The 'State Labour Reserves': An Episode in Soviet Social HistoryAuthor(s): Mervyn MatthewsSource: The Slavonic and East European Review, Vol. 61, No. 2 (Apr., 1983), pp. 238-251Published by: the Modern Humanities Research Association and University College London, School ofSlavonic and East European StudiesStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4208630 .

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SEER, Vol. 6i, No. 2, April 983

The 'State Labour Reserves': An

Episode in Soviet Social History

MERVYN MATTHEWS

THE Soviet State Labour Reserve (SLR) system, designed to train young people in manual trades under properly controlled condi- tions, rather than on the job, was established in the tense days of I940. During the two decades of its existence as a separate entity it developed a number of unusual functions, and had a rather specific social impact. The aim of this short article is to outline, on the basis of hitherto unpublished Soviet materials, its more salient features.1

The history of the SLR system under Stalin falls naturally into three parts. The first extends from its establishment up to the end of the Second World War, when it seems to have partly disintegrated; the second, which began with an attempt to revive it, ended in the early fifties. In its final years, that is, until its transformation into the existing vocational network in I959, the SLR system was oversha- dowed by Khrushchev's experiments in other educational sectors, and was again rather neglected. Here we shall concentrate on what happened during the Stalin period, as being of most interest to the social historian.

I

The Main Administration for State Labour Reserves was estab- lished by a decree of the U.S.S.R. Sovnarkom on 2 October 1940. The preamble to this measure stated that in view of the need to 'ensure a constant flow of new labour into the mines, transport enterprises and factories . . . the state has the task of organizing the training of new workers from among the urban and rural population, and creating the necessary labour reserves for industry.' The new administration was to provide the answer.2

This explanation did not really go to the bottom of the matter, however, for industrial workers had been needed in great numbers since the early thirties, and most of them had received as much

M. Matthews is Reader in Soviet Studies at the University of Surrey.

1 This topic is treated briefly in a section of my book Education in the Soviet Union: Policies and Institutions since Stalin, London, I 982.

2 Trudovyye rezervy SSSR, sbornik ofitsial'nykh materialov, comp. M. S. Rozofarov, Moscow, I 950, p. 3 (hereafter referred to as Trudovyye rezervy SSSR).

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'STATE LABOUR RESERVES' 239

training as they needed at work. The State Labour Reserves were in fact brought into being by more specific factors. One was the exceed- ingly high output targets of the third five-year plan; a second was the comparative inefficiency of the old orgnabor system of recruiting new workers, primarily from the peasantry; a third was the failure of the existing schools for manual trades (Shkoly fabrichno-zavodskogo uchenichestva, hereafter FZU) to provide enough skilled labour, gra- duations from them having fallen considerably since the early thir- ties. Fourthly, the labour market was becoming increasingly regimented, and the mobilization which the SLR schools were to practise fitted that trend. Labour mobilization in one form or another can be traced back to Trotsky's 'labour army' of 1920, while graduates of the FZU schools, secondary special and higher educa- tional institutions had been subject to state posting since the end of that decade.

The main provisions of the October decree may be summed up as follows. The Sovnarkom acquired the right to 'call up' between 8oo,ooo and i ,000,ooo youths aged from 14 to 17 years annually for training. The operation was to be centrally planned; collective farms had to provide two recruits for every hundred able-bodied members, while the quotas for local soviets were to be decided at higher levels. Soon after the inauguration of the system, girls aged I5 to I8 were also made liable to the draft. The mobilization decree did not mention any formal entrance examinations, though entrants were supposed to pass a medical fitness test.

A complete new school network could not, of course, be set up overnight, and many of the fifteen hundred institutions in the system were taken over from elsewhere. Some goo FZU schools, for exam- ple, were transferred to the SLR in this way (the FZU schools left outside the system served, it seems, the light, textile and food indus- tries). The geographical distribution of the State Labour Reserve thus reflected that of the former FZU schools and of industry itself. The SLR establishments, which were staffed by 'teachers' of general subjects and 'masters of production (skills)', trained workers in some eight hundred specialities needed mostly for heavy industry and construction. By I950 (the first year for which a comprehensive listing is available) about 70 per cent of the trainees were fitters, turners, carpenters, masons, plasterers and electricians.3

The schools themselves were of two distinct types - trade, rail- way and mining uchilishcha which provided two-year courses in rather more advanced skills, primarily for young people with seven

3 A. N. Veselov. Professional'no-tekhnicheskoye obrazovaniye v SSSR, Moscow, I96I, pp. 344, 346; Trud v SSSR, statisticheskiy sbornik, Moscow, I 968, p. 312 (hereafter referred to as Trud v SSSR).

