Productive Labor as an Important Factor in the Training of Future Specialists

A. A. Sokalsky

Teachers and economists, sociologists and philosophers are increasingly addressing the study of the sources, nature, and content of student labor activity during the summer vacations. And it is quite natural, for over ten years it has turned from a small-scale, spontaneous movement into an organized one that brings great economic and educational effect¹. Today it is legitimate to speak of it as an established socio-economic experiment, begun by university youth and carefully, attentively supported by the Komsomol, the Communist Party, and the Soviet government, by society as a whole.

Let us cite only some evidence. On October 1, 1966, a meeting was held in the Central Committee of the CPSU with the leaders and participants of student construction detachments². In May 1967, a joint resolution of the Council of Ministers of the USSR and the Central Committee of the Komsomol was adopted, “On measures to improve the organization and increase the effectiveness of students’ summer work.” At the XIX conference of the Mos—

of the Moscow city Party organization, it is emphasized that the linking of academic studies with practical labor has found its expression in the creation of student construction brigades and in the participation of students in other useful activities. In the resolution of the CPSU Central Committee “On the 50th Anniversary of the Komsomol and the Tasks of the Communist Education of Youth” it is recommended that the striving of students to create construction brigades be supported—one of the elements of a system that forms in the rising generation high ideological conviction, political maturity, firm discipline, organization, and the ability to overcome difficulties and trials³).

The problems of the so-called third labor semester have repeatedly been the subject of discussions at meetings of the collegia of ministries and departments. One of the decisions adopted at a meeting of the collegium of the USSR Ministry of Higher and Secondary Specialized Education, in particular, states: “Student construction brigades have become a school of labor and ideological-political education for youth... All this develops in students a feeling of comradeship and collectivism, persistence in achieving a goal, and produces organizational abilities and skills in economic management, that is, precisely those qualities that are necessary for the future specialist”⁴).

The role and significance of student construction brigades were also pointed out at the XIV and XV congresses and at a number of plenums of the Central Committee of the Komsomol⁵). The experience of the student labor movement is summarized on the pages of the central organ of the CPSU, Pravda, and in other periodicals. “Labor activity has become a genuine school of the communist education of young people, of the formation in our students of a sense of civic responsibility, a spirit of collectivism and organizational skills, and the ability to manage rationally and independently overcome difficulties,” it is emphasized in an editorial article of Pravda⁶).

The present work pursues a specific goal—on the basis of sociological studies, to try to reveal this process in its interconnection with the improvement of the training of the graduate of higher school.

³) Resolutions and Decisions. Documents of the Party on the Komsomol and Youth, Molodaya gvardiya, Moscow, 1969, p. 558.

⁴) Current Archive of the USSR Ministry of Higher and Secondary Specialized Education, Circular I-14 of February 15, 1967.

⁵) See, for example, the materials of the Third Plenum of the Central Committee of the Komsomol “On the Work of Komsomol Organizations of Higher Educational Institutions in the Communist Education of Students,” published in the newspaper Komsomolskaya pravda, Nos. 301 and 302 of December 27 and 28, 1967.

⁶) See “Toward the Third Labor Semester,” newspaper Pravda, April 14, 1969.

The starting point is the theoretical premise that the educational influence on the individual is exerted not by labor in itself, but by its content and character, and by the production collective within which it takes place.

Productive labor in a student construction detachment, although mainly physical, serves as a natural continuation and supplement to academic work at the higher educational institution, for on construction sites there occurs a consolidation and expansion of the knowledge acquired at the institute, and the acquisition of the corresponding skills and abilities. This is expressed most distinctly in specialized subdivisions, detachments, services, and brigades, where labor activity, by its profile, comes close to the student’s future profession. Under such conditions, work during the summer period is counted as industrial practice.

In Tomsk Oblast, specialized formations of this type have been operating for several years, in particular “Energiya.” This detachment is staffed on the basis of the electrical-energy and electromechanical faculties of the Tomsk Polytechnic Institute. The volunteers who belong to it bring Leninist ideas to life—they carry out the electrification of rural areas. A selective survey among them showed that almost every third person (31.9 percent) in the labor process made use of knowledge acquired in higher school and during industrial practice, especially knowledge connected with the future specialty. Here, as noted by V. Bulankin, a student of the electrical-energy faculty, expressing the opinion of his fellow students, the principle of “feedback” also operates: professional interest is strengthened, and lectures in the profile disciplines are subsequently perceived more deeply.

