Some time ago, on the TOPWAR website, my material was published on the current state of university science, which dealt with the intensification of learning processes and, accordingly, an increase in the productivity of university scientists. Previously, the norm is 5 articles in five years, now 25, plus a lot of other things, which with all the simplification of this approach is still better than the old level. However, only those who work in this system can truly appreciate this. And, nevertheless, this example once again shows that the main direction, the main vector of all the activities of human civilization was … an all-round increase in labor productivity in all spheres. And, by the way, one of the reasons for the collapse of the Soviet system was … precisely low labor productivity, which could not be raised to the appropriate level. Although, many attempts have been made to that.
The real name of Alexei Stakhanov is Andrey. The name Aleksey appeared due to an error in the Pravda newspaper, which published an article about the fantastic record of a Soviet miner. Since Pravda never makes mistakes, Stakhanov was given a new passport with a new name, which became known throughout the country, within a few days at Stalin's instructions. It is difficult to judge whether this is a legend or not. However, such information takes place.
One of them is the famous Stakhanov movement. However, what do we know about him today? A couple of meager lines from a school textbook, a little more from a university textbook and that's it! Meanwhile, I managed to find very interesting material about the Stakhanov movement in the journal Science and Technology for 1938 (No. 17, pp. 1-3). This material seemed to me so interesting that I considered it necessary to put it here in its entirety and without any changes. Firstly, the language of that time is interesting in itself, and secondly, this message was prepared with a view to the people of that time, with their mentality, their knowledge and attitude. That is, it is an interesting historical document that does not fall into our hands every day. So, we read:
STAKHANOV MOVEMENT AND SCIENCE
On the night of August 30, 1935, at the Tsentralnaya-Irmino mine in Donbass, a young miner Aleksey Stakhanov cut down 102 tons of coal per shift with a jackhammer, having fulfilled twelve norms. This unprecedented record marked the beginning of the mighty Stakhanov movement, which spread to all sectors of the national economy of the Soviet Union and became one of the main driving forces of socialist construction.
Here it is, the cover of this magazine.
Later, Alexey Stakhanov set a number of new records, increasing his productivity per shift to 312 tons of coal.
But this remarkable achievement was much overshadowed by other outstanding miners who worked according to the method of Alexei Stakhanov. For example, Fedor Artyukhov cut down 563 tons of coal per shift with a jackhammer, and Nikita Izotov - 607 tons. These miracles of labor productivity of the Stakhanovites caused amazement throughout the world.
At first glance, Alexey Stakhanov's method is very simple. It consists in the division of labor in the face between the cutter and the lumberjack and in the lengthening of benches on steeply dipping coal seams. It is this simplicity that made the new Stakhanov method so accessible to many thousands of miners.
However, the simple Stakhanov method caused profound changes in science and technology, made a real revolution in industry. In a speech at a reception in the Kremlin of workers of higher education on May 17, 1938, Comrade Stalin said: “… The Stakhanov and the Stakhanovites in their practical work in the field of industry overturned the existing norms established by famous people of science and technology as obsolete, and introduced new norms corresponding requirements of real science and technology … Comrade Stalin called Alexei Stakhanov an innovator in science, a representative of our advanced science.
What were the new methods of work of Alexey Stakhanov expressed?
For decades, mining science has nurtured methods for developing steep coal seams. What it came to in practice can be seen in the example of the Nikanor section of the Tsentralnaya-Irmino mine, where Alexey Stakhanov first began to work in a new way.
This section mined a seam with a thickness of 1, 4 m, with a dip angle of 65 ° and an average hardness of coal. The site had 85 m high lava, cut into 8 benches, each of which had one miner. It was the responsibility of the miner to cut down about 10 m of coal and fix the face. This was the norm.
Under such conditions, the miner could devote no more than 2.5 hours directly to cutting coal. The rest of the time was spent on fastening and other auxiliary operations. The pneumatic jackhammer at this time lay inactive, although the compressors that supplied the compressed air were running continuously. So two shifts went on. The third shift in the longwall was a repair one: we moved air ducts, drove timber, etc.
Thus, in each face, coal was mined for no more than 5-6 hours per day, and the jackhammer worked the same amount of time.
This was in sharp contradiction with the instructions of Comrade Stalin about the need to use new technology to the bottom.
The idea of Alexei Stakhanov was aimed primarily at making the jackhammer work the entire shift. That is why he offered to release the miner from the attachment.
The new method increased the productivity of the miner, not only by using the time previously spent on fastening, but also by eliminating the large losses that previously occurred during the transition from coal cutting to fastening. Timekeeping observations showed that these losses amounted to one third of the total working time of the miner.