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240 MERVYN MATTHEWS

years of general education; and shkoly fabrichno-zavodskogo obucheniya (FZO) and mining schools, where the courses lasted generally from six to ten months. The curricula in both cases were strongly biased towards productive activities; in the uchilishcha 70 per cent, and in the FZO schools 8o per cent of the time was devoted to what was euphemistically called 'production instruction'. The remainder went on simple technological, physical and military training, while the uchilishcha also taught some general studies.

In social terms, the SLR were meant to take the least privileged youngsters in Soviet society. Educational requirements for entry, as we have noted, were low or non-existent: and once registered in the establishments trainees were offered but little by way of material recompense, even when judged against the harsh conditions of life outside. They were entitled to free accommodation in dormitories, communal food and free uniforms (the wearing of which was obligatory). There was, however, no pocket money or stipend, and SLR premises had to be maintained by the inhabitants. The schools had to sign contracts for the sale of goods produced, which meant that trainees soon came under the production pressures normal in Soviet enterprises. This at least allowed the directors to pay them something, even though, for ideological reasons, the word 'pay' could not be used to describe it. The educational, rather than production, role of the SLR was always emphasized for propaganda purposes. It was hardly coincidental that on the same day as the system was established Pravda announced the introduction of fees for enrolment in the senior classes of general schools, in secondary special and higher educational establishments, together with a reduction of some student maintenance grants. The differentiating effects of these several measures require no comment.

The Main Administration for State Labour Reserves was a powerful body in that it had All-Union status and was directly attached to the Sovnarkom. It established offices throughout the country, with pyramidal subordination; the first mobilization order that it issued covered no less than seventy-two oblasti, kraya and republics.4

The Administration was headed by a director, with the usual collegium of leading officials, and possessed an elaborate array of departments. The central office in Moscow had to 'compile plans for training in the State Labour Reserves by trade; present them to the U.S.S.R. Sovnarkom for approval: and control fulfilment of

4 Ye. P. Rachkov. 'Podgotovka Gosudarstvennykh trudovykh rezervov v gody Velikoy Otechestvennoy voyny' (unpublished Candidate of Science Dissertation, Moscow University, I 954), p. 38.

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'STATE LABOUR RESERVES' 24I

approved plans'.5 The local offices drew up recruitment plans within a national framework; corrections were introduced at various stages, to ensure the satisfaction of commissariats' labour demands and, if required, the territorial redistribution of trainees. All plans had to receive the final approval of the U.S.S.R. Sovnarkom, before being passed back down the chain for implementation. The actual recruitment of individuals was carried out by 'mobilization commis- sions' consisting of representatives of the executive committee of the local soviet and State Labour Reserves office, the secretary of the local Komsomol committee, a medical officer and a representative of the local Trades Union Council.

The placement of SLR trainees was a comparatively simple matter, in that they were usually sent to the enterprises with which their training establishments were linked, or in which they had done their production practice. Preliminary plans for this operation were drawn up by local offices, and forwarded to the central authorities for approval or modification. Other checks were, of course, kept on the inflow of young workers by means of enterprise labour plans (which were approved by the commissariats concerned) and the State Planning Authority, Gosplan.

We may presume, given the number of trainees involved, that a great deal of unofficial co-operation was needed between the various schools and enterprises in fixing estimates and easing difficulties which inevitably developed.

The first contingent of SLR pupils, enrolled in October and November I940, numbered about 6oo,ooo (slightly different figures were given in different newspaper reports). About half of them went into the FZO schools and half into the uchilishcha: three-quarters of them were boys, and nearly two-thirds came from the villages. Some twenty large-scale recruitment drives caused intakes to grow quickly; but the rate was not maintained, and by 1945, tojudge from graduations, it had fallen back to something like starting level. During the war years the SLR trained about 2.5 million workers an impressive figure, though one which must be judged against the I I .3 million who learned directly on the job.6 The relative merits of the two methods in fact remained a matter of contention.