The course toward specialization in the labor semester has been adopted at other institutes of Tomsk as well: the Civil Engineering Institute, the Institute of Radio Electronics, and the Institute of Electronic Technology. Volunteers from these higher educational institutions provide qualified assistance in the construction of roads, in the installation of telephones in the oblast, and in expanding the operating radius of the Tomsk television center. A health service, staffed by senior students, postgraduate students, and residents of the Tomsk Medical Institute, operates every year. Just one figure testifies to its coefficient of useful effect: in 1968 it served more than 22 thousand people, providing medical and preventive assistance not only to members of the detachments, but also to geologists, timber workers, fishermen, builders, and other categories of the population³. Servicing the pioneer satellite camps established under construction detach—

in the detachments, for future teachers, also became an effective form of linking higher education with life, contributing to the improvement of the professional mastery of the future engineer of human souls.

Consequently, there is every reason to regard specialized student formations of this type as a principal direction of the third semester, one that effectively influences the improvement of the training of a university graduate. In 1966, about half of the participants in the student labor movement in the country worked according to this principle. This tendency is developing on the rise^8).

A survey conducted in the Tomsk student construction detachments, as well as in control groups from Kiev and Novosibirsk, showed that the process of deepening and expanding the knowledge acquired in higher educational institutions, and of applying it on the construction site, takes place not only in specialized subdivisions. Respondents noted that they made greatest use of their knowledge in the following academic courses: the theory of general electrical engineering, machines and mechanisms, construction, and the organization and economics of industrial enterprises. And this is quite natural and well-founded, for, being the master of a facility, erecting it from the zero cycle “turnkey,” students use machinery, activate the work of the auxiliary services of construction organizations, and at times become machine-tool operators and repairmen. Everywhere they have to resort to “small-scale mechanization”—to ease labor-intensive operations by designing various devices. The knowledge brought from the higher educational institution, multiplied by search, initiative, and resourcefulness, makes it possible to find optimal solutions and introduce new technology.

In view of the definite limits of this article, it is not possible to cite the multitude of examples confirming the proposition stated. We shall therefore confine ourselves to only a few, the most characteristic.

The “Khimik” detachment from the Tomsk Polytechnic Institute, which was serving the Aleksandrovsk oil-exploration expedition, had to install powerful vertical tanks for storing liquid fuel. Neither the local specialists nor the students had experience in such work. Knowledge and ingenuity, plus collective creativity, came to the rescue. The student brigade of polytechnic students put forward an original proposal, the implementation of which made it possible not only to solve the production task but also to shorten the time required for the work. The Bureau of Rationalization and Invention—

^8) These data were presented at a meeting of the Bureau of the Central Committee of the Komsomol devoted to the readiness of the All-Union Student Construction Detachment for the labor semester. Materials on the work of the Bureau of the Central Committee of the Komsomol were published in the newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda, No. 144 of June 21, 1966.

The headquarters of the Aleksandrovsk oil-exploration expedition accepted this proposal. The initiators of a new unit-by-unit assembly of tanks for storing liquid fuel were thanked, and the method they had developed entered construction practice.

In Kazakhstan, a Tomsk detachment from the Polytechnic Institute carried out the electrification of state-farm settlements. In the mechanized column that it serviced, a unique rolling machine was designed. Its use greatly eased the labor of electrical installers, increased productivity, and reduced the cost of the work. Specialists of the construction organization entrusted the experimental unit to the students, and it successfully underwent production tests⁴.

A student’s productive labor at summer construction sites has a beneficial influence on the formation of the complex of traits and qualities (organizational abilities) needed by the future specialist, the commander of production. In the population studied, this process is widespread, though with varying intensity. For some, according to those surveyed, the third semester merely “revealed the basic qualities of a commander” (N-50); to others it gave “a little” (K-5), “something” (D-54), “partly what a production organizer needs” (VITs-17). For still others, “what had existed earlier became consolidated after a certain break in work” (N-72). A fourth group is firmly convinced that, as future commanders of production, they gained “a great deal” (K-16), “a very great deal” (T-13), “organizational skills” (VTs-17), and that “organizational abilities were developed” (VTs-28).

The averaged indicators in the population studied (69.5 percent) testify that nearly five out of every seven gave a positive assessment of the influence of the labor semester on the development and manifestation of organizational abilities. In this complex set of personality traits and qualities, the ability to work with people was singled out as the leading one.

The organizational skills acquired do not remain “a thing in themselves.” Having returned to the higher educational institution, participants in the labor movement improve them and successfully apply them in social practice. A comparison of statistical data collected over the last several years at Tomsk Polytechnic Institute showed that approximately two thirds of university activists engaged in elective posts in Komsomol organizations are recruited from among those who have passed through the labor and political school in construction detachments. These conclusions coincide with the generalized materi-

...the observations made in other higher educational institutions: the current Komsomol activists of the country’s largest institutions of higher education have almost all received virgin-lands tempering⁵. Subsequently, after graduating from a higher educational institution, many of them become talented organizers, join the ranks of young scientists, and devote themselves entirely to public work. This is confirmed by a sample study, a “probe,” taken from the Tomsk student labor movement: by studying the destinies of the members of the first shock Komsomol virgin-lands construction detachment after they graduated from the Tomsk Polytechnic Institute.

