주제어 :	World War Ⅱ, Soviet Home-front Identity, Sense of Entitlement

투 고 일 :	2008.	10.	15

심 사 일 :	2008.	11.	1	~ 11. 30

심사완료일 :	2008.	12.	15

The Impact of World War Ⅱ on the Formation

of the Home-Front Identities

Joonseo Song*

****	한국외국어대학교 강사

제24권 1호

The Impact of World War II on the Formation of the Home-Front Identities

국문요약

본 논문은 제 2차 세계대전동안 한 번도 나치 독일군과의 전투를 치르거나 점령당한 적이 없었던 소련 후방 지역의 소비에트 인민들의 정체성 형성에 대한 전쟁의 영향을 고찰한 것이다. 이제까지 전쟁이 소비에트 인민들의 정체성 형성에 대해 미친 영향은 주로 전방에서의 전투 경험이나 점령지역에서의 경험과 관련되어 고찰 되어왔으나 전방의 경험을 토대로 한 관점은 후방의 지역적 특수성을 반영하지 못하는 문제점이 있었다. 이를 극복하기 위해 본 연구는 제 2차 대전시 후방의 대표적 군수 산업기지였던 우랄지방의 철강도시 마그니토고르스크 주민들의 전후의 극심한 물자부족에 대한 불평, 불만, 그리고 보다 나은 생활을 영위할 권리감의 표출 속에 나타난 수사들의 분석을 통하여 전쟁의 사회·경제적 유산이 후방 지역 주민들의 전후 정체성 형성에 미친 영향을 고찰하였다.

Ⅰ. Introduction

Recent studies on daily life in the postwar Stalin years show that scarcity was a universal problem throughout the Soviet Union, regardless of whether one lived in a former front region or in a key industrial town on the “home front.” Some regional studies focusing on the former front/liberated regions destroyed and occupied by the German armies during the war, such as Kalinin province and Rostov-on-the Don, also demonstrate that postwar scarcity prevailed in the daily life of these regions, even though they were identified as a priority for the government and received relatively large amounts of government investment. Primarily the shortages in the former front regions were due to the focus of investment on reconstruction of infrastructure and heavy industry, which affected daily living conditions less than light industry.

1)	For example, see Julie Hessler, A Social History of Soviet Trade: Trade Policy, Retail Practices, and Consumption, 1917-1953 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004), chapter 7; Donald Filtzer, Soviet Workers and Late Stalinism Soviet Workers and Late Stalinism: Labour and Restoration of the Stalinist System after World War II (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002); idem, “The Standard of Living of Soviet Industrial Workers in the Immediate Postwar Period, 1945-1948,” Europe-Asia Studies, vol. 51, no. 6 (1999), pp. 1013-1038; Elena Zubkova, Russia After the War: Hopes, Illusions, and Disappointments, 1945-1957 (Armonk, New York: M.E. Sharpe, 1998); Sheila Fitzpatrick, “Postwar Soviet Society: The ‘Return to Normalcy,’ 1945-1953,” in The Impact of World War II on the Soviet Union, ed. by Susan Linz (Totowa, New Jersey: Rowman & Allanheld, 1985), pp. 129-156.

Kees Boterbloem. Life and Death under Stalin: Kalinin Province, 1945-1953 (Montreal & Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1999), pp. 181-182; Jeffrey W. Jones, “People Without a Definite Occupation,” in Provincial Landscapes: Local Dimensions of Soviet Power, 1917-53, ed. by Donald J. Raleigh (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2001), p. 237.

During 1945-1950 nearly 88 percent of economic investments were concentrated on producer goods (e.g., raw materials for heavy industry), while only about 12 percent were focused on food and consumer goods. Alec Nove, An Economic History of the Soviet Union, 1917-1991, 3rd edition (London and New York: Penguin Books, 1992), p. 297.

While scholars have paid much attention to the center-region relationship in decision-making on economic policies and their implementation, perceptions and attitudes toward those practices during the postwar Stalin years have not been investigated thoroughly. Few scholars have fully examined the postwar living conditions within key industrial cities of the former home-front region. Moreover, few scholars have shed light on working peoples’ postwar socio-political attitudes from the home-front perspective, which would draw on the particular home-front wartime experience. Studies on the impact of wartime experiences on socio-political attitudes and the self-identification of the Soviet people tend to focus heavily on either the former front or occupied regions or on particular groups, such as war veterans. However, the experiences of the former battleground regions cannot appropriately explain the impact of the wartime experience on the attitudes of those in the “deep rear,” which was never touched by a single battle during the war. For the workers in the hinterland, memories of the war would be related to their labor in the factories, rather than heroic exploits in (or the terror of) battle and experiences with Nazi collaborators or partisans during the occupation and liberation. Then, the question I will explore in this paper is how the wartime experiences of the home-front industrial town affect the identifications of the people in the region. Through this study I aim to show the ways in which Soviet people in the home front regions identified themselves were not same as the ways that people in the front regions employed for their self-identifications because the wartime experiences and their impacts were not homogeneous, but varied across the region.

For example, see Timothy Dunmore, The Stalinist Command Economy: The Soviet State Apparatus and Economic Policy, 1945-1953 (Macmillan Press LTD, 1980); James Harris, “Resisting the Planin the Urals, 1928-1956: Or, Why Regional Officials Needed ‘Wreckers’ and‘ Saboteurs’,” in Contending with Stalinism: Soviet Power & Popular Resistance in the 1930s, ed. by Lynne Viola (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2002), pp. 201-228.

For example, see Amir Weiner. Making Sense of War: The Second World War and the Fate of the Bolshevik Revolution (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2001); Karl D. Qualls, “Local-Outsider Negotiations in Postwar Sevastopol’s Reconstruction, 1944-1953,” in Provincial Landscapes; Jones, “People Without a Definite Occupation,”in Provincial Landscapes.

For example, see Mark Edele, “Soviet Veterans as an Entitlement Group, 1945-1955,” Slavic Review, Vol. 65, No.1 (2006), pp. 111-37.

