Workers, Steel Factories, and Communism: Labor in Kremikovci (Bulgaria) and Elbasan (Albania) under State Socialism
Item
- Title
- Identifier
- Creator
- has publication year
- Is Part Of
- volume
- has URL
- extracted text
-
Workers, Steel Factories, and Communism: Labor in Kremikovci (Bulgaria) and Elbasan (Albania) under State Socialism
-
BV041566597
-
Brunnbauer, Ulf
-
Nonaj, Visar
-
Raeva, Biljana
-
2013
-
IOS-Mitteilungen
-
62
-
https://www.dokumente.ios-regensburg.de/publikationen/mitteilungen/mitt_62.pdf
-
https://langzeitarchivierung.bib-bvb.de:443/delivery/DeliveryManagerServlet?dps_pid=IE578360
-
https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:0168-ssoar-63250-3
-
Arbeitsbereich Geschichte
IOS Mitteilungen
No. 62 July 2013
Workers, Steel Factories, and Communism: Labor in
Kremikovci (Bulgaria) and Elbasan (Albania) under
State Socialism
Ulf Brunnbauer*, Visar Nonaj**, and Biljana Raeva***
*
Institute for East and Southeast European Studies (IOS), Regensburg, e-mail: brunnbauer@iosregensburg.de; ** Institute for East and Southeast European Studies (IOS), Regensburg, e-mail:
nonaj@ios-regensburg.de; *** Institute for East and Southeast European Studies (IOS), Regensburg, e-mail: raeva@ios-regensburg.de
Landshuter Straße 4
D-93047 Regensburg
Telefon: (09 41) 943 54-10
Telefax: (09 41) 943 54-27
E-Mail: info@ios-regensburg.de
Internet: www.ios-regensburg.de
Contents
1 Introduction ......................................................................................................... 1
2 The research project “Industrial Workers’ Cultures in the Balkans during
State Socialism” .................................................................................................. 5
3 Industrial workers in state socialism ................................................................. 10
4 Kremikovci and Elbasan: Two steel giants in comparison ............................... 22
5 Work in the Kremikovci and Elbasan steel factories ........................................ 26
5.1 Recruitment of workers and composition of the workforce ....................... 26
5.2 Labor discipline .......................................................................................... 33
5.3 Socialist integration ................................................................................... 35
6 Conclusions ...................................................................................................... 41
Archival Sources .................................................................................................... 46
Bibliography ........................................................................................................... 47
Research for this paper has been supported by the research grant “Realsozialistische
Industriearbeiterkulturen” by the Fritz Thyssen Stiftung (2011–2014). We want to thank Jill
Massino (University of North Carolina, Charlotte) and the participants of the panel “Social
Identities of Industrial Workers in State-Socialism and Beyond in Southeastern Europe” at the
2012 ASEEES convention in New Orleans for their most useful comments.
Workers, Steel Factories, and Communism
1 Introduction
On 14 March 1960, the Bulgarian engineer Zlatan Zlatarov noted in his diary:
Now, after four years of hard work as technical manager of the construction site of the
copper factory G. Damjanov in Pirdop, I reported at my new work place – the metallurgical plant Kremikovci. Already some years ago, there was talk about the construction of
this giant of our ferrous industry and I yearned for the day, when I would start work at its
construction. I was looking back on almost ten years of construction work as technical
manager, exclusively on national construction sites – the railway lines Loveč-Trojan, die
Lower-Balkan Railway Line, the copper factory in Pirdop, and others.
So, together with the technical manager of the group, Ljako Marinov and the boarding
foremen Jordan Docov, and together with engineer Delčo Gjurov, we were the first construction workers here, who laid the foundations of the factory in Kremikovci.
It was a fortunate twist of fate that my first working day here coincided with the laying
of the first stone of the metallurgical plant in Kremikovci.
The work was tense and exhausting yet fruitful. We managed to do a lot for the preparation of the superstructure work. After this hard day of work we returned together with brigadier Jordan Docov back in our barrack, which was “generously” provided by Transtroj, the
factory developer. We now used it as our living space. We had to think about the equipment
of this place because there could not be any word of “living conditions” yet. The room,
which we had to furnish, was three times three meters in size. There was only enough space
for two beds and one chair, which served also as table. Yet, only that one who had never before worked on a construction site would complain about such inconveniences, which are
the companion of the construction worker, especially the first ones.
And so … the first day of the building of the Kremikovci steel plant passed by. I laid
down in my hard bed and imagined that in the next years, in this endless plain, hundreds
of machines would resound, that thousands of construction workers would come and that
joint efforts would build factory halls and mills, that the chimneys would smoke and the
gigantic heart of the Kremikovci steel plant, which I have seen so far only on plans,
would beat – yet, let’s see what tomorrow will bring.1
1
The diary is kept by the “Ivan Hadžijski” Institute at Gallup Sofia, doc. no. 1011.
1
IOS Mitteilung No. 62
Zlatarov put down these lines about his first day of work in Kremikovci in his diary. On
the following pages, he describes the construction of the steel plant, which would become
the single largest industrial enterprise in socialist Bulgaria. Despite backbreaking work and
awful living conditions, his enthusiasm for the project did not faint. He was a real exemplification of the ideal worker as imagined by the communist regime, although not even being
a party member: hard working, ready to sacrifice himself for a greater good – the industrialization of Bulgaria and the building of socialism. He articulated his experience and expectations with the tropes of official ideology setting his eyes clearly on a bright future.
To take a diary at face value would be naïve, of course. Yet, there is no indication
that Zlatan Zlatarov wrote these lines for anybody else than himself. The diary was never published and is today kept in a private archive in Sofia. The language, which the
author uses, resembles official rhetoric. His unclouded optimism and astonishing ability
to look over obvious shortcomings in the present make the reader suspicious: is it possible that someone really internalized communist ideology to the extent that he spoke
Bolshevik – to paraphrase Stephen Kotkin2 – even to himself? Is this a case of selfduplicity, of double speak in a closed circuit? Or does this diary reflect real enthusiasm
of a technical worker who cherished the creation of heavy industry in socialist Bulgaria
and took pride from the fact that he was part of the modernization of the country?
For the expression of his feelings, Zlatarov used the language that was there at the moment. The use of the ideological tropes rendered his own experiences meaningful and
helped him to connect his personal fate with larger historical forces.3 He was devoted to his
2
3
Kotkin, Magnetic Mountain.
Research on Soviet diary writing, which is much better developed than on any other formerly
socialist country, points to the internalization of official tropes and the writing of the self in terms that
connect with the ideological foundations of the system, be it the ideal person as envisioned by
Stalinism or the fear of war nurtured in the post-war period. See Hellbeck, “Fashioning the Stalinist
soul”; Hellbeck, Revolution on my mind; Paperno, Stories of the Soviet experience, esp. 142 passim.
Oral history research on memories of socialism has also shown that many interviewees, for situating
themselves in society and creating subjectivity, use salient category of socialist differentiation and
group ascription, such as [being] “a worker from a poor family”, [coming] “from a poor peasant
background”, [being] a “diligent worker” etc. See Wierling, “Dominante scripts und komplizierte
Lebensgeschichten“, 324; for empirical examples from Bulgaria see: Koleva et al., Slŭnceto na zalez
pak sreštu men, 120, 178, 208, 224 and 234.
2
Workers, Steel Factories, and Communism
work and to building industry, and he praised diligence and commitment. He felt that his
participation in socialist Bulgarian society was a success and that he contributed to the success of Bulgaria. He shared these values with the communist regime, which, therefore, appeared as a legitimate one in his eyes, although there are no indications in his diary that he
cared for any other aspect of communist ideology. The communist regime relied on people
such as Zlatarov: first, it needed their labor and technical expertise for industrialization and
modernization. Second, such workers manifested the ability of the communist regime to
link its ideological claims to pre-existing popular values and attitudes, such as notions of
hard work, progress, self-reliance, education, and endurance.
Research on post-socialist memories of (formerly) industrial workers confirms that
workers at least to some extent have internalized elements of communist ideology. In interviews they often articulate their position through notions and images once promoted by
communist power. Tanja Petrović, for example, in her study of the social memory of workers in a once large cable factory in the Serbian town of Jagodina, alludes to the importance
of the concept of “modernity” in the reflections of workers about post-socialist development. The workers she interviewed felt that under socialism, they had been part of modernity, while after socialism their whole country became more backward and less European
than it had used to be. So, the pivotal claim of the Yugoslav communists to build modernity
had found eager recipients and participants.4 No wonder that these workers also nostalgically remember the Yugoslav idea of “Brotherhood and Unity”, which they contrast with
the catastrophic consequences of the politics of nationalism.5 In her research on the
memory of workers in a Slovenian textile mill, Nina Vodopivec came to similar conclusions. Workers remembered socialism as the “good old days” and rendered their current
life meaningful by relying on categories that come from socialism.6 Analyzing shop-floor
relations in a Sofia based glass factory Dimitra Kofti also found out that the workers de-
4
Petrović, “When We Were Europe”, 141.
5
Ibid, 131.
6
Vodopivec, “Past for the Present”, 226–7.
3
IOS Mitteilung No. 62
scribed their situation today “often through the lens of communist practices.”7 The concept
of work is salient in workers’ memories, which is clearly a result of the fact that under
communism, “work served as the basic determinant of what constituted a loyal and respectable socialist citizen.”8
Yet, despite the obvious importance of state socialism for workers, and of workers
for state socialism, and despite the heavy weight of the communist legacy on the (former) workers’ habitus and their memories today, we know relatively little about workers under communism in the Balkans. The project which this working paper describes
wants to help filling this void. It aims at a comparative study of shop floor practices and
labor relations in two major industrial enterprises in the communist Balkans: the steel
mills in Kremikovci near Sofia in Bulgaria and in Elbasan in central Albania.
7
Kofti, “Everything has changed” – “Everything is the same”, 20 [unpublished paper].
8
Massino, “Gender, Identity and Work Under State Socialism”, 133.
4
Workers, Steel Factories, and Communism
2 The research project “Industrial Workers’ Cultures in the
Balkans during State Socialism”
Modernization and industrialization were among the pivotal goals of the communist
regimes in Southeastern Europe. The challenges which they faced were comparable to
those of the Bolsheviks after the October Revolution: when communists took power in
the Balkans, they did so in largely rural societies, where the single most sizeable social
group were peasants (mostly smallholders). The working class, in contrast, was small
and dispersed. So, the “dictatorship of the proletariat” was forced to create a “socialist”
working class in the first place. Hence the nature of the emerging industrial working
class was tied to the structures of communist power in the Balkans from the very beginning. This was a marked difference – with important consequences for shop-floor relations – to the East Central European countries, especially Czechoslovakia, the Soviet
Zone of Occupation / GDR, but also Hungary and Poland, where a relatively large and
sometimes well organized industrial workforce was already in place when the communists took power. Peter Heumos, for example, showed how difficult it was for the
Czechoslovak communists in the late 1940s and early 1950s to implement Stalinist
campaigns for the increase of production, such as shock-work and socialist competition.
These measures were detested by a proud working class that had been socialized in a
unionized, social-democratic industrial milieu.9 Mark Pittaway comments that “Eastern
and especially Central European workers had powerful preexisting working-class cultures, values, and aspirations which clashed sharply with notions underpinning Communist party attempts to reshape workers in their own image.”10 This was a noted difference to the Balkans, where such traditional working class strongholds were almost
totally missing with few local exceptions.
9
Heumos, “Betriebsräte, Einheitsgewerkschaft und staatliche Unternehmensverwaltung”; Heumos,
“Zum Verhalten von Arbeitern in industriellen Konflikten”; Heumos, ‘Vyhrňme si rukávy, než se kola
zastaví!’; Heumos, “Grenzen des Sozialistischen Produktivismus”; Heumos, “State Socialism, Egalitarianism, Collectivism”.
10
Pittaway, “Introduction: Workers and Socialist States in Postwar Central and Eastern Europe”, 5.
5
IOS Mitteilung No. 62
Bulgaria and Albania can illustrate the Southeast European pattern, while at the same
time they display important differences. In both countries, the industrial working class
was miniscule – in the Albanian case, almost non-existent – when the communists took
power in 1944 / 5. Bulgaria registered some 90,000 industrial workers in 1945, many of
them in small, hardly mechanized workshops.11 In Albania, there was no industrial
working class to speak of at all. In 1950, the share of people employed in industry, mining and construction amounted to 7.0 percent of the workforce in Albania and 11.4 percent in Bulgaria in 1950, according to the official data.12 Yet, in both countries, the ruling communists aimed at achieving industrialization. As a matter of fact, Bulgaria and
Albania experienced rapid industrialization under communist rule, though in Albania to
a lesser extent than in Bulgaria. By 1989, 45.3 percent of the Bulgarian workforce
worked in industry which made this country one of the most industrialized ones in the
world. Industry and mining contributed almost 60 percent to the gross domestic product
of Bulgaria by the end of communist rule. In Albania, according to official and probably
inflated figures, 31.0 percent of the workforce was employed in industry, mining and
construction by the end of the 1980s.13 The lower share of industrial employment in
Albania was the result of strict restrictions on rural-urban mobility. The Albanian communists had put in place forceful administrative measures to limit the rural exodus (see
below), and in their pursuit of total autarky they placed more emphasis on retaining a
large farming population.14 So, Bulgaria and Albania stand also for different ways of
economic policy under communism.