The initial response to the recruiting drive was hailed as a splendid illustration of the willingness of Soviet youth to acquire skills through attractive new channels. On io October 1940, Pravda announced that I, OO,OOO applications had been received, and that in some regions there were many times as many applicants as there

5 See references to the Polozheniye of I April I941, in Sbornik prikazov i instrmktsiy Ministerstva trudovykh rezervov SSSR, 1946 iyanvar' -fevral' I947, Moscow, 1947.

6 Trud v SSSR, pp. 305, 320.

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242 MERVYN MATTHEWS

were places. Yet figures published in Trud on 23 November I 940 cast doubt on this claim: according to this newspaper only 409,505, - or 71 per cent - of the 668,564 recruits were volunteers, which meant that I6o,ooo were pulled in against their will. Even so, some of the schools were apparently not quite full.

As might have been expected, many of the SLR recruits were unsuitable. According to an unpublished decree of the Main Admi- nistration entitled 'On the fulfilment of the Edict of the Supreme Soviet of the U.S.S.R. "On the State Labour Reserves"', trainees were sometimes physically unfit for work; below the prescribed age- limits; below the minimal educational level (e.g. being admitted to uchilishcha with only two classes of general schooling) and unaware of their responsibilities under the terms of the mobilization orders.7

Mobilization further implied legal sanctions against persons who failed to comply with instructions, and SLR recruitment plans were, like other state measures, commonly believed to have the force of law. Yet, strange though it might seem, the call-up was not initially backed by any formal penalty for refusal, and, in theory, young people had the right to say 'no'. 'Even the call-up into the Trade and FZO schools was by no means mobilization in the true sense of the word,' wrote Yu. P. Orlovsky, a legal scholar, in the easier days of the mid-fifties, 'since there was no established judicial responsibility on the part of the persons concerned for refusing to appear before the call-up committee . '8

Moreover, if the recruit appeared before the commission, but did not go into the appointed school, he still did not break the law. According to a directive letter of the U.S.S.R. People's Commissar- iat ofJustice of the i i September I 943, recruits refusing to do so were to have the laws relating to the State Labour Reserves explained to them and their parents, and were to be subjected to 'measures of social pressure'.9

It is difficult to judge what really happened in such cases, but much emphasis was placed on 'explanatory work' conducted by the State Labour Reserves offices, doubtless with the assistance of the governing boards of collective farms, Trade Union and Komsomol organizations.

The legal position was, however, quite specific once young persons had registered at a SLR establishment. A draconian edict of the U.S.S.R. Supreme Soviet of 28 December I940, entitled 'On the

7 Rachkov, op. cit., p. 52. 8 YU. P. Orlovsky, 'Pravovoye regulirovaniye podgotovki i povysheniya kvalifikatsii

rabochikh kadrov v SSSR' (unpublished Candidate of Science Dissertation, Moscow University, 1955), p. 79.

9 Ibid.

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'STATE LABOUR RESERVES' 243

Responsibility of Pupils for Unauthorized Departure from the State Labour Reserves', stated that flight from a school, as well as systematic and crude violation of school discipline leading to expulsion, made the culprit liable to a sentence of up to one year's imprisonment in a labour colony. An internal instruction sent out in 1943 indicated that school directors did not always prosecute; this was possibly because the penalties were so severe. Nevertheless the edict appears to have remained in force at least for the duration of the war.10 Heavy desertion was a natural consequence both of involun- tary recruitment and bad living conditions in the schools, but the authorities at that time failed to provide data from which it could be calculated.

As to the legal position of those who finished their courses, clause IO of the October I940 decree stated that all 'should consider themselves mobilized, and obliged to work continuously for four years in state enterprises, at the direction of the Main Administra- tion of the State Labour Reserves, at rates of pay usual for the job'. Desertion at this stage was presumably punishable under the general labour law of 26 June 1940, which stipulated a sentence of from two to four months imprisonment. SLR trainees remained on the Administration's lists throughout the period of mobilization, and were liable for military service only after the four years were completed.

II

The early decline of intakes into the SLR system meant that by I 946 the output of trainees was down to a modest 376,ooo. Major reasons for this were undoubtedly the destruction of a large number of schools during the German advance, the uprooting and transfer of others to eastern regions, recruitment difficulties and a marked degeneration in their functioning. A decree of 25 August I945 contained some hair-raising comments on this last matter. Trainees had been put on accelerated courses and used for production work; teaching was bad, textbooks, premises and equipment such as machine tools, were lacking; there was a great shortage of teachers; too many specialities were being taught; new trainees were not properly assigned to suitable groups, or were recruited at irregular intervals.1" Clearly, in the face of these drawbacks, mobilization on the scale originally envisaged was impracticable.