For my research I chose Magnitogorsk, home of a giant steel mill located in a deep rear behind the Urals, as the site for my case study of socio-political attitudes of people in an unoccupied home-front region during postwar years because of both its typicality as a home-front town and differences from the experiences of the towns in the front region that help us see a more complete picture of the impact of the war on the ways that the home-front people identified themselves.

On the one hand, Magnitogorsk was a typical home-front town that shares many war and postwar experiences with other unoccupied home-front towns. Like many towns and cities in the rear, Magnitogorsk experienced demographic and social and economic upheaval during the war due to the influx of evacuees, factory workers, and wounded soldiers, as well as the evacuation of factories, schools, and other institutions. Extended work weeks(frequently described as “heroic labor” in official rhetoric)—usually seven days a week, twelve to fifteen hours of work a day—were routine for workers in Magnitogorsk just as for those in the other home-front towns. On the other hand, Magnitogorsk was not an ordinary home-front town. During World War II Magnitogorsk became a key location for the defense industry as the city produced steel for tanks and shells. Due to its strategic significance for the Soviet war effort, Magnitogorsk received special attention from Moscow during the war period. The heavy industry workers of Magnitogorsk were placed in the first category in the wartime rationing system. In principle, those belonging to this first category had priority under the rationing system which allowed them more food supplies than those working in light industry.

Magnitogorsk, which received a total of 43,000 evacuees during the war, was one of the industrial centers of the Ural region, which received a total of about 1,620,000 evacuees. AOAM, f. 10, op. 1, d. 383, l. 175 (5/24/1945); M. N. Potemkina, Evakuatsiia v gody velikoi otechestvennoi voinyna urale: liudi i sud’by (Magnitogorsk: MaGU, 2002), p. 256. Like Magnitogorsk, much smaller rural towns in the Ural region also received evacuees and other people from the front areas. More than 30,000 refugees, evacuees, and wounded from western regions went to Shadrinsk, a kind of “granary of the Urals,” during the war years. Marius Broekmeyer, Stalin, the Russians, and Their War,1941-1945,trans. Rosalind Buck (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2004), pp.251, 253, 267.

In many cases, extended labor hours at factories were common not only for workers in the industrial centers of the home front but also for the people in rural towns because many large and small factories were evacuated to predominantly rural towns. For example, with the outbreak of the war, five different kinds of factories (including car, textile, fire-fighting equipment, tobacco, and nail factories) with workers and their family members were evacuated from Ukraine, Moscow, and other regions to Shadrinsk, a small provincial town situated east of Sverdlovsk, with a total population of about 31,000 on the eve of the war. Broekmeyer, Stalin, the Russians, and Their War, p. 255; for the prewar(1939) population of Shadrinsk, see http://www.populstat.info/Europe/russiat.htm (Last visited on Oct. 1, 2008). Through his interviews with many workers in the home-front towns in the Urals and Siberia during the war years, Alexander Werth, a British correspondent, reported that most workers in these home-front towns regardless of their industrial significance were suffered enormously from the “most crippling and heartbreaking work.” Alexander Werth, Russia At War, 1941-1945 (New York: Carroll & Graf Publishers, Inc., 1964), pp. 218-19.

A. V. Liubimov, Torgovilia i snabzhenie v gody velikoi otechestvennoi voiny. (Moskva: Izdatel’stvo ekonomika, 1968), p. 28.

In reality, however, a shortage of state-supplied food for civilians persisted throughout the war because the foremost priority was feeding the armed forces. Additionally, with priority given in transportation to soldiers and war supplies, transport of food and commodities delays exacerbated the shortage in Magnitogorsk during certain periods of the war.  This shortages continued in Magnitogorsk even after the war. Although Magnitogorsk received continuing attention from Moscow after the war ended due to its role as the country’s largest producer of steel for the postwar reconstruction, material supplies for daily life in Magnitogorsk changed little compared to those of the war years, at least during the first four or five years after the war. Shortage was the inevitable result of the Stalin government’s concentration of support for heavy industry at the expense of light industry. Thus, as in the war years, shortages dominated daily life in Magnitogorsk at least until the late 1940s and early 1950s. Accordingly, for the people of Magnitogorsk, both war and postwar years were indeed extraordinary times, during which they had to suffered from food and housing shortages. How, then, did the people of Magnitogorsk—a city which had been celebrated for heroic war effort—respond to the difficulties that plagued the postwar years, such as persistent food, consumer goods, and housing shortages? Through the analysis of the Magnitogorsk people’s response to the hardships, I will explore the ways that the ways that the urban inhabitants’ identified themselves and the impact of the war on the self-identifications.

William Moskoff, The Bread of Affliction: The Food Supply in the USSR during World War II (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), ch. 6.

GARF, f. 8300, op. 18, d. 12, l. 2ob (1/18/1943)

To analyze their response to the postwar difficulties in daily life, I will investigate the rhetoric displayed in their main survival strategies for coping with the shortages, such as claiming entitlement to a better life and denunciation of local officials. This examination of the rhetoric will help us grasp the ways of self-identifications because language was able to shape the thought and behavior of the people. Employing class and the sense of regionalism as analytic tools, I will show how the working people of Magnitogorsk used class to justify their demand for better treatment from the state. Here, Sheila Fitzpatrick’s approach, which uses class as an “ascribed” characteristic (rather than as a socioeconomic attribute) whose key function is to define an individual’s rights, privileges, and obligations vis-à-vis the state, will be useful. In the same vein, I will also employ E. P. Thompson’s understanding of class or class consciousness not as a given, inherent, or fixed attribute of an individual, but as something that has to be formed, and thus, can be taken up, castoff, or hidden. For the analysis of the sense of regionalism, I will consider Benedict Anderson’s concept of the “imagined community” and Sheila Fitzpatrick’s “Potemkin Village—[the] state’s idealized representation of the rural life.” She defined Potemkinism as a “Stalinist discourse in which shortcomings and contradictions of the present were overlooked.” In the discourse, the world was portrayed “not as it was but as it was becoming” by focusing only on positive and bright sides of the world. Applying these concepts, I will examine how the portrayal of the city in official rhetoric as a model Soviet city during the war and after and the particular regional wartime experience of Magnitogorsk (i.e., hard labor at factories on the home front) shaped a unique regional identity among the working people of the city.

