Industrial workers in the countryside
Industrial workers in the country was a propaganda solution of the SED to stimulate the cooperative production method in the field of agriculture .
Beginnings
In July 1952, at its 2nd party conference , the SED decided to transform privately operated agriculture into cooperative agricultural production. The beginnings of cooperatives , which were still based on a voluntary basis, developed cautiously and in different territories.
In order to push ahead with the initially faltering formation of cooperatives, the agricultural politicians pondered suitable methods to achieve measurable successes more quickly. The campaign "Industrial workers in the country" was decided by the Central Committee of the SED at its 21st session in November 1954. The resolution provided for technically qualified industrial workers who were politically behind the socialist party to be sent to the villages to help build socialism in the countryside. The previous year, in April 1953, this decision had been prepared by the Central Committee Secretariat.
Example Magdeburg
In a dissertation by Wolfgang Mahlich, he had examined the beginning and the further course of this action in the Magdeburg district. By the end of the First Five-Year Plan in 1955, few industrial workers went to the countryside. In the entire district of Haldensleben , there was even no advertising for it during this period. It was not until January 1955 that the party took serious steps to accelerate the hitherto sluggish implementation of its project. To this end, a commission of eight party members was formed to improve the recruitment of industrial workers. These were obtained from heavy engineering companies in Magdeburg: from the Karl Marx factory and the Georgi Dimitroff factory . In this way, 28 skilled workers could be won over within a short period of time to initiate the formation of agricultural production cooperatives. By February 1955, the commission recruited 125 industrial workers, 81 of them for work in the LPG. For her advertising campaigns she used u. a. Press and city radio. In the next few months, however, there was stagnation in the advertising of industrial workers. The district's advertising commission saw the responsibility for this in the rigid stance of the management and works management of large Magdeburg companies, in whose interests it could obviously not be in the interests of handing over qualified workers.
The commission then shifted the focus of its advertising to the operations of the district town. She also invited industrial workers from the Haldensleben district to festive events and community representatives meetings in the villages in order to encourage them to work in the LPG. However, only a few took up work in a cooperative.
The activities of the secretariat also included offering industrial workers from the Haldensleben district working in Magdeburg to work in the countryside as an alternative to their previous work. By the late autumn of 1955, in addition to the above-mentioned 122 workers from industry, decided to work in agriculture. Six of them even held managerial positions. In addition, 58 former industrial workers were employed in crop production and 26 in animal production. Twenty-seven people worked as craftsmen and five did other work. 15 urban workers were deployed in the area of the MTS Flechtingen . They took on a function as director of the MTS, as a so-called political leader or deputy political leader, as cultural chairman and two of them as agricultural instructors . Nine skilled workers joined the MTS squad as tractor drivers .
In November 1958 the Council of Ministers of the GDR issued an order for the implementation of the "Industrial workers in the country" campaign, which was published in the Law Gazette of the German Democratic Republic I 1958 (No. 68, pp. 845-847).
With the transition to fully cooperative production in the countryside at the beginning of the 1960s, the campaign's function was fulfilled.
literature
- Witkowski, Gregory R .: "Industrial workers in the country!". A case study on state planning, obstinacy and attempts at modernization , = Zeitschrift für Geschichtswwissenschaft Vol. 57 (2009), no. 11, pp. 913–929, ISSN 0044-2828
Individual evidence
- ↑ https://edoc.hu-berlin.de/bitstream/handle/18452/15151/Mahlich.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y
- ↑ http://www1.recht.makrolog.de/irfd/search?q=*:*&rubrik=bund&fp=rfd/Verk%C3%BCndungsbl%C3%A4tter%20Bund/Gesetzblatt%20der%20Deutschen%20Demokratischen%20Republik% 20I / 1958/068% 7CNr.% 2068% 20 (29.11.1958) / Order% 20for% 20perform% C3% BCour% 20der% 20Action% 20% 22Industrial workers% 20to% 20Country% 22 /