Abstract
This article examines temporary labour migration to Moscow from 1971 to 1991, paying particular attention to relationships between state actors and young migrant workers. State officials not only provided young workers with housing and educational opportunities but also fostered Soviet socialist values among the young workers. The policies of Glasnost and Perestroika altered this relationship since state policies shifted towards embracing neoliberal practices. Such practices diminished social security for young migrants, leaving this once important social group vulnerable in a time of economic uncertainty.
* I thank Lewis Siegelbaum for his guidance in writing this article. I also thank the organisers and participants of the International Graduate Student Workshop in Soviet History, held at the European University in St. Petersburg, the conference ‘Sojourners, Economic Migrants, Expats: Temporary Migrations in Global Perspectives’, at Northumbria University, and the Midwest Russian History Workshop at Northwestern University for their feedback. I thank Sean McDaniel, Heather Brothers, and all members of my dissertation writing groups at Michigan State University for reading and providing comments on earlier drafts. This research was made possible through the Milton E. Muelder Fellowship in History from the Department of History at Michigan State University.
Introduction
Temporary labour migration was the number one reason Moscow’s population expanded by nearly 2 million people from 1971 to 1989. The advanced planning of the economy and the ageing population in the capital caused a shortage of labourers. Each year, approximately 80,000 Soviet citizens moved to the capital, but the overwhelming majority initially relocated on a temporary basis. 1 In 1973, such migrants, known colloquially as limitchiki (singular: limitchik), accounted for 91 per cent of migration-related population growth. 2 These migrants were primarily young, unmarried, unskilled labourers from the rural areas of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (rsfsr). They were a solution to Moscow’s largest problem – its chronic labour shortage in the most dangerous and undesirable sectors of the economy. Limitchiki lived in workers’ dormitories where Soviet officials devoted considerable time and effort to increasing these young migrants’ cultural, educational, and physical fitness levels.
The Soviet systems of internal passports and domicile registration restricted migration to large cities, but enterprises in such cities experienced chronic shortages of labours. As a result, the State Committee for Labour of rsfsr created a system in which enterprise directors recruited workers from labour rich areas of the Soviet Union. In exchange for their labour, limitchiki received a temporary domicile registration and a bed in a dormitory in addition to their wages. In Moscow, enterprise directors worked closely with the Office for the Use of Labour Resources of the Executive Committee of the Moscow Soviet to find workers and issue them the proper documents to reside in the city. The enterprise – and for limitchiki, the dormitory – became the centre of social welfare distribution and cultural engagement with Soviet socialist values.
In the 1970s, the vospitatel (plural: vospitateli), a mentor who oversaw the cultural development of dormitory residents, had the singular most important role in the dormitory – the cultivation of Soviet socialist values among limitchiki. The majority of labour migrants were youths, in Soviet parlance, anyone under the age of 30, and they became the focus of cultural development in the dormitory. The vospitatel had a relatively large assignment, charged with the physical, educational, and cultural development of all residents. The vospitatel explored the interests and enquiries of residents to determine the best way to help in their development. 3 This role went beyond providing areas for study and physical activity and also included the development of clubs, sports teams, and cultural activities – from lectures to excursions around Moscow. 4 The vospitatel ‘cultivated the spirit of collectivism and camaraderie’, and ‘increased the social activism, educational, political, and cultural level of residents’. 5
During Perestroika and Glasnost, the Council of Ministers of the rsfsr, who had outlined the roles of the vospitatel, dormitory director, dormitory commandant, and migrant residents, divested the vospitatel of his most important role, the cultural development of limitchiki. As part of a wider programme that promoted personal initiative, democratisation and freedoms in politics, the Council of Ministers now tasked newly created workers’ committees, self-organised groups of dormitory residents, with this job. Moreover, the Office for the Use of Labour Resources embraced a new conception of who ideal workers were and the social welfare they should receive. The Office planned to curb migration to the Soviet capital, viewing limitchiki as an economic drain. The Office began to favour policies that would physically and psychologically improve the conditions of families within Moscow and therefore lead to a strong local workforce and an increase in natural population growth by births.
Examining regimes of migration provides a window through which we can understand how various state actors in the Soviet Union conceptualised socialism. Lewis H. Siegelbaum and Leslie Page Moch define regimes of migration as ‘policies, practices, and infrastructure designed to both foster and limit human movement.’ Regimes represent an official ‘and evolving approach to how and where people should move.’ 6 In the 1970s and 1980s, the advanced planning of the economy made creating a properly trained workforce and properly distributing workers difficult. How Soviet organs of power implemented migration regimes to solve these problems reveal the goals and outcomes of developed socialism under Leonid i. Brezhnev and of Perestroika and Glasnost under Mikhail S. Gorbachev.
In this article, I explain how and why the dormitory lost its important role in the development of young migrant labourers. Soviet economic policies were linked with political and social development, but the conception of socialism and how it should function differed in the 1970s and the late 1980s. How the command economy functioned remained unchanged under developed socialism. Policies of developed socialism emphasised the development of culturedness through education, cultural engagement, and physical activity. These policies did not address the root causes of problems such as worker training and allocation. Instead, they remedied these issues on the spot with moderate success. Via Glasnost and Perestroika, Gorbachev embraced market and political reforms as a means to rectify the problems of the command economy but such policies deemphasised cultural development in the dormitory and left young migrant workers particularly vulnerable. I suggest that the emphasis on individual and market freedom, although still in its infancy in the late 1980s, brought about economic consequences similar to those seen in countries that embraced neoliberal platforms.
Migrants to Moscow
The internal passport and domicile registration systems were the central tools through which state actors attempted to manipulate migration. Collectivisation, dekulakisation, and rapid industrialisation all increased mobility in the Soviet Union during the First Five Year Plan (1928–1932), subverting official plans for building socialism. As a result, the Politburo devised an internal passport system in 1932 and a system of domicile registration in 1933. The Joint State Political Directorate under the Council of People’s Commissars of the ussr (ogpu) and local police forces vetted urban residents before issuing them a passport during the initial passportisation campaigns (Russian: pasportizatsiia). This allowed policing units to remove anti-Soviet elements from cities and restrict their mobility thereafter. 7 After the initial campaigns, passports became a prerequisite for taking up residency in a city, and the domicile registration verified the possessor’s right to live there. 8 I argue that these systems both created and solved economic problems that led to shortages of labour in urban areas. The passport and domicile registration systems worked in tandem with the directives of the command economy and changing official conceptions of state socialism to regulate labour migration throughout the Soviet period.
Migration both fed and subverted official plans to build socialism in the Soviet Union. Rapid industrialisation drew peasants to cities while collectivisation and dekulakisation were strong incentives for many to leave the countryside. 9 The chaos of collectivisation was soon coupled with extreme environmental conditions that led to famine, killing millions in the winter of 1932/33. 10 Frustrated and starving peasants applied to leave the collective farms to find work in cities, but many left without the appropriate release forms from their collective farms, forming their own migration repertoires that did not necessarily align with the goals of state-organized migration regimes. Once peasants arrived in the cities, they faced strained relationships with industrial workers, who blamed the new arrivals for social problems. 11 By late 1932, not only Muscovites but also the Politburo came to see these new arrivals as a threat to the stability of cities, fearing that these ‘socially harmful elements’ that evaded collectivisation would ‘contaminate’ urban areas with anti-Soviet values. 12 Anyone entering a city on his or her own initiative became suspect.