As examples of analysis of the language of the Soviet subject and its role in self-identification, see Sheila Fitzpatrick, “Supplicants and Citizens: Public Letter-Writing in Soviet Russia in the 1930s, Slavic Review, vol. 55, no. 1 (Spring 1996), pp. 78-105; Lewis H. Siegelbaum, ‘“Dear Comrade, You Ask What We Need’: Socialist Paternalism and Soviet Rural ‘Notables’ in the Mid-1930s.” Slavic Review 57, no. 1 (1998).

See Sheila Fitzpatrick, “Ascribing Class: The Construction of Social Identity in Soviet Russia,”Journal of Modern History, vol. 65, no. 4, (1993), pp. 745-70; Fitzpatrick, ed., Stalinism: New Directions (London and New York: Routledge, 2000), p. 16.

See E. P. Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class (New York: Vintage Books, 1963), pp. 9-13. See also Lewis H. Siegelbaum and Ronald Grigor Suny, “Class Backwards? In Search of the Soviet Working Class,” in Making Workers Soviet: Power, Class and Identity, ed. by Siegelbaum and Suny (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1994), pp. 1-26.

See Sheila Fitzpatrick, Stalin’s Peasants: Resistance and Survival in the Russian Village after Collectivization (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), p. 16.

For the analysis of Magnitogorsk people’s rhetoric of denunciations, I will focus on one of the key functions of denunciation—manipulation of the state in order to “provoke a state response from which the denouncer would derive some specific benefit or satisfaction.” Through this analysis, I expect to understand the way in which the working people of Magnitogorsk attempted to protect their interests during shortages and the way in which they perceived the Soviet socialist system.

Sheila Fitzpatrick, “Signals from Below: Soviet Letters of Denunciation of the 1930s,” Journal of Modern History (1996), p. 863. For the regime-centered approach, denunciation was a means of monitoring public opinion (i.e., a surveillance function) and a state control mechanism over local party officials and bureaucrats.

Ⅱ. Postwar Shortages in Magnitogorsk

The general picture of the postwar living conditions in Magnitogorsk was not so different from what Fitzpatrick, Filtzer, and Hessler have shown in their studies on postwar Soviet society: the shortages of food, consumer goods, and housing continued in the city well into the late 1940s and even early 1950s. Although there began a gradual improvement in food supplies immediately following the war, there remained serious insufficiencies. As a vice director of the Department of Workers’ Supply of Magnitogorsk Steel Works (MMK) admitted in his report, full supply was impossible with the funds that MMK received from the government. Food shortages were simply unavoidable. By the end of 1945, only 83% of the bread-supply quota was fulfilled. Thus, as some MMK factory workers complained like, “How can we fulfill the production plan with empty stomachs?” they frequently had to labor for 12 hr work-days without enough bread to sustain them.

Fitzpatrick, “Postwar Soviet Society; Zubkova. Russia After the War; Filtzer, Soviet Workers and Late Stalinism; idem, “The Standard of Living...”; Hessler, A Social History of Soviet Trade, ch. 7.

AOAM, f. 118, op. 1, d. 174, l. 39 (12/29/45)

Ibid., l. 33 (12/29/45).

During the poor harvest years of 1946-47, the food supply condition was worsening in Magnitogorsk. The hardest hit by the poor harvest were the workers in the local light industries, such as shoe or sewing factories, whose food supply condition was even more precarious than that of the MMK’s. A party report shows that during the summer of 1947, these workers were not receiving any food stamps. Even the disabled veterans, sick women, invalids, and young dependents who could not work were no exception. Although these people appealed to a local hospital for food stamps, they were refused.

AOAM, f. 118, op. 1, d. 184, ll. 3-8 (3/24/48)

OGAChO, f. P-234, op. 19, d. 88, l. 122 (May 1946); OGAChO, f. P-234, op. 22, d. 1, l. 121ob (11/26/47).

OGAChO, f. P-288, op. 11, d. 189, l. 7 (8/4/47).

As well, housing shortage was not only a serious problem in the former front regions where much housing was destroyed during the battle. People in Magnitogorsk, a hinterland, also faced the same problem. Although not a single home in Magnitogorsk was bombed or destroyed during the war, the wartime conditions exacerbated pressing housing problems that had persisted during the prewar years. Even though the city population increased during the war, housing construction came to halt because of the priority given to industrial construction. As a result, many city residents had to live in extremely small spaces during the immediate postwar years. According to a city soviet report in June 1945, the average living space per city resident was only 2.83 square meters. It was not uncommon for four adults—a worker, his two adult sons, and his mother—to live in one room. Five family members were living in 9 square meters in barracks, while some of them were even sleeping on the floor. As of June 1945, 70% of the living space in the city was comprised of substandard “temporary” accommodations, such as barracks and mud huts. By late 1946, over 130,000 people, more than half of the whole city population, were still living in the barracks built during the 1930s, which by now were dilapidated, and about 20,000 workers of MMK and other factories in the city were still living in cramped dormitory quarters with bunk beds.

See for example, Boterbloem. Life and Death under Stalin..., pp.181-82; Jones, “People Without a Definite Occupation,” p. 237.

OGAChO, f. P-234, op. 19, d. 79, l. 137 (7/18/45).

AOAM, f. 10, op.1, d. 383, 172 ob. (6/21/45).

Ibid.

