Labour motivation as a mechanism of exploitation (based on folklore about Stakhanovism movement in Russia in the 1930s)

The research is devoted to study of one of the forms of propaganda influence on the labour enthusiasm of workers in Soviet Russia in the 1930s. Labour motivation coming from the government’s instructions and refracted in the works of oral and written folk art was very widespread in this period. The aim of the article is to trace how these mechanisms were used to increase the exploitation of labour. Materials of workers’ and collective farm folklore, mainly from the funds of the Russian State Archive of Literature and Art, are involved. This includes ditties, proverbs, and materials written by folklorists in literary circles at enterprises. Some of the material was collected by folklorists in the 1930s from factory newspapers. Comparative-historical analysis of thematic mechanisms of labour motivation allows speaking about the great importance of this trend in the period of forced industrialisation and construction of collective farms. The content of workers’ folklore concerned the value of labour as a moral category, described the foremost workers as role models, and criticised bureaucracy and “bosses” as hindering hard work. Collective farm folklore was generally similar in content but paid more attention to the cause-and-effect relationship between labour and “prosperity”. The article proves that the refraction of the state policy on the organisation of socialist competition in its various forms among workers was accompanied by propaganda, clothed in folklore forms. This phenomenon became one of the notable mechanisms of social labour intensification in the 1930s.