Ibid., p. 8o; Trudovyye rezervy SSSR, p. 82. 11 F. L. Blinchevsky and G. I. Zelenko, Professional'no-tekhnicheskoye obrazovaniye rabochikh

v SSSR, Moscow, 1957, pp. 8o, 9' .

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244 MERVYN MATTHEWS

Yet, faced with the extensive tasks of post-war reconstruction, the authorities decided to attempt another massive expansion. More funds were made available, and a campaign was quickly mounted. The SLR were instructed, under the terms of the 1946-50 Five-Year Plan, to turn out no less than 4.5 million workers, as against the 7.7 million to be trained directly 'on production'. In the event, the numbers of young people finishing the schools increased to a peak of one million in I 948- and then slumped again. The directives of the original Plan (it was revised downwards) were 24 per cent under- fulfilled, as only 3.4 million workers were trained in the course of it. On the other hand, over eleven million workers were said to have acquired new skills at the bench.12 In terms of numbers, therefore, the SLR system once more failed rather badly: and no firm intake figures were given in the directives of the next Five-Year Plan, approved by the Communist Party Congress in I952. The official reactions to this failure ranged from defensive assertions that the SLR had met the immediate demands of the economy, to depreca- tion of the continuing decline.13 The faults in the system, which had been apparent from the first, were no doubt still to blame. Although the intakes into both uchilishcha and FZO fell, the former institu- tions, which offered a more substantial course, held up better.

In their general character, the SLR establishments seem to have changed but little. The 'production' element in the curriculum, which had been allowed to rise to even higher levels during the war, was cut back, but still took up over sixty per cent of the time in the uchilishcha in I945. This level was maintained into the fifties. Growing emphasis seems to have been placed on technical dis- ciplines at the expense of general educational subjects, a trend which could be permitted as the general educational level of the trainees rose. No later details are available for FZO curricula, but their already short courses offered little scope for change. The SLR system thus remained basically unintegrated with the nation's general education sector.

It is noteworthy that the expansion of the SLR in the mid-forties was accompanied by a strengthening of the bureaucratic base. In May 1946 the Main Administration was elevated to the status of an All-Union Ministry, and the Orgnabor recruiting offices were put under its control. Documents relating to the new structure showed that no less than thirty departments controlled its activities at the

12 Trud v SSSR; see pp. 305, 320 for figures used here and below. 13 M. N. Kurov, 'Komsomol - aktivnyy pomoshchnik partii v podgotovke i vospitanii

kvalifitsirovannykh kadrov rabochego klassa v sisteme Gosudarstvennykh Trudovykh Rezervov SSSR, I946-I950' (unpublished Candidate of Science Dissertation, Lenin- grad University, I955), p. I I I.

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'STATE LABOUR RESERVES 245

centre, while the local offices continued to operate at republic, kray, oblast' and district levels.14

Ministerial status was, it seems, retained until March I 953, when, in the course of extensive ministerial amalgamations, the SLR became a Main Administration again, under the scarcely appropri- ate aegis of the Ministry of Culture; by then the output of trainees was down to 324,000, and its fortunes were at a very low ebb. But at the end of the year it was charged with the important task of training agricultural mechanics and drivers, so when the ministerial system was de-amalgamated in March I954, the Main Administration of State Labour Reserves was attached directly to the Council of Ministers. It found shelter there until it was finally replaced, in July 1959, by the U.S.S.R. Committee for Professional and Technical Education. 15

III

The uchilishcha and FZO schools faced rather disparate recruit- ment problems during the post-war years, and are best dealt with separately.

The few data available on voluntary and involuntary recruitment into the uchilishcha show that whereas, in I946, only half of the entrants were volunteers (in other words, at least I 25,000 young persons were conscripted), by I951 the intakes were entirely voluntary.16 The most obvious explanation for this change was undoubtedly linked with the overall fall in numbers; finding compulsory recruitment to the longer courses impracticable or inefficient, the authorities quietly abandoned it.