By 1947 housing conditions for the factory cadres and technical intelligentsia, as well as the Stakhanovites, were not much better than those of ordinary workers. Many skilled workers and factory cadres still lived in collapsing barracks. Even by 1949, only 84% of the housing construction plan of Magnitogorsk was fulfilled. Consequently, as of 1952 a number of city residents were still residing in temporary housing.

OGAChO, f. P-234, op.19, d. 78, l. 125оb.

AOAM, f. 10, op. 1, d. 415, l. 71ob (1949).

AOAM. f. 10, op. 1, d. 442 (1952).

Ⅲ. Responding to the Shortages

The postwar scarcity of food, consumer goods, and housing was not new to the people of Magnitogorsk. Since the construction of the city in the late 1920s and early 1930s, shortages were a part of the inhabitants’ daily lives. However, the gulf between the postwar reality and the expectations for better living conditions that the inhabitants who had survived the hard times of both intensive labor and shortages during the war made Magnitogorsk workers feel more disappointed than people in other regions. Indeed, the Magnitogorsk workers’ language that we will examine below reflects three major patterns of the working people’s postwar psychology: first, their expectations for changes after the war; second, their identification of themselves as “labor heroes”; and third, their sense of entitlement to a better life based on strong regional and class identities, and their strong belief in the socialist system. Although the party requested the Soviet people’s patience with difficult material conditions during the immediate postwar years by warning that the conditions would not be improved rapidly in a brief period, the working people of Magnitogorsk did not endure these hardships silently. Rather, they claimed the entitlement to a better life, denounced factory management, “self-interested” local officials, and party members.

Kotkin, Magnetic Mountain.

O. Kozlova, “Zametki o rabote raikoma v novykh usloviiakh,” Partiinoe stroitel’stvo. No.13-14 (July 1945), p. 10.

Increasing sense of entitlement: “because the war is now over…”

The inhabitants of Magnitogorsk, like other people in other parts of the Soviet Union, did not doubt that things should change because the war ended. Thus, “because the war is now ended” became a frequent and dominant rhetorical phrase used by the workers in demanding better living conditions and more provisions. One worker claimed, “The war is now ended. In the peaceful conditions, the ORS [Department of Workers’ Supply] must work for the realization of consumer goods.” Additionally, after criticizing the unsanitary or “uncultured” practices at stores and the irregular serving of breakfast at factory cafeterias, Volkov, a MMK worker in the Fine-Wire Workshop, voiced his complaints at a trade union meeting of metallurgists in December 1945. He strongly exhorted the vice-director of the ORS “to inform the managers of the cafeterias of the fact that the war ended, and that the working class should be served better.” Efanov, another worker, also emphasized the need for postwar improvements:

AOAM, f. 118, op. 1, d. 174, l. 27.

Ibid., l. 26. Italics mine.

Time passes and changes… while if there was only one request for ORS during the war, now, when our Fatherland’s war is finished with victory, the demands for the ORS would be different. The fundamental duty of the party and government for the next Five-Year Plan is the improvement of the cultural and daily life of the working class. Thus, the ORS should play a key role in the decision making regarding the improvement of the daily living conditions of the working class.

Ibid., ll. 28ob-29. Italics mine.

Workers even claimed that the taste of cafeteria food should be improved “because the war was over.” Complaining about an unqualified cook who provided tasteless dishes, another worker firmly maintained that “the war is over; so the environment of the cafeteria should be fundamentally changed.” The rhetoric of “because the war ended” became a powerful tool in the negotiation for improved supplies for daily life.

Ibid., l. 24 ob.

The catchphrase, “because the war ended” was frequently associated with the demand for “cultured” life. Workers who still had to have their meals in unbearable conditions in cafeterias exploded with their complaints. At a trade union meeting in October 1948, one worker asserted, “Wartime passed; it is now not appropriate to serve meals on rusty plates without forks and cups. We need to apply proper culture in this matter.” One inspector who examined the conditions of the cafeteria was also appalled: “How long should we eat at the cafeteria like this? It’s already time to switch to more cultured service for workers.” In addition, describing the “uncultured” practices that he witnessed at a store, one MMK worker stressed that the conditions had to be improved as the war ended. He described the scene at the store as follows:

AOAM, f. 118, op. 1, d. 225, l. 51 (10/9/1948).

AOAM, f. 118, op. 1, d. 184, l. 5ob.

At Store No.1 some ladies had a quarrel with a store employee as they asked him to remove fish heads and tails from the counter and sell tea and omelets more culturally. The employee had not cleaned the scale dish after weighing the fish and then weighed the tea and omelets together with remnants of fish skin. Then, the employee put them together into the customers’ baskets…. Of course, this uncultured treatment cause danger.

AOAM, f. 118, op. 1, d. 174, l. 28ob-29. Emphasis added by author.

In Magnitogorsk, the longing for “culturedness,” which had been widely propagated as a means of modernizing or civilizing the backward practices in Soviet trade during the prewar years and largely forgotten during the wartime, re-emerged not only “from above,” but this time also“from below,”or from workers, who had a strong sense of entitlement to a better life as the war ended.

For example see, Lewis H. Siegelbaum, Stakhanovism and the Politics of Productivity, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), pp. 225-33; Sheila Fitzpatrick, “Becoming Cultured: Socialist Realism and the Representation of Privilege and Taste,” in Soviet Society and Culture: Essays in Honor of Vera S. Dunham, ed. Terry L. Thompson and Richard Sheldon (Boulder, Colo.: Westview, 1988); Julie Hessler, “Cultured Trade: The Stalinist Turn Towards Consumerism,”in Stalinism: New Direction, pp. 182-209.

Regional identity and the sense of entitlement

The feeling of postwar entitlement among the workers of Magnitogorsk was another factor that motivated inhabitants’ complaints about the poor living conditions and their denunciations of local officials and party members. This was a particular factor of the postwar attitude brought about by the heroic role of the home front. The Magnitogorsk workers realized the significance of their wartime labor to the Soviet victory. For example, in early 1945, the Stalin regime awarded MMK and Magnitostroi the nation’s highest honors: the Order of Lenin and the Order of the Red Banner of Labor. At the end of 1945, more than 2,000 MMK workers received medals and honors from the Soviet government, while medals for Heroic Labor during the War were granted to 30,000 MMK workers. A regional pride shaped by heroic wartime labor and the prizes they received became leverage the workers could use to justify their demands for better treatment.

