G. B. Gel'man, Speech to the First Congress of Shock Brigades. December 1929

Original Source: Pervyi Vsesoiuznyi s"ezd udarnykh brigad (k tridts. s"ezdu), (Moscow, 1959).

... It's necessary that those agreements we put together be comprehensible to the workers so that each worker who signs an agreement will know that in doing so he takes upon himself such and such obligations. We have achieved at our factory some 200 cases of reduced production costs, in some departments workers voluntarily increased their productivity per shift, etc. Thanks to this, we carried out our tasks and even more. If the delegates here say that they intend to fulfill the Five-Year Plan in four years, then our workers have adopted that rate of speed needed to fulfill their five-year plan in three years, for we have already cut costs by 21% and reduced the number of rejects.

Working in the foremost lines of the economic battlefront one must not forget that we find ourselves amidst the fiercest class struggle. I wish to present as an example the following facts: the workers of the dyeing division changed from one type of jigger to another, raising labor productivity by more than 100%. On the night shift a shock worker fell into the machine and when he was being beaten by this jigger, when his legs were being broken, when he was being boiled in the hot dye, a worker standing nearby did not stop the machine. When the matter was investigated, it turned out that he was a well-to-do kulak.

Another instance. When the boiler room firemen were to start increased work shifts, they nearly tossed our initiator into the furnace.

We're not afraid of battling with the enemy we see, but the enemy who works along side us at a machine, the enemy who is dressed in the same overalls as us, this enemy we're afraid of. We can't for a minute forget that the class enemy is mighty powerful, and we will be victorious only by the fiercest struggle with him.

Source: Lewis Siegelbaum and Andrei Sokolov, eds., Stalinism as a Way of Life (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000), pp. 32-33.