Soviet Workers and De-Stalinization: The Consolidation of the Modern System of Soviet Production Relations 1953-1964: 87 (Cambridge Russian, Soviet and Post-Soviet Studies, Series Number 87) - Softcover

Filtzer, Donald

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0521522412 ISBN 13: 9780521522410

Publisher: Cambridge University Press, 2002

Synopsis

This 1992 book is a comprehensive study of the position of Soviet industrial workers during the Khrushchev period. Dr Filtzer examines the main features of labour policy, shop-floor relations between workers and managers, and the position of women workers. He argues that the main concern of labour policy was to remotivate an industrial population left demoralized by the Stalinist terror. This 'de-Stalinization' had to be carried out without undermining the power and property relations on which the Stalinist system had been built. The author convincingly demonstrates how labour policy was thus limited to superficial gestures of liberalization and tinkering with incentive schemes. Rather than achieving any lasting effects, the Khrushchev period saw the consolidation of a long-term decline into economic stagnation. The labour problems under Khrushchev are shown to be the same as those which confronted Mikhail Gorbachev and his ill-fated perestroika, thus helping to explain the failures of Gorbachev's policies.

About this title

Review:

"...a valuable and worthwhile book." Walter D. Connor, Slavic Review

Book Description:

In this 1992 book, Dr Filtzer demonstrates how labour policy under Khrushchev was limited to superficial gestures of liberalization and tinkering with incentive schemes. Rather than achieving any lasting effects, the Khrushchev period saw the consolidation of a long-term decline into economic stagnation.

About this edition

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Publication date: 2002
• ISBN 10: 0521522412
• ISBN 13: 9780521522410
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 340