Other explanations may be sought in improved selection methods and more attractive living conditions in the uchilishcha themselves. (The fall in the numbers of youngsters in the recruitment age groups associated with the low wartime birth rate could not have become relevant until the early fifties.)

In any case the term 'call-up' was not used in legislation after 1953;17 and the formal abolition of mobilization for the uchilishcha came on I8 March I955, as part and parcel of Khrushchev's liberalization of the labour market. The fact that this law lay

14 Trudovyye rezervy SSSR, p. 5. 15 E. N. Medynsky, Prosveshcheniye v SSSR, Moscow, 1955, pp. 133-35; Sbornik zakono-

datel'nykh aktov o trude, ed. D. S. Karev, Moscow, I960, p. I09. 16 S. M. Lemelev, 'Rasshirennoye proizvodstvo rabochey sily v promyshlennosti SSSR' (unpublished Candidate of Science Dissertation, Moscow University, I955), p. I73. 17 Orlovsky, op. cit., p. 79.

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246 MERVYN MATTHEWS

unpublished for a whole year after it had been passed probably reflects the authorities' continuing touchiness about the matter.

The FZO schools were far less popular than the uchilishcha, and unlike them, recruited the overwhelming majority of their trainees from the village. Of the 234,000 persons trained in them in 1946, only 30 per cent entered of their own accord, and by 1950 the percentage of voluntary recruits had reached only 43.7 per cent.18 The sharp fall in intakes between I95I and I953, as compared with the previous years, could largely explain a jump in the proportion of voluntary admissions to over 6o per cent; but the rise in intakes after 1954, due to the transfer of the schools for agricultural mechanics to SLR control, must have meant an absolute rise in enforced recruitment. No mention was made of FZO schools in the March 1955 law, so they must have remained covered, for some time at least, by the October 1940 'mobilization' order.

Since recruitment for the State Labour Reserves was a matter of some social moment, it is worth pausing to consider how it was actually conducted. We have noted that young people appeared before 'mobilization commissions', and that recruitment drives were at times frequent. The SLR offices were, it seems, responsible for local advertising: beyond that matters were mostly in the hands of the Komsomol.

The involvement of this organization began early. In 1940, when mobilization was declared, the Central Committee of the Komsomol sent a circular letter to its regional organizations asking for their active co-operation. As a result Komsomol agitators (to quote one authoritative source) 'sought out young volunteers who desired to enter uchilishcha and FZO schools, and took an active part in the organizational and technical work of conducting the call-up and getting the teaching and work premises ready. . .' In this they were assisted by the trades unions.19

After the war, as one might expect, this help was renewed, and became particularly important in 1948. During that year there were four major recruiting drives, in which 'the Central Committee of the Komsomol, in accordance with the decisions of the government, passed its own resolutions, giving instructions to oblast' and kray committees and the Central Committees of republican Komsomol organizations on all aspects of preparing and conducting recruit- ment' 20

The local organizations arranged lectures, talks, concerts, exhibi- tions and broadcasts to attract applicants. Sports competitions were

18 Ibid. 19 Rachkov, op. Cit., p. 34. 20 Kurov, op. cit., p. 90.

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'STATE LABOUR RESERVES' 247

held under State Labour Reserves auspices, and an appeal was made to patriotic sentiment. Sometime SLR trainees were asked to send letters to their friends extolling the advantages they enjoyed. Very illuminating is M. N. Kurov's account of the use of the Komsomol meeting for recruitment purposes:

The members of the Komsomol of Trade Uchilishcha No. I9 in Leningrad took it upon themselves to help the Party organization. A meeting held on 29 July I948 passed resolutions stating that: 'All Komsomol members are to help fill the uchilishcha with a new contingent of pupils, and for this every member must persuade at least one person [to apply]. The Komsomol Committee is to keep a personal account of the fulfilment of this instruction.... An active part must be played in the work of the recruiting commissions, and for this, groups of the best Komsomol members must be appointed for duty at reception points, where they are to conduct individual talks with recruits, and decorate the premises with exhibitions of SLR trainees' work. They must also post recruitment notices up throughout the town'.21

It may be presumed, as recruitment tended to lose its coercive character, and fall in incidence, that such operations became less necessary; the Komsomol, however, continued to play a part in the solution of youth employment problems through its involvement in the local soviet's placement commissions.

