Heroes of Donbass and the Soviet Union Alexey Stakhanov and Maria Grishutina. To be remembered
Today marks the anniversary of the labor feat accomplished by miner Alexei Stakhanov and his work comrades. These days, when the DPR and LPR became centers of civil war not for the first time in history, we would like to remind readers that Donbass is not an accidental region. That several times already it became the center of the development of fundamentally new social projects, and won this fight. That people here have always loved their land not only in words - they proved it with deeds, and first of all, with labor achievements. This is very important to remember today, when Ukraine, which has gone crazy, is trying to disown its history and forget everything that happened to it.
Donbass has always been a unique region in which the grandeur and richness of its history are very successfully combined with incredible prospects provided by talented people - writers, poets, scientists, industrialists. The history of this region is impressive in its scale and significant events: in ancient times the Scythians lived here, there was a lot - the Wild Field, industrial exploration of salt in Bakhmut, colonization, the beginning of the development of the region both industrially and socially.
What follows is more interesting: it is enough to recall the history of the first half of the 1917th century, namely how the people of Donbass reacted to the events of 1920 with the subsequent civil war, during which the region suffered incredible destruction. The situation was so tough that Lenin then wrote: “The Donetsk basin will be subjected to such devastation that we have no idea about.” To confirm this, it is enough to cite the following fact: if before the start of the civil war about one and a half thousand mines were operating in the Donbass, then in 981 their number was XNUMX enterprises.
The question of the post-war restoration of the coal region, or rather, of raising it from the ruins, had been in the air since January 1921. Then the party leadership recognized that Donbass was supposed to become the starting point for the development of the Soviet republics, and that all possible efforts and means must be applied to restore it as quickly as possible. In such conditions, on May 27, 1921, the Council of Labor and Defense adopted a resolution “On the restoration of the coal industry of Donbass.”
And the restoration began - for four years, ordinary metallurgists, miners and simply caring residents of cities and villages restored the economy of the region destroyed by the war. Despite a number of difficulties and obstacles, such as completely destroyed railway tracks, in some places covered with snow, mines flooded with water, post-war hunger, the lack of any food supply for workers and a catastrophic shortage of workers, they managed not only to restore the region, but to help it subsequently gain fame as an “all-Union stoker.”
The course towards industrialization of the economy set new tasks for the industry of the entire union to restructure in accordance with the latest advances in technology and the planned deployment of production to ensure the economic independence of the USSR. Here Donbass had its own special role in supplying the economy with fuel and metal. IN AND. Lenin, mentioning the importance of the region, said that “... without Donbass, socialist construction remains a simple good wish.”
At the beginning of the first five-year plan, Donbass was the only coal and metallurgical base in the entire country: in 1928-1929, out of forty million tons of coal production in the USSR, Donbass produced approximately thirty-one million tons (that is, about 80% of the all-Union production).
In search of better opportunities for solving the problems of industrialization, the party leadership was forced to turn to the long-forgotten theoretical developments of V.I. Lenin. His article “How to organize a competition?” was published in the newspaper Pravda on January 20, 1929. After this, it was decided that it was the idea of labor competition that best met all the tasks set. The primary initiative to start socialist competition was made by the workers of Moscow and Leningrad, and already on April 29, 1929, the XVI Party Conference addressed the workers and all working people with a call to expand competition.
The workers of Donbass did not remain indifferent here either, taking an active part in social competition. As mentioned above, the coal region has always been famous for its extremely hardworking and selfless people, who are able not only to carry out the tasks assigned to them, but also to come up with their own initiatives and proposals.
In August 1935, the party organizer of the Central-Irmino mine decided to conduct a technological experiment. He proposed dividing the responsibilities of the miner and the rigger: the main role in this was assigned to Alexei Stakhanov, the second - to Tikhon Shchigolev and Gavriil Borisenko. These workers were considered not only physically strong, but the most intelligent and proactive in the entire mine. Then the miners hesitated for a long time, and therefore did not immediately give their consent. The fact is that the party organizer had a bad reputation, so if the experiment failed, everyone would bear responsibility for it. The experiment began on the evening of August 30, 1935. The softest coal seam was chosen for it, and all the equipment necessary for the experiment was delivered to the face in advance.
The result exceeded all expectations: if we count the entire team, then the then existing production norm was exceeded by four and a half times. However, there is other data about an alleged fourteen-fold excess of the plan. The fact is that at that time the entire tonnage of what was mined was fully accounted for by the miner. Because of this, a misconception arose.
A note about the record published in Pravda attracted the attention of Ordzhonikidze and Stalin, who, in fact, blessed the birth of the Stakhanov movement.
Already at the end of 1935, the newspaper “Socialist Donbass” wrote: “Even before, many workers had to be hurried, urged on, but now the situation has changed, the Stakhanovite workers themselves are teasing, forcing, driving their leaders. We consider our task to be the creation of even better conditions for the manifestation of the initiative of the Stakhanovites...”
In 1935, in connection with the record set by Alexei Stakhanov, the Stalin Metallurgical Plant decided that the enterprise should be made a “laboratory of new methods.” On the initiative of master Leonid Bubnov, ferrous metallurgy for the first time began its own competition for the production of high-speed melts to order. For more than four months, Bubnov produced one hundred and ninety-seven melts without a single ton of defects.
Not only men, but also women throughout history have made their special contribution to the post-war rise of industry. After the liberation of Donbass from the Nazi invaders, the miner of one of the Gorlovka mines, Maria Grishutina, organized a female youth brigade of miners who systematically exceeded production targets and were more than once awarded the Challenge Red Banners of the State Defense Committee and the Komsomol Central Committee. It was Maria who came up with the famous call “Girls, go to the slaughter!”, with which she addressed the entire female half of Donbass with a call to master the mining professions and replace the brothers and husbands who had gone to the front.
In December 1944, Maria Grishutina practically repeated Alexei Stakhanov's record: in one shift she chopped 40,6 tons of coal - 11,5 men's norms.
The labor feat of Alexei Stakhanov's brigade and the personal record of Maria Grishutina are just a few of hundreds of other examples when the workers of the coal region, sparing no effort and time, did and are doing everything possible to show the whole world that Donbass is a land of heroes, strong people, possessing incredible courage and the so-called “Donbass character”.
The workers of this region will not be intimidated by the process of reviving the region after large-scale destruction. We raised it once, we’ll raise it again. The main thing is to believe in yourself.
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