Despite differences in the speed and intensity of industrial development in Bulgaria and Albania, both countries displayed a number of similarities in their industrialization effort. In both countries – such as in most other communist countries – the
state prioritized heavy industry over light industry, with notorious consequences for
11
Vladigerov, Ikonomičesko i socialno razvitie na Narodna Republika Bŭlgarija, 44.
12
Brunnbauer, “Gesellschaft und gesellschaftlicher Wandel in Südosteuropa nach 1945”, 669. It goes
without saying that communist statistics are not the most reliable source of information.
13
Ibid, 668–9.
14
Sjöberg, “Rural Retention in Albania”.
6
Workers, Steel Factories, and Communism
the provision of the population with consumer goods. Heavy industry received the
bulk of state investment because economic planners thought that only capital industry
would lay durable foundations of a modern economy by producing the goods necessary for infrastructure development and further industrialization. As Katherine
Verdery put it “Socialist regimes wanted not just eggs but the goose that lays them.”15
The concentration of resources in heavy industry created significant imbalances in the
economy as a whole which contributed to the economic malaise of state socialism. It
had also salient consequences for the nature of the workforce and its internal differentiation: factories in heavy industry employed more people and formed a micro-cosmos
within socialist society; they wielded more political influence and, therefore, were
more successful in soliciting scarce resources from the state authorities. Workers in
heavy industry received higher wages and were more sought after; that is why they
had more room for maneuver than, for example, female workers in the textile industry. It is important to note that the size of an industrial enterprise did matter greatly
not only for economic but also for social reasons. Companies in state socialism were
not only employers, and factories not only a place where people worked, but they
played a significant role for the organization of social life. Many social benefits, such
as housing, places in vacation homes, educational opportunities, cultural and other
leisurely activities, were distributed and organized through the employer and not the
state directly. To work in a large, politically powerful enterprise which enjoyed privileged investment provision, thus, meant concrete benefits for the workers.
Our project does not aim at a detailed reconstruction of economic policies and industrial development. We rather take the post-1945 industrialization drive and the
concomitant rise of a working class as point of departure for the analysis of industrial
labor relations under communism. We are interested in practices and relations on the
shop-floor and the attitudes of workers towards work and their relations with management and the party-state. We want to reconstruct the social differences among the
workers and their accommodation with the communist system. These questions will
15
Verdery, What was socialism, and what comes next?, 26.
7
IOS Mitteilung No. 62
be studied by two case studies: the “Brežnev Metallurgical Complex” in Kremikovci
in Bulgaria and the “Steel of the Party” steel mill in Elbasan, Albania. Both steel factories were the single largest industrial enterprises in their country with enormous
economic but also political significance.
The heuristic value of these two case studies lies in their being a micro-cosmos of
social relations in state socialism. We depart from the assumption that the salient patterns of economic and social organization, but also of cultural and societal policies of
the communist regimes are reflected in the relations at the workplace and between
workers and management in these two steel mills. The two enterprises were sites of
the construction of communism. They stand for its ideology but also for the divergent
social results that came out of policy measures. Such as other large-scale sites of the
building of socialism – in a literal and metaphorical way – the steel plants in
Kremikovci and Elbasan were over-determined by various and sometimes conflicting
symbolic ascriptions.16 They were intended to become molders of the “New Man” and
of the communist soul, while at the same time they had to fulfill functions essential to
the economies of Albania and Bulgaria. The communists ascribed huge ideological
importance onto the two factories and invested a lot of political as well as financial
capital to make these intentions true. Enver Hoxha even called the construction of the
Elbasan steel plant a “second liberation” of Albania, after the first one by the communist partisans in World War Two. The names of the factories carried a lot of symbolic meaning as well: In 1982, after the death of the long-time General Secretary of
the Communist Part of the Soviet Union, Leonid Brežnev, who had worked in the iron
and steel industry, the Kremikovci plant took his name. This choice of name alluded
to the close relationship between Bulgaria and the Soviet Union. The name “Steel of
the Party,” given to the factory in Elbasan, highlighted the role of the party and its
claims at heroism, steadfastness and strength. The symbolic meaning of the factories
would eventually outweigh their economic rationale: the “Brežnev Metallurgical
Complex” in Kremikovci and the “Steel of Party” mill in Elbasan were essentially
8
Workers, Steel Factories, and Communism
poetic endeavors. A business or economic history point of view, therefore, cannot
fully appreciate their political, social and cultural significance.
Kremikovci
16
Elbasan
Cf. Kotkin, Magnetic Mountain; Gestwa, Die Stalinschen Großbauten des Kommunismus.
9
IOS Mitteilung No. 62
3 Industrial workers in state socialism
While the history of industrial workers under communism in Southeastern Europe has
attracted limited interest, we can build on a significant body of scholarship on workers’
history in state socialism in other countries. The main thrust in this literature is the relationship between workers and the party-state which – according to most accounts – was
ambiguous. Peter Heumos succinctly concluded on this issue that
Cooperation with the political system could coexist with actions that could be described
as deviant, just as accommodation and the pursuit of individual interests could reinforce
conformity. Patterns of behavior that were unambiguous were only found occasionally.17
The spread of the geographic focus of research on “socialist workers” is very uneven. This
is a pity because each state socialist society possessed its idiosyncratic features. The variations neither in time nor in place have been sufficiently explored. In terms of place, we
know most about workers in the Soviet Union and the GDR, two arguably and for different reasons very specific cases. As for the Soviet Union, the development of the industrial
working class and industrial relations in the 1920s and 1930s have been in the center of
the attention of labor history; that is, the periods of the relatively liberal Novaia
ekonomičeskaia politika (New Economic Policies) and of forced industrialization under
Stalin.18 There is much less research on workers in the Soviet post-war and especially the
post-Stalinist period.19 The history of workers in the GDR has found extensive treatment
as well, for example by the voluminous collection “Arbeiter in der SBZ – DDR” or
in Christoph Klessmann’s similarly exhaustive “Arbeiter im Arbeiterstaat”.20 In her
17
Heumos, “State Socialism, Egalitarianism, Collectivism”, 47; cf. Pittaway, “Introduction: Workers and
Socialist States in Postwar Central and Eastern Europeˮ, 1.
18
Filtzer, Soviet workers and Stalinist industrialization; Filtzer, Soviet workers and de-Stalinization; Filtzer,
Labour and the Contradictions of Soviet Planning under Stalin; Filtzer, “Labor Discipline, the Use of Work
Time, and the Decline of the Soviet System, 1928–1991; Filtzer, “The standard of living of Soviet industrial
workers in the immediate postwar period, 1945–1948ˮ; Filtzer, Soviet workers and late Stalinism; Filtzer,
A dream deferred; Kotkin, Magnetic mountain; Chase, Workers, society, and the Soviet state.
19
A notable exception is Donald Filtzer (Filtzer, Soviet workers and Stalinist industrialization). The impact
of perestroika on workers has found more attention, though mainly from a political (science) point of view.
20
Hübner, Klessmann and Tenfelde, Arbeiter im Staatssozialismus; Kleßmann, Arbeiter im ‘Arbeiterstaat’ DDR.
10
Workers, Steel Factories, and Communism
comparative study of different industrial enterprises in the GDR Jeannette Madarász has
pointed to the significance of the political relevance of a factory: its place in the hierarchy
of investment allocation and the ability of its director to exploit networks had direct consequences for the situation of its workers.21
Research on workers in other state-socialist countries is sketchier and owes a lot to
individual efforts, such as Peter Heumos’ explorations of the relationship between
communist power and industrial workers in Czechoslovakia or late Mark Pittaway’s
interest in the accommodation of workers with the socialist system in Hungary.22 There
is especially a lack in genuinely comparative studies.23 Dagmara Jajeśniak-Quast’s exploration of the steel mills in Nowa Huta (Poland), in Eisenhüttenstadt (GDR) and Ostrava (Czechoslovakia), in which she deals also with the situation of the workers, is a
notable exception,24 Mark Pittaway’s cross-regional perspective another.25
A very productive thread in the research on the social history of state socialism,
which offers important insights also into workers’ history, has been the exploration of
new “socialist” cities. Stephen Kotkin’s now classic study on the “Magnetic Mountain”,26 which is a histoire total of the construction of the new Soviet industrial city of
Magnitogorsk south of the Ural Mountains, was followed by investigations of the social, cultural and economic developments of other “socialist” cities as well: Nowa Huta
in Poland,27 Sztálinváros / Dunaújváros in Hungary,28 Stalinstadt / Eisenhüttenstatt in the
21
Madarász, Working in East Germany.
22
For Heumos see references in footnote 9; Pittaway, “Workers, Management and the State in Socialist
Hungaryˮ; Pittaway, “Accomodation and the Limits of Economic Reformˮ; International Labor and
Working-Class History, vol. 68 (2005), special issue on “Workers and Socialist States in Postwar Central
and Eastern Europe”; Pittaway, The workers’ state.
23
An important edited volumes with contributions on different countries is Hübner, Klessmann and
Tenfelde, Arbeiter im Staatssozialismus.
24
Jajeśniak-Quast, “Die sozialistische Planstadt Eisenhüttenstadt im Vergleich mit Nowa Huta und
Ostrava-Kunčice”, Jajeśniak-Quast, Stahlgiganten in der sozialistischen Transformation.
25
Pittaway, “Introduction: Workers and Socialist States in Postwar Central and Eastern Europeˮ.
26
Kotkin, Magnetic Mountain.
27
Lebow, “Socialist Leisure in Time and Spaceˮ; Janus, “Labor’s Paradiseˮ.
28
Horváth, A kapu és a határ; Horváth, “Alltag in Sztálinvárosˮ.
11
IOS Mitteilung No. 62
GDR,29 and Dimitrovgrad in Bulgaria.30 These towns were not only connected with the
important goal to create a heavy industry base for the socialist economy but they were
considered by the communists also a hotbed of the New Man, the ultimate goal of
communist societal policy. One common theme of these explorations is the significant
gulf between political intentions and socio-cultural as well as economic results: although these new cities and their industries31 enjoyed privileged resource allocation and
were places of major ideological investment, the social and cultural practices diverged
from the communist blue print of the New Man (and Woman). The party had hoped to
see the emergence of self-sacrificing builders of socialism. Yet, social life in these places was characterized by a myriad of practices that in the eyes of the communist rulers
were often deviant. The cities and industries also mirrored general shortcomings of
communist planning, evident for example in severe housing shortages and problems in
labor discipline. Another important finding of these studies on new “socialist” cities is
the fact that these places became characterized by new forms of social inequality.
Communist policies produced new mechanisms of social exclusion while at the same
time providing avenues of social advancement for certain segments of the population.
However, the failure of communist regimes to render social relations and cultural
practices a mirror image of their ideology does not mean that political interventions did
not leave traces in collective identities and loyalties. The impact of party politics and of
ideology, therefore, must not be neglected. On the one hand, there were certain elements of communist ideology – such as the appraisal of work – which were accepted by
workers; on the other hand, the workers learnt how to navigate the constraints of the
system by learning to speak “Bolshevik.” This is how Stephen Kotkin put it: “Life in
Magnitogorsk taught cynicism as well as labor enthusiasm, fear as well as pride. Most
of all, life in Magnitogorsk taught one how to identify oneself and speak in the accepta-
29
Jajeśniak-Quast, Stahlgiganten in der sozialistischen Transformation.
30
Brunnbauer, “ ‘The Town of the Youth’: Dimitrovgrad and Bulgarian Socialism”.
31
With the exception of Dimitrovgrad in Bulgaria, which became a center of chemical industry, the other
‘socialist’ cities were shaped by the steel industry.
12
Workers, Steel Factories, and Communism
ble terms.”32 The acceptance of communist concepts for individual identification is also
evident in contemporaneous autobiographies of workers and in their letters to the
authorities in which they framed their self in terms that were meaningful to the powerholders.33
A core question in the research of workers’ history under state socialism is the impact of party dictatorship upon the workplace and upon shop-floor relations. Contemporary research refutes both the notion that workers were just cogs in a gigantic cogwheel, nor that the “dictatorship of the proletariat” has brought liberation from alienation; neither does recent research portray workers as being in constant opposition to
the communist regime. The relationship between workers and party-state are rather
described in terms of a “complex dynamic of consent, accommodation and appropriation as much as by resistance.”34 The intricate issue of labor discipline is a case in
point for the fact that any dichotomous conceptualizations are misplaced. Many researchers highlight the apparent paradox that, on the one hand, labor codes and labor
policies were strict and often repressive; on the other hand, party, government and
enterprise documents are full with reports about slack labor discipline, frequent absenteeism, drinking at the workplace, and insubordinate workers. Even though during
Stalinism violations of factory discipline were part of the criminal code, and many
workers were sent to the GULAG or otherwise repressed for coming late, causing
machine breakdowns, or stealing property of the factory, the communists appear to
have been on the losing side in their struggle for increased labor productivity and discipline. Neither punishment and propaganda, nor material incentives seemed to help:
industrial workers displayed a high degree of “Eigen-Sinn” (self-will)35 which manifested itself also in a lack of discipline.
32
Kotkin, Magentic Mountain, 237.
33
See Friedman, “Furtive Selves”.
