogyai, Jogi ismeretek, 195. 28  In this chapter, I do not discuss in a comprehensive manner the development of wage policies and the wage system in Hungary at the time, which also included extra-wage components of remuneration such as social services and other social provisions which involved a strong focus on easing the labor of social reproduction. 25 26

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 345

2020.05.12. 19:28:03

346

Susan Zimmermann

campaign for equal pay in the 1970s was notable for how reference to restrictive elements of the macroeconomic framing briefly took a backseat. The campaign for equal pay was characterized by strong trade union intervention and an inclusive vision of the politics of equal pay. This was so even after leading actors such as Árpád Pullai, by foregrounding the implementation of the principle “in practice” and focusing on action within the enterprises and factories in his speech quoted above, had advocated restrictive ideas in the course of making the Directive(s) on women’s issues. As a direct follow-up to the Directive(s), the enterprises had to devise overarching action plans (intézkedési terv) on the steps and means of implementing the decision. In parallel, each national trade union had to devise its own action plan aimed at promoting equal pay in the enterprises it covered. The Trade Union of Workers in the Leather Industry (Bőripari Dolgozók Szakszervezete, BIDSZ), an industry where 65 percent of the employees (dolgozó) were female, soon adopted such a  document.29 The BIDSZ action plan aimed to make maximum use of the terms set for trade union initiative in the directives on women’s issues. While it was somewhat exceptional in terms of the detail and enthusiasm of how it designed the new politics of equal pay, the plan was exemplary in identifying—in an inclusive manner—three main dimensions of how unequal pay was generated or perpetuated at the enterprise level. It advocated, firstly, that the Trade Union Commissions (szakszervezeti bizottság, SZB)—the base organizations (alapszervezet) in the factories—facilitate an examination of the wages paid at those workplaces where “women carry out identical work as compared to men (identical skill, identical practice). They shall examine the experiences in terms of category wages, time wages, and individual job-grading,” and “devise concrete measures.” Secondly, the plan decreed that “every plant has to carry out a survey to determine those categories of work where the majority of workers are women and the wages lag behind [bérekben lemaradás van].” The “termination of backward or disproportional wages and the increase of the wage levels” was the goal. Thirdly, the BIDSZ leadership suggested that all leather, shoe, and leatherwear enterprises should examine the “wage spread of the average wages” with the aim to “eliminate monthly wages below 1,300 [Hungarian Forint]. Since the majority of the workers are low-income women workers, this measure in substance would result in the improvement of their condition.” The BIDSZ action plan also aimed to achieve “central” measures. The “conditions and . . . difficulty of work, 29

 “Feladatterv a  bőriparban dolgozó nők gazdasági és szociális helyzetének javitására” [Action plan for the improvement of the economic and social condition of the working women in the leather industry], PIL, SZKL 2. f. 19 / 1970 / 1 doboz, BIDSZ Central leadership, July 14, 1970.

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 346

2020.05.12. 19:28:03

“It Shall Not Be a Written Gift, but a Lived Reality”

347

as well as the content of the work, are not expressed in a realistic manner in the present wage level” within the leather and shoe industries. Therefore, the top leadership of the trade union “together with the Ministry of Light Industries” was entrusted to “take measures to generate” a more appropriate “wage level,” based on reconsidering the industry’s “importance and service” for the national economy and the prevalent “labor conditions.” The BIDSZ plan entertained a  remarkably broad vision of how the gender wage gap was to be narrowed through a combination of gender- and class-focused measures carried out across all enterprises nationwide, and by central measures. The explicit wage discrimination of individual female workers was to be addressed directly. This was to be complemented by over-proportional wage increases for certain types of work and by abolishing particularly low monthly wages wherever they were found. These two types of special wage improvement for low-income, low-class workers, while designed without explicit reference to gender, were intended to counterbalance deeply ingrained gendered income inequalities. As the national trade unions and the enterprises began to plan to implement the Directive(s) on women’s issues, some of their activities visibly bore the hallmark of an emerging lobby of female trade unionists dedicated to improving the lot of working women. These women began to take advantage of their new institutional standing and the endorsement of the prowoman-worker agenda generated by the Directive(s) on women’s issues. The newly established SZOTNB quickly began to work both from “above” and “below.” Its important initial tasks included guidance and support for all actors, from local to national, in operationalizing the tasks described in the Directive(s) into actual policies in their respective spheres of action, controlling implementation at all levels, conducting a two-to-three-week training course for the trade union representatives responsible for women’s issues of the national trade unions and the SZMTs, and contributing to the preparation of the Fourth Five-Year Plan (1971–1975).30 The training course was held in the fall of 1970, and can be considered the most substantial initial activity aimed at building a network amongst upper level trade union functionaries responsible for women’s issues. SZOTNB discussed the program in advance with leading functionaries of the national trade unions and the SZMTs. As a result it was ensured that the concrete “trade union to-dos in relation to the topic”31 and informa30

 “A [SZOTNB] Nőbizottságának programja (1970. VII.1-1971 VI.30): Tervezet” [Program of SZOTNB, July 1, 1970–June 30, 1971: Draft] PIL, SZKL 2. f. 19 / 1970 / 1 doboz, n.d. 31  Here Mrs. Arpád Barta, Secretary General, Hajdu-Bihar SZMT, to Czerván, PIL, SZKL 2. f. 19 / 1970 / 1 doboz, August 10, 1970.

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 347

2020.05.12. 19:28:03

348

Susan Zimmermann

tion on “the place and role of the trade union representatives responsible for women’s issues in the enterprises, factories, and plants”32 were included into the program.33 One of the conclusions SZOTNB drew from its experience with the first training course was that it was necessary to organize regular meetings with the trade union representatives responsible for women’s issues of the national trade unions and the SZMTs. The first two-day conference of trade union representatives responsible for women’s issues was called in January 1971, and the goal of “eliminating the wage inequalities” figured prominently in preparing for the event.34 The trade union women’s network pushing for working women’s interests—as they defined them—dynamically developed over time, and became increasingly institutionalized. Training courses for the trade union representatives responsible for women’s issues at all levels of the trade union hierarchy, including those in office within the factories, were regularly organized under the guidance of SZOTNB. Information material on the tasks and training of these functionaries was abundant.35 At the workplace, women of diverse standing and disposition took on the various functions, many of them half prompted by party, trade unions, or colleagues, and half on their own initiative—at least as remembered by individuals who took part in the campaign. Two examples may illustrate the variety, ranging from women workers who took on unpaid lower-level trade union duties in addition to their regular jobs,36 to careers which led women as full-time functionaries into the upper levels of the trade union hierarchy. 32

 Mrs. Ferenc Ország, National Poultry Enterprise, to Czerván, PIL, SZKL 2. f. 19 / 1970 / 1 doboz, September 10, 1970. 33  The quotes are taken from the critical comments given on the initial program plan. “A SZOT nőfelelős tanfolyam tematikája” [Themes of the SZOT training course for the trade union representatives responsible for women’s issues], PIL, SZKL 2. f. 19 / 1970 / 1 doboz, n.d. 34  Czerván to József Pandurovics (Leading Secretary of the Budapest SZMT), PIL, SZKL 2. f. 19 / 1971 / 2 doboz / 7 ő.e., January 14, 1971. 35  Examples include Tanterv a  nőfelelősök tanfolyama számára [Curriculum for the training course for trade union representatives responsible for women’s issues] (n.p.: Táncsics Könyvkiadó, 1971); “Tanterv a  szakszervezeti bizottságok nőfelelőseink 2 hetes tanfolyamára 1976” [Curriculum for the 1976 two-week training course for our SZB trade union representative responsible for women’s issues], PIL, SZKL 2. f. 19 / 1976 / 1 doboz / 16 ő.e., n.d. 36  Renate Hürtgen, Zwischen Disziplinierung und Partizipation: Vertrauensleute des FDGB im DDR-Betrieb [Between disciplining and participation: FDGB Union stewards in the GDR enterprise] (Cologne, Weimar, and Vienna: Böhlau Verlag, 2005), discusses in detail the role of women as union stewards in the GDR factories. Hürtgen argues that most of these women duly accepted the subordinated role they played in the factory hierarchy and contributed to stabilization and harmony. Over time, the Union Stewards lost much of their function. The settlement of minute social issues was at the core of their activities, while questions of equal pay were apparently not addressed.

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 348

2020.05.12. 19:28:03

“It Shall Not Be a Written Gift, but a Lived Reality”

349

Mrs. Béla Csordás worked three shifts in the Lenin Ironworks in Miskolc, after many years of employment as a sitting ticket inspector. Her testimony was published in a 1980 book based on interviews with women workers. The purpose of the book was to “record the inner image [belső arculat] of the women and girls living at the end of the 1970s without any embellishment [kozmetikázás nélkül].”37 At the time of the interview Mrs. Csordás worked as a semi-skilled thread roller (menethengerész), narrating how “just like an actor in an unforeseen role, I too have gotten at the machine as a substitute [akárcsak egy színész a váratlan szerepbe, én is beugrással kerültem a  hengerlő gépre].” She described her route into women’s trade union politics, at the very beginning of her time in the Lenin Ironworks when she had had difficulties adjusting to her new industrial work environment, in this way: “The days passed and as I came around, before now my colleagues elected me as a union steward [bizalmi], and then brigade leader and trade union representative responsible for women’s issues. I  no longer had any time to deal with myself; other people thoroughly commandeered my time.” Years after these events Mrs. Csordás still worked three shifts, since for her this was easier “than getting up every night.” She regularly came to the factory well before her shift began: “because of the functions, there are always things to be discussed.”38 Manyi Csík was employed in the Dunai Ironworks in Dunaújváros, where she had done three years of three-shift work since she graduated from high school. By 1980 she had spent seven years in an administrative position in the work competition office of the large plant. Not long before Easter in the year 1980 she went to work, and then suddenly there was a phone call that I should come down to the party committee at once. I said to myself, Jesus Christ, what’s happened? One needs to know that I was a party member. What has happened. And I go down, and the party secretary of the large enterprise informs me that the party committee has decided that from May 1, I shall become a fulltime [függetlenített] member of the [SZB] and that I  will become the chair of the [trade union] Women’s Committee. I said oh God, I didn’t even know what they were talking about, and I said I would like to ask for respite so that I  can think this through, and well, there was no respite, one has to go there, following the instruction of the party. So well, I  went home and told my husband, he said, well, mother, then you go  Béla Szémann, Utak, sorsok, asszonyok: Szociográfiai életrajzi riportok munkásnőkről [Routes, fates, women: Sociographic biographical reports on women workers] (Budapest: Magyar Nők Országos Tanácsa, Kossuth Könyvkiadó, 1980), 4–10. 38  Szémann, Utak, 297–99. 37

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 349

2020.05.12. 19:28:03

350

Susan Zimmermann

there and do this. Hence I arrived here in 1980, practically at the age of twenty-eight.39

The decision soon turned out to be only the beginning of more far-reaching turnarounds and a life-changing experience which led Manyi Csík into the upper echelons of full-time trade union work in the Trade Union of Workers in the Iron, Metal, and Electrical Industries (Vas-, Fém- és Villamosenergiaipari Dolgozók Szakszervezete, VFVDSZ). She continued her narrative: At the age of twenty-eight in the [SZB]. And well, as I got into the [SZB], with the same momentum they elected me as a member of the Women’s Committee of the [VFVDSZ], arguing that this is the place for the firstrank women’s leader of such a  big industrial enterprise. Well, this period for me conjures up very good memories [ez az időszak nagyon szép emlékekről szól nekem], together with the fact that there were many unknown things, I had to learn a lot . . . , but I regarded it my primary goal that I see clearly what the situation of the women in the Dunai Ironworks is, given that in this period we were an enterprise that employed nearly 10,000 people, and more than one third . . . was women . . . , and more than one third [of them] worked in continuous uninterrupted shifts [i.e., including the night shift].40

Built in this way, the trade union women’s network reached from the factories through the women’s committees of the county-level SZMTs and the national trade unions—Manyi Csík belonged to the Women’s Committee of the VFVDSZ from 1980—to SZOTNB, where the representatives of the women’s committees of the SZMTs and the national trade unions regularly met. SZOTNB, while building and guiding this network, fully engaged with the question of equal pay as an element of the politics of women’s work in the macro-economy—“the large relations of economic planning, and the economy-related problems of the further solution of the women’s question” within this framing41—and national-level decision-making on labor policies. SZOTNB urged the SZOT Presidium to ask the National Plan-

39

 Manyi Csík, Interview, Audio recording and transcript, September 12, 2016, transcript p. 2. 40  Ibid. 41  This is how the content of one of the ten major lectures of the planned training course was circumscribed. Júlia Turgonyi, “Javaslat a [SZOT] által szervezendő nőfelelősi tanfolyam tematikájára” [Proposal for the themes to be covered by the training course for the trade union representatives responsible for women’s issues to be organized by SZOT], PIL, SZKL 2. f. 19 / 1970 / 1 doboz, July 22, 1970.

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 350

2020.05.12. 19:28:03

“It Shall Not Be a Written Gift, but a Lived Reality”

351

ning Office (Országos Tervhivatal) to include a reference to the Directive(s) on women’s issues, including equal pay, into the objectives of the Fourth Five-Year Plan before it went to Parliament for discussion. Welcoming the planned special pay raises for various groups of employees (in some of which the proportion of women was very high), SZOTNB first demanded the addition of a special pay increase for the textile and garment industries via a “central measure.” This was necessary because in these branches, reflecting the “heritage of the past,” the wage level was “arbitrarily low,” particularly when considering that most of the work in these branches was shift work, characterized by “dictated pace” (diktált ütemű) and demanding norms.42 Secondly, “[t]he central effort to eliminate women’s wage inequality, [a phenomenon] which has been disclosed by the party too, and [the elimination of which] also has been decreed in the Government decision . . . , is not included into the objectives of the Plan regarding wage issues. We consider it necessary to additionally include this wage measure.”43 In the fall of 1971, taking stock of the experiences amassed during the first year of work for the implementation of the Directive(s) on women’s issues, the SZOT Secretariat realistically summarized that the trade unions had already gained “rich experience especially in terms of revealing and exploiting the local opportunities.”44 With regard to equal pay, this meant substantive measures by a considerable number of enterprises that had enacted collective pay raises for (some of ) the lowest income groups where these predominantly included women. In one enterprise in Baranya County the raise had been as large as 40 percent. Elsewhere, forty out of 105 women workers had received a special raise of 8 percent, while a group of unskilled (kisegítő) kitchen workers was granted a  lump sum raise.45 The parallel attempts at “abolishing the unjustified [indokolatlan] wage differentials” in those cases when women did work identical to that of men within a  given enterprise were considered less successful. The enterprises had not yet even “duly scrutinized the magnitude of the unjustified differentials.” SZOT drew a twofold conclusion. Firstly, the enterprises should “devise plans for the gradual and yearly elimination of the disproportions and . . . the deployment of the mate42

 The presentation was “strictly confidential.” See “Előterjesztés a  SZOT Elnökségének. [SZOTNB] . . . javaslatai a IV. 5 éves terv főbb célkitűzéseihez” [Proposal to the SZOT Presidium: The propositions of the SZOTNB on the main goals of the Fourth Five-Year Plan], PIL, SZKL 2. f. 19 / 1970 / 1 doboz, July 17, 1970. 43  Ibid. 44  “A SZOT Titkárság állásfoglalása a nőpolitikai határozat további végrehajtására” [Statement of the SZOT Secretariat on the further execution of the women politics decision], PIL, SZKL 2. f. 19 / 1971 / 3 doboz / 4 ő.e., October 8, 1971. 45  Czerván to Mrs. László Erdei (MNOT), PIL, SZKL 2. f. 19 / 1971 / 3 doboz / 4 ő.e., Appendix, n.d.

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 351

2020.05.12. 19:28:03

352

Susan Zimmermann

rial means at hand . . . which can be put to use for this goal.” Secondly, the annual review of the collective agreements had to take these plans into consideration.46 Ilona Futó, the doyenne of the politics of women’s work in the VFVDSZ, had already demanded that the ministries should develop and decree the “principles” based on which the grading of women’s and men’s work within the enterprises would be facilitated, so that the proportions between their remuneration would be “just” (igazságosan megoldani).47 In terms of the overall opportunities for promoting equal pay, the years 1972 and 1973 brought favorable changes. Starting in late 1972, further development of the New Economic Mechanism was delayed. Preference was henceforth given to wage policies in favor of workers in large state sector factories, and new emphasis was placed on central wage policies. This increased the room to act in favor of equal pay at the central level, and central wage regulation did repeatedly take the question of women’s wages into consideration in the following years. By 1973, the government decided on further steps to take. They included “gradual but rapidly paced [gyorsütemű]” central and enterprise-level action, and politics aimed at reducing the “justified” differences, especially insofar as they were grounded in women workers’ lack of skill.48 In January 1975, a new instrument designed to control wage differentials within industries or professions across the country was introduced. These National Wage Tables for the Professions (Országos Szakmai Bértáblázat), under preparation since 1973 with the strong involvement of SZOT and the trade unions, constituted a promising instrument for promoting the struggle against women’s wage discrimination. The instrument was to aim at the “reduction of unjustified differences between base wages” in different parts of the country. It “has to be achieved that across the whole territory of the country, independent of . . . sector, the workers receive nearly identical base wages for work which requires identical education and comes with identical physical hardship and conditions.”49 The introduction of the National Wage Tables for the Profes46

 “A SZOT Titkárság állásfoglalása.”  “Nőfelelősi értekezlet.” 48  “Munkaügyi Miniszter [Minister of Labor] 761/1980. V/32, Trethon Ferenc s.k.,” PIL, SZKL 2. f. 19 / 1980 / 1 doboz / 4 ő.e, July 8, 1980; “Tájékoztató a nők gazdasági és szociális helyzete javítása érdekében hozott határozatokról és rendeletekről” [Information on the decisions and bylaws decreed in the interest of the improvement of the economic and social condition of women], PIL, SZKL 2. f. 19 / 1978 / 3 doboz / 16 ő.e., ÉDOSZ, n.d., reprinting the Council of Ministers Decision 1004/1973 (December 24). 49  MSZMP CC Guidelines for the development of the societal role of the working class and the further improvement of its conditions, 19-20/03/1974, reprinted in Az MSZMP Központi Bizottságának Párttörténeti Intézete (MSZMP PI), ed., A  Magyar Szocialista Munkáspárt határozatai és dokumentumai 1971–1975 [Directives and documents of 47

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 352

2020.05.12. 19:28:03

“It Shall Not Be a Written Gift, but a Lived Reality”

353

sions would effectively raise the wages of women workers who, often as a result of the program of decentralized industrialization, were massed together in the branch-factories of large enterprises established in remote areas. By the middle of the decade, the commitment of the party, state, and trade unions to pursue equal pay had also made important inroads into other core instruments of Hungarian labor policy. In 1974, the Central Committee combined its declaration that the “labor force of the large enterprises” was the “most solid core” of the working class with the necessity to “deal specifically with the problems of women workers because of their special position and importance within the working class.” This assessment concluded with the observation that it “continues to be a fundamental task to guarantee the principle of equal pay for equal work.”50 The 1975 guidelines on the collective agreements to be concluded with reference to the Fifth Five-Year Plan period, jointly issued by the Ministry of Labor and SZOT, prescribed that the agreements had to address equal pay. The precisely defined principle of equal pay had to be pursued “in a more effective manner,” so as to achieve full implementation “throughout the whole enterprise.”51 Shortly before the open eruption of the macroeconomic and debt crises toward the end of the decade, additional measures were taken, such as raising the lower end of the wage scales and re-regulating shift bonuses. Women workers in particular would profit from these reforms.52

the MSZMP, 1971–1975] (Budapest: Kossuth Könyvkiadó, 1978), 672; Decision of the SZOT Presidium on the work on the development of the national wage tables and the statement of the trade unions in this regard, June 25, 1973, reprinted in PTI, Érdekegyeztetés, 130–31; A magyar szakszervezetek XXIII. kongresszusa, 1975. december 8–13. (Rövidített jegyzőkönyv) [The twenty-third congress of the Hungarian trade unions, December 8­–13, 1980; Abbreviated minutes] (n.p.: Táncsics Könyvkiadó, 1976), 414. 50  Communication on the MSZMP CC session, March 19–20, 1974, reprinted in MSZMP PI, A Magyar Szocialista Munkáspárt, 657, 666. Historian Mark Pittaway describes the focus on the workers of the large state enterprises as a redefinition of the working class, replacing the earlier focus on skilled workers. See Mark Pittaway, From the Vanguard to the Margins: Workers in Hungary, 1939 to the Present (Leiden: Brill, 2014), 210. 51  “A munkaügyi miniszter és a  SZOT irányelvei a  kollektív szerződések megkőtéséről” [Guidelines issued by the Minister of Labor and SZOT on the conclusion of the collective agreements], Munkaügyi Közlöny, no. 9 ( July 19, 1975): 308. The trade union women claimed that the collective agreements also had to give a share of the wage development funds to be set aside for this purpose, “Tanterv . . . 1976.” 52  “Jelentés az MSZMP KB, a  kormány, a  SZOT és központi vezetőségünk nőpolitikai határozatai végrehajtásának tapasztalatairól” [Report on the experiences with regard to the execution of the directives on women’s politics of the MSZMP CC, the government, SZOT, and our central leadership], PIL, SZKL 2. f. 19 / 1979 / 1 doboz / 2 ő.e., VFVDSZ, December 1978; Turgonyi and Garai, Összefoglaló tanulmány, 45; A magyar szakszervezetek XXIII. kongresszusa, 337.

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 353

2020.05.12. 19:28:03

354

Susan Zimmermann

This section has looked at the campaign for equal pay unfolding from 1969 and documented how female trade union functionaries, dedicated to tirelessly promoting equal pay, became a driving force of the campaign. As they built a multilayered policy network for promoting policies in favor of working women, these women accumulated and systematically disseminated expert knowledge on (un)equal pay. They pursued an inclusive and sophisticated policy vision, combining various components of how equal pay should be conceptualized and pursued on both enterprise and national levels. Trade union women were involved in generating local successes, and their demands and lobbying most likely contributed to achieving some nationwide pro-equal pay measures. In the following two sections of this chapter I aim to explain the limited overall success of both the campaign for equal pay and the narrowing of the gender wage gap, as repeatedly documented by both the trade union women’s lobby and the Ministry of Labor. The trade union women widely publicized this information as they continued to struggle for equal pay. In the first half of the 1970s, women workers’ effective hourly wages in the state sector grew more slowly than the wages of male workers, falling to 70 percent of the latter in 1974, compared to 71.9 percent in 1969. The loss affected all categories of women workers, whether skilled, semi-skilled, or unskilled. In terms of the “hourly base wage” (alapórabér) there was minimal improvement, with all women workers’ wages reaching 73.5 percent of the level of men’s in 1974, compared to 73 percent in 1964. Yet the large group of semi-skilled women workers had lost out even in terms of the hourly base wage. In the textile and garment industries there were small gains. In general terms, the data for 1979 again showed slight deterioration.53 In Hungary, as in other countries, a vested interest in continued wage discrimination against female workers remained, pursued by various actors and rooted in numerous motivations. Still, the fact that interests and dynamics opposed to equal pay were so dominant in the period between 1969 and 1978 is remarkable, not least because this period, by the end of which the macroeconomic and debt crises became acute, was the heyday of successful standard of living policies in Hungary. These policies largely ignored  Júlia Turgonyi, Az iparban foglalkoztatott nők foglalkozási-, szakmai struktúrája, és a szakszervezetek feladatai (Zárótanulmány) [The employment and professional structure of the women employed in industry, and the tasks of the trade unions: Concluding study] (Budapest: Szakszervezetek Elméleti Kutató Intézete, 1981), 98–101, 103, 108–9. A report by the Ministry of Labor issued in 1980 stated that the overall average income of women was 30 percent lower than that of men in 1979, as compared to 35 percent in 1970. Women’s base wages in identical work were 10 percent lower than men’s, yet the difference was bigger when the fulfillment of norms and the piece rate-based component of the wages was taken into account. “Munkaügyi Miniszter [Minister of Labor] 761/1980.”

53

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 354

2020.05.12. 19:28:03

“It Shall Not Be a Written Gift, but a Lived Reality”

355

the consequences of the world economic crisis triggered in 1973, including a dramatic deterioration in Hungary’s terms of trade, and other macroeconomic problems and restrictions connected to the continued industrialization drive that now relied more heavily on easily-procured Western loans than it had in the 1960s. Only at the end of 1978 was the MSZMP’s general secretary, the head of state János Kádár, forced to acquiesce to demands to freeze the standard of living for an indefinite period of time in order to restore macroeconomic equilibrium.54 The period between 1970 and 1975 saw the highest increases in real wages according to Hungarian national statistics. In the second half of the 1970s real wages rose at a slower pace, before they stagnated and ultimately declined in the 1980s.55 The 1970s thus entailed—in the abstract—high potential for any campaign for equal pay, sustained by dedicated actors, to yield visible success. However, as will be shown in the following section, dominant framings of the politics of women’s work—which many trade union women willingly embraced—and a number of characteristics of the creation of wage policies in state-socialist Hungary kept the door open for vested interests to continue wage discrimination against female workers, even before 1978.

The Co-Construction of Restrictive Framings of the Politics of Women’s Work The agenda of promoting working women’s material interests, which so visibly informed the politics of labor from 1969, was systematically tied to the overall economic advancement of the state-socialist project. Time and again, economic considerations—including references to the perceived necessities of economic planning, and the challenges to and opportunities  György Földes, Az eladósodás politikatörténete, 1957–1986 [The political history of indebtedness, 1957–1986] (Budapest: Maecenas Könyvkiadó, 1995), chs. 3, 4, and 5, at 137; Richard Portes, “Hungary: Economic Performance, Policy and Prospects,” in East European Economies Post-Helsinki: A  Compendium of Papers (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1977), 775–77; “Die innenwirtschaftliche Lage Ungarns” [The domestic economic position of Hungary], April 20, 1976, Zwischenarchiv [Intermediate archive], no. 117636, Politisches Archiv des Auswärtigen Amtes, Berlin, Germany; “Wirtschaftsjahresbericht 1975 der Botschaft Budapest” [Annual economic report 1975 of the Budapest Embassy], January 7, 1976, Zwischenarchiv, no. 117636. 55  Tibor Valuch, Magyar hétköznapok: Fejezetek a  mindennapi élet történetéből a  második világháborútól az ezredfordulóig [Hungarian everydays: Chapters of the history of everyday life from World War II to the turn of the millenium] (Budapest: Napvilág Kiadó, 2013), 39; Bartha, Alienating Labour, 122. 54

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 355

2020.05.12. 19:28:03

356

Susan Zimmermann

for state-socialist economic development within the (capitalist and statesocialist) world economy—were weighed against female workers’ material interests. Enterprise-level economic considerations—that is, the economic rationality informing the strategies of economic management at the point of production—were also regularly invoked in those cases when measures designed to advance female workers’ material interests were tied to the development and material possibilities of the state-socialist project as a whole. Those actors who advocated change concurred in principle with the perceived need to take these framings into consideration, so it was easy for others to invoke these framings at any time in order to control and reject specific demands. The fact that the policies of advancing female workers’ material interest were tied into these framings thus genuinely restricted the transformative potential of the campaign for equal pay. The restrictive potential of the framings was clearly discernible from the very beginnings of the campaign for equal pay. As a consequence of a largescale inquiry into the condition of working women, in February of that year the government issued a brief decision that simultaneously paved the way for inserting equal pay into the changing construction of workplace-related women’s policies and prefigured the constraints upon real action. The decision referred to the need to enforce the principle of equal pay “in a more consistent manner,” while relating the envisioned progress in the politics of women’s work to a number of defining parameters and constraints. The government declared that the “societal-political [társadalompolitikai] importance of further improvement of the condition of women working in factories [üzem], in the home and at the workplace, requires that the leadership, in harmony with our economic development, in designing the national economic plans and as part of our standard of living policy, regularly concerns itself with this question at all levels.”56 While attributing the highest level of legitimacy to the improvement of the condition of women workers, the decision thus directly tied this element of state-socialist gender policies to the economic advancement of state-socialism, as connected with and expressed in the making of the FiveYear Plans and the evolution of the standard of living policy. In the years to come, this abstract iunctim would be repeatedly mobilized in order to legitimate delays in concrete action or justify outright rejection of concrete proposals or demands for change. The trade unions, with their specific 56

 “A Magyar Forradalmi Munkás-Paraszt Kormány 2003/1969. (II. 15.) számú határozata az üzemi dolgozó nők munkahelyi és otthoni körülményeinek alakulásáról” [Decision no. 2003/1969 (15. 2.) by the Hungarian Revolutionary Workers’ and Peasant’s Government on the development of the conditions at the workplace and at home of women working in factories], Határozatok tára 18, no. 2 (1969).

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 356

2020.05.12. 19:28:03

“It Shall Not Be a Written Gift, but a Lived Reality”

357

dual role of both “protect[ing] and represent[ing] the interests of working people [dolgozók]”57 and “partaking in power [részese a hatalomnak],”58 embodied the iunctim in a distinct manner. This dual role translated into a requirement that the trade unions take into consideration the macroeconomic framings of the politics of women’s work. They were—read the MSZMP party program in 1975—“to represent, in accordance with the material possibilities of the country, the interests of their members in terms of the satisfaction of their material, social, and cultural aspirations.”59 Accordingly, the trade union women who contributed so much to triggering and sustaining the campaign for equal pay repeatedly emphasized that the gendered change they advocated was not meant to question the economic viability of state socialism, even while arguing that gender injustice, in terms of wages or other factors, was not justifiable under the given economic circumstances either. The 1969 study “The Work and Life Circumstances of the Industrial Women Workers,” authored by Júlia Turgonyi, a leading intellectual representative of women’s trade union politics, and Zsuzsa Ferge, who had spent many years as an employee of the Central Statistical Office, is a case in point. The study was pathbreaking in that it strongly advocated a new politics of women’s work and made the case for the substantive, effective equality of women, including the issue of equal pay. Yet the authors also claimed that progress towards women’s equality could be achieved only in tandem with “economic and general societal” development: “Even . . . if there was the endeavor to fix the obvious errors, our material possibilities would not allow for the radical, swift, and overarching improvement of women’s wages. This can happen only gradually.”60 Implying that improving women’s wages was a matter of additional expense, the authors thus indirectly argued that redistributing wage funds in favor of women could not happen at the expense of wage funds already consumed by men. Simultaneously, they also tied the quest for more justice between the women and men of the working classes to the overall development of state socialism. Trade union women thus acquiesced to gradualism while tirelessly pressing for the hastening of progressive change. From their perspective, only one systemic alternative existed: capitalism, which had long embodied women’s  As given in the Hungarian Constitution, “Law 1/1972,” Magyar Közlöny, no. 32 (April 26, 1972), Art. 4. 58  This is how Márton Buza, long-term Director of the Theoretical Research Institute of the Trade Unions (Szakszervezetek Elméleti Kutató Intézete), put it in 1985. Márton Buza, A  szakszervezetek Magyarországon [The trade unions in Hungary] (Budapest: Kossuth Könyvkiadó, 1985), 19. 59  MSZMP party program 1975, reprinted in MSZMP PI, A Magyar Szocialista Munkáspárt, 972. 60  Turgonyi and Ferge, Az ipari munkásnők, 7–8, 52–53. 57

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 357

2020.05.12. 19:28:03

358

Susan Zimmermann

wage discrimination, a view exemplified in the pages of Women of the Whole World and countless Hungarian publications. An additional explanation for why trade union women acquiesced to gradualism might be found in what gender historian Wang Zheng has recently called the “politics of concealment” pursued by “state feminists” in socialist China between 1949 and 1964. In response to their institutional subordination in the socialist state structure, these women developed strategies of hiding their feminist agenda behind, or embedding it into, declarations of strong support for the official agenda of party and state.61 Such “politics,” however, would not only enable the pursuit of the campaign for equal pay by tying it explicitly to the stage of development of state socialism, but also enable opponents to keep it at bay via reference to the very framings thus invoked. The overall framing of the politics of promoting female workers’ material interests, as described here, characterized the campaign against unequal pay in all its phases. The discourse of gradualism was already utilized within SZOT when discussing the first year of experience with the Directive(s) on women’s issues, so as to temper the inappropriate zeal SZOTNB had developed in tackling equal pay. The SZOT division responsible for issues relating to wages and labor, for instance, criticized SZOTNB for presenting “the [components of the Directive(s) on women’s issues] as if they had prescribed, in connection with the various themes [egy-egy témában], concrete implementation in 1971, although these [decisions] aimed at continuous progress.” This was particularly true for equal pay. SZOTNB might have “interpreted this point of the government’s decision as if the wage inequalities had to be abolished within one year. Yet nothing of the sort is true! This takes much more time, and can only be the result of gradual, purposeful, persistent work.”62 SZOTNB insisted it be formally recorded that the wage “gap has remained wide open, and even become bigger in some places [olló nyitva maradt, sőt helyenként kitágult].”63 However, in its role of generating expertise within the trade unions on the struggle for equal pay, SZOTNB itself always made sure to systematically evoke the “larger” framings. The 1976 curricular guidelines for those trade union bodies which organized training courses “for our [SZB] trade union representatives responsible for women’s issues”—as the main experts promoting women’s interests in the en Wang Zheng, Finding Women in the State: A Socialist Feminist Revolution in the People’s Republic of China, 1949–1964 (Oakland: University of California Press, 2016), esp. 16– 18. 62  Bér-Munkaügyi Osztály, “Észrevételek a nőpolitikai határozat végrehajtásával kapcsolatos jelentéshez” [Notes on the report on the implementation of the women-policy decision], SZOT, PIL, SZKL 2. f. 19 / 1971 / 3 doboz / 4 ő.e., September 22, 1971. 63  Tanterv a nőfelelősök tanfolyama számára (1971); Tanterv . . . 1976.” 61

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 358

2020.05.12. 19:28:03

“It Shall Not Be a Written Gift, but a Lived Reality”

359

terprises—made sure to convey that the struggle for equal pay was framed by a number of restrictions and interests which could not be conflated with the quest for women’s equality. In the present period, read the guidelines, “the level of development of the national economy, the size of the national income per capita, or the quantity of the means taken from this income which can be devoted to consumption, influence the wage proportions.” The progress toward equal pay was dependent on other variables, whereas there was no hint whatsoever at any concrete relation between these variables and the possible rhythm of progress toward equal pay. Neither the “larger” variables nor their relation to equal pay were ever translated into concrete figures. Moreover, equal pay was presented as an instrument in the service of foundational goals of state-socialist labor market policies, rather than a goal in itself. The “material appreciation of women’s work” was to serve as an “incentive” to lure some of the few remaining housewives into wage work, and to make women perform appropriately at the workplace.64 The politics of equal pay were thus governed by pressure for action, produced throughout the campaign for equal pay via reference to the powerful top-down Directive(s) on women’s issues, on the one hand, and retarded progress, justified via constant reference to the various “larger” discursive and political framings, on the other. Key moments of decision-making duly translated this constellation into ambiguous results, even when large-scale material rewards were distributed to the core working class. The (in)famous Central Committee resolution of November 1972 is a case in point. This decision has been described by a Western observer as a reaction to the “discontents of the urban, blue-collar working class” with some of the outcomes of the New Economic Mechanism;65 but up to now scholarship has not asked how the materially marginalized female “mass workers”—recognized in the Directive(s) on women’s issues as a  constitutive component of the working class—and the female trade union lobby related to the process. The Central Committee resolution scheduled, on top of the planned general increase in the income of the working population, an 8 percent raise in wages for manual workers in the state industries, which was to be enacted in a “differentiated” manner. This constituted an unprecedented window of opportunity for pursuing a politics of equal pay focusing on industrial women workers. On the one hand, the decision indeed included a clause according to which “the factories which predominantly employ women and work in three shifts have to be treated favorably.”66 As a result, enterprises with 64

 “Tanterv . . . 1976.”  Portes, “Hungary,” 784. 66  Communication about the meeting of MSZMP CC, November 14–15, 1972, reprinted in MSZMP PI, A Magyar Szocialista Munkáspárt, 381–82. 65

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 359

2020.05.12. 19:28:03

360

Susan Zimmermann

a high percentage of workers doing multiple shifts—which included women workers in large proportions—were treated preferentially, and within the industrial sector the special raise was particularly high in the garment industry.67 On the other hand, however, “higher qualification, performance, and heavy manual labor” had to be taken into consideration.68 By definition, at least two of these criteria worked against reducing the gender wage gap. In particular, the focus on heavy manual labor went squarely against the argument voiced by woman trade unionists and their allies that it was necessary to reevaluate what was considered heavy or burdensome labor. In order to understand how the politics of (un)equal pay were actually facilitated, we now turn to state-socialist labor policies, the second “larger” framing of the politics of (un)equal pay. If the campaign for equal pay was driven by the Directive(s) on women’s issues and related action, and curbed via reference to the “larger” macroeconomic framings, this tension translated into (re)producing (un)equal pay through characteristic features of state-socialist labor policies.

Doing the Politics of (Un)equal Pay Key to facilitating state-socialist labor politics was a specific multi-actor arrangement which pervasively characterized wage policies, and the politics of women’s work and labor policies more generally. Under the umbrella of an overall top-down approach, key features of this arrangement were operational in parallel at enterprise, intra-trade union, and national levels. At each of these levels of decision-making, and in between these levels, formal requirements for cooperation with—and the layered rights of—less powerful actors governed how hierarchy was negotiated. For the trade unions this included, depending on subject matter, the right to “consent” (egyetértés), and/or “representation of opinion” (véleményezés), and/or “monitoring” (ellenőrzés). The unions were to represent their opinion on any question touching upon the “life and labor circumstances” of the working population, whenever the MSZMP Central Committee, a branch ministry, or the economic management within the factories prepared and took relevant decisions. Their consent was required whenever the terms of the labor relation of individual workers were set, when the enterprise-level collective agreements were negotiated and concluded, and in relation to other intra-enter67

 “Munkaügyi Miniszter [Minister of labor] 761/1980.” Other sectors treated preferentially were health and education. 68  Communication about the meeting of MSZMP CC, November 14–15, 1972, reprinted in MSZMP PI, A Magyar Szocialista Munkáspárt, 381–82.