In response to this crisis, the Politburo instituted an internal passport system in December 1932 to regulate who could live in large cities and strategically important regions, shaping new repertoires and regimes of migration. Soviet authorities reserved residency in these strategically important areas, known as regime cities or regions, for those with proper Soviet socialist credentials. The ogpu and local police forces carefully vetted each citizen before issuing or denying a passport. 13 The ogpu refused passports to the socially harmful elements, which David Shearer defines as ‘criminals, fortune seekers, [and] runaway kulaks’. 14 However, non-regime areas had less stringent requirements. Those ineligible for passports in regime areas could apply for and most likely receive a passport and the right to residency elsewhere. 15
The Politburo decreed the following year that any individual living within the borders of a regime city apply for a domicile registration. Local soviets used domicile registrations to vet any new arrivals after the passportisation campaigns and to curb urban unemployment. New arrivals presented a passport and proof of release from collective farms to receive a domicile registration. Additionally, this system called for all recipients to prove that they had gainful employment within the city. 16 This registration continued what the passport system began; it permitted state organs – at this point, down to individual enterprises that provided proof of employment – to regulate who inhabited the most important cities while the passport was now a necessary document for moving to a Soviet city. The passport and domicile registration policies limited repertoires of migration that could contribute to urban unemployment by forbidding those without proof of employment from receiving a domicile registration.
The tools for the state manipulation of migration evolved throughout the Soviet period. In 1940, labour laws forbade workers from leaving one place of employment for another without official permission, restricting the mobility of the labour force. 17 Despite these restrictions, millions moved to cities following victory in the Great Patriotic War through organised labour recruitment for post-war reconstruction projects. 18 This provided official channels for workers to change their place of employment and temporarily live in a regime area, often providing means for gaining permanent residency in a new place of employment. If an enterprise decided to continue to employ a worker, the worker then renewed his or her passport at his or her current place of residence. 19 While Nikita Khrushchev left the passport system largely unchanged, he undid the labour laws that required official permission to leave one’s place of work, giving industrial workers the right to change their job simply because they no longer wanted to work there. 20
By 1971, the passport and domicile registration systems had created a conundrum. In the Soviet command economy, resources, including labourers, were limited and subject to a complex system of distribution. Official hierarchies that privileged certain cities, branches of the economy, and even some specific enterprises, guided the State Planning Committee’s (Gosplan) allocation of resources while simultaneously informing migrants’ decisions of where to live and work. 21 Regime cities requiring a domicile registration were technically closed to in-migration, but they also offered more employment and educational opportunities, leisure time and consumer goods.
In his estimation, Gosplan disregarded the restraints placed on mobility and opted to open enterprises in larger cities because it was easier and more efficient. This industrial development caused growth in other areas – housing, stores, schools, and the like – that were needed to accommodate growing populations. In short, regime cities slowly began to offer more of the stuff that made up the good life and needed labourers to meet production goals and build expanding infrastructure.The economic advantages of the big city are what lure so many enterprises and institutions there. Labour productivity is higher, the return on assets is greater, and operating costs are lower. It follows that the chief determining factor in the growth of cities is new industrial construction. 22
The right to leave one’s place of employment at will and the desirability of regime cities clashed with Gosplan’s and the State Committee for Labour of the rsfsr’s plans to rationally allocate labour and reach full employment of the Soviet population. In his study of socialist economies, Janos Kornai points out that the advanced planning of the command economy led to disparities in the regional availability of workers and their professional training. 23 In 1971, the Office for the Use of Labour Resources of the Moscow Executive Committee conducted a study of untapped labour resources in Moscow that confirmed Kornai’s assertions. The major problems facing the workforce in the capital were a lack of availability of workers and disparities in job training. Workers often trained for one position but then needed new skills to fill the positions available. As a result, youths chose not to join the workforce or delayed entering in order to attend additional classes to learn new skills. 24 Moreover, low birth rates and an ageing population exacerbated shortages of labourers in regime cities. 25
While Brezhnev and the Council of Ministers never abolished the passport or domicile registration systems, almost every level of government and ministry worked together to facilitate a temporary labour migration regime that permitted workers to move to regime cities that were short on labour. Gosplan set forth Five Year Plans that contained production goals and the number of workers needed to complete them. 26 Each Union and republican-level ministry broke these numbers down further, determining how many workers each enterprise needed. Enterprises took stock of their current workers and determined how many labourers short they would be for the upcoming plan. They then worked with both the State Committee for Labour of the rsfsr and the Office for the Use of Labour Resources to find workers. 27
This process of hiring workers laid the groundwork for emerging relationships among various state actors and workers. The Office for the Use of Labour Resources tapped pensioners, students, recent high school and college graduates, and housewives as potential workers from within the boundaries of Moscow. 28 Individual enterprises then negotiated with Gosplan to establish the number of labourers needed from beyond the city. The State Committee for Labour of the rsfsr aided these enterprises by recruiting workers from labour rich areas to work in labour deficit areas like Moscow. 29 Moreover, the Council of Ministers of the ussr required enterprises to provide basic housing in dormitories, usually a bed in a room designed for two to four people. 30 The dormitory requirements set forth by the Council of Ministers of the rsfsr further outlined the responsibility of enterprise directors to cultivate the physical and moral wellbeing of its young migrant labour force. 31 In short, how migrants should find work and how employing enterprises should treat them was fixed by law.
The new temporary labour migration regime was imperfect and did not address the root causes of territorial stratification of labour resources. The passport and domicile registration provided tools for creating hierarchies of distribution for consumer goods, labour power, and the development of enterprises. Perevedentsev challenged one Gosplan official to run an experiment by changing one regime city to an open one to see if the problems of labour distribution solved themselves. The official categorically refused to entertain such an idea. 32 Instead of opening closed cities, Gosplan enabled a system of temporary labour recruitment, but local enterprises and soviets provided pathways to gaining permanent domicile registration.
Soviet Socialist Stars
The migration regime of issuing temporary domicile registration to workers from beyond Moscow’s borders remained intact until the end of the Soviet period, but how Soviet authorities implemented this system changed. During the 1970s, this migration regime filled chronic labour shortages in Moscow but attempted no structural overhaul of the passport and domicile registration system that exacerbated this problem. However, local authorities and enterprises in Moscow enacted this migration regime in a manner that embraced the values of developed socialism – primarily an emphasis on the cultural development of youths through education, excursions, and physical fitness. The dormitory with its high concentration of young labour migrants became the central laboratory for this development.
These cultural programmes, led by the vospitatel mentioned in the introduction, engaged with the values of developed socialism and the Soviet way of life. Brezhnev argued that developed socialism marked the completion of building socialism, and socialism as it existed would slowly perfect itself into communism. 33 He defined the Soviet way of life as ‘an atmosphere of genuine collectivism and comradeship, solidarity, the friendship of all the nations and people of our country, which grows stronger from day to day, and moral health, which makes us strong and steadfast.’ 34 These values invoked socialism not only as a means of distributing material goods but also as the development of a superior set of values. In particular, fostering collectivism would increase the wellbeing of the Soviet Union and its individuals.