34
Pittaway, “Introduction: Workers and Socialist States in Postwar Central and Eastern Europe,” 3.
35
Cf. Lüdtke, Herrschaft als soziale Praxis.
13
IOS Mitteilung No. 62
Already in 1982, Charles Sabel and David Stark provided a plausible answer to the
apparent puzzle, why workers under a dictatorial and overtly interventionist regime and
despite harsh labor codes and the non-existence of independent trade unions, enjoyed a
surprisingly large room of maneuver: full employment – which was an important political-ideological promise of the communists that they hardly wanted to betray – had created a tremendous need of labor, which forced enterprises to accept ‘deviant’ practices
of the workers because workers could threaten the management to leave. State socialist
economies were economies of shortage, and labor was one of the scarce production factors. Such as with other supplies, many companies pursued a strategy of hording: they
employed more people than they would normally need for maintaining regular production, just to have enough workers at those – rare – moments when they received the
necessary materials in order to meet their production goals as specified by the plan.
Workers knew that the management depended on them, and managers knew that if they
did not meet production figures they would face sanctions or lose their job. The permanent lack of workers constituted a risk for the managers and a chance for the workers.
Workers gained bargaining power on the workplace and vis-à-vis their superiors, regardless of the fact that trade-unions were relatively toothless and rarely stood up
against the party.36 Kotkin makes a similar point:
The state policy of full employment further reinforced workers’ leverage. Workers discovered that in the absence of unemployment or a ‘reserve army,’ managers and especially
foremen under severe pressure to meet obligations could become accommodating. What
resulted could be called a kind of equal but nonetheless real codependency.37
This mechanism seems to have been in place in all European state-socialist countries
once they had reached full employment. The only notable exception is Yugoslavia,
where officially recognized unemployment became a permanent feature of socioeconomic life in the mid-1960s and grew to very high numbers in the 1980s (with sig-
36
Sabel and Stark, “Planning, Politics, and Shop-Floor Power”, 451; Heumos, “State Socialism,
Egalitarianism, Collectivism”, 51 and 54.
37
Kotkin, Magnetic Mountain, 224.
14
Workers, Steel Factories, and Communism
nificant differences between the republics and provinces).38 Unfortunately, there is practically no new historical research on the situation of industrial workers in socialist Yugoslavia (in contrast, for example, to the topic of workers’ memory of socialism, which
draws scholarly interest). Yet, the fact that Yugoslavia recorded a high number of usually localized strikes and walkouts can be seen as an indicator for the fact that the relations between workers and management were different from other state socialist countries. It was not only unemployment that constituted a difference: Yugoslav workers
enjoyed “self-management,” which was introduced by law in 1950 and became one of
the pillars of Yugoslavia’s claim to a distinctive path towards socialism. This was not
mere window-dressing. Workers had more say in company related matters than in other
state socialist (and for that matter, capitalist) countries.39 The other major difference
which must have had an impact on relations on the workplace was the opportunity of
Yugoslav workers to take up work abroad. In 1963 / 4 the Yugoslav government permitted temporary emigration abroad for the purpose of taking work. Until 1973 / 4, when the
Western European countries declared a stop on recruitment of Yugoslav emigrant workers, up to one million workers left Yugoslavia.40 It seems a reasonable but yet to be tested hypothesis that the opportunity to go abroad and the relatively strong position of
workers in the “self-managed” enterprises in Yugoslavia had similar consequences for
shop-floor relations like full employment in the other state socialist economies.
An important economic result of full employment and the general need for workers
was the high rate of labor turn-over in state socialist societies. Sabel and Stark point to
frequent complaints by party leaders that so many workers changed their job, especially
young and well-qualified ones who easily found another job with better pay or lighter
norms and better working conditions.41 The opportunity to get employment somewhere
else was a major bargaining chip of workers vis-à-vis their employer. Katharyne Mitchell
38
Woodward, Socialist umemployment.
39
Höpken, “Sozialismus und Pluralismus in Jugoslawien”.
40
Baučič, “Some economic consequences of Yugoslav external migrations”.
41
Sabel and Stark, “Planning, Politics, and Shop-Floor Power”, 452.
15
IOS Mitteilung No. 62
notes in a 1992 paper that in the Soviet Union in the 1970s, approximately 20 percent of all
workers changed their job in each year. They were mostly young and qualified. Mitchell
also emphasizes that there were significant differences in the rate of labor turn-over according to region, industry, level of qualification, age and political engagement of the workers.42 Neither the Soviet nor the other ruling communists managed to curtail labor turnover
with administrative measure. One reason for that failure was the practice of the managements of enterprises in need of workers to directly recruit workers from somewhere
else.43 Dagmara Jajeśnik-Quandt, for example, shows how the steel mill in Stalinstadt /
Eisenhüttenstadt lost workers to other industrial enterprises, despite its prominent ideological and political position in the GDR. Yet, other factories would offer better working conditions (e.g., no night shifts, physically less exhaustive jobs) or were located in more attractive places, so that they were able to recruit workers from one of the presumed flagships of
GDR industry.44 Rates of labor turnover could reach astronomic dimensions, especially in
the early years of socialist construction: The steel mill in Nowa Huta hired 4,928 workers
in the first five months of 1955, while 4,306 left the enterprise during the same time.45
However, as Mitchell’s data on the 1970s’ Soviet Union show, turnover would remain on a
high level also in the years after the initial built-up of industry. In Bulgaria as well, labor
turnover was a major characteristic of industry: in 1981, the rate was twenty-nine percent.46
It goes without saying that the discontinuity of the workforce had detrimental effects on
production and qualification levels. It was one important reason why the communist regimes never achieved their goals with respect to professional training of workers.
The particular bargaining power of workers shaped relations also within an enterprise.
The management often sought ways to retain workers, especially qualified personnel, and
to tie them to the factory. One way was to offer higher wages, which however was a limited option because wages were usually centrally set. Yet, the management could decree
42
Mitchell, “Work Authority in Industryˮ, 688.
43
Sabel and Stark, “Planning, Politics, and Shop-Floor Powerˮ, 453.
44
Jajeśniak-Quast, Stahlgiganten in der sozialistischen Transformation, 130.
45
Ibid, 135.
16
Workers, Steel Factories, and Communism
lighter norms, often in conflict with central planners who preferred higher, “scientifically”
established norms.47 Management also often turned a blind eye on violations of labor discipline, such as showing up too late or leaving too early, drinking on the job, etc. It should
be noted that absenteeism was often caused by unpredictable public transportation and the
need to queue for basic consumer goods, and not a result of laziness. Enterprises that enjoyed privileged access to state investments could offer non-financial incentives as well,
such as better housing, vacation homes in attractive touristic areas, cultural, sports and
other leisurely facilities for their workers, etc. The provision of welfare benefits through
enterprises can be seen as an attempt of the communist regime to territorialize citizenship
rights and thereby prevent mobility and create loyalty of workers to their enterprise.48 The
frequent organization of enterprise festivities was another attempt by the management to
foster among the workers bonds of attachment with their work place. While politicoideological speeches were an inevitable component of these festivities, workers do seem
to have enjoyed them, though for more mundane reasons, i.e., for the availability of food
and drinks as well as the chance to take a day off.49 The workers practiced, in John Scott’s
term, a “counter appropriation” of an action that management had thought to use for increasing control over them.50 This does not contradict information from oral history that
the core workforce of an enterprise identified with it.51
Another area where managers had leeway to make concession was the acceptance of
informal practices. They often turned a blind eye on the wide-spread practice of workers
to appropriate resources of their enterprise for moonlighting. These resources included
not only material items (tools and machines, primary materials for production) but also
work time. Informal relations permeated all walks of socialist society, and informal
economic activities were essential for maintaining at least a modicum of stability and to
46
Lampe, The Bulgarian economy in the twentieth century, 161.
47
For an example of such a conflict see Sabel and Stark, “Planning, Politics, and Shop-Floor Powerˮ, 455–6.
48
Dičev, “Usjadaneto na nomadskija komunizămˮ; Tóth, “Shifting Identities in the Life Histories”.
49
Petrov, “Sozialistische Arbeitsfeiern im Betrieb”, 161.
50
Quoted in Lüdtke, “Einleitung: Herrschaft als soziale Praxis”, 49.
51
E. g. Tóth, “Shifting Identities in the Life Histories”, 87.
17
IOS Mitteilung No. 62
put the available economic resources to use. Hence, party leaderships often accepted
these arrangements even if they ran counter to their claim of rationally organizing society and planning economy. The work-place was a fundament of such informal networks.
Access to networks and resources became a major factor in the differentiation of the
working class (and of wider society).52
So, workers were not completely powerless in contrast to what has often been suggested by Western observers during the Cold War. Workers played an active role in the formation of the state-socialist system. Yet, the literature on workers under communism does
not paint a rosy picture either. It stresses the many material and political constraints under
which workers (and other members of socialist society) lived and worked. The relationship between communist rulers and workers was difficult from the very beginning, because established industrial workers opposed certain policy measures of the new regimes.53 The well known examples of labor unrest – such in the GDR and Czechoslovakia
in 1953, in Poland and Hungary in 1956, in Romania in 1971 and 1987, and the
Solidarność movement – are evidence of the significant gap between workers’ aspirations
and their lived realities. These manifestations of workers discontent often forced the party
to offer concessions and to improve living and working conditions. Mark Pittaway
stressed the “workerism” of communist regimes after the labor upheavals in the mid1950s, which at least for some time stabilized the system and secured workers rising living standards. So, workers through mass action forced policy changes. The regime’s attempts to accommodate the industrial working class and to safeguard its earnings – especially of its male, skilled elite – “resulted in tacit acceptance by the regime of the informal
patterns of workplace bargaining, which had sprung up between workers and management
(…).”54 This policy undermined regime and management efforts to raise productivity in
the long-term. In Hungary, for example the workerism of the regime created a new sense
of entitlement among the skilled workers, which the workers perceived to be jeopardized
52
Pittaway, “Accomodation and the Limits of Economic Reform”, 462–3.
53
Ibid, 2; see Kenney, Rebuilding Poland.
54
Pittaway, Eastern Europe 1939–2000, 68.
18
Workers, Steel Factories, and Communism
when the Hungarian communists introduced market-oriented reforms in the late 1960s.
These reforms were, thus, met with “a wave of working-class protest. (…) Some [workers] felt alienated by what they saw as a new managerialism in industry.”55 Hungarian
workers also resented the increased materialism manifest in the economic reforms.56
Hence, the attitudes of the working class were a factor with which communists had to
reckon when introducing economic reforms. The large miners’ strike in the Jiu Valley in
Romania in August 1971 is a case in point: a new law that brought a number of reductions
in social benefits marked the end of a tacit ‘deal’ between regime and workers. The walkout in the Jiu mine was even successful in the short time, because Ceauşescu personally
came to the miners and promised to accept their demands. Only later did the state clamp
down on the organizers of the protest.57 In post-1968 Czechoslovakia and the GDR – two
other regimes which resisted political liberalization – system stability depended to a large
degree on the material concessions granted by the party-state to the workers; at least as
long as the tacit social contract of foregoing political liberties in exchange for social benefits, consumer choices, tranquility and a relatively relaxed labor regime could be maintained.58 Bulgaria broadly falls into this pattern as well. Even the Albanian regime took
measures to appease workers, such as by reducing prices and wage differences and by
creating “workers’ control committees” in factories.59
Workers, thus, were not pawns in the socialist chess play but actors with their own
agendas, hopes and expectations. Their room for maneuver and bargaining power
nevertheless remained dependent on the bureaucratic decisions of the rulers, upon
which they usually had only a mediate influence at best. The workers’ situation was
connected to the institutional-political arrangements and the power structures of the
communist system. They fared best if they could find allies among powerful circles of
the regime that used the support of workers for their own purposes. This could result
55
Pittaway, “Accomodation and the Limits of Economic Reform”, 453–4.
56
Bartha, “The Disloyal ‘Ruling Class’ˮ, 147.
57
Petrescu, “Workers and Peasant-Workers in a Working Class’ ‘Paradise’ˮ, 127.
58
Boyer, “Sozialgeschichte der Arbeiterschaft und staatssozialistische Entwicklungspfadeˮ, 77.
19
IOS Mitteilung No. 62
in divergent and dynamic constellations and tacit coalitions that impacted on the
overall development of economic and social policy.60
Finally, our project takes up the important insight that the working class did not form
a unified body at all. It is hard to retrospectively analyze workers’ self-identification
because this is clouded by a thick wall of ideological ascriptions. Collective actions of
workers were often concentrated around individual factories and there were few cases
of trans-local activism (the emergence and rapid growth of the Solidarność movement
in Poland is a rare case in point). There were important cleavages among the industrial
workers during state socialism which sometimes resulted in antagonistic relations:
“old”, well established workers detested new recruits who were seen as more liable to
accept communist-style forms of production and to do overwork for material and nonmaterial incentives, while established workers had acquired knowledge how to resist
impositions by the management.61 Skilled workers used the dependence of the management on their work for defending their privileges, sometimes to the disadvantage of
unskilled workers.62 Male workers did not greet with enthusiasm the promotion of female workers.63 Another major divide was between urban workers and rural workers
who often maintained close connections with farming; especially in the late industrializing countries a significant percentage of workers can be classified as peasant-workers.