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 360

2020.05.12. 19:28:03

“It Shall Not Be a Written Gift, but a Lived Reality”

361

prise matters. Union monitoring included the right to request information from the responsible actors or carry out controls with regard to any subject matter touched upon in legal regulations concerning the working population. From the late 1960s onward, the trade unions also exercised the right of “representation of opinion” in connection with the appointment of economic managers, and they very formally granted the right to veto decisions of the management.69 This formal setting generated a  pervasive atmosphere and a  constant practice of formal and informal bargaining, which kept many actors busy, especially those who actually wanted to achieve tangible results. Sociologist Hertha Kuhrig’s description of “women’s politics” captures some aspects of this setting for the GDR. Here, strategic decision-making by the party was followed by “practical implementation through a  division of labor” in which many actors were involved, and within the framework of which many “female actors [Akteurin], who devised the reports [Vorlage] for the main actors . . . were convinced to do good,” not only for socialism but also for women.70 In Hungary, the formal setting, involving the trade unions in many capacities, allowed for female trade unionists’ relentless action and intervention on behalf of women workers. The same setting, however, generated the intensely mixed record of the campaign for equal pay. At particular moments, such as during the political conjuncture surrounding the 1970 directives on women’s issues and their aftermath, it allowed the trade union women’s lobby to oblige many actors to commit themselves to setting innovative policy goals regarding working women’s equality. To some degree, it also aided the implementation of these goals. Yet the same setting was conducive to the instant translation of adverse interests and circumstances into the factual politics of slowing, and indeed obstructing, progress toward equal pay. Reference to the various restrictive framings discussed above could always be flexibly invoked to justify such a course of action. State-socialist labor policies, through the operation of these relationships, converted the Directive(s) on women’s issues into both weak, partial, or missing implementation, and tireless action by many trade union women. This can be illustrated by countless examples. The last months of 1970 and the beginning of 1971 proved to be a  significant juncture in enterprises’ wage policies. This was a moment of two beginnings. The enterprises had to  PTI, Érdekegyeztetés, 2–16, 132–37; Judit Lux, A  magyarországi szakszervezetek történetéből: Átdolgozott kiadás [On the history of the Hungarian trade unions: Revised edition] (Budapest: Friedrich Ebert Alapítvány, 2008), pdf available online, accessed September 5, 2018, http://polhist.hu/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/lux2008.pdf, 121–22, 129–34. 70  Kuhrig, “Mit den Frauen,” 217–20. 69

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 361

2020.05.12. 19:28:03

362

Susan Zimmermann

translate the Fourth Five-Year Plan (1971–1975) into enterprise-level politics, including the preparation and conclusion of the collective agreements. At the same time, in following up on the Directive(s) on women’s issues they had to devise their action plans for improving the condition of female employees. The trade union women, acting upon the newly adopted decision, worked fervently toward getting their agenda into the action plans and the collective agreements, along with generating systematic cross references and synergy between these documents.71 However, within the trade unions the bargaining position of the actors sustaining trade union women’s politics, while strengthened by the Directive(s) on women’s issues, was formally a weak one. The nascent trade union women’s committees, established at all institutional levels, only had advisory status in each of these contexts. Their work was supervised and guided by the regular trade union bodies. Their rights centered on the “representation of opinion,” “monitoring,” making propositions, and networking. The chairs of the women’s committees of the national trade unions had to be secretaries (titkár)—that is, functionaries of the given trade union—and the chair of the enterprise-level women’s committees had to be a member of the relevant SZB.72 The leaders of the women’s committees at the various levels considered it a “very important” task to lay their “suggestions” before the responsible main bodies, urged reluctant functionaries to provide the relevant draft materials, and demanded, where formal inclusion had not yet been secured, to be “invited” to all meetings of the relevant bodies so that “at least one person can give her observations [hozzászól].”73 The relevant trade union bodies themselves were bound to cooperate with the economic management. The procedure leading up to the adoption of the collective agreement exemplifies the formal elements of this cooperation. The plan prepared by the employer in collaboration with the enterprise-based trade union representation had to be discussed with the workers and thereafter signed by the SZB secretary and the employer.74 The early history of the involvement of the emerging trade union women’s lobby, with the making of the collective agreements and action plans, illustrates the lived reality of “doing” (un)equal pay within this setting. The 71

 This focus and connection was underlined repeatedly during the first conference of trade union representatives responsible for women’s issues in early 1971. For one statement, see Jolán Harsányi, “Nőfelelősi értekezlet.” 72  For the regulations on the various types of trade union women’s committees, see Dokumentumok, 62–64, 105, 112; for the committees in the enterprises, see also Tanterv, 55. 73  In this case, this person was Comrade Mrs. Krekk, Trade Union of Workers in Agriculture, Forestry, and Water Management (Mezőgazdasági, Erdészeti és Vízügyi Dolgozók Szakszervezete), talking about the trade union’s Secretariat “Nőfelelősi értekezlet”; see also Mrs. Zsigmond Szabó, ibid. 74  Buza and Simó, Szakszervezeti lexikon, 281–82, 307.

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 362

2020.05.12. 19:28:04

“It Shall Not Be a Written Gift, but a Lived Reality”

363

trade union women were keenly aware that the universal preparation and adoption of the collective agreement was key to the actual promotion of equal pay. “If we are to achieve anything during [our] lifetime [valamit az életben] in connection to women’s wages, then this is when the plan for the collective agreement is being discussed.”75 The trade union representatives responsible for women’s issues and women’s committees had to be alert and prepared for action at all times in this regard to ensure that they were heard in their advisory capacity. Addressing the first “Conference of Trade Union Representatives Responsible for Women’s Issues” (Nőfelelősi értekezlet), SZOTNB president Margit Czerván exhorted that the SZBs “shall not give their opinion on the collective agreements unless the women’s committee has made its suggestions.”76 Reporting the complaint of one local trade union representative responsible for women’s issues from her trade union, Mrs. Futó reflected on the precarious position of the trade union representatives responsible for women’s issues for the local politics of women’s work more generally. “One comrade . . . put it this way: how can she assert the attainment of the [Directive(s) on women’s issues] if there are men at every level, and the leadership and fate of the decision’s implementation is in their hands, and . . . [the women’s] work in this regard can [only] be subsidiary.”77 The trade union women also worked hard to get the enterprises to seriously “put on the table” within the action plans “what they want to do in the interest of women” rather than simply trying to “copy the [central] decision” or sketching out “the tasks only roughly.”78 At the first conference of trade union representatives responsible for women’s issues, SZOT functionary and SZOTNB staff member Erzsébet Déri nonetheless cautioned against exaggerated expectations. The connection between the action plans and the collective agreements was nonbinding, and therefore much depended on trade union women’s activity. In her conclusion as given in the conference minutes, Mrs. Déri stated: “It is a good thing that we shall get [the responsible actors] to work the key points of the action plans into the collective agreements. Of course, not everything is possible, only that which can be regulated. . . . We ask you to send us good examples of the enterprises’ action plans.”79 These could be used to apply pressure or help willing enterprises to come up with good action plans. 75

 Statement by Comrade Mrs. Németh, trade union representative responsible for women’s issues of the Pest County SZMT, “Nőfelelősi értekezlet.” 76  Mrs. Czerván, “Nőfelelősi értekezlet.” 77  Such harsh words were extremely rare. “Nőfelelősi értekezlet.” 78  Comrade Mrs. Gerstenbrand, Trade Union of Workers in Traffic and Transport (Közlekedési és Szállítási Dolgozók Szakszervezete), “Nőfelelősi értekezlet.” 79  Jolán Harsányi, BDSZ, “Nőfelelősi értekezlet.”

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 363

2020.05.12. 19:28:04

364

Susan Zimmermann

These struggles and interactions paint a vivid picture of the many ways in which the politics of women’s work could be, and indeed were, conducted within the enterprises. Early on, SZOTNB summarized one of the difficulties of the new politics of women’s work. “The guarantee and control of genuinely performance-based remuneration, and consistent action against unjustified differences, are the weak point of the guiding work of the economic leadership, the activity of the trade unions, and the exercise of the union stewards’ right of consent.”80 The trade union women expended a great deal of energy in negotiating these difficulties and the multiple, malleable, and firm institutional frameworks of state-socialist labor policies on the ground. These women knew or experienced that they had gained no more than the capacity to negotiate and to try to exert pressure on other actors. In addition, even activists or functionaries who were openly critical of the resistance they experienced at every turn concurrently failed to engage critically with the overall arrangement of state-socialist labor policies, and only rarely criticized or reflected upon the status of their own politics of women’s work within this arrangement. The trade union women geared up for many years of struggle and unremitting activity, an attitude which was in line with their acceptance of the “larger,” potentially restrictive framings described above. As they acquiesced in the given conditions they developed a strong focus on the “subjective factor.” This approach, always mindful of the fact that the new politics of women’s work had to be initially facilitated by means of negotiation and pressure, consisted of three components. Firstly, the trade union women time and again underlined the importance of goodwill, especially from the more powerful actors, and their readiness to cooperate. “If a  leadership [here meaning the economic management of an enterprise or factory] is mindful of the signals of the women’s committee, then the execution of the directive [on women’s issues] will be effective.”81 This implied, secondly, that the “attitude” (hozzáállás)82 or “approach” (szemlélet)83 of these actors was decisive, and therefore that time and energy spent on influencing and convincing all those actors who 80

 “Jelentés a SZOT Elnökségének a Nőhatározat végrehajtásának tapasztalatairól és a további tennivalókról” [Report to the SZOT Presidium on the experiences of the execution of the Directive(s) on women’s issues and on further tasks], SZOTNB, PIL, SZKL 2. f. 19 / 1980 / 1 doboz / 8 ő.e., April 25, 1980. 81  Statement by Mrs. Déri, “Jegyzőkönyv … az SZMT [NB] alakuló üléséről” [Minutes of the opening meeting of the SZMT NB], PIL, SZKL 2. f. 19 / 1971 / 2 doboz / 7 ő.e., December 11, 1970, Tolna county. 82  “Jelentés a bányászati iparágakban foglalkozott nődolgozók helyzetének … javitása érdekében” [Report on the … improvement of the position of women employed in the mining industries], PIL, SZKL 2. f. 19 / 1971 / 3 doboz / 4 ő.e., June 8, 1971. 83  “A SZOT Titkárság állásfoglalása.”

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 364

2020.05.12. 19:28:04

“It Shall Not Be a Written Gift, but a Lived Reality”

365

had more power—from the ministry, through the economic management of the enterprise, to the fellow trade union functionary—to support the new politics of women’s work was never wasted. Thirdly, in exploiting the topdown structure of state-socialist labor policies with ultimate decision-making concentrated in the hands of upper-level actors, connections to these actors could be mobilized to overcome difficulties on the ground and achieve larger goals. At the first Conference of trade union representatives responsible for women’s issues in 1971, one comrade Ács, who represented the Trade Union of Workers of the Building, Wood, and Construction Materials Industries (ÉFÉDSZ) powerfully described (while being repeatedly interrupted by Mrs. Déri) some of the relevant efforts and experiences: Comrade Ács: . . . [W]e managed to ensure that the director general of the Glass Industry Works prepared the action plan on the basis of negotiation with the [responsible trade union body]. . . . In my opinion, if we can ensure that the economic units prepare the action plans, then there will be big results. Government decision—whether or not the ministry decrees [its own] action plan—is mandatory. Mrs. Déri: In essence it was the trade union, which extorted [kierőszakol] the whole action plan. Comrade Ács:  .  .  .  The SZOT Secretariat shall excoriate [elmarasztal] those [national] trade unions which insufficiently urged the ministry to issue the [branch level] action plan. Our general secretary [főtitkár; i.e., the executive leader of ÉFÉDSZ] went to see the minister five times without result, until in the end he went to see Comrade Somoskői [Gábor Somoskői, SZOT secretary and high-ranking MSZMP functionary] and asked him for help in this regard. . . . In preparation for the action plans one had to wield large-scale influence on the trade union bodies too. They put in writing that in their realm there is no problem, but in the end, they note that women’s wages need to rise by 30 percent within five years . . .84

Irén Martos, who from 1980 to 1989 was general secretary of the Trade Union of Workers in the Textile Industry (Textilipari Dolgozók Szakszervezete), remembered in an interview given in 2016 that things had to be broached every day. Now, when Juli Nyitrai [the chair of SZOTNB from 1977] will be here [for a previously scheduled interview], she can then, I think, relate a good many practical examples. . . . But

84

 “Nőfelelősi értekezlet.” In the translation of this statement I  have tried to capture the somewhat abbreviated style of the minutes.

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 365

2020.05.12. 19:28:04

366

Susan Zimmermann

on every level . . . how shall I say, there was a need for the interest-representation of women, . . . down in the factory on the factory level, then in the industry on the level of each industry, then likewise on the level of the [SZOT], in other words, everywhere [one had to remind] the partners that these things may not be neglected, and this had to be brought up day by day.85

Of key relevance for the fortunes of state-socialist labor policies in Hungary was the particular combination of a  strong discursive commitment with rather weak legal commitments and overtly weak implementation mechanisms. The “mass organizations,” including with regard to many questions the trade unions, were put into a position to negotiate and exert pressure, and the status of the trade union women responsible for the politics of women’s work within this setting was particularly weak. These general features of labor policy, as well as the constant invocation of the restrictive larger framings discussed above, left a  strong mark on the politics of women’s work and trade union women’s engagement with these politics. As a result of their complex (self-)positioning, female Hungarian trade unionists had a difficult time squarely confronting the ambiguity of other actors, or their opponents’ outright denial of change. It is hard to guess how individual protagonists of the equal pay campaign, in their “inner image,” connected with this ambiguous constellation. For those amongst them who, while committed to the (self-described) socialist state or its trade unions, felt deeply about gendered wage injustice, indefatigable effort and initiative in the face of limited results was certainly one modus operandi. The structure and practices of state-socialist labor policy discussed in this section were conducive to such an approach. Many trade union women certainly understood themselves, as SZOTNB president Margit Czerván put it, as engaged in constant struggle to transform the new politics of women’s work from “a written gift” into “a lived reality” (hogy ne írott ajándék, hanem valóraváltott gyakorlat legyen).86

85

 Irén Martos, Interview, audio recording and transcript, January 26, 2016, transcript p. 8.  Czerván used this formula when summarizing the debates of the first conference of trade union representatives responsible for women’s issues in January 1971. “Nőfelelősi értekezlet.”

86

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 366

2020.05.12. 19:28:04

“It Shall Not Be a Written Gift, but a Lived Reality”

367

Women Workers’ Wages and the State-Socialist Project in Perspective The appeal for joint action toward the enforcement of women’s rights, adopted by the World Congress of Women convened by the WIDF in Helsinki in June 1969, resolved the unacknowledged problem of how to address, from an international communist-led platform, the existence of unequal pay in state-socialist countries—where the phenomenon by definition could not exist. In her report on working women presented to the congress, the Soviet delegate Valentina Nikolayevna Tereshkova had once again asserted that in the socialist countries the “principle of equal pay is guaranteed . . . and put into effect.”87 The appeal for joint action, by contrast, employed an open-ended formula, demanding the “general application of the principle of equal pay for equal work.”88 Back in Hungary, only a few weeks earlier in May 1969, SZOT had invented the formula (quoted in the introduction to this chapter) which defined the “effective implementation” of the principle of equal pay as the key political task. This formula would guide the equal pay campaign unfolding in Hungary for years to come. The history of the campaign, which had been triggered and in many senses was continued by trade union pressure and in particular by female trade unionists—whilst also being fully endorsed by party and state—helps to develop a deeper understanding of some elements of the history of labor under state socialism. Wage policies in Hungary in the 1970s evolved within the double framework of the reemergence of a politics of “privileging” the industrial working class as the New Economic Mechanism was curtailed from late 1972 onwards, and the politics of a cornucopia in terms of wage development in general, and for the industrial labor force in particular. The regime fully acknowledged that women workers formed a backbone of the industrial working class, and that the few remaining, desperately needed labor reserves were comprised of women in the first place. This conjuncture was conducive to the politics of promoting equal pay for industrial women workers. These mostly semi-skilled or unskilled women workers were strongly represented in the growing group of the often harshly exploited “mass workers” in industry. As a result of wage differentials between branches and differentially located production units, and vari Women of the Whole World, no. 3 (1969).  Ibid.

87 88

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 367

2020.05.12. 19:28:04

368

Susan Zimmermann

ous more directly gendered biases in wage setting, women suffered from systematic wage discrimination when compared to male workers belonging to the same group.89 In addition, female workers—at least in Hungary—felt strongly about, and repeatedly gave voice to, their anger about gendered wage injustice. Turgonyi and Ferge, who had interviewed 260 women workers in six factories for their 1969 study, claimed that gendered wage discrimination had “elicited the most negative reverberations” from the women workers.90 When interviewed more than a decade later, Ferenc Zavori, head of the Organization and Cadre Division of a remote northeastern county SZMT, gave a mixed account of progress with regard to equal pay, and gendered wage issues more generally. In his county, Zavori stated, “[t]he leaders and union stewards are satisfied, but the women are impatient with regard to this theme.”91 Neither the particular conjuncture in terms of wage policies in the 1970s nor women workers’ openly articulated discontent with wage inequality proved conducive to generating a breakthrough. This was so with regard to both special wage promotion for the “mass workers”—including the women—within the industrial workforce as a whole, and the women within the group of the “mass workers.” From the analysis given in this chapter of how this happened, two conclusions can be drawn with regard to wage policies and the politics of women’s work more generally. Firstly, state-socialist wage policies treated industrial “mass workers” in a markedly instrumental manner, subordinating their condition to the goal of economic development even at those moments when—at least according to the perception of many contemporaneous actors—they could have done otherwise. The persistence of the politics of gendered unequal pay discussed in this chapter, as well as the abortive attempt to abolish women’s night work 89

 The parallel and overlapping wage discrimination of (the much smaller overall group of ) male and female workers belonging to the Roma population needs to be investigated. In the first half of the 1970s, amongst the working household heads belonging to the Roma population, 55 percent were unskilled workers. While the activity rate of working age Roms was nearly as high as amongst non-Roms (85 and 88 percent respectively), the Romnja activity rate was low (30 percent as compared to 64 percent of the non-Romnja). As was the case with regard to working women at the time, the low skill level was considered a key reason for the low wages of the working Roma population. Nonetheless, as one author added, “presumably the prejudices against the Gypsies” also played a  role. Mrs. István Kozák, “Az életszínvonal és a foglalkoztatottság összefüggése a cigánylakosságnál” [The correlation between standard of living and employment among the Gypsy population], Munkaügyi Szemle, no. 11 (1975): 23–28. 90  Turgonyi and Ferge, Az ipari munkásnők, 5, 51–52. 91  The interview formed part of a long series of interviews, most of which were conducted in 1982, and some, possibly, in 1979. Interview with Ferenc Zavori, conducted by Mrs. István Benkő, PIL, SZKL 2. f. 19 / 1983 / 1 doboz / 5 ő.e.

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 368

2020.05.12. 19:28:04

“It Shall Not Be a Written Gift, but a Lived Reality”

369

that formed a parallel element of the new politics of women’s work in the 1970s,92 substantiate this claim. The fact that the state-socialist regimes on the factory floor treated labor in a highly instrumental manner is common knowledge amongst historians of state socialism. Concentrating on the campaign for equal pay through a focus on the gendered composition of the large group of the “mass workers” helps capture an important element of the classed and gendered differentiation of this instrumental approach. Secondly, state-socialist wage policies built on an inherited, and were co-shaped and sustained, by an ongoing foundational male bias, which persisted despite all the activities, decrees, and measures addressing the issue of unequal pay. In other words, there was not one unified working class under Hungarian state socialism, but a fundamentally gendered working class. The women who formed part of this class were systematically materially discriminated against in terms of wages, and in a broader sense held a secondary working-class citizenship. The politics of equal pay as pursued and advocated in state-socialist Hungary during the 1970s and beyond, and possibly the gendered politics of the workplace more generally, offer a second set of insights. There was never any visible rupture with the declared goal to pursue the “effective implementation” of the principle of equal pay. Still, when compared to the parallel policies of easing the burden which the labors of social reproduction placed on working women, the campaign for equal pay produced fewer results. Historian Małgorzata Mazurek has claimed that women workers in Łódź, rather than challenging gendered wage injustice, “saw the industrial plant as the extension of work for the household” and used the factory as a venue through which to pursue their interests related to social reproduction.93 Donna Harsch has argued that the rapid advance of new social reproduction poli92

 This is the second focus of my study on trade unions and the politics of women’s work in Hungary from the 1960s to the 1980s. The 1970 Directive(s) on women’s issues addressed four major policy areas: equal pay, night work, measures aimed at easing the burden of social reproduction, and professional training for women. The commitment to abolish the night shift for women workers was flimsier than the commitment to equal pay from the beginning, and further weakened a few months after the various directives on women’s issues were adopted. Against the background of the macroeconomic crisis and intensifying export orientation, in 1977 Hungary abrogated the ILO Night Work (Women) Convention (Revised) (No. 41), to which the country had been party since 1936. The parallel analysis of the policies of women’s night work demonstrates how the politics of women’s work were driven by considerations directly related to both domestic and international factors impacting on the Hungarian economy. 93  Małgorzata Mazurek, “From Welfare State to Self-Welfare: Everyday Opposition among Female Textile Workers in Łódź, 1971–81,” in Gender Politics and Mass Dictatorship: Global Perspectives, ed. Jie-Hyun Lim and Karen Petrone (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), 289.

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 369

2020.05.12. 19:28:04

370

Susan Zimmermann

cies in the GDR reflected the enhanced opportunities for working women to successfully pursue their related interests—if only in the form of “atomized individual strategies”—against the backdrop of the economy’s increasing dependency on the female workforce.94 In Hungary, women workers repeatedly articulated their resentment of unequal pay, and many trade union women involved in the politics of women’s work devoted keen attention to wage injustice, sustaining a full-scale campaign for equal pay. Situating these findings in the larger context of the state-socialist politics of women’s paid and unpaid work, I draw two conclusions. Firstly, in light of the fairly limited successes of the enduring campaign for equal pay, it can be argued, at least with regard to Hungary, that women workers’ capacity to pursue their interests for remuneration at the point of production was weaker not only in comparison to their male peers, but also in comparison to how their needs and interests influenced the politics of social reproduction. There was one difference between the question of equal pay and the question of social reproduction that was crucial from the perspective of this chapter. While investment in social reproduction certainly stabilized the larger gender order as it helped women to cope with the “double burden”—often labeled the “second shift” in Hungary at the time—the politics of equal pay could be, and indeed often were, perceived as generating or enhancing direct competition between male and female workers, and destabilizing material groundings of male hegemony at the point of production. Secondly, it could be argued that the instrumental treatment of the labor force that characterized the state-socialist politics of labor found a particularly pronounced expression in the gendered politics of the workplace. This finding complements those studies which suggest that male skilled workers enjoyed considerable bargaining power in state-socialist societies,95 and can serve as a springboard to develop a fuller picture of the relationship between state-socialist regimes and the labor force. The scholarly debate on this relationship has long focused “primarily not on the state but on the workers.”96 Foregrounding the trade unions and the trade union women invested in promoting working women’s in94

 With reference to earlier decades, Harsch argues that women were interested in wage questions and that demands for equal pay were deemed legitimate, whereas low wages in general couldn’t be challenged. Harsch, Revenge of the Domestic, 102–3, 312. 95  Alf Lüdtke, “The World of Men’s Work, East and West,” in Socialist Modern: East German Everyday Culture and Politics, ed. Katherine Pence and Paul Betts (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2007), 234–49; Pittaway, From the Vanguard. 96  Tuong Vu, “Workers under Communism: Romance and Reality,” in The Oxford Handbook of the History of Communism, ed. Stephen A. Smith (Oxford: Oxford University Press, online edition, 2013), accessed July 15, 2015, DOI:10.1093/oxfordhb/ 9780199602056.013.027.

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 370

2020.05.12. 19:28:04

“It Shall Not Be a Written Gift, but a Lived Reality”

371

terest within the (self-described) socialist state does not merely contribute to developing a more nuanced understanding of how the state-socialist regime engaged with workers. It also offers a way to “think together” about labor history and women’s history through a final set of conclusions referring to trade union women’s engagement with the politics of women’s work. The trade unions, and above all the female trade unionists and their allies, while certainly invested in the instrumentalist approach to the labor force, pursued the new gendered politics of promoting women’s interests at the workplace. Ordinary working women were drawn or pushed into the trade union institutions and functions installed for the purpose (generating pronounced upward mobility in some cases). The network of female trade unionists played a key role in generating, sustaining, and driving forward the campaign for equal pay. The women-centered politics of the workplace these actors pursued were characterized by a number of features particular to the state-socialist gender regime at the time, and by features that speak to larger contexts of the politics of gender and labor in the twentieth century. Firstly, women were the single most important driving force of the politics directed against unequal pay, a  key element of material gendered injustice. In other words, it was women who championed women’s core interests against reluctant men and male-dominated institutions. This finding squarely situates both the gender regime and women’s commitment to pro-women policies in 1970s state-socialist Hungary within a larger common history of women’s movements and activisms around the world. Scholars have only just begun to consider within a common frame the activism of women dedicated to various pro-women agendas in divergent political systems and international contexts within the evolving gender politics of the twentieth century.97 Secondly, in one sense, the Hungarian female trade unionists pursued their pro-women policies from a  comparatively strong “outsider-within” position. Key trade union institutions dedicated to the politics of women’s work with a focus on the workplace operated in an advisory capacity alone. In addition, trade union women dedicated to pursuing women’s interests (as defined at the time) could exert influence on those committees and institutions which were ultimately responsible for the “real” decisions only to a limited degree. This finding situates the history of these women in the larger context of the pervasively masculinist traditions of the labor movement, while also underscoring the masculinist character of the Hungarian state in the period of state-socialism which built on these tradi97

 Celia Donert, “Women’s Rights in Cold War Europe: Disentangling Feminist Histories,” Past and Present 218, Supplement 8 (2013): 178–202; Francisca de Haan et al., eds., Women’s Activism: Global Perspectives from the 1890s to the Present (London and New York: Routledge, 2013); Zheng, Finding Women in the State.

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 371

2020.05.12. 19:28:04

372

Susan Zimmermann

tions. Thirdly, in another sense, female Hungarian trade unionists were invested more than laboring women in other contexts within a system of layered top-down power over the female workforce they claimed to represent. They identified, if only for the perceived lack of better alternatives, with the base structure of this system. As a result, while many of them were, in all certainty, genuinely committed to the agenda of promoting women workers’ interests, they would never challenge the foundational framings and mechanisms of state-socialist labor policies which were conducive to pursuing working women’s interests in a limited manner at best. Trade union women would thus confidently engage in or resign themselves to persevering—in many cases through decades—in pursuing their goals within the given hierarchical multi-actor arrangement of state-socialist labor policies, whatever results they might or might not achieve. In this way they visibly contributed to the women-friendly substance and appearance of the statesocialist system, while simultaneously cooperating—some from a position of “soft power” and many from clearly subordinate locations—with a system of labor policies that continuously produced and reproduced the material injustice weighing so heavily on women workers.

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 372

2020.05.12. 19:28:04

Labor Protest in the Italian-Yugoslav Border Region During the Cold War: Action, Control, Legitimacy, SelfManagement Sabine Rutar

T

his chapter began with two conversations with colleagues.1 When Thomas Welskopp maintained that the concept of “enterprise” (Unternehmen) was intrinsically connected to capitalism and that, consequently, there could be no talk of “enterprises” during state socialism,2 I  doubted such a clear-cut dichotomy, at least for the Yugoslav variant of a market-oriented, federated, yet centrally planned state socialism.3 When Jürgen Kocka, reflecting on the history of capitalism(s) and class formation, asked whether I thought that Yugoslav self-management had elements that could be useful

1

 I sincerely thank the Berlin Center for Cold War Studies for a very productive sabbatical year that permitted me to reflect on the issues at stake in this study. 2  We discussed this over a coffee during the 10th European Social Science History Conference in Vienna in April 2014. Welskopp’s contributions to the field over the last two decades have been among the most lucid, and recently he has, together with Ulrike Schulz, refined his reflections on the topic. See Ulrike Schulz and Thomas Welskopp, “Wieviel kapitalistisches Unternehmen steckte in den Betrieben des real existierenden Sozialismus?: Konzeptionelle Überlegungen und ein Fallbeispiel” [How much capitalist enterprise was there in the firms of the actually existing socialism?: Conceptual reflections and a case study], Jahrbuch für Wirtschaftsgeschichte 58, no. 2 (2017): 331–66. See also his Unternehmen Praxisgeschichte: Historische Perspektiven auf Kapitalismus, Arbeit und Klassengesellschaft [Enterprise practical history: Historical perspectives on capitalism, labor, and class society] (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2014); Karl Lauschke and Thomas Welskopp, eds., Mikropolitik im Unternehmen: Arbeitsbeziehungen und Machtstrukturen in industriellen Großbetrieben des 20. Jahrhunderts [Micropolitics in the enterprise: Labor relations and power structures in industrial large companies in the twentieth century] (Essen: Klartext, 1994). 3  Cf. Sabine Rutar, “Containing Conflict and Enforcing Consent in Titoist Yugoslavia: The 1970 Dockworkers’ Strike in Koper (Slovenia),” in “Violence in Late Socialist Public Spheres,” ed. Sabine Rutar, Special Issue European History Quarterly 45, no. 2 (2015): 275– 94. Cf. Schulz and Welskopp, “Wieviel kapitalistisches Unternehmen,” which confirms my assumption with an example from the GDR.

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 373

2020.05.12. 19:28:05

374

Sabine Rutar

for the construction of future labor relations, I thought he was designing a research agenda.4 In this chapter, I wish to open such a research agenda by looking at how the Yugoslav economic model of self-management was put into practice in the labor relations of the northeastern Adriatic port cities during the Cold War, specifically in the late 1960s and early 1970s, prior to the signing of the Helsinki Accords. The port and shipyard of Rijeka, Croatia, and the port of Koper, Slovenia, stand at the center of my argument, while the capitalistrun port and shipyard in Trieste across the border in Italy serve as a comparison. I compare social protests in the docks and ports of the three cities, thereby connecting the palpable changes in labor relations to the more general transformative processes in Italian and Yugoslav society during this period. As I show, labor relations in Koper and Rijeka can be understood by challenging mental maps that separate state-socialist economies from those in the capitalist world.5 The shipbuilding and port industries on both sides of the Italian-Yugoslav Cold War border continued to depend upon their global interconnectedness in order to function. While state-socialist ideologists may have wished to design an alternative socioeconomic order, daily practice required a response to world markets. I am not especially interested in the ideological premises: these are rather obvious, as industrial workers were considered a core ideological pillar of any state-socialist society. Rather, I look to discover the ways in which the ideological framework of the “good worker” and the “heroes of labor,” as well as the structural predispositions of this framework, were put into daily practice, and how both market requirements and nested patterns of social (inter)action, learned in previous political regimes, were encountered and enacted. Looking at Yugoslav and Italian maritime industries at their respective northern fringes, the chapter puts democracy and dictatorship into a relationship with each other. Neither labor history nor economic history have yet closely tied the construction of a “new order” of industrial relations 4

 He has asked me this question twice, once when I presented my research at the International Research Center‚ “Work and Human Life Cycle in Global History” in December 2014; and once more during the 51st International Conference of Labor and Social History (ITH) in Berlin in September 2015. See his Geschichte des Kapitalismus [History of capitalism] (Munich: Beck, 2014). His question prompted me to write “Betriebliche Selbstverwaltung zwischen den Blöcken—und danach?: Das jugoslawische Modell in Rückschau und Perspektive” [Entrepreneurial self-management between the blocks—and beyond?: The Yugoslav model in hindsight and perspective], Südost-Forschungen 75, no. 1 (2016, published 2017): 118–35. 5  On the global economy of the Soviet Union, see Oscar Sanchez-Sibony, Red Globalization: The Political Economy of the Soviet Cold War from Stalin to Khrushchev (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014).

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 374

2020.05.12. 19:28:05

Labor Protest in the Italian-Yugoslav Border Region

375

after World War II to the issue of the political integration of the workforce into their respective social systems.6 Juxtaposing the two opposed politicalideological settings serves to interrogate the concepts and repertoires of social action that were valid and applied among industrial workers of analogous industries on both sides of the Italian-Yugoslav border. Looking at the shipyards and ports of regionally adjacent analogous enterprises, all globally connected, sharpens the comparative perspective.

The Northeastern Adriatic during the Cold War In the aftermath of World War II and up to the mid-1970s, the northeastern Adriatic region was characterized by the contested state border between Italy and Yugoslavia, and by two strong yet contrasting communist ideologies: namely the Yugoslav Titoist variant, and the Italian variant that remained aligned to Stalin. Whilst the shopping habits of Yugoslavs travelling to Trieste have come to symbolize one of the most open Cold War borders, that same border also signified unresolved state-building issues. Only in November 1975 did the Treaty of Osimo legally fix the postwar border that the London Memorandum had established as a de facto boundary in 1954. The first half of the 1970s has not only generally been perceived as a “watershed” in the Cold War, but it also turned out to mark the end of the socioeconomic boom.7 In the Italian-Yugoslav border region, Helsinki and Osimo also ended the conspicuously long aftermath of World War II.8  See Till Kössler, Abschied von der Revolution: Kommunisten und Gesellschaft in Westdeutschland 1945–1968 [Farewell to the revolution: Communists and society in West Germany, 1945–1968] (Düsseldorf: Droste, 2004), who investigated the communist “like-minded community” (Gesinnungsgemeinschaft) between party traditions, the policy of the East German Socialist Unity Party (Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands, SED), and shop floor radicalism in Germany’s heavily industrialized Ruhr Valley. He identified one of the most important effects of the communist movement: namely, its constant reminders to the West German state that “deficits of integration [existed] in the new order, prompting the supply of energies to remedy those shortcomings” (449). See also the valuable study by the late Mark Pittaway, The Workers’ State: Industrial Labor and the Making of Socialist Hungary, 1944–1958 (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2012). 7  Eric J. Hobsbawm, Age of Extremes: The Short Twentieth Century (London: Joseph, 1994); Tony Judt, Postwar: A  History of Europe since 1945 (New York: Penguin Press, 2005); Anselm Doering-Manteuffel and Lutz Raphael, Nach dem Boom: Perspektiven auf die Zeitgeschichte seit 1970 [After the boom: Perspectives on contemporary history since 1970] (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2008). 8  Jože Pirjevec, Borut Klabjan, and Gorazd Bajc, eds., Osimska meja: jugoslovansko-italijanska pogajanja in razmejitev leta 1975 [The Osimo border: The Yugoslav-Italian negotiations and the 1975 delimitation] (Koper: Annales, 2006). 6

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 375

2020.05.12. 19:28:05

376

Sabine Rutar

On a larger scale, the Cold War decades saw the “normalization” of what between the 1950s and the 1970s emerged as a Western European labor pattern: that is, wage labor linked to formal and permanent contracts. The rather narrow limits of this norm have frequently been pointed out. To be sure, the alleged norm created expectations and served as a  measure of values, with strong implications for social policy, labor rights, as well as social and gender equality.9 In practice, however, the wage labor pattern of contracts remained exceptional, existing for a minority of workers, in a small number of countries, for a short period of time. At the same time, the state-socialist regimes of Eastern Europe served as a negative mirror image despite the existence of relative social security among the workforce, which observers rightly linked to perceptions of economic inefficiency. Yugoslavia provided the exception: its experiment in workers’ self-management differed from this pattern in several ways. It linked free market mechanisms to a  planned economy; it was originated precisely to differ from Soviet-led planned economies; and it was implemented in a state that was dependent on American and other Western finance, even as it sought to keep relations with the Soviet Union in check.10 Many on the Western European left were fascinated with the Yugoslav model of self-management, a potentially viable “third way” between Western-style capitalisms and Soviet-style planned economies. In the 1980s, younger generations of Italian and Yugoslav scholars came together more than once to critically discuss the topic.11 This sympathy is also evident in the older literature on the labor and trade union movement in Italy’s northeasternmost region, Friuli Venezia Giulia.12 Here, hardly anyone denied the  Nicole Mayer-Ahuja, Wieder dienen lernen?: Vom westdeutschen “Normalarbeitsverhältnis” zu prekärer Beschäftigung seit 1973 [To learn to serve again?: From the West German “standard labor relation” to precarious employment since 1973] (Berlin: edition sigma, 2003); cf. Françoise Carré, “Destandardization: Qualitative and Quantitative,” in The Sage Handbook of Sociology of Work and Employment, ed. Stephen Edgell, Heidi Gottfried, and Edward Granter (Los Angeles: Sage, 2016). 10  For an interesting economic approach which contains useful indicators for future research, see Saul Estrin, Self-Management: Economic Theory and Yugoslav Practice (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010 [1983]). 11  Cf., for example, Walter Briganti, ed., Cooperazione ed autogestione in Italia ed in Jugoslavia: Atti del seminario [Co-operation and self-management in Italy and Yugoslavia: Workshop proceedings] (Rome: Ed. Cooperativa, 1986); Assunta Antonini and Stefano Bianchini, eds., L’autogestione jugoslava [Yugoslav self-management] (Milan: Angeli,1982). 12  For example, Cristina Colummi, “... anche l’uomo doveva essere di ferro”: Classe e movimento operaio a Trieste nel secondo dopoguerra [“... Man had to be iron, too”: Class and labor movement in Trieste after World War II] (Milan: Angeli, 1986); Massimo Gobessi, ed., Cantieri addio!: Le lotte, le conquiste e la vita quotidiana nei cantieri e nelle fabbriche [Goodbye, shipyards!: The struggles, the achievements, and daily life in the shipyards and the factories] (Trieste: Astra, 2001). 9

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 376

2020.05.12. 19:28:05

Labor Protest in the Italian-Yugoslav Border Region

377

long-term negative consequences of their peripheral geopolitical context for the socioeconomic development of the region after its 1918 annexation by Italy.13 Research on Titoist Yugoslavia has broadly focused on the development of consumerism in the 1960s and 1970s,14 and more specifically on Yugoslav shopping journeys to Trieste;15 tourism on the Adriatic coast;16 and tendencies toward Americanization.17 Beyond this, scholars have studied the Yugoslav variant of 1968;18 the so-called “Croatian Spring” of 1971;19 and more generally, the ambiguous “golden decade” of the 1960s.20 However, only recently have researchers paid attention to workers at their workplaces. We know little about how those who constructed the local postwar labor milieus laid claim to sociopolitical legitimacy and power relations, and how  Cf. the excellent study by Giulio Sapelli, Trieste italiana: Mito e destino economico [Italian Trieste: Myth and economic fate] (Milan: Angeli, 1990). 14  Patrick H. Patterson, Bought & Sold: Living and Losing the Good Life in Socialist Yugoslavia (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2011); Igor Duda, U potrazi za blagostanjem: o povijesti dokolice i potrošačkog društva u Hrvatskoj 1950-ih i 1960-ih [In search of well-being: The history of leisure and consumer society in Croatia in the 1950s and 1960s] (­Zagreb: Srednja Europa, 2005); Igor Duda, Pronađeno blagostanje: svakodnevni život i potrošačka kultura u Hrvatskoj 1970-ih i 1980-ih [Prosperity found: Daily life and consumer culture in Croatia in the 1970s and 1980s] (Zagreb: Srednja Europa, 2010). 15  Breda Luthar, “Shame, Desire and Longing for the West: A  Case Study of Consumption,” in Remembering Utopia: The Culture of Everyday Life in Socialist Yugoslavia, ed. Breda Luthar and Maruša Pušnik (Washington, DC: New Academia Publishing, 2010), 341–78. 16  Hannes Grandits and Karin Taylor, Yugoslavia’s Sunny Side: A History of Tourism in Socialism (1950s–1980s) (Budapest and New York: Central European University Press, 2010). 17  Radina Vučetić, Koka-kola socijalizam: Amerikanizacija jugoslovenske popularne kulture šezdesetih godina XX veka [Coca-Cola socialism: The Americanization of Yugoslav popular culture in the 1960s] (Belgrade: Službeni Glasnik, 2012); English translation (Budapest: Central European University Press, 2018). 18  Boris Kanzleiter, “Rote Universität”: Studentenbewegung und Linksopposition in Belgrad 1964–1975 [“Red university”: The student movement and left opposition in Belgrade, 1964–1975] (Hamburg: VSA Verlag, 2011); Boris Kanzleiter and Krunoslav Stojaković, “1968” in Jugoslawien: Studentenproteste und kulturelle Avantgarde zwischen 1960 und 1975; Gespräche und Dokumente [“1968” in Yugoslavia: Student protests and the cultural avantgarde between 1960 and 1975; Dialogues and documents] (Bonn: Dietz, 2008); Hrvoje Klasić, Jugoslavija i svijet 1968 [Yugoslavia and the world, 1968] (Zagreb: Ljevak, 2012). 19  Darko Dukovski, Istra i Rijeka u Hrvatskome proljeću [Istria and Rijeka in the Croatian spring] (Zagreb: Alinea, 2007); Tihomir Ponoš, Na rubu revolucije: Studenti ‘71 [On the edge of revolution: The students of ‘71] (Zagreb: Profil international, 2007). 20  Hannes Grandits and Holm Sundhaussen, eds., Jugoslawien in den 1960er Jahren: Auf dem Weg zu einem (a)normalen Staat? [Yugoslavia in the 1960s: On its way to an (ab)normal state?] (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2013). 13