The popularity, or unpopularity, of the schools was in great measure linked with living and working conditions in them: complaints about these were numerous. As early as December 1940, a meeting of the collegium of the SLR was obliged to consider the problem, because it was said to encourage desertion. By the end of the war, when the system was in a parlous state, a number of detailed, if ineffective, instructions were issued for improvement. Since they make very tedious reading we will spare the reader quotation; but the standard phrases with regard to living conditions were 'extremely inadequate', 'particularly bad', 'not well-prepared for winter', etc. There was criticism of staff members who had a 'negligent and careless attitude towards instruction and the every- day needs of the pupils'.22 It was as a result of these failings, and poor training in general, that II9,000 trainees left the SLR in 1945, including 77,000 (possibly a sixth of the enrolment) without authorization. 23

21 Ibid., p. 102. Kurov is quoting from the archives of the Petrograd District Committee of the Komsomol, Leningrad.

22 No less than twelve Ministerial decrees (prikazy) of this nature are contained in Prikazy i instruktsii Ministerstva trudovykh rezervov SSSR, Moscow, 1947 (hereafter referred to as Prikazy i instruktsii). 23 Direktivy KPSS i sovetskogo pravitel'stva po khozyaystvennym voprosam: sbornik dokumentov,

comp. V. N. Malin and A. V. Korobov, vol. 3, Moscow, 1958, p. 90.

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248 MERVYN MATTHEWS

The system continued to cater for the less privileged groups in society, especially poorly-educated boys from the countryside. The proportion of boys overall rose from about two-thirds during the war years to over ninety per cent by the early fifties. The FZO schools, as the least desirable institutions, took three-quarters or more of their entrants from the village, and the uchilishcha - over half. The two types of institution differed somewhat in the educational levels of their trainees. In I953 two-thirds of those in the FZO schools had less than seven classes of general schooling behind them, as against a quarter in the uchilishcha. By the mid-fifties the proportions had dropped to a half in the FZO, while the uchilishcha switched almost entirely to seven-year school leavers.24 As early as I 943 special four- year uchilishcha had been started for the country's numerous orphans. Such contingents rose from about eleven thousand in I 944-45 to over 4I ,000, or nearly 13 per cent of all SLR trainees, in I952-53.25 Alas, the preponderance of uprooted and parentless youngsters contributed to the establishments' widespread reputa- tion as centres of delinquency.

IV

In the immediate post-war years the edict of 28 December I 940 on unauthorized departure was still valid, though still poorly enforced. Many cases of schools failing to prosecute runaways were quoted in the legislation of I 947, when the authorities were making yet another effort to reduce the drop-out rate. Sometimes directors tried to conceal desertion, or were slow to inform the local militia about it. Local SLR offices sometimes ignored such infringements, and courts were known to pass light sentences, or none at all. AJuly I 947 order of the Ministry of State Labour Reserves, for example, contained a list of offices which brought actions in only I5-35 per cent of the cases reported.

This order, and several others issued at the time, called for greater severity.26 Directors of schools, and managers of enterprises who did not provide suitable living or working conditions, or who failed to report desertions, were made liable to prosecution. Deserters from schools were to be sought out and punished, in strict accordance with the law. Meanwhile, SLR leavers who left their jobs at enterprises before their four-year term had expired were still

24 Lemelev, OP. cit., P. I176. 25 A. A. Bulgakov, Professional'no-tekhnicheskoye obrazovaniye v SSSR na sovremennom etape,

Moscow, 1977, p. 71- 26 Prikazy i instruktsii, passim.

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'STATE LABOUR RESERVES' 249

punishable under the general rules of 26 June I 940, which pro- hibited unauthorized departure altogether.

The promulgation of repressive measures seems to have ceased towards the end of the decade; with more reliance being placed on volunteers, such severity became pointless. But as so frequently happens in the U.S.S.R., no comprehensive repeal was published. The conclusion which emerges is that young persons recruited into the State Labour Reserves schools until the late forties were subject to unpleasant legal sanctions which were constantly being repaired. If any justification can be found for such severity it can lie only in the nation's acute economic need.