The nature of the industry made also an important difference as for the bargaining power of workers: those who worked in politically sensitive branches had more options than
those who worked in marginal industries. A qualified male worker in a large steel or
machine factory in a large city was in a better place to negotiate concessions than an
unqualified female worker in a textile factory in a village.
59
Kaser, “Economic System”, 301.
60
See Sabel and Stark, “Planning, Politics, and Shop-Floor Powerˮ, 466–72.
61
E. g. Chumiński and Ruchniewicz, “Arbeiter und Opposition in Polen 1945–1989”, 451; Heumos,
“State Socialism, Egalitarianism, Collectivismˮ, 59–60.
62
Heumos, “State Socialism, Egalitarianism, Collectivism”, 66.
63
E. g. Massino, “Gender, Identity and Work Under State Socialism”, 143.
20
Workers, Steel Factories, and Communism
Why do we nevertheless use the concept of class, despite the mentioned differentiations within this presumed group? First of all, we use “class” for the lack of better alternatives. But there is also a more substantial argument: memories of former industrial
workers reveal a self-identification as “worker” and the construction of a community of
fate by this name. Workers often position themselves against non-workers and describe
their experiences as part of a collective story. As E. P. Thompson stressed in his seminal
“The Making of the English Working Class,” class is something that happens during a
process; it constitutes a relationship and a set of ideas, not a structure or category.64
64
Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class, 9–11.
21
IOS Mitteilung No. 62
4 Kremikovci and Elbasan: Two steel giants in comparison
The economic policies of communist governments displayed a distinctive trend towards
achieving autarky. Each of them intended to build a national base of heavy industry.
The production of steel played an important role in these strategies, not least because
communists regarded the steel industry an embodiment of modernity and the fundament
of further industrial progress. Steel also represented a variety of values in which the
communists fervently believed. Iosif Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili’s nom de guerre,
Stalin, added further symbolic power to steel. Bulgaria and Albania were no exceptions.
In 1958, the Central Committee of the Bulgarian Communist Party (BCP) decided
to build a large steel plant in the outskirts of Sofia near the village of Kremikovci.65
The new factory was thought to produce the amounts of steel deemed necessary for
Bulgaria’s further industrialization and infrastructure development. It was part of the
Bulgarian “Great Leap Forward” propagated by the party leadership at that time,
which amounted to a renewal of massive investments in industry. The factory was
also to create jobs in order to erase urban unemployment, which had appeared in the
late 1950s. From the very beginning, this industrial endeavor was attributed cultural
functions as well: the ruling communists hoped that the new factory would contribute
to the making of the socialist worker and to giving Sofia, the capital city, a more proletarian outlook. The motivations of the Albanian communists were similar. In 1964,
the Fifth Congress of the Party of Labor of Albania passed the decision to build the
country’s first steel plant, which was to be located near the town of Elbasan in central
Albania. In Albania even more so than in Bulgaria, this decision reflected the party’s
aim at achieving economic autarky: Albania had broken with the Soviet Union in
1961 and was economically isolated from both East and West. The foundation of its
own steel industry was, therefore, imperative because the country could not, or did
not want to, import steel.
65
For a history of the steel plant see Palairet, “‘Lenin’ and ‘Brezhnev’ˮ; Brunnbauer, “Stählerne Träumeˮ.
22
Workers, Steel Factories, and Communism
Our project focuses on the workers in these two enterprises. Yet, their situation and
their relations to the management cannot be understood if the economic development of
the factories and their political context are ignored. The significance of national politics
for the steel plants is evinced by the fact that their directors were also members of the party’s Central Committee and directly answered to its Politburo. Hajredin Çeliku, director of
the Elbasan factory since 1981, was even member of the Albanian Politburo.66 Political
developments, even the foreign policies of the governments, had direct effects on workplace relations. A case in point is the external orientation of Bulgaria and Albania: Bulgaria relied heavily on Soviet support (loans, machinery, and technical specialists) for the
construction of the Kremikovci plant, even though the Soviets doubted its economic viability.67 Consequently, propaganda praised the “Metallurgical Complex Kremikovci” as a
symbol of the “eternal friendship” between Bulgaria and the Soviet Union, manifested in
1982 also by the adding of the late Soviet leader’s name to the name of the factory. This
added another important symbolic layer to the meaning of the factory. In Albania the government solicited help from the PR of China, the remaining ally of Albania after its break
with the Soviets. China sent hundreds of specialists who supported the erection of the
plant in the 1960s. The Chinese also tested the iron ore sent by Albania for inspection.
In 1978 the Albanian leadership broke also with the Chinese communists. The cooling of relations prior to the complete break is evident in reports on the Elbasan steel
factory, which detailed the economic damage of alleged Chinese “sabotage”. Before the
eventual break between the countries, the local interaction in Elbasan between the Albanians and the Chinese was increasingly fraught with difficulties. The cessation of
economic support from the PR of China caused severe disturbances in the Albanian
economy and the Elbasan steel plant as well. This forced the management, under close
surveillance by the government, to seek contacts with western firms, e.g. the “Salzgitter
AG” in Germany, in search for expertise. It is an irony that the technical demands of a
66
Mataj, Kur jeta kerkon te flas, 331.
67
The doubts concerned mainly the size and quality of the iron ore deposits near Kremikovci, which were
one of the main reasons for choosing this site for the steel plant. At about 31 percent, the iron content of
the ore was much lower than in ore from mines in the Soviet Union.
23
IOS Mitteilung No. 62
major instrument in the pursuit of autarky, i.e., the steel plant in Elbasan, forced the
Albanian leadership to seek contacts with a capitalist country.
The Bulgarians were faced with similarly paradoxical results. While thanks to
Kremikovci they accomplished their goal of self-reliance in steel production, the plant’s
insatiable demand for resources created new external dependencies. The iron ore deposits
in Kremikovci, which had been the prime reason for the location of the factory, proved to
be insufficient. The Bulgarians were, therefore, forced to import iron ore from the Soviet
Union and other countries. They also had to buy coke abroad, which was required for the
production of steel, because Bulgaria did not possess its own bituminous coal deposits for
the production of coke. Now, the location of the plant far away from the nearest port
turned into a major disadvantage, which was compounded by the notorious unreliability of
the Bulgarian railways, which transported ore and coke from Burgas at the Black Sea to
Kremikovci. The plan to build a channel from the Danube to Sofia was not realized. Aside
from that, the technology of production in Kremikovci was outdated and was hardly modernized during the 1970s and 1980s. Eventually, the productivity of Kremikovci was lower than that of the older and smaller steel plant in the Bulgarian town of Pernik, which had
been founded before World War Two. Nevertheless, thanks to its size, Kremikovci produced more steel than the Bulgarian economy would need. So, the factory sought to sell
its products on foreign markets. However, the quality of its steel was so low that it could
be marketed abroad only at very low prices which were below the costs of production.
The state would finance the difference, which is why Kremikovci continued to swallow up
a significant part of the total industrial investment in Bulgaria. When all costs are factored
in, it would have been cheaper for Bulgaria to buy Soviet steel instead of producing its
own.68 Today’s memories of Kremikovci as one of the biggest nails in the coffin of the
Bulgarian socialist economy are not much beyond the point, although former workers of
Kremikovci deplore its bad image.
The economic development of the factory in Elbasan has not been reconstructed
yet. From our exploratory analysis of archival evidence it seems that problems were
24
Workers, Steel Factories, and Communism
similar – if not more severe – to the ones in Kremikovci. In the mid-1980s, for example, the Elbasan plant struggled to receive enough raw materials (iron ore, nickel)
from domestic suppliers who preferred to export these commodities. Production almost came to a standstill in the late 1980s; workers remember that they were often
idle. The efficiency of the plant was low as well, if compared to western steel factories.69 However, neither the Kremikovci nor the Elbasan steel plant followed an exclusively or even predominantly economic rationale. They were ascribed by the partystate many other equally important social, political and cultural functions. Therefore,
party and government, which were well aware of the economic inefficiencies of these
factories, were ready to commit further resources to keep them afloat. They were also
ready to accept enormous pollution of air and soil – another notorious feature that
unites Kremikovci and Elbasan and that has left a lasting imprint on the public perception of the two plants.
68
See Palairet, “‘Lenin’ and ‘Brezhnev’”; Schönfelder, Vom Spätsozialismus zur Privatrechtsordnung, 896.
69
Hutchings, “Albanian Industrialization”, 123.
25
IOS Mitteilung No. 62
5 Work in the Kremikovci and Elbasan steel factories
In order to understand what it meant to be a worker in the two factories, and how daily
work and life were shaped by political and economic conditions, the genealogy of the
workforce and their everyday labor practices need to be reconstructed. Particularly revealing is the investigation of those fields of interaction, where policies and agendas of
the party-state and its divergent institutions, of the management, and of the workers
intersected. In the following, we will therefore present first results of our analysis of
three major problems: (1) the patterns of the recruitment and of the composition of the
workforce, (2) the problem of labor discipline and (3) the integrative function of the
steel plants.
5.1 Recruitment of workers and composition of the workforce
A common challenge to the management of both factories was the recruitment of workers. This is an important question also because recruitment, and concomitantly the social and geographic background of workers, was a prime factor for the differentiation of
the workforce. Furthermore, the difficulties to recruit workers is yet another indicator
for the gulf between political intentions and results: despite being so highly cherished
by propaganda and despite offering material privileges, the two steel plants found it
difficult to attract and retain workers.
The analysis of recruitment offers insight into the realities of the internal mobility
regime that was in place in both countries. The governments of Bulgaria and Albania
had imposed restrictions on internal mobility in order to stem the rural exodus. In Bulgaria the government introduced new restrictions on the relocation to Sofia in the early
1950s, which in 1955 were extended to other large cities and later to smaller ones as
well.70 In Albania the movement from one place of residence to another was dependent
70
These restrictions were based on a 1942 law. In 1981, there were only 121 small towns without
restriction of taking residence there. Yet, these restrictions did little to stem the tide of urbanization in
socialist Bulgaria. Creed, Domesticating Revolution, 145.
26
Workers, Steel Factories, and Communism
on permission by the authorities because the government wanted to prevent the depopulation of the rural areas. In the early 1960s the flood of rural migrants was, indeed, practically stemmed in Albania.71 Unfortunately, it is very difficult to reconstruct the legal
framework governing mobility in Albania because, as Örjan Sjöberg notes, most laws,
decrees and other legal rules were not made public after the Fifth Party Congress in
1966.72 Sjöberg could nonetheless identify several concrete measures of the Albanian
government, by which they tried to reign in the rural exodus.
From the overall demographic development of Bulgaria and Albania it appears that
the Albanian regime was much more consistent in enforcing these administrative restrictions on mobility, although it did not manage to fully implement them as well. Despite an ongoing trend of urbanization, the majority of the population of Albania continued to live in the countryside, whereas in Bulgaria the rural-urban distribution was
reversed. According to official Albanian statistics, the share of the population residing
in rural areas increased from 20 percent in 1950 to 36 percent in 1989, while in Bulgaria
it grew from 30 to 67 percent.73
The recruitment practices of the Kremikovci plant help to explain why in Bulgaria,
despite legal restrictions, the rural exodus continued almost unabated in the 1960s. One
of the main motives to take work in Kremikovci was the granting of a residence permit
(žitelstvo) in Sofia. Thanks to its political leverage and the priority status that it enjoyed
in the eyes of the government the Kremikovci factory faced no difficulties to get residency permits from the city authorities for its newly recruited workers. Many workers
took work in Kremikovci only for that purpose, and left the factory after some time in
order to find a job in the city of Sofia proper. This practice was one of the underlying
factors of the continuously high rate of labor turnover in Kremikovci: in the early
1970s, for example, between 16 and 18 percent of the workforce left the factory each
71
Sjöberg, “Rural Retention in Albaniaˮ, 215.
72
Ibid, 210. This points, of course, also to a very idiosyncratic understanding of law and statehood by the
Albanian communist.
73
Brunnbauer, “Gesellschaft und gesellschaftlicher Wandel in Südosteuropa nach 1945”, 685.
27
IOS Mitteilung No. 62
year. Between 1971 and 1975, the plant hired 17,492 workers, while 13,950 left it.74
Since many of the new workers came from villages, the authorities and the management
continued to deplore the low level of qualification of the workforce.
Even though the mobility restrictions were much more vigorously enforced by the
Albanian regime, the investigation of recruitment practices by the Elbasan steel plant
reveals divergent practices. In general, the Albanian communists tried to strictly divide
the labor force into an urban and a rural component. Sjöberg writes that
Moreover, labour legislation appears to prescribe a strict divorce of new entrants to the
labour ‘market’ along the lines of rural or urban origin and place of residence. Thus, the
rural youth are expected to take up jobs in the rural sector (…), whereas urban youth remains the pool from which the urban labour force is replenished.75
Yet, the same author already assumed that these strict rules were not always enforced
because they contradicted other important political goals, such as the achievement of
production targets and the maintenance of high employment levels. Sjöberg also suspected that Albanian enterprises as well practiced a strategy of hoarding resources and
sought additional labor beyond what the central planning authorities had allocated to
them.76 Archival evidence indeed shows that the Elbasan steel plant circumvented the
mobility restrictions in place. The factory had no choice but to resort to informal practices if it wanted to reach the employment level necessary for plan fulfillment. A 1977
report of the State Commission for Planning, which was responsible for the allocation
of workers to enterprises, stated that various enterprises in Elbasan recruited, in violation of the existing rules, workers from the countryside, although there were enough
unemployed in the town.77 The Elbasan steel plant employed workers who came from
collective farms, although they had not been granted a permission to work in the factory
by the head of their farm. Another practice of the factory was to employ workers from
74
DA (State Archive) Sofia, f. 1459, op. 3, a.e. 528, 63; DA Sofia, f. 1459, op. 3, a.e. 537, 4.