A. G. Degtiarev. Letopis’ gory magnitnoii goroda magnitogorska (Magnitogorsk: Izdatel’skii otdel Magnitogorskogo poligraficheskogo predpriiatiia,1 993), pp. 46-48.

On the sense of entitlement among the state farm workers during the 1930s, see Siegelbaum, “Dear Comrade, You Asked What We Need.’”

The strategic and economic significance of the city presented in the official rhetoric during and after the war also helped the working people of Magnitogorsk justify their entitlement or their requests for better treatment. In fact, the propagandized representations of Magnitogorsk as a“Potemkin Village”in national newspapers and books created an “imagined community” the inhabitants of Magnitogorsk believed in and internalized. For example, Rodinov, a mechanic in an MMK furnace workshop who was frustrated by the unavailability of fruit in the city after finding only 60 raspberries at a local market in 1946, complained that “compared to Magnitogorsk workers’ high level of productivity in steel production, the fruit supply enormously lags behind.” Workers became aware of the discrepancy between their perceived contribution to the nation’s economy and their living conditions. Complaining about the poor harvest of potatoes and their high prices, one worker claimed at a factory party meeting of the MMK in 1953 that the ORS should have done “everything” in order to secure the potato, vegetable, and fruit supplies for the “metal workers in Magnitogorsk, [which was] such an important industrial center.” Babichenko, a worker in an MMK flattening mill workshop, also asserted that the ORS should guarantee that “the workers of the world’s largest steel mill could order garments at a tailorshop with the material that the workers wanted.”

For example, see Marietta Shaginian, Podorogam Piatiletki.: Izdatl’stvo BTsSPS (vsesoiuznyi tsentral’nyi sovet professional’nykh soiuzov). PROFIZDAT, 1947.

OGAChO, f. P-234, op. 20, d. 2, l. 15 (Dec 22. 1946) Fruit that was mostly supplied from the collective farms of Alma-Ata, Kazakhstan was truly a luxury food for the inhabitants of Magnitogorsk, not only because it was very expensive, but also because it rarely appeared in the local market.

OGAChO, f. P-779, op. 1, d. 1191, l. 6 (11/16-17/1953)

Ibid., l. 4. Emphasis added by author.

One episode shows that not only workers themselves but also non-workers utilized the publicly well-known images of the inhabitants of Magnitogorsk as citizens of a heroic city to negotiate for better treatment from the government. In October 1948 E.K., a high-ranking editorial staff member at Magnitogorskii metall, the MMK factory newspaper, who was frustrated with the scarcity of food and consumer goods, attempted to agitate MMK workers into signing a collective letter to Stalin. To convince the workers, he spread the rumor that 1,200 MMK workers had already signed the letter. According to a local security department report, some of his colleagues, including two party members, a representative of the MMK trade union, and the head of the planning department of the MMK, were also involved in this bold plot. The rhetoric used in the letter implies that the inhabitants of Magnitogorsk understood that the government was aware of their contributions to the war effort, which had been lauded by the central newspapers. One worker recalled the text of the letter as follows:

OGAChO, f. P-234, op. 23, d. 15, ll. 89-91 (10/25/1948); OGAChO, f. P-234, op. 23, d. 11, ll. 68-73 (1/13/1949).

OGAChO, f. P-234, op. 23, d. 15, l. 89.

Dear Comrade Stalin:

We raise this issue because the food supply in this country is considerably improved. Our colleagues who have had vacations in various cities saw a good harvest and the populations of those cities were fully supplied. Stores everywhere in the southern and central parts of Russia and in Moscow were overfull. In Magnitogorsk, we receive neither sugar, groats, nor flour. Many of us have not received even once a kilogram of groats since the food supply reform. We Magnitogorsk people have worked selflessly for the welfare of the Motherland. We became famous during the war and postwar years, but the supplies in the city have become worse than those in other cities. During the war we were supplied well, and the director of the complex [MMK] himself well realized this problem. He even put menus on the tables in cafeterias. He knew what they served and took away cooks who made substandard food. But, after the abolition of rationing, Magnitogorsk was very badly supplied and local organizations have not paid the necessary attention to this problem. Among us, we have many outstanding people who deserve good supplies and good bread without waiting in long queues. We request your help for improvement of supplies for the workers (rabochee snabzhenie) of Magnitka.

OGAChO, f. P-234, op. 23, d. 11, l. 71. Magnitka is a nickname of Magnitogorsk. During the period of the Famine, many workers in Cheliabinsk oblast wanted to escape the cities, which were in poor material condition, and move to central and southern regions of the Soviet Union where they believed that the conditions were better. OGAChO, f. P-288, op. 11, d. 189, l. 35. (8/11/1947).

Moreover, comparing the material conditions of Magnitogorsk with other cities in the Soviet Union, E.K. and his colleagues also expressed their anger about the poor supply conditions in the wartime heroic city. Although we do not clearly know the accuracy of their description of food supply conditions in the other parts of Russian Soviet Federal Socialist Republic (RSFSR), the relatively rich supply in the southern part of the RFSFR was not a totally inaccurate observation. Filtzer and Hessler show that the Soviet food supply gradually improved beginning in 1948. Also, the argument in the letter about better food supplies in Moscow and other regions is quite reasonable, since the postwar Stalin regime made the restoration of those newly liberated regions a top priority. Likewise, complaining that the bread supply in Magnitogorsk was stable only one or two days a week, one worker questioned why Magnitogorsk had a shortage, while other cities did not. Certainly, the inhabitants were upset with the instability of the food supply that Magnitogorsk, the showcase city, had to face. A regional or local identity shaped out of a strong pride for the city and their wartime contribution enhanced their disappointment and grievances about the food shortage.

