WINNER OF THE SOCIALIST COMPETITION

The Socialist competition is a labour productivity competition that existed in the Soviet Union between workshops, state enterprises, brigades, and even individual workers. Including educational institutions of "Labour Reserves" took part in socialist competitions. It was assumed that this would be able to replace the competition that existed in the capitalist world. This practice existed in the Soviet Union, as well as in the countries that were part of the Eastern Bloc.

Organization of the process

Participation in socialist competition has always been voluntary. At the same time, they were carried out in almost all sectors of the national economy, wherever people served or worked. For example, in agriculture, industry, institutions, offices, hospitals, schools, in the army. At the same time, everywhere, with the exception of the Armed Forces, the committees of the Soviet trade unions were responsible for the management of socialist competition. Its important part has always been the so-called socialist commitments. When the production plan was the main reference point, labour collectives and individual employees were obliged to take on planned or even increased social obligations. In most cases, the dates for summing up the results of each socialist competition in the USSR were timed to coincide with some important or memorable date. For example, the anniversary of the October Revolution, the birthday of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin. The winners were awarded not only morally, but also financially. An excellent worker in socialist competition was entitled to specific goods, money or benefits to be characteristic of the existence of a socialist system. For example, it could be tickets to the Black Sea resort, the right to get a car or housing out of turn, permission to travel abroad. Among the moral incentives were badges of honour, honorary diplomas. The portraits of the winners were necessarily hung on the Hall of Fame. Labour collectives that won the victory in socialist competition were awarded the challenge banner

The date of the appearance of socialist competitions is considered March 15, 1929, when the newspaper Pravda published an article entitled "The Agreement on Socialist Competition of Cutters of the Pipe Shop of the Krasny Vyborzhets Plant".In particular, this text contained an appeal to aluminium cutters Mokin, Putin, Ogloblin and Kruglov, in which they called for socialist competition to reduce the cost and raise labor productivity of, specialists who were engaged in scraping, cutting red copper, and developing tram arcs. The aluminium cutters themselves pledged to cut prices by ten percent, taking measures to increase labour productivity by ten percent. They urged the rest of the workers to accept the challenge and conclude an appropriate contract. This was the first treaty of this kind in the history of the country. As a result, today it is believed that the first socialist competitions were born at the "Krasny Vyborzhets". Based on their results, the winners were awarded the title of shock workers for communist labour.