75
Sjöberg, “Rural Retention in Albaniaˮ, 218.
76
Sjöberg, “Rural Retention in Albaniaˮ, 219.
28
Workers, Steel Factories, and Communism
the countryside on temporary contracts even after their contracts had expired.78 Many
workers from villages accepted a job in the Elbasan steel plant in the hope to receive an
urban residence permit and a significant number of them left the factory soon: in the
first eleven months of 1973, for example, 1,378 workers left the plant.79 The informal
and illegal recruitment by the “Steel of the Party” factory helps to explain why the population of the town of Elbasan significantly increased in the 1970s (from 39,100 in 1969
to 62,400 ten years later). Elbasan also consistently recorded higher numbers of rural
migrants who lived in the town without permission than Tirana.80
Yet despite the fact that workers from villages took a job in the two steel plants for
the reason to receive residence permits in Sofia and Elbasan respectively, and despite
the circumvention of existing rules for recruitment by the factory managements, both
factories found it very difficult to recruit enough workers. In Kremikovci, wages for
workers were fifteen to eighteen percent higher than standard wages in Bulgarian industry, and workers could earn a twenty-five percent premium for the “fulfillment of the
plan.”81 Yet, “Sofia residents avoided working there as if it were plague-infected” (Michael Palairet).82 Work in Kremikovci seemed unappealing to many, because working
conditions were hard and it took a rather long and often not very reliant commute from
downtown Sofia to the plant. Sofia residents preferred white collar jobs. The above
mentioned numbers for labor turnover also make clear that recruitment was a constant
problem because each year the factory had to find replacements for thousands of workers who had left.
77
AQSh (State Archive of Albania), f. 495, Komisioni i Planit të Shtetit (State Planning Commission),
document no. 1977 / 23, 24–37.
78
AQSh, f. 14, KQ i PPSh (Central Committee of the Party of Labor of Albania), document no. 1977 / 590,
1–15.
79
AQSh, , f. 657 Bashkimet Profesionale të Shqipërisë (Trade Unions of Albania), document no. 1974 / 63, 5.
80
AQSh, f. 490, Këshilli i Ministrave (Council of Ministers), document no. 1976 / 478, 24.
81
DA Sofia, f. 1459, op. 2, a.e. 4 and a.e. 14; DA Sofia, f. 1459, op. 3, a.e. 528, 74.
82
Palairet, “ ‘Lenin’ and ‘Brezhnev’ ˮ, 501
29
IOS Mitteilung No. 62
In the 1970s the Bulgarian government, therefore, introduced special measures to recruit workers for their showpiece factory.83 Teams of recruiters, for example, went to villages of the Turkish minority to find workers; in 1974, more than thirty percent of workers
in an important production line belonged to an ethnic minority.84 The enterprise also hired
more than 500 contract workers from Vietnam. In 1973 the government decreed that army
recruits would be dispensed from service, if they signed a work contract for at least five
years of un-interrupted work in Kremikovci, and in 1974 the Politburo sent an additional
1,500 army recruits into the factory.85 As a result of this continuous recruitment of new
workers, a large percentage of the workers came from the village: according to a 1974
trade-union report more than half of all workers in Kremikovci were of rural origins.86 In
interviews taken in our project, former workers of the factory remember few co-workers
who hailed from Sofia. It seems that common origins and kinship bonds attracted further
co-villagers – a pattern known also from industrialization in nineteenth century England.
One author, who had worked in Kremikovci, wrote that “I learned that in one brigade in
the mechanical repair factory kinsmen and neighbors gathered.”87
The same author also provided a positive interpretation of the rural recruitment: “The
people came from villages (…), they entered into the working class, they made themselves benevolent persons.”88 This notion of the transformative power of industrial work
on the self and of the creation of socialist subjectivity through work in a factory is a
recurrent motive in the proletarian literature of that time.89 In an ironic twist the ideology of the cathartic effect of industrial work had an equivalent in real life because
Kremikovci, due to its difficulties to recruit workers, did offer an opportunity for people
83
See reports in Central State Archive in Sofia (= CDA), f. 136, op. 56, a.e. 354, 2–3; DA Sofia, f. 1459,
op. 3, a.e. 537, 6.
84
DA Sofia, f. 2336, op. 1, a.e. 31, 19.
85
DA Sofia, f. 2336, op. 1, a.e. 48, 46–51.
86
DA Sofia, f. 2336, op. 1, a.e. 6, 44.
87
Kitanova, Khiliada i petstotin gradusa na sianka, 91.
88
Ibid, 88.
89
Cf. the stress of the party on the conversion effects of industrial work which instilled a proletarian
ethos. Friedman, “Furtive Selvesˮ.
30
Workers, Steel Factories, and Communism
with “problematic pasts”. The factory hired convicted criminals and people with questionable political credentials. In the recently opened archive of the state-security we
found an interesting example:90 Stoian H. R., a worker in Kremikovci, was questioned
by the secret police in 1963 for reasons that we do not know. He had worked in the “socialist town” of Dimitrovgrad at the end of the 1940s, when this new town was being
built. Then, he fled to Turkey and in 1951 he moved on to Brazil. In 1957, after the end
of Stalinism and an amnesty, he came back to Bulgaria. In 1961 he was sentenced to
one and a half years of imprisonment because of habitual drunkenness. After his release
from the work camp in Belene, he went to his family in Kazanlŭk and then started to
work in the town of Gabrovo. After that he took a job in Kremikovci. While this most
certainly is an idiosyncratic case, it can be taken as an indicator of the fact that the
shortage of labor, which the Bulgarian economy experienced in general and the
Kremikovci steel plant in particular, created job opportunities also for people whose
past put them under the risk of social exclusion.
The Elbasan steel plant found it also hard to recruit enough workers. Their problems
were, of course, compounded by the tough restrictions on domestic mobility and by the
regime’s policy to centrally allocate workers to enterprises. The State Commission for
Planning set for all the country’s districts the number of workers that they had to send to
specific enterprises. A firm was allowed to recruit workers from other districts only if
there were no workers available in their own district. Yet, because of poor coordination
and frequent confusion in the dealings of institutions at different levels, districts often
did not send the required number of workers or they sent people, which local authorities
considered a problem but were unfit for industrial work. The Elbasan steel factory suffered from that, while it faced growing plan targets as for production. In 1974, for example, the factory failed to achieve the plan because it had not been provided with
enough workers from several districts.91 In the 1970s, the factory directly hired hun-
90
“Protokol za razpit”, 17 February 1963, in: AKRDOPBGDSRSBNA (Archive of the State Security), f. VІ,
a.e. 342, part ІІ: Agenturno-operativni materiali, 21.
91
AQSh, f. 495 (State Planning Commission), document no. 1974 / 8, 3.
31
IOS Mitteilung No. 62
dreds of conscripts after they had finished military service. It was especially difficult to
recruit from among better qualified urban workers who were apparently loath to accept
such a physically demanding job in a steel factory, which is why the majority of workers had little formal training. Labor fluctuation did exist in Albania as well, though most
likely to a lesser extent than in Bulgaria. The state planning commission, at least, deplored “uncontrolled fluctuations” which posed a threat to the recruitment and qualification of workers.92 There is also evidence that the Elbasan factory employed people from
“problematic” families, even though discrimination of individuals because of their family’s history remained a fact of life in Albania until the very end of communism.
The continuous inflow of new workers into the factory had significant consequences
for the composition of the workforce: on the one hand, there was a more or less stable
core workforce; on the other hand, a significant share of the workforce remained in the
factory only for few years. In Elbasan labor turnover was lower than in Kremikovci but
still significant. We are, therefore, interested in the relationship between these two categories of workers: research on other state socialist industries suggests that this difference was a potential source of tension among workers. “Old” workers knew the routines
of production and even though they did bend factory rules, they generally seemed to
have had an interest in maintaining production and developed a proletarian ethos.93
Workers coming directly from the villages, however, often disrupted production and left
their workplace without giving notice, which reflected badly on the production figures
of the smallest units of work organization. To understand these relations, the basic work
units and their role for the integration of new workers and their socialization into the
unwritten codes of workers’ behavior need to be explored. In Bulgaria, work was organized in brigades which gave groups of workers some leeway in organizing their work.
Reports on the impact of financial incentives for plan fulfillment suggest a high degree
of solidarity among brigades, that shared premiums on equal terms rather than allocating them according to individual effort. Brigades even used the additional money
92
Ibid, 2.
93
DA Sofia, f. 2336, op. 1, a.e. 24, 20.
32
Workers, Steel Factories, and Communism
earned in “socialist competition” to throw parties, much to the disgust of the authorities,
who had intended to stimulate individual competition by providing financial incentives.94 The workers’ sense of egalitarianism proved resilient in face of regimesponsored attempts to increase competition.
Archival documents suggest various other lines of differentiation among the workforce (gender, qualification, blue collar vs. white collar, and so on) which points to the
heterogeneity of the working class even in one factory. This is another reason why the
micro-cosmos of a factory is an apt social site to explore state socialist societies which
were anything but uniform and equal.
5.2 Labor discipline
A recurrent theme in management and government reports about the workforce in
Kremikovci and – to a lesser extent – in Elbasan, and also in interviews taken with former workers is labor discipline; or to be more precise, the lack thereof.
In Bulgaria, reports identified workers from the villages and from the minorities – the
latter usually belonged also to the first category – as the worst offenders of the work-code,
as measured by unexcused absences. In Kremikovci leaders of factory units and the management were apparently lenient to take strong measures against violators of labor discipline.95 This can be explained by their fear to alienate workers who would then possibly
leave the factory for good. Given the difficulty to find adequate replacements, it was a
rational strategy of the management to accept a certain degree of violations of labor discipline in order not to offend workers by a heavy-handed approach. The room for sanctions
by the management against workers, who regularly came late, left early, drank on their
94
DA Sofia, f. 2336, op. 1, a.e. 21, 35–6; Georgiev, “Die Arbeiter als Modernisierungsbremse im realsozialistischen Bulgarien?”, 116–7. The memory of strong emotional ties and solidarity among
colleagues at a work-place is a frequent topic in oral histories of state socialism. Cf. Tóth, “Shifting
Identities in the Life Histories of Working-Class Women in Socialist Hungary”, 87. The egalitarian
current in working class behavior is also evident in the opposition of Czechoslovak workers against
greater wage differentiation, which was proposed by economic reformers in the mid-1960s (Heumos,
“State Socialism, Egalitarianism, Collectivismˮ, 64).
95
DA Sofia, f. 2336, op. 1, a.e. 31, 19–20.
33
IOS Mitteilung No. 62
work-place, took overtly long breaks, etc., was also limited by interventions of the trade
union and party organizations in the factory. The government, for example, deplored that
the trade union officials, rather than fighting properly again slack discipline, “took the
incorrect position with respect to the punishment of undisciplined workers.”96 The
Kremikovci factory regularly fired workers for the violation of labor discipline (though
not many). Yet, those who had been fired stood a good chance to be reinstated after the
intervention of the party and / or trade union committee in the factory. Neither the party
nor the trade union would light-heartedly take a stance against workers on the grass-root
level. They also conceded that many cases of violations of labor discipline were not
caused by bad character or laziness but by shortcomings of the system: the lack of goods,
inadequate working and living conditions, irregular transportation, and other typical features of the Bulgarian socialist economy were often to blame for the violation of factory
rules.97 Many workers of the Kremikovci iron ore mine, for example, left up to an hour
early every day in order to catch the 4:20 p.m. bus to Sofia.98 Of course, there were also
workers who really exploited the constraints on the management in firing them and who
left the factory, for example, in the early afternoon to see a football game in Sofia.
Information on labor discipline in the Elbasan steel plant is much sketchier. In general, it can be assumed that workers enjoyed less tolerance by the authorities than in
Bulgaria. Yet this assumption is until now inferred only from our general knowledge
about the much more repressive nature of the Albanian regime, which was the most
dictatorial among the European communist regimes. Thanks to its secretive character
the regime produced little information (even a statistical yearbook was not regularly
published). However, frequent articles about a lack of discipline and other forms of
“wrong” behavior in the local newspaper of Elbasan, Shkumbini, can be seen as evidence of the existence of these phenomena. The newspaper regularly published letters
and articles by “voluntary” correspondents who deplored various problems in the facto-
96
DA Sofia, f. 2336, op. 1, a.e. 23, 74.
97
DA Sofia, f. 2336, op. 1, a.e. 13, 45; a.e. 5, 35–41.
98
DA Sofia, f. 2336, op. 1, a.e. 23, 79.
34
Workers, Steel Factories, and Communism
ry, such as the fact that workers often appeared late at their work place. Frequent leaves
for illness also attracted critique and suspicion by the newspaper.