Hessler, A Social History of Soviet Trade, p. 297; Filtzer, “Standard of Living,” p. 1031.

According to Hessler, since the abolition of the rationing in December 1947, central planners largely supported a policy of “preferential provisionment” in which Moscow was mostly cared for while regional towns were hardly given any priority. Hessler, A Social History of Soviet Trade, pp. 309, 317-18. Also, the reconstruction of cities such as Leningrad, Stalingrad, and Kiev, which were either destroyed or occupied by the German armies during the war, was important for the Stalin regime for propaganda purposes.

AOAM, f. 118, op. 1, d. 225, l. 50 (10/9/1948).

Class identity and the sense of entitlement

One construction within the historical documents worthy of attention is the workers’ frequent use of the term “workers” or “working class.” MMK workers frequently used the term “working class” in their addresses at the factory meetings about what they needed. The term “class” was not one that appeared or was discussed only during political education sessions; workers used it in their daily lives. “Class” was a part of a common vocabulary.

The strong presence of class identity among the working people in Magnitogorsk can be easily understood, considering one of the key sources for its justification came from the workers’ labor in producing steel. Thus, workers made demands in the name of “workers” or the “working class.” As we saw in the case of the letter to Stalin prepared by a newspaper editor and his colleagues, even intellectuals spoke in the name of the workers from such a well-known industrial town to appeal for material support from the government. For example, their discussion about whose name they would use to sign the letter indicates that class played a large part in defining the local people’s identity. After the group discussed whether they should use the term “workers” or the name of a party organization (such as the trade union), they finally decided to sign in the name of the “workers (rabochie).” They understood that workers, especially MMK workers, were the core of the city’s identity and believed that complaints from workers were more likely to capture Stalin’s attention.

The fact that workers and other social groups used the rhetoric of working class implied, on the one hand, that they “played” or “spoke Bolshevik” with one of the entities of socialist ideology to justify their demands. On the other hand, it also means that the inhabitants of Magnitogorsk internalized the key values of Soviet ideology in which workers were the most crucial social group within society. For these reasons, the working people of Magnitogorsk developed strong voices as the “workers” or the “working class.” Although Amir Weiner and Vera Dunham suggest that during the postwar years the class concept was overshadowed either by the memories of the battle against the Nazis or “embourgeoisement” values, class remained a prominent element which shaped the identities of the workers in Magnitogorsk. Unlike those from the former occupied regions of the Ukraine, which Weiner examines in his study, the inhabitants of Magnitogorsk, a former wartime industrial center in the “deep rear,” defined their own participation and success in the war not in terms of battlefield exploits, but in terms of the workers’ productivity and labor that supported the Soviet war effort. The people on the wartime home front had different legacies of the war than those who had lived in the battleground regions during the war. The “middleclass values,” or “embourgeoisment” of Soviet values, which Dunham defines as craving and pursuing material incentives and consumption, also appeared among the workers; but only through class were the workers of Magnitogorsk able to consider them. In addition, Magnitogorsk workers’ uses of “working class” rhetoric for demanding better treatment from the government based on their wartime heroic labor shows that the workers perceived class not in terms of Marxist class, which is constructed in the relationship of other social groups in society, but in terms of the relationship with the state. This means that MMK workers perceived class as an “ascribed characteristic” whose primary function was to define an individual’s rights, privileges, and obligations vis-à-vis the state, rather than as a socio-economic attribute.

Amir Weiner. Making Sense of War.

Vera Dunham, In Stalin’s Time: Middleclass Values in Soviet Fiction (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 1976).

For example, many Stakhanovite workers of the MMK justified their entitlement to better housing based on their overfulfillment of output norms during the war. See RGASPI, f. 17, op. 125, d. 518, l. 9. (10/1947). Surely, this trend is not limited only to Magnitogorsk workers, but can be applied to other workers who labored on the home front during the war. For example, a worker laboring in the defense industry in Cheliabinsk justified his entitlement to receiving adequate work equipment by claiming “During the war I produced 7,000 plavok….. I worked hard during the whole years of war. (My two sons were at the front.) But now I cannot work. Give me rubber boot. Mittens and apron.” OGAChO, f. P-288, op. 9, d. 146, l. 32 (5/17/1945). Also, see Ibid., l. 37.

Fitzpatrick, “Ascribing Class...” pp. 745-70.

Denunciation as a tool for manipulation

Denunciation was another strategy that Magnitogorsk workers employed to cope with the postwar shortages. MMK workers’ denunciations of self-interested officials represented the workers’ desperate efforts to pressure those “immoral” (i.e., “un-socialist” or “un-soviet”) officials to maintain a “moral (i.e., “socialist” or “soviet”) economy.” This did not necessarily mean that the workers opposed the Soviet system itself. Rather, their critiques are evidence of heavy industry workers’ belief in the system; in many cases the working people criticized those who operated the system wrongly, rather than the system itself. In this sense, denunciation of factory management and the local authorities can be seen as Magnitogorsk workers’ manipulative intentions (rather than simply opposition to the Soviet system itself) of provoking certain corrections of the “wrong” policies either of the factory management or the authorities.

The concept of “moral economy” embraces ideas of “egalitarianism, social justice, and basic collective rights.” Padraic Kenney, Rebuilding Poland: Workers and Communists, 1945-1950 (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1997), p. 6. For the examples of workers’ demands for “moral economy” see Polish workers’ accusations of speculation in Ibid., pp. 191-195. For the articulation of the concept of “moral economy,” see E. P. Thompson, Customs in Common (London: The Merlin Press, 1991).

Another function of denunciation, understood from the regime-centered or top-down approach, is as a state-control mechanism over local officials and a means of surveillance or monitoring public opinion. Fitzpatrick. “Signals from Below...” pp. 831-66.