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 377

2020.05.12. 19:28:05

378

Sabine Rutar

they related to their respective communist parties or to international politics and economies. This chapter specifically looks at workers in the port cities in the Italian-Yugoslav border region, observing how the negotiating processes in and between the various communist groups played out locally and more generally during the 1960s and 1970s.21 The shipbuilding and dock workers looked back on their strong tradition of communist and/or antifascist underground activities during the interwar period, when the whole region had been part of Italy.22 Italian and Yugoslav partisans had commonly fought against Nazi occupation between 1943 and 1945.23 After the end of the war, many workers in cities like Trieste and Monfalcone looked upon Titoist communism with interest and benevolence. The region experienced large demographic changes. Most prominent was the “exodus” of the Istrian population—mostly, but not exclusively, ethnic Italians—to Italy and elsewhere.24 In 1946–47, several thousand people went from northeastern Italy to Yugoslavia, intending to contribute to the construction of a  socialist society.25 After Yugoslavia was expelled from the Cominform in 1948, communists who were critical of Titoism and remained faithful to Stalin fled Yugoslavia in yet another migration. Ethnicity, national identity, and nationalism are further key concepts in interpreting this multi-ethnic, multi-linguistic region. In her history of the rimasti, the Italians who did not participate in the “plebiscite” of emigration from Istria, Gloria Nemec has used oral history interviews and other source materials to challenge several historiographic tropes that are deeply inscribed in the region’s twentieth-century history of violence and ideolo Cf., for the first postwar decade, Patrick Karlsen, Frontiera rossa: Il Pci, il confine orientale e il contesto internazionale 1941–1955 [Red frontier: The PCI, the eastern border, and the international context, 1941–1955] (Gorizia: Libreria editrice goriziana, 2010). 22  Galliano Fogar, L’antifascismo operaio monfalconese tra le due guerre [Labor antifascism in Monfalcone between the world wars] (Milan: Vangelista, 1982). 23  Rolf Wörsdörfer, Krisenherd Adria 1915–1955: Konstruktion und Artikulation des Nationalen im italienisch-jugoslawischen Grenzraum [Adriatic hotspot, 1915–1955: Construction and articulation of the national in the Italo-Yugoslav border region] (Paderborn: Schöningh, 2004), 315–492. 24  Pamela Ballinger, History in Exile: Memory and Identity at the Borders of the Balkans (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2003); Marina Cattaruzza, Marco Dogo, and Raoul Pupo, eds., Esodi: trasferimenti forzati di popolazione nel Novecento europeo [Exodi: Displacements in the European twentieth century] (Naples: Ed. Scientifiche Ital., 2000). 25  Andrea Berrini, Noi siamo la classe operaia: i duemila di Monfalcone [We are the working class: The two thousand of Monfalcone] (Milan: Baldini Castoldi Dalai, 2004); Marco Puppini, Costruire un mondo nuovo: un secolo di lotte operaie nel Cantiere di Monfalcone; Storie di uomini, di passioni e di valori [Building a new world: A century of labor struggles in the Monfalcone shipyard; Stories of people, passions, and values] (Gradisca d’Isonzo: Centro Isontino di ricerca e documentazione storica e sociale “Leopoldo Gasparini,” 2008). 21

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 378

2020.05.12. 19:28:05

Labor Protest in the Italian-Yugoslav Border Region

379

gies.26 To be sure, her research interest is defined monoethnically, focusing on the italianità istriana, and leaves aside several significant tropes from “the left side of history.”27 To mention one example, the Italian-language secondary school in Piran (in Italian, Pirano) was established at the end of the war by Istrian-Italian antifascists and communists. The founding director remained loyal to the Stalin-aligned Italian Communist Party and fled to Trieste in 1952, finally succumbing to the pressure exercised upon him in the framework of the rigorously anti-Stalinist political climate in Yugoslavia after 1948.28 Connecting the italianità more comprehensively to political semantics and measures, and acknowledging the hybridity and fluidity of ethnic categorizations, would lead towards a more comprehensive history of the border region—both during the Cold War and beyond.29

Self-Managed Labor Functioning self-management on the shop floor was a goal of labor movements on both sides of the political divide. Self-management was linked to political concepts like justice, equality, solidarity, and the quest for a better society. Socioeconomic power relations existed in analogous manners beyond ideological (normative) defaults. Even so, the social practice in Italian and Yugoslav labor milieus was conditioned by precisely such defaults. The historicization of Western political semantics on concepts like freedom or democracy can serve as a model for analogous research in the ports and shipyards of the northeastern Adriatic.30 Labor protests, strikes, and eco Gloria Nemec, Nascita di una minoranza: Istria 1947–1965, storia e memoria degli italiani rimasti nell’area istro-quarnerina [The birth of a minority: Istria 1947–1965, the history and memory of the Italians who remained in the region of Istria and the Quarner Islands] (Rijeka/Fiume: Unione degli italiani, 2012). 27  Kristen Ghodsee, The Left Side of History: World War II and the Unfulfilled Promise of Communism in Eastern Europe (Durham: Duke University Press, 2015). 28  Daniela Paliaga and Sabine Rutar, “Das italienische Gymnasium ‘Antonio Sema’ in Piran zwischen Erinnerung und Geschichte” [The Italian secondary school “Antonio Sema” in Piran between memory and history], Jahrbücher für Geschichte und Kultur Südosteuropas 8 (2006): 221–31. 29  For the “Slovene side of history” after World War II, see Marta Verginella, Il confine degli altri: La questione giuliana e la memoria slovena [The border of the others: The question of the Julian March and Slovene memory] (Rome: Donzelli, 2008). 30  Peter Kuznick and James Gilbert, eds., Rethinking Cold War Culture (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institute Press, 2001); Patrick Major and Rana Mitter, eds., Across the Blocs: Cold War Cultural and Social History (London: Frank Cass, 2004); Christopher Duggan and Christopher Wagstaff, eds., Italy in the Cold War: Politics, Culture, and Society, 1948–1958 (Oxford: Berg, 1995). 26

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 379

2020.05.12. 19:28:05

380

Sabine Rutar

nomic crises, as well as the international key dates of 1953 (GDR), 1956 (Hungary), 1968 (Czechoslovakia), 1981 (Poland and Yugoslavia), and the Eurocommunist movement, created transnational leftist discourses on societal ideals.31 Yugoslavia’s model of a  self-managed economy as a  central pillar of its socialist statehood contributed to this discourse. The early 1970s in Yugoslavia, which culminated in the 1971 “Croatian Spring,” led to the country’s further decentralization as enshrined in the constitution of 1974, even as it experienced socioeconomic decline.32 In Italy, the year 1973 marked the start of the Italian communists’ willingness to become part of the government. Their close-to-stipulated deal with the governing Christian Democrats (Democrazia Cristiana) went down into history as the (attempted) “historic compromise” (compromesso storico) between Enrico Berlinguer, the head of the Italian Communist Party (Partito Comunista Italiano, PCI) and Aldo Moro, the leader of the Christian Democrats.33 Against the backdrop of these large-scale European developments, the port cities experienced their own postwar adjustments. Trieste’s gradual industrial decline reached its nadir in 1966, when the government in Rome decided to close down the century-old San Marco shipyard, once a symbol of the city’s prosperity and cosmopolitanism. In Rijeka, the port and shipyard had been almost completely destroyed during World War II, and the new Yugoslav government had rebuilt both. Their emblematic role was mirrored in the shipyard’s new name, May 3rd (“3. Maj”), the day Tito’s partisans liberated the city in 1945. In Koper, the port represented a genuinely socialist modernization project. When there could no longer be any doubt that Yugoslavia had lost any claim to Trieste, after the London Memorandum of 1954, the Koper project quickly gained momentum. The new port on the Slovenian coast commenced operation in December 1958, only a decade before the period at stake here, the years between 1965 and 1974,  Cf. Valentine Lomellini, L’appuntamento mancato: La sinistra italiana e il dissenso nei regimi comunisti (1968–1989) [The missed appointment: The Italian left and dissent within the communist regimes, 1968–1989] (Florence: Le Monnier, 2010); Nikolas Dörr, “NATO and Eurocommunism: The Fear of a Weakening of the Southern Flank from the mid-1970s to mid-1980s,” Journal of European Integration History 2 (2014): 245–58; Arnd Bauerkämper and Francesco Di Palma, eds., Bruderparteien jenseits des Eisernen Vorhangs: Die Beziehungen der SED zu den kommunistischen Parteien West- und Südeuropas (1968–1989) [Fraternal parties beyond the iron curtain: The relations of the SED with the communist parties in western and southern Europe (1968–1989)] (Berlin: Links Verlag, 2011). 32  Cf. Dejan Jović, Yugoslavia: A State that Withered Away (West Lafayette, IN: Purdue University Press, 2009). 33  Giuseppe Bedeschi, La prima Repubblica, 1946–1993: Storia di una democrazia difficile [The first republic, 1946–1993: History of a  difficult democracy] (Soveria Mannelli: Rubbettino, 2013). Cf. esp. chapter 6, “Dal ‘centro-sinistra’ alla ‘solidarietà nazionale’” [From “center-left” to “national solidarity”]. 31

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 380

2020.05.12. 19:28:05

Labor Protest in the Italian-Yugoslav Border Region

381

which have been defined as the years in which “market self-management” was effectively operational.34

Social Protests: Semantics, Action, Choreography In 1969 and 1971, the workers in the Rijeka docks and port staged two huge strikes. Before the strike was called in June 1969, a year-long public discussion had been conducted locally about why the port and the shipyard were in such bad shape and what needed to be done. The key issues were ongoing student unrest, unemployment, emigration—the vast majority of Yugoslav workers that went abroad came from Croatia—and the decreasing potential for workers’ social mobility. In mid-1968, the local newspaper Novi List published statements by several May 3rd shipyard workers, including a carpenter, a metalworker, and an electrician. They displayed a proud confidence in their self-management; such confidence, however, was also a source of criticism. They claimed that self-management, now in its eighteenth year, had reached a deadlock. The solution, they suggested, was more power for the workers, and less for the Federation and Republic: “Everybody looks at us from other countries, both in the East and the West. The workers in France see our system as something to be inspired by. Therefore we must go forward. But also because of ourselves. We will hand over to the Federation and the Republic whatever it takes. But the economy needs more resources!”35 In their public statements, these workers defined the role of the trade union as ensuring that everybody behaved as a “good worker” should behave: “The union is the protector of the working class—in capitalism. In our country, where the working class is in power, the union should protect us against those who are bureaucrats, inside the working class and in society as a whole.”36 The public discussion about how to improve economic performance included addressing what was seen as a lack of labor discipline. Problems mentioned included high turnover, a high rate of illness, and too many workers (more than 900) simply not showing up for work, while other workers had to do overtime. One commentator concluded: “One could say, there are enough people in the enterprise, but too few workers.”37  Cf. Estrin, Self-Management.  “Jedni su za reformu, drugi su u reformi” [There are those who are for reform, and those who are under reform], Novi List, June 29–30, 1968. 36  Ibid. 37  “Jači miris mora” [A stronger smell from the sea], Novi List, December 28–29, 1968; cf. “Slabost u vlastitoj kući” [Weakness in one’s own house], Novi List, January 20, 1969. 34 35

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 381

2020.05.12. 19:28:05

382

Sabine Rutar

Another problem was the source of the labor force. Shipyards and ports drew a  lot of their new workers from other parts of Yugoslavia. In both Rijeka and Koper, arguments were raised against the fact that, while local workers went abroad to find jobs, intra-Yugoslav migration—mostly from Bosnia-Herzegovina—was strong. It was even suggested to close local labor markets to these migrants, and only to employ local people.38 What emerges from the documented discussions both in Rijeka and in Koper is a set of factors that undercuts the demands of the market, including a  huge number of disabled workers (possibly including war invalids), economic amateurism, and in particular a lack of intelligent leadership that would maintain work discipline. The self-managed “collective” was rhetorically held up by, and firmly linked to, the expectation that workers should understand the need for individual sacrifice to promote enterprise prosperity. In these discussions, the management of the enterprise was discursively on the side of the workers, with the political nomenklatura, those called “bureaucrats,” depicted as responsible for “making mischief ”—claims which clearly echo in the demands for political reform during the “Croatian Spring.”39 What happened in Rijeka in mid-1969, however, proved such rhetoric to be just that: rhetoric. In June of that year, a newly elected workers’ council triggered a strike by enacting several regulatory measures that meant “sacrifice” for the workers. These included cutting basic wages, first by 10 and then by 20 percent, abolishing overtime pay, and halving pay for idle hours. The workers moved through the town with red flags, the Yugoslav flag, and images of Tito, and then engaged in a public display of fierce anger and violence: “Single individuals . . . physically attacked the director general of the enterprise. They pursued the financial director all the way to the ‘Torpedo’ restaurant, threw him down on the pavement, and stamped on him. The same fate befell the president of the union . . . in the middle of the Corso, with a large audience watching. The commercial director and one employee were also attacked and beaten.”40 Both the Croatian- and Italian-language local newspapers reported that only a small number of men were responsible for the violent escalation, but reminded their readers that “anything can happen, if men fear for the bread that they need for living.”41 Those truly re-

 “Jedni su za reformu, drugi su u reformi,” Novi List, June 29–30, 1968; Pokrajinski Arhiv Koper (PAK), Fond 728, Proceedings of the Directors’ Meeting, February 23, 1970. 39  “Jedni su za reformu, drugi su u reformi,” Novi List, June 29–30, 1968; “Luka traže luku života” [The port seeks life for the port], October 5–6, 1968; “Slabost u vlastitoj kući,” Novi List, January 20, 1969. 40  “Štrajk u riječkoj Luci” [Strike in the Rijeka port], Novi List, June 3, 1969. 41  “Sciopero in porto con la bandiera rossa” [Strike in the port with the red flag], La Voce del Popolo, June 3, 1969; cf. “Štrajk u riječkoj Luci,” Novi List, June 3, 1969. 38

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 382

2020.05.12. 19:28:05

Labor Protest in the Italian-Yugoslav Border Region

383

sponsible, according to the local press, were the trade unionists: that is, the “bureaucrats” inside the organization, who had not succeeded in identifying potential troublemakers. Had those “bureaucrats” done their duty, the protest would have remained peaceful. The local press moved to further contain any negative consequences from the event by stating that, as a result of the strike, the approximately 2,000 striking workers abolished all new regulations and saw their goals fully achieved. Eight individuals were singled out as responsible for the violence, arrested, and sentenced to up to two years and ten months in prison. The strike was rhetorically turned into a  winwin situation for both the workers and the enterprise, “as long as the goals of the workers are progressive in their intentions.”42 This ultimately meant “that anyone is strongly condemned who, in our socialist self-managing society, uses force and physical revenge to solve their problems, especially when physical revenge targets those who have given their whole life to fight for the rights of the working class, because they themselves originated from it.”43 In their statement, local party functionaries excluded the culprits from the working class, and addressed the community of “good workers” in terms reminiscent of the commonly fought liberation war against the aggressors during World War II: “We invite all communists of this city to condemn such acts, and we strongly demand that the security services inform the public about the measures taken against those who threw stigma and shame on the entire working class of Rijeka and the Croatian coast, on this seashore with its peace-loving people who have always fought against aggression in order to live in peace and freedom.”44 Although the 1969 strike was successfully ended and rhetorically celebrated, two years later, in June 1971, 3,000 Rijeka workers went on strike again. They rioted, beat up their managers, and attacked TV journalists, whom they blamed for not paying enough attention to their issues. Again, the workers’ demands for higher wages were met, even though reports qualified that a raise of 15 percent was scarcely sufficient in the face of a 13 percent increase in living expenses. The local newspapers referred to the first escalation two years earlier, writing of “opet Crni petak” (another Black Friday) for Rijeka. During the previous strike, “the sociopolitical organizations had not learned how to deal with such escalations. . . . The air once more is full of aggression. But this time this counts doubly, as everybody is thinking of the events two years ago; there is an immense psychological pressure.”45

 “Štrajk u riječkoj Luci,” Novi List, June 3, 1969.  Ibid. 44  Ibid. 45  “Crni petak riječke luke” [A black Friday in the Rijeka port], Novi List, June 12–13, 1971. 42 43

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 383

2020.05.12. 19:28:05

384

Sabine Rutar

In the face of workers’ renewed aggression against their management during a  period of ever-shrinking living standards, how could conjuring up the “good worker” be effective, both immediately in halting the strike and also more broadly? It seems in fact that the “good worker” was discursively saved in the same way the “brotherhood and unity” slogan was preserved among the Yugoslav peoples. The mechanism was to find culprits to be expelled from both communities and, at the same time, to continue the process of regulation—or overregulation—of societal (and intrastate) relations. After the Rijeka strikes, the intense debate over the checks and balances between the various self-management institutions focused on how conflicts were to be resolved in all organizational units of the enterprise. The debate seconded the “cleansing” efforts in the more general Croatian crisis that culminated in 1971. Enterprise directors in Croatia, but also in Slovenia and other republics, were among those who were subjected to persecution if they were suspected of not toeing the party line. This politicalideological struggle was an essential component of the process that led to the constitutional changes of 1974, when further fragmentation and rearrangement of personnel, and another step in the process of technocratization and bureaucratization, was reached. Those who had claimed that “the bureaucrats” were the main obstacle to a profitable self-managed economy were thus silenced. Radio Free Europe was among those Western, US-led institutions which observed the Yugoslav model benevolently; the country was “a friendly state in American eyes.”46 The Munich-based Yugoslav journalist Zdenko Antić reported on the Rijeka strike of 1971: The latest strike in the port of Rijeka was characterized by massive worker participation, moderation in negotiations between workers’ representatives and the workers’ council of the port enterprise “Luka,” and an almost routine development in negotiations. . . . The special significance of the most recent strike of the Rijeka dockers is not the results achieved by dockers, but the relatively uneventful and business-like manner in which the strike was settled. . . . According to all available evidence it appears that Yugoslav political and social elements have finally accepted the strike as an instrument in settling social conflicts. On the other hand, it also seems evident that the workers have learned how to use the strike in order to advance their interests. . . . The latest dockers’ strike in the port of Rijeka proved

 George R. Urban, Radio Free Europe and the Pursuit of Democracy: My War within the Cold War (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1997), 133.

46

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 384

2020.05.12. 19:28:05

Labor Protest in the Italian-Yugoslav Border Region

385

the judicious nature of the Yugoslav leadership in acknowledging strikes as being not only legal but also useful. For, if some contradictions appear between various social strata of the population in a socialist society, then why not let these conflicting groups negotiate freely in order to solve the problem? The case of Rijeka proved that this old and tested method does work even in the socialist system. On the other hand, the December 1970 uprisings in the Polish ports proved that suppressing the workers over the right to strike can only have catastrophic results.47

The riots, the beaten managers and journalists, were not mentioned. Instead, what is suggested is an open, even pluralist, culture of social negotiation, and thus a seemingly effective mode of social control and legitimization of the political-ideological system. The workers’ “learning process” is to be understood as immanent to the Yugoslav system of self-management, and also explains the silencing of the violence. From a broader Yugoslav perspective, the protests in Rijeka were “simply” just two of a large number of work stoppages in Yugoslavia since 1958, when the coal miners in Trbovlje (Slovenia) went on strike for higher wages. Between 1958 and 1969 there were more than 1,500 work stoppages, predominantly occurring in the most prosperous northern republics of Slovenia and Croatia. It was the Yugoslav model of self-management that was teaching workers how to raise and solve social conflicts successfully, Radio Free Europe suggested. In the port of Koper, the largest workers’ protest during state socialism happened in March 1970, in between the two Rijeka strikes. This strike, too, was as much a local incident as it was part of the broader northwestern Adriatic and Yugoslav story. Again, the precipitant was low wages, this time perceived as a result of infrastructure investments. Most importantly, the port was directly financing the thirty-two kilometer long railway connection to the village of Prešnica, 460 meters above sea level on the Karst plateau, connecting the port to the century-old Vienna–Trieste railway. Even though this railway connection was vital to the port’s development, neither Ljubljana nor the federal authorities in Belgrade had subsidized it. The lack of either federal or republican support mirrors the combined effect of Yugoslav distributive policies among its individual republics, Belgrade’s 47

 Radio Free Europe, June 16, 1971, Research, Communist Area, “Yugoslavia: Dockers’ Strike Successful in Yugoslav Port of Rijeka” by Zdenko Antić, HU OSA 300-8-3:10618, Vera and Donald Blinken Open Society Archives at Central European University, Budapest, http://hdl.handle.net/10891/osa:6b9c33cf-aa04-4f1a-b963-082475403cf0, accessed August 29, 2018, emphasis added. The toll of the labor protests in the shipyard in Gdańsk, Poland, in December 1970 was close to 100 dead and over 1,000 injured.

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 385

2020.05.12. 19:28:05

386

Sabine Rutar

ambiguous economic policy regarding the Adriatic coastline, as well as the insecurity that resulted from the legally unresolved border.48 The port’s director general insistently praised those workers who showed an above-average commitment to the port’s development. The port, he consistently emphasized, had been built “exclusively” from the initiative of such workers. Many had succumbed in the face of such harsh conditions, however, and turnover among the workforce had always been high, so no measures had effectively improved the quality or quantity of the work performed. For the port management, the only solution was to get rid of incompetent employees. In the weeks before the strike, the port’s managers discussed how they could persuade the workers’ council (delavski svet) to support their objectives. When the council did announce new regulations in March 1970, including dismissals, the workers went on strike.49 The company files report that when the strike broke out, the director general, Danilo Petrinja, had fallen ill, apparently from overexertion. The engineer who took his place let things escalate rather than mediating. He joined the strikers and even led them, carrying the Yugoslav flag towards the city’s central square. There, the strike culminated in noisy agitation, prompting the municipal party secretary to fetch Petrinja and convince him to come and talk to the workers, despite his illness. He did succeed in persuading the dockers to return to the port, but they continued to riot and prevent any dialogue.50 48

 Cf. Rutar, “Containing Conflict and Enforcing Consent in Titoist Yugoslavia.” On the investment policies in Slovenia during these years, see Jože Prinčič, “Sedemletni gospodarski načrt” [The seven-year economic plan], in idem, V začaranem krogu: Slovensko gospodar­stvo od nove ekonomske politike do velike reforme (1955–1970) [In the vicious circle: The Slovene economy from the new economic policy to the great reform, 1955–1970] (Ljubljana: Cankarjeva založba, 1999), 195–210. The need for developmental financial support in Yugoslavia’s industrial enterprises greatly exceeded the credits granted: see Holm Sundhaussen, Jugoslawien und seine Nachfolgestaaten 1943–2011: Eine ungewöhnliche Geschichte des Gewöhnlichen [Yugoslavia and its successor states, 1943–2011: An unusual history of the usual] (Vienna: Böhlau, 2012), 165. On Yugoslav attitudes towards the Adriatic coast, see, from a strictly Croatian perspective, Dunja Rihtman-Auguštin, “A Croatian Controversy: Mediterranean—Danube—Balkans,” Narodna Umjetnost 36, no. 1 (1999): 103–19. 49  PAK, Fond 728, Proceedings of the Directors’ Meeting, February 4, 1970. On directors in Yugoslav socialism, and the changing power relationships between party, workers’ councils, and directors, see Jože Prinčič, “Direktorska funkcija v jugoslovanskem socialističnem gospodarskem sistemu” [The director’s function in the Yugoslav socialist economic system], in Biti direktor v času socializma: Med idejami in praksami [Being a director during socialism: Between ideas and practice], ed. Jurij Fikfak and Jože Prinčič (Ljubljana: Založba ZRC, 2008), 57–101, After the establishment of self-management in 1950, the workers’ council formally carried out the installation and dismissal of company directors. 50  PAK, Fond 728, “Zaostreni gospodarski problemi in odnosi v Luki Koper” [Tightened economic problems and relations in the port of Koper], July 2, 1970.

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 386

2020.05.12. 19:28:05

Labor Protest in the Italian-Yugoslav Border Region

387

The next day, the workers’ council gave in and agreed to the workers’ demands. In the course of this settlement, the council received Petrinja’s written resignation. The president of the Executive Committee of the Slovene Government, Stane Kavčič, supported the workers’ council in its wish to retain him. Kavčič promised to intensify government support for the port’s development.51 However Petrinja’s challenger, the engineer who had substituted for him, continued to work toward the director’s dismissal and was effectively supported in this effort by a group of younger engineers; the company files speak of “conspiracy.” A few weeks after the end of the strike, the workers’ council and the party functionaries relented: the old director was dismissed, and the new one installed.52 The workers’ council was reproached for having made decisions without consulting those who had the necessary know-how, namely the management. Given that the workers’ council had introduced the regulatory measures upon the request of the management—of which the “conspiring” engineers were a part—it remains difficult to distinguish between lip-service statements and the real power struggle.53 In fact, the handling of the strikes in both Koper and Rijeka, including the capitulation to all of the workers’ demands, corresponded to the way strikes and work stoppages were habitually dealt with in Yugoslavia, and may well have concealed settlements behind the scenes. Whatever the full story might be, the way in which the strikes were handled demonstrated a concerted and conscious effort to contain the conflict and control the urban public space. The arguments put forth were very similar: it was the system that was at stake, and thus the executives of the system were responsible. The high number of work stoppages since the end of the 1950s prompted Yugoslav industrial sociologists and economists to critically reflect on the system of self-management, conflict negotiation between the management, the workers’ councils, and the workforce, as well as the right of the workers to strike.54 They engaged in eloquent attempts to integrate protest into the system and thereby legitimize it. Only conflicts motivated by nationalism, such as the 1971 Croatian Spring, were seen by the state as

51

 PAK, Fond 728, “Delegacija Luke” [Delegation of the port], March 28, 1970.  PAK, Fond 728, “Zaostreni gospodarski problemi in odnosi v Luki Koper,” July 2, 1970. 53  PAK, Fond 728, “IX. redno zasedanje DS” [Ninth regular meeting of the board of directors], April 18, 1970. 54  I  mention only Neca Jovanov, Radnički štrajkovi u Socijalističkoj Federativnoj Republici Jugoslaviji od 1958. do 1969. godine [Labor strikes in the SFRY from 1958 to 1969] (Belgrade: Zapis, 1979). On May 20, 2019, the OCLC World Catalog listed 3,302 items under “self-management, Yugoslavia.” The vast majority of works was published during the time of the actually existing self-managed economy in Yugoslavia. 52

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 387

2020.05.12. 19:28:05

388

Sabine Rutar

potentially delegitimizing and requiring the “cleansing” of political cadres— and not only in Croatia.55 Increasingly, strategies to control social conflict were entangled with attempts to fence in centrifugal state dynamics by making decentralizing concessions. Two years after the 1974 constitution—one of the longest in the world—was promulgated, another 600 articles were added by the 1976 Law on Associated Labor (Zakon o udruženom radu), also called the “small constitution.” This law attempted to comprehensively codify social relations on the shop floor. The expectation was that such a codification would enable the state to gradually withdraw from any intervention in the economy, because the mechanisms of the market would unfold solely within the framework of the new law regulating the organizations of associated labor. This expectation quickly proved to be unrealistic. On the contrary, state functionaries continued to regularly intervene in conflictual situations. To be sure, such interventions were always labelled as “temporary”; the “normal” self-management procedures were to resume as soon as the crisis was over.56 The difference to the semantic dialectics of Western states is obvious, where state intervention in economic processes was a key moment in assuring welfare, as well as a means of social control and legitimation. In examining the attempts of the functionaries in Rijeka and Koper to deal with or instrumentalize workers’ discontent, it is useful to consider how social protests and violence, as both a threat and an act, were present in the Italian workers’ milieu on the other side of the border, happening simultaneously but in a different sociopolitical system. At the time, Italy featured the largest communist party in Western Europe, and in the mid-1970s the PCI came close to joining the Italian government.57 In addition, it should not be forgotten that in the 1970s and early 1980s, the political elites of several Western European countries, including Italy, viewed public political violence as a serious threat to state stability.58  Dukovski, Istra i Rijeka u Hrvatskome proljeću.  Dragoljub Đurović, Das Gesetz über assoziierte Arbeit [The law on associated labor] (Ljubljana: Dopisna Delavska Univerza, 1977); Zlatko Crnić, Komentar Zakona o radnim odnosima radnika u udruženom radu i odgovarajućih odredbi ZUR-a: Sa sudskom praksom, stanovištima predstavnika sudova udruženog rada i mišljenjima Komisije Skupštine SFRJ za praćenje ZUR-a [Comment on the law on labor relations of the workers in associated labor and the relevant provisions of the sections of the law: With the court practice, the views of representatives of the courts on associated labor and the opinions of the commission of the assembly of Yugoslavia to monitor the law] (Zagreb: Narodne novine, 1983). 57  Cf. Bedeschi, La prima Repubblica, 1946–1993, esp. chapter 6: “Dal ‘centro-sinistra’ alla ‘solidarietà nazionale’.” 58  Cf. Petra Terhoeven, Deutscher Herbst in Europa: Der Linksterrorismus der siebziger Jahre als transnationales Phänomen [German autumn in Europe: The left-wing terrorism of the 55 56

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 388

2020.05.12. 19:28:06

Labor Protest in the Italian-Yugoslav Border Region

389

The Italian example of workers’ culture was known in Koper and Rijeka. For example, a commercial agent employed in the port of Koper from 1963 until his retirement in the 1980s, when recalling the strike of 1970, stated that “the workers in Koper learned about the culture of strikes from Italy”; in particular, they “saw what the workers in Trieste had obtained in terms of wage increases with their strikes.” He describes a peculiar political apprenticeship, with the “Western” laborer teaching the socialist one to fight for his rights.59 The Italian strikes needed to have a decidedly public character in order to be noticed by the dockers in Koper, illustrating not only the open character of this Cold War border region but also the way in which social discontent could bridge the systemic divide.60 It is no surprise that violence in the Italian workers’ milieu was much more public than in the Yugoslav one. Yet the polarization of advocacy for either the suppression of socially motivated strikes or for workers’ increased participatory rights was not confined to Yugoslavia. The political debate in Italy was also polarized between those who conceived the protests as a threat, and those who viewed them as an essential part of a democratic society.61 Three instances of public riots during workers’ protests at the San Marco shipyard in Trieste seem significant for the strikes in Rijeka and Koper: these occurred in the autumn of 1966, in June 1968, and in the autumn of 1969. The latter is known in Italian collective memory as the “Hot Autumn” (autunno caldo) of 1969, because of the huge wave of violent workers’ protests that swept throughout northern Italy at the time. The state intervened in favor of the workers: in 1970, the government in Rome issued a Workers’ Statute (Statuto dei Lavoratori), which granted the hitherto heavily dependent workers a large degree of self-management and an almost unlimited right to strike. Dismissals from work became virtually im-

1970s as a  transnational phenomenon] (Munich: Oldenbourg, 2014), with a  focus on Germany, Italy, and France. 59  Interview with Ludvik Hravatin, Koper, January 4, 2006, quoted in Gaetano Dato, “I tre porti del Golfo di Trieste: Tra il Memorandum di Londra e gli Accordi di Osimo” [The three ports in the gulf of Trieste: Between the London memorandum and the treaty of Osimo] (Thesis, Università di Trieste, 2004/05), 80f. 60  In the satirical documentary film directed by Mako Sajko, Kje je železna zavesa? [Where is the iron curtain?] (Ljubljana, 1961), one of the comments about Trieste, as seen from the Yugoslav side, concerns “the always-ready-for-strike shipyard.” The film is available on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LLElxTOuep4, accessed May 20, 2019. 61  See Donatella della Porta, Social Movements, Political Violence, and the State: A  Comparative Analysis of Italy and Germany (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 187–216.

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 389

2020.05.12. 19:28:06

390

Sabine Rutar

possible. In 1975, the Scala mobile, the automatic adaptation of salaries to the cost of living, was introduced.62 In August 1966, workers in Trieste’s San Marco shipyard called a general strike. The background to the protests was the imminent closure of the shipyard. When in October of that year the newly founded Italian Interdepartmental Committee for Economic Planning (Comitato interministeriale per la programmazione economica, CIPE) accepted plans to close the century-old enterprise, protests escalated violently, culminating in a day-long urban guerrilla fight against the police.63 Between June 20 and 25, 1968, the workers rioted again in a further attempt to save the Trieste shipyard, erecting barricades and fighting running battles with the police.64 A year later, during the “Hot Autumn” of 1969, the workers at the San Marco shipyard once more occupied the docks.65 As such, the social conflicts at the respective borders were part and parcel of larger issues affecting the industrialized regions of both Yugoslavia and Italy. Furthermore, there was an apparent choreography of eruptive social protests in the border region, in 1966, 1968, and 1969 in Trieste, in 1969 and 1971 in Rijeka, and in 1970 in Koper. In fact, the direct influence of Italian public riots on events in Yugoslavia seems plausible. An investigation of the analogous industries on both sides of this comparatively open Cold War border thus produces an illustration of what Charles S. Maier and others have hypothesized as a “crisis of industrialization” that affected both capitalist and state-socialist societies. This “crisis” cannot be properly understood if the exploration is limited to only one economic and political system.66 While the cult of labor and the central position of the working class in socialist ideology implied that workers’ strikes deserved a  special, gentler treatment by the authorities than protests by other groups, the League of Communists of Yugoslavia (LCY) also claimed that strikes were superfluous within a system of workers’ self-management. Yet work stoppages oc See Bruno Trentin, Autunno caldo: Il secondo biennio rosso 1968–1969 [Hot autumn: The second two red years] (Pisa: Editori Riuniti, 1999). 63  Paolo Fragiacomo, L’industria come continuazione della politica: La cantieristica italiana 1861–2011 [The industry as a continuation of politics: The Italian shipbuilding industry, 1861–2011] (Milan: Angeli, 2012), 180ff. 64  Ibid., 213ff. 65  Ibid., 195f. 66  Charles S. Maier, “Two Sorts of Crisis?: The ‘Long’ 1970s in the West and the East,” in Koordinaten deutscher Geschichte in der Epoche des Ost-West-Konflikts [Coordinates of German history in the period of conflict between East and West], ed. Hans Günter Hockerts (Munich: Oldenbourg, 2004), 49–62; cf. several of the chapters in Konrad H. Jarausch, ed., Das Ende der Zuversicht?: Die siebziger Jahre als Geschichte [The end of confidence?: The 1970s as history] (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2008). 62

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 390

2020.05.12. 19:28:06

Labor Protest in the Italian-Yugoslav Border Region

391

curred more frequently in Yugoslavia than in any other East European socialist state. As was the case in Rijeka and Koper, strikes were generally short because the authorities dealt quickly with the workers’ demands, largely by acceding to them. The strikes’ organizers were often targeted, but repression—if it occurred at all—was highly selective, and more often than not it was the managers who were the accused parties.67 In Koper, a group of “conspirators” who knew the procedure seem to have used it skilfully to achieve their own ambitions. In Rijeka, the unrest was entangled with the nationally saturated claims put forth by the “Croatian Spring”—even though historians have not yet fully integrated the elite perspectives of politicians, intellectuals, and students with labor issues.

What Is in It for Self-Managed Labor? Three aspects are of particular interest for further research into labor relations in the Cold War border region between Yugoslavia and Italy, with implications for other world regions. First, the rhetoric of the socialist “heroes of labor” in Yugoslavia was marked by the expectation that these “heroes” would understand the necessities of sacrifice and would push themselves toward this goal. Capitalist exploitation patterns seem to have been rhetorically shifted toward a quest for self-exploitation in the name of socialist solidarity. This pattern, both in Rijeka and in Koper, shows a discursive division between “good workers” and “layabouts,” if not outright criminals. Interestingly, however, this rhetoric was linked in both cities to a locally rooted loyalty, by denouncing those workers who had come from other parts of Yugoslavia as mischief-makers. Given that the border region had been emptied of its labor capacities only recently in the aftermath of the war, such antagonisms directed against other Yugoslavs, internal migrants, have implications that require further scrutiny. Second, this case is intensified if one considers that, on the one hand, the Rijeka and Koper maritime laborers frequently lamented the perceived neglect of “maritime Yugoslavia”—mainly of Croatia, but also of the largest such industry in Slovenia—by the federal government in Belgrade, thus hinting at a simmering conflict between the center and the republics and/or peripheries. On the other hand, contemporaries conspicuously overlooked the Cold War border. Rijeka workers argued within the framework of their

 Jovanov, Radnički štrajkovi, 70, 186; Duško Sekulić, “Štrajk ili obustava rada—jedan sociološki pristup” [Strike or work stoppage: A sociological approach], Kulturni radnik 40/6 (1987), 23–33.

67

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 391

2020.05.12. 19:28:06

392

Sabine Rutar

maritime republic, Croatia. Both Koper and Trieste served as the immediate competitive enterprises in the vicinity, and were typically mentioned in the same breath, sometimes together with the port of Bar in Montenegro.68 Workers and managers in Koper did the same when referring to Trieste and Rijeka as the “traditional” ports of the northeastern Adriatic, as opposed to the innovative one, in Koper.69 Quests for an intra-Yugoslav solidarity between shipyards and ports did exist, but remained largely without significant consequences in terms of economic coordination.70 The third aspect concerns the Italian labor movement and its inclinations to protest. The motivations of the workers were similar on both sides of the border: fear of worsening living standards; fear of losing one’s job; dissatisfaction with existing malpractices; a feeling of distributive injustice; and a lack of possibilities for real participation. As port and shipyard industries are by definition dependent upon global markets, with the socioeconomic system reaching only to the respective state borders, the reactions to protest were coordinated in a manner immanent to the respective political and economic systems. Here and there, concessions were granted to the workers, and the rhetorical framing was carefully crafted with the intent of keeping the system solid: here, the LCY in its regional Croatian and Slovenian party sections, there Italy’s strong PCI; here, the stylization of “heroes of labor” in the sense of an accelerated modernization process, of which model industries like the shipyards were to be shining examples, and there, attempts at containing the effects of deindustrialization and economic peripheralization. In Yugoslavia, the ideological expectation was that the state would gradually withdraw from intervention in the economy, leaving market forces to operate within the framework of increasingly regulated self-management organizations. Wolfgang Höpken recently defined this development as proof of the mounting difficulties of a society that “lived through a permanent, almost manic change of the institutional order of the system, driven by the ideological imperative of the idea of a self-managed society.”71 What is largely lacking is, “apart from the discredited systemic comparison, a theoretical approach that could put dictatorship and democracy in

 “Gdje je zajednička luka?” [Where is the common port?] Novi List, February 8–9, 1969.  PAK, Fond 728, Osebni fond Petrinja Danilo, Program razvoja Luke Koper do leta 1975 [Personal holdings of Danilo Petrinja, developmental programme of the port of Koper until 1975], Koper, June 1969. 70  “Gdje je zajednička luka?” Novi List, February 8–9, 1969. 71  Wolfgang Höpken, “‘Durchherrschte Freiheit’: Wie ‘autoritär’ (oder wie ‘liberal’) war Titos Jugoslawien?“ [“Freedom by rule”: How “authoritarian” (or how “liberal”) was Tito’s Yugoslavia?], in Grandits and Sundhaussen, Jugoslawien in den 1960er Jahren, 54–55.