The intersection of repertoires and regimes of migration made youths the focus of cultural development that in turn would fill labour vacancies and slow labour turnover. Youths from the rural areas of the rsfsr, particularly the regions surrounding Moscow, were the most likely to move to the capital, making youths synonymous with temporary labour migrants. The limitchiki who came to Moscow in the 1970s were a cohort of primarily young, single, ethnic Russian, unskilled workers who hailed from rural areas. A desire to experience something new, enjoy the cultural amenities the capital had to offer, or escape the monotony of the countryside, were some of the main reasons these young migrants left home and forged their own repertoires of migration. 35 Some parents advised their children to leave the countryside, particularly emphasising the lack of opportunities for young women. Lewis Siegelbaum notes that women faced an overall tougher life in the villages. Demanding physical labour, lack of educational opportunities, and a dearth of marriage prospects encouraged women to envision their futures in the city. 36
In the 1970s, repertoires and regimes of migration were at their most compatible. Limitchiki used the official regime to legalise and legitimise their desire to move, while the continuous influx of youths helped lessen Moscow’s labour deficit. One the one hand, enterprises may have embraced youths because they were the workers most easily available. In the early 1970s, Moscow’s Office for the Use of Labour Resources estimated that 76 per cent of all limitchiki in Moscow arrived on their own and found work after. 37 On the other hand, when enterprises had a say in whom they recruited for work, they tended to prefer youths. Several enterprises expressly requested young workers for practical reasons. Labourers that were unmarried, under the age of 30, and preferably male were the easiest to accommodate in dormitories. 38
The tendency of the enterprise leadership to conflate migrants from beyond Moscow’s borders with youths in general influenced the approach of the vospitatel to his work. The director of the Lenin Komsomol Automobile Factory (azlk) stated, ‘it is no secret that we, like many other enterprises, fulfil our quota of workers through the system of hiring limitchiki, meaning we accept youths from outside the city.’ 39 In his estimation, a limitchik was, by definition, a youth, and over 94 per cent of limitchiki, at least in the Liublinskii District, fell into this category. 40 In terms of the vospitatel, he focused on pushing education through informal and formal channels. Soviet policy pushed the notion that well-developed and well-adjusted youths would be less likely to leave their positions and engage in questionable social behaviour. 41
At times, enterprises failed to meet these expectations, falling short of providing adequate living conditions, let alone methods of vospitanie – the cultural development of those in the dormitories. In 1974, the Council of Ministers of the ussr conducted an all-Union inquiry into the conditions in dormitories. The Council of Ministers added the renovation of dormitory bathrooms and kitchens as well as the production of sturdier dormitory furniture to the Tenth Five Year Plan (1976–1980). 42 At the city and neighbourhood level, People’s Control Committees and factory trade union committees oversaw the implementation of these plans, laying out specific development timelines and inspecting their completion. 43 A similar inquiry in 1975 led by the People’s Control Committee of Liublinskii District criticised the conditions of several dormitories in the district. 44 The living conditions in dormitories were, at times, nothing short of horrendous. Dormitories, of course, had shared kitchens and bathrooms as well as several workers living in one bedroom. However, in some cases, dormitories were infested with cockroaches and lacked basic utilities, such as hot water and gas. Working conditions tended to be less abysmal, but the inquiry placed the blame for high labour turnover on the enterprises and dormitory conditions, not the workers. Poor living conditions coupled with unpleasant jobs led to high rates of labour turnover for limitchiki. 45
While investigating dormitory living conditions, the People’s Control Committee often handed down strong reprimands to directors for failing to give adequate attention to proper effort in ensuring the wellbeing of dormitory residents. Enterprise directors, they argued, viewed dormitories only as temporary housing. To the directors, they functioned as little more than places of transition before workers moved on to a new job or place of residence. In particular, the Committee instructed enterprise directors to become more actively involved in making dormitories more liveable. 46 Improved living conditions and cultural programmes in the dormitory also stood to help enterprises. Raising worker qualifications and standards of living could help slow labour turnover and increase enterprise productivity.
These studies only reaffirmed problems that dormitory directors had already begun to rectify. In 1971, azlk had eleven dormitories under its control and deemed five of these temporary structures. 47 However, by 1975, azlk controlled twelve dormitories, ten of which had been completely rebuilt or significantly renovated in the last three years. 48 The dormitory directors and commandants had also worked to combat communicable diseases, namely the flu, that festered under these poor living conditions. In particular, the factory trade union committee found that cold, draughty conditions left many in the women’s dormitories ill, and as a result, these women missed more days from work. The committee planned to offer flu shots to offset these outcomes. 49
As conditions in dormitories improved, vospitateli and enterprise directors turned their attention toward migrant education. Since many migrants arrived with minimal, if any, job training, the first order of business was raising their educational level. The factory committee required any worker under the age of 30 who had not graduated high school to complete their education. This applied to only a few individuals. In 1972, only ten of all of azlk’s workers fell into this category, and by 1975, none did. 50 On average, azlk had 1,000 workers with an incomplete middle education and usually offered 600 workers annually the chance to work toward achieving a complete secondary education. 51
The administration required all workers under the age of 20 to participate in its mentoring programme, working alongside veterans of labour to develop their problem-solving skills. Mentors participated in a course of study that included six lectures and two seminars to prepare them to instil a respect for communist labour in their mentees. 52 The mentors were predominantly older, blue-collar workers with a completed secondary school education. Of the 790 mentors, 615 were over the age of 30 and 560 had completed their secondary education. 53 These mentors oversaw the development of approximately 1,200 youths under the age of 20 every year. It is difficult to gauge the overall success of the programme based on the archival information, but at least one young participant cited the influence of the programme on her personal achievements. A young girl with the last name Belkina arrived at azlk with no particular profession in mind. Her mentor encouraged her to enrol in a professional-technical school (ptu; Russian: professional’no-tekhnicheskoe uchilishche), which she eventually did. Within several years, she had been elected to the district soviet and credited her mentor with her success. 54
Limitchiki also pursued a variety of other educational pursuits from enrolling in ptus and colleges (vuz; Russian: vysshee uchebnoe zavedenie) to simply increasing their workplace qualifications. In Liublinskii District, almost 90 per cent of all limitchiki had taken a course of some sort. Approximately 10 per cent of limitchiki enrolled in a vuz, and another 20 per cent in the less prestigious ptu. 55 The overwhelming majority of limitchiki took courses to increase their work qualifications instead of enrolling in a formal programme of study. Approximately 50 per cent of all workers who took courses for a new profession received a job in their new field of study by 1975. 56
The Communist Party and Communist Youth League saw youths as the ideological future of Soviet socialism and sought to raise their level of culturedness. For instance, the factory trade union at the Likhachev Automobile Factory (zil) set forth a yearly plan for the cultural development of all of its young workers. In addition to offering courses to increase one’s skill level, the committee also created a workplace library with books appropriate for those studying in technical courses. The factory was obliged to offer no less than ten cultural excursions in Moscow and to hold courses on technological development and factory machinery. 57
