Communist subbotniki (Communist Volunteer Saturday Workers) were shockworkers who volunteered their free Saturdays for the Bolshevik cause.
Subbotniki were lauded as heroes of socialist labor, as prototypes of the new unselfish man, and role models for the working class. Their actions may have reflected spontaneous enthusiasm among some workers, but they were also encouraged by the Communist Party to mobilize effort. The phenomenon was a mixture of socialist idealism and coercion.
The KS (Communist subbotniki) movement is said to have started by the communists on April 12, 1919 at the Moscow-Kazan railway depot, and was praised by Vladimir Lenin in an article entitled “Velikii pochin,” July 28, 1919. During the summer and autumn of 1919, KS mobilized to defeat Denikin, and surmount the “fuel crisis.”
During World War II, the KS and voskresniki (Sunday volunteers) are said to have inspired the war effort. Celebrations commemorating their achievements and encouraging the movement’s continuation were held frequently during the seventies. See also: SOVIET MAN; STAKHANOVITE MOVEMENT
STEVEN ROSEFIELDE
The original line of the Moscow metro, completed in May 1935, laid the foundation for one of the world’s most impressive subway systems. In its first fifty years, the Moscow metro grew from thirteen stations to more than 120, and the average
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number of passengers carried daily increased from 177,000 to more than six million, making the Moscow system the world’s busiest. The Moscow metro organization also reproduced its various structures in similar metro systems across the former Soviet Union and behind the Iron Curtain. It became, in the words of one official, “the mother of all socialist metros.” Symbols of Soviet power accompanied riders in the metros of Leningrad, Kiev, Kharkov, Baku, Tiflis, Tashkent, Minsk, Gorky, Erevan, Novosibirsk, Sverdlovsk, and Volgograd-not to mention those systems built partly by Moscow engineers and architects in Poland and Czechoslovakia.
For Soviet leaders, Soviet subways were more than transportation systems. The metro provided what one Soviet propagandist called “a majestic school in the formation of the new man.” For the 1935 inaugural line of the Moscow metro, the Soviets constructed each of the stations on different themes of socialist life. Stations celebrated Soviet leaders, the Communist Party, Soviet achievements in education, and the supposed superiority of the Soviet system. The Soviets lavished scarce resources on the first thirteen stations, including 23,000 square meters of marble facing, chandeliers, and crystal. Metro builders boasted that they used more marble in the first line of the Moscow metro than had been used in the entire Tsarist period. Through the end of the Stalin era, stations became more ornate and monumental as the metro grew. Like a mirror held up to Soviet self-perceptions, an elaborate political iconography reflected a sense of approaching perfection in Soviet society. To convey this message, architects calculated that a passenger would spend roughly five minutes per station. In the words of one: “Within that time the architecture, emblems, and entire artistic image should actively influence him.” Soviet subway systems thus celebrated Soviet socialism, provided a pulpit for preaching its values, and offered an effective way to get to work in the morning.
Lazar Kaganovich, a ruthless Bolshevik leader of working-class origin, assumed managerial responsibility for construction of the original metro line. His chief deputy on the project was Nikita Khrushchev, who later became general secretary of the Communist Party. Kaganovich believed that the metro “went far beyond . . . the typical understanding of a technological construction. Our metropolitan is a symbol of the new socialist society being built.” Under his management, the Soviets deployed a variety of improvised Western techENCYCLOPEDIA OF RUSSIAN HISTORY
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niques to build the metro in the treacherous geology of Moscow’s subsoil, which was laced with underground rivers and quicksand. Builders bored through layers of Jurassic clay and fissured limestone, soaked with water. Khrushchev recalled that the builders had only “the vaguest idea of what the job would entail.” The party mobilized public opinion to gather necessary resources and labor. Days of voluntary labor became festive occasions as bands played and able-bodied Muscovites roamed the shafts looking for work. Prominent officials picked up shovels and joined Moscow’s masses. Compared to the construction of the New York subway system, however, only a handful of Soviet workers died-and the Soviets trumpeted the successful construction as proof of the superiority of the socialist order. Nonetheless, the Soviets benefited greatly from the long experience of foreign engineers who had helped construct the world’s other great subway systems. They used the drafts of a failed 1908 Moscow subway plan, whose backers were unable to secure financing. Soviet engineers visited the Berlin subway, studied engineering plans for the London and Paris subways, and hired American engineers as consultants.
The story of the first Soviet subway was as much the subject of Soviet propaganda as the actual metro stations. Soviet memoirs, official histories, metro architecture, and newspaper accounts wove the events and personalities of the metro’s construction into a mythical microcosm of the new Soviet society. The epic tale of its construction, which was recounted in two elaborately bound volumes published in 1935, relayed an ideal conception of socialist engineering and its ability to conquer and transform nature (human and otherwise). In this story, successful technological construction did more than fulfill the party plan for transportation; it proved the inevitable success of the revolution and the party’s vision of itself as an instrument of a supposedly scientifically determined historical destiny. See also: KAGANOVICH, LAZAR MOYSEYEVICH; KHRUSHCHEV, NIKITA SERGEYEVICH; SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY POLICY
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Bobrick, Benson. (1981). Labyrinths of Iron: A History of the World’s Subways. New York: Newsweek Books. Jenks, Andrew. (2000). “A Metro on the Mount: The Underground as a Church of Soviet Civilization.” Technology and Culture 41:697-724.
Josephson, Paul. (1995). “‘Projects of the Century’ in Soviet History: Large-Scale Technologies from Lenin to Gorbachev.” Technology and Culture 36:519-559.
Peter I published the Law on Succession, a manifesto on the succession to the Russian imperial throne, on February 16, 1722.
The Law on Succession was the first such written law in Russian history. Russia’s rulers in the fifteenth through seventeenth centuries favored primogeniture (inheritance by the first-born son), although this custom could be bypassed for pragmatic reasons. Peter, prompted by the defection of his eldest son Alexei (condemned to death for treason in 1718), and by the death of his only surviving son in 1719, rejected primogeniture and issued a succession law. The new law required the reigning monarch to nominate his successor with regard to worthiness. It placed no restrictions on age or gender, but it did not specifically direct the reigning monarch to look beyond the imperial family, by raising a commoner, for example. The work The Justice of the Monarch’s Right to Appoint the Heir to the Throne (1722), attributed to Feofan Prokopovich, justified the new law with reference to scripture, history, and natural law. Peter himself died without nominating a successor, but Alexander Men-shikov claimed to be implementing Peter’s wishes by choosing his widow Catherine, thereby inaugurating a period of female rule. Catherine I, Anna, Elizabeth, and Catherine II all nominated their own successors, while Elizabeth and Catherine II took the throne from legally nominated emperors on the pretext of protecting the common good. Paul I repealed the law in 1797, replacing it with a new law based on primogeniture. See also: PAUL I; PETER I; PROKOPOVICH, FEOFAN
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Lentin, Antony, ed. and tr. (1996). Peter the Great: His Law on the Imperial Succession: The Official Commentary. Oxford: Headstart History.
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