A Day at a Soviet Factory
LOCHAK, PIERRE
French Socialist visitor to Moscow showplace finds curious combination of automation and primitive facilities A Day at a Soviet Factory By Pierre Lochak Paris In the Land of the Soviets, the...
...It is a pity...
...Indeed, the effort to educate is apparent everywhere...
...The enthusiasm was strictly confined to banners which hung everywhere from the factory's beautiful modern facade to the dim corridors, the unpaved yards, and the frequently unpaved shops: "Indestructible bond between the Party and the working class...
...The sample chosen for us was an impressive one: one of the country's largest factories, a veritable pilot plant, 12,000 workers...
...Wherever we went, a sort of "directors' curtain" was raised: dinner at a students' club without students, a visit to a state farm without farmers, and so on...
...We saw merely the strain of effort, not enthusiasm, on the faces of weary women dragging heavy carts across the yard and on those of workers sitting, generally in their street clothes since they owned no others, before their machines...
...The average, according to the director, is approximately 900 rubles a month (bonuses included), with a maximum of 1,800 for a skilled worker...
...We never encountered this atmosphere in the Kaganovich Plant we visited...
...How could one know what the Soviet citizen thinks and says when the directors and managers are not around...
...In the "automation shop" which was offered to our curious eyes, we found (amid a volume of noise astonishing for a modern factory) up-to-date machines alongside others which were corroding away, a melange of automatic-electronic operations and manual labor, with a team of 80 workers which seemed remarkably large for a shop of that size...
...The meetings and conversation actually took place in the factory director's office with him and his stall...
...Here we present his report on a guided tour of the Kaganovich Plant, which, we think, shows how much keen eyes can sec even on such planned tours...
...Our Socialist delegation was given no further opportunity to address Soviet workers...
...A director will now have the right to negotiate purchases and sales with other directors without clearing through the ministry, but only outside the limits of the Plan...
...At the end of our automation tour, an "impromptu" meeting (with public-address system, movies and typewritten speeches) was arranged for us...
...To be sure, there is a trade-union committee (30 per cent Communist in composition, as compared with 10 to 15 per cent for the factory as a whole), but it seems to enjoy fewer rights than a factory committee in France...
...Since August 1955, a hesitant start has been made toward providing some measure of autonomy for factory directors...
...The latter are essential for the creation of a trained working force...
...The worker in the Kaganovich Plant cannot compare his condition with that of his fellow-workers in Paris or Detroit, for he knows nothing about them...
...visibly at home in his work and familiar with his industry, he sketched a picture of the factory in simple, concrete terms, using no notes and prepared for every question...
...And I wondered why the only time they did not applaud was when Philip referred to French nationalization of key industries, banks, insurance companies...
...Particularly since on May 3, the day of our visit, Soviet Ambassador to Paris Vinogradov had not yet made his revealing assertion--not publicized in the Soviet press, of course--that the French worker's standard of living was higher than that of his Russian brother...
...Exceeding the norm is a vital necessity under a system in which piecework applies to 80 per cent of the factory personnel and bonuses amount to 30-40 per cent of the meager wages...
...I doubt that the plant director, who was very proud of this competition, would have admitted such a thing...
...This reform, incidentally, in no way limits the director's absolute powers in his own factory...
...In the shops, every delegate was flanked by guides whose presence clearly did not contribute to putting at ease the workers with whom we tried to strike up conversation...
...And just outside the neatly kept lavatory one reads: "Chew your food well when you eat...
...But is he satisfied with his lot...
...from this must be deducted various assessments, a "voluntary" loan to the Government amounting to about a month's wages annually, and a tax which is 8 to 9 per cent for 1,000 rubles and more for higher amounts...
...As for lunch, it took place in the workers' restaurant but at, an hour when the workers were no longer there, and the menu was of the generous proportions always offered to visitors in the USSR (smoked salmon, chicken, etc...
...Unity of Communists, Socialists and progressives for democracy and peace...
...This is very little, even when one considers the price of lunch at the factory restaurant (3 to 5 rubles), the rent a worker pays (50 rubles a month), and the innumerable free institutions such as nurseries, libraries, evening courses, and technical schools...
...Soviet apologists generally try to conjure up a picture of enthusiasm and joyous competition in Soviet factories...
...French Socialist visitor to Moscow showplace finds curious combination of automation and primitive facilities A Day at a Soviet Factory By Pierre Lochak Paris In the Land of the Soviets, the factory is the basic cell of socialism...
...The reality was quite different...
...For our French Socialist delegation, the program was alluring: meetings and conversation with the workers, a glimpse of social and cultural activities, lunch at the workers' restaurant--a program truly calculated to establish communion between militant workers of France and the workers of the USSR...
...Observing the audience of Russian workers from my place on the speakers' platform, I did not have the impression that they were applauding the foreign Socialist orator (whose remarks were translated for them phrase by phrase) out of mere politeness...
...For the workers, like all the citizens of that great nation, will never be able to form a true opinion of their own regime until they learn about the outside world--of which, in their isolation, they are ignorant to a degree scarcely conceivable to one who lives in the West...
...Let us fulfil and overfulfil the monthly plan...
...He was a well-informed boss who, in turn, was dependent upon his anonymous boss, the ministry, which decided everything: prices, wages, supply, customers, equipment...
...there he remains unchallenged master...
...Seeing the workers at their tasks is, presumably, seeing socialism in action...
...Pierre Lochak, a prominent member of the Socialist party of France, was part of the 18-man delegation of French Socialists which recently returned from a one-month visit to the Soviet Union...
...In an hour's visit to a shop, it is difficult to form an opinion about the quality of work and the productivity...
...In other words, his autonomy begins only after the goals set in the Plan have been achieved...
...This alone is what enables the Kaganovich Plant and others like it to meet American, Swedish and other competition in such importing countries as India, Argentina and Turkey...
...That was the plan...
...Nor did we see workers joyously congregating about the honor rolls listing those who had exceeded the norm...
...The director earns 7,500 and the chief engineer 3,000...
...but very different from the workers' menu which we saw posted...
...In conversations with individual workers, our delegation found cases of wages as low as 500 rubles a month and even 300...
...At lunch, I was seated next to an engineer, a former worker who had attended evening courses...
...Young, energetic, intelligent...
...And in France the committee, together with the trade union, can resort to a strike--a right which, of course, does not exist in the Soviet Union...
...And, the Party having decided, the Government's task is merely to put into execution--in spite of the current de-Stalinization, Party domination remains intact...
...Andre Philip, a member of our delegation, gave a truly impromptu talk in which he discussed the workers' struggles in France, the right to strike, and the collective agreements freely negotiated between union and management...
...One sees it even in such details as the signs in the restaurant: "Before sitting down to the table, wash your hands...
...The 20th Party Congress decided to loosen further the tight bonds of bureaucracy...
...Our impression of this sample Soviet factory was that, owing to its technical level and the output of its workers, it could function only by paying low wages--far lower than in Western countries...
...The factory director, to be sure, was neither an ogre nor a slave-driver...
Vol. 39 • July 1956 • No. 28