68

69

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 392

2020.05.12. 19:28:06

Labor Protest in the Italian-Yugoslav Border Region

393

relation with each other.”72 The border region’s multiethnicity and postwar demographic upheavals make the development of such an approach even more intriguing. The Weberian dialectic of a network of social relationships between those who exercise authority and those who submit to it remains a valid analytical tool. Any comparative analysis of the life and labor of shipyard and port workers needs a “code for a complex perspective” that challenges exclusivist master narratives of any type—be it nationalist or otherwise—which claim to systematize history through the moment of (nationstate) territoriality or ideological premises.73 Marina Cattaruzza and Jože Pirjevec have comprehensively studied the political significance of the eastern and western borders for Italian and Slovenian society respectively.74 Anna Millo has analyzed newly accessible archival materials and added to Cattaruzza’s study of Rome’s perspective on the Trieste question during the first postwar decade.75 Given that Pirjevec focused almost exclusively on the Slovene perspective, he largely produced a  history of a  politically significant yearning that never reached the level of geopolitics: namely the Slovenes’ yearning for the sea. His analysis ends, like Millo’s, in the key year of 1954, which effectively ended any such geopolitical hopes for the Slovenes. As such, Pirjevec’s study includes Titoist Yugoslavia only during the border region’s first, insecure postwar decade. Whether the Titoist state ever exercised effective control over its northwestern periphery remains an open question. For Italy, Marina Cattaruzza comprehensively showed how the eastern border has been an object of nationalist mobilization throughout much of the twentieth century—in several respects even until today—which ultimately meant that observing the 72

 Konrad Jarausch, “‘Die Teile als Ganzes erkennen’: Zur Integration der beiden deutschen Nachkriegsgeschichten” [“Recognizing the parts as a whole”: On the integration of the two German postwar histories], Zeithistorische Forschungen 1, no. 1 (2004), http://www. zeithistorische-forschungen.de/16126041-Jarausch-1-2004, accessed May 20, 2019, 2; cf. Christoph Klessmann, Arbeiter im “Arbeiterstaat” DDR: deutsche Traditionen, sowjetisches Modell, westdeutsches Magnetfeld (1945 bis 1971) [Workers in the “workers’ state” GDR: German traditions, Soviet model, West German magnetic field, 1945–1971] (Bonn: Dietz, 2007). 73  Belinda Davis, Thomas Lindenberger, and Michael Wildt, Alltag, Erfahrung, Eigensinn: Historisch-anthropologische Erkundungen [The everyday, experience, Eigen-Sinn: Historical-anthropological explorations] (Frankfurt am Main: Campus, 2008), 17. 74  Marina Cattaruzza, L’Italia e il confine orientale, 1866–2006 [Italy and the eastern border, 1866–2006] (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2007); Jože Pirjevec, “Trst je naš!”: Boj Slovencev za morje (1848–1954) [“Trieste is ours!”: The struggle of the Slovenes for the sea, 1848– 1954] (Ljubljana: Nova revija, 2007). 75  Anna Millo, La difficile intesa: Roma e Trieste nella Questione Giuliana 1945–1954 [The difficult understanding: Rome and Trieste in the context of the Julian question, 1945– 1954] (Trieste: Italo Svevo, 2011).

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 393

2020.05.12. 19:28:06

394

Sabine Rutar

periphery made it quite clear to the center how weak the Italian nation-state actually was, particularly with regard to its sustainable implementation at its fringes.76 My sketches of parallel social protests in industrial enterprises on both sides of the Italian-Yugoslav state border emphasize the added value of a  perspective that overcomes the epistemological Cold War divide. The still-dominant binary categories of scholarly reflection about “East” and “West” are not adequate to understand the complexities of a world system, in which “control, coercion, alienation, fear, and moral quandaries were irreducibly mixed with ideals, communal ethics, dignity, creativity, and care for the future,” an enumeration which vividly crystallizes in labor relations and labor action.77 Social control, loyalty, and legitimacy were goals of both systems. These concepts offer a key to understanding social conflicts and the ways in which social norms were created and pushed to be accepted. Control always contains a sensitizing moment and draws attention to the mechanisms of authority whereby people—whether citizens or comrades—consent to behave in a particular way. As this approach to the parallel shop floor issues of shipyard and port workers in Rijeka, Koper, and Trieste shows, questions about the genesis of repertoires of social action in modern societies transcend economic and political systems as well as state borders.

 Cattaruzza, L’Italia e il confine orientale.  Alexei Yurchak, Everything Was Forever, Until It Was No More: The Last Soviet Generation (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005), 10.

76 77

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 394

2020.05.12. 19:28:06

When Workers’ Self-Management Met Neoliberalism: Positive Perceptions of Market Reforms among Blue-Collar Workers in Late Yugoslav Socialism* Rory Archer and Goran Musić

Introduction Markets were not anathema to socialism, nor were they necessarily analogous to capitalism. In theorizing the global context of the collapse of state socialism, scholars such as Zsuzsa Gille have increasingly stressed the mutually constitutive nature of the histories of “East” and “West,”1 not least as a corollary of examining the protocapitalism and embourgeoisement characteristic of late socialism.2 Johanna Bockman’s research on the left-wing origins of neoliberalism sheds new light on the exchange of ideas between economists on both sides of the Iron Curtain, demonstrating that no matter how autarkic developmental plans initially appeared, few state-socialist societies managed to escape the exchange of goods and services on the international market or the global shifts in political, economic, and cultural trends.3 Nowhere does this observation hold more sway than in the case of Yugoslavia, whose economy was largely based on integration into the world market following the break with the Soviet model of development after 1948. During the 1950s and 1960s in particular, Yugoslav socialism resembled neoliberalism to the extent that both Yugoslav socialism and neoliberalism shared a distrust of the state and an embrace of the market. Of course, the Yugoslav communists insisted a functioning market was possible only *

 This work was supported by the Austrian Science Fund (FWF) under Grant P27008.  Zsuzsa Gille, “Is There a Global Postsocialist Condition?,” Global Society 24, no. 1 (2010): 10. 2  Iván Szelényi, Socialist Entrepreneurs: Embourgeoisement in Rural Hungary (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1988); Carole Nagengast, Reluctant Socialists, Rural Entrepreneurs: Class, Culture, and the Polish State (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1991); Martha Lampland, The Object of Labor: Commodification in Socialist Hungary (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996). 3  Johanna Bockman, Markets in the Name of Socialism (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2011). 1

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 395

2020.05.12. 19:28:06

396

Rory Archer and Goran Musić

within a socialist institutional setup, which included a one-party political system, combined with participatory self-management and socialized ownership. As Bockman rightly observes, “While they [Yugoslav socialism and neoliberalism] agree on economic means, their political ends and fundamental values are diametrically opposed.”4 By the early 1980s, faced with sluggish economic growth and a rising foreign debt crisis, the ruling League of Communists of Yugoslavia (LCY) imposed austerity measures and new interpretations of workers’ self-management, increasingly attuned to the global neoliberal shift. This chapter explores how workers understood liberal stirrings in Yugoslavia’s enterprises by shifting the focus away from economic and intellectual history and toward the shop floor. We argue that these reforms were comprehended largely as a  continuation of the liberal market socialism associated with the 1960s, which had been interrupted during the 1970s. In the face of economic crisis, many workers demanded a  redistribution of income to the advantage of less successful enterprises. For others, however, the furthering of the logic of the market was considered a legitimate means to exit the crisis and achieve a more just society. While the kind of “rampant individualism and utilitarianism of everyday life” observed by Martha Lampland in the village economy of late socialist Hungary5 is not quite replicated on the Yugoslav shop floor, we argue that certain political, demographic, generational, and temporal transformations served to forge novel working class subjectivities in Yugoslavia which were cynical regarding the status quo and amenable to economic liberalization. The 1980s were a decade of economic stagnation and political impasse inside Yugoslavia, resulting in a sense of demoralization and fatigue among ordinary citizens.6 Nevertheless, the decade was also characterized by the burgeoning of alternative ideas about the best ways to continue the socialist project, and rich discussions were fostered in different institutional fora, not least inside the factories. The pro-market reformers were arguably some of the strongest voices in these debates. Through analysis of workers’ discussions inside the factory and the units of self-management in the Yugoslav workplace (workers’ councils, factory party cells, trade unions, and so on), we present how market reforms were framed and the ways in which workers mediated and related the liberal stirrings to older concepts of workers’ selfmanagement.

 Bockman, Markets in the Name of Socialism, 11.  Lampland, The Object of Labor, 1–2. 6  Pedro Ramet, “Apocalypse Culture and Social Change in Yugoslavia,” in Yugoslavia in the 1980s, ed. Pedro Ramet (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1985), 7. 4 5

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 396

2020.05.12. 19:28:06

When Workers’ Self-Management Met Neoliberalism

397

Our findings are derived from an ongoing research project, “Between Class and Nation: Working Class Communities in 1980s Serbia and Montenegro.”7 Starting from a micro-level approach (detailed case studies of factories and their surrounding communities), the research seeks insight into how workers conceived of macro-level processes (the dynamic changes at the level of the state and society) and their role within them. The perspective we explore in this chapter, however, is the interplay between the calls for economic liberalization and workers’ understanding of socialism. This was sufficiently flexible to allow for a  greater deference to market forces for some workers in Serbia. Within the Yugoslav framework during the 1980s, the Socialist Republic of Serbia was quite a lively center of oppositional themes, aided by its increasingly critically-minded media and growing cleavages inside the leadership of the republic’s party structures.8 The chapter focuses on two working class communities in Serbia and their factories: Rakovica, a suburb of the capital Belgrade with a reputation for metalworkers’ militancy, and Priboj, a center for heavy vehicle production in southwest Serbia. Priboj was a  peripheral, multiethnic town close to Serbia’s border with Bosnia and Herzegovina and Montenegro, which industrialized only in the 1950s with the construction of the heavy vehicle plant Fabrika automobila Priboj (FAP). Rakovica, on the other hand, was Belgrade’s industrial municipality par excellence, with close links to the republic and federal political elite. Both municipalities were home to a large number of skilled metalworkers as well as a layer of less skilled assembly line workers. Workers were encouraged to participate in decision making procedures in their factories and to be active in the political life of their municipality. In the large, industrial complexes of Priboj and Rakovica, the institutions of self-management were well developed, enabling us to closely follow the evolution of discussions in the factory bodies. As in many other contexts,9 metalwork tended to be gendered, represented as a  predominantly masculine occupation in Yugoslavia. In Priboj and Rakovica male workers predominated, and female workers were typically found in more auxiliary roles. Nevertheless, socialist gendered pedagogies sought to transform existing modes of femininity.10 Female workers 7

 For the website of this project, see https://yulabour.wordpress.com/.  Slovenia was the second republic where dissenting voices echoed strongly at the time: see Dejan Jović, Yugoslavia: A State that Withered Away (West Lafayette, IN: Purdue University Press, 2009). 9  Laura Lee Downs, “‘Boys will be men and girls will be boys’: Division sexuelle et travail dans la métallurgie (France et Angleterre, 1914–1939),” Annales. Histoire, Sciences Sociales 54, no. 3 (May–June, 1999): 561–86. 10  Chiara Bonfiglioli, Women and Industry in the Balkans: The Rise and Fall of the Yugoslav Textile Sector (London: I.B. Tauris, 2019). 8

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 397

2020.05.12. 19:28:06

398

Rory Archer and Goran Musić

could be found on the shop floor in Priboj and Rakovica and were encouraged to participate in political life in the factory and municipality. At the same time, as Wendy Bracewell notes, the 1980s witnessed the ascendency of nationalist, gendered discourses in which images of “‘real Serbs,’ [male] workers in blue overalls, with hard bodies and dirty hands, the true representatives of the nation” were contrasted with “the soft, effeminate, de-nationalised middle-class ‘armchair bureaucrats’ [foteljaši], who had betrayed both their nation and their gender.”11 Through examining documents from factories and the local self-management institutions in Rakovica and Priboj, one can detect the changing moods of the blue-collar workers in these two rather divergent settings. These case studies offer an insight into the increased official deference to the logic of the market and the mechanisms through which the demands for more determined liberal reforms were connected to the everyday grievances on the Serbian shop floor. Our research thus far reveals that the workers’ reactions to the crisis and political openings were manifold. Many workers retreated into the private sphere, seeking individual solutions to their falling living standards through methods such as moonlighting, subsistence farming, or engaging in petty trade. For others, their instinct was to demand an increased redistribution of wealth and the strengthening of the political role of labor.12 However, this chapter focuses on those workers who, to varying degrees, acquiesced or even broadly supported market impulses. The analysis will not focus so much on the differentiations between manual industrial workers and other social layers in Yugoslav society. Instead, it looks at some  Wendy Bracewell, “Rape in Kosovo: Masculinity and Serbian Nationalism,” Nations and Nationalism 6, no. 4 (2000): 578–79. In popular culture and entertainment media, one can observe the ambiguous late-1980s entanglement of socialist emancipation and embedded, resurgent patriarchy. For example, the Serbian women’s magazine Bazar reported from FAP Priboj in March 1989 to coincide with International Women’s Day. The article featured twenty-six-year-old Melvida Gledović, who worked on the production line on a “real men’s machine,” a radial drill. Her boss described her as a “top-class metalworker.” Another female FAP worker who was interviewed, Mehida Agić, was a company financial director and her husband reported to her. However, as if consciously stressing the patriarchal nature of the private domain, the article noted that Agić’s hobby was needlework; furthermore, despite being her husband’s superior at work, she remarks “at home it is known that he is the boss.” Snežana Milošević, “Žene osvajaju FAP,” Bazar, no. 630, March 3, 1989, 14–15. 12  For examples of workers’ demands for greater political empowerment of labor in late 1980s Serbia, such as their insistence on the inclusion of a separate chamber of workers’ delegates in the Federal Parliament (Veće udruženog rada), see Goran Musić, “‘They Came as Workers and Left as Serbs’: The Role of Rakovica’s Blue-Collar Workers in Serbian Social Mobilizations of the Late 1980s,” in Social Inequalities and Discontent in Yugoslav Socialism, ed. Rory Archer et al. (Abingdon: Routledge, 2016), 132–54. 11

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 398

2020.05.12. 19:28:06

When Workers’ Self-Management Met Neoliberalism

399

of the divisions within the working-class communities, and the different ways in which the heterogeneity of working-class experience and the dysfunctionality of workers’ self-management inspired support for greater topdown control and a supposedly objective market evaluation in industry. The chapter demonstrates how the party leadership and the enterprise management adjusted the language of the economic reforms in line with working-class criticisms in order to mobilize a section of the working class behind their campaign. It describes how the liberal economic reforms in Yugoslav socialism could partially utilize traditional workerist tropes, such as hard work and productivity, to spread a pro-reform agenda inside the working-class communities. We also show that workers’ agency was not expressed solely as would be expected—in collective resistance against liberal economic policies—but also in attempts to accommodate their grievances within the new direction of the reforms, internalizing competitive logic, even when this would occur at the expense of social solidarity. Forging a market-oriented course in the 1980s necessarily meant exposing economically weaker segments of industry to losses, and their workers to unemployment.

The Liberal (Dis)Continuities The basic premises of neoclassical economics were no oddity within the Yugoslav industrial milieu. As American scholar Ichak Adizes noticed when visiting Yugoslav textile factories in the late 1960s, the bookshelves in directors’ offices typically featured Marxist classics standing next to English manuals on marketing and managerial subjects.13 In contrast to Soviet-style planned economies, the Yugoslav enterprise was largely independent to pursue its own interests in the market, which—despite its high degree of regulation—was nevertheless functional. The party tended to view the law of value as an objective economic law that impacted upon socialist societies to the same extent as capitalist ones. The state was seen as an alienated body standing in irreconcilable opposition to self-management and the interests of the working class. The exchange, grounded in the law of value and in conjunction with collective ownership, supposedly prevented the exploitation of labor and provided the only objective criterion for socialist distribution.14 The rejection of excessive state control at the macroeconomic level was matched by the bottom-up alternatives to hierarchical organization inside

 Ichak Adizes, Industrial Democracy: Yugoslav Style; The Effect of Decentralization on Organizational Behavior (New York: The Free Press, 1971), 96. 14  Boris Kidrič, Izabrana dela I (Belgrade: Izdavački centar Komunist, 1985), 66–69. 13

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 399

2020.05.12. 19:28:06

400

Rory Archer and Goran Musić

the individual enterprises. The introduction of workers’ self-management established a  distinction between the professional management and the “governing” structure within the enterprise. The salaried personnel managed their enterprise via top-down structures, being chosen in compliance with the market and the technological demands of production. On the other hand, the governing structure was the principal framework for the exercise of workers’ self-management and rested upon a belief that workers had the political right to participate in the running of their enterprises. The workers’ council was the basic governing body and functioned on the principle of popular vote and consensus-seeking.15 The implementation of workers’ self-management was supposed to act as a counterbalance to the power of both state administration and enterprise managers (the actors blamed for the common problems of socialist economies noticed early on in Yugoslavia, such as hoarding, material waste, bureaucratization, and parochialism). The workers’ councils were encouraged to rationalize production, raise productivity, reduce red tape, and cut costs directly through self-discipline and teamwork.16 The communist leadership claimed it was implementing the Marxist vision of the “withering away of the state,” but simultaneously it hoped to unleash the productive potential of the self-managing worker, envisioned as the rational, decision-making homo economicus. With the enterprises transformed into autonomous, self-managed units, a single worker was no longer defined structurally as a person belonging to a class or category of wage earners, but as a self-managing individual receiving a share of the collectively-owned company’s income. The occupational divisions inside the enterprises were to be overcome through common participation and a shared interest in maximizing the enterprise’s income. However, the actual practice of self-management lagged far behind the normative standards, with low participation from the shop floor workers and a high degree of influence by technical staff and directors.17 Workers did not feel they had the necessary time, competence, or information to make increasingly complex market decisions, so they delegated responsibility to the professional management as long as the expert decisions positively contributed to the company’s total income. As such, the professional executives were in a position to build a support base among the workers and frame popular grievances as a struggle for more business freedoms against the state bureaucracy.  Adizes, Industrial Democracy.  Martin Upchurch and Darko Marinković, Workers and Revolution in Serbia: From Tito to Milošević and Beyond (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2013), 29. 17  Josip Županov, Samoupravljanje i društvena moć: Prilozi za sociologiju samoupravne organizacije [Self-management and social power: Contributions toward a sociology of the self-governing organization] (Zagreb: Globus, 1985 [1969]). 15 16

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 400

2020.05.12. 19:28:06

When Workers’ Self-Management Met Neoliberalism

401

The process of liberalization reached its pinnacle in the mid-1960s, during the years of so-called market socialism, but by the early 1970s, the reformists in all republics were forced to step down amidst rising unemployment, economic slowdown, and growing income disparities.18 The professional management was accused of misusing its influence inside self-management bodies to skew the income distribution to their own advantage. The factories were handed over to the working class, but the directors were apparently able to place them under their control and gain powers similar to those of a private entrepreneur in capitalism.19 What ensued was a series of new laws which were supposed to lay the normative groundwork for the transition to a supposedly higher stage of self-management: the system approaching the Marxist ideal of an association of free producers. In practice, these legislative acts marked an ideological shift: a  move away from the market and reliance on enterprises’ technical staff, and towards more planning and increased institutional prerogatives for blue-collar workers. The foundation of the new system (codified though the lengthy and cumbersome 1976 Law on Associated Labor) was the Basic Organization of Associated Labor (BOAL), defined as the smallest part of the enterprise which constituted an economic-technological entity and whose financial performance could be assessed independently, either by market or other means.20 Each BOAL was equipped with its own set of self-management bodies and joined the larger work organizations voluntarily, on the basis of a self-management contract and delegate representation in the central workers’ councils. All key decisions reached by the professional management and the central workers’ council had to be ratified unanimously by the broaderbased self-management bodies embedded in each BOAL. The 1970s therefore represent an attempt at a radical break with the actual self-management practices that had evolved in the previous decade. The legislative changes inside the enterprises were accompanied by the spread of anti-market language and the rediscovered societal importance of manual labor. The traditional values of socialist revolution, such as social equality, working-class solidarity, and the leading role of the party, were now brought back to the forefront in public discourse. There was an attempt to reinstate

 Dennison Rusinow, The Yugoslav Experiment, 1948–1974 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978), 202. 19  Jože Prinčič, “Direktorska funkcija v jugoslovanskem socialističnem gospodarskem sistemu” [Directorate in the Yugoslav socialist economic system], in Biti director v času socijalizma: med idejami i praksami [Being a director in times of socialism: Between ideas and practices], ed. Jurij Fikfak and Jože Prinčič (Ljubljana: Založba ZRC, 2008), 84–88. 20  Christopher Prout, Market Socialism in Yugoslavia (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985), 65–70. 18

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 401

2020.05.12. 19:28:06

402

Rory Archer and Goran Musić

the industrial working class to the center of social development and revive political participation after the proliferation of consumerism and individualistic lifestyles in the 1960s.21 The ambitious institutional makeover of the 1970s was facilitated by a thriving economy and high living standards based on credit, investments, and extensive industrial growth. Yet the oil crisis of the late 1970s accentuated Yugoslavia’s structural economic problems, particularly its foreign debt which was approaching 20 billion US dollars by the early 1980s. From 1981, the country committed to enforcing programs of export-driven economic “stabilization” to repay foreign debt.22 Woodward writes that stabilization sought to “reorient domestic institutions to Western markets and foreign price competition . . . and to increase productivity in manufacturing, again by technological modernization through imports.”23 One consequence of economic stabilization was a massive drop in living standards, which disproportionally affected Yugoslav blue-collar workers. Registered unemployment, already running at 13.8 percent in the late 1970s, reached 16.3 percent by 1985. Earnings fell by some 25 percent in the same period and aggregate inflation exceeded 1,000 percent.24 The federal government tried to conduct stabilization through the existing institutional setup, yet the complex decision-making procedures inside the self-management bodies stalled the process and offered space for the obstruction of unpopular measures. After a series of political appeals and economic drives failed to deliver tangible results, the factories were swept by a wave of apathy and the communists were losing credibility. Workers were increasingly apathetic vis-à-vis political participation, with membership in the party industrial branches falling by the mid-1980s. Of course, membership in the LCY in itself did not imply meaningful political engagement or participation. Studies classified at least a third of LCY members as “politically passive” and this was even truer for workers than other members.25 So-

21

 Marie-Janine Calic, “The Beginning of the End—The 1970s as a Historical Turning Point in Yugoslavia,” in The Crisis of Socialist Modernity: The Soviet Union and Yugoslavia in the 1970s, ed. Marie-Janine Calic, Dietmar Neutatz, and Julia Obertreis (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2011), 66–87. 22  John R. Lampe, Yugoslavia as History: Twice There Was a Country (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 328. 23  Susan Woodward, Socialist Unemployment: The Political Economy of Yugoslavia, 1945– 1990 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995), 254. 24  Lampe, Yugoslavia as History, 299. 25  Wolfgang Höpken, “Party Monopoly and Political Change: The League of Communists since Tito’s Death,” in Yugoslavia in the 1980s, ed. Pedro Ramet (Boulder: Westview Press, 1985), 47.

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 402

2020.05.12. 19:28:06

When Workers’ Self-Management Met Neoliberalism

403

ciological research indicated increased perceptions of powerlessness in the decision-making processes in the workplace by the 1980s.26 Referring to the decline of worker membership in the LCY and reduced participation in the institutions of self-management, Silvano Bolčić identified important demographic traits, in particular the “new generation” of the working class who entered the workforce after the 1965 economic reforms and did not have direct experience of the partisan struggle during World War II.27 Between 1978 and 1984, some 820,000 new workers entered the workforce.28 Yet the faltering system was unable to socialize workers as it had before, and significant numbers of workers were “opting out” of the selfmanagement system (or in the case of the soaring number of unemployed, never even entering it). Swathes of Yugoslav working-class communities had become decoupled from institutions of self-management, the party, and the state, thus sensitizing them to a plethora of alternative discourses.29 Consequently, for many Yugoslav citizens, including blue-collar workers, there was a certain openness to new ideas and formulas which attempted to acknowledge and deal with the crisis. If the top party cadres, still adhering to the conventions of the 1970s, appeared to be clueless about the ways to handle the economic stalemate, there was a group of intellectuals and politicians who shared the popular sense of urgency but claimed to have answers. The liberal economic experts weathered the 1970s inside economic institutes, universities, and economic journals.30 They maintained good relations with managers of large companies and, as the decade advanced, regained their lost positions 26

 Ana Dević, “What Nationalism Has Buried: Yugoslav Social Scientists on the Crisis, Grassroots Powerlessness and Yugoslavism,” in Social Inequalities and Discontent in Yugoslav Socialism, ed. Rory Archer et al. (Abingdon: Routledge, 2016), 21–38. 27  Silvano Bolčić, “Savez komunista u ostvarivanju interesa radničke klase” [The League of Communists in achieving the interests of the working class], in Radnička klasa i SKJ ­danas [Labor and the LCY today] (Belgrade: Komunist, 1986), 46–48. 28  Dušan Bilandžić, Jugoslavija poslije Tita 1980–1985 [Yugoslavia after Tito, 1980–1985] (Zagreb: Globus, 1986), 119. 29  For a detailed discussion on changes in the composition of the Yugoslav working class in this period, see Rory Archer and Goran Musić, “The Belgrade Working Class from Tito to Milošević: New Geographies of Poverty and Evolving Expressions of Grievances in an Era of Crisis, 1979–1986,” Revue d’études comparatives Est-Ouest (RECEO) 50, no. 1 (2019): 53–79, https://doi.org/10.3917/receo1.501.0053. 30  For an account of the Yugoslav business magazine Ekonomska politika and its influence on the liberal-oriented management and political elites, see Mijat Lakićević, ed., Ispred vremena, 1963–1973, sudbonosna decenija, uspon i pad srpskih liberala, uzroci i posledice od tada do naših dana, kroz prizmu Ekonomske politike, novine kakvih više nema [Before the time, 1963–1973, the fateful decade, the rise and fall of Serbian liberals, the causes and consequences from then to today, through the prism of economic policy, newspapers that no longer exist] (Belgrade: Fond za otvoreno društvo, 2011).

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 403

2020.05.12. 19:28:06

404

Rory Archer and Goran Musić

in the party and especially the state apparatus. Their ideas seemed to be in tune with modern global trends in economic thought. The message of this group of economists and politicians was simple: either the political realm would allow the market to balance structural deficiencies or there would be an economic collapse. The seriousness of the situation left no alternative. Yugoslavia had to implement a radical stabilization program in partnership with the IMF. The party had allegedly capitulated to social demagogy and left posturing in the late 1960s. The chance for catching up with developed Western societies through market reforms had been wasted, and the whole society was now paying the price.

The “Exploitation of Work by Non-Work” By the late 1980s, liberal economic ideas penetrated the public discourse so deeply that they found their way into the factory press, publications whose pages had previously been primarily reserved for orthodox party views.31 Critically worded articles were keen to relativize the difference between socialism and capitalism, insisting that “economic laws” (ekonomske zakonitosti) were universal principles of modern civilization (as a report from a 1988 conference of socialist youth in FAP Priboj noted).32 Yugoslavs were supposed to choose between a market orientation (leading to efficiency and creating wealth) or a voluntarist, non-economic reallocation (encouraging mediocracy).33 An article appearing in October 1988 in the factory paper of Rakovica’s tractor factory IMR argued that the alleged income leveling found in Yugoslavia “does not exist in any other country in the world which reached a similar civilization level.”34 The insistence on “economic laws” as the prerequisite of sound economic decision-making on both sides of the Iron Curtain was important, since workers’ self-management nurtured strong liberal economic traditions. The market reforms were not seen as

31

 On the utility of Yugoslav workplace periodicals in labor history, see Rory Archer and Goran Musić, “Approaching the Socialist Factory and Its Workforce: Considerations from Fieldwork in (Former) Yugoslavia,” Labor History 58, no. 1 (2017): 44–66; Sven Cvek, “Class and Culture in Yugoslav Factory Newspapers,” in The Cultural Life of Capitalism in Yugoslavia: (Post)Socialism and Its Other, ed. Dijana Jelača et al. (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017), 101–20. 32  “Kakvu privrednu reformu žele mladi” [What kind of economic reform do young people want], FAP Informator, nos. 502–503, December 30, 1988, 9. 33  J. M., “Taktika za prepreke” [Barrier tactics], Beogradski radnik, no. 26, April 1986, 10–11. 34  “Uravnilovka—put u dublju krizu” [Income levelling—the path to a deeper crisis], IMR: List radne organizacije Industrije motora Rakovica, no. 512, October 31, 1989, 7.

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 404

2020.05.12. 19:28:06

When Workers’ Self-Management Met Neoliberalism

405

something that Yugoslavia should simply copy from the West, but as a continuation of the abruptly disrupted market socialism of the 1960s. The enterprise managers were traditionally the key transmitters of liberal economic interpretations of self-management in the industrial milieu. According to sociological surveys conducted in the mid-1980s, most workers still connected socialism primarily with the concept of “equality” and a “classless society.”35 Still, our research suggests that a layer of blue-collar workers actually internalized the vision of self-management as the opportunity for each person to maximize their individual income. The lingering crisis, alongside the inability to increase one’s paycheck on the basis of greater work efforts and skills, only amplified the belief that more income differentiation between different sections of the working class was a prerequisite for the return of economic growth. In May 1988, the Belgrade trade union magazine Beogradski radnik published a series of interviews with metalworkers, in which they presented their individual understandings of socialism. One of the main themes running through these comments is that income distribution inside the system of workers’ self-management unjustly rewarded those who did not contribute their fair share of work (or did not work at all, despite being on the factory employment list): Socialism means hard work should be rewarded. Socialism in Yugoslavia should not be “welfare provisions” [socijala]; we should not be afraid of those workers who can earn well from their work. (Stevo Tatić, qualified worker) The main principle of socialism, distribution according to the results of work, is not respected. We should reward work. That way, the shirkers [neradnici] would also be forced to change their ways. (Radisav Milovanović, mechanic) Fair compensation must be the cornerstone of our future. We are sick and tired of politicizing everything and everyone. We need to produce more, with better quality, and not create extreme income levelling [uravnilovka] and social handouts for each person who is employed but does not contribute to the work collective. ( Jovica Stojiljković, auto mechanic)36  See Sharon Zukin, “Self-Management and Socialization,” in Yugoslavia in the 1980s, ed. Pedro Ramet (Boulder: Westview Press, 1985), 93; and Vladimir Goati, Politička anatomija jugoslovenskog društva [Political anatomy of the Yugoslav society] (Zagreb: Naprijed, 1989), 69–70. 36  M. Đoković, “Pošten rad i lep život” [Honest work and good life], Beogradski radnik, no. 47, May 1988, 7. 35

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 405

2020.05.12. 19:28:07

406

Rory Archer and Goran Musić

In order to understand the notion of “shirkers” or “freeloaders,” one has to start from the blue-collar workers’ understanding of productive and unproductive work. The type of labor that produces new value in society was associated with physical—usually masculine—manual work behind the machine. All other professions allegedly lived off the redistribution of wealth generated in industry. The slogan “distribution according to work” did not imply the right to obtain a certain wage level and standard of living because one was a working person, but rather because of actual work performance. The more the results of one’s work could be measured and quantified, the better chances a person would have of being accepted as a productive member of the working class. Those professions whose wages were fixed in advance and not exposed to strict outside evaluation were regarded with suspicion. As Beogradski radnik reported in 1986: “Since the [Second World] war, a worker’s wage was never guaranteed. One always had to earn it. We should find ways to measure work, from the cleaning personnel all the way up to the president of the government.”37 The shop floor workers had the feeling that “nonproductive” positions were rapidly multiplying and were able to seize the income created in industry by influencing government economic policies. The “bureaucracy” was a pejorative term used for numerous groups which allegedly lived off the workers’ labor without having any useful function in society. The label could relate to white-collar staff and professional management employed inside the factory, but as the above citation from the trade union magazine indicates, it also referred to state employees and professional politicians at all levels right up to the echelons of the party-state. The self-managed factory was perceived as prey for these “non-economic” forces, sucking out the income through different redistribution mechanisms. As a qualified auto electrician from Priboj, Dušanka Lučić, stated when she was asked about her views on the reforms in March 1988: “We must put an end to the practice where workers earn income through their own labor and then whoever manages it puts their hands into workers’ pockets and grabs as much as they need, while we only receive the leftovers.”38 A metalworker from Rakovica, Mića Milanović, expressed a similar logic in May 1987, when he stated:

 Todor Desnica, “Merila” [Criteria], Beogradski radnik, no. 26, April 1986, 13.  M. Šukić, “Šta se menja u Ustavu SFRJ?” [What is changing in the Constitution of the SFRY?], FAP Informator, nos. 489–90, March 7, 1988, 6. Clearly, the masculine producerism identified by Bracewell as having proliferated in the 1980s was also internalized by some female workers. Bracewell, “Rape in Kosovo,” 578–79.

37 38

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 406

2020.05.12. 19:28:07

When Workers’ Self-Management Met Neoliberalism

407

Among our workers there is support for the introduction of economic behavior . . . the state bureaucracy has grown so much that it blocks all the processes directed against its interests. The political bureaucracy is an even bigger evil. . . . As a consequence, we see the formation of all kinds of institutions for analysis, steering, overseeing, and who knows what else. All of this has to be supported by the modest capabilities of industry.39

Even the blue-collar workers were not exempt from accusations of manipulating the perceived objective economic law of reward according to work. Fellow manual workers who managed to influence the enterprise’s income distribution and receive wages higher than their work effort, as well as those workers with poor job performance who were nonetheless guaranteed a minimum income, were also often seen as the cause of economic stagnation and inadequate wages for harder-working members of the collective. In the January 1986 issue of Beogradski radnik, Miroslav Kostić, a young construction worker, described numerous groups of workers who were actively misusing socialism for idleness or personal gain. The first group were the older workers who advanced in the workplace hierarchy over time. Kostić complained how during the winter, the senior workers delegated the most strenuous outdoor tasks to the newly-arrived younger workers. The older workers preferred to stay in the warm barracks, while their wages remained up to five times higher despite the difference in work conditions. The second group of “privileged” manual laborers mentioned by Kostić, who allegedly perverted socialism to serve their narrow interests, were workers who spent many years working for the enterprise abroad, receiving high wages in hard currency.40 These workers were usually well-off and kept their position inside the factory to secure their pension, social security, and other perks distributed by the enterprise-focused welfare state, investing minimum effort in the actual production process.41 The third group were the children of older workers and other staff employed through personal connections (veze). Kostić insisted that various superfluous non-productive job positions were invented in order to accommodate

39

 Dragutin Žujović, “Radnici IMRa: Realna ekonomija da, ali kako” [IMR workers: Real economy yes, but how], Beogradski radnik, no. 37, May 1987, 4. 40  Many self-managed enterprises were using Yugoslavia’s favorable geopolitical position and role in the Non-Aligned Movement to obtain contracts for lucrative projects abroad. 41  Kostić mentions workers who spent time abroad because his construction company was undertaking projects in many developing countries. In other enterprises, the same criticism could be directed against gastarbajteri, workers returning from years of work in Western Europe, or those workers who had another source of income parallel to their factory wage, such as private business or agricultural land.

