Home – Home – Jornals – Humanitarian sciences in Siberia 2014 number

The paper analyzes living conditions of the “distinguished people” of the industrial enterprises in Western Siberia in the mid-1930s in relation to their work activities. As sources of information the author used the results of surveys carried out by trade-union committees in order to estimate social and living conditions of Stakhanovists, “Udarniks” (“strike workers”) and “Exemplary workers”. He also refers to the data from a journal article propagating standards of the Soviet workers welfare. Having analyzed these data the author reveals features of propagandized moral, ethical and professional identity of an exemplary Soviet worker, as well as the level of material and living conditions of the “distinguished people”. It is noted that the above mentioned article was focused on revealing how the “exemplary worker’s” production and social activities eventually determined his and his family’s standards of living. Such publications had a purely applied character because a broad coverage of such positive examples in the Soviet periodical press played an important role in formation of labor motivation of the Soviet working people. The author analyzes the results of surveys of the “distinguished workers” and their families’ material and living conditions; reveals differences in their material maintenance as compared to employees of other industries, finds out reasons for such diversity. Based on comparison of an ideal and real material maintenance of “the distinguished people”, the author reconstructed the actual level of their living conditions and also demonstrated which level of maintenance was perceived as “acceptable” by the employees. The revealed components of material maintenance of the best employees indicated their high social status in the then existing hierarchy, which in some way or other influenced the living standards of certain groups of employees.