In its most basic form, culturedness relied on opening libraries and red corners to expose workers to socialist values. 58 At azlk alone, 2,000 migrants used the dormitory libraries as a place to complete schoolwork on a regular basis. 59 There were seven red corners among the twelve dormitories, but no information on how they were decorated or maintained. 60 azlk’s dormitories provided thousands of lectures, clubs, and excursions every calendar year to raise the cultural level of migrants. The vospitateli linked this cultural programme with rising rates of production and improved efficiency in workshops. 61
Lecture series, particularly those on international themes, were an important element of cultural development. It is unclear who gave such lectures and what their content was beyond ‘modern international life’. 62 However, cultural exchange among the socialist world was important, and azlk hosted in its dormitories car factory workers visiting from Bulgaria and Czechoslovakia. Other lecture series were dedicated to discussions on literature and music, and dormitories offered classes on learning to play Estrada music. 63 Guest lecturers included auto-rally drivers, the editorial board of the satirical magazine Krokodil, and other artists and actors. 64 Clubs also flourished in the dormitories. Of the 87 clubs that operated at azlk, 20 were organised by youths in the dormitories and focused on political and non-political themes. 65
Cultural excursions played a similar role in the development of young workers. azlk’s dormitories offered 240 excursions in the first nine months of 1972 alone. The most popular destinations were historic sites in Moscow and the Moscow region to cultivate the patriotism of workers. Other excursions included trips to museum exhibits and to the theatre. 66 Some enterprise dormitories also offered travel beyond Moscow’s borders. One limitchik, Natalia Sergeevna Shvetsova, recalled not only a trip to Leningrad but also to Bulgaria that her dormitory organised in the 1970s. 67
Physical fitness was also an aspect of the dormitory-based upbringing of limitchiki. The provisions for operating dormitories set forth by the Council of Ministers of the rsfsr mandated that each dormitory should have outdoor and indoor spaces for exercise. In fact, one of the expectations for worker-residents was to be responsible for the upkeep of these areas. 68 The Communist Youth League at one azlk dormitory spent over 200,000 man hours building a gymnasium for its residents to use. 69 Physical activity was also a chance to instil patriotic virtues. One event in azlk’s dormitories invited veterans of war and labour to play sports with limitchiki to celebrate ‘victory over Hitler’s Germany in the Great Patriotic War’. 70
Vospitateli promoted not only physical wellbeing but also organised sports, seeing it as a means for preventing hooliganism and drunkenness. azlk hired trainers to organise sports teams in each dormitory, with hockey and football being the most popular. 71 In order to encourage participation, the factory committee offered the ultimate prize – an apartment of one’s own. Cash was an inappropriate reward for Soviet citizens, but an apartment for the victors was likely more valuable than any cash prize. It is unclear if every player on the winning team received an apartment or if just one player did, but the victor(s) skipped to the top of the existing housing queues. 72 Perhaps it was the hope of winning that grand prize that drew over 3,000 dormitory residents to participate in the 22 intramural sports leagues in the azlk dormitories. 73
It is difficult to measure the depth of success of the educational, cultural, and physical development of limitchiki living in the dormitories. Education may have been the most successful element. ptu graduates were significantly less likely to leave their place of employment when compared to other limitchiki who did not attend a ptu. 44 per cent of all limitchiki in the Liublinskii District left their place of employment, and 75 per cent of those who left their place of employment also moved beyond Moscow’s borders. While 40 per cent of migrants who graduated from a ptu left their place of employment, only 4 per cent moved away from the capital. The overwhelming majority were conscripted into military service, and most planned to return to their enterprise when their service was completed. 74 From an enterprise’s point of view, providing educational opportunities slowed labour turnover.
It is even more difficult to gauge how limitchiki in dormitories viewed cultural and physical activities. A possible correlation suggests that limitchiki were less likely to participate in absenteeism and hooliganism. Limitchiki accounted for 38 per cent of all workers hired in the enterprises studied by the Liublinskii District People’s Control Committee in which azlk was included. Yet, limitchiki accounted for only 30 per cent of all cases of absenteeism and only 15 per cent of instances of light hooliganism. 75 This is not to say that the dormitory activities kept migrant youths away from trouble, but only suggests that it is one of many possibilities.
Limitchiki became the most important group for meeting Moscow’s need for labour. They used the state’s temporary labour migration regime to normalise their legal status in the city while simultaneously filling labour shortages. Limitchiki made up nearly 40 per cent of the workforce in the light automobile production and construction sectors. 76 However, not even the unchecked flow of youths from the countryside to the city could remedy Moscow’s labour shortage. In the early 1970s, Moscow enterprises often only recruited between 85 and 90 per cent of their proposed limits. 77 While the Office for the Use of Labour Resources hoped to recruit 100,000 new workers in 1972, it only reached 88 per cent of its goal. 78
Neoliberal Losers
During Glasnost and Perestroika, workers’ dormitories lost their position of privilege for shaping the formation of limitchiki. In 1988, the Council of Ministers of the rsfsr issued new protocols regarding workers’ dormitories and legally restructured the relationship between migrant workers and vospitateli. The Council of Ministers no longer tasked vospitateli with ‘enhanc[ing] the social activity, educational, political and cultural levels of residents in the dormitory’. 79 Instead, the protocols embraced the political democratisation underway in the Soviet Union and called for each dormitory to create a workers’ committee that would ‘improve education, mass culture, physical wellness and sports activities; assert the norms and rules of a socialist dormitory, a sober and healthy lifestyle; and help the dormitory administration to improve their living conditions and public services.’ 80 Culturedness, education, and physical activity remained the foci of youth development, but limitchiki now needed to take the initiative for their own personal development.
The transfer of responsibility for cultural development from vospitateli to migrant workers is representative of the wider goals of Glasnost and Perestroika. The development of youths in Soviet dormitories in the 1970s both emphasised the values of the Soviet way of life and attempted to slow labour turnover. Likewise, Glasnost and Perestroika joined the political and economic by ‘direct[ing] socialism to humanism, justice, economic effectiveness, and building of democracy’. 81 Placing the cultural development of youthful migrants under the direction of workers’ committees was part of this democratisation process that sought to undo a hierarchical relationship between party actors and young citizens. However, the dormitory lost not only the strength of its cultural programmes but also its importance to the Soviet economy. During Perestroika, the Office for the Use of Labour Resources, the Council of Ministers and enterprises in Moscow imagined a new economic order in which improved levels of education, higher birth rates, and more employment opportunities in the countryside would render temporary labour migration obsolete. Young families replaced limitchiki as the solution to Moscow’s economic problems and became the object of Soviet political and social development. Repertoires and regimes of migration became less compatible when the Council of Ministers of the ussr and the Office for the Use of Labour Resources attempted to curb temporary labour migration and minimised social welfare provisions in the dormitory.
The Council of Ministers of the ussr outlined a host of youth-related ‘social demographic problems that needed to be solved through society-state reforms’. 82 Between 1979 and 1989, the number of youths in the entire Soviet Union dropped from 70 million to 63 million. However, these numbers obscured the uneven development of the youth. While the number of young workers in the rsfsr plummeted, it skyrocketed in the Central Asian Republics. The Council of Ministers associated the shifting locations of youths with employment problems. The ageing population in the rsfsr created labour shortages, particularly in its cities, which encouraged migration among the youth there. However, the burgeoning population in Central Asia tended to be less mobile and thus underemployed. 83 Instead of encouraging migration from labour rich Central Asia to places with labour deficits in the rsfsr, the Council of Ministers of the ussr encouraged raising the birthrate in labour deficit areas and providing more employment opportunities in labour rich ones. In short, it no longer saw migration as desirable.