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 407

2020.05.12. 19:28:07

408

Rory Archer and Goran Musić

these people, such as coffee makers, storage personnel, post distributors, and archivists. Finally, there were also those blue-collar workers who became politically active, finished adult education, and left the shop floor in order to serve as self-management delegates in various government institutions. These individuals probably had the worst reputation on the shop floor of all the categories listed above, since they were seen as class traitors who had changed sides and transformed from workers into hated “bureaucrats.”42 All of these individuals allegedly exercised greater informal sway over the workers’ council and its income distribution agreements than blue-collar workers through their wealth, status, family connections, or political influence. The gap between the officially proclaimed values of workers’ selfmanagement and the everyday reality of the factory shop floor gave birth to radical views which claimed that a new pattern of exploitation had come into existence under the cover of socialism. As economist Branko Medojević explicated in Beogradski radnik: The income distribution system has an administrative character. Metaphysically separated from the social capital, the income has become a  bookkeeping substance for itself allocated according to arbitrary rules. . . . The social forces standing above the direct producers conduct the policy of administrative and voluntary regulation of social reproduction. In this regard, it can be claimed that there is exploitation of work by non-work.43

If the workers were not able to influence the political decisions in the selfmanagement bodies, the alternative was to make economic decisions more dependent on the market once again. The laws of “socialist commodity production” were supposed to enable each worker to receive the full value of their work. If all value was created in industry then, left to operate freely, the neutral socialist market would surely recognize this and eventually eliminate the manner in which shirkers and bureaucrats exploit the economy to the detriment of ordinary, hardworking people. The so-called “economic laws” were fair in the sense that they were externally imparted, thus equal for all and seemingly objective. As IMR Rakovica’s young metalworker Mladen Ćulibrk reasoned in October 1989 when the acceleration of market reforms was announced: “It is good that economic laws will finally prevail . . . allow-

 Miroslav Kostić, “I to je socijalizam” [That is also socialism], Beogradski radnik, no. 23, January 1986, 8. 43  “Raspodela: Korak od parole” [Distribution: A step away from a slogan], Beogradski radnik, no. 26, April 1986, 5–7. 42

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 408

2020.05.12. 19:28:07

When Workers’ Self-Management Met Neoliberalism

409

ing us to earn according to our capabilities, instead of doing people favors and rewarding according to income levelling [uravnilovka].”44 Most of the interviewees displaying this type of reasoning were younger and better-skilled workers. They felt the older elites inside the factories were entrenched in their positions of power in the self-management institutions with the support of mediocre workers and the bureaucracy. The order established during the 1970s was, from their perspective, blocking their advancement to better-paid positions. The liberal reforms therefore enjoyed support inside the factories from a layer of blue-collar workers who expected to benefit from less political intervention in the economy. Part of a speech delivered by the leading figure of the Serbian communists, Slobodan Milošević, at the November 1988 conference of the Serbian party clearly aims to connect to these sentiments. At the peak of his power Milošević was keen to underline that the reforms pursued by him did not address solely the national question, but also economic liberalization: There is no more room for an increase in poverty. . . . The reform therefore means a break with the illusion that political actors in society can successfully guide economic processes and relations. . . . Economic decision-making should be placed in the hands of direct producers and their enterprises, their motives and interest, their initiative, their capacity to grapple with risk, with competition, with all foreseeable and unforeseeable challenges inherent in the market organization of the world economy of which we are part. . . . This is the first and foremost task of economic and social reform . . . to remove the blockades, ideological and other ones, for the individual and society to be able to enrich themselves through their labor.45

An “(Un)Developed Culture of Work” Workers often described the disruptions of economic and political mechanisms surrounding them as uniquely absurd, something that citizens of “normal societies” did not have to face on a daily basis. However, what was this assumed “normality” that working people usually referred to in the final decade of Yugoslav socialism, and where could one find it? The benchmark for measuring the success of the local system was increasingly being set against the economically most advanced capitalist countries of Western Europe, not

 D. Žujović, “Samostalnost—samo na papiru” [Autonomy—only on paper], IMR: List radne organizacije Industrije motora Rakovica, no. 511, October 17, 1989, 5. 45  Slobodan Milošević, Godine raspleta [Crucial years] (Belgrade: Bigz, 1989), 278–80. 44

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 409

2020.05.12. 19:28:07

410

Rory Archer and Goran Musić

other socialist societies or the developing world. After years of open borders with the West, increasing exposure to cultural products arriving from the global market, and the entrenchment of consumerism as the distinguishing lifestyle of the privileged social strata, Yugoslav industrial workers were no longer content with the higher living standards they enjoyed in comparison to citizens of other socialist countries. More than ever before, they looked westwards and contemplated “catching up” with the consumer habits of workers in capitalist metropolises.46 As a former metalworker and party activist from Belgrade, Momčilo Plećaš, stated in an oral history interview: Some doctor [presumably an intellectual] from the city organization was giving a speech at our municipal branch and I complained about the hard times. He commented: “Plećaš, you have never been to Romania or Bulgaria, you should see the conditions there.” I replied, “Comrade Doctor, that is correct, I have never visited Bulgaria, but I have been to Switzerland and Austria and that is my goal. Please stop making me look at the rearview mirror; I am interested in those ahead of us, not those behind.”47

Of course, one should take into account that the interviewee might be relating his statement much more to the current living standards in Serbia, and frustration with the slow pace of joining the European Union, than to socialist times. Yet plenty of indications reveal the change in blue-collar workers’ mental mapping of the world in the late 1980s. After more than three decades of attempts to modernize the country through an alternative development model, Yugoslav society was slowly facing the fact that it remained a producer of inferior goods on the world market with relatively high production costs. Internally, the Yugoslav project was no longer seen through the lens of the Non-Aligned Movement, as the champion of developing countries globally, but as a Western European periphery.  On consumer culture in Yugoslavia, see Igor Duda, U potrazi za blagostanjem: O povijesti dokolice i potrošakog društva u Hrvatskoj 1950-ih i 1960-ih [In search of well-being: About the history of leisure and consumer society in Croatia in the 1950s and 1960s] (Zagreb: Srednja Europa, 2005); Igor Duda, Pronađeno blagostanje: Svakodnevni život i potrošačka kultura u Hrvatskoj 1970-ih i 1980-ih [Well-being found: Everyday life and consumer culture in Croatia in the 1970s and 1980s] (Zagreb: Srednja Europa, 2010); Patrick Hyder Patterson, Bought and Sold: Living and Losing the Good Life in Socialist Yugoslavia (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2011); Radina Vučetić, Koka-kola socijalizam: Amerikanizacija popularne kulture šezdesetih godina XX veka (Belgrade: Službeni glasnik, 2012), 350–76. For the English version, see Vučetić, Coca-Cola Socialism: Americanization of Yugoslav Culture in the Sixties (Budapest–New York: CEU Press, 2018), 254–79. 47  Interview with Momčilo Plećaš (IMR metalworker and party activist), Belgrade, March 2011. 46

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 410

2020.05.12. 19:28:07

When Workers’ Self-Management Met Neoliberalism

411

The open border policy and the existence of bilateral agreements between the Yugoslav government and those Western European countries suffering from labor shortages during the postwar economic boom enabled many workers to travel and find employment abroad as guest workers (gastarbajteri). This enabled workers to make comparisons of life under the two systems based on firsthand experience: I visit them [two brothers living in Germany] often, so I have the opportunity to see and hear how work is organized there. Work discipline and industrial culture are very developed. Once I  observed three construction workers at the building. They arrived to work exactly on time, used their lunch break at the scheduled time, and did not leave work before the workday ended. All this without any visible supervision. Here at home everything is improvised.48

Many gastarbajteri would return home with luxurious goods, such as foreign cars, or invested their savings into building lavish houses, something few bluecollar workers employed in the Yugoslav social sector could afford.49 The following statements made by workers from Belgrade’s blue-collar municipality of Rakovica at the time make the same reference toward the “West”: I am reflecting deeply on why I didn’t leave Yugoslavia in the 1970s and then come back, fifteen years later, as a  gentleman with a  nice car and a house. Instead, I decided to stay here and build a socialist society on selfmanaged, democratic foundations. I  protest loudly in factory meetings, but that is as far as my voice reaches.50 We call ourselves a  socialist country, but if we look at the social relations inside of it, there is no socialism here, just a pure bureaucratic system . . . the Yugoslav workers are the most exploited workers in Europe.51

In the first citation, the interviewed worker regrets not taking advantage of the policy of open borders like many of his fellow citizens did during the

 M. Belajev, “Dok traka ide,” Informator DMB, July 3, 1987, 10.  For the study of Yugoslav migrant workers’ conspicuous consumption at home, see Carl-­ Ulrik Schierup, Houses, Tractors, Golden Ducats: Prestige Game and Migration; A Study of Migrants to Denmark from a Yugoslav Village; Field report (Aarhus: Institute for Ethnography and Social Anthropology, 1987). 50  Mića Milošević, Žulj [Blister] (Belgrade: Centar Film, 1987). Emphasis added. 51  “Da se čuje radnička reč” [That the working word be heard], IMR: List radne organizacije Industrije motora Rakovica, no. 494, December 6, 1988, 2. 48 49

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 411

2020.05.12. 19:28:07

412

Rory Archer and Goran Musić

1960s and 1970s. The failure of the Yugoslav system to match the consumption levels enjoyed by the working class in highly industrialized countries was an obvious source of frustration for the local workforce. However, the second part of his statement hints at an additional concern, equally important—if not more so—than the falling standard of living. To some degree, the lag in consumption was supposed to be offset by a unique set of economic and political rights to be enjoyed by Yugoslav workers. Chief among these was the right to participate in the construction of a society on “selfmanaged foundations,” as implied by the interviewee. For many workers, this was the crucial point of disappointment with the system. The blue-collar workers were used to cyclical oscillations of the socialist market economy. In the past, however, the years of “belt-tightening” were always followed by periods of economic expansion and greater consumption possibilities for the workers, as long as they remained recognized as a key constituent of socialism and the system of self-management. As such, a bigger problem than mere material deprivation was the perception that the voice of the workers was no longer being taken into account. Dragan Krstić, an auto mechanic employed at the “May 21” factory in Rakovica, declared: Here a worker does not get heard. They often convince us of something, sometimes because of that I don’t even bother going to the meeting. They say one thing, do another, and write a third. When the annual plans are made, that nobody understands, I  don’t go, it just gets adopted. Voting is usually after working hours, then everyone just gives up so they can go home as soon as possible.52

In October 1986, a  blue-collar delegate from Belgrade told the Central Committee of the League of Communists of Serbia how laborers’ work motivation, both in their jobs and in the self-management organs, was weakening. This was reflected in the fact that one of the flagship Belgrade factories, Industrija Motora Rakovica, was not capable of organizing a  union conference for years. Out of 1,500 members in one factory department, some forty people allegedly attended the meeting. At the lower level workers’ assemblies in the factory, the delegate revealed, “it’s not much better, if we wouldn’t pull people by their sleeves and escort them into the meeting hall, only 10–20 percent of workers would appear.”53

52

 S. Jugović, “Na prvom mestu—stambeno pitanje” [In the first place—a housing issue], Informator DMB, March 13, 1981, 2. 53  D. Ž., “Opredeljenje sprovoditi u praksi” [The decisions should be implemented in practice], IMR: List radne organizacije Industrije motora Rakovica, October 15, 1986, 6.

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 412

2020.05.12. 19:28:07

When Workers’ Self-Management Met Neoliberalism

413

The radical decentralization of self-management and the self-centeredness of each BOAL made it difficult to pass decisive, strategic decisions at the enterprise level. The steady obstruction of collective decision-making changed the popular image of workers’ self-management. Where once it was seen as a facilitator of enterprise unity and readiness to undertake collective risk, it came to be perceived as a costly, self-absolved apparatus which created bureaucracy and lawlessness. In this situation, the reformist demands for greater centralization and a stronger role for professional management received an audience on the shop floor. The loose work discipline contributed to a feeling of chaos inside the atomized factories. It seemed the aforementioned shirkers and others who misused social property for personal gain could navigate easily through the labyrinth of different self-management organs and splintered professional management without fear of concrete sanctions. Zoran Miletić, a norm-breaking worker from Rakovica’s “May 21” factory, complained about the work habits of younger laborers who used the factory as a “passing stop” on their way to other more lucrative jobs in the city. These individuals allegedly neglected their shop floor duties, “daydreaming about privately-owned business during working hours, moonlighting in the afternoon.” However, after his scornful words, Miletić showed understanding for such practices, admitting that “all of us here have such plans, more or less.” Miletić concluded that the obstacle in the way of opening a private business was the lack of money to invest, or as he put it, “one needs to fatten his pockets first,” implying that theft was a common way to procure capital to invest in private business.54 For some, the easiest way to raise the initial funds for a small business was to privatize elements of common property: in other words, to engage in workplace theft. In February 1986, Beogradski radnik stated that economic crime had doubled in the previous four years. The peasants and small workshop owners around Belgrade allegedly established direct links with the city metalworkers, who smuggled spare parts and finished products through the factory gates for sale on the black market.55 Similar reports were emerging from Priboj, where the heavy vehicle producer FAP complained about the disruptive consequences of an expansion in small businesses.56 In September 1988, the workers’ assembly (zbor radnika) of Priboj’s blue-collar BOAL  M. Belajev, “Od vere do nepoverenja” [From faith to distrust], Informator DMB, April 28, 1987, 10. 55  Jovan Kozomara, “Lovimo li lopove?” [Are we catching thieves?], Beogradski radnik, no. 24, February 1986, 13–14. 56  “OOUR Drustvena ishrana: Odlučno protiv nerada i nediscipline” [BOAL Social Nutrition: Decisively against idleness and unruliness], FAP Dnevni vesti, nos. 2408–9, November 2, 1982. 54

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 413

2020.05.12. 19:28:07

414

Rory Archer and Goran Musić

Montaža stressed that the factory was suffering considerable damage due to theft, irresponsible usage, unnecessary business trips, sales below the costs of production, advertisement, and the lavish pampering of business partners.57 If the appeal of calls for more market influence in income distribution was reserved primarily for younger, skilled workers in good positions, the reformist demand for greater accountability, leaner factory structures, and a  straightforward management chain echoed widely among all layers of manual workers. The reasoning of Rakovica’s “May 21” workers, recorded in the factory newspaper in February 1989, is indicative of the prevailing mood in favor of greater accountability: I came to the factory fifteen years ago when it was still a unified company; however, soon they started to create a  patchwork out of it and things started going downhill. It is time for “May 21” to become a unified enterprise so we can know what is being done and who does what. More jurisdiction should be given to the director, so he can give an order or punish a shirker or relocate him to another job position . . . there is no work without discipline. (Riroslav Radojević, highly skilled worker) Disunity destroyed us. . . . we have to separate work from non-work . . . everyone does as they please; in order for this to cease we need more work, order, discipline, and one boss. (Smail Dauti, skilled worker) I am absolutely in favor of a unified enterprise and a single boss so that I know whom I can call out. As things stand at the moment everyone is in charge and nobody takes the blame. (Pavle Radojčić, foreman)58

There was strong support for a strict separation of work and management and, by extension, a  tendency to curtail aspects of the self-management structures. Allegedly lacking the “work culture” witnessed in West Germany by the worker cited above, the Yugoslav worker was seen as too immature to practice self-management and was thus in need of a stronger, hierarchical control mechanism. A clear-cut division of manual and intellectual work— where the general management enjoys more autonomy in decision-making, but where it is also prepared to be held accountable for business results— was the desired business culture. This was not necessarily seen as the disempowerment of the blue-collar workers. As a telling article appearing at the 57

 Zbor radnog naroda OOUR Montaža, September 12, 1988, FAP Archive, File: Zbor radnika zapisnici January 19, 1987–December 31, 1988. 58  “Radnici su za, a  rukovodioci…” [The workers are for, but the managers...], Informator DMB, February 14, 1989, 2.

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 414

2020.05.12. 19:28:07

When Workers’ Self-Management Met Neoliberalism

415

end of 1988 in Priboj’s FAP factory paper underlined, the market reforms would result in the workers losing rights that they have on paper but are not in a position to use. On the other hand, they could gain the tangible power to hold the professional management accountable for its actions.59

Workers as Homeowners The dilemmas associated with access to affordable housing in Yugoslavia offer another fruitful example of workers (among other constituents) pushing for market-oriented reforms as a means of tackling social disparities. The normative model of housing for urban Yugoslavs, whether in established Belgrade industrial centers like Rakovica or developing peripheries like Priboj, was the socially owned apartment, often in a high-rise block. All working Yugoslavs contributed to this subsidized program of housing provision in tandem with workplaces and local authorities, who also funded and undertook construction. Originally conceived as a progressive welfare measure aimed to allow those most in need to resolve their housing problems, socially owned flats became one of the main generators of inequality in the working-class communities. In practice, working-class Yugoslavs were far less likely than white-collar workers to receive access to this prized stock of affordable housing. As the factories used their housing stock to induce labor mobility and attract highly-skilled staff, many blue-collar workers with lower incomes were pushed into the semi-official (and thus highly unregulated) housing market, either through renting or building their own house. Many blue-collar Yugoslavs thus felt aggrieved that they were “forced to pay for their housing twice,” through both the obligatory financial contributions for social sector flats they never received, and the actual cost of renting or building independently.60 In contrast to the capitalist West, blue-collar Yugoslavs were more likely to be homeowners than white-collar workers, who more frequently enjoyed lifetime use of socially owned flats. In Belgrade half of the housing stock was in the social sector, yet only a quarter of blue-collar workers resided in these

59

 “Kakvu privrednu reformu žele mladi” [What kind of economic reform do young people want?], FAP Informator, nos. 502–503, December 30, 1988, 9. 60  On housing inequalities in Yugoslavia, see Rory Archer, “‘Paid for by the Workers, Occupied by the Bureaucrats’: Housing Inequalities in 1980s Belgrade,” in Social Inequalities and Discontent in Yugoslav Socialism, ed. Rory Archer et al. (Abingdon: Routledge, 2016), 58–76. On independent home construction in Yugoslavia, see Rory Archer, “The Moral Economy of Home Construction in Late Socialist Yugoslavia,” History and Anthropology 29, no. 2 (2018): 141–62.

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 415

2020.05.12. 19:28:07

416

Rory Archer and Goran Musić

flats.61 Similarly, it was mostly white-collar and skilled workers who resided in the new, plusher high-rises of Novi Priboj, a  purpose-built settlement of modern socially-owned apartments whose existence was owed to FAP. Disparities in housing were a perennial gripe in Yugoslavia and a source of constant embitterment in workplaces. In the late 1980s, some of the more engaged communists in Priboj loudly complained that those in leadership roles were taking advantage of their positions while workers in production were living in poverty. The factory newspaper discussed the example of Šefik Alagić: despite having been awarded the title of “best metalworker in Yugoslavia” and being one of the highest-paid workers in FAP for normbreaking, Alagić was not able to access a socially owned flat.62 He was also unlikely to be able to rent one privately. By the latter half of the 1980s it was “almost impossible” to find a modest flat to rent on the unregulated market in Priboj: they were reportedly almost all occupied, despite the high rental rates being charged.63 Most workers, many of whom had migrated from the countryside within their own lifetime and bore the brunt of Yugoslavia’s endemic housing shortage, needed to resolve their housing situation by renting privately on the gray real estate market (at a cost far higher than the more prestigious social sector), or by building their own home independently. While independent construction of the family home did not gel with socialist morality and sometimes provoked moral panic, it was tolerated by the authorities, and in the 1970s and 1980s it mushroomed on the peripheries of Yugoslav cities in its legal, gray, and illegal variants. Though rarely explicated by Yugoslav authorities, such construction was in accordance with the growing view that, in the context of economic stabilization, there was a need for citizens to contribute more of their own income (lični dinar) toward resolving their housing situation.64 Even before the onset of severe economic crisis and the stabilization measures undertaken from 1981 onward, there was a  realization that the housing shortage could not be solved with “social funds” alone but would increasingly require individuals to invest their own finances into resolving their housing situation. For example, this view was inserted into the agenda of the Eleventh Congress of the LCY in June 1978.65 Such a  declaration was largely reflective of actual practice, at least as far as blue-collar work61

 Archer, “‘Paid for by the Workers, Occupied by the Bureaucrats.’”  FAP Dnevni vesti, nos. 3110–11, January 26, 1988, 2. 63  “Završava se šest zgrada” [Six buildings are completed], Pribojske novine, no. 262, December 16, 1987, 4. 64  Archer, “The Moral Economy of Home Construction in Late Socialist Yugoslavia,” 145. 65  Živorad Kovačević, “Ćekajući stan” [Waiting for the apartment], NIN, April 23, 1978. 62

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 416

2020.05.12. 19:28:07

When Workers’ Self-Management Met Neoliberalism

417

ers were concerned. With the adoption of economic stabilization, a flat was conceived of as “not only the concern of society” but rather the “concern of the individual with the assistance of society.”66 Beogradski radnik reported that the “leitmotif ” of stabilization was thus to introduce economic rental rates for socially owned housing, coupled with the maintenance of “solidarity” housing for the most vulnerable.67 As the marketization of the housing stock was placed on the agenda by the end of the decade, some workers welcomed it as an act which would allegedly erase unfair advantages and release more funds for low-income workers, who were relying on the banks and workplace loans to finance individual house construction. A Kosovar migrant worker at IMR, living in a precarious, self-built house on the outskirts of Belgrade, declared: I support the housing reform. Let everyone buy his or her own house or apartment. Where in the world have you seen the practice of handing out apartments as gifts? Nowhere! One sees this only here, and we are poor. Socially-owned housing should be abolished! For the price of a  single apartment, the enterprise could make a credit down payment for ten workers to build their own houses.68

More market criteria were thus seen by some workers as both a recognition of the reality on the ground and an opportunity to legally regulate the unresolved private housing stock previously built by workers themselves. Like income distribution, the market solution was perceived as a less costly and more democratic mechanism for resolving the housing question than the slow and bureaucratized local governments or ad hoc workplace procedures which overwhelmingly favored white-collar workers.

Conclusion Facing a decline in living standards and compounded economic and political crises in the 1980s, Yugoslav workers had a variety of sources from which to draw upon to inspire a liberal turn. These included the recent memory of market socialism and its apex in the 1960s, contact with the capitalist West through migration, tourism, and cultural flows, and the lived experience of  Nenad Sanković, “Stan kao mislena imenica” [Apartment as a thought noun], Beogradski radnik, no. 10, October, 1984, 16–17. 67  Sanković, “Stan kao mislena imenica.” 68  “Ruke za dva takta” [Hands for two strokes], IMR: List radne organizacije Industrije motora Rakovica, no. 505, June 6, 1989, 6. 66

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 417

2020.05.12. 19:28:07

418

Rory Archer and Goran Musić

a system in which socialist-inspired redistributive practices like social housing were actually fostering new inequalities.69 A number of factors contributed to openness toward market reforms. A  frustrated layer of young and skilled workers, who could not improve their wages due to the need for business decisions to pass a vote in broadbased self-management bodies or by a cumbersome referendum, fomented discontent. The dysfunctionality of self-management in practice, the perennially loose work discipline, and the theft of social property on the shop floor provoked the necessity for stricter control and centralized authority. For many workers in late socialist Yugoslavia, life outside the factory tended to be based on consumerism and self-help. Traditional homesteads (for the nuclear or extended family, both often being constructed though intergenerational labor) remained especially important, while the state bureaucracy with its laws and procedures was often seen as the main adversary. Just like many economists of the same era, most workers did not see a greater deference to the market in the late 1980s as a passage to capitalism, but rather as the deepening of socialism with a stronger market influence. We see that this was sometimes the case for workers in Priboj and Rakovica, communities which one may expect to have been less amenable to market liberalization than those in more developed parts of Yugoslavia, such as Slovenia or Croatia. Socially-owned companies were to remain the foundation of the system. In public discussions, the growing market influence was related to opportunities for ordinary workers to enrich themselves through their labor. According to such a view, economic liberalization was supposed to punish those who earned their money through monopolies and bureaucratic maneuvers, not the ordinary hardworking people.

 Cf. Ivan Szelenyi, Urban Inequalities in Socialism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983).

69

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 418

2020.05.12. 19:28:07

PART V TOWARD AN INCLUSIVE HISTORY OF WORK

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 419

2020.05.12. 19:28:07

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 420

2020.05.12. 19:28:07

Not Just Socialist Miners, but Miners of the World: Internationalism, Global Trends, and Romanian Coal Workers Anca Glont

T

he coal miners of the Jiu Valley identified themselves and their industry as phenomena that transcended national borders. Their view was shaped by Romanian state socialism; the coal industry was a cornerstone of Romania’s industrialization policy, part of the trend toward the worldwide “equalization of economic development” in which Romania would “catch up” with more advanced economies through industrialization.1 The socialist conceptualization of national industry and workers was emphatically global—both were comparatively scrutinized, within the frameworks of worldwide socialism and capitalism. “International solidarity between all those who work”2 was paramount, and the local press in the valley presented the daily life of miners and news of the coal industry from all corners of the globe. The socialist era, however, did not create internationalism in Jiu. The valley’s coal mining industry and its worker cultures emerged from imperial—and later national—economic programs, but were at the same time products of larger, global economic and social processes of which the miners were well aware. The company towns of the Jiu Valley were established by the Austro-Hungarian monarchy to spur industrialization, using both Austrian state investment and international private capital.3 The working class that emerged was multi-ethnic, literate, and self-conscious—entirely aware  Costin Murgescu, Probleme ale relațiilor economice dintre țările socialiste [Issues regarding economic relations between socialist countries] (Bucharest: Biblioteca Viața Economică, 1964), 24. 2  Nicolae Ceaușescu, “Cuvântare la conferința Uniunii Asociațiilor Studențești din Ro­ mâ­nia” [Speech at the Conference of the United Student Associations of Romania], in România pe drumul construirii societății socialiste multilateral dezvoltate [Romania on the road to building the multilaterally developed socialist society], vol. 4 (Bucharest: Editura Politică, 1970), 13. 3  Mircea Baron, Cărbune și societate în Valea Jiului—perioada interbelică [Coal and society in the Jiu Valley: The interwar period] (Petroșani: Editura Universitas, 1998), 66–74. 1

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 421

2020.05.12. 19:28:08

422

Anca Glont

of its role in the wider world. The miners used this awareness in their negotiations with company owners and the state, looking to the miners’ standard of living in other European countries and forging alliances with organized labor movements in other countries. This internationalism continued through the shifting borders and politics of the interwar era. The pressures and the impetus of further development in the Jiu Valley were a combination of international markets, national policies aiming to improve Romania’s position on a perceived scale of industrial progress, and the miners’ efforts to understand and improve their lot through alliances with organized labor at home and abroad. The labor history of the Jiu mines from 1949 to 1989 provides, at one level, a lens through which to explore Romanian state socialism. However, the case of Jiu suggests further insight into the construction of global labor history. Recent efforts to define a “new global labor history” have sought to overcome the discipline’s predilection to focus on national units of analysis.4 This has led to proposals to focus labor history around the history of the globalization of capitalism.5 Such efforts have largely neglected the history of labor within the socialist bloc.6 This serves to obscure elements of labor history within a  larger global framework but without methodological rationale: why include Labour-led Britain, but not socialist Romania? The history of labor in the Jiu Valley shows both that the region remained connected to global processes, challenging the inferred insularity of Eastern Europe, and that these processes represented continuities of trends and practices that predate state socialism.7 Jiu participated in some aspects and movements within the globalization process, suggesting that it was not only capitalism that developed the global networks of intercon-

4

 Efforts to overcome this kind of methodological nationalism started early in comparative labor history. However, the nation-state remained one of the main units of analysis and comparison, which ultimately reinforced its position. See Ira Katznelson and Aristide Zolberg, eds., Working-Class Formation: Nineteenth-Century Patterns in Western Europe and the United States (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1986). 5  See Marcel van der Linden, Globalizing Labour History: The IISH Approach (Amsterdam: International Institute of Social History, 2002), 2; Bruce Mazlish, “Introduction to Global History,” in Conceptualizing Global History, ed. Bruce Mazlish and Ralph Buultjens (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1993), 3. 6  Jan Lucassen’s edited volume includes both China and the Soviet Union. However, it is an excellent discussion of the historiography of labor history in each of these areas, with little discussion of what makes that labor history global. See Jan Lucassen ed., Global Labor History: A State of the Art (Bern: Peter Lang, 2006). 7  Indeed, these trends often postdate socialism: eight of the fifteen Jiu coal mines were shut down between 1994 and 2015, as Romanian coal entered fully into global energy markets and subsidies were withdrawn.

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 422

2020.05.12. 19:28:08

Not Just Socialist Miners, but Miners of the World

423

nectivity—and thus the need to complicate how the new labor history will define globalization.8 Both before and after World War II, there are strong connections and interactions between the Jiu Valley and different world regions, as well as social and cultural networks that tie the miners to mining areas in Romania and abroad. These connections were not only within the communist bloc and Comecon: African countries—whether socialist or not—sent students to the Jiu Valley to become mining engineers, and many of them spent at least some of their three years of practical study in the Jiu mines. In this sense, the Jiu Valley experienced expanded global networks during the socialist years. During the previous century, technology and knowledge transfers came from Austria and Germany to the Jiu Valley. Throughout the socialist period machinery and mining knowledge came from the Soviet Union and Poland, then additionally from Austria, the United States, and France during the 1970s, and was disseminated to students from Vietnam, Cuba, Zambia, the Dominican Republic, and Kenya, among others. The miners were aware not only of their role within Romania, but also their global role, a  struggle for production and development that would ultimately equalize not just Romania’s opportunities and society, but the opportunities and societies of workers everywhere. The transnational influences on the Jiu Valley’s coal industry did shift during state socialism, but by no means could they be inscribed simply within the socialist bloc. While the socialist organization of labor and political reality remains distinct from the world’s other modes of political organization at the time, it was by no means isolated from the non-socialist world, nor was it free of outside influence. In the case of Jiu, this can be seen by the place of Jiu coal (and thus Jiu workers) in the trajectory of global energy use, the miners’ participation in global networks transferring knowledge and technology, and the ways internationalism was expressed in the worker culture of the valley’s mines. In these areas, the valley was entangled in larger processes of great importance for the new global labor history.

8

 As such, the basic description of global history offered by Marcel van der Linden does not cease to be useful with the advent of the Iron Curtain, which hedged—but did not end— connections between workers in the socialist and non-socialist worlds. In this sense, while van der Linden argues the history of labor is a lens to examine the history of capitalism, I prefer it as a lens to examine the history of economic exchange—and thus, global labor history should properly include the socialist world. Marcel van der Linden, “The Promise and Challenges of Global Labor History,” International Labor and Working-Class History 82 (Fall 2012): 62.

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 423

2020.05.12. 19:28:08

424

Anca Glont

The Romanian Coal Industry in a Global Perspective The move to a socialist economy between 1944 and 1949 fundamentally shifted market transactions and ownership of the coal industry. Regardless, the demand for coal in Romania closely followed international trends in energy usage and production. Similarly, while the structure of the mines’ ownership and administration did change under state socialism, the role and treatment of the miners in Jiu reflected facets of broader global trends that constrained and shaped the context of labor there—the global thus providing insight into a local history. If “[f ]or two crucial centuries [world] industrial civilization was founded on coal,”9 the miners’ and the state’s understanding of their role in Romania and the world was fully justified. The insatiable international need for energy in the postwar years also meant steadily increasing absolute coal production figures all over the world, with a significant portion of the output earmarked for energy production.10 The relative importance of coalproduced energy may have decreased, but today it continues to represent a significant portion of the world’s GDP.11 The effort of Romanian central planning to dramatically increase coal production and thereby energy production is thus less a stereotype of the state-socialist “heavy industry” economies and rather more a reflection of global trends. Romanian five-year plans from 1949 to 1989 focused on dramatically increasing coal production for the energy industry.12 Coal was the  Peter Ackers, “Life after Death: Mining History without a Coal Industry,” Historical Studies in Industrial Relations 1, no.1 (March 1996): 169. 10  For the United States’ use of coal, see U.S. Energy Information Agency, Annual Energy Review (September 2012): 199–212. For a world overview between 1950 and 1974, see United Nations, World Energy Supplies, 1950–1974 (New York: United Nations, 1976). Although the proportion of energy produced by coal did decline between 1950 and 1970, this reflects energy demand doubling roughly every fourteen years: absolute consumption figures rose, albeit with periodic slumps. 11  Ger Klaassen and Keywan Riahi, “Internalizing Externalities of Electricity Generation: An Analysis with MESSAGE-MACRO,” Energy Policy 35, no. 2 (2007): 815–27. 12  Nicolae Ceaușescu, “Cuvântare la întâlnirea cu activul de partid din regiunea Hunedoara cu prilejul vizitei conducătorilor de partid și de stat, 9 Octombrie 1966” [Speech held during the meeting with the active party cadre from the Hunedoara Region occasioned by the visit of the party and state leaders, October 9, 1966], in România pe drumul desăvârșirii construcției socialiste: Rapoarte, Cuvântări, Articole [Romania on the road to finishing building socialism: Reports, speeches, articles], vol. 2 (Bucharest: Editura Politică, 1968), 51–52. 9

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 424

2020.05.12. 19:28:08

Not Just Socialist Miners, but Miners of the World

425

cornerstone of the country’s energy policy: from 1959 to 1970 alone, production increased by 160 percent, and would double again between 1970 and 1989.13 The thermo-electric, coal-powered plants of Paroșeni in the Jiu Valley and nearby Craiova, built during this period, were a cornerstone of the regime’s energy policy and ran mainly on Jiu coal.14 This emphasis reflected the broader importance of coal power plants in generating electricity throughout both the capitalist and the socialist world, despite the efforts of Romania and other countries to diversify energy production. The worldwide development of energy policy between 1945 and 1980 emphasized several major sources: coal, oil, hydroelectric power, and nuclear.15 In Romania, both hydroelectric plants and, after 1968, atomic power were elements of the energy strategy, the latter including cooperation and technology transfers from Canada.16 Romania’s petroleum industry was reserved for use in the chemical industry and for export. The Romanian socialist state considered its approaches to energy within an international context, following the Soviet and American examples in attempting to develop electrification to satisfy consumer and industrial needs, in light of commonly perceived international pressures.17

13

 “Directivele Congresului al IX-lea al P.C.R. cu privire la dezvoltarea economiei naționale în perioada 1966–1970” [The instructions of the Ninth Congress of the PCR regarding the development of the national economy, 1966–1970], in Congresul al IX-lea al Partidului Comunist Român 19–24 iulie 1965 [The Ninth Congress of the Romanian Communist Party, July 19–24, 1965] (Bucharest: Editura Politică, 1965), 757; and “Cuvântarea tovarășului Nicolae Constantin, delegat al Organizației regionale de partid Hunedoara” [Speech by comrade Nicolae Constantin, delegate of the Hunedoara regional party organization], in Congresul al IX-lea, 571. 14  “Directivele Congresului al IX-lea al P.C.R. cu privire la valorificarea surselor energetice și electrificarea țării în perioada 1966–1975” [The instructions of the Ninth Congress of the PCR regarding the use of energy resources and the electrification of the country for 1966–1975], in Congresul al IX-lea, 790–94. 15  Martin Chick, “Oil, National Security and Fuel Policy in France and the United Kingdom, 1945–1975,” in A Comparative History of National Oil Companies, ed. Alain Beltran (Brussels: Peter Lang, 2010), 182. 16  Initially the project was supposed to be a Soviet-Romanian collaboration. From 1977 it became a Romanian-Canadian effort, with conventional parts of the power plant ordered in 1981 from General Electric in the USA and ANSALDO in Italy. Veronica Andrei, Iosif Constantin Bilegan, Florin Glodeanu, and Constantin Racoveanu, De la atom la kilowat în Romania [From atom to kilowatt in Romania] (Galați: Editura Modelism, 2007), 70–74. 17  For the former, see Ignat Saphier, “Energetica Socialistă” [Socialist energy science], Revista Energetică 1, nos. 1–2 (1953): 4–6. In terms of international pressures, Romanian considerations of the use of coal are strikingly similar to those of the United States as late as 1970; see Michael Camp, “Carter’s Energy Insecurity: The Political Economy of Coal in the 1970s,” Journal of Policy History 26, no. 4 (2014): 459–78.

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 425

2020.05.12. 19:28:08

426

Anca Glont

State ownership of the coal mines similarly reflected certain global patterns. The Jiu coal companies were founded as international firms with international boards of directors—drawing from Austria, Hungary, France, and Germany—and remained foreign-owned even after partial Romanian nationalization in the 1920s.18 State ownership emerged after World War II, when Hungarian stock in the mines was part of the Hungarian war reparations to the Soviet Union in 1948. It would eventually form part of the joint Soviet-Romanian coal company Sovromcărbune, established in 1949 and replaced by the Romanian Jiu Valley Coal Combine in 1956.19 If state nationalization represents a caesura, the early years of transition have parallels with other economies that utilized heavy state subsidies and production control. Both France and the United Kingdom nationalized coal and coalburning electric plants after World War II. Mexico’s coal industry followed a corporatist model where the state had an important role in planning production and distribution. The postcolonial mining industries of Sub-Saharan Africa were similarly created with heavy state intervention, which lasted until the partial liberalization of the 1990s.20 This trend toward state ownership saw the state taking important practical and symbolic control over the relationship between mine workers and their administrators and supervisors. The case of Mexico provides an illuminating case study: while the state held the upper hand in dealing with both workers and companies,21 it also allowed for greater input from workers, adding “a wide variety of socioeconomic benefits, including governmentsubsidized housing, health care, basic commodities, and a legally mandated share of enterprise profits.”22 The role of the state in postwar coal production in Britain, France, Romania, and postcolonial Sub-Saharan Africa similarly meant state intervention in hiring practices, along with control over production and workplace policies. But the state also provided important symbolic 18

 Ludovic Vajda, “Capitalul străin în industria minieră și metalurgică a Transilvaniei (1867– 1900)” [Foreign capital in the mining and metal industry of Transylvania, 1867–1900], Acta Musei Napocensis 9 (1972): 232–33. 19  Direcția Județeană a Arhivelor Naționale Hunedoara (hereafter DJANH), Fond 81 Societatea “Petroșani” Direcția Generală, Consiliul de Administrație, Folder 3/1948, f. 1–3; Folder 10/1945, f. 8–14; Arhivele Naționale Istorice Centrale (hereafter ANIC), Fond 3109 C.C. al P.C.R. Cancelarie, vol. 2, Folder 6/1963, f. 360–62. 20  Janet Fishlock, “But the White Man Peeked: Impacts, Opportunities and Dilemmas within Social Development and Private Sector Cooperation in the International Mining Sector in Sub-Saharan Africa” (PhD diss., York University [Canada], 2010), 51–59. 21  Claudia Esqueda Llanes, “La reforma laboral” [Labor reform], in La reforma del estado para un nuevo proyecto nacional [State reform for a new national project], ed. José Olvera (Mexico City: Universitad National Autonoma de México, 2005), 193–98. 22  Kevin J. Middlebrook, The Paradox of Revolution: Labor, the State, and Authoritarianism in Mexico (Baltimore and London: John Hopkins University Press, 1995), 153.

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 426

2020.05.12. 19:28:08

Not Just Socialist Miners, but Miners of the World

427

and remunerative benefits for the workers, as in Mexico. These included expanded social security networks, various levels of input into production practices by workers, and state guarantees for base pay, subsidized housing, and so forth. State-socialist Romania is one experience in a broad continuum of how corporatist, authoritarian, and social democratic regimes sought to manage capitalism to various degrees, and thus provided a plethora of approaches to state intervention in mining development and worker control. Just as Romanian demand for coal and state policies toward the resource reflect global patterns, the impact of state socialism on the history of labor in the Jiu Valley coal mines similarly echoes broader global patterns. State intervention in Britain, France, Mexico, the socialist sphere, and postcolonial economies created common realities for these workers. The state administration of mines encouraged full employment, increasing both the number of workers in mines and addressing historic complaints about layoffs in the mines during industrial slumps.23 Similarly, better wages and benefits were offered to miners, particularly between 1950 and 1970, and better working conditions and safety regulations were instituted.24 In return, however, the workers generally lost control over their labor unions, which were increasingly aligned with state goals.25 Such changes are in contrast to the continuity of the experience within the mine shaft, as the working environment had considerable similarity to that of the prewar period. Miners from all over the world were confronted by continued mechanization, pressures to increase production, long shifts, and work in subterranean galleries with their attendant risks: occupational sicknesses, coal fires, and gallery collapse.26 Such global similarities in miners’ occupational hazards and general industry trends meant that workers’ responses to reduced occupational  David Coates, The Crisis of Labor (Oxford: Philip Allan, 1989), 10; Darryl Holter, “Politique charbonnière et guerre froide, 1945–1950,” Le Mouvement social, 130 ( Jan–Mar 1985): 33. 24  George Benedict Baldwin, Beyond Nationalization: The Labor Problems of British Coal (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1955), 26–27; John Braithwaite, To Punish or Persuade: Enforcement of Coal Mine Safety (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1985), 11; Richard L. Gordon, World Coal: Economics, Policies and Prospects (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 2. 25  Keith Barlow, The Labour Movement in Britain from Thatcher to Blair, 2nd ed. (Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 2008), 18; Richard F. Kuisel, Capitalism and the State in Modern France: Renovation and Economic Management in the Twentieth Century, 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), 211; Michael Snodgrass, Deference and Defiance in Monterrey: Workers, Paternalism, and Revolution in Mexico, 1890–1950 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 301. 26  James R. Armstrong, et al, “Mining and Quarrying,” in Encyclopedia of Occupational Health and Safety, ed. Jeanne Mager Stellman (Geneva: International Labour Organization, 2011). 23

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 427

2020.05.12. 19:28:08

428

Anca Glont

safety and security transcended the divide between state socialism, statedirected capitalism, and the free market. The aftermath of the 1973–1974 energy crisis saw several governments and coal companies attempting to shift costs to the coal miners, resulting in a series of protracted strikes. Romania, the United Kingdom, and the United States all experienced wideranging coal strikes, whose impetus largely came from the rank and file. Miners forced to bear the costs of stagflation, economic slowdown, or cost cutting by coal producers shared the tendency to go on strike, whether supported by their union leadership or not. While nationalization of coal industries decreased miner control of the union, and state socialism effectively absorbed labor unions into the state apparatus, this did not eliminate wildcat strikes and sometimes violent pressure from the rank and file. In the case of Jiu, the strike of 1977 was organized without union backing, and forced the PCR (Partidul Comunist Român, Romanian Communist Party) to the negotiating table following beatings of local party officials. The strike was triggered by changing pension plans, unpaid labor, and the dearth of consumer goods available in the Jiu Valley.27 The general strike engulfed all the mines, and could only be resolved by President Nicolae Ceaușescu’s personal intervention in the negotiations, as well as by guarantees of better pay and extensive improvement in Jiu Valley provisioning.28 The strike in the Jiu Valley bears striking resemblance to the British strike of 1974 and the United States coal miners’ strike in 1977–78. All three were the result of rank and file discontent with the way macroeconomic policies were applied to the coal mining industry, and all managed to force both the state and coal companies to the negotiating table by threatening the energy supply.29 Such strikes suggest at least some common elements of worker agency across ideological divides. Direct state intervention in the mines is characteristic of the Romanian socialist government, but it also reflects a  continuation of how local, regional, national, and international politics consistently and directly shaped Jiu coal exploitation. The socialist state and the miners interpreted the politics and economics of coal extraction as nested in international markets, as markers of national revival and independence, and as proof of progress. In this light, seeing the Jiu Valley as a laboratory for modern society reveals  Mihai Barbu, După 20 de ani sau Lupeni ‘77–Lupeni ‘97 [After twenty years, or Lupeni 1977–Lupeni 1997] (Petroșani: Editura Cameleonul, 1997), 20–22. 28  DJANH, Fond 40 Comisariatul de Poliție Lupeni, Folder 320/1977, f. 8–9. 29  Andrew John Richards, Miners on Strike: Class Solidarity and Division in Britain (Oxford: Berg, 1996), 72–87; Paul J. Nyden, “Rank-and-File Movements in the United Mine Workers of America,” in Rebel Rank and File: Labor Militancy and Revolt from Below During the Long 1970s, ed. Aaron Brenner, Robert Brenner, and Carl Winslow (New York: Verso, 2010), 173–97. 27

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 428

2020.05.12. 19:28:08

Not Just Socialist Miners, but Miners of the World

429

a  broad continuity between the Habsburg, royal Romanian and state-socialist regimes: all pursued modernity based on the desire to develop and “catch up” with the best of the world. Similarly, the drive to increase coal production and thereby electricity output was not simply a Romanian phenomenon, and it was not imagined in terms of autarky. While the socialist regime embraced the goal of producing sufficient energy to cover the needs of national industry and consumers, this was part of an effort to fit Romania into the larger category of globally successful developed states.