The rapid, intensive, and multifaceted influence on the individual in construction detachments is also conditioned by other specific features of productive labor: voluntariness, the dedication of free time (summer vacation) for the benefit of society, partial gratuitousness, and high productivity. The founders of scientific communism emphasized that, for the development of inclinations and abilities, it is not enough to be master of one’s own needs; one must also be master of one’s own time⁶. In our view, students participating in the labor movement act in precisely this capacity.

Of course, labor under socialism is calculated for remuneration, and this principle extends to student construction detachments. Nevertheless, they perform part of the work without compensation. The deduction of one day’s earnings to the fund for aid to embattled Vietnam, for a column of tractors for the new Cuba, the gift to society of schools, children’s centers, and clubs built by students’ hands and with the money they earned—this is far from a complete list of public selflessness.

It is generally recognized that a student’s necessary working time is filled with academic labor, predominantly intellectual. However, a healthy human organism cannot function normally without physical labor, and the student finds a solution: academic semesters are replaced by labor semesters. As a result, there occurs an organic union of mental labor with physical labor, an erasure of the boundaries between them on the basis of the law of the alternation of labor. Perhaps in this process—alongside other components: a high educational level, age-specific features, and a special emotional coloring—one should seek the sources of high productivity. Let us refer to the numerical data. The volume of work that student construction detachments master in a short summer is

an attractive program of the republican ministry⁷. If we take the Tomsk Regional Student Construction Detachment, its “weight” in the labor movement, in quantitative terms, is 2 percent, while in terms of the utilization of capital investments it is 4 percent⁸.

And one more distinctive feature: production activity on a construction site is combined with broad socio-political and cultural-mass work among the population, in the detachments. Thus, direct participation in the labor movement is objectively linked with assuming increased obligations, readiness for self-education, and an orientation toward socially significant values.

As noted above, educational influence upon the personality is exerted not only by the nature and content of labor, but also by the collective in which it is carried out. In the present case, what is meant is the student construction detachment—a new socio-economic unit in relation to the academic group.

Undoubtedly, the academic group is the primary and principal student production collective. Sociologists N. E. Kryazhev, B. Rubin, and Yu. Kolesnikov point to some of its weaknesses⁹. In particular, to the instability of functional ties, arising from the specific character of academic labor in higher education. In their opinion, there is insufficient control of objective forces over the activity of the student’s psyche. After the collective labor process (lectures, practical classes), the center of gravity is transferred to individual preparation. Social activity at a higher educational institution is likewise connected with a certain weakening of functional ties in the group, for the student “enters” new associations.

In this respect, the student construction detachment supplements the missing qualities of the principal production collective—the study group. The specificity of material production (daily tangible results of labor, control over its quality, social responsibility, etc.) places all members in close functional dependencies. These ties, encompassing the collec-

...continue to operate outside production, for a construction brigade also performs the function of educator of the masses, of a political fighter.

Activity in construction brigades helps strengthen functional ties within academic groups. This is all the more so because the principle underlying the formation of brigades is: the brigade is the core of the group. In this respect, the results of the present studies coincide with observations at other higher educational institutions, where it has also been established that after the labor summer, as if different people return to the institute: the main mass is disciplined, with the skills and need for everyday rhythmic labor, with a high sense of responsibility^15).

The founders of scientific communism taught that the all-round development of the individual ceases to be merely an ideal, a vocation, and so on, only when the influence of the external world, causing the actual development of his capacities, is brought under the control of the individuals themselves^16).

A particular example of this is the student construction brigade, based on the principles of student self-government, of the commune, and of a special charter that determines not only the internal order but also the entire style of work and life.

These features of the production collective objectively create the prerequisites for an accelerated and intensive influence on the personality, on the student’s civic maturation, for developing in him a sense of being master of the country, for strengthening faith in his own powers and abilities, and for realizing the usefulness of his labor.

If, on the basis of the questionnaire survey conducted, one constructs a sector diagram reflecting changes in the structure of the personality during the student’s stay in a construction brigade, then the largest part of the circle will be occupied by collectivism, responsibility, and discipline. Next will come purposefulness, confidence in one’s own powers, honesty, determination, and self-control.

In summarizing the empirical material, the action of centrifugal forces was discovered, hindering and weakening the educational effect of the labor movement. In what, then, does it manifest itself, and what are its consequences?

1. Measurement of the educational influence of the summer semester on the student in several “cross-sections” (the formation of practical, impulsive