These labour shortages in the rsfsr negatively affected the political and economic position of youths there. Youths entered the workforce later than ever before. In earlier decades, 90 per cent of youths were employed by the age of 20, but in the 1980s, youths only reached the 90 per cent threshold by age 25. The Council of Ministers argued that youths found work later because they spent longer completing their education and job training. Despite increased qualifications, young workers mainly worked in difficult conditions that required low levels of education. Men under the age of 30 made up 30 per cent of all construction workers and 35 per cent of those working in automobile production. 84 In Moscow, overqualified workers prevailed. 50 per cent of all blue-collar workers and 40 per cent of white-collar ones did not use the skills for which they had originally trained. 85
The levels of political involvement for youths were not much better. In the rsfsr, only 2 per cent of all youths were involved in political work in the ministries. The Council of Ministers of the ussr’s inquiry into youth conditions noted that these positions paid better than the low-skilled labour that most youths took on. The Council of Ministers also expressed anxiety that youths turned to unofficial means for social organisation, citing the proliferation of neformalnye groups in the 1980s. 86 Neformalnye, the Russian word for “informal”, were youth subcultures that proliferated outside the control of the Party or the Communist Youth League. In her analysis of these neformalnye groups, Hilary Pilkington highlights the assumption of Soviet scholars during Perestroika that rural to urban migration fuelled the formation of neformalnye groups. In search of ways to make sense of their new environs, migrants and their children sought out meaningful connections with others. 87 These subcultures eschewed engagement with politics, favouring their own hangouts. Perhaps this is suggestive of the fewer avenues available to youthful migrants for structured engagement. However, according to the Council of Ministers, the neformalnye represented the youthful propensity for democratisation through self-organisation. 88
The Council of Ministers of the ussr immediately attacked the allegedly poor Soviet education system that supported party dogmatism and failed to develop individuality. They desired to replace ‘authoritarian dogmatism that influenced student-teacher relationships’, 89 with a government-society partnership in education that would accommodate a multiparty system. Such a system would allow youths to develop themselves as individuals. Education also provided a means to stem migration and establish the importance of young families. The Council of Ministers planned to open places of employment (although they never specified what sort of employment they would offer) and job training centres in labour rich areas to hinder labour migration. 90 Similarly, the Communist Youth League promised to strengthen the guarantee for work by improving the conditions of education, the socio-economic support available for families, and the maternity leave available for women with children under the age of two. 91
While the Council of Ministers laid out the problems facing youths and young families, it ultimately left the implementation of specific policies up to city administrations. The Office for the Use of Labour Resources changed its name to the Office for Labour and Social Problems in 1987. It provides an interesting case study of how official policies tied economic and social reform on the local level to improvements in family life. Originally charged with rallying labour resources within the capital and recruiting labours from outside Moscow, the Office now sought to address demographic problems that went hand in hand with labour shortages. The Office for Labour and Social problems was well aware that these chronically low birth rates meant smaller workforces in the future. In the meantime, this demographic stagnation resulted in an ageing population that relied on labour migrants to keep factories and construction brigades functioning.
In terms of birth rates in 1987, Moscow ranked 25th out of 30 Soviet cities that had populations over 1,000,000 people. Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, the number of births in Moscow surpassed the number of deaths by 10,000 to 15,000 annually. In 1989, however, deaths surpassed births by 5,000, and Moscow dropped to last place for birth rates in Soviet cities. 92 In 1991, the year of the dissolution of the Soviet Union, there were 34,000 more deaths than births. From 1971 to 1984, Moscow’s population had grown by 50,000 annually due to migration alone. 93 The Office linked these demographic problems to economic ones. In a study on demographic problems, the Office also noted that Moscow’s enterprises, like most Soviet ones, suffered from a lack of technological innovation. 50 per cent of labourers and 40 per cent of white-collar workers did not use the skills in which they were trained. Approximately 400,000 workers had changed their position in the last two years (1987–1988) alone. This led to Moscow ranking below New York, London, Paris, Tokyo, Chicago, Montreal, Madrid, and Sydney in terms of economic growth. 94
The Office’s solution was a series of long-term goals and plans to increase the natural growth of the city’s population – that is to say, population growth by births as opposed to in-migration. The Office, which had long focused on recruiting migrants and monitoring their conditions in the capital, now directed its actions towards its native population (among whose numbers were limitchiki turned permanent residents) to solve both demographic problems and economic ones. Policies focused on births, marriages, and divorces, not available labour resources, dormitories, and the like. A report from 1987 covered the demographic situation in Moscow and speculated as to its causes. Each year, Moscow officials registered 90,000 marriages, 40,000 deaths, and 125,000 births. Moscow had a total of 2.5 million families, but only 350,000 were families in which the spouses were under the age of 30. In short, Moscow’s demographic crisis was on the precipice of becoming even worse. Its birth rate was only 14/1000, compared to the all-Soviet 20/1000. 95
The Office argued that divorce was the leading cause of these alarmingly low birth rates, and, as a result, the Office tasked itself with combatting divorce. Its guiding principle was to ‘implement recommendations from research, based on psychology, demographics, and sociology’. 96 Psychological problems, they believed, were associated with high divorce rates. The prestige of both motherhood and fatherhood was allegedly underrated. Soviet families suffered from disinterested fathers and mothers with difficult working conditions. This led to degradation of the material conditions of family. 97 The Office for Labour and Social Problems’ first course of action was to offer a lecture series titled ‘Family and Everyday Life in the Conditions of Developed Socialism’. After offering the lecture at several institutes and enterprises, the office reported that over 100,000 Muscovites had listened to the lecture over the course of the year. 98
The Office for Labour and Social Problems also opened a series of clinics to aid the physical and psychological health of Moscow’s families. The clinics, named ‘Marriage and Family’, helped address ‘personal problems, interfamily conflicts, problems with keeping promises, psychological problems with raising families, preparing youths for marriage, and problems with conceiving’. 99 Three such units opened in 1988, and the office planned to open more through 2000. All units had a psychologist on hand in addition to medical professionals who could address issues on fertility. 100 These family clinics were of the pronatalist sort, encouraging young families to have children and raise them in stable homes with both a mother and father present.