The Transfer of Knowledge and Technology The creation of the coal industry in the Jiu Valley was envisioned as a transnational transmission of knowledge, an attempt to create a modern Habsburg industrial project in the hinterland of Transylvania by importing cutting-edge machinery and engineers familiar with external practices. Such imports would organize and define the miners’ life and productive work. The transition to state socialism between 1944 and 1949 did not isolate the Jiu miners from larger global trends in the transmission of knowledge and technology, but rather shifted the connection and nodes, including the rise of the Jiu Valley as a distribution point for other developing economies. The Habsburgs identified the Jiu towns as industrial “colonies,” and accordingly imported both skilled and unskilled labor to run the mines. From the outset, the Jiu coal industry imported educated engineers and technicians from other parts of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The connections in the nineteenth century were made through individual personal and professional networks: for instance, most engineers were graduates of technical schools in Vienna or Miskolc, subscribed to German and Hungarian technical journals, and published their own work there. This continued into the interwar period (though now the general director was a graduate of the École des Mines in Paris) and many of the technical personnel stayed after the war.30 When the mines were reorganized between 1925 and 1939, local engineers conducted feasibility studies through twenty-seven research visits to mines in Germany, Hungary, France, Czechoslovakia, Poland, England, Belgium, Holland, and Yugoslavia.31 During the joint Soviet-Romanian operation of the mines, the existing heads of the technical and administrative apparatus were replaced by Soviet engineers, who drew on their experience with the coal mines of the Donets  Baron, Cărbune și societate, 156.  DJANH, Fond 252 Societatea “Petroșani” D.M., Serviciul Tehnic, Folder 96/1938, f. 17–20.

30 31

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 429

2020.05.12. 19:28:08

430

Anca Glont

Basin to upgrade the production process in Jiu and establish new production plans.32 By the 1950s, this was expanded to include exchange programs for Romanian mine workers in the Donets mines, and Romanian engineering students were afforded the opportunity to study at various technical universities in the Soviet Union.33 However, the program of educational exchanges for the miners quickly faded (in large part due to language difficulties for the workers) and focus shifted onto cooperation projects between the Petroșani Mining Institute and various Soviet universities. 34 Instead, the Romanian state adapted Soviet models of mass education for the valley, beginning with comprehensive efforts at Romanian-language education for the working class. The Miners’ University was opened, literacy drives began among the women, and cadre schools for party members were founded in each city, all extensively advertised in the local newspapers. The state’s efforts aimed to produce a well-rounded worker, whose knowledge would also translate into increased productivity. In time, the Petroșani Mining Institute would take on the function of educating foreign mining engineers, disseminating knowledge to students from developing countries in South-East Asia, Africa, and South America starting in 1968.35 Ultimately, engineers from twenty different countries received four-year academic degrees along with practical experience in Romanian mining consortia around the country, culminating in advanced experience working in the Jiu Valley mines. In domestic and international media, the PCR presented the education of foreign students as part of a larger effort to end an old world order “based on inequality and the exploitation of certain peoples” and to assure the faster progress of developing countries towards an equitable and equal world order.36 Faculty at the institute similarly referenced the goal of fostering economic devel Florian Banu, Asalt asupra economiei României: de la Solagra la SOVROM, 1936–1956 [Assault on the Romanian economy: From Solagra to SOVROM, 1936–1956] (Bucharest: Nemira, 2004), 159. 33  DJANH, Fond 672 Comitetul Regional Partidul Muncitoresc Român, Hunedoara, Folder 364/1950, f. 17–18. Partidul Muncitoresc Român (hereafter, P.M.R.) was the official name of the Romanian Communist Party until 1965. 34  Ilie Constantinescu, “Dezvoltarea învățământului superior minier” [The development of higher education in mining], Steagul Roşu 25, no. 5920 (November 7, 1968): 1–3. 35  The students were from Vietnam, Kenya, Ghana, Sudan, Republic of Zambia, Congo, Central African Republic, Tanzania, Upper Volta, Liberia, the Dominican Republic, Cuba, and Libya. Universitatea din Petroșani, Facultatea de Mine, Registru Matricol [Petroșani University, Mining College, enrollment records], vol. 17, nos. 2301–2545; vol. 19, nos. 2546–2640; vol. 21, nos. 2739–2838. 36  Nicolae Ceaușescu, “Întîlnire cu reprezentanții presei la Accra” [Meeting press representatives in Accra], in România pe drumul construirii societății socialiste multilateral dezvoltate, vol. 14 (Bucharest: Editura Politică, 1977), 13. 32

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 430

2020.05.12. 19:28:08

Not Just Socialist Miners, but Miners of the World

431

opment abroad through technological education in the Jiu Valley when celebrating the achievements of the institute’s first twenty-five years. Such education would provide aspiring mining engineers, both from Romania and abroad, with a  strong understanding of the priorities of developing economies. This reflected a conviction that development, both in Second World Romania and Third World countries, would benefit from collaboration in creating an alternative to an unjust international economic system.37 While the Petroșani Mining Institute would draw fewer foreign students after 1980 (reflecting a broader trend in the 1980s of declining numbers of foreign students in Romania), it was an important shift in the way the Jiu Valley was represented: no longer merely the beneficiary of advanced mining research conducted elsewhere, but now contributing to the transfer of knowledge abroad.38 Similarly, members of the mining institute were part of a Romanian delegation to China in 1982 to help with the design of the Bailong coal mine.39 Technological transfer to and from Jiu paralleled the transmission of knowledge. Prior to World War I, the companies’ business plans emphasized imports of mechanized mining equipment, power plant equipment from Austria and Germany, as well as machine tools for the on-site maintenance workshops.40 The town plans, too, were imported models, as company towns designed for the Hungarian basin were adapted for the sparsely populated Carpathian valley. The same networks continued through the interwar period, as new technology for the mines and power plant expansions was either purchased directly from Austria, or Swiss-manufactured technology was imported through Budapest companies.41 The advent of communism shifted the geographical emphasis of both the technology and knowledge transfer networks in the Jiu Valley. Heavy mining machinery was imported from the Soviet Union, including excava37

 Bogdan Bujor, “25 de ani de la înființarea Insitutului de Mine Petroșani” [25 Years since the founding of the Petroșani Mining Institute], Steagul Roşu 30, no. 7472 (November 11, 1973): 1–3. 38  “Înțelegere de colaborare între Ministerul Învățământului al Republicii Socialiste Romania și Ministerul Învățământului Superior și Mediu de Specialitate in R. D. Vietnam” [Collaboration agreement between the Ministry of Education of the Romanian Socialist Republic and the Ministry of Higher and Medium Specialist Education of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam], October 12, 1956. 39  People’s Republic of China Ministry of Coal Industry, ed., China Coal Industry Yearbook 1983 (Hong Kong: Economic Information & Agency, 1984), 221. 40  János Andreics and Aladár Blaschek, “A salgótarjáni kőszénbánya részvény-társulat zsilvölgyi bányái” [The Jiu Valley mines of the Salgótarján Coal Mines Stock Company], Bányászati és Kohászati Lapok 36, no. 15, vol. 2 (Aug. 1903): 160–77. 41  DJANH, Fond 80 Inspectoratul Geologic și Minier Deva. Secția Petroșani, Folder 104/1929, f. 2–3; Folder 58/1932, passim.

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 431

2020.05.12. 19:28:08

432

Anca Glont

tors, loading machines, electric locomotives, and swing carts to mechanize the transportation of coal within the mines (replacing carts pulled by humans or horses).42 Light machinery was imported from Poland, later supplemented in the 1970s by an influx of Western equipment. The reorganization of the mines in the 1950s was based on the Soviet model from Donets, imported without feasibility studies on the local conditions. The transfusion of equipment aimed to bring the Jiu Valley mines similar ratios between auxiliary personnel and directly productive personnel as in the Soviet mines.43 As in the Habsburg period, the influx of technology reached beyond the mining equipment to include production practices and public policy. Towns would be reorganized and extensively redeveloped during the socialist era, now using Soviet plans.44 Notably, over 10,000 apartments were built between 1945 and 1965, and represented improvements over the existing workers’ housing both in terms of size and the availability of running water.45 Similarly, Soviet plans were used to create a sewage system and to resurface, expand, and reorganize the town’s roads. The state drew on Soviet innovations in urban planning to support the dramatic increase in the valley’s labor force: between 1941 and 1989, the population of the Jiu Valley grew from 58,088 people to over 150,000.46 The Soviet model employed between 1945 and 1956 focused on aggressive mechanization of existing mines, opening new mine heads, and skimping on support and preparation work in favor of immediate coal production. Stakhanovism, honor shifts, and prizes for mining teams who surpassed planned output were introduced.47 The Jiu daily newspaper Zori Noi (New Dawn) in particular featured exposés on shock worker teams led by “miners who are also members of the PCR” that competed in their effort

42

 ANIC, Fond 3109 C.C. al P.C.R. - Cancelarie, vol. 2, Folder 7/1963, f. 17.  DJANH, Fond 81 Societatea “Petroșani” Direcția Generală, Consiliul de Administrație, Folder 1/1951, f. 43–45. 44  DJANH, Fond 81 Societatea “Petroșani” Direcția Generală, Consiliul de Administrație, Folder 100/1952, passim. See also near-monthly articles on the new buildings in Steagul Roşu, the local newspaper: for instance, Ion Margineanu, “Sistematizarea centrului orașului Petroșani: Interviu cu arhitect Violeta Morariu” [The rationalization of the Petroșani city center: Interview with architect Violeta Morariu], Steagul Roşu 27, no. 6318 (February 20, 1970), 1. 45  “Cuvântarea tovarășului Nicolae Constantin,” 570. 46  Recensământul general al Romaniei din 6 aprilie 1941, date sumare, provizorii [The general census of Romania of April 6, 1941: Summary data, provisional] (Bucharest: Institutul Central de Statistică, 1944), xviii; and Recensământul populației și al locuințelor 2002 [Census of population and housing 2002] (Bucharest: Institutul Național de Statistică, 2002). 47  DJANH, Fond 81 Societatea “Petroșani” Direcția Generală, Consiliul de Administrație, Folder 1/1951, f. 2–21. 43

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 432

2020.05.12. 19:28:08

Not Just Socialist Miners, but Miners of the World

433

to surpass the company production plan.48 Furthermore, during this period “teams of volunteers”—women, intellectuals, workers—would also go into the mine to do the work of unqualified miners (namely, loading coal into the wagons). There were “volunteer” only Sundays, when the miners could remain home and only volunteers, who were not miners by profession, went into the mines.49 Mechanization modeled on the Soviet system was part of an effort to modernize the miners’ labor, with some initial success. Although interviews with miners regarding this period suggest that they did not buy into the enthusiasm of the postwar reconstruction,50 complaints from the mining administration that it was almost impossible to compute salaries due to overtime, increased production, and additional shifts suggest that at the time the miners did indeed participate in the production drive.51 However, the reorganization of the mines led to problems: more miners were assigned to direct production, rather than to the preparation of new shafts or the maintenance of existing ones; miners had insufficient knowledge to use the new Soviet equipment; and the equipment itself was sometimes unsuited for the conditions in the Jiu Valley.52 Despite these problems, after 1956 the Romanian state would continue to focus on increasing labor productivity (and production) by relying on imported machinery from the Eastern Bloc and, after the 1970s, from the West.53 Though the mining administration directed the flow of imported technology, the miners did not remain silent regarding how their workplace was  See, for instance, “Echipa de Șoc” [The shock team], Zori Noi 4, no. 386 (Dec. 28, 1948), 3. As late as 1977, the local newspaper still ran periodic discussions of the “forerunners in the socialist competition.” See, for instance, “Fapte de vrednicie în întrecerea socialistă” [Industrious acts within socialist competition], Steagul Roşu, July 28, 1977, 1. 49  “Mâine lucrăm numai noi, voluntarii” [Tomorrow only we, the volunteers, work], Zori Noi, November 30, 1947, 3. The practice of non-specialist volunteer labor was soon discontinued, due to the rise in accidents. 50  Alin Rus, Mineriadele: Între manipulare politică și solidaritate muncitorească [The Mineriads: Between political manipulation and workers’ solidarity] (Bucharest: Editura Curtea Veche, 2008), 531. 51  DJANH, Fond 255 Societatea “Petroșani” Confidențiale, Folder 22/1948, f. 69. 52  DJANH, Fond 672 Comitetul Regional P.M.R. Hunedoara, Folder 104/1951, f. 14–15. 53  See, for instance, plans to increase productivity between 1959 and 1962 and their connection to machinery imports between 1959 and 1961: DJANH, Fond 672 Comitetul Regional PCR Hunedoara, Folder 78/1963, f. 49; and Folder 78/1963, f. 53–55. Both heavy machinery and miners’ personal equipment continued to be imported as part of the efforts to increase production during the 1960s. See “Dezbaterea sarcinilor de plan” [Debating planned goals] and “Utilaje pentru exploatările miniere” [Machinery for mining], Steagul Roşu 24, no. 5355 ( Jan. 10, 1967), 1. This continues through the 1970s, as demonstrated by articles in the regional newspaper as well as reports from the party regional committee. 48

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 433

2020.05.12. 19:28:08

434

Anca Glont

shaped. Miner brigades complained about unsuitable machinery by sending notes to party officials.54 When such appeals were ignored, miners who were unconvinced of the new machines’ utility would malinger in using them, drawing out training or simply working around the machinery, leaving it unused.55 When the party sought to address these issues with professional improvement courses, roughly half of the miners chose to treat the training sessions as a holiday; graduation rates were about 50 percent.56 Such sustained opposition to the early model Donbas coal excavators in the 1950s did fade, and by the mid-1960s the miners appeared far more willing to implement mechanization.57 This acceptance came as the pay system substantially increased rewards for improved production—and miners were willing to accept mechanization on their own terms and for their own benefit. The state’s twin efforts to import both technology and knowledge are notably highlighted by the opening of the computer center in Jiu in 1976. The center, built around an imported French mainframe, Austrian cooling system, and American hard drives, was created to support the expansion of production in the Jiu Valley.58 The diversity of hardware was reflected in the Romanian computer engineering programs, which established technical and educational links within the socialist bloc and also with British, French, and American institutions. The new center immediately provided the opportunity for programming and hardware classes were quickly added to the local mathematical high school, with a view toward preparing both operators and additional personnel.59 The image of the valley as always willing to incorporate and improve upon the latest advances in technology and education was not only a trope in the local press, but also ever-present in discussions about the Mining Institute and its research. The modernization and operation of the Jiu Valley coal mines was intended to fit national central plans for Romania’s economic development. But to do this, both the mining administration and the miners themselves recognized the importance of the influx of technology and knowledge— and, in turn, would create and participate in programs that would allow the coal industry to pass on these benefits to developing nations. If the rate and 54

 DJANH, Fond 672 Comitetul Regional P.M.R. Hunedoara, Folder 104/1951, f. 14–15.  DJANH, Fond 672 Comitetul Regional P.M.R. Hunedoara, Folder 76/1960, f. 181. 56  DJANH, Fond 672 Comitetul Regional P.M.R. Hunedoara, Folder 104/1951, f. 47. 57  DJANH, Fond 672 Comitetul Regional P.M.R. Hunedoara, Folder 78/1963, f. 50. 58  Florentin Glonț, “Centrul de Calcul Petroșani,” personal interview, December 10, 2014. Florentin Glonț was one of the systems engineers assigned to the new computers from their installation in 1977 until after the fall of communism. 59  Maria Predoșanu, “Primii pași, primele succese în descifrarea limbajelor de calcul” [First steps, first successes in untangling computer languages], Steagul Roşu 33, no. 7822 (Oct. 26, 1977): 3. 55

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 434

2020.05.12. 19:28:08

Not Just Socialist Miners, but Miners of the World

435

nature of this influx was directed by the mining administration, the miners’ ability to resist and frustrate the implementation of mechanization highlights their own agency in the process. The decision to actually use the new machines in the mines was not only up to the party planners, or even the mining engineers; instead, the miner brigades themselves chose whether to obstruct or implement modernization plans. The same can be seen in how the miners chose to embrace or spurn the socialist state’s efforts to foster international solidarity.

Forging Internationalism From its beginnings, labor organizers in the Jiu Valley intentionally cast the politics of labor and protest within a larger perceived economic system. Capital, state policies, and the demand for coal on world markets variously constrained and empowered workers in the coal industry. The miners accordingly forged transnational links between 1875 and 1945, attending international labor congresses and attempting to network with miners’ unions outside Transylvania.60 The postwar Soviet-Romanian administration of the mines changed these networks, but did not abolish them. Most of the existing personnel remained, and their vision of the industry and its global context survived the transition to new networks as Romania aligned towards the Soviet bloc. Where before both workers and management argued that work should be structured according to models from the Ruhr Basin and Poland, now the organization of labor drew on Soviet practice and rhetoric. The state assumption of control over trade unions removed one of the traditional vehicles by which the miners had framed a sense of internationalism, but this did not mean the state was now able to unequivocally define this internationalism, as workers’ reactions to newspapers and state-sponsored events show. In a  sense, the Jiu miners were connected to outside labor networks from the outset, given that the founding of the coal towns led to the in-migration of workers from Habsburg Trento, Bohemia, Galicia, Austria, and

60

 As early as 1893, delegates from the Jiu Valley mines sought to participate in the International Socialist Congress in Zurich. See “A nemzetközi szoczialista-kongresszus” [The international socialist congress], Népszava 21, no. 31 (Aug. 4, 1893): 1. In 1920 the miners, together with the other Transylvanian unions, decided not to join the Third International, but rather the Romanian Socialist Party, and eventually the International Federation of Trade Unions. “Congresul partidului socialist și a sindicatelor din Ardeal și Banat” [The congress of the Socialist Party and the unions in Transylvania and Banat], Minerul 2, no. 19 (Sept. 24, 1920): 3.

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 435

2020.05.12. 19:28:08

436

Anca Glont

northern Hungary. By the 1890s, strong connections had been forged between the valley’s miners (of various ethnicities) and the Social Democratic Party in Budapest, which played a leading role in organizing labor in the valley through its weekly newspaper, Népszava (The People’s Voice), connecting local workers’ struggles to larger world events.61 Interwar newspapers continued these trends, with both the interwar trade union monthly and the weekly local workers’ newspaper reporting world trends in capitalism, the fluctuation of German miners’ wages, and strikes throughout Europe.62 Reporting in the local newspapers additionally embraced a wide variety of international topics, from trade fairs to industrial news.63 These kinds of articles were particularly common during periods of collective contract negotiations: the expectation was that miners wished to know how their demands, as well as their mines’ production, compared with those abroad.64 From this perspective, the internationalism of the socialist daily newspaper in the Jiu Valley after 1949 clearly continued local and trade union traditions in reporting. The daily local socialist newspaper bore the title Zori Noi (New Dawn) for its first two years (1947–1948), and Steagul Roşu (The Red Flag) from 1948 to 1989.65 For all its years in print, the last page of each issue was dedicated to international news. Steagul Roşu’s editorial offices consistently had a reporter monitoring the wire service, following the Romanian news agency Agerpres for international news.66 However, the most important aspect of the newspapers’ international reporting was its continuity with interwar trends: articles about the mining and energy industries appeared every couple of issues, generally also featuring news about miners in the world, mining collapses, new technology, and so forth. Furthermore, while news about strikes in the United States and Canada fit well within the expected socialist dogma, there was also reporting of technological advances

61

 Margareta Toth-Gaspar, “Condițiile de muncă și de viață ale minerilor din Valea Jiului și luptele lor greviste până la sfîrșitul sec. XIX” [The working and living conditions of the Jiu Valley miners and their strikes and struggles until the end of the nineteenth century], Acta Musei Napocensis 1, no. 1 (1964): 276. 62  For instance, “Conferința Internaționalei Muncitorilor Mineri” [The Conference of the Mine Workers’ International], Minerul 9, no. 3 (Mar. 31, 1927): 2; or “Mi az a TÜKÖR?” [What is a Mirror?], Zsilvölgyi Napló 11, no. 2 ( Jan. 13, 1934): 3. 63  For instance, “Nemzetközi árumintavásárok” [International fairs], Zsilvölgyi Napló 5, nos. 7–8 (Feb. 19–28, 1928): 3. 64  See, for example, the comparison between twelve European countries and Romanian coal production and miner salaries in “Producția minieră a României” [Romanian mines’ production], Minerul 5, no. 3 (March 3, 1923): 4. 65  Steagul Roşu shifted to a weekly in 1975. 66  Mihai Barbu, “Steagul Roşu,” personal interview, December 11, 2014.

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 436

2020.05.12. 19:28:08

Not Just Socialist Miners, but Miners of the World

437

achieved in both the Eastern Bloc and the West.67 While the articles correspond roughly to state socialism’s ideological commitment to a global perspective, they are also clearly responding to local interests. The depth of this local interest can be seen in internal reports of the county propaganda office commenting on Steagul Roşu’s performance. Reporters were criticized for failing to draw public interest in international news, with the singular exception of mining news from around the world.68 Similarly, internal reports by newspaper correspondents in Jiu suggest that miners were notably more interested in assisting with interviews and stories when they were aware that the stories would reach an international audience.69 The miners’ engagement with these kinds of stories suggests that they were choosy recipients of the internationalism presented by the statesocialist newspapers. When they found issues unconvincing, or outside their sphere of interest, they simply did not engage with them—as the newspaper staff suggests they had little interest in stories about the “struggle for peace” and the condemnation of Western imperialism. Jiu miners were interested in the supranational context of their industry and in other miners around the world, rather than the political context of the Cold War outside of the race for technological innovation. The global vision of the miners focused on solidarity—articles about workers’ strikes from Agerpres were considered successful in internal newspaper reports—and the place for their industry on a global scale of progress. This represents a continuation of the themes from local newspapers of the interwar era, which reported more on innovations in the coal industry, and rather less on the grand political events in either the national or foreign capitals. The miners similarly engaged efforts by the county propaganda office to stage local demonstrations of international solidarity. Here, too, there was an existing tradition. Jiu miners sought to participate in international labor congresses, notably celebrating the First of May in 1890 and instituting May Day as an annual holiday of labor.70 Given the holiday’s shifting legal status under both Habsburg Hungarian and royal Romanian rule, miners variously celebrated by marching with red banners and the miners’ band or,

67

 See, for instance, “Hidromonitoare pentru extragerea cărbunelui” [Water monitors for coal extraction], Steagul Roşu 12, no. 3428 (Oct. 21, 1960), 2; “Prima uzină nucleară plutitoare” [The first floating nuclear plant], Steagul Roşu 19, no. 5372 ( Jan. 29, 1967), 4. 68  DJANH, Fond 672 Comitetul Regional P.M.R. Hunedoara, Folder 218/1951, f. 163–72. 69  DJANH, Fond 672 Comitetul Regional P.M.R. Hunedoara, Folder 2371/1957, f. 13. 70  See Augustin Deac, Mișcarea muncitorească din Transilvania, 1890–1895 [The Transylvanian workers’ movement, 1890–1895] (Bucharest: Editura Științifică și Pedagogică, 1962), 79–93; also Toth-Gaspar, “Condițiile de muncă și de viață,” 276.

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 437

2020.05.12. 19:28:08

438

Anca Glont

when necessary, flocking to the nearby mountains to celebrate with family picnics. The miners clearly saw their actions as expressions of international solidarity with miners and workers across Europe and the world.71 Socialist officials inheriting this tradition hoped to make it more encompassing by staging further rallies against war, aggression, and imperialism, and celebrating the inevitable economic victory of socialism over capitalism. For example, the party organized a grand program to bring party officials and activists to Jiu to organize individual and group discussions, as well as local and county conferences, all in preparation for the Vienna Congress of the Peoples for Peace in December 1952.72 Success, however, was limited, as discussions regarding the drive’s effectiveness criticize the relevant committees for “vegetating, perpetrating errors . . . and falling into the hands of enemy elements.”73 More successful was a petition drive against the most recent arrest of the Greek communist hero Manolis Glezos in 1959, but worker enthusiasm was still limited. Only two of the fifteen mines participated in the protest, and Jiu miners signed no protest telegrams.74 The propaganda bureau’s drive for telegram protests against the United States’ aggression in Cuba in 1962 showed moderate success in the rest of the county but was completely ignored in the Jiu Valley mines.75 Geopolitical rallies and protests generally achieved little attention in Jiu unless they appealed directly to the miners’ own internationalist framework: the larger picture of organized labor. Unlike other drives, an appeal to collect household items for the Korean people saw 173 volunteer brigades canvass the valley and organize fundraisers.76 The miners contributed little at the workplace (as they would have had to bring objects to donate), but the fundraisers organized by the miners’ wives collected material valued at approximately 70,000 lei (more than US $450 at the time).77 The miners further donated an impressive number of gently used winter clothes.78 71

 Mircea Baron, “De când o zi a  minerului?” [Since when is there a Miners’ Day?], in ­Lucrările științifice ale simpozionului internațional multidisciplinar “Universitaria Simpro” 2008: 60 de ani de învățământ superior la Petroșani 1948–2008 [Conference proceedings of the Interdisciplinary International Symposium “Universitaria Simpro” 2008: ­Sixty years of higher education in Petroșani, 1948–2008] (Petroșani: Editura Universitas, 2008), 14–16. 72  DJANH, Fond 672 Comitetul Regional P.M.R. Hunedoara, Folder 603/1952, f. 36–40, 54. 73  DJANH, Fond 672 Comitetul Regional P.M.R. Hunedoara, Folder 603/1952, f. 57. 74  DJANH, Fond 672 Comitetul Regional P.M.R. Hunedoara, Folder 68/1959, f. 58. 75  DJANH, Fond 672 Comitetul Regional P.M.R. Hunedoara, Folder 52/1961. 76  DJANH, Fond 672 Comitetul Regional P.M.R. Hunedoara, Folder 104/1951, f. 13. 77  DJANH, Fond 672 Comitetul Regional P.M.R. Hunedoara, Folder 104/1951, f. 28. US $450 in 1951 would be roughly $4,200 in 2015, adjusting for inflation. 78  DJANH, Fond 672 Comitetul Regional P.M.R. Hunedoara, Folder 104/1951, f. 36.

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 438

2020.05.12. 19:28:08

Not Just Socialist Miners, but Miners of the World

439

This campaign’s relative success can be partially connected to the surviving interwar tradition of fundraising for union benefits. Miners had previously gathered funds to help feed and clothe miners or metalworkers on strike, and they were more likely to demonstrate solidarity with workers. Asking the miners to help Korean workers, rather than the Korean people in the abstract, proved more successful. The two campaigns that managed to attract miner support—to the point of surviving after 1989—were creating the Day of the Miner, and inaugurating the Jiu Valley International Women’s Day celebrations.79 These campaigns achieved immediate local success, both in terms of miner participation in PCR-organized fetes, and as they began to be celebrated independently at grassroots level.80 The socialist Romanian state actively sought to monopolize the representation of internationalism in local media and pageantry, and it was largely successful at this. However, as both the miners’ reception of the local newspapers and their reception of local drives demonstrates, the state was less able to control how internationalism was received. The miners of Jiu had a strong existing tradition of defining themselves as part of a global context related deeply to the coal industry, and in a larger sense to industrial workers. This trend continued throughout the socialist period.

Jiu and Romanian State Socialism’s Permeable Boundaries Between 1944 and 1989, the Jiu Valley coal mines were a node in a larger global network of exchange. Although state socialism ended some historic connections and shifted others to closer alignment with the Soviet bloc, it did not cut the valley off from connections with the wider world; rather, it transformed them. Similarly, it modified—but did not sever—existing traditions of trade, knowledge transmission, and workers’ perceptions of internationalism. Important continuities remained during the transition to state socialism. In a similar fashion, Romania’s transition to a free market economy and pluralistic politics did not immediately or fully eliminate traditions that had emerged or evolved in the state socialist era.81 In other words, the beginning and end of the socialist period in Romania did not represent caesuras but important markers within larger trends. 79

 Baron, “De când o zi a minerului?,” 14–21. Although International Women’s Day might be construed as an abstract, in practice it was a tangible celebration of the miners’ wives, daughters, mothers, and other female relatives and friends. 80  DJANH, Fond 672 Comitetul Regional P.M.R. Hunedoara, Folder 2371/1957, f. 1. 81  Maria Grecu, “‘On est resté l’écume du métier’: Le groupe des mineurs de la Vallée du Jiu (Roumanie) disloqué par les restructurations, 1997–2013” [“We remained the foam

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 439

2020.05.12. 19:28:08

440

Anca Glont

Any analysis of Romanian labor conditions in the early twenty-first century must rest on an understanding of the socialist past and the global contexts in which socialism rose and fell. But such an understanding has sometimes been obscured by studies that focus instead on larger processes of globalization irrespective of local and regional histories, or by studies that focus on the national and fail to consider larger trends and processes.82 Such studies have contributed to our understanding of Romania in transition, but they have not fully illuminated the ways in which transition incorporates not only the adaptation to new market realities, but also lingering aspects of the socialist (and pre-socialist) era. A larger synthesis that would bring Jiu (and Romania, and indeed Eastern Europe more widely) into the new global labor history is still lacking, and still needed. Placing the Jiu Valley and its labor history into its global context not only aids in understanding what shaped this region, it also serves as a lens to complicate the image of Romanian state socialism. The reach of transnational networks to Jiu, a medium-sized provincial industrial center, highlights the depth to which a larger Romanian economy, not just the capital of Bucharest, was interconnected with a larger world. While Romanian internationalism may be equated to a top-down Stalinist import imposed on the people—and this does certainly characterize aspects of state efforts83—there was also a local tradition in Jiu that managed to survive and function alongside the official language. The Jiu miners’ understanding of the larger world was not bounded by the official visits conducted by Gheorghe GheorghiuDej and Ceaușescu to foreign countries. The history of labor under state socialism suggests ways in which socialism’s border was not an Iron Curtain, but rather a  permeable network that drew from and fed into global networks. Understanding the relationship of labor to that shifting boundary is not just a fruitful contribution to the new global labor history, but integral to its concepts.

of the trade”: The impact of restructuring on Jiu Valley miners, 1997–2013], Travail et emploi 31, no. 137 ( Jan.–Mar. 2014), 123–38; Rus, Mineriadele, 532–40. 82  David Kideckel’s excellent study of Jiu in the post-socialist period is more concerned with the impact of capitalism, neoliberalism, and market economics after 1989 than with continuities in working class culture. See David A. Kideckel, Getting By in Postsocialist Romania: Labor, the Body, and Working Class Culture (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2008). For an example of a more nationally-focused study, see John Gledhill, “States of Contention: State-Led Political Violence in Post-Socialist Romania,” East European Politics and Societies 19, no. 1 (2005): 76–104. Both studies are useful in understanding the post-socialist period; my suggestion is less a critique and more a complementary approach. 83  Umut Korkut, “Nationalism versus Internationalism: The Roles of Political and Cultural Elites in Interwar and Communist Romania,” Nationalities Papers: The Journal of Nationalism and Ethnicity 34, no. 2 (2006): 142.