Likewise, we can see the demands of the working people of Magnitogorsk for ORS reforms and criticism of the wrong doings of local party members and officials as workers’ strong desire to restore a healthy social and economic system, one which harkened back to the idealized prewar years. Recognizing the government’s effort to help the Soviet people, some workers attributed the shortage problems in the city to local officials. Some MMK workers reminded the factory management of the government’s good intentions to improve material conditions. At a trade union meeting in 1946 workers claimed, “We have government decisions and an order from the People’s Commissariat of Ferrous Metallurgy about not only rehabilitation of consumer goods production, but further expansion of the production!” Other MMK workers expressed the view that the party and government took care of the Soviet people very well, but the ORS did not do so. Pointing out that not a single party member and no Komsomol were working in Store No.19, a worker asked (when no party members were present), “How could the store employees know of the party’s decisions?” The workers criticized local party members who did not carry out party policy, which they believed was set up by the government to take care of the Soviet people. From these examples, one can see the Magnitogorsk workers’ belief in the government, and their hopes for more strict control over trade by the state. Although there was some criticism of the government and its policies, many complaints, like those above, were limited to economic or daily life issues; only rarely did a complaint expand from an economic to a political issue. The workers’ intentions were politically “healthy” ones in nature.

Saldaev, a former MMK worker whom I interviewed, recalled that the 1930s were better than the postwar years. He claimed, “People in Magnitogorsk lived better in the 1950s than in the 1940s. But, compared to the 1930s, the living conditions of the 1950s were still far less.” MMK Library, Magnitogorsk, July 6 2001.

AOAM, f. 10, op. 1, d. 402, l. 160 (3/13/1946)

OGAChO, f. P-779, op. 1, d. 1191, l. 4 (11/16-17/1953); also, Ibid., l. 5.

Ibid., l. 6.

Ibid., l. 4.

For other examples of the struggle to correct the deviation from the orthodox socialist system based on Leninism, see Zubkova, Russia after the War, chapter11; Juliane Furst, “Prisoners of the Soviet Self?—Political Youth Opposition in Late Stalinism,” Europe-Asia Studies 54, no. 3 (2002), pp. 353-375.

Workers’ criticism of speculation indicates that some workers in Magnitogorsk very much supported the state-controlled trade and distribution system and requested that the local authorities enhance governmental control over trade and distribution. As in other cities in the Soviet Union during the period of material shortages, illegal speculation was widely practiced in Magnitogorsk. Workers in garment and other factories made products with factory materials and then sold them in local markets at speculation prices. Likewise, furniture factory workers made beds secretly during working hours with the purpose of selling them in the market, even in the presence of factory shop managers. The local government eventually launched a “battle against handicraftsmen” in 1955 to prevent widespread speculative practices, such as making beds with governmental material and selling them on the black market. Additionally, dating back to the war period during which the secondary market rose and the control of authorities over un-socialist practices loosened, MMK workers strongly blamed ORS personnel for corruption and irresponsibility and demanded the postwar reform of the ORS in order to weaken the black market. Complaining about high prices, which were seven times higher than normal, and that they had to pay for fish that speculators caught in “their” ponds, workers demanded the reform of the ORS. They felt awkward about the state’s loss of control over state property and its planned economy. They asked, “Why does the ORS allow the secondary economy? Why doesn’t the ORS run kolkhozes (collective farms) and cooperatives?” Some angry workers asked for reform in the ORS so that people would buy food at its stores, rather than from the speculators in the local market. For the workers who considered themselves victims of un-socialist trade practices such as speculation, it was unbearable, especially during a time of material hardship. Moreover, although many inhabitants longed for the abolition of rationing, there was a large group of people who wanted the authorities to keep rationing for a while, until the state could achieve a stable bread supply. These people were very much concerned about a hike in bread price in stores after the abolition of rationing. This shows that there were people who relied deeply on the paternalistic role of the state.

OGAChO, f. P-779, op. 1, d. 1191, l. 2 (11/16-17/1953). see also l. 3, 4, 5, 12.

AOAM, f. 10, op. 11, d. 118, l. 25 (4/9/1955).

AOAM, f. 118, op. 1, d. 174, ll. 28, 32. Fourteen hundred employees worked in the ORS of the MMK. Ibid., l. 21. However, the conditions were not improved quickly. By the early 1950s, there was still a serious shortage in public catering and workers were still complaining about shortages in MMK’s ORS commerce. AOAM, f. 10, op. 1, d. 442, ll. 247-48 (1/8- 7/16/1952)

AOAM, f. 118, op. 1, d. 174, l. 35.

Ibid., l. 34ob.

Ibid., l. 35.

RGASPI, f. 17, op. 125, d. 518, ll. 6-7.

“Speaking Bolshevik,” some MMK workers criticized the ORS cadres at a party conference. Claiming that “we all know what soviet trade means in our daily life and what place it takes in the construction of the communist society,” Iakovlev, a railway transportation shopworker, chastised the ORS officials as “those who lacked Bolshevik enthusiasm, which is required in every field of work.” The urban inhabitants’ denunciations of the local party members and officials who either ignored speculation or participated in the illegal, immoral, and un-soviet trade show that Magnitogorsk workers intended to manipulate the state to enhance state (or “socialist”) control over speculation and protecting workers’ own interests. Considering the contemporary rhetoric over “building communist society” during the postwar years, however, this implies that the workers subconsciously internalized the official rhetoric and used it for manipulating the authorities.

OGAChO, f. P-779, op. 1, d. 1191, l. 2. Italics mine.

For an example of Russian peasants’ strategies of manipulation, see Fitzpatrick, Stalin’s Peasants, pp. 13-16.