Such plans ignored the immediate problems facing Moscow’s labour market. Raising birth rates promised a more substantial workforce in terms of numbers of workers in the future, but it did not address many of the issues facing Moscow’s labour force during Perestroika. By 1989, Moscow’s economy seemed to be in crisis. Despite plans to have a native Muscovite workforce in the future, neither the Council of Ministers of the ussr nor the Office for Labour and Social Problems seemed particularly eager to encourage migration to Moscow. 101 Long reliant on outside labour, Moscow’s enterprises now struggled to provide employment for those already residing within the city. The Office for Labour and Social Problems explicitly called for reversing the flow of migration because the city’s enterprises could no longer offer new workers employment. 102
The new economic conditions in Moscow created a strange irony. The Office for the Use of Labour Resources had long rallied local and migrant youth, women, and pensioners to join the workforce. However, in the late 1980s following the Office’s name change to the Office for Labour and Social Problems, these very groups became just that: social problems, not labour resources. In a 1989 study, the Office argued that ‘one problem will increase: employment of youth, women, pensioners, and invalids. At the current moment, these categories cannot be taken on profitably.’ 103 The Office predicted that unemployment rates in Moscow would soon mimic those rates seen in capitalist countries. Looking to other world capitals, the Office predicted that under economic liberalisation, unemployment in Moscow would reach between 4 and 7 per cent, leaving approximately 400,000 people unemployed. 104
The Office sought socialist solutions to these new capitalistic problems. It planned to provide (1) the guarantee of employment for all; (2) training and retraining programmes; and (3) access to social welfare resources for families. The Office replaced organised labour recruitment with a labour market that would work in conjunction with enterprises to create more jobs. The guarantee of employment relied heavily on the Office’s ability to coordinate with enterprises and workers. Unemployed workers registered with the Office for Labour and Social Problems who then provided them with information on available employment opportunities, courses for retraining, and unemployment benefits. The Office called on all enterprises to register any employment vacancies with the Office so the unemployed could be forwarded on to work. 105
The economic conditions in Moscow worsened in 1991, the year of the Soviet Union’s dissolution. Over 100,000 people sought the help of the Office for Labour and Social Problems for finding work. The overwhelming majority were unemployed because they had been let go from their previous place of employment. Different government ministries planned to release 140,000 from work by the end of the year. The Office predicted that 380,000 to 450,000 people living in Moscow would be in search of work by the end of 1991 due to liberalisation policies. Moreover, the 640,000 people of retirement age in the workforce faced the reality that they might be forced out of their jobs and as a result lose their pensions. 106 The Moscow City Council entertained the idea of selling domicile registrations to provide hard cash for unemployment benefits and pensions but such plans never came to fruition. 107
Market socialism was the name of Gorbachev’s game, and the socialism aspect should be taken seriously. The Office for Labour and Social Problems desired to offer unemployment benefits and pensions. However, the course of economic and social reforms made this difficult, if not impossible. In the 1970s, the dormitory was the centre of cultural development and social welfare distribution, so when it lost its place of pre-eminence, migrants lost their relatively easy access to these services. Moreover, market reforms led to the failure of the Soviet state to meet its guarantee of employment for all.According to Gorbachev, perestroika meant ending totalitarian systems and introducing democratic reforms and freedoms, a pluralistic economy (with many types of ownership, including privatization, free enterprise, and shareholding), and a free market economy. This might sound like capitalism to observers looking back in hindsight, but at the time it represented the most advanced understanding of socialism among economists in both East and West. 108
Some of these elements, such as the proletarianisation of the Soviet workforce and the privatisation of assets would become more pronounced in the post-Soviet period when Russia began its journey through ‘shock therapy’, but elements of the other four characteristics can clearly be seen in Soviet Moscow.the massive proletarianisation of China’s workforce, the breaking of the ‘iron rice bowl’, the evisceration of social protections, the imposition of user fees, the creation of a flexible labour market regime, and the privatization of assets formerly held in common. 110
David Harvey described the ‘iron rice bowl’ in ways that are similar to the role of the Soviet enterprise and dormitory, primarily a ‘wide range of welfare and pension benefits’ distributed through the state-owned enterprises in China. 111 In the Soviet case, the decline of the role of the vospitatel and the increasing focus on the family share similarities with the breaking of the ‘iron rice bowl’. Encouraging the democratisation of cultural programmes within the Soviet dormitory diminished the role of the enterprise in shaping and influencing Soviet youth. Moreover, the social welfare that the Office for Labour and Social Problems offered moved away from the dormitory to focus on all families within Moscow. The new sites of social formation and welfare were now clinics for physical and psychological care. Moreover, by 1991 the Office for Labour and Social Problems failed to provide employment and social welfare for the most vulnerable: youth, women, pensioners, and the infirm.
The imposition of user fees and the creation of a labour market accompanied the struggling economic reforms in Soviet Moscow. In the Soviet case, organised labour recruitment and personal connections were the channels that funnelled workers from labour rich to labour deficit areas in the Soviet Union. However, by the late 1980s, both the Council of Ministers of the ussr and the Office for Labour and Social Problems attempted to stem migration and develop local labour markets. Although labour deficit areas often did not offer sufficient employment opportunities, economic liberalisation meant cities such as Moscow, which had long absorbed labour surpluses because of its own deficits, could no longer do so. Instead, the Office developed a citywide labour market based on ‘the research of domestic and international scholars on labour markets’. 112 As local organs in Moscow failed to deliver social welfare, user fees, particularly the idea of charging for a domicile registration, were debated as a possible means for financing the struggling social welfare system.
All of these in one form or another represent the evisceration of social welfare protections, particularly for migrants. The Council of Ministers of the ussr and the Office for Labour and Social Problems planned to tackle the larger issues that led to labour shortages in regime cities, which had encouraged temporary labour migration. These policies emphasised the importance of families in Moscow, viewing healthy and stable families as a necessary component for creating a local, young labour pool. However, the development of the family was a long-term plan for Moscow’s economic wellbeing. Such plans left migrant workers out in the cold. Many arrived single and unattached, relying on the dormitory for their economic and social wellbeing and falling outside of the focus on the family.
Conclusion
The highest echelons of Soviet power – the Council of Ministers of the ussr, the Supreme Soviet of the ussr, and the Council of Ministers of the rsfsr – linked political, economic and social development. Local organs of power such as the Office for the Use of Labour Resources (later named the Office for Labour and Social Problems) and enterprises implemented such policies on the local level. In the 1970s, enterprises in Moscow relied on limitchiki to solve the problems of the command economy, primarily a chronic shortage of labour. The advanced planning of the economy and ageing urban population left the city without many young workers. Cultural, educational, and physical development reinforced the economic goals of attracting and keeping labourers. Higher levels of education, cultural excursions, and intramural sports tempered hooliganism, absenteeism, and high labour turnover. The investment in youth improved the productivity of enterprises.
During Glasnost and Perestroika, the Council of Ministers of the ussr and the rsfsr embarked on a new programme that emphasised democratisation, personal initiative, and young families. Soviet policies in the 1970s addressed labour shortages and turnover but not the larger issues that caused and exacerbated these problems. In the late 1980s, economic liberalisation and concerns about the ageing urban population led to wholesale changes in social policies. The Council of Ministers of the ussr and the Office for Labour and Social Problems focused on young families and sought to stem the tide of labour migration.
Both systems were flawed but are suggestive of the political and social values of their times. In the 1970s, large-scale temporary labour migration failed to quench Moscow’s thirst for labourers. Enterprises and the Office for the Use of Labour Resources failed to recruit their total number of workers. However, the emphasis on cultural development engaged with and took seriously the tenets of developed socialism and the Soviet way of life, passing along such ideas to labour migrants. In the late 1980s, the focus on young families provided a long-term solution while failing to address the short-term needs of labourers and labour migrants. Although such policies promoted democratisation, they are also suggestive of neoliberal economic outcomes.
Tsentral’nyi Gosudarstvennyi Arkhiv goroda Moskvy (Central State Archive of the City of Moscow, TsGAGM), Upravlenie po ispol’zovaniiu trudovykh resursov Mosgorispolkoma, fond 249, opis’ 2, delo 481.
TsGAGM, Upravlenie po ispol’zovaniiu trudovykh resursov Mosgorispolkoma, f. 249, op. 2, d. 183.
