NUMBER 8, 1965 T O W A R D H I G H LABOR P R O D U C T I V I T Y THE THIRTHtETH ANNIVERSARYOF THE STAKHANOVITE MOVEMENT B. C h u s o v Central Committee of the Union of Metallurgical Workers Industry Translated in abridged form from MetaIlurg, No. 8, pp. 1-2, August, 1965

Probably every part of the country and every enterprise has been affected by the force of socialist competition. It plays a decisive role in the struggle to fill production quotas ahead of schedule. Socialist competition did not imediately assume a nationwide character. Suitable conditions were necessary for it to affect the workers and demand from them the utmost expenditure of strength and energy. At the end of April, 1920, workers in Moscow donated labor to the state during their free hours. This practice began in 1919 with workers of the Moskva-Sortirovochnaya Depot of the Kazan railway, a major artery. On April 12 between 7:30 in the evening and 6:00 in the morning,thirty-two workers repaired broken engines. By morning three locomotives stood on the rails ready to pull roiling stock. Industrial conferences, which played a major role in the development of socialist competition, emerged as an active means of involving the workers in production management during the period of reconstruction of industry. From the work of the conferences came newer and newer forms of creative activity-industrial contests, inspections, interplant industrial conferences, etc. When the first five-year plan was begun, a collective of metallurgists of the Leningrad plaat "Krasnyi Vyborzhets" initiated socialist competition to reduce the cost of production and to further develope sociaIist industry. One of the first to respond to the example of the Leningrad workers was the collective of the Moscow plant "Serp i Molot." The paper "Pravda" supported the initiative of the Leningrad metallurgists and assisted the socialist competition in becoming a broad and genuine movement. Well-trained workers were required to provide the national economy with new technology during the second five-year plan. The job required that large numbers of workers, having mastered the new techniques, should still further raise labor productivity. During this period, socialist Competition rose to a new high level and began the powerful movement of innovators and masters toward high labor productivity. The originator of this undertaking 30 years ago was the Donets miner Aleksei Stakhanov. The movement was supported by the entire country. It penetrated deeply into all branches of the economy and assumed a nationwide character. Several decades have passed. The country has become industrialized, surpassing many of the industriallydeveloped countries of the world. Engineers and highly qualified workers have emerged that are capable of handling the most modem machines and units. Socialist competition is also growing, achieving still higher rates of industrial growth. In the metallurgical installations of the country, there are more than 1.5 million metallurgists. At the present time 90% of the workers are involved in some type of competition. This effort constantly gives rise to more and more new Iabor advances: higher pledges are assumed, world records are established, and new undertakings are begun. The country receives millions of tons of products exceeding planned output every year. In the metallurgical industry alone, during the first half of 1965, production over plan included more than two million tons of ore, 500 thousand tons of iron, 516 thousand tons of steel, 628 thousand tons of roiled product, and considerable amounts of nonferrrous, rare, and precious metals, semiconductor materials, solid alloys, and diamonds. Many collectives have already fulfilled the assignments of the seven-year plan with respect to the volume of metal

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production. More than 5 thousand tons of iron over plan were produced during the past year and the first half of this year by the workers of the efghth blast-furnace of the Magnitogorsk Metallurgical Combine. More than 42thousand tons of steel over plan were produced by the workers of the second open-hearth furnace of the Kuznets Metallurgical Combine; they achieved high removal of steel from each square meter of floor area of the open-hearth furnace. At the Achisai Polymetal Combine a crew set a world record in cutting horizontal drifts in hard rock. News of the achievements of the participants in the competition arrive from various regions of our country. Metallurgists of Donbass completed the seven-year plan with respect to the producnon of steel and roiled commodities. Steel workers of the Dnepropetrov district and the Nizhni Tagil Metallurgical Combine, a collective of the Volgograd Aluminum Plant, workers of the Leningrad Steel-Rolling Plant, and a number of other installations have completed the seven-year plan ahead of sehedule. It is impossible to enumerate the examples of labor achievements. It is sufficient to say that the title of "collectives of communist labor" have been won by 25 installations including the Dzerzhinsk Steel-Roiling Plant at Odessa, the mines "Gigant" and Bol'shevik" of the Krivorog basin, the Dneprodzerzhinsk, Baglei, Zhdanov, Zaporog, and Yasinov Coke-Chemical Plants, the Moscow Combine for Hard Alloys, the Moscow Coke-Gas Plant, the Lenin Lead-Zinc Combine of Ust'-Kamenogorsk, the Bogoslov Aluminum Plant, and others. This titIe is born by collectives of 3037 mills, 20,375 brigades, and about 300,000 workers. On the eve of Metallurgists Day the results of socialist competition in collectives of the steel mills of the metallurgical installations of the RSFSR during quarter II of 1965 were compiled. The open-hearth workers produced thousands of tons of high-quality metal over plan at the following plants: Vyksunsk Metailurgical Plant, plan 104~ completed; Beloretsk Metallurgical Combine, plan 102.9% completed; NTMC, plan 104.8% completed; MMC, plans 105.8%; MMC, and 107% completed. The winners of the competition were Nven the title of "Collective of the best open-hearth furnaces of installations of ferrous metallurgy of the RSFSR." At the metallurgical installations there are 2600 public bureaus and groups for economic analysis in which over 26 thousand industrial leaders and innovators,economists, technicians, mechanics, and power engineers participate. There are 1~00 public bureaus for technical standardization, over 3000 public construction bureaus, and 5000 industrial councils in continuous session.

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