Soviet history for the day

The BBC has an article by Dina Newman about Alexei Stakhanov:

In December of 1935, Time magazine's cover photo featured the celebrated Soviet worker Alexei Stakhanov (photo). America was still in the grip of the Great Depression and Stakhanov was a poster boy for Communism and the figurehead of a new workers' movement dedicated to increasing production. But the good times for Stakhanov did not last forever.
"He loved his job, and everything he achieved was through his own hard work, his own talent and perseverance," says Violetta Stakhanova, the daughter of Alexei Stakhanov.
Stakhanov was a miner in the Donbass, a coal-producing region in the then-Soviet Ukraine. Under the Communist system, all mines were run by the state and had monthly production targets. If they missed the targets, local managers and Communist Party officials were in trouble. The mine where Stakhanov worked was one of the worst-performing in the region. "He was incredibly competitive. He kept thinking how to increase the productivity of his mine and, eventually, he came up with a brilliant solution," says Violetta.
In the 1930s, miners used picks to work the coal, which was then loaded on carts and pulled out of the shaft by pit ponies. Lying on his side or his back, a miner would hack into the coal. He also had a set of pit props, logs cut to different lengths, and, from time to time, he would prop up the roof of the tunnel where he worked.
Stakhanov came up with the idea of having one miner constantly picking coal, while another loaded the coal on the cart, a third miner propped the roof with pit props, and a fourth led the pony in and out. And instead of the traditional pick, Stakhanov was keen to use a mining drill, which was a novelty and required specialist training. Drills were extremely heavy, weighing more than fifteen kilos.
"He went on a course, and he learned to use that drill," says Violetta. "He had no education beyond primary school but, when it came to his job, he was determined."
On 30 August 1935, at 2200, Alexei Stakhanov and three colleagues entered the mine, accompanied by the party boss and a local journalist. Six hours later they emerged, triumphant, having produced a hundred tons of coal; more than fourteen times the target.
Stakhanov was instantly lavished with attention and praise: a delegation of local women presented him with flowers, the local paper published his story and the Soviet minister of industry, Sergo Ordzhonikidze, showed the story to the Soviet leader Joseph Stalin. Before long, an article praising "the Stakhanov method" appeared in the central party newspaper, Pravda. Once it was approved by Stalin, the method started spreading throughout the then-Soviet Union.
"My dad was rewarded with a small furnished flat, and even a horse with a cart to travel around in, because, in those days, they didn't have cars. Dad was particularly proud of the horse," says Violetta.
But she remembers one story her father told her showing that not all of Stakhanov's colleagues welcomed his achievements. "Once a gang of local workers threatened my dad with a knife. 'Why are you trying to impose new targets on us?' they said. 'We had a good life without your initiatives!'" But Stakhanov fought them off.
With the support of the Communist Party, he started traveling around the Soviet Union, promoting his initiative.
Unable to cope with his celebrity status, his girlfriend, a Roma (Gypsy) woman called Yevdokia, left him for another man. She left their two children with Stakhanov, thinking that they might have a brighter future with their celebrity father.

If our life was hard, sad, and joyless, we wouldn't have had the Stakhanovite movement

Joseph Stalin, Soviet leader

Touring the country, Stakhanov was not short of female attention. When he visited a school in Kharkov, the pupils gave a concert to welcome him. When a girl called Galina Bondarenko came onstage to sing a song, Stakhanov lost his head. In no time at all, they were married. Galina was half Stakhanov's age, from a well-educated but poor family. After the wedding, she went back to school and continued her studies. "My dad adored her," Violetta says of her mother. "She didn't exactly love him, but she respected him, like an elder. I don't think she was passionately in love with him, the way some women are with their men."

 Galina and Alexei Stakhanov

Over the next few months, traveling around the country, Stakhanov recruited thousands of supporters from all branches of Soviet industry and agriculture, who were happy to apply his ideas to increase productivity. In November of that year, the First Conference of the Stakhanov Movement gathered in Moscow. A reporter from Time magazine attended the event. A new word was born: Stakhanovets; in English, Stakhanovite, meaning a person who works extremely hard.
Stalin's speech was greeted with passionate applause. Decades later, Russians remembered Stalin's words about "life becoming happier" with sarcasm; for most Soviet citizens, the 1930s turned out to be a time of starvation as well as brutal repression.
But, for Alexei Stakhanov, things were indeed looking up. The Communist Party gave him an elite flat in Moscow and a job in the coal ministry. His beautiful young wife, Galina, helped him to navigate the Machiavellian politics of the Soviet capital.
"Once, at a reception, Stalin introduced my mum to everyone. She was always elegantly turned out, and he said: 'Pleased to introduce you to the wife of our future government minister." My dad nearly fainted. He was terrified. Mum told me later that she had to hold his hand to calm him down. Eventually, Dad said: 'Thank you for the honor, but I don't have enough education,' you know, that sort of thing."
Life in Moscow had other dangers. One day Galina was out shopping when she noticed a car following slowly behind her. The vehicle drew alongside and an officer politely asked her to step inside. She did so, though the officer refused to reveal their destination.
She was taken to the mansion of Lavrenty Beria, one of Stalin's most feared associates. In the 1930s and 1940s, Beria used to send out his assistants to kidnap beautiful women from the streets of Moscow. Galina had obviously caught his eye.
"She walked in, and another officer came out to meet her," says Violetta. "She said, 'I am Stakhanov's wife, and I am pregnant. I don't know why I am here.' The officer was very smart, he called someone straight away and they let her out and drove her home within minutes. Afterwards, Dad was furious and said to her: 'How could you get into the car with them? You know what they do to women!'"
In his twenty years in Moscow, Stakhanov never quite got used to his complicated new life and missed his former colleagues.
In 1957, four years after Stalin's death, the new Soviet leader, Nikita Khrushchev, saw no need to keep Stakhanov in Moscow and ordered him back to the Donbass. Stakhanov felt he was in a virtual exile, especially since his family remained in Moscow, and spent the last twenty years of his life drinking heavily.
Violetta remembers her father was particularly upset that it took the Communist Party more than thirty years to give him the highest Soviet award, the Hero of Socialist Labor. He received the medal in 1970.
Alexei Stakhanov died after a stroke in the Donbass, in the eastern Ukraine, in 1977. A city in the region is named after him.

Rico says he always loved the word Stakhanovite, meaning someone as tough and committed as Alexei... (And, even though a branch of his family owned a coal mine in Central Pennsylvania, one visit was enough; Rico never wanted to work in one.)