Sovet Ministrov rsfsr, Postanovlenie, 30 Marta 1967 g. N 227, ‘Ob utverzhdenii primernogo polozheniia ob obshchezhitiiakh (utratilo silu na osnovanii postanovleniia Soveta ministrov rsfsr ot 11.88)’.
TsGAGM, Avtomobil’nyi zavod imena Leninskogo Komsomola glavnogo upravleniia po proizvodstvu legkovykh avtomobilei i avtobusov Ministerstva avtomobil’noi promyshlennosti sssr, f. 653, op. 1, d. 1769.
Sovet Ministrov rsfsr, Postanovlenie, 30 Marta 1967 g. N 227. All translations are by the author.
Lewis H. Siegelbaum and Leslie Page Moch, Broad is my native land: repertoires and regimes of migration in Russia’s twentieth century (Ithaca 2014) 3.
For an overview of these processes, see Paul M. Hagenloh, ‘“Chekist in essence, Chekist in spirit”: regular and political police in the 1930s’, Cahiers du Monde Russe 42:2/4 (2001) 447–475; Gijs Kessler, ‘The passport system and state control over population flows in the Soviet Union, 1932–1940’, Cahiers du Monde Russe 42:2/4 (2001) 477–503; David Shearer, ‘Elements near and alien: passportization, policing and identity in the Stalinist state, 1932–1952’, The Journal of Modern History 76:4 (2004) 835–881.
Kessler, ‘The passport system’, 488–492.
Lewis Siegelbaum and Andrei Sokolov, Stalinism as a way of life: abridged edition (New Haven 2004) 39. “Dekulakisation” refers to the removal of wealthy peasants from collective farms, usually through deportation.
Siegelbaum and Sokolov, Stalinism as a way of life, 57–58.
Please see David Hoffman, Peasant metropolis: social identities in Moscow, 1929–1941 (Ithaca 1994); Siegelbaum and Moch, Broad is my native land, 118–123.
Shearer, ‘Elements near and alien’, 851–852.
Hagenloh, ‘“Chekist in essence”’, 467–469; Shearer, ‘Elements near and alien’, 852.
Shearer, ‘Elements near and alien’, 850.
Kessler, ‘The passport system’, 485–486.
Kessler, ‘The passport system’, 488–492.
Shearer, ‘Elements near and alien’, 873.
Siegelbaum and Moch, Broad is my native land, 123–126.
Kessler, ‘The passport system’, 490–496.
Viktor Zaslavsky, The neo-Stalinist state: class, ethnicity, and consensus in Soviet society (Armonk 1982) 47.
Silvana Malle, ‘Planned and unplanned mobility in the Soviet Union under the threat of labour shortages’, Soviet Studies 39:3 (1987) 357–387, 363.
Viktor Perevedentsev, ‘Bolshie goroda’, Ogonyok 34 (August 1988) 12–14, 12.
Janos Kornai, Economics of shortage (New York 1980).
TsGAGM, Upravlenie po ispol’zovaniiu trudovykh resursov, f. 249, op. 2, d. 189.
TsGAGM, Statisticheskoe upravlenie g. Moskvy Tsentral’nogo Statisticheskoe upravlenie rsfsr, f. 126, op. 13, d. 526; TsGAGM, Statisticheskoe upravlenie g. Moskvy rsfsr, f. 126, op. 13, d. 605.
TsGAGM, Statisticheskoe upravlenie g. Moskvy, f. 126, op. 14, d. 4040, 4041, 4058, 4191, 4403, 4508. The individual document listed provides counts of workers according to plan, actually working at a location, and needed from outside the city. Some provide an analysis of how workers could be found to fill vacancies.
Gosudarstvennyi Arkhiv Rossiiskoi Federatsii (garf), Gosudarstvennyi komitet rsfsr po trudu, f. 10005, op. 1, d. 165.
TsGAGM, Upravlenie po ispol’zovaniiu trudovykh resursov, f. 249, op. 2, d. 143.
garf, Gosudarstvennyi komitet rsfsr po trudu, f. 10005, op. 1, d. 165.
garf, Sovet Ministrov sssr, f. 5446, op. 108, d. 1314.
Sovet Ministrov rsfsr, Postanovlenie, 30 Marta 1967 g. N 227.
Zaslavsky, The neo-Stalinist state, 147.
Leonid Brezhnev, ‘A historic stage on the road to Communism, 1977’, Seventeen Moments in Soviet History, http://soviethistory.msu.edu/1980-2/our-little-father/our-little-father-texts/brezhnev-on-the-theory-of-developed-socialism/ (9 March 2017).
Christine Evans, ‘The “Soviet way of life” as a way of feeling: emotion and influence on Soviet Central Television in the Brezhnev era’, Cahiers du Monde Russe 56:2/3 (2015) 543–569. Brezhnev quoted on p. 544.
For an overview of why migrants would want to leave, please see L.N. Denisova, Rural Russia: economic, social and moral crisis (New York 1995); Moch and Siegelbaum, Broad is my native land.
Lewis Siegelbaum, ‘People on the move during the “era of stagnation”: the rural exodus in the rsfsr during the 1960s–1980s’, in: Dina Fainberg and Artemy Kalinovsky (eds), Reconsidering stagnation in the Brezhnev era: ideology and exchange (New York 2016) 43–58, 45–50.
TsGAGM, Upravlenie po ispol’zovaniiu trudovykh resursov, f. 249, op. 2, d. 183.
garf, Gosudarstvennyi Komitet rsfsr po trudu, f. 10005 op. 1 d. 144.
TsGAGM, Avtomobil’nyi zavod imena Leninskogo Komsomola, f. 653 op. 1 d. 1775.
TsGAGM, Liublinskii raionnyi komitet nardonogo kontrolia g. Moskvy moskovskogo gorodskogo komiteta narodnogo kontrolia f. 974, op. 1, d. 11.
Sovet Ministrov rsfsr, Postanovlenie, 30 Marta 1967 g. N 227.
garf, Sovet Ministrov sssr, f. 5446 op. 108 d. 1314.
garf, Sovet Ministrov sssr, f. 5446 op. 108 d. 1314.
TsGAGM, Liublinskii raionnyi komitet nardonogo kontrolia, f. 974, op. 1, d. 11. In addition to azlk, Liublinskii District was home to at least twenty other factories and construction brigades that relied on limitchiki for labour.
TsGAGM, Liublinskii raionnyi komitet nardonogo kontrolia, f. 974, op. 1, d. 11.
TsGAGM, Liublinskii raionnyi komitet nardonogo kontrolia, f. 974, op. 1, d. 11.
TsGAGM, Avtomobil’nyi zavod imena Leninskogo Komsomola, f. 653, op. 1, d. 1657.
TsGAGM, Avtomobil’nyi zavod imena Leninskogo Komsomola, f. 653, op. 1, d. 1870.
TsGAGM, Avtomobil’nyi zavod imena Leninskogo Komsomola, f. 653, op. 1, d. 1656.
TsGAGM, Avtomobil’nyi zavod imena Leninskogo Komsomola, f. 653, op. 1, d. 1774.
TsGAGM, Avtomobil’nyi zavod imena Leninskogo Komsomola, f. 653, op. 1, d. 1870 and TsGAGM, Avtomobil’nyi zavod imena Leninskogo Komsomola, f. 653, op. 1, d. 2235.