The MMK workers considered not only speculation, but also blat (pull or clout) as an unhealthy practice that overpowered Soviet trade and should be eradicated. Antonov, a worker in the MMK motor depot, expressed strong resentment against a store manager who was a party member and always inebriated, whom the worker believed sold items by blat. Antonov claimed, “I don’t know who coined it, but there is a saying: ‘blat is above the Sovnarkom (Council of People’s Commissars).’ Indeed, things are just like that.” Exposing the store manager’s name, the worker stressed that “one cannot find a word for explaining the conditions of the store. The store is a personal patrimony; there’s no governmental control there.” Antonov asserted that every transaction in that store was done “through a back door. Currently nothing goes through the front door.” The worker added that “the manager is a party member and his assistant is a party member, too.” He continually asserted that the corrupt store manager should be punished because he drank with “our” money and deceived the government. Additionally, the worker criticized the loosened attitudes of the trade union inspectors as too tolerant toward such illegal/un-Soviet behaviors. The worker strongly requested more strict control or inspection by the party and government of the disordered practices. As well, a steam engine machinist at the railway transportation department who was selected as a public inspector claimed that the party, trade union, and public’s control over the work of the ORS should be strengthened.

OGAChO, f. P-779, op. 1, d. 1191, ll. 10ob-11.

Ibid., l. 4. See also l.6 for the request to enhance the power of the public inspector.

In sum, the working people of Magnitogorsk appropriated the language of official ideology and requested correction of policies which, they believed, were not operating in the socialist or Soviet way. Using the official language which they internalized, they attempted to manipulate the authorities and factory management into doing something about or changing inadequate or “immoral” practices. Certainly, speculation was not a way of daily life that many Soviet people simply accepted and participated in without any uncomfortable feelings. For many MMK workers, who officially deserved a certain priority in supply and incentives, speculation was a criminal act which ruined healthy socialist trade. They believed that if the Soviet system functioned as it should the system would guarantee their privileges.

Ⅳ. Conclusion

The strategies that Magnitogorsk workers used to cope with the shortages reveal that the war time regional experiences heavily affected their attitudes and self-identification. First, unlike the increased significance of wartime exploits in postwar daily life in the former occupied regions, such as Ukraine, class played a crucial part in the identification of self among the working people in a home-front industrial center. In the hinterland, which had not been involved in any battle during the war, more than one third of the city’s population were workers in heavy industry and were praised as models of heroic labor during the war. Thus, here, class, rather than war-related activities, was far more important in determining the identity of the city’s inhabitants. Second, Magnitogorsk workers’ wartime labor and its contribution to the Soviet war effort, which was propagandized in official rhetoric, enhanced a general sense of entitlement among the city’s inhabitants. Common wartime experiences based on geographical location (battlefield vs. home front and/or occupied vs. unoccupied) strongly affected the enhancement of homogeneous regional identity.

Weiner, Making Sense of War.

For the Ukrainian case, see Weiner, Making Sense of War, p. 60

Magnitogorsk workers’ enhanced sense of entitlement and class identity, as well as their criticism of the local authorities’ poor control over the state-controlled economy, proved that Magnitogorsk workers, especially those such as steel factory workers who were “privileged,” maintained their belief in the Soviet system during the extreme shortages. Their criticism was also a sign of their heavy dependency on the state. Their class rhetoric can be considered “speaking Bolshevik” or “worming one’s way” to gain some advantages from the state; but, surely the criticism was a sign that many Magnitogorsk workers living in a city portrayed as a “Potemkin village” did not abandon their hope for a better future, but kept making every effort to discipline the state into upholding its socialist policies. This implies that, contrary to what some historians have observed, there were many workers who neither lost working-class consciousness nor became demoralized due to the shortages.

Lewis H. Siegelbaum and Andrei Sokolov, Stalinism As A Way of Life: A Narrative in Documents (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2000). p. 424.

For example, see Filtzer, Soviet Workers and Late Stalinism, pp. 75-6.

Certainly, the ways that Magnitogorsk workers identified themselves were different from the ways that people in the front region employed for their self-identification. To what extent, then, Magnitogorsk people’s attitudes--i.e., the enhanced sense of entitlement and denunciations of local officials for their negligence of the soviet socialist economic order--represent effectively characteristics of home-front people’s attitudes? One can assume that the extent of the strength of regional and class identities among home-front people would vary, depending on whether they lived in “Potemkin villages,” such as Magnitogorsk. But, it is much reasonable to consider the ways in which Magnitogorsk people responded to postwar shortages not unique, but more common to most people in the home front. These people’s wartime and postwar experiences--i.e., heartbreaking labor and extreme shortage--were quite typical regardless of whether they labored in “Potemkin villages” or not.

For example, see Werth, Russia At War, pp. 218-19.

Bibliography

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Archival Sources

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Резюме

Влияние Второй мировой войны на образование тыловых идентичностей

Сонг, Джунсо

Трудно обобщить влияние Второй мировой войны на советский народ. Если после войны в бывших фронтовых регионах военным подвигам придавалось большое значение, то в тылах память о войне была не такой же. В Магнитогорске，одной из крупных промышленных баз  уральского тыла, воспоминания населения города о войне были другими. Для граждан этого города тяжёлый, утомительный труд в напряжённое военное время и повышенное значение города во время войны как военно-промышленного комплекса были важнее, чем сами военные бои. Языковой анализ жалоб городского населения к партийным, государственным, и заводским чиновникам в условиях жесточайшего послевоенного материального недостатка показывает решающее влияние труда в военном тылу на формирование идентичности населения. Жители Магнитогорска верили, что имеют право на более лучшие жизненные и рабочие условия. Многие жители думали，что Магнитогорск, как стратегическая промышленная база, должен иметь приоритет в снабжении материалами, и часто оправдывали свои права такими риториками как ＂рабочий “или” рабочий класс＂. Многие магнитогорские рабочие требовали более строгого управления социалистической экономической политики и государственного контроля над спекуляцией и элементами рыночной экономики. Это означает, что мы не можем принять точку зрения, подчёркивающую десоциалистическую деморализацию советских граждан как общее настроение. С другой стороны нужно отметить, что различный военный опыт привёл к тому, что после войны население тыльных промышленных городов осознавало себя по другому, чем фронтовое население.

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