The division of labor between the cutter and the lumberman made it possible, at the same time, to specialize the workers of these qualifications, which also gave an increase in labor productivity.
At the same time, the new Stakhanov organization of labor in the face led to a change in the entire technological process of coal mining in steeply dipping seams. This was primarily reflected in the lengthening of the ledges.
It should be noted that even before Stakhanov, one of the most experienced coal masters in the Donbass, Comrade. Sviridov made attempts to lengthen the ledges. He hoped in this way to increase the productivity of the jackhammer. But then this proposal did not get widespread. At that time, the miner was still tied up with fastening operations, and therefore he did not have time to cut coal and fasten it behind him on an elongated ledge at the same time.
In December 1935, a photograph of Alexei Stakhanov even got on the cover of the American Time magazine, and in February 1936 this edition published a material called Ten Stakhanov's Days.
After the division of labor in the face according to the Stakhanov method, the lengthening of the ledges became a necessity. On a small ledge, the Stakhanovite slayer had nowhere to turn around. It is characteristic that Aleksey Stakhanov, in his first record, worked on the old 8 benches of the Nikanor site, and during the shift he consistently cut coal in each of them.
The point is that in each ledge it is necessary to cut the so-called “codend.” This is the upper corner of the face in the ledge. It is cut down in an extremely inconvenient position for the miner: a jackhammer weighing 8-10 kg has to be held overhead in outstretched hands all the time. In this way, 0.85 m of the seam along the strike is cut in each ledge. At the face, this is the most laborious and difficult operation, requiring almost three times more effort than cutting coal at the bottom of the bench.
Alexey Stakhanov, after his first record, immediately realized that short ledges could become a serious obstacle to his method. Therefore, he demanded a decisive restructuring of the organization of mining operations. A week later, the 85-meter long lava at the Nikanor section was cut in a new way: instead of 8 ledges there were 4, but their length was doubled.
As a result, the Stakhanovite method took the form of paired work of a pile driver and a lancer on elongated ledges.
Work on this method has become widespread. If earlier in the Donbass, ledges with a length of 6, 4-8, 5 m prevailed, and the specific weight of ledges above 14 m was less than 1%, then a year after the start of the Stakhanov movement, the average length of ledges developed by jackhammers was 19.3 m Moreover, one third of all ledges were more than 21 m long.
This Stakhanovian restructuring of the organization of mining in steeply dipping seams had a huge positive impact on the main technological processes of coal mining.
First of all, with the lengthening of the ledges, the number of codend decreased significantly. Previously, the codend had to be cut down after 6-3 m of the face, but now - after 20 or more meters. Due to this, the share of labor costs for cutting the codend has sharply decreased in the overall balance of the cutter's working time.
Further, with the lengthening of the benches, and, consequently, with a decrease in their number, the bottom line was noticeably straightened, which significantly improved the organization of a number of the most important operations in the longwall. In particular, the straightening of the face line facilitated the delivery of timber, improved ventilation of workplaces, simplified transport of air ducts, etc. Solid pans for delivering coal along the face became possible to replace with a small number of guide shelves. The arrangement of the rows of the main lining - fires - has become more correct, which is of great importance for preventing roof settlement and work safety. Finally, with a decrease in the number of benches, and hence the number of jackhammers working in the longwall, the coefficient of supply and pressure of compressed air in each of them increased.
All this had a very favorable effect on the productivity of the miner. If, with the previous organization of work in steeply dipping seams, the productivity of the miner in Donbass averaged 6-8 tons of coal per shift, then when working according to the Stakhanov method, it increased on average, depending on the length of the bench and the thickness of the seam, to 40-70 tons.
Alexey Stakhanov made sure that the jackhammer works in the extended ledge almost without interruption during the entire shift. This played a colossal role in the consolidation and development of mechanized coal mining in steeply dipping seams. Before the work on the Stakhanov method, manual coal mining with the help of backing still had a significant share here - about 45%. Quite often the miners gave higher productivity on the back than on the jackhammer.
With the introduction of the Stakhanov methods of work, this situation changed dramatically. The jackhammer began to decisively displace the backing and took a dominant place in the development of steeply dipping seams. Already 6-8 months after the first record of Alexei Stakhanov, the share of manual extraction fell to 13%. The method of Alexei Stakhanov ensured the complete victory of the jackhammer over the butt.