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 440

2020.05.12. 19:28:08

List of Contributors

Alena Alamgir holds a PhD in Sociology from Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey. Her dissertation won the 2015 Theda Skocpol Dissertation Prize awarded annually by the American Sociological Association’s Section on Historical and Comparative Sociology, as well as Rutgers University’s Sociology Department’s 2014 Anne Foner Prize. Her articles on various aspects of the Vietnamese-Czechoslovak labor exchange program have appeared in Slavic Review, Race & Class, the Journal of Vietnamese Studies, and the volume Work out of Place edited by Mahua Sarkar. She edited a special issue of the journal Labor History 59, no. 3 (2018) on labor and labor migration in state socialism. She is the Director of Technical Communication at the School of Materials Science and Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology, in Atlanta, GA. Rory Archer is a  postdoctoral researcher at the history department of the University of Konstanz. He also works at the Centre for Southeast European Studies, University of Graz, where he leads the Austrian Science Fund (FWF) financed project “To the Northwest! Intra-Yugoslav Albanian migration.” As a social historian who works on the twentieth-century Balkans, he is interested in labor, gender, (post)socialism, and the ways in which macro level events and processes are experienced, understood, and negotiated in micro, everyday contexts. Recent publications include Social Inequalities and Discontent in Yugoslav Socialism (coedited with Igor Duda and Paul Stubbs; Abingdon: Routledge, 2016). Eszter Bartha (Dr. habil) is Associate Professor at the Department of East European Studies, Eötvös Loránd University (ELTE), Budapest, Hungary. Her main research field is the postwar social history of Eastern Europe, with an emphasis on labor history. She has published extensively on the state socialist era and the working class, including her book Alienating Labour: Workers on the Road from Socialism to Capitalism in East Germany

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 441

2020.05.12. 19:28:09

442

List of Contributors

and Hungary (New York and Oxford: Berghahn, 2013). In 2007–2008 she was a Max Weber Fellow at the European University Institute. She also held various visiting fellowships, including an Endeavour Fellowship Program at the University of Chicago (2010–11), a scholarship to Sorbonne (2015, “Research in Paris”), and a scholarship of the International Visegrad Fund (2014, University of Pavol Jozef Šafarik, Košice). In 2016–17 she was a visiting professor at the Central European University. In 2018–19 she was a fellow at re:work: “Work and Human Lifecycle in Global History” at Humboldt University, Berlin. Ulf Brunnbauer has a PhD in history from the University of Graz, Austria. He holds the Chair for the History of Southeastern and Eastern Europe at the University of Regensburg and is director of the Leibniz Institute for East and Southeast European Studies, also in Regensburg. He acts as one of the two coordinators of the Graduate School for East and Southeast European Studies, which is a doctoral school organized jointly by the University of Regensburg and the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich. His research deals mainly with the social history of Southeastern Europe in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, especially the history of family, labor, and migration. He is coeditor of four book series, among them “Südosteuropäische Arbeiten” (Berlin: de Gruyter Oldenbourg), and author of four monographs. His most recent books are Globalizing Southeastern Europe: Emigrants, America, and the State since the Late Nineteenth Century (Lanham: Lexington, 2016), and Geschichte Südosteuropas (Ditzingen: Reclam, 2018), with Klaus Buchenau. Chiara Bonfiglioli is a  Lecturer in Gender and Women’s Studies at University College Cork, Ireland. She holds a PhD in Gender Studies from the University of Utrecht, the Netherlands. Between 2012 and 2017, she worked as a  research fellow at the University of Edinburgh, within the framework of the CITSEE project (“The Europeanisation of Citizenship in the Successor States of the Former Yugoslavia”), and as a NEWFELPRO postdoctoral fellow within the Centre for Cultural and Historical Research of Socialism (CKPIS), University of Pula, Croatia. In 2016–17, she held an EURIAS Junior Fellowship at the Institute for Human Sciences (IWM), Vienna. Her publications address transnational women’s, gender, and feminist history, with a specific focus on the former Yugoslavia and Italy. Her monograph Women and Industry in the Balkans: The Rise and Fall of the Yugoslav Textile Sector, is published with I.B. Tauris (2019). Alina-Sandra Cucu is a postdoctoral fellow at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin, where she worked in a multidisciplinary

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 442

2020.05.12. 19:28:09

List of Contributors

443

project on Histories of Planning. During 2017–2018 she was a postdoctoral fellow at re:work—IGK Work and Human Life Cycle in Global History in Berlin. She is a historical anthropologist whose research stands at the intersection between global labor studies, economic history, and sociology of knowledge. She holds a PhD in Sociology and Social Anthropology from Central European University, Budapest. Her book, Planning Labour: Time and the Foundations of Industrial Socialism in Romania is published with Berghahn Books (2019). Among her research publications are “Why Hegemony Was Not Born in the Factory: Sciences of Labour and Politics of Productivity from a Gramscian Angle,” in Cultural Hegemony in a Scientific World: Gramscian Concepts for the History of Science, ed. Pietro Omodeo and Massimiliano Badiliano (Leiden: Brill, forthcoming); and “Producing Knowledge in Productive Spaces: Ethnography and Planning in Early Socialist Romania,” Economy and Society 43, no. 2 (2014): 211–232. She is currently the Deputy Managing Editor of Focaal: Journal of Global and Historical Anthropology. Anca Glonţ is an Assistant Professor in the Department of History at the University of Dayton. Her research has looked to the interrelationship between labor and the coal industry in Transylvania, and to the definition and use of forced labor in authoritarian regimes. Recent publications include (with Maria Grecu), “Bâtir la classe ouvrière: logement et stratification sociale dans le basin charbonnier de la Vallée du Jiu, 1860–1989,” in Habiter l’usine, and (with James Frusetta) “Interwar Fascism and the Post-1989 Radical Right: Ideology, Opportunism and Historical Legacy in Bulgaria and Romania,” in Historical Legacies and the Radical Right in Post-Cold War Central and Eastern Europe, ed. Michael Minkenberg (Stuttgart: ibidemVerlag, 2010). Adrian Grama is a postdoctoral fellow of the Graduate School for East and Southeast European Studies, University of Regensburg, where he works on questions of social and intellectual history of twentieth-century Europe. He is coauthor with Susan Zimmermann of “The Art of Link-Making in Global Labour History: Subaltern, Feminist and Eastern European Contributions,” European Review of History: Revue européenne d’histoire 25, no. 1 (2018): 1–20. His most recent book is Laboring Along: Industrial Workers and the Making of Postwar Romania (Berlin: de Gruyter Oldenbourg, 2018), and his current project is entitled “‘Dominant Fictions’: The Making of Standard Employment in Portugal and Romania, 1920s to 2000s.”  Peter Heumos is a historian of the Bohemian lands who has published widely on labor history topics concerning the interwar Czechoslovak Re-

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 443

2020.05.12. 19:28:09

444

List of Contributors

public and postwar Czechoslovakia. Recent publications in English include “State Socialism, Egalitarianism, Collectivism: On the Social Context of Socialist Work Movements in Czechoslovak Industrial and Mining Enterprises, 1945–1965,” International Labor and Working-Class History 68 (2005): 47–74; and “Workers under Communist Rule: Research in the Former Socialist Countries of Eastern-Central and South-Eastern Europe and in the Federal Republic of Germany,” International Review of Social History 55, no. 1 (2010): 83–115. Natalia Jarska is adjunct professor at the Tadeusz Manteuffel Institute of History (Polish Academy of Sciences). Her research interests include women’s and gender history, history of sexuality, and social history of postwar Poland. Recent publications include the book Women of Marble: Women Workers in Poland, 1945–1960 (in Polish) (Warsaw: IPN, 2015), and the articles “Modern Marriage and the Culture of Sexuality: Experts between the State and the Church in Poland, 1956–1970,” European History Quarterly 49, no. 3 (2019); “The Periphery Revisited: Polish Post-War Historiography on the Working Class and the New Global Labour History,” European Review of History 25, no. 1 (2018): 45–60; “Rural Women, Gender Ideologies, and Industrialization in State Socialism: The Case of a Polish Factory in the 1950s,” Aspasia: The International Yearbook of Central, Eastern, and Southeastern European Women’s and Gender History 9, no. 1 (2015): 65–86; and “Gender and Labour in Post-War Communist Poland: Female Unemployment, 1945–1970,” Acta Poloniae Historica 110 (2014): 49–85. Thomas Lindenberger is director of the Hannah Arendt Institute for Totalitarianism Studies at the Technische Universität Dresden and a professor at the Technische Universität Dresden. His fields of work include social and everyday life history of twentieth century Germany and Europe, history of film, history of communism, and the history of the GDR. He is currently working on the transformation of East German society from late socialism to capitalism in a comparative perspective. Among his publications are 100 Jahre Roter Oktober: Zur Weltgeschichte der Russischen Revolution, edited together with Jan C. Behrends and Nikolaus Katzer (Berlin: Ch. Links Verlag, 2017); “Eigen-Sinn, Domination and No Resistance,” in Docupedia-Zeitgeschichte, http://docupedia.de/zg/Lindenberger_eigensinn_v1_en_2015; and Cold War Cultures: Perspectives on Eastern and Western European Societies, with Annette Vowinckel and Marcus Payk (Berlin: Berghahn, 2012). Małgorzata Mazurek is an associate professor of Polish Studies in the Department of History, Columbia University. Her interests include the social and intellectual history of modern Poland and East Central Eu-

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 444

2020.05.12. 19:28:09

List of Contributors

445

rope, and history of social sciences. She is the author of Socialist Factory: Workers in People’s Poland and the GDR on the Eve of the Sixties (Warsaw: Wydawnictwo TRIO, 2005, in Polish) and Society in Waiting Lines: On Experiences of Shortages in Postwar Poland (Warsaw: Wydawnictwo TRIO, 2010, in Polish). Her new book project deals with the intellectual history of East Central European involvement in the making of the non-Western world, 1918–1968. It investigates the role of Warsaw-based social scientists in shaping Eastern European debates on population, migration, and capitalism, and further, in transforming this locally produced knowledge into development policies for the so-called “Third World.” She has recently published “Polish Economists in Nehru’s India: Making Science for the Third World in an Era of De-Stalinization and Decolonization,” Slavic Review 77, no. 3 (2018): 588–610. Marko Miljković is a PhD Candidate at Central European University in Budapest, Department of History. During his research at the Faculty of Philosophy in Belgrade (Serbia) and CEU he focused on Cold War history and the phenomenon of technology transfer from Western to socialist countries. His doctoral dissertation investigates the history of the Yugoslav nuclear program as a top-priority state project which reveals many contradictions of the Yugoslav state system. He is a member of the Wilson Center’s Nuclear Proliferation International History Project (NPIHP). Among his recent publications are “Making Automobiles in Yugoslavia: Fiat Technology in the Crvena Zastava Factory, 1954–1962,” The Journal of Transport History 38, no. 1 (2017): 20–36; and “CER Computers as Weapons of Mass Disruption: The Yugoslav Computer Industry in the 1960s,” Godišnjak za društvenu istoriju 24, no. 3 (2017): 99–123. Goran Musić is an associated researcher at the Centre for Southeast European Studies, University of Graz. His fields of interest include global labor history, comparative history of workers under state socialism, and everyday history of socialist Yugoslavia. Among his recent publications are “Approaching the Socialist Factory and Its Workforce: Considerations from Fieldwork, in (former) Yugoslavia,” Labor History 58, no. 1 (2017): 44–66 (together with Rory Archer), and “‘They Came as Workers and Returned as Serbs’: The Role of Rakovica’s Blue-Collar Workers in Serbian Social Mobilizations of the late 1980s,” in Social Inequalities and Discontent in Yugoslavia, ed. Igor Duda, Paul Stubbs, and Rory Archer (London: Ashgate, 2016). Visar Nonaj studied German Literature and History at the Johann-Wolfgang-Goethe-University in Frankfurt am Main and at the Sorbonne. From 2011 to 2014 he worked in a project of the Institute of East and Southeast

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 445

2020.05.12. 19:28:09

446

List of Contributors

European Studies, Regensburg, on industrial workers’ culture under “actually existing socialism” in the Balkans. His publications include “‘Schools of Communism’: The Importance of Trade Unions in the Albanian Combine ‘Steel of the Party,’” in About Ardian Klosi: The German from Albania (in Albanian), ed. Oliver Jens Schmitt (Tirana: Fjala Publishing, 2016), and “‘Neues Werk, neue Menschen’: Die Rekrutierung von Arbeitskräften für das albanische Stahlwerk ‘Stahl der Partei’,” Südost-Forschungen 72 (2013): 319–348. His book Heavy Industry as Second Liberation: “The Steel of the Party” as Microcosmos of Communism, which is based on his PdD dissertation at the University of Regensburg, is forthcoming (Berlin: de Gruyter Oldenbourg). Sabine Rutar holds a  PhD from the European University Institute in Florence (2001) and has been a Senior Research Associate at the Leibniz Institute for East and Southeast European Studies in Regensburg since 2008. She is the Editor in Chief of social science quarterly Südosteuropa: Journal of Politics and Society (De Gruyter). Since 2011, she has earned fellowships and guest professorships at the Universities of Ljubljana and Koper, the Imre Kertész Kolleg ( Jena), the Centre for Contemporary History (Potsdam), the International Research Center “Work and Human Life Cycle in Global History” (re:work) at the Humboldt University (Berlin), the Berlin Center for Cold War Studies, and the EHESS (Paris). Most recently she published “(Re-)Scaling the Second World War: Regimes of Historicity and the Legacies of the Cold War in Europe,” in Local Dimensions of the Second World War in Southeastern Europe, ed. Xavier Bougarel et al. (New York: Routledge, 2019), 263–81. She edited a special issue on “Violence in Late Socialist Public Spheres” for European History Quarterly 45, no. 2 (2015); a special issue on “The Second World War in Historiography and Public Debate” for Südosteuropa 65, no. 3 (2017); as well as two volumes (coedited with Katrin Boeckh) on the Balkan Wars of 1912–13, published with Palgrave Macmillan (2017) and Berghahn (2018) respectively. Currently, she is completing a monograph on mining and maritime industries in Yugoslavia between the 1930s and 1970s. Ulrike Schult received her PhD at Friedrich Schiller University (FSU) Jena, Department for Eastern European History in 2016. She was a member of the German Research Foundation’s (DFG) Research Training Group 1412 “Cultural Orientations and Institutional Order in Southeastern Europe” at FSU in Jena from 2012–2016. She was an associated scholar of the Imre Kertész Kolleg graduate school from 2013–2015. Her research focuses on the social history of state socialism. She is the author of “Social Fragmentation of Industrial Workforces: The Yugoslav Motor Vehicle Industry during Self-Managed Socialism,” Südost-Forschungen 73 (2014): 351–373;

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 446

2020.05.12. 19:28:09

List of Contributors

447

and Zwischen Stechuhr und Selbstverwaltung: Eine Mikrogeschichte sozialer Konflikte in der jugoslawischen Fahrzeugindustrie 1965–1985 (Berlin: LITVerlag, 2017). Marsha Siefert teaches in the History Department at Central European University, specializing in cultural and communications history, particularly state-socialist cultural industries during the Cold War. Two of her five edited books deal with Russia and the former Soviet Union, and she is co-editor of the book series Historical Studies of Eastern Europe and Eurasia (CEU Press). From 2012 she co-chaired the Initiative for Labor History for the 21st Century in a Global Perspective at CEU with Susan Zimmermann. She was a visiting fellow at the Rothermere American Institute (Oxford University), the Kennan Institute (Washington, DC), and New York University, Center for Ballet & the Arts and the Jordan Center for the Advanced Study of Russia. Recent publications appear in Socialist Internationalism in the Cold War: Exploring the Second World (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016); Cold War Crossings: International Travel and Exchange in the Soviet Bloc, 1940s–1960s (College Station, TX: Texas A&M Press, 2014); Divided Dreamworlds? The Cultural Cold War East and West (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2012); and Cold War Cultures: Perspectives on Eastern and Western European Societies (New York: Berghahn, 2012). Susan Zimmermann is University Professor at Central European University in Budapest, Department of History and Department of Gender Studies. Her research has focused on the history of the Habsburg Monarchy, international women’s organizations in the 20th century, the ILO, and women and trade unions in state-socialist Hungary. She is President of the International Conference of Labour and Social History (ITH) and from 2012 she co-chaired the Initiative for Labor History for the 21st Century in a Global Perspective at CEU with Marsha Siefert. Most recently she has published the study “Equality of Women’s Economic Status? A Major Bone of Contention in the International Gender Politics Emerging during the Interwar Period,” The International History Review 41, no. 1 (2019): 200–27; and coedited, together with Eileen Boris and Dorothea Hoehtker, the volume Women’s ILO: Transnational Networks, Global Labour Standards and Gender Equity, 1919 to Present (Leiden: Brill, 2018). She is the recipient of a 2019 European Research Council Advanced Grant to study the history of women’s labor activism in Eastern Europe.

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 447

2020.05.12. 19:28:09

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 448

2020.05.12. 19:28:09

Selected Bibliography

Adizes, Ichak. Industrial Democracy: Yugoslav Style; The Effect of Decentralization on Organizational Behavior. New York: The Free Press, 1971. Alamgir, Alena. “Socialist Internationalism at Work: Changes in the Czechoslovak-Vietnamese Labor Exchange Program, 1967–1989.” Ph.D. dissertation, Rutgers University, 2014. Archer, Rory. “‘Paid for by the Workers, Occupied by the Bureaucrats’: Housing Inequalities in 1980s Belgrade.” In Archer, Duda, and Stubbs, Social Inequalities and Discontent in Yugoslav Socialism, 58–76. —. “Social Inequalities and the Study of Yugoslavia’s Dissolution.” In Debating the End of Yugoslavia, edited by Florian Bieber, Armina Galijas, and Rory Archer, 135–54. Farnham: Ashgate, 2014. Archer, Rory, and Goran Musić. “Approaching the Socialist Factory and Its Workforce: Considerations from Fieldwork in (Former) Yugoslavia.” Labor History 58, no. 1 (2017): 44–66. —. “The Belgrade Working Class from Tito to Milošević: New geographies of poverty and evolving expressions of grievances in an era of crisis, 1979–1986.” Revue d’études comparatives Est-Ouest (RECEO) 50, no. 1 (2019): 53–79. https://doi.org/10.3917/ receo1.501.0053 Archer, Rory, Igor Duda, and Paul Stubbs, eds. Social Inequalities and Discontent in Yugoslav Socialism. Abingdon: Routledge, 2016. Arnold, Lorna. Windscale 1957: Anatomy of a Nuclear Accident. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007. Babiracki, Patryk, and Austin Jersild, eds. Socialist Internationalism in the Cold War: Exploring the Second World. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016. Babiracki, Patryk, and Kenyon Zimmer, eds. Cold War Crossings: International Travel and Exchange Across the Soviet Bloc, 1940s-1960s. Arlington: Texas A&M University Press, 2014. Baker, Catherine, ed. Gender in Twentieth-Century Eastern Europe and the USSR. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016. Bartha, Eszter. Alienating Labour: Workers on the Road from Socialism to Capitalism in East Germany and Hungary. New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2013. Berlanstein, Lenard R. “The Formation of a Factory Labor Force: Rubber and Cable Workers in Bezons, France (1860–1914).” Journal of Social History 15, no. 2 (1981): 163–86. Bloch, Ernst, and Mark Ritter. “Nonsynchronism and the Obligation to Its Dialectics.” New German Critique 11 (1977): 22–38. Bockman, Johanna. Markets in the Name of Socialism. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2011.

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 449

2020.05.12. 19:28:09

450

Selected Bibliography

Bockman, Johanna, and Gil Eyal. “Eastern Europe as a Laboratory for Economic Knowledge: The Transnational Roots of Neoliberalism.” American Journal of Sociology 108, no. 2 (2002): 310–52. Bohle, Dorothee, and Bela Greskovits. Capitalist Diversity on Europe’s Periphery. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2012. Bonfiglioli, Chiara. “Gender, Labour and Precarity in the South East European Periphery: The Case of Textile Workers in Štip.” Contemporary Southeastern Europe 1, no. 2 (2014): 7–23. —. “Gendered Citizenship in the Global European Periphery: Textile Workers in Post-Yugoslav States.” Women’s Studies International Forum 49 (2015): 57–65. —. “Women’s Political and Social Activism in the Early Cold War Era: The Case of Yugoslavia.” Aspasia 8 (2014): 1–25. —. Women and Industry in the Balkans: The Rise and Fall of the Yugoslav Textile Sector. London: I.B. Tauris, 2019. Bren, Paulina, and Mary Neuburger, eds. Communism Unwrapped: Consumption in Cold War Eastern Europe. New York: Oxford University Press, 2012. Brenner, Christiane, and Peter Heumos, eds. Sozialgeschichtliche Kommunismusforschung: Tschechoslowakei, Polen, Ungarn und DDR 1948-1968; Vorträge der Tagung des Colllegium Carolinum in Bad Wiessee vom 22. bis 24. November 2002 [Social-historical communism research: Czechoslovakia, Poland, Hungary, and the GDR, 1948–1968; Lectures at the meeting of the Collegium Carolinum in Bad Wiessee, November 22–24, 2002]. Munich: Oldenbourg Verlag 2005. Brown, Kate. Plutopia: Nuclear Families, Atomic Cities, and the Great Soviet and American Plutonium Disasters. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013. Brunnbauer, Ulf. “Die sozialistische Lebensweise”: Ideologie, Gesellschaft, Familie und Politik in Bulgarien (1944–1989) [“The socialist way of life”: Ideology, society, family, and politics in Bulgaria, 1944–1989]. Cologne, Weimar, Vienna: Böhlau, 2007. —. “From Equality without Democracy to Democracy without Equality? Women and Transition in South-East Europe.” South-East Europe Review 3 (2000): 151–68. —. “Gesellschaft und gesellschaftlicher Wandel in Südosteuropa nach 1945.” In Geschichte Südosteuropas: Vom frühen Mittelalter bis zur Gegenwart, edited by Konrad Clewing and Oliver J. Schmitt, 651–702. Regensburg: F. Pustet, 2011. —. “Stählerne Träume: Kremikovci und der Neue Mensch.” In Transformationsprobleme Bulgariens im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert: Historische und ethnologische Perspektiven, edited by Ulf Brunnbauer and Wolfgang Höpken, 205−228. Munich: Verlag Otto Sagner, 2007. Brunnbauer, Ulf, Visar Nonaj, and Biljana Raeva. “Workers, Steel Factories, and Communism: Labor in Kremikovci (Bulgaria) and Elbasan (Albania) under State Socialism.” IOS Mitteilungen, no. 62 (2013): 1–52. http://www.dokumente.ios-regensburg.de/publikationen/ mitteilungen/mitt_62.pdf. Brzostek, Błażej. Za progiem: Codzienność w przestrzeni publicznej Warszawy lat 1955–1970 [On the doorstep: Everyday life in the public spaces of Warsaw in the years 1955–1970]. Warsaw: Wydawnictwo Trio, 2007. Bunce, Valerie. Subversive Institutions: The Design and the Destruction of Socialism and the State. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999. Burawoy, Michael. The Politics of Production: Factory Regimes under Capitalism and Socialism. London: Verso, 1985. Burawoy, Michael, and János Lukacs. “Mythologies of Work: A Comparison of Firms in State Socialism and Advanced Capitalism.” American Sociological Review 50, no. 6 (1985): 723–37. —. The Radiant Past: Ideology and Reality in Hungary’s Road to Capitalism. Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1992.

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 450

2020.05.12. 19:28:09

Selected Bibliography

451

Calic, Marie-Janine. Geschichte Jugoslawiens im 20. Jahrhundert [History of Yugoslavia in the twentieth century]. Munich: C. H. Beck, 2010. Chase, William J. Workers, Society, and the Soviet State: Labor and Life in Moscow, 1918– 1929. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1987. Comisso, Ellen T. Workers’ Control under Plan and Market: Implications of Yugoslav Self-Management. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1979. Crowley, Stephen, and David Ost, eds. Workers after Workers’ States: Labor and Politics in Postcommunist Eastern Europe. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2001. Cucu, Alina-Sandra. “Producing Knowledge in Productive Spaces: Ethnography and Planning in Early Socialist Romania.” Economy and Society 43, no. 2 (2014): 211–32. —. Planning Labour: Time and the Foundations of Industrial Socialism in Romania. Oxford and New York: Berghahn Books, 2019. Davies, Sam, ed. Dock Workers: International Explorations in Comparative Labour History, 1790–1970. 2 vols. Farnham and Burlington: Ashgate, 2000. de Haan, Francisca. “Continuing Cold War Paradigms in Western Historiography of Transnational Women’s Organisations: The Case of the Women’s International Democratic Federation (WIDF).” Women’s History Review 19, no. 4 (2010): 547–73. de Haan, Francisca, Margaret Allen, June Purvis, and Krassimira Daskalova, eds. Women’s Activism Global Perspectives from the 1890s to the Present. London and New York: Routledge, 2013. De Vito, Christian G. “New Perspectives on Global Labor History: Introduction.” In “Global labor history,” special issue, Workers of the World: International Journal on Strikes and Social Conflicts 1, no. 3 (2013): 7–31. Dennis, Mike. “Working under Hammer and Sickle: Vietnamese Workers in the German Democratic Republic, 1980–89.” German Politics 16, no. 3 (2007): 339–57. Duda, Igor. Pronađeno blagostanje: svakodnevni život I potrošačka kultura u Hrvatskoj 1970-ih i 1980-ih [Well-being found: Everyday life and consumer culture in Croatia in the 1970s and 1980s]. Zagreb: Srednja Europa, 2010. —. U potrazi za blagostanjem: o povijesti dokolice i potrošačkog društva u Hrvatskoj 1950-ih i 1960-ih [In search for well-being: On the history of leisure and consumer society in Croatia in the 1950s and 1960s]. Zagreb: Srednja Europa, 2005. Duraković, Lada, and Andrea Matošević, eds. Socijalizam na klupi: Jugoslavensko društvo očima nove postjugoslavenske humanistike [Socialism on the bench: Yugoslav society views the new post-Yugoslav humanities]. Zagreb: Srednja Europa, 2013. Dzikiewicz, Lech. Odpowiedzialność majątkowa personelu sprzedającego [Material liability of the sales staff ]. Warsaw: Wydawnictwo Prawnicze, 1971. Einhorn, Barbara. Cinderella Goes to Market: Citizenship, Gender and Women’s Movements in East Central Europe. London: Verso, 1993. Eley, Geoff. Forging Democracy: The History of the Left in Europe, 1850–2000. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002. Fidelis, Małgorzata. Women, Communism, and Industrialization in Postwar Poland. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010. Fikfak, Jurij, and Jože Prinčič, eds. Biti direktor v času socializma: Med idejami in praksami [Being a  director during socialism: Between ideas and practice]. Ljubljana: Založba ZRC, 2008. Filtzer, Donald. “Labor Discipline, the Use of Work Time, and the Decline of the Soviet System.” International Labor and Working-Class History, no. 50 (1996): 9–28. —. Soviet Workers and Stalinist Industrialization: The Formation of Modern Soviet Production Relations, 1928–1941. London: Pluto, 1986. Filtzer, Donald, Wendy Z. Goldman, Gijs Kesler, and Simon Pirani, eds. A Dream Deferred: New Studies in Russian and Soviet Labour History. Bern: Peter Lang, 2008.

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 451

2020.05.12. 19:28:09

452

Selected Bibliography

Fodor, Éva. Working Difference: Women’s Working Lives in Hungary and Austria, 1945–1995. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2003. Form, William H. “The Accommodation of Rural and Urban Workers to Industrial Discipline and Urban Living: A Four-Nation Study.” Rural Sociology 36, no. 4 (1971): 488–508. Friedreich, Sönke. Autos bauen im Sozialismus: Arbeit und Organisationskultur in der Zwickauer Automobilindustrie [Constructing cars during socialism: Work and organizational culture in the Zwickau automotive industry]. Leipzig: Leipziger Universitätsverlag, 2008. Goran Musić. “‘They Came as Workers and Left as Serbs’: The Role of Rakovica’s Blue-Collar Workers in Serbian Social Mobilizations of the Late 1980s.” In Archer, Duda, and Stubbs, Social Inequalities and Discontent in Yugoslav Socialism, 132–54. Grandits, Hannes, and Karin Taylor, eds. Yugoslavia’s Sunny Side: A History of Tourism in Socialism (1950s–1980s). Budapest and New York: Central European University Press, 2010. Grama, Adrian. Laboring Along: Industrial Workers and the Making of Postwar Romania. Berlin: de Gruyter, 2018. Grama, Adrian, and Susan Zimmermann. “The Art of Link-Making in Global Labour History: Subaltern, Feminist and Eastern European Contributions.” European Review of History: Revue européenne d’histoire 25, no. 1 (2018): 1–20. Griffin, Emma. Liberty’s Dawn: A People’s History of the Industrial Revolution. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2013. Haraszti, Miklós. A Worker in a Worker’s State: Piece-Rates in Hungary. London: Penguin, 1977. Harsch, Donna. Revenge of the Domestic: Women, the Family, and Communism in the German Democratic Republic. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2007. Haumann, Heiko. “‘Ich habe gedacht, dass die Arbeiter in den Städten besser leben’: Arbeiter bäuerlicher Herkunft in der Industrialisierung des Zarenreichs und der frühen Sowjetunion.” Schweizerische Zeitschrift für Geschichte 43, no. 1 (1993): 42–60. Heerma van Voss, Lex, Els Hiemstra-Kuperus, and Elise van Nederveen Meerkerk, eds. The Ashgate Companion to the History of Textile Workers, 1650–2000. Farnham: Ashgate, 2016. Hessler, Julie. A Social History of Soviet Trade: Trade Policy, Retail Practices, and Consumption, 1917–1953. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004. Heumos, Peter. “Grenzen des Sozialistischen Produktivismus: Arbeitsinitiativen und Arbeitsverhalten in Tschechoslowakischen Industriebetrieben in den fünfziger Jahren” [Limits of socialist productivism: Work initiatives and labor behavior in Czechoslovak industrial enterprises in the 1950s]. In Arbeit im Sozialismus – Arbeit im Postsozialismus: Erkundungen zum Arbeitsleben im östlichen Europa, edited by Klaus Roth, 199–218. Münster: LIT, 2004. —. “State Socialism, Egalitarianism, Collectivism: On the Social Context of Socialist Work Movements in Czechoslovak Industrial and Mining Enterprises, 1945–1965.” International Labor and Working-Class History 68 (2005): 47–74. —. “Workers under Communist Rule: Research in the Former Socialist Countries of Eastern-Central and South-Eastern Europe and in the Federal Republic of Germany.” International Review of Social History 55 (2010): 83–115. —. “Zum Verhalten von Arbeitern in industriellen Konflikten: Tschechoslowakei und DDR im Vergleich bis 1968” [On the behavior of workers in industrial conflicts: Czechoslovakia and the GDR compared to 1968]. In Kommunismus in der Krise: Die Entstalinisierung 1956 und ihre Folgen [Communism in crisis: The de-Stalinization of 1956 and its consequences], edited by Roger Engelmann, Thomas Großbölting, and Hermann Wentker, 407–29. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2008. Hoerder, Dirk. Cultures in Contact: World Migrations in the Second Millennium. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2002.

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 452

2020.05.12. 19:28:09

Selected Bibliography

453

Hofmeester, Karin, and Marcel van der Linden, eds. Handbook: Global History of Work. Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter Oldenbourg, 2017. Hormel, Leontina M. “A Case Study of Gender, Class, and Garment Work Reorganization in Ukraine.” GENDER: Journal for Gender, Culture and Society 1 (2011): 10–25. Horváth, Sándor. Két emelet boldogság: Mindennapi szociálpolitika Budapesten a Kádár-korban [Two floors of happiness: Everyday social policy in Budapest in the Kádár era]. Budapest: Napvilág, 2012. Hübner, Peter, Christoph Klessmann, and Klaus Tenfelde, eds. Arbeiter im Staatssozialismus: Ideologischer Anspruch und soziale Wirklichkeit [Workers in state socialism: Ideological claim and social reality]. Cologne: Böhlau, 2005. Hürtgen, Renate. Zwischen Disziplinierung und Partizipation: Vertrauensleute des FDGB im DDR-Betrieb [Between disciplining and participation: FDGB Union stewards in the GDR enterprise]. Cologne, Weimar, and Vienna: Böhlau Verlag, 2005. Inglot, Tomasz. Welfare States in East Central Europe, 1919–2004. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008. Jambrešić Kirin, Renata, and Marina Blagaić. “The Ambivalence of Socialist Working Women’s Heritage: A Case Study of the Jugoplastika Factory.” Narodna Umjetnost 50, no. 1 (2003): 40–73. Jarosz, Dariusz, and Maria Pasztor. Afera Mięsna: fakty i konteksty [The meat scandal: Facts and contexts]. Warsaw: Centrum Edukacji Europejskiej, 2004. Jarska, Natalia. “Gender and Labour in Post-War Communist Poland: Female Unemployment 1945–1970.” Acta Poloniae Historica 110 (2014): 49–85. —. Kobiety z marmuru: Robotnice w Polsce w latach 1945–1960 [Women of Marble: Women Workers in Poland, 1945–1960]. Warsaw: IPN, 2015. —. “Rural Women, Gender Ideologies, and Industrialization in State Socialism.” Aspasia: The International Yearbook of Central, Eastern and Southeastern European Women’s and Gender History 9 (2015): 65–86. Josephson, Paul R. “No Hard Hats, No Steel-Toed Shoes Required: Worker Safety in the Proletarian Paradise.” In Would Trotsky Wear a Bluetooth? Technological Utopianism under Socialism, 1917–1989, 233–63. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2010. Jović, Dejan. Yugoslavia: A State that Withered Away (West Lafayette, IN: Purdue University Press, 2009. Kalb, Don. “‘Worthless Poles’ and Other Dispossessions: Toward an Anthropology of Labor in Post-Communist Central and Eastern Europe.” In Blood and Fire: Toward a Global Anthropology of Labor, edited by Sharryn Kasmir and August Carbonella, 250–88. Berlin: Berghahn, 2014. Kenney, Padraic. Rebuilding Poland: Workers and Communists, 1945–1950. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1997. Kideckel, David. Getting By in Postsocialist Romania: Labor, the Body, and Working-Class Culture. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2008. Klessmann, Christoph. Arbeiter im “Arbeiterstaat” DDR: deutsche Traditionen, sowjetisches Modell, westdeutsches Magnetfeld (1945 bis 1971) [Workers in the “workers’ state” GDR: German traditions, Soviet model, West German magnetic field, 1945–1971]. Bonn: ­Dietz, 2007. Klípa, Ondřej. “Polští pracovníci v ČSSR: nevítaná družba. Specifika dočasné zahraniční pra­ cov­ní migrace v socialistickém systému.” Ph.D. dissertation, Faculty of Social Sciences, Charles University, Prague, 2013. Kochanowicz, Jacek, and Bogdan Murgescu. “Rural and Urban Worlds: Between Economic Modernization and Persistent Backwardness.” In The Routledge History of East Central Europe since 1700, edited by Irina Livezeanu and Árpád von Klimó, 81–125. New York: Routledge, 2017.

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 453

2020.05.12. 19:28:09

454

Selected Bibliography

Kochanowski, Jerzy. “Pioneers of the Free Market Economy? Unofficial Commercial Exchange between People from the Socialist Bloc Countries (1970s and 1980s).” Journal of Modern European History 8, no. 2 (2010): 196–220. —. Rewolucja międzypaździernikowa: Polska 1956–1957 [Revolution between two Octobers: Poland 1956–1957]. Kraków: ZNAK, 2017. —. “Szara strefa Października: ‘Notatka’ o nielegalnych dochodach w Polsce 1956–1957” [Gray zone of the Polish October: A ‘Note’ about illegal income in Poland, 1956–1957]. Przegląd Historyczny 95, no. 1 (2004): 77–96. Kocka, Jürgen, and Marcel van der Linden, eds. Capitalism: The Reemergence of a Historical Concept. London: Bloomsbury 2016. Komlosy, Andrea. Work: The Last 1,000 Years. London: Verso, 2018. Kornai, János. Economics of Shortage. Amsterdam: North Holland, 1979. —. The Socialist System: The Political Economy of Communism. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992. Kotkin, Stephen. “Introduction: A Future for Labor under Communism?” International Labor and Working-Class History, no. 50 (Fall 1996): 1–8. —. Magnetic Mountain: Stalinism as a Civilization. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997. Kott, Sandrine, and Joelle Droux, eds. Globalizing Social Rights: The International Labour Organization and Beyond. Basingstoke and Geneva: Palgrave Macmillan and International Labour Office, 2013. Koźmiński, Andrzej K., and Adam Sarapata, eds. Socjologia handlu: Wybrane zagadnienia [Sociology of trade: Selected issues]. Warsaw: Państwowe Wydawnictwo Ekonomiczne, 1972. Kožul, Franjo. Žena u samoupravljanju: Samoupravni i radni status žene u Bosni i Hercegovini [Woman in self-management: The self-governing and working status of women in Bosnia and Herzegovina]. Sarajevo: Fakultet Politički Nauka, 1973. Kuromiya, Hiroaki. Stalin’s Industrial Revolution: Politics and Workers, 1928–1932. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988. Kwiatkowski, Stefan. “Sylwetki zawodowe sprzedawców” [Professional profiles of sellers]. In Koźmiński and Sarapata, Socjologia handlu, 218–237. “Labor and Labor Migration in State Socialism.” Special Issue, Labor History 59, no. 3 (2018). Lampland, Martha. The Object of Labor: Commodification in Socialist Hungary. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995. —. The Value of Labor: The Science of Commodification in Hungary, 1920–1956. Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2016. Lebow, Katherine. Unfinished Utopia: Nowa Huta, Stalinism, and Polish Society, 1949–1956. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2013. Ledeneva, Alena, ed. The Global Encyclopaedia of Informality: Understanding Social and Cultural Complexity. 2 vols. London: UCL Press, 2018. Lim, Jie-Hyun, and Karen Petrone, eds. Gender Politics and Mass Dictatorship: Global Perspectives. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010. Long, Kristi S. We All Fought for Freedom: Women in Poland’s Solidarity Movement. Boulder: Westview Press, 1996. Lucassen, Jan, ed. Global Labour History: A State of the Art. Bern: Peter Lang Academic, 2006. Lüdtke, Alf. Eigen-Sinn: Fabrikalltag, Arbeitererfahrungen und Politik vom Kaiserreich bis in den Faschismus [Eigen-Sinn: Everyday factory life, experience of labor, and politics from the German Empire to fascism]. Hamburg: Ergebnisse Verlag, 1993. Luthar, Breda, and Maruša Pušnik, eds. Remembering Utopia: The Culture of Everyday Life in Socialist Yugoslavia. Washington, DC: New Academia Publishing, 2010. Marecki, Jacek. “Przestępczość gospodarcza: mechanizm i środki zaradcze” [Economic delinquency: Mechanism and remedies]. Kultura i Społeczeństwo 6, no. 3 (1962): 57–72.

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 454

2020.05.12. 19:28:09

Selected Bibliography

455

Mark, James, and Quinn Slobodian. “Eastern Europe in the Global History of Decolonization.” In The Oxford Handbook of the Ends of Empire, edited by Martin Thomas and Andrew S. Thompson. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018. Massey, Garth, Karen Hahn, and Duško Sekulić. “Women, Men, and the ‘Second Shift’ in Socialist Yugoslavia.” Gender & Society 9, no. 3 (1995): 359–79. Massino, Jill, and Shana Penn, eds. Gender Politics and Everyday Life in State Socialist East and Central Europe. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009. Mazurek, Małgorzata. “Between Sociology and Ideology: Perception of Work and Sociologists Advisors in Communist Poland, 1956–1970.” Revue d’Histoire des Sciences Humaines 1 (2007): 11–31. —. “Das Alltagsleben im sozialistischen Betrieb am Beispiel der ‘Rosa-Luxemburg-Werke’ in Warschau an der Schwelle zur ‘kleinen Stabilisierung’” [Everyday life in the socialist enterprise on the example of the “Rosa Luxemburg Plant” in Warsaw on the brink of “new stabilization”]. In Hübner, Klessmann, and Tenefelde, Arbeiter im Staatssozialismus, 291–317. McDermott, Kevin. “Popular Resistance in Communist Czechoslovakia: The Plzeň Uprising, June 1953.” Contemporary European History 19, no. 4 (2010): 287–307. Miklóssy, Katalin, and Melanie Ilic, eds. Competition in Socialist Society. New York: Routledge, 2014. Mikuła, Lidia A. “Z badań nad psychiczną uciążliwością pracy w handlu” [From research on the psychological burden of work in trade]. Handel Wewnętrzny, no. 4 (1976), 67–73. Morris, D. Morris. “The Recruitment of an Industrial Labor Force in India, with British and American Comparisons.” Comparative Studies in Society & History 2, no. 3 (1960): 305–328. Naimark, Norman M. “The Sovietization of Eastern Europe, 1944–1953.” In The Cambridge History of the Cold War, vol 1, Origins, edited by Melvyn P. Leffler and Odd Arne Westad, 175–97. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010. Oppenheimer, Jochen. “Mozambican Worker Migration to the Former German Democratic Republic: Serving Socialism and Struggling Under Democracy.” Portuguese Studies Review 12, no. 1 (2004): 163–87. Ost, David. Solidarity and the Politics of Anti-politics: Opposition and Reform in Poland since 1968. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2010. Palairet, Michael. “‘Lenin’ and ‘Brezhnev’: Steel making and the Bulgarian Economy, 1956– 90.” Europe-Asia Studies 47, no. 3 (1995): 493–505. Patterson, Patrick Hyder. Bought & Sold: Living and Losing the Good Life in Socialist Yugoslavia. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2011. Pence, Katherine, and Paul Betts, eds. Socialist Modern: East German Everyday Culture and Politics. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2007. Pernes, Jiří. Brno 1951: Příspěvek k dějinám protikomunistického odporu na Moravě [Brno 1951: A  Contribution to the History of Anti-Communist Resisitance in Moravia]. Prague: Ústav pro soudobé dějiny, 1997. Petrovici, Norbert. “Neoliberal Proletarization along the Urban-Rural Divide in Postsocialist Romania.” Studia Universitatis Babes-Bolyai Sociologia 58 (2013): 23–54. Pittaway, Mark. From the Vanguard to the Margins: Workers in Hungary, 1939 to the Present. Leiden: Brill, 2014. —. “Introduction: Workers and Socialist States in Postwar Central and Eastern Europe.” International Labor and Working-Class History, no. 68 (October 2005): 1–8. —. “The Reproduction of Hierarchy: Skill, Working-Class Culture, and the State in Early Socialist Hungary.” The Journal of Modern History 74, no. 4 (2002): 737–69. —. “The Social Limits of State Control: Time, the Industrial Wage Relation, and Social Identity in Stalinist Hungary, 1948–1953.” Journal of Historical Sociology 12, no. 3 (1999): 271–301.

