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Twenty-five-thousanders (Russian:двадцатипятитысячники,dvadtsatipyatitysyachniki) was a collective name for the frontline workers from the major industrial cities of theSoviet Union who voluntarily left their urban homes forrural areas at the call of theAll-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) to improve the performance ofkolkhozes during theagriculturalcollectivisation in the Soviet Union in early 1930.
In November 1929, theplenum of the Central Committee of the Communist Party issued a decree on sending 25,000 workers with sufficient organizational and political experience to the rural areas to work in kolkhozy and inMachine and Tractor Stations (MTS). The decree found a broad response among the workers of the country, but they often had to fight resistance from their factories, which needed them to fill production quotas. In her history of the movement,Lynne Viola wrote:
The recruitment drive illustrated the sometimes contradictory nature of thefirst five-year plan revolution, which aimed for the maximum in economic modernization while at the same time insisting that modernization occur within the parameters of the social and political guidelines of the proletarian dictatorship. The factories were required to increase production while releasing their best workers for participation in the numerous mobilizations of skilled workers for promotion in the bureaucracy, the purge of the state administration, enrollment in higher technical education, and work in the countryside. The consequences of these contradictory demands were frequently inconsistency, disorder, and an uneasy balance between different institutional concerns, revealing a side of Soviet politics lacking unity of purpose and divided by differing interests. In the recruitment of the 25,000ers this meant that ultimately the state had to circumvent factory officialdom and, with the aid of the party organs, appeal directly to workers over the head of resistant factory officials for support in the campaign. And the result was that, in spite of the opposition of factory officials and problems in campaign implementation, the recruitment drive was an enormous success.[1]
As a result, 27,519 people were selected from all over the Soviet Union and sent to work in the kolkhozy.
Analysis of the social structure of 23,409 twenty-five-thousanders with personal files reveals:
To prepare the twenty-five-thousanders for work in the rural areas, theSoviets organized special courses. Some volunteers were sent tosovkhozy for two or three months as interns. Most of the twenty-five-thousanders were sent directly to kolkhozy in the principalcereal regions of the country, such asUkraine, NorthCaucasus, Lower and MiddleVolga, theBlack Earth Region and others.
The twenty-five-thousanders took part in establishing new kolkhozy and in strengthening the weak ones, conducting political, educational and cultural work among the inhabitants of the rural areas. They assisted kolkhozy in organizing stock, strengthening work-discipline and establishing "correct" product-distribution. Some of the twenty-five-thousanders were elected board members and chairmen of kolkhozy.
However, the twenty-five-thousanders encountered fierce resistance from the so-calledkulaks, who opposed thesocialist re-organization ofagriculture.
Sovietliterature treated thephenomenon of the twenty-five-thousanders extensively.Mikhail Sholokhov wrote one of the most famous books on this subject:Virgin Soil Upturned (Russian:Поднятая целина,romanized: Podnyataya tselina, 1932 and 1960).
This article includes content derived from theGreat Soviet Encyclopedia, 1969–1978, which is partially in thepublic domain.