The Stakhanov method has a number of other outstanding advantages. He opened the way for rationalization measures to eliminate pillars of coal, which had previously remained in several rows along the strike of the developed seam. At present, in most longwalls, only the lower pillars are preserved, which serve for greater stability of the main haulage drifts along which coal is transported. The elimination of a large number of pillars made it possible to significantly reduce the loss of coal in the subsoil and sharply reduce the cutting work, where the productivity of the miners is the lowest. At the same time, the safety of work increased, because usually the pillars were gradually destroyed by the pressure of the roof and side rocks, the coal was squeezed out and "left", and the remaining free space became a focus of rubble.
Lava cutting scheme during Alexey Stakhanov's record on March 5, 1937.
A great advantage of the Stakhanov method of working on elongated benches is also that it ensures uniform coal flow from the benches. This allows for more efficient use of tramming, which receives an even load throughout the shift. At the same time, the possibility of adding coal to the lower ledges is eliminated.
Alexey Stakhanov, in his last record, set in the spring of last year, gave a high example of the integrated implementation of these new methods of work. He cut coal at the Stalin mine (formerly Tsentralnaya-Irmino), at the Beral site, in a longwall 105.7 m high (see diagram). The lava was cut into three benches, of which two upper ones were 25 m long and the lower one was 47.5 m long. Under the benches there was a store for coal 8, 2 m high. ledge - 1, 8 m, on the second - from 1, 1 to 0, 4 m, on the third - 0, 9 m. At the top of the longwall there is a ventilation drift, which is supported by a rubble strip of 10 m. m.
In this longwall, Aleksey Stakhanov began to take coal in the first ledge, then moved to the second and further to the third, and in the second half of the shift he walked around the entire face in the same order. In each ledge, he cut coal from the bottom up, immediately capturing a strip of seam with a width of 1.6 m.
At the same time in the same sequence ledge balers and bonfire workers worked. At the time when Aleksey Stakhanov was cutting coal in the second ledge, the lumbermen were working in the first, when he moved to the third ledge, the lumbermen descended into the second, etc. At a very intensive rate of cutting coal, such an organization of labor in the ledges continuously provided a prepared front work for the miner and woodcutters.
As a result, Aleksey Stakhanov fulfilled 21.6 per shift and cut down 321 tons of coal!
Alexey Stakhanov's records.
Such are the possibilities of the Stakhanov method, so crushingly it overturns the old technical norms based on outdated scientific data.
At the first All-Union meeting of the Stakhanovists on November 17, 1935, Comrade Stalin said: “They are talking about science. They say that the data of science, data of technical reference books and instructions contradict the demands of the Stakhanovites about new, higher technical standards. But what kind of science are we talking about here? Science data have always been verified by practice and experience. A science that has broken ties with practice, with experience - what kind of science is this?"
The great contribution of Alexei Stakhanov to science consists in the fact that he showed her new, proven in practice, ways to achieve the highest socialist labor productivity.
P. S. But this is also an interesting historical source, which literally survived by a miracle: my notebook, with which I happened to go to lectures of Moscow lecturers of the Central Committee of the CPSU who came to us in Penza and read to us, lecturers of the "lower level" at the level of OK and RK KPSS lectures with attitudes about what you can say to the "people" and what you can't! This book has an exact reference to the time: autumn 1985. That is, there were only a few days or weeks left before my departure for graduate school in Kuibyshev, where I was supposed to appear on November 1. Here on the bottom left is a mark that the article sent to Komsomolskaya Pravda was posted on 5.12.1985. The strange mechanism on the left marked "done" is a homemade vibrating pass for the next TV show "Studio of young technicians" on Penza television. This funny car was capable of moving forward due to vibration in any position (no matter how sideways it fell). On the right - data on the then military and economic confrontation between the USSR and the United States.
This photo shows the next two pages of the notebook. And here we are talking about the terrible shortage of labor in the Penza region (left) and the difficult prospects for 1995 (right). In the US agriculture - 4.5 million people. We have 27 million people! In fact, we were then openly told that the social experiment in Russia had failed. But only then we did not understand it! It was emphasized that the 13th five-year plan would be the most difficult. 40% of the population is employed in low-productivity manual labor. And here we were named the main contradiction of socialism, as it was seen "at the top" at that time: "between the growing possibilities of our society and their use." So you see how it was. The people at the top saw all these shortcomings back in 1985, and realized that in 10 years we simply would not have enough workforce for the way we use it. In 1982 alone, we had losses of 50 million man-days and 5.5 billion rubles due to violations of labor discipline, that is, people worked carelessly. True, when I wrote it all down, then … - here it is a feature of human nature - did not attach much importance to this. "It will resolve, they say, or there" upstairs "will come up with something!" And there "above" really came up with !!!
