A good-sized Soviet fac­tory usu­ally con­sisted of up to a hun­dred indus­trial divi­sions, with 200 – 800 work­ers in each. They had to be accom­mo­dated, fed, and often edu­cated, and typ­i­cally to the Soviet way of doing things, that often wasn’t han­dled very well. So if you ever won­dered what it would be like to be a young engi­neer at a large fac­tory in the Soviet Rus­sia — please read on.

Eat

The team lead­ers, heads of depart­ments and the exec­u­tives of any fac­tory would dine sep­a­rately and their cafe­te­ria would dif­fer sig­nif­i­cantly from the one for the reg­u­lar staff. An exec­u­tive can­teen would have nice table­cloths, wait­resses, paper nap­kins, flow­ers and sub­dued music. The menu would be exten­sive and could include trout, lamb and pork cut­lets, plenty of meat in bor­sht and fresh crou­tons for the soups. Well, the work­ing class can­teen would be exactly the opposite.

The idea of con­veyer type ser­vice was bor­rowed from the US as it allowed let­ting many staff through in a timely man­ner. Well, that wasn’t the case in a typ­i­cal Soviet can­teen. There would often be queues, lack of clean trays, short­age of tables and rude staff – oh, those work­ers of Soviet can­teens! Usu­ally a middle-aged lady with bad tem­per and poor man­ners; they were said to be tak­ing the nice cuts of meat and poul­try home. One day there could be a book writ­ten on the tricks of the Soviet can­teen work­ers – what they did to bal­ance out the short­ages! For instance, if you want to keep half a kilo of sour cream to your­self, you can­not sim­ply dilute the rest with water – that could show up if the inspec­tion came to check. No, they would use a cheaper yoghurt (kefir) or ran­cid milk – and often the sour cream served in those can­teens was as liq­uid as milk. The menu was also unimag­i­na­tive, with very lit­tle meat in soups or stews, but with plenty of over-cooked pasta and over boiled potatoes.

Drink

A reg­u­lar Soviet fac­tory worker would receive 1 rou­ble from his wife for the daily spends. Why the wife and why so lit­tle? The prob­lem of alco­holism was an acute one. Since the jobs were very demand­ing phys­i­cally and drink­ing was often the only known way of relax­ation (not to men­tion the peer pres­sure!), it was impos­si­ble for the work­ers not to drink. Of course, bring­ing alco­hol to work was not allowed, but there were ways around it. Like, pay a goods dri­ver to bring you a bot­tle with a deliv­ery. Or, even bet­ter, ethanol – used widely as a sol­vent, or a as cleanser for machine parts, it was a very pop­u­lar drink.

As every­one was paid monthly, pay day drink­ing was part of indus­trial cul­ture – the joke went that it was drink­ing “for the rea­son”, unlike any other day.

Alco­hol and alco­holism were cer­tainly berated; and the pun­ish­ment was two-fold: moral and mate­r­ial. The drinkers were openly rep­ri­manded at staff meet­ings; satiric car­i­ca­tures were drawn and dis­played, but if noth­ing helped, the pun­ish­ment became more tan­gi­ble: no bonuses, time off in win­ter (there was even a joke: You’ve got to hate warm beer and sweaty women, take some time off in Feb!) and poten­tially even med­ical reha­bil­i­ta­tion. How­ever, it was very rare for a drunk­ard to be fired: the coun­try needed all labour force it could have.

Stay

The accom­mo­da­tion for fac­tory work­ers was pro­vided and almost free; the only thing was that it was of a pecu­liar char­ac­ter. The accom­mo­dat­ing houses of com­mu­nal liv­ing were of three types: male, female and family-oriented. The last type was prob­a­bly the most decent of all, as a fam­ily would usu­ally get a room of their own. The sin­gles had to share: usu­ally not the most capa­cious room would have to fit between two to three sin­gle beds. Noth­ing was pri­vate: if we said that the space allo­ca­tion was about 5sq m, this would not mean per per­son –  that would mean per room, and one was lucky to be able to share with friends! There would be a cou­ple of show­ers for the floor, and maybe a cou­ple of toi­lets. Typ­i­cally guys would not be allowed even to stay overnight – event to visit the gals was for­bid­den! The kitchen was com­mu­nal with a few cook­ing stoves/ovens – bor­sht or meat­balls often went miss­ing if left unattended!

The law and order would be guarded by a Com­man­dant — and this is not a fig­ure of speech, this was actu­ally an offi­cial title! A woman in her late 50s, usu­ally with a mean char­ac­ter and a lot of unre­solved issues, this lady would be very sus­cep­ti­ble to bribes and all sorts of favour – for allow­ing a vis­i­tor, for com­ing in after the doors were locked (and they were usu­ally locked by 10pm, with no access granted. The late­com­ers might as well had sleep on the street, for what a Com­man­dant would care!).

Work

So how come that the Soviet man­u­fac­tur­ing went belly up? The prime rea­son for it was the inabil­ity to sus­tain any com­pe­ti­tion. The items for every­day use (TV sets, wash­ing machines, even cars or irons) were not user-friendly and just out­right ugly. The sit­u­a­tion was even more com­plex with heav­ier man­u­fac­tur­ing. Any­body who had vis­ited a fac­tory which built planes in late 1970s or early 1980s would recall what a gloomy look it had. The tech­no­log­i­cal rules were bro­ken as much and as often as it could only be: the only help was an extremely high num­ber of man­ual controllers.

The waste rates were as high as 80% of the total items pro­duced. Hardly any metal was cast: the major­ity was about the metal cut­ting, which was inef­fec­tive and costly. The tech­nolo­gies which were get­ting a wider use in the West (lasers, blast mould­ing, pre­cise cast) were still unheard of. Robots were still exotic as; noth­ing was auto­mated. All the machin­ery was Soviet-made, often dated back to 1930s and 1940s. All graph­ics and design was done man­u­ally, with pen­cils, erasers and slide rulers. Even the fin­ish­ing touches for plane parts were often done man­u­ally, with a metal file, sand paper and some pol­ish paste.

The story goes that there was even a joke: Amer­i­can R&D sci­en­tists were schem­ing against the Soviet man­u­fac­tur­ing, until the CIA cracked a spy. The spy said:

— Do you know what you need to do to kill the Soviet manufacturing?

— What?

— Noth­ing!

And indeed, those fac­to­ries were only good for their times of Cold Wars, when the resources were unlim­ited but nobody would demand a cost-benefit analy­sis or even a ROI report. Not any­more, so rest in peace, “Made in the USSR”.

Related posts:

1. Сollec­tive Housing
2. Queues
3. In The Bookshop
4. A Trip Around the USSR: Leningrad 1972
5. More pic­tures of Soviet Moscow 1960s by Mark Riboud