The official explanation of such behavior in Albania, though, was markedly different
from that in Bulgaria. Reports of the Bulgarian authorities and the Kremikovci management describe violations of labor discipline usually as the result of undue behavior by individual workers, who were lazy or politically unconscious, and who might exercise a bad
effect on fellow workers. They also conceded, as mentioned above, that shortcomings in
the organization of work and in the economy sometimes made the observance of factory
rules impossible. In Albania in contrast, violations of the factory code are usually explained as politically motivated “sabotage” and as instances of the malign offensive of the
imperialist forces against Albania. So, the ideological framing of violations of labor discipline was markedly different in Bulgaria and Albania. The Albanian communist mounted
heavy guns against this phenomenon, which politicized it even stronger. Violations of
labor discipline became part of an overarching discourse of a country being permanently
threatened by outside forces. We assume that this language reduced the room of maneuver
of the management: it became much more risky to take a lenient approach towards workers, if their “misbehavior” was described as a mortal danger to Albania.
5.3 Socialist integration
The ideological framing of workers’ practices is an important topic of our research project
because it not only reveals the official perception of the working class but shaped also the
self-identification of workers. The steel plants in Kremikovci and Elbasan were major
sites of socialist socialization into which the party-state invested not only a lot of financial
and political capital but also symbolic meaning. The breadth of ideological literature and
the prominent role of the two enterprises and their workers in the self-image of the regimes are evidence of the significance attributed by communist power to these two factories. While communist ideology did not directly translate into workers consciousness and
self-identification, it did leave traces, which becomes evident also in the nostalgic memories about that time by workers. Festivities in the enterprise, official praise and awards for
their workers, rituals of community and other performative acts as well as the patterns of
35
IOS Mitteilung No. 62
labor produced arenas of legitimacy. The probably most effective force of creating consents was the way, how production was organized, because this touched the daily routines
of workers and directly impacted on their level of life satisfaction.
In most of our interviews with (former) workers of the Kremikovci and Elbasan steel
plants strong identification with work in the factory is evident. Galina Petrova T., for
example, worked various jobs from 1980 to 2001 in Kremikovci (as assistant of an electrical engineer, dispatcher, fitter, machine operator). While she is generally a taciturn
respondent, she perks up when being asked about her concrete work, which she describes in great detail. She stresses how hard her work was and how often she was
forced to cope with unforeseen problems, but she obviously gained self-confidence
from overcoming these difficulties. She presents herself as having agency. This reflects
the particularity of the organization of production in large industrial enterprises during
state socialism: production was relatively inefficient (not to be compared with Fordist
principles of the organization of work, not to mention post-Fordist just-in-time production), also due to outdated technology. Machines often broke down, labor processes
were often not thoroughly standardized and the supply with materials was irregular. In
such a production environment, the maintenance of production often depended on the
effort and creativity of workers. This model of production depended on generalists, i.e.,
workers who managed to fix different things. These workers executed more than the
same physical motion all over again. From the point of view of workers, this pattern of
production gave them more leeway in determining how they would use their time, at
least as long as production targets were met. They felt to have some agency in the factory and to make things. As far as the mentioned respondent is concerned, there is another
moment which explains her strong identification with her former work: women especially felt that industrial work, despite all the drudgery, did have a liberating effect.99
There was another important aspect of the workers’ opportunities to fashion daily
work: at least for the Bulgarian case study, there is evidence that workers appropriated
resources by the factory for their own private purposes either for moonlighting or for
36
Workers, Steel Factories, and Communism
personal needs. This pattern corroborates findings from other state socialist countries.
The management, and even the government, put a blind eye on these practices, as long
as workers kept some restraint, although these constituted theft of “socialist property”
which was a severe crime. Yet, this was one incentive that the management could concede to its workers, and the immediate economic effects were seen positively by the
regime. Informal economic activities filled some of the many wholes of the formal
economy, especially with regard to the poor level of its service sector. By that, resources were used – though in a different than originally planned way – which otherwise would not have been exploited. In an ironic twist, this arrangement also strengthened the accommodation of workers with the regime, because they got a sense to be
able to trick and work the system.
At the same time, the opportunities to shape one’s own work and to use resources of the
employer for private purposes were unequally distributed among the workers. Here again
one sees the differences between the situation of workers in a large, important enterprise
and those in small, less important ones. The latter usually had less access to these opportunities. To put it bluntly: a qualified, typically male steel worker in Kremikovci had more
bargaining power than a female worker at a conveyer belt in a small textile factory in a
village.
Another recurrent theme in interviews with workers of formerly socialist enterprises is
the sense of comradeship that many of them express. It is quite common that in oral narratives, co-workers are presented as a second family.100 These nostalgic reflections are, of
course, shaped by the experience of atomization, social decline and dissolution of networks
experienced by many (former) workers after the end of socialism. Yet, they express also
pre-1989 experiences, as shaped by the perception of social action at the time of both experience and speaking. Co-workers were an important social network, and the formal structures of power and labor organization strengthened these primary groups. The brigade organization of work in Bulgaria is a case in point. Workers also stress that, even if they had
99
Cf. Massino, “Gender, Identity and Work Under State Socialism”, 144.
100
See Kofti, “Everything has changed”, 11.
37
IOS Mitteilung No. 62
disagreements and quarrels among each other, they would have never betrayed their coworkers vis-à-vis the management. Informal relations appear to have been important in
Albania as well. Otherwise, newspapers would not have reported on the downsides of
strong mutual support and solidarity, such as clientelism, misappropriation of state property, and nepotism. It will be interesting to see, how the ‘traditional’ foundations of informal
networks in Bulgaria and Albania, such as family, kinship and locality, were transformed
and re-shaped by the industrial experience. It is indeed striking to hear former workers in
Bulgaria using the word “collective” when they describe their primary group at the workplace.
The enterprise as well as the trade union and party committees in the factory attempted to foster loyalty of the workers towards the factory by various means. This included the allocation of social benefits (such as housing and places in vacation homes),
the provision of facilities for leisurely activities (especially for sport), and the organization of “political-educational” and cultural events. The trade union committee in
Kremikovci, for example, aimed at “inculcating the love of every worker, engineer and
clerk to the giant of our heavy metallurgy.”101 The formation of class consciousness and
collectivism, of industrial habits and discipline was another goal of the trade union’s
educational program. However, documents from the trade unions point to the fact that
few workers were interested in these kinds of programs and rarely signed up to them if
not forced to do so. Yet, we nevertheless believe that the all-encompassing take of the
factory on the workers had an impact on their habitus. Workers not only worked in the
factory, but they took also their vacation in one of its homes, they lived in apartments
provided by their employer, they used the factory’s leisure facilities, and they supported
one of the factory’s sports teams. Almost the whole day – work and leisure – could be
spent in the factory and its socio-cultural outlets. So, there was a strong material fundament for workers’ identification with the factory, as it is articulated today in memories.
There were, in any case, also limits to the readiness of workers to accommodate with
constantly difficult living and working conditions. The archive of the Kremikovci en-
38
Workers, Steel Factories, and Communism
terprise and of its trade union committee contains many complaints of workers, picturing the many problems of everyday life under communism. Workers were dissatisfied
with their wages, with the perennial lack of housing, with poor transportation, with the
system of distributing vouchers for the vacation homes of the factory, with their work
clothes, with the trade union, etc. The regime struggled hard to deflect criticism and
opened channels for critique that would not question the foundations of its power. The
solicitation of letters of complaints and the invitation to workers to submit recommendations to the management were thought to take the steam off. The introduction of
workers’ control in Albania and of production committees, and at the end of the 1980s
of “workers’ self-management” in Bulgaria, served the same purpose. There are, indeed,
no indications of open protest or a walk out neither in Kremikovci nor in Elbasan. Yet,
this was more likely the result of the fear of workers for severe consequences if they
staged an open protest. From sociological polls taken regularly in Bulgaria in the 1980s,
which measured workers’ opinion, we can infer a growing level of dissatisfaction of
workers with the regime. The mechanisms of accommodating the working class appear
to have become ever more fragile because of the growing economic problems and ideological antinomies.102 Eventually, workers were not ready to rally for the survival of
state socialism neither in Bulgaria nor in Albania, although most of them today seem
unhappy about its demise.
The close look into the inner life of two major factories, thus, reveals new insights
into the production of legitimacy in a state socialist system and its erosion. As for the
production of legitimacy, the foundations of the always shaky legitimacy of communist
rule should also be searched in the daily routines of work and the level of satisfaction
that work could deliver, in terms of remuneration as well as of the sense of agency it
made possible. For this reason, the loss of legitimacy of communist rule in the eyes of
the workers was also closely tied to developments in the enterprises. The deterioration
of overall economic conditions in Bulgaria and Albania in the 1980s reduced the oppor-
101
DA Sofia, f. 2336, op. 1, a.e. 3, 8.
102
See Petrov, “Lebenszufriedenheit bulgarischer Arbeitnehmerˮ.
39
IOS Mitteilung No. 62
tunities of the two factories to accommodate workers’ aspirations. It increased the pressure on workers to engage in informal activities. The growing informality of the economy, in turn, further reduced the efficiency of production, thus strengthening the
downward cycle of both the economy and the level of acceptance of the communist regime. Attempts to rationalize or accelerate production were seen as threats to a labor
routine which offered workers some autonomy. The gradual breakdown of production
in Elbasan in the late 1980s, mainly due to a lack of raw material, must also have had a
demoralizing effect. Industrial case-studies, therefore, have something to say about the
end of communist rule as well.
40
Workers, Steel Factories, and Communism
6 Conclusions
The comparative exploration of the history of workers in two major industrial enterprises in
Albania and Bulgaria reveals new vistas on the creation of “worlds of meaning” in state
socialism. We do not want to write neither the history of Albania and Bulgaria nor the
company history of the steel plants, but of the people working in these places. How did they
perceive and navigate their social world? Of course, in order to understand the actors we
need to know the stage (and backstage) on which their history took place. We believe that
the Metallurgical Complex in Kremikovci and the Steel of the Party plant in Elbasan are
ideal case studies to understand the interrelation between social practices and political intervention in state socialism. The revelatory potential of the two factories is conditioned by
their especially salient role for the party-state and the shaping of the “socialist” working
class. On the one hand, the two steel factories were a place of claims at legitimacy by the
rulers and of the concrete policies that emanated from the politics of legitimation; on the
other hand, they were a place where workers aimed to achieve some sort of autonomy and
to find a place in a rapidly changing society. We claim that these two factories are an ideal
place to investigate what Thomas Lindenberger has described as an important task of the
social history of state socialism: to analyze the “interpenetration of the formal structures of
power and of the informal relationship building” in order to explain the intricate entanglement between the life-worlds on the micro level and the interventionist party-state.103
Shop-floor relations and labor practices were social manifestations of larger power structures in state socialism. They highlighted the social quality of rule: the rulers were constrained by dependencies, and the ruled ones were not just the receivers of orders from
“above.”104
One striking factor of these two factories, which differentiates them from steel plants
in the capitalist world at that time, was the intensity of ideological ascription to them.
The two steel works were also sites where high ideology was translated into concrete
103
Lindenberger, “Die Diktatur der Grenzen”, 17.
104
See Lüdtke, “Einleitung: Herrschaft als soziale Praxis”, 13.
41
IOS Mitteilung No. 62
instructions. The regime’s goal was to firmly link the idea of communism with the social and cultural practices of the workers. Although we can observe also a process of the
accommodation of ideological claims to the realities of social life and the necessities of
production, ideology continued to matter and conditioned status ascriptions and political
perceptions. Industrial labor and relations at the workplace were over-determined in the
sense that they always were connected with other than just an economic rationale. There
were differences in this regard between Bulgaria and Albania, the latter keeping to a
much narrower ideological framework. In both countries, and consequently in the two
enterprises in question, work – such as many other aspects of everyday life under state
socialism – was highly politicized. Workers were encouraged to meet certain production
goals not just for the sake of production but a variety of other reasons as well – such as
to fight imperialism. At the same time, the party was heavily present in the factory,
though the factory party committee’s activities were often less ideologically charged
than the narrative of the central authorities would suggest. Still, workers were constantly reminded of the political significance of what they did or failed to do. The social results of this discourse were double-edged: on the one hand, the constant reminder of the
importance of industrial work offered workers the opportunity to strengthen their own
claims by linking them with official ideology; on the other hand, over-politicization of
social life undermined the legitimacy of communism in the long term.
The stabilizing effects of ideology are evident, for example, in complaints of
Kremikovci workers in which the adoption of important tropes of official ideology are
common place. The highlighting of a political “correct” family background, of sound
communist credentials, and of modest social origins belongs to the frequent rhetoric
devices in these letters. Since industrial workers were important to the regime not only
for ideological-propagandistic, but also economic and ultimately political reasons, the
communist regime would not want to alienate them. The fact that the steel factories in
Elbasan and Kremikovci ranked especially high on the political and economic agenda of
the two regimes gave workers special bargaining power. This was further increased by
the shortage of industrial labor thanks to full employment and, in Albania, strict mobility restrictions, which forced the management but ultimately also the government to of-
42
Workers, Steel Factories, and Communism
fer certain privileges to the workers of the two show-piece factories. The nature of “socialist” organization of labor on the shop-floor, with its many inefficiencies and inconsistencies, was another important factor in determining the room of maneuver of workers: they seem to have enjoyed more possibilities to control the usage of their work time
than in a thoroughly rationalized, just-in-time production environment. At the same
time, this pattern of the organization of production was part of the larger economic malaise of state socialism which eventually undermined the strategies of the regime to accommodate industrial workers with the system. Here again, we see the contradictory
and paradoxical effects of certain structures in state socialism. That which appeared as a
solution at one moment, turned into a problem in the next moment.