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 455

2020.05.12. 19:28:10

456

Selected Bibliography

—. The Workers’ State: Industrial Labor and the Making of Socialist Hungary. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2012. Pola veka Instituta Vinča (1948–1998) [Half a century of the Vinča Institute (1948–1998)]. Belgrade: Institut za nuklearne nauke Vinča, 1999. Pons, Silvio. The Global Revolution: A  History of International Communism, 1917–1991. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014. Porket, Josef L. Unemployment in Capitalist, Communist and Post-Communist Economies. New York: St. Martin’s Press and Palgrave Macmillan, 1995. Postone, Moishe. Time, Labor and Social Domination: A Reinterpretation of Marx’s Critical Theory. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003. Pula, Besnik. Globalization Under and After Socialism: The Evolution of Transnational Capital in Central and Eastern Europe. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2018. Ramet, Pedro, ed. Yugoslavia in the 1980s. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1985. Roth, Klaus, ed. Arbeit im Sozialismus—Arbeit im Postsozialismus: Erkundungen zum Arbeitsleben im östlichen Europa. Freiburger sozialanthropologische Studien, no. 1. Münster: LIT, 2004. Rutar, Sabine. “Betriebliche Selbstverwaltung zwischen den Blöcken—und danach?: Das jugoslawische Modell in Rückschau und Perspektive” [Entrepreneurial self-management between the blocks—and beyond?: The Yugoslav model in hindsight and perspective], Südost-Forschungen 75, no. 1 (2016): 118–35. —. “Containing Conflict and Enforcing Consent in Titoist Yugoslavia: The 1970 Dockworkers’ Strike in Koper (Slovenia).” In “Violence in Late Socialist Public Spheres,” ed. Sabine Rutar, Special Issue European History Quarterly 45, no. 2 (2015): 275–94. —. “Towards a Southeast European History of Labour: Examples from Yugoslavia.” In Beyond the Balkans: Towards an Inclusive History of Southeastern Europe, edited by Sabine Rutar, 323–54. Berlin: Lit Verlag, 2014. Sabel, Charles F., and David Stark. “Planning, Politics, and Shop-Floor Power: Hidden Forms of Bargaining in Soviet-Imposed State-Socialist Societies.” Politics and Society 11, no. 4 (1982): 439–76. Schulz, Ulrike, and Thomas Welskopp. “Wieviel kapitalistisches Unternehmen steckte in den Betrieben des real existierenden Sozialismus?: Konzeptionelle Überlegungen und ein Fallbeispiel” [How much capitalist enterprise was there in the firms of the actually existing socialism?: Conceptual reflections and a case study]. Jahrbuch für Wirtschaftsgeschichte 58, no. 2 (2017): 331–66. Siegelbaum, Lewis H. “Industrial Accidents and Their Prevention in the Interwar Period.” In The Disabled in the Soviet Union: Past and Present, Theory and Practice, edited by William O. McCagg, 85–118. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1989. —. “The Late Romance of the Soviet Worker in Western Historiography.” International Review of Social History 51, no. 3 (2006): 463–81. —. “Workers and Industrialization.” In The Cambridge History of Russia, vol. 3, The Twentieth Century, edited by Ronald Grigor Suny, 440–67. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006. Silver, Beverly J. Forces of Labor: Workers’ Movements and Globalization since 1870. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003. Sjöberg, Örjan. “Rural Retention in Albania: Administrative Restrictions on Urban-Bound Migration.” East European Quarterly 28, no. 2 (1994): 205–233. Smith, Stephen A., ed. The Oxford Handbook of the History of Communism. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014. Smula, Johann. “The Party and the Proletariat: Škoda 1948–53.” Cold War History 6, no. 2 (2006): 153–75. Stedman Jones, Gareth. Languages of Class: Studies in English Working Class History, 1832–

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 456

2020.05.12. 19:28:10

Selected Bibliography

457

1982. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996. Szigeti, Péter. Építőipari munkásszállások lakóinak életkörülményei: Két építőipari munkásszállás szociológiai vizsgálata [Living conditions of people living in construction workers’ hostels: A sociological examination of two construction workers’ hostels]. Budapest: Szakszervezetek Elméleti Kutató Intézete, 1976. Tosstorff, Reiner. The Red International of Labour Unions (RILU) 1920–1937. Translated by Ben Fowkes. Leiden: Brill, 2016. Triska, Jan F., and Charles Gati, eds. Blue-Collar Workers in Eastern Europe. Winchester, MA: Allen and Unwin, 1981. Turcan, John R. “Some Observations on Retail Distribution in Poland.” Soviet Studies 29, no. 1 (1977): 128–36. Unkovski-Korica, Vladimir. The Economic Struggle for Power in Tito’s Yugoslavia: From World War II to Non-Alignment. London: I.B. Tauris, 2016. van der Linden, Marcel. “The Promise and Challenges of Global Labor History.” International Labor and Working-Class History, no. 82 (Fall 2012): 1–21. —. Workers of the World: Essays toward a Global Labor History. Leiden: Brill, 2008. van Goethem, Geert. The Amsterdam International: The World of the International Federation of Trade Unions (IFTU), 1913–1945. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006. Verdery, Katherine. What Was Socialism, and What Comes Next? Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996. Vu, Tuong. “Workers under Communism: Romance and Reality.” In The Oxford Handbook of the History of Communism, edited by Stephen A. Smith, 471–87. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014. Vučetić, Radina. Coca-Cola Socialism: Americanization of Yugoslav Culture in the Sixties. Budapest–New York: CEU Press, 2018. Wienhold, Lutz. Zwischen Anspruch und Wirklichkeit: Historischer Abriss zum Arbeitsschutz in der SBZ/DDR. Cologne: Grin Verlag, 2011. Woodward, Susan L. Socialist Unemployment: The Political Economy of Yugoslavia, 1945– 1990. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995. Zapałowski, Tadeusz. Odpowiedzialność materialna pracowników handlu [Material responsibility of trade employees]. Warsaw: Instytut Handlu Wewnętrznego i Usług, 1980. Zgłobica, Michał. “Czy naprawdę w Polsce Ludowej nie istniało bezrobocie?” [Did unemployment in communist Poland really exist?]. Przegląd Historyczny 107, no. 4 (2016): 619–56. Zheng, Wang. Finding Women in the State: A Socialist Feminist Revolution in the People’s Republic of China, 1949–1964. Oakland: University of California Press, 2016. Zimmermann, Susan. “The Agrarian Working Class Put Somewhat Centre Stage: An Often Neglected Group of Workers in the Historiography of Labour in State-Socialist Hungary.” European Review of History: Revue européenne d’histoire 25, no. 1 (2018): 79–100. —. “Eastern Europe.” In Handbook Global History of Work, edited by Karin Hofmeester and Marcel van der Linden, 131–56. Berlin: De Gruyter Oldenbourg, 2017. —. “Gender Regime and Gender Struggle in Hungarian State Socialism.” Aspasia: The International Yearbook of Central, Eastern and Southeastern European Women’s and Gender History 4 (2010): 1–24.

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 457

2020.05.12. 19:28:10

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 458

2020.05.12. 19:28:10

Index

absenteeism, 94, 95, 107, 117, 131, 153, 250–51, 257, 317. See also labor discipline accidents; work, 20, 219, 242, 245, 247–53, 257–70; industrial, 20, 219–21, 223n, 224–29, 273–74, 277–81, 283–84, 287, 292–94; Havarien, 220, 223, 233, 235, 240–42; and the charge of sabotage, 233, 235. See also occupational hazards agency, 197, 198; workers’, 1, 13, 28, 97, 98, 198, 215, 221n, 339, 428, 435 agriculture; as productive sector, 125; collectivization of, 10, 40, 78, 83; mechanization of, 150; parallel employment in both industry and, 145, 148–51 (see also peasant-workers); seasonal work in, 101, 149; strikes in, 113; subsistence, 57, 69, 151; unemployment in, 30, 31; women in, 200; agricultural cooperatives, 38, 84–85, 92, 114, 129; agricultural labor, 3, 15, 17–18 Albania, 9, 17, 18, 73–86, 89–92, 96–98 Austria, 146, 192, 410, 423, 426, 431, 434, 435 Austro-Hungarian Empire, 148, 318, 421, 429, 437 Basic Organization of Associated Labor (BOAL), 401, 413 Belgium, 429 Beria, Lavrentiy, 290, 304 Bitterfeld electrochemical combine (VEB Elektrochemisches Kombinat Bitterfeld), GDR, 228–29, 231, 232, 234, 237, 238, 239, 240, 242  blat, 8

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 459

Bohemian-Moravian Glassworks,  Krásno nad Bečvou, Czechoslovakia, 315–16  Boris Kidric Institute for Nuclear Sciences, 277, 281–83, 285, 290, 296–98, 302–3  brigades, 91, 94–95, 97, 233, 435 Bulgaria, 6, 10, 17, 18, 73–91, 94–98, 101, 102, 156, 410 Burawoy, Michael, 53, 103, 168  bureaucracy, 34, 276, 286, 400, 406–7, 409, 411, 413, 418 bureaucratization, 206, 213, 384, 400, 417 bureaucrats, 16, 229, 381, 381–84, 398, 408 capital, 64, 99, 413, 435; financial, 80, 421; industrial, 250; social, 195n, 408; relation to labor, 148, 260 capitalism, 3, 155, 158, 161, 221, 373, 376; history of, 373, 422, 423n; communist image of, 41, 69–70, 312, 391, 438; commonalities with state socialism, 147, 157–58, 161, 183n, 246, 261, 269, 374, 390, 395, 399, 401, 404, 422, 425, 427–28; contrasted to state socialism, 40–42, 94, 98, 146–47, 191, 219, 222–23, 276, 333, 337, 357, 373–74, 381, 409–10, 415; trans-bloc relations with state-socialism, 8, 22, 79, 80, 160, 202, 241, 417; legacy of pre-communist, 41, 47, 54, 96, 141, 148, 220, 312, 318, 436; postsocialist return to, 10, 194, 410n, 418 Carl Zeiss factory, Jena, 173, 177, 180  Center for Occupational Health (CPB), Belgrade, 277–80, 287–88 

2020.05.12. 19:28:10

460

Index

Central Women’s Committee of the National Federation of Trade Unions (SZOTNB), Hungary, 339, 347–48, 350–51, 358, 363–64, 365, 366 Chernobyl, 223n12, 274, 287 childcare; as domestic work, 15, 212, 339, 340, facilities, 201, 204–8, 211, 232 children, 41, 64, 199, 207, 208, 213, 232, 239, 328, 407; as workers, 81; child allowance, 117; protection of, 221; working women with, 43, 45, 180, 181, 262; left home by working mothers, 199, 205, 207, 208 Cluj Railway Workshops, 52f, 59, 60, 61f  Cold War, 11, 103, 222, 311, 374, 379, 437; divide, 4, 8, 22, 275, 374, 375, 389, 391, 394; legacies of, 99; new interpretations of, 8–9; terminology, 8, 9, 13, 179, 198 Comecon, 6, 78, 229, 331, 423  commodities, 2, 4, 80, 123, 129, 135, 408, 426 communism, 5–6, 12, 16; historiography of, 5–7, 9; ideology/rhetoric of, 14, 16, 125, 170, 239, 240, 309, 375; introduction of, 125, 309, 431; popularity of, 22, 46; reform of, 193, 234; goulash, 19, 168, 192, 194; national, 12; Titoist variant of, 273, 375, 378; transnational, 6; Eurocommunism, 380 communist parties, 6, 9, 11; Party of Labor of Albania, 78–79, 84; Bulgarian Communist Party, 78; Communist Party of Czechoslovakia (KSČ), 309, 311, 312, 315, 316, 318, 320, 323–26, 327, 330, 331, 333; Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED), 224, 229, 233–34, 240, 375n; Hungarian Socialist Workers’ Party; (MSZMP), 339 341, 355, 357, 360; Italian Communist Party (PCI), 379–80, 388, 392; Romanian Communist Party (PCR), 52, 67, 256, 262, 264, 428, 430, 432, 439; League of Communists of Yugoslavia (LCY), 145–46, 209, 390, 392, 396, 402–3, 416 Conference for the Social Activity of Women (KDAŽ), Yugoslavia, 203, 208  consumer culture, 134, 136, 153–54, 182, 192, 194, 410 consumerism, 191, 377, 402, 410, 418 consumption, 8, 19, 64, 125, 129n, 141, 153, 170, 182, 192, 194, 196, 197, 215, 250, 259, 412

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 460

contracts; collective, 255, 320, 436; employment, 13, 88, 117, 256, 259, 261, 330n; employment without, 85; permanent, 376; temporary, 85; obligations derived from 107–9, 145; gender, 214; social, 302 cultural workers, 168, 174–76, 179, 183, 185–91, 193 Czechoslovakia, 6, 10, 18, 21, 82, 99–119, 160, 186, 191, 234, 238, 240, 309–36, 380, 429 Dunaújváros, 17, 349 Elbasan steel factory, Albania, 74–76, 79–97 employment; abroad, 101, 106, 109, 411; benefits, 256, 282; contingent, 251; cross-border 100–101, 115n; discrimination, 221; employment offices, 27, 32–34, 40–42, 46, 108–9; illegal, 85; industrial, 76–77, 97, 148, 210; overemployment, 34; policy of, 32, 39–42, 46, 84, 87; principle of full, 16, 28, 31, 40–43, 46, 86, 97–98, 153, 194, 275, 427; regulations of, 57, 69, 74, 100, 161, 254, 255; self-employment, 154, 163; underemployment, 150, 159, 166. See also unemployment; contracts; and under woman engineers, 68, 95, 157, 205, 229, 241–42, 252 253, 256, 267, 274, 277, 293, 295, 386–87, 423, 429–31, 435; female, 209 enterprises, concept of state socialist, 373; Yugoslav-type of, 399–400. See also factories; and under state-socialist Espenhain power plant (VEB Kombinat Espenhain), GDR, 225–27, 230, 232–36, 239 ethnic minorities, 74n, 88, 94, 200. See also Roma experts, 27, 128–29, 134, 213, 226, 227, 229, 230, 233, 241–42, 246, 255–56, 282, 286, 289, 290, 296, 303, 358, 403 Fabrika automobila Priboj (FAP), 397, 398n, 404, 413, 415–16 factories; as sites of social engineering, 17, 80, 91, 96–97; cultural function of, 80; political function of, 78–80, 184, 330; social function of, 80, 97, 184–85, 200, 214, 407; symbolic meaning of, 80

2020.05.12. 19:28:10

Index factory councils, 21, 4, 310, 312, 313, 314, 318–19, 321–24, 325, 330–31. See also self-management; worker’s councils factory culture, 21, 329, 355 factory discipline. See labor discipline factory newspapers, 17, 19, 49, 50, 51, 62, 90, 95, 96, 145, 147, 152, 155, 164, 198, 203, 208, 214, 232, 234, 414, 416 Federal Nuclear Energy Commission (SKNE), Yugoslavia, 277–78, 280, 284–86, 288–300, 302–4 feminism, 14, 23, 190, 358 Fordism (post-Fordism), 184, 219, 222–23, 243, 332–33, 335 foreign workers; commodification of, 118–19; conflicts with, 110; involvement of sending country, 108–9, 111, 114–15, 117–18; protests/strikes by, 103, 111, 113–14, 117; recruitment of, 18, 88, 108, 113n, 117; Cuban, 9, 18, 101–2, 105–6, 109–12, 190; Italian, 117; Polish, 18, 100n, 101, 104–9, 111, 117, 188; Turkish, 117–18; Vietnamese, 18, 88, 101–2, 105–6, 112–117; Yugoslav, 407, 411 Foucault, Michel, 257 France, 9 21, 271n, 279, 281, 282, 292, 297–98, 303, 337, 381, 389n, 423, 426, 427, 429, 424 Geertz, Clifford, 267 gender; history of, 13, 341–42; equality, 45, 198, 204, 206, 210, 214, 337, 345, 357, 359, 361, 376; hierarchy of, 13, 43, 130; preconceptions of, 129, 131, 138, 141–42, 185, 189, 203, 398; politics of, 22, 256, 356, 370–71; relations, 198, 213; state socialist gender regimes, 22, 214–15, 340–42, 370–71; and the division of labor, 34, 35n, 200–201, 213, 342, 379, 397–98, 406; and labor relations, 28–29, 46–47, 198; and politics of labor, 124, 205, 342, 343, 345, 350, 352, 355, 356–57, 359–60, 364–66, 369–72; and recruitment, 34–35; and social blaming/shaming, 60, 124, 128–130; and the understanding of work, 28n 29, 45–46, 128, 397; and unemployment, 28, 30–31, 34–35, 37, 38, 43, 45–46, 201; and wage inequality, 21, 22, 337–38, 341, 343, 374, 354,

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 461

461

357, 360, 366, 368, 369; and working class, 275, 369 General Confederation of Labor (CGM), Romania, 248–49, 252 German Democratic Republic (GDR, East Germany), 9, 19–20, 82, 101–2, 156, 162, 167–70, 173–87, 191–93, 219–43, 321, 331, 340, 361, 370, 380 Germany (pre-1945), 158, 161, 223, 423, 426, 429, 431, 436; Nazi, 304 Germany, Federal Republic of (FRG, West Germany), 8, 79, 117–18, 130, 160, 177n, 179, 181, 186, 191, 192, 222, 223n, 225, 233, 234, 241, 334, 337, 411, 414 Gomułka, Władysław, 29, 127 Honecker, Erich, 169–70, 175, 179, 186, 192 Hořice textile factory, Czechoslovakia, 328, 335–36 Hoxha, Enver, 80 housing; conditions, 18; shortage, 17, 34, 40, 87, 150–53; socialism’s promise of, 16, 19, 167n, 170; as a right, 152, 170, 178–79, 185; state owned, 206, 415–17; temporary, 167, 170, 179, 184 (see also workers’ hostels); market, 415 Hungary, 7, 9 17, 19, 21, 56n, 57, 63, 82, 100, 104, 167–77, 179–94, 200, 201, 269, 270, 337–72, 380, 396, 426, 429, 431, 436, 437 industrial culture/tradition, 17, 75, 81, 222, 332, 411 Industrial Revolution, 2–3, 81, 148, 219 industrialization; agrarian, 17; decentralized, 343, 353; full, 77; restrained, 77; socialist, 15, 54, 69–70; Soviet-style, 11, 82, 147, 222; contradictions of, 198, 201, 206; crisis of, 22, 390; different pathways to, 81, 102; and women, 14, 200, 343; deindustrialization, 198, 392; in Albania, 74–77, 86; in Bulgaria, 74–77, 86; in Poland, 27, 31, 33; in Romania, 53, 421; in the Soviet Union, 75, 86; in Yugoslavia, 147–48, 150, 153, 164, 165, 195, 197, 397 industries; heavy, 20, 74, 77–78, 86, 424; light, 60, 77, 203, 343, 347; primary, 227; armament, 314; automotive, 93,

2020.05.12. 19:28:10

462

Index

156; chemical, 228, 237, 238, 250, 256, 425; construction, 76, 113, 113; consumer goods, 67, 78; energy, 424, 436; food processing, 52; garment, 195, 202, 351, 354, 360; leather and shoe, 347; machine engineering, 158; maritime (port and shipbuilding), 34, 391, 392; mining (coal), 23, 34, 35, 76–77, 250, 236n, 246, 253, 256, 311n, 313, 322n, 330, 421, 423–26, 428–29, 434–39; nuclear, 273–74, 276, 280–82, 284, 286, 291, 302, 303, 305; petroleum, 425; steel, 78; textile, 77, 106, 201, 204, 312, 351, 354, 365; perceived as masculine, 31, 35, 141, 343, 397; perceived as feminized, 129, 197, 343, 397 Industrija Motora Rakovica (IMR), Yugoslavia, 404, 408, 412, 417 intelligentsia (intellectuals), 175, 179, 185, 186, 190–93, 237, 240, 391, 403, 433 International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), 274, 281, 282n38, 286, 287, 291, 295 International Labour Organization (ILO), 6, 221, 260, 270, 282n38, 369n92 International Monetary Fund (IMF), 192, 195, 404 International Women’s Day, 398n, 439 internationalism, 6, 23, 118, 237, 421–23, 435–40 János Herbák factory, Cluj, 49, 52n, 60, 62, 65 Jiu Valley, Romania, 23, 250, 251, 265, 266, 421–40 Kádár, János (including Kádár regime; Kádárism), 169, 172, 184n, 185, 186, 192, 355 Koper port, Slovenia, 22, 374, 380, 382, 385, 387–92, 394 Kornai, János, 275–76, 280 Kotkin, Stephen, 1, 13, 97, 256 Kraśnik, 30, 35, 45 Kremikovci steel factory, Bulgaria, 73–97 labor; agricultural, 3, 15, 17–18; industrial, 21, 57, 75, 91–92, 147, 150, 220, 312, 342–43; intellectual, 159, 166, 414; reproductive, 2, 14–15, 20, 22, 198–99, 206, 211, 340, 369–70 (see also

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 462

domestic under work); skilled, 20 35n, 269; unskilled, 15–116, 269; division between manual and intellectual, 159, 414; fluctuation, 88–89, 93, 107, 251, 254, 256, 317; and gender (see gender; men; women); gendered division of, 34, 35n, 200–201, 213, 342, 379, 397–98, 406; hierarchies of, 11–12, 13, 19, 42–43, 64, 146, 147, 160, 162, 166, 219, 269, 360, 399, 407 414; hoarding, 84, 95, 400; organized, 82, 312, 422, 438 (see also trade unions; workers’ councils; workers’ movements); policies of, 21, 27–29, 82, 205, 342, 345, 350, 353, 360–61, 364–66, 372; politics of, 124, 355, 370, 435; regimes of, 3, 11, 18, 82, 124, 142, 150; shortage, 16, 18, 31, 42, 47, 56, 64, 86, 89, 91–92, 95, 97, 109, 118, 411; surplus, 34, 98, 156; turnover, 85–89, 106, 108, 117, 251, 254, 381, 386; waged (see wage labor). See also work labor code (law), 13, 156n, 221, 223, 249, 254, 255, 388, 401 labor competition, 16, 22, 53, 164–65, 311–14, 318, 328, 329, 331, 349 labor discipline, 13, 18–19, 49–50, 55, 68–69, 146, 411; enforcing, 57, 60, 98, 131, 136, 137, 163–64, 237, 250, 252; conflicts over, 150, 153, 159, 163, 165; problems with, 67, 93–94, 204, 265, 381–82, 413–14, 418; reasons behind violations of, 19, 94–95, 97, 409–10, 114–15, 117, 145–47, 152–55, 157; sanctioning of violations of, 19, 61, 95–96, 147, 155, 157, 161–63, 166, 319; redefinition of, 266–67. See also absenteeism labor history; historiography of, 1–15, 220–21, 269, 422; of state socialism/ communism, 1–2, 4–15, 18, 23–24, 28, 197–98, 269, 271, 329, 342, 367, 374–75, 422–23, 440; new global, 2, 9, 23, 47, 220–21, 222, 271, 422–23, 440; and women’s history, 340, 342, 371, 342 labor market, 27, 30, 33–34, 39–40, 42, 46, 56, 69, 118, 221, 246–47, 254, 260, 269–70, 359 (see also under women) labor mobility. See under migration; mobility

2020.05.12. 19:28:10

Index

463

labor productivity, 20, 54, 55, 247, 250–53, 256, 265, 268, 331–32, 433 labor protests, 13, 18, 22, 97, 103–4, 111, 113–14, 143, 246, 311, 316, 324, 327, 328, 374, 379, 385, 388, 389–90, 392, 438. See also strikes labor recruitment, 16, 17, 34, 74–76, 80–85, 88–89, 91–92, 96–98, 152, 251, 313n; campaigns of, 27, 32, 34; of foreign workers, 18, 88, 108, 113n, 117; and gender, 34–35 Lampland, Martha, 269, 396 legitimacy, 31, 57, 137, 168, 170, 175, 186, 317, 388, 394 legitimacy, crisis of, 167–68, 186, 192–93

migration; labor, 2, 9, 34, 101–2, 111, 119, 382; rural to urban, 27, 38, 148–52, 200, 334, 416; intra-bloc, 101, 115n. See also mobility miners, 23, 52, 141, 226, 233, 235, 251, 265–66, 290–92, 302, 312, 313, 328, 385, 421–44. See also under industries mobility; labor, 9, 18, 257, 415; social, 12, 13, 75, 98, 130, 171, 185, 198, 204, 211, 212, 215, 314, 371, 381; internal geographic, 75, 82, 97–98, 183; crossborder, 99, 101; intra-bloc, 18, 101; overseas, 101; restrictions on, 82–84, 86, 96, 97; “socialist,” 99. See also migration

Makedonka textile factory, Štip, 205, 207 management, managers, 81, 184, 275–76, 400, 405; collusion/lenience of, 13, 16, 95–96, 160, 162–63, 265, 320, 382; workers’ resentment toward, 19, 165–66; conflicts among, 163; criticism of, 264–67, 269, 322, 391, 401, 406; managerial authority, 248, 325, 400, 413–14; limitations on the authority of, 323, 361, 400, 401, 415; managerial “dictatorship,” 103; managerial control of labor, 16, 68, 131, 145–46, 150, 151, 156, 157–58, 160, 161, 162–63, 165, 250, 260, 267, 319, 325; motivation of workers by, 17, 20, 63, 164, 399; resistance to directives from above, 59 64, 75, 83, 91, 97, 142, 254, 315n, 319; techniques, 160–62, 163, 260; violence against, 136–37, 383–84, 385; women in, 205, 208–9, 211–12; workers promoted into, 314, 322, 408; workers’ resistance to, 157–58, 166, 210, 323, 324, 326. See also self-management men; and employment, 30–31, 34–35, 44, 46, 343; and family allowance, 38, 45– 46; class and status differences among, 20, 183; competition between woman and, 22, 41n, 43, 370; domination of in decision-making, 130, 211, 214, 263, 271; industries/occupations associated with, 31, 35, 141, 343, 397, 406; male sociality, 60–61; preconceptions about, 43, 398; privileged position of, 46, 212–13, 369, 370; seen as breadwinner, 37, 44–45. See also gender; patriarchy

National Council of Hungarian Women (MNOT), 339 National Federation of Trade Unions (SZOT), Hungary, 339, 341, 343, 350–53, 358, 363, 365, 366, 367 neoliberalism, 24, 198, 221, 395–96 Netherlands, the, 8, 429 New Economic Mechanism, 340, 342, 352, 359, 367

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 463

occupational hazards, 23, 221–22, 246, 252, 257, 270, 291, 427. See also work safety organized labor. See under labor patriarchy, 14, 201, 202, 210, 214, 398n; state, 198, 215. See also gender peasant-workers, 3, 17, 19, 38, 43, 57, 64, 69–70, 75, 93–94, 145, 148–51, 163 pensions; disability, 209, 245–48, 255, 260, 262, 268, 269–70; retirement, 16, 33, 254, 256, 257, 407, 428; widow and orphan, 230–31; reforms of, 245–47, 256–57, 259, 264, 269. See also social insurance Petroşani Mining Company, 265–66 Petroșani Mining Institute, 430–31 piecework, 16, 62, 250, 269, 312 Pittaway, Mark, 1, 24, 82, 269, 353n Plzeň Škoda Works, 311–12, 319, 324, 327 Plzeň, Czechoslovakia, 310, 323 Poland, 6, 7, 12, 16, 18, 27–47, 82, 93, 100, 101, 104–9, 111, 117, 123–43, 170, 188, 331, 380, 385, 423, 429, 432, 435 popular culture, 196, 202, 398n

2020.05.12. 19:28:10

464

Index

post-socialist transition, 10, 23, 197–99, 335 Radio Free Europe, 384–85 recruitment. See labor recruitment Revolutionary Trade Union Movement (ROH), Czechoslovakia, 315, 317, 318, 320, 326 Rijeka port and shipyard, 22, 374, 380–94 Roma; workers, 94, 175, 189–90, 368n, women, 190, 368n; bias against, 190 Romania, 17, 21, 23, 49–72, 93, 245–71, 410, 421–40 Rositz tar processing works (VEB Teerverarbeitungswerk Rositz), GDR, 226–28, 231–34, 236, 239, 240 Russia, 94, 312 San Marco shipyard, Trieste, 374, 380, 389–90 self-management, Yugoslav system of, 12, 19, 147, 158, 156, 159–161, 273, 276, 374, 376, 379–80, 385, 387, 392, 400– 403; contradictions of, 196, 413, 418; criticism of, 381, 405, 409, 412–414, 418; decentralization of, 413; women in, 198, 206–9, 212–14; and managerial control, 19, 146, 157, 400–401, 405, 408; and distribution of social benefits, 151–52; and market mechanisms, 22, 376, 381, 399, 405, 408; and Taylorism, 156, 159, 162, 166; in Italy, 379, 389 social insurance, 20–21, 151, 245–49, 254–264, 269–71, 285, 407, 427. See also welfare; pensions social workers, 204, 207, 209, 230 socialism, 4–5, 178, 179, 183, 404, 421; cooperative, 318; market, 12, 22, 24n, 195–96, 373, 376, 396, 401, 405, 417 (see also goulash communism); ideals of, 183n, 204, 212, 380, 401, 405, 408, 411; understanding of, 22, 40, 397, 405; “actual existing,” 10, 14, 185, 224; “with human face,” 185, 240. See also state socialism, communism socialist; emulation, 17, 50, 60; accumulation, 50, 54–55, 57, 65, 70–72; subjectivity, 91; modernity, 102, 197; morality, 416 Solidarity (Solidarność), 12–13, 111, 135–40, 143

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 464

Soviet Union, 6, 10–11, 33, 53, 64, 78, 79, 86, 93, 95, 101, 102, 153, 156, 158, 183n, 193, 195, 223n, 251, 257, 290, 296, 302–304, 331, 335, 376, 423, 426, 430, 431; Soviet model, 4, 9–11, 62, 82, 125, 222, 242, 319, 395, 425, 430, 432–33; Soviet methods, 53, 58–59, 82, 313, 435; Soviet-style economies, 11, 56, 125–26, 159, 376, 399. See also under industrialization Sovietization, 11 Stakhanovites, 17, 52–65, 68, 314, 432 state security, 88, 91–92, 113, 180, 224, 226, 229, 230, 241, 277, 280, 289–90, 304, 315–16, 320, 327 state socialism, 4–5, 31, 179, 198, 243, 271, 273, 275, 310, 439–40; ideology of, 12, 36, 280, 283, 374, 390; labor relations in, 5 11, 22–23, 28, 46–47, 360; late, 14, 22, 182, 213, 395–96; early, 51, 53–55, 57–58, 70–71, 424; end/collapse of, 15, 21, 168, 311, 329, 332, 395; contradictions of, 70, 198, 206; institutions of, 75, 98; consolidation of, 124; everyday life of, 13, 19, 21, 123–24, 141–42, 168–169, 185, 196–98, 214, 327–28, 396; criticism of, 168, 172, 175, 185, 303, 332; liberalization/reform of, 12, 21, 22, 127, 146, 153, 175, 186, 193, 203, 240, 321, 324– 26, 331, 339, 340, 342, 382, 396–99, 401–9, 418; promises of, 16, 18–21, 46, 64, 173, 185. See also socialism; communism; post-socialist transition state socialist; enterprises, 8, 13, 21, 77, 276, 373; factories, 14, 57, 62, 70, 94, 97–98; trade, 19, 124–28, 141; political economy, 55; productivism, 51, 260, 323 strikes, 334–35; authorities’ response to, 309–10, 316, 327–28, 383–84, 387, 390–91, 428; culture of, 389; regulation of, 309, 316, 320; research of, 333–35; wildcat, 334–35, 428; and violence, 326, 382–84, 389, 428; by Cuban workers, 111; by Vietnamese workers, 18, 113–14, 117; in Czechoslovakia, 21, 309–11, 315–16, 321, 328; in Italy, 388–90, 392; in Poland, 6, 12, 138–140; in Romania, 428; in Yugoslavia, 22, 210, 381–88. See also labor protests

2020.05.12. 19:28:10

Index Taylorism, 150, 155, 157, 160, 161, 260, 270; Soviet adaptation of, 54, 59, 62; and self-management, 156, 159, 162, 166; resistance to, 158 Tehnofrig, Cluj, Romania, 52n, 68–69, 71 Tovarna avtomobilov in motorjev (TAM), Serbia, 146–47, 149, 152, 154–58, 160–61, 164 trade; communist perception of, 125–26; cooperative, 125, 130; culture of, 128, 135, 141; domestic, 108; export, 108; petty, 398; private, 32, 125; statesocialist, 124–27, 128, 140, 141; trade personnel, 124, 125, 129, 131; trade tourism, 8; trade workers, 124, 137, 138, 140 trade unions, 5, 21, 317, 356–57, 360–61; independent, 6, 135, 136 (see also Soldarity); women in, 21, 181, 338–39, 348–50, 354, 357, 364, 366, 371–72; and gender policies, 338–41, 346–48, 351–55, 358–59, 363–67; and labor discipline, 164; and labor disputes, 315, 317, 320; and labor safety, 224, 226, 248, 252; and social assistance, 230–31; and social benefits, 231, 254, 264; and wage policies, 343–45, 352, 360; and worker’s self-governance, 21, 310, 312, 318, 320, 322, 324 training, 16, 18, 23, 53, 88, 92, 101–2, 113, 117, 164, 204–5, 208, 242, 267, 274, 293, 313, 347–48, 358, 433; on-site, 74, 93, 102 Trieste, 8; port and shipyard, 374–75, 377, 378, 379, 380, 385, 389–393, 394 Ulbricht, Walter, 169, 226, 240, unemployment; under state socialism, 16, 27–28, 31–32, 34, 36, 40, 42, 97; interwar, 29, 30–31, 39, 40; hidden, 28, 30, 31, 33, 39; rural, 30, 31; urban, 30, 78, 86; youth, 33, 37; and gender, 28, 30–31, 34–35, 37, 38, 43, 45–46, 201; definitions of, 27, 36–38, 39; discourse on, 34, 36, 44; measures against, 38–39, 92; research on, 39–40; in Albania, 92; in Poland, 28–35; in the Soviet Union, 86; in Yugoslavia, 153, 155, 165, 195, 381, 399, 401, 402 urbanization, 53, 70n, 83, 147–50, 165, 200, 201

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 465

465

Verdery, Katherine, 77 wage; policies of, 324–25, 331, 341–45, 352, 355, 360–61, 367–69; gender gap, 341, 343, 347, 354, 360; system of distribution of, 344–45 wage labor, 2–3, 8, 15, 18, 21, 69, 81, 97, 153, 199, 269–71, 376 Wajda, Andrzej, 13 welfare; social, 13, 16, 23, 247, 256; services to women, 201–2, 206, 211–13, 214; suspicion toward recipients of, 246–47, 260 welfare dictatorships, 167–68, 170, 176, 179, 183, 186, 191, 194, 224 welfare state, 5, 222, 407 women; and employment, 14, 29, 35, 38, 40, 43–46, 200, 204, 210, 211n; and the labor market, 16, 29, 34–35, 37, 38, 43–46, 190n, 197, 200–201; as workers, 14–15, 197, 204–5, 340; as industrial workers, 35n, 197, 202, 206, 210, 214, 342–43, 349, 357, 359, 367, 369; double and triple burden of, 19-20, 22, 198–200, 203, 206–7, 210, 212, 214, 339, 370; political participation of, 200, 207–10; productivization of, 27, 35; and reproductive labor, 14, 22, 44–45, 198, 206, 211; paid work of, 14, 15, 19, 45, 198, 199, 202–4, 340, 343; unpaid work of, 201, 202, 205, 206; combining paid and unpaid work, 19, 200–201, 206–7, 208, 210, 211–12, 214–15, 370 (see also double and triple burden of ); class differences among, 20, 198, 211–12; discrimination against, 21, 29, 38, 43, 46, 212, 221, 337–38, 347, 352, 354–55, 358, 368, 369; emancipation of, 34, 172, 191, 197, 198, 199–200, 202, 281, 398n; socialist ideal of, 202, 205–6; unmarried, 172, 191, 213; and maternity leave, 201, 340. See also feminism; gender; men Women’s International Democratic Federation (WIDF), 6–7, 337, 367 women’s politics, 339–40, 342, 356, 361, 362, work accidents. See accidents work; conceptualization of, 27–29, 36, 38, 46–47; conditions, 18, 20–21, 68, 86, 87, 98, 103–4, 108, 111, 115, 147,

2020.05.12. 19:28:10

466

Index

150, 155–56, 209, 211, 220–21, 246, 249, 251, 260, 264, 266, 269, 292, 343, 344, 346–47, 407, 440; culture of, 22, 327, 409, 414; domestic, 44–45, 199, 201–2, 205, 210, 212–14, 231 (see also childcare; women; reproductive labor); industrial (see under labor); paid and unpaid (see under women); unproductive, 39, 43, 44, 125, 406; politicization of, 21, 311–12, 314, 330, 405. See also labor work safety (Occupational Health and Safety), 20, 21, 219–24, 242, 260, 262, 264, 266–69, 273, 286, 305, 427–28; inspection, 223, 237; policies of, 223, 252; reform, 248, 252; regulations, 20, 220, 224, 241, 249, 252–53, 281, 282, 303, 427; safety culture, 242, 283, 303. See also occupational hazards workers; communist/socialist ideal of, 51, 57–58, 63, 69, 96, 117, 149, 151, 275, 379, 391; culture, 23, 82, 194, 317, 389, 421, 423, 440n; industrial, 7, 52, 76, 81, 82, 89, 97–98, 117, 131, 145, 149, 163, 169, 197, 199, 202, 231, 313, 343, 367–68, 374–75, 398, 402, 410, 439; skilled, 22, 34, 45, 51, 56, 64, 87, 103, 152, 157, 211, 248, 275, 313, 325, 343, 353n, 370, 397, 409, 414, 418, 429; unskilled, 34 64, 70, 82, 88, 92, 152, 165, 166, 200, 211, 212, 338, 343, 351, 367 368n, 429; semi-skilled, 338, 343, 349, 354, 367, 397; tensions/differentiation between skilled and unskilled, 12, 13, 17, 21, 41n, 63, 56–57, 152, 313, 325, 343, 405, 415–16; blue-collar, 31, 34,

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 466

37, 38, 39, 86, 92, 100, 102, 115n 152, 154, 157–58, 162, 166, 206, 359, 398, 401, 402, 405–16; white-collar, 34, 37, 38, 39, 42, 152, 157, 211, 406, 415–16, 417; making of socialist, 11, 57, 62, 71, 80, 82, 96, 203; shock workers, 52, 260, 311–14, 432 (see also Stakhanovites); commodification of, 118–19, 269–70; agency of, 1, 13, 28, 97, 98, 198, 215, 221n, 339, 428, 435. See also foreign workers; peasant-workers workers’ councils, 12, 19, 21, 147, 156, 159, 161–62, 164, 205–6, 208, 325, 382, 384, 386–87, 396, 400–401, 408. See also factory councils; self-management workers’ hostels; in the GDR, 173–86; in Hungary, 170–72, 187–94; conditions at, 170–74, 187–88; as hotbeds of deviance, 171–72, 176, 185; permanent residents of, 170 workers’ movements, 8, 12, 111, 135, 221, 318, 371, 376, 379, 392, 422 workers’ state, 1, 11, 16, 173, 175, 239, 241 World Federation of Trade Unions, 6 World Health Organization, 282n, 287 Yugoslav People’s Army ( JNA), 295–97, 300–301, 303 Yugoslavia, 8, 12, 19, 21, 22, 28, 93, 101, 145–66, 195–215, 273–305, 373–94, 395–418, 429 Zastava (Zavodi Crvena Zastava), Serbia, 145, 146–48, 152, 154, 156–58, 160, 161, 164

2020.05.12. 19:28:10

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 467

2020.05.12. 19:28:10

CEU Press Book Series

Work and Labor: Transdisciplinary Studies for the 21st Century The peer-reviewed Book Series Work and Labor: Transdisciplinary Studies for the 21st Century contributes to an emerging field of inquiry drawing from the insights of transnational history, geography, anthropology, and sociology. The Series seeks fresh perspectives on: structures, cultures, and habitats of working lives; regimes of value in capitalist, state-socialist, and developmental contexts; structures and practices of power and inequality that undergird them; situated biographies, constructed within and against such structures and practices; and transnational inequalities and geographies of labor and capital. Work and Labor also publishes local and regional case studies of work, whether within or outside Central and Eastern Europe, that specialize in any relevant empirical field or combination of fields, including migration, urbanism, family and community, gender and other categories of difference, state policies, social movements, union politics and labor activism, and past and present crises of labor and hegemony.

Editorial Board: Eszter Bartha Adrian Grama Don Kalb David Ost Susan Zimmermann Forthcoming title: Goran Music, Making and Breaking the Yugoslav Working Class: The Story of Two Self-Managed Factories (2020) Inquiries and submission of manuscripts: Please contact Susan Zimmermann, [email protected]

Labor in State 002 könyv.indb 468

2020.05.12. 19:28:10