When they completed their training, youngsters continued to be subject to the original placement restrictions. Most, though not all, were posted to the enterprise to which their school was attached.27 In Soviet sources I have been unable to find any proper instructions covering the placement procedure at that time. New sets of statutes of FZO schools and uchilishcha approved on 29 December I946 merely stated that pupils were 'obliged to take the leaving examina- tions on completing the course.... Those who passed received a leaving certificate . .. showing their trade and qualifications'.28 This was in striking contrast to the personal direction of graduates of secondary and higher educational institutions, which was covered by a veritable battery of laws and decrees. The implication is that SLR leavers were, for administrative purposes, presumed to have either made their choice when they entered the SLR, or to have surrendered this right altogether. Many volunteers no doubt chose an uchilishche or school in the full knowledge that it would lead to a job locally. On completing their courses, they were despatched to enterprises in batches, all the members of a given batch being listed on a single drafting order.

In practice some concessions had to be made to personal circumstances. 'The desires and interests of the young workers themselves', wrote one observer, 'should be taken into account when directing them to enterprises: in particular, they should be sent to work ... near their families, if this is possible. Experience shows that in the overwhelming majority of cases the bodies which direct cadres take into account leavers' desires to be sent to a certain place.' We can only take this assertion at its face value.29

The placement of huge contingents of labour by administrative means was no easy matter, and there were wide gaps between plan

27 Lemelev, op. cit., p. I84. 28 Trudovyye rezervy SSSR, pp. 5 I, 57. 29 E. Astrakhan et al., Rol' sovetskogo trudovogo prava v planovom obespechenii narodnogo

khozyaystva kadrami, Moscow, I 955, p. 42.

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250 MERVYN MATTHEWS

and fulfilment. Official attacks on discrepancies, both deliberate and accidental, were made at regular intervals. Bad planning sometimes led to ministries being unable to accept quotas of trainees which they had ordered; in 1953, for instance, over I 2,000 youngsters were said to have been refused on these grounds. Another variant was unreadiness on the part of enterprises to receive them; in the same year six major branches of heavy industry, transport and construc- tion were 'unprepared' for about 33,000 leavers, ranging from 14 per cent to 28 per cent of the planned intakes. Sometimes the leavers were despatched to enterprises other than those for which they had been trained, and sometimes managers refused to accept them because other workers had already been hired instead. In I948 nearly 9 per cent of the SLR trainees in 5,ooo enterprises throughout the country, were said to be working in the 'wrong' trades. The official figures for leavers who were finally left without jobs were relatively good, at 2-4 per cent in I952-54, but obviously reflected only part of the general dislocation.30

Many SLR leavers did not stay at their appointed posts as long as they were supposed to. Desertion rates in the Ukraine, expressed as a proportion of the number of young workers under mobilization orders, ran at nearly 40 per cent in I947, but fell to just over i6 per cent in I950. Figures of i8 per cent to 27 per cent were given for the years I950-53 for the U.S.S.R. as a whole, although about half of the workers involved had some sort of permission to leave from the management, if that meant anything.31 Such figures are not unrealistic, given the natural mobility of youth labour, and the conditions existing in the U.S.S.R. at that time.

It is apparent from the foregoing that the various State Labour Reserve schools, through almost a quarter of a century, not only failed to fire the imagination of the country's youth, despite all official claims, but were profoundly unpopular. They imposed hard living conditions and considerably restricted the freedom of the young people who entered them. As training and placement mechanisms they left much to be desired. Perhaps the most interesting aspect of the whole experiment was the ultimate failure of the authorities to make a country-wide programme of labour

30 Selected data available in S. I. Sokolov, 'Gosudarstvennyye trudovyye rezervy kak istochnik popolneniya rabochego klassa SSSR' (unpublished Candidate's Dissertation, Moscow University, I955), pp. i85, 243; F. M. Ivanenko, 'Bor'ba KPSS za podgotovku kvalifitsirovannykh rabochikh kadrov v promyshlennosti v 5-oy pyatiletke' (unpub- lished Candidates' Dissertation, Moscow University, I958), pp. 172, I84; Komsomol'- skaya pravda, 2 December I 956.

31 E. M. Novikova, 'Bor'ba kommunisticheskoy partii SSSR za podgotovku kvalifitsi- rovannykh kadrov rabochikh dlya promyshlyennosti, I946-I950 (unpublished Candi- date's Dissertation, no location or date), p. 133; Ivanenko, op. cit., p. 178.

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'STATE LABOUR RESERVESI 25I

mobilization work, this being in striking contrast to the apparently effective use of repression in other spheres. All in all, the State Labour Reserves marked a sad episode in the story of Soviet education. But it is an episode which should not be allowed to sink into oblivion.

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