The investigation of relations at the workplace, thus, helps to understand and observe in
detail both the production and the erosion of legitimacy of communist rule. It is not enough
to point only to economic woes as the main reason why communists all over Europe lost
power. Economic crisis is not sufficient to make citizens questioning the very foundations
of a given political and social order. A system is on the brink of collapse when its citizens
question the viability of the system to cope with problems and instead perceive concrete
difficulties as symptoms of systemic contradictions. In such a situation, people refute the
claims of the regime to represent an order rooted in morality and question the ideational
foundations of the system. Of course, the loss of legitimacy of communist power in eastern
and southeastern Europe has many roots and dimensions, and in each country, this process
displayed idiosyncrasies, thanks to different social configurations and arrangements.105
However, the over-politicization of everyday life was one major reason for the loss of legitimacy on a wide front. Katherine Verdery summarized that mechanism succinctly:
The very forms of Party rule in the workplace, then, tended to focus, politicize, and turn
against it the popular discontent that capitalist societies more successfully disperse, depoliticize, and deflect.106
105
Kenney, A carnival of revolution; Kotkin, Uncivil society.
106
Verdery, What was socialism, and what comes next?, 23.
43
IOS Mitteilung No. 62
In their totalizing self-understanding – manifest in the constitutions of the Peoples’ Democracies, which attributed the “leading role” in society to the communist party – the
communists had declared themselves responsible for everything. Since much in socialism did not function as it should have, and shortages and other difficulties were an omnipresent feature of everyday life, the communists constantly risked to be made responsible for all these problems. At the same time, the increasingly evident economic failure
undermined the basic principle of the communists’ claim to legitimacy, their “goalrationality”.107 The clearer it became that the stated goals – such as overtaking the West
and producing ever-increasing standards of living – would not be achieved, the shakier
the foundations of communist legitimacy became. The work place was one of the social
spaces where these processes crystallized and were negotiated.
From existing research on the attitudes of industrial workers towards communist rule in
Bulgaria, we can infer that the alienation of workers grew significantly in the 1980s.108
Workers were not only fed up with concrete problems in their everyday life and at work
and with the empty promises of the party, but they also did not believe that the propagated
reform-agenda of the party would lead to genuine improvements. To the dismay of party
officials, they took a “wait and see” approach; the party found it impossible to mobilize
workers for its reform policies. The “dictatorship of the proletariat” lost even the outward
expression of support from the working class in whose name the communists ruled. From
the close examination of workers’ opinion and practices in the two steel plants we expect
further insight into the erosion of communist rule on the level of social practice, but also
into the adaptation of accommodation strategies at the end of communism.
Finally it needs to be stressed that a micro-history of shop-floor relations in two giants of socialist industry reveals not only the social logic of state socialism but also the
macro-patterns of socio-economic change. One goal of the project is to relate the story
107
108
Rigby, “Introduction: Political Legitimacyˮ, 10–1.
Annual sociological surveys conducted by the research institute of the trade unions, in which thousands
of workers across the country were polled, indicate a stark increase in workers dissatisfaction and growing
levels of alienation from the regime in the 1980s. See Petrov, “Lebenszufriedenheit bulgarischer Arbeitnehmer”, 51–62; Brunnbauer, “Die sozialistische Lebensweise”, 235.
44
Workers, Steel Factories, and Communism
of the two enterprises to the wider historical context in order to learn more about the
particularities of industrialization in Albania and Bulgaria. This ambition is driven also
by the fact that the internal dynamics of industrial relations in the two steel works are
entangled with the wider dynamics of change in Albania and Bulgaria, and with the
domestic and foreign policies of the two communist regimes. The study of the two factories and of labor relations in them can help to elucidate the micro-social consequences
of industrialization in Southeastern Europe, which have hardly been studied. The patterns of interaction between workers, management, party and state officials are an indispensable part of the history of everyday life during a period of rapid change. Any
society can be understood only if the social process of its reproduction, i.e. labor, is
explored. Industrial work is an important part of it. The working class might have been
gone in Southeastern Europe, but its history can still be written.
45
IOS Mitteilung No. 62
Archival Sources
AKRDOPBGDSRSBNA (“Committee on Disclosure the Documents and Announcing Affiliation of Bulgarian Citizens to the State Security and the Intelligence Services of the Bulgarian
National Army”; i.e., Archive of the State Security)
f. VІ
AQSh (State Archive of Albania)
f. 14, KQ i PPSh (Central Committee of the Party of Labor of Albania)
f. 495, Komisioni i Planit të Shtetit (State Planning Commission)
f. 657, Bashkimet Profesionale të Shqipërisë (Trade Unions of Albania)
f. 490, Këshilli i Ministrave (Council of Ministers)
CDA (Central State Archive)
f. 136, Ministerski sŭvet (Council of Ministers)
DA Sofia (State Archive of Sofia)
f. 1459, MK Kremikovci (Metallurgical Combine ‘Kremikovci’)
f. 2336, Kombinatski komitet na Profsŭjuza pri Metalurgičen kombinat ‘Kremikovci’
(Trade Union Committee at the MK ‘Kremikovci’)
“Ivan Hadžijski” Institute at Gallup Sofia
Document no. 1011
46
Workers, Steel Factories, and Communism
Bibliography
Kosiński, Leszek A. (Ed.): Demographic Developments in Eastern Europe. New York: Praeger, 1977.
Engelmann, Roger / Großbölting, Thomas / Wentker, Hermann (Eds.): Kommunismus in der Krise:
Die Entstalinisierung 1956 und die Folgen. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2008.
Bohn, Thomas (Ed.): Von der “europäischen Stadtˮ zur “sozialistischen Stadtˮ und zurück?
Urbane Transformationen im östlichen Europa des 20. Jahrhunderts. Munich: Oldenbourg,
2009 (Bad Wiesseer Tagungen des Collegium Carolinum, 29).
Bartha, Anikó E.: “The Disloyal ‘Ruling Class’: The Conflict between Ideology and Experience
in Hungaryˮ, in: Peter Hübner / Christoph Klessmann / Klaus Tenfelde (Eds.): Arbeiter im
Staatssozialismus: Ideologischer Anspruch und soziale Wirklichkeit. Cologne: Böhlau, 2005
(Zeithistorische Studien, 31), 141–162.
Baučič, Ivo: “Some Economic Consequences of Yugoslav External Migrationsˮ, in: Leszek A. Kosiński (Ed.): Demographic developments in Eastern Europe. New York: Praeger, 1977, 266–
288.
Boyer, Christoph: “Sozialgeschichte der Arbeiterschaft und staatssozialistische Entwicklungspfade: konzeptionelle Überlegungen und eine Erklärungsskizzeˮ, in: Peter Hübner / Christoph
Klessmann / Klaus Tenfelde (Eds.): Arbeiter im Staatssozialismus: Ideologischer Anspruch und
soziale Wirklichkeit. Cologne: Böhlau, 2005 (Zeithistorische Studien, 31), 71–86.
Brunnbauer, Ulf: “ ‘The Town of the Youth’: Dimitrovgrad and Bulgarian Socialism”, in: Ethnologia Balkanica 9 (2005), 91–114.
Brunnbauer, Ulf: “Die sozialistische Lebensweise“: Ideologie, Gesellschaft, Familie und Politik
in Bulgarien (1944–1989). Vienna: Böhlau, 2007.
Brunnbauer, Ulf: “Stählerne Träume: Kremikovci und der Neue Menschˮ, in: Ulf Brunnbauer /
Wolfgang Höpken (Eds.): Transformationsprobleme Bulgariens im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert:
Historische und ethnologische Perspektiven. Munich: Verlag Otto Sagner, 2007, 205−228.
Brunnbauer, Ulf: “Gesellschaft und gesellschaftlicher Wandel in Südosteuropa nach 1945ˮ, in:
Konrad Clewing / Oliver J. Schmitt (Eds.): Geschichte Südosteuropas: Vom frühen Mittelalter
bis zur Gegenwart. Regensburg: F. Pustet, 2011, 651−707.
Brunnbauer, Ulf: “Staat und Gesellschaft im Realsozialismus: Legitimitätsstrategien kommunistischer Herrschaft in Südosteuropaˮ, in: Radu H. Dinu / Mihai-D. Grigore / Marc Živojinović
(Eds.): Herrschaft in Südosteuropa. Göttingen: V&R unipress, 2011, 21–54.
Brunnbauer, Ulf / Wolfgang Höpken (Eds.): Transformationsprobleme Bulgariens im 19. und
20. Jahrhundert: Historische und ethnologische Perspektiven. Munich: Verlag Otto
Sagner, 2007.
Chase, William J.: Workers, Society, and the Soviet State: Labor and Life in Moscow, 1918–
1929. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1987 (Studies of the Harriman Institute).
Chumiński, Jędrzej / Ruchniewicz, Krzysztof: “Arbeiter und Opposition in Polen 1945–1989ˮ,
in: Klaus Heller / Jan Plamper (Eds.): Personality Cults in Stalinism. Göttingen: V&R unipress, 2004, 425–452.
Clewing, Konrad / Schmitt Oliver, Jens (Eds.): Geschichte Südosteuropas: Vom frühen Mittelalter bis zur Gegenwart. Regensburg: F. Pustet, 2011.
47
IOS Mitteilung No. 62
Creed, Gerald W.: Domesticating Revolution: From Socialist Reform to Ambivalent Transition
in a Bulgarian Village. University Park, Pa.: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1998.
Dičev, Ivajlo: “Usjadaneto na nomadskija komunizăm. Socialističeskata urbanizacija i krŭgovete na graždanstvoˮ, in: Sociologičeski problemi (2003), no. 3–4, 33–63.
Dinu, Radu H. / Mihai-D. Grigore / Marc Živojinović (Eds.): Herrschaft in Südosteuropa. Göttingen: V&R unipress, 2011.
Filtzer, Donald: Soviet Workers and Stalinist industrialization: The Formation of Modern Soviet
Production Relations, 1928–1941. Armonk/NY: M.E. Sharpe, 1986.
Filtzer, Donald: Soviet Workers and de-Stalinization: The Consolidation of the Modern System of Soviet Production Relations, 1953–1964. Cambridge, New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992.
Filtzer, Donald: “Labour and the Contradictions of Soviet Planning under Stalin: The Working
Class and the Regime during the First Years of Forced Industrializationˮ, in: Critique: Journal of Socialist Theory 25 (1993), 71–103.
Filtzer, Donald: “Labor Discipline, the Use of Work Time, and the Decline of the Soviet System,
1928–1991ˮ, in: International Labor & Working Class History 50 (1996), 9–28.
Filtzer, Donald: “The Standard of Living of Soviet Industrial Workers in the Immediate Postwar
Period, 1945–1948ˮ, in: Europe-Asia Studies 51 (1999), no. 6, 1013–1038.
Filtzer, Donald: Soviet Workers and Late Stalinism: Labour and the Restoration of the Stalinist
System after World War II. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002.
Filtzer, Donald (Ed.): A Dream Deferred: New Studies in Russian and Soviet Labour History.
Bern: Peter Lang, 2008.
Friedman, Jack R.: “Furtive Selves: Proletarian Contradictions, Self-Presentation, and the Party
in 1950s Romaniaˮ, in: International Labor and Working-Class History 68 (2005), 9–23.
Georgiev, Ivo: “Die Arbeiter als Modernisierungsbremse im realsozialistischen Bulgarien?ˮ, in:
Peter Hübner / Christoph Klessmann / Klaus Tenfelde (Eds.): Arbeiter im Staatssozialismus:
Ideologischer Anspruch und soziale Wirklichkeit. Cologne: Böhlau, 2005 (Zeithistorische
Studien 31), 109–118.
Gestwa, Klaus: Die Stalinschen Großbauten des Kommunismus. Sowjetische Technik- und Umweltgeschichte, 1948–1967. Munich: Oldenbourg, 2010 (Ordnungssysteme, 30).
Hellbeck, Jochen: “Fashioning the Stalinist Soul: The Diary of Stepan Podlubnyi (1931–1939)ˮ,
in: Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas 44 (1996), 344–373.
Hellbeck, Jochen: Revolution on My Mind: Writing a Diary Under Stalin. Cambridge, Mass:
Harvard University Press, 2006.
Heller, Klaus / Jan Plamper (Eds.): Personality Cults in Stalinism. Göttingen: V&R unipress, 2004.
Heumos, Peter: “Betriebsräte, Einheitsgewerkschaft und staatliche Unternehmensverwaltung:
Anmerkungen zu einer Petition mährischer Arbeiter an die tschechoslowakische Regierung
vom 8.6.1947ˮ, in: Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas 29 (1981), no. 2, 215–245.