TsGAGM, Avtomobil’nyi zavod imena Leninskogo Komsomola, f. 653, op. 1, d. 1884.
TsGAGM, Avtomobil’nyi zavod imena Leninskogo Komsomola, f. 653, op. 1, d. 1883.
TsGAGM, Avtomobil’nyi zavod imena Leninskogo Komsomola, f. 653, op. 1, d. 1997.
TsGAGM, Liublinskii raionnyi komitet nardonogo kontrolia, f. 974, op. 1, d. 11. Glavmosstroi, Mostelefonstroi, and azlk each had a ptu in the district.
TsGAGM, Liublinskii raionnyi komitet nardonogo kontrolia, f. 974, op. 1, d. 11.
TsGAGM, Avtomobil’nyi zavod imena Likhacheva (zil) Ministerstva avtomobil’noi promyshlennosti f. 1851, op. 1, d. 765.
Red corners functioned as monuments to socialism with propaganda, pictures, and literature on socialism.
TsGAGM, Avtomobil’nyi zavod imena Leninskogo Komsomola, f. 653, op. 1, d. 1559.
TsGAGM, Avtomobil’nyi zavod imena Leninskogo Komsomola, f. 653, op. 1, d. 1657.
TsGAGM, Avtomobil’nyi zavod imena Leninskogo Komsomola, f. 653, op. 1, d. 1883.
TsGAGM, Avtomobil’nyi zavod imena Leninskogo Komsomola, f. 653, op. 1, d. 1769.
Estrada music was a genre of Soviet songs.
TsGAGM, Avtomobil’nyi zavod imena Leninskogo Komsomola, f. 653, op. 1, d. 1769.
TsGAGM, Avtomobil’nyi zavod imena Leninskogo Komsomola, f. 653, op. 1, d. 1769.
TsGAGM, Avtomobil’nyi zavod imena Leninskogo Komsomola, f. 653, op. 1, d. 1657.
Interview with Natalia Sergeevna Shvetsova, Moscow, by Emily Elliott in October 2015.
Sovet Ministrov rsfsr, Postanovlenie, 30 Marta 1967 g. N 227.
TsGAGM, Avtomobil’nyi zavod imena Leninskogo Komsomola, f. 653, op. 1, d. 1558.
TsGAGM, Avtomobil’nyi zavod imena Leninskogo Komsomola, f. 653, op. 1, d. 1883.
TsGAGM, Avtomobil’nyi zavod imena Leninskogo Komsomola, f. 653, op. 1, d. 1769.
TsGAGM, Avtomobil’nyi zavod imena Leninskogo Komsomola, f. 653, op. 1, d. 1657.
TsGAGM, Avtomobil’nyi zavod imena Leninskogo Komsomola, f. 653, op. 1, d. 1883.
TsGAGM, Liublinskii raionnyi komitet nardonogo kontrolia g. Moskvy moskovskogo gorodskogo komiteta narodnogo kontrolia, f. 974, op. 1, d. 11.
TsGAGM, Liublinskii raionnyi komitet nardonogo kontrolia g. Moskvy moskovskogo gorodskogo komiteta narodnogo kontrolia, f. 974, op. 1, d. 11.
TsGAGM, Upravlenie po ispol’zovaniiu trudovykh resursov Mosgorispolkoma, f. 249, op. 2, d. 145.
TsGAGM, Upravlenie po ispol’zovaniiu trudovykh resursov Mosgorispolkoma, f. 249, op. 2, d. 145.
TsGAGM, Upravlenie po ispol’zovaniiu trudovykh resursov Mosgorispolkoma, f. 249, op. 2, d. 145.
Sovet Ministrov rsfsr, Postanovlenie, ot 11.08.1988 n. 328.
Sovet Ministrov rsfsr, Postanovlenie, ot 11.08.1988 n. 328.
garf, Sovet Ministrov sssr, f. 5446, op. 163, d. 1023.
garf, Sovet Ministrov sssr, f. 5446, op. 163, d. 1022.
garf, Sovet Ministrov sssr, f. 5446, op. 163, d. 1022.
garf, Sovet Ministrov sssr, f. 5446, op. 163, d. 1022.
TsGAGM, Glavnoe upravlenie po trudu i sotsial’nym voprosam, f. 249, op.2, d. 481.
garf, Sovet Ministrov sssr, f. 5446, op. 163, d. 1023.
Hilary Pilkington, Russia’s youth and its culture: a nation’s constructors and constructed (London 1994) 77.
garf, Sovet Ministrov sssr, f. 5446, op. 163, d. 1023.
garf, Sovet Ministrov sssr, f. 5446, op. 163, d. 1023.
garf, Sovet Ministrov sssr, f. 5446, op. 163, d. 1022.
garf, Sovet Ministrov sssr, f. 5446, op. 163, d. 1023.
TsGAGM, Glavnoe upravlenie po trudu i sotsial’nym voprosam, f. 249, op. 2, d. 481.
TsGAGM, Glavnoe upravlenie po trudu i sotsial’nym voprosam, f. 249, op. 2, d. 461.
TsGAGM, Glavnoe upravlenie po trudu i sotsial’nym voprosam, f. 249, op. 2, d. 481.
TsGAGM, Glavnoe upravlenie po trudu i sotsial’nym voprosam, f. 249, op. 2, d. 465.
TsGAGM, Glavnoe upravlenie po trudu i sotsial’nym voprosam, f. 249, op. 2, d. 465.
TsGAGM, Glavnoe upravlenie po trudu i sotsial’nym voprosam, f. 249, op. 2, d. 461.
TsGAGM, Glavnoe upravlenie po trudu i sotsial’nym voprosam, f. 249, op. 2, d. 465.
TsGAGM, Glavnoe upravlenie po trudu i sotsial’nym voprosam, f. 249, op. 2, d. 466.
TsGAGM, Glavnoe upravlenie po trudu i sotsial’nym voprosam, f. 249, op. 2, d. 466.
garf, Sovet Ministrov sssr, f. 5446, op. 163, d. 1023; Tsgagm, Glavnoe upravlenie po trudu i sotsial’nym voprosam, f. 249, op. 2, d. 481.
TsGAGM, Glavnoe upravlenie po trudu i sotsial’nym voprosam, f. 249, op. 2, d. 481.
TsGAGM, Glavnoe upravlenie po trudu i sotsial’nym voprosam, f. 249, op. 2, d. 481.
TsGAGM, Glavnoe upravlenie po trudu i sotsial’nym voprosam, f. 249, op. 2, d. 481.
TsGAGM, Glavnoe upravlenie po trudu i sotsial’nym voprosam, f. 249, op. 2, d. 485.
TsGAGM, Glavnoe upravlenie po trudu i sotsial’nym voprosam, f. 249, op. 2, d. 498.
TsGAGM, Glavnoe upravlenie po trudu i sotsial’nym voprosam, f. 249, op. 2, d. 499.
Johanna Bockman, Markets in the name of socialism: the left-wing origins of neoliberalism (Stanford 2011) 180.
David Harvey, A brief history of neoliberalism (Oxford 2005) 2.
Harvey, A brief history of neoliberalism, 150.
Harvey, A brief history of neoliberalism, 126.
TsGAGM, Glavnoe upravlenie po trudu i sotsial’nym voprosam, f. 249, op. 2, d. 485.