The powerful driving force in awakening the creative activity and initiative of the masses in the struggle to increase labor productivity and boost the output of surplus products for the front was socialist competition.
V. I. Lenin, after the victory of the Great October (in February 1918), wrote: “Our task now, when the socialist government is in power, is to organize competition.” He was the first to see in competition an inexhaustible creative force in increasing the productivity of social labor, developing the socialist economy, and strengthening the defensive might of our Motherland.
Incorporating the traditions of communist Saturday workdays and shock brigades of the pre-war five-year plans, socialist competition during the Great Patriotic War was marked by further development of its forms, taking on a truly mass, nationwide character.
It has already been mentioned about the labor initiatives for the production of surplus products for the front that arose in the early days of the war, about the emergence in early 1942 of Komsomol-youth brigades in the coal industry of Kyrgyzstan, which later grew into a mass movement for the creation of front brigades.
On January 21-22, 1942, Leninist shifts were organized at the Frunze agricultural machinery plant. Taking up this honorable shift, the brigade of M. T. Chernychev completed the production task at 775%, the brigade of Nikitin at 583%, the first shift at 137%, and the second at 127%.
Sorter S. Toktobolotova from the canned food workshop of the meat processing plant, a deputy of the Frunze city council, worked with great enthusiasm, producing 2.5 norms daily.
Soon, the initiative of the two-hundred, three-hundred, and five-hundred workers grew into a movement of thousand workers. It was initiated by the milling machine operator D. F. Bosy from the Nizhny Tagil carriage-building plant. On February 12, 1942, he completed his shift assignment at 1480%.
The first follower in the industry of Kyrgyzstan was the skilled worker-Stakhanovite from the Frunze agricultural machinery plant, blacksmith M. T. Chernychev. By making a simple device for his machine that allowed for faster processing of parts and carefully considering the entire work process, on March 16, 1942, he achieved about ten norms per shift — 960%, on March 17 he achieved even higher results, completing the task at 1160%, and on March 18 he set a record, raising the daily output to 1171%. The entire workshop where Chernychev worked exceeded the shift task by almost 2 times on March 18. By the end of March, more than 50% of the plant's workers were Stakhanovites, shock workers, and two-hundred workers. The newspapers "Kyzyl-Kyrgyzstan" and "Soviet Kyrgyzstan" detailed the selfless labor of the innovator, and a special issue of the newsreel was released.
The initiative of M. T. Chernychev was taken up by all factory collectives. Komsomol member Zarlyk Alimkulov, having mastered the work on the long machine perfectly, produced two norms in February 1942, and in March achieved the highest labor productivity — almost 12 norms (1166%) per shift. More than 12 norms per day were achieved in March-April 1942 by the innovator steel cutter Jusupek Mambetov. He achieved success as a result of a radical change in the technology of the processing process, replacing cutting on the machine with pressing. Record-breaking over-fulfillment of production norms was achieved by grinder V. T. Brezhnev and locksmith I. I. Safonov.
Everything for the front. Oil and coal production in Kyrgyzstan