48
Workers, Steel Factories, and Communism
Heumos, Peter: “Grenzen des Sozialistischen Produktivismus: Arbeitsinitiativen und Arbeitsverhalten in Tschechoslowakischen Industriebetrieben in den fünfziger Jahrenˮ, in: Klaus Roth (Ed.):
Arbeit im Sozialismus – Arbeit im Postsozialismus: Erkundungen zum Arbeitsleben im östlichen
Europa. Münster: LIT, 2004 (Freiburger sozialanthropologische Studien, 1), 199–218.
Heumos, Peter: “State Socialism, Egalitarianism, Collectivism: On the Social Context of Socialist Work Movements in Czechoslovak Industrial and Mining Enterprises, 1945–1965ˮ, in:
International Labor and Working-Class History 68 (2005), 47–74.
Heumos, Peter: ‘Vyhrňme si rukávy, než se kola zastaví!’: Dělníci a státní socialismus v
Československu 1945–1968. Praha: Ústav pro soudobé dějiny AV ČR, 2006.
Heumos, Peter: “Zum Verhalten von Arbeitern in industriellen Konflikten: Tschechoslowakei
und DDR im Vergleich bis 1968ˮ, in: Roger Engelmann / Thomas Großbölting / Hermann
Wentker (Eds.): Kommunismus in der Krise: Die Entstalinisierung 1956 und die Folgen.
Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2008, 409–427.
Heumos, Peter / Christiane Brenner (Eds.): Sozialgeschichtliche Kommunismusforschung: Tschechoslowakei, Polen, Ungarn und DDR 1948–1968. Munich: Oldenbourg, 2005 (Bad Wiesseer Tagungen des Collegium Carolinum, 27).
Höpken, Wolfgang: Sozialismus und Pluralismus in Jugoslawien. Munich: Oldenbourg, 1984.
Horváth, Sándor: A kapu és a határ: Mindennapi Sztálinváros. Budapest: MTA Történettudományi Intézete, 2004 (Társadalom és művelődéstörténeti tanulmányok, 34).
Horváth, Sándor: “Alltag in Sztálinváros: Die ‘Zivilisierten’ und die ‘Wilden’ in der ersten sozialistischen Stadt Ungarnsˮ, in: Peter Heumos / Christiane Brenner (Eds.): Sozialgeschichtliche
Kommunismusforschung: Tschechoslowakei, Polen, Ungarn und DDR 1948–1968. Munich:
Oldenbourg, 2005 (Bad Wiesseer Tagungen des Collegium Carolinum, 27), 505–526.
Hübner, Peter / Christoph Klessmann / Klaus Tenfelde (Eds.): Arbeiter im Staatssozialismus.
Ideologischer Anspruch und soziale Wirklichkeit. Cologne: Böhlau, 2005 (Zeithistorische
Studien, 31).
Hübner, Peter / Klaus Tenfelde (Eds.): Arbeiter in der SBZ/DDR. Essen: Klartext-Verlag, 1999.
Hutchings, Raymond: “Albanian Industrialization. Widening Divergence from Stalinismˮ, in:
Roland Schönfeld (Ed.): Industrialisierung und gesellschaftlicher Wandel in Südosteuropa.
Munich: Oldenbourg, 1989, 109–124.
Jajeśniak-Quast, Dagmara: “Die sozialistische Planstadt Eisenhüttenstadt im Vergleich mit
Nowa Huta und Ostrava-Kunčiceˮ, in: Thomas Bohn (Ed.): Von der ‘europäischen Stadt’
zur ‘sozialistischen Stadt’ und zurück? Urbane Transformationen im östlichen Europa des
20. Jahrhunderts. Munich: Oldenbourg, 2009 (Bad Wiesseer Tagungen des Collegium Carolinum, 29), 99–113.
Jajeśniak-Quast, Dagmara: Stahlgiganten in der sozialistischen Transformation. Nowa Huta in
Krakau EKO in Eisenhüttenstadt und Kunǐce in Ostrava. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2010
(Studien zur Sozial- und Wirtschaftsgeschichte Ostmitteleuropas, 20).
Janus, Bolesław: “Labor’s Paradise: Family, Work, and Home in Nowa Huta, Poland, 1950–
1960ˮ, in: East European Quarterly 33 (2000), no. 4, 453–474.
Kaser, Michael: “Economic Systemˮ, in: Klaus-Detlev Grothusen (Ed.): Albanien. Göttingen:
Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1993 (Südosteuropa-Handbuch, 7), 289–311.
49
IOS Mitteilung No. 62
Kenney, Padraic: Rebuilding Poland: Workers and Communists, 1945–1950. Ithaca, NY:
Cornell University Press, 1997.
Kenney, Padraic: A Carnival of Revolution: Central Europe 1989. Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press, 2002.
Kitanova, Vesela: Khiliada i petstotin gradusa na sianka. Sofia, 1978.
Kleßmann, Christoph: Arbeiter im “Arbeiterstaat” DDR: Deutsche Traditionen, sowjetisches
Modell, westdeutsches Magnetfeld (1945 bis 1971). Bonn: Dietz, 2007.
Kofti, Dimitra: “Everything has changed” – “Everything is the same”: Shifting production practices and relationships of power in a privatized Bulgarian factory [unpublished paper].
Koleva, Daniela et al.: Slŭnceto na zalez pak sreštu men. Žitejski razkazi. Sofia: LIK, 1999.
Kotkin, Stephen: Magnetic Mountain: Stalinism as a Civilization. Berkeley, Ca.: University of
California Press, 1997.
Kotkin, Stephen: Uncivil Society: 1989 and the Implosion of the Communist Establishment.
New York: Modern Library, 2009.
Lampe, John R: The Bulgarian Economy in the Twentieth Century. New York, NY: St. Martin’s
Press, 1986.
Lebow, Katherine: “Socialist Leisure in Time and Space: Hooliganism and Bikiniarstwo in
Nowa Huta 1949–1956ˮ, in: Peter Heumos / Christiane Brenner (Eds.): Sozialgeschichtliche
Kommunismusforschung: Tschechoslowakei, Polen, Ungarn und DDR 1948–1968. Munich:
Oldenbourg, 2005 (Bad Wiesseer Tagungen des Collegium Carolinum, 27), 527–42.
Lindenberger, Thomas: “Die Diktatur der Grenzen. Zur Einleitungˮ, in: Thomas Lindenberger
(Ed.): Herrschaft und Eigen-Sinn in der Diktatur: Studien zur Gesellschaftsgeschichte der
DDR. Cologne, Weimar, Vienna: Böhlau 1999, 13–44.
Lüdtke, Alf: “Einleitung: Herrschaft als soziale Praxisˮ, in: Alf Lüdtke (Ed.): Herrschaft als
soziale Praxis: Historische und sozial-anthropologische Studien. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck &
Ruprecht, 1991, 9–63.
Madarász, Jeannette Z.: Working in East Germany: Normality in a socialist dictatorship, 1961–79.
Basingstoke / New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006.
Massino, Jill: “Gender, Identity and Work Under State Socialismˮ, in: Aspasia 3 (2009), 131–160.
Mataj, Feruz: Kur jeta kerkon te flas. Kujtime. Tiranë: West Print, 2011.
Mitchell, Katharyne: “Work Authority in Industry: The Happy Demise of the Ideal Typeˮ, in:
Comparative Studies in Society and History 34 (1992), no. 4, 679–694.
Obertreis, Julia / Anke Stephan (Eds.): Erinnerungen nach der Wende: Oral history und (post)
sozialistische Gesellschaften. Essen: Klartext, 2009.
Palairet, Michael: “ ‘Lenin’ and ‘Brezhnev’: Steel making and the Bulgarian economy, 1956–90ˮ,
in: Europe-Asia Studies 47 (1995), no. 3, 493–505.
Paperno, Irina: Stories of the Soviet experience. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2009.
50
Workers, Steel Factories, and Communism
Petrescu, Dragoş: “Workers and Peasant-Workers in a Working Class ‘Paradise’: Patterns of
Working Class Protest in Communist Romaniaˮ, in: Peter Hübner / Christoph Klessmann /
Klaus Tenfelde (Eds.): Arbeiter im Staatssozialismus: Ideologischer Anspruch und soziale
Wirklichkeit. Cologne: Böhlau, 2005 (Zeithistorische Studien, 31), 119–140.
Petrović, Tanja: “ ‘When We Were Europe’: Socialist Workers in Serbia and Their Nostalgic
Narratives: The Case of the Cable Factory Workers in Jagodinaˮ, in: Maria N. Todorova
(Ed.): Remembering Communism: Genres of Representation. New York: Social Science Research Council, 2010, 127–154.
Petrov, Petăr: “Sozialistische Arbeitsfeiern im Betrieb: Konzept und Umsetzungˮ, in: Klaus Roth
(Ed.): Arbeit im Sozialismus – Arbeit im Postsozialismus: Erkundungen zum Arbeitsleben im östlichen Europa. Münster: LIT, 2004 (Freiburger sozialanthropologische Studien, 1), 147–166.
Petrov, Petăr: “Lebenszufriedenheit bulgarischer Arbeitnehmer: Aussagen aus den 1980er Jahren und heutiges Erinnernˮ, in: Klaus Roth (Ed.): Arbeitswelt – Lebenswelt: Facetten einer
spannungsreichen Beziehung im östlichen Europa. Berlin: LIT, 2006 (Freiburger sozialanthropologische Studien, 4), 51–62.
Pittaway, Mark: “Workers, Management and the State in Socialist Hungary: Shaping and
Re-Shaping the Socialist Factory Regime in Újpest and Tatabánya, 1950–1956ˮ, in: Peter
Heumos / Christiane Brenner (Eds.): Sozialgeschichtliche Kommunismusforschung: Tschechoslowakei, Polen, Ungarn und DDR 1948–1968. Munich: Oldenbourg, 2005 (Bad Wiesseer Tagungen des Collegium Carolinum, 27), 105–132.
Pittaway, Mark: “Accommodation and the Limits of Economic Reform: Industrial Workers
during the Making and Unmaking of Kádár’s Hungaryˮ, in: Peter Hübner / Christoph Klessmann / Klaus Tenfelde (Eds.): Arbeiter im Staatssozialismus: Ideologischer Anspruch und
soziale Wirklichkeit. Cologne: Böhlau, 2005 (Zeithistorische Studien, 31), 453–471.
Pittaway, Mark: “Introduction: Workers and Socialist States in Postwar Central and Eastern
Europeˮ, in: International Labor and Working-Class History 68 (2005), 1–8.
Pittaway, Mark: Eastern Europe 1939–2000: Brief Histories. London: Bloomsbury Academic,
2010.
Pittaway, Mark: The Workers’ State. Industrial Labor and the Making of Socialist Hungary,
1944–1958. Pittsburgh, Pa.: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2012.
Rigby, Thomas H.: “Introduction: Political Legitimacy, Weber and Communist Mono-organisational Systemsˮ, in: Thomas H. Rigby / Ferenc Fehér (Eds.): Political Legitimation in Communist States. London: Macmillan, 1982, 1–26.
Roth, Klaus (Ed.): Arbeit im Sozialismus – Arbeit im Postsozialismus: Erkundungen zum Arbeitsleben im östlichen Europa. Münster: LIT, 2004 (Freiburger sozialanthropologische Studien, 1).
Roth, Klaus (Ed.): Arbeitswelt – Lebenswelt: Facetten einer spannungsreichen Beziehung im
östlichen Europa. Berlin: LIT, 2006 (Freiburger sozialanthropologische Studien, 4).
Sabel, Charles F. / David Stark: “Planning, Politics, and Shop-Floor Power. Hidden Forms of
Bargaining in Soviet-Imposed State-Socialist Societiesˮ, in: Politics and Society 11 (1982),
no. 4, 439–476.
Sjöberg, Örjan: “Rural Retention in Albania: Administrative Restrictions Urban-Bound Migrationˮ,
in: East European Quarterly 28 (1994), no. 2, 205–233.
51
IOS Mitteilung No. 62
Schönfelder, Bruno: Vom Spätsozialismus zur Privatrechtsordnung. Berlin: Berliner Wissenschaftsverlag, 2012.
Thompson, Edward P.: The Making of the English Working Class. London: Victor Golancz, 1963.
Todorova, Maria N. (Ed.): Remembering Communism: Genres of Representation. New York:
Social Science Research Council, 2010.
Tóth, Eszter Z.: “Shifting Identities in the Life Histories of Working-Class Women in Socialist
Hungaryˮ, in: International Labor and Working-Class History 68 (2005), 75–92.
Verdery, Katherine: What Was Socialism, and What Comes Next? Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press, 1996.
Vladigerov, Todor et al.: Ikonomičesko i socialno razvitie na Narodna Republika Bŭlgarija.
Sofia: BAN, 1964.
Vodopivec, Nina: “Past for the Present: The Social Memory of Textile Workers in Sloveniaˮ,
in: Maria N. Todorova (Ed.): Remembering Communism: Genres of Representation. New
York: Social Science Research Council, 2010, 213–236.
Wierling, Dorothee: “Dominante scripts und komplizierte Lebensgeschichten – ein Kommentar
zur Erforschung des Alltags im Staatssozialismusˮ, in: Julia Obertreis / Anke Stephan (Eds.):
Erinnerungen nach der Wende: Oral history und (post)sozialistische Gesellschaften. Essen:
Klartext, 2009, 323–328.
Woodward, Susan L.: Socialist Unemployment: The Political Economy of Yugoslavia, 1945–1990.
Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995.
52
- Item sets