EVOLUTION OF THE COERCIVE STRATEGY AIMED AT WORKERS OF THE SIBERIAN DEFENSE INDUSTRY IN THE LATE 1930S – EARLY 1940S

• Main Author: R. E. Romanov
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Kemerovo State University 2018-12-01
• Series: Вестник Кемеровского государственного университета
• Subjects: defense industry; stimulation of working personnel; compulsory strategy
• Online Access: https://vestnik.kemsu.ru/jour/article/view/2572

The study features the origins and development of the coercive component of the system of social and labor relations in the defense industry of the pre-war Siberia. Its goal is to identify the prerequisites and causes, the general trends and specifics of this strengthening, the essence of which was in the qualitative  transformation of the personnel incentive strategy "The lower the discipline – the higher the punishment". The methodological basis of the research is the author's version of the concept defined by American historians and sociologists Ch. and K. Tilly about the three universal factors of labor motivation (reward, motivation, and coercion). According to their theory, such a strategy acted as a coercive mechanism that was enacted with the help of material, moral, disciplinary (ordinary), and criminal (extraordinary) sanctions. The methodology shows the evolution of the scope of punishment in the Siberian military industry in the period from December 28, 1938 to June 21, 1941. At the first stage (December 28, 1938 – June 25, 1940), the Soviet state made an unsuccessful attempt to adapt the ordinary practices of compulsory strategy to the policy of militarization of the economy, which resulted in an increase in the proportion of dismissed truants in the general turnover of workers. At the second stage (June 26, 1940 – June 21, 1941), the government relied on a combination of ordinary and extraordinary practices, which made it possible to reduce such disciplinary offenses as truancy and unauthorized leave. However, in Siberia this effect was less tangible due to the fact that the regional defense industry was at the stage of initial deployment, which was carried out mainly by the working youth, who had not yet acquired the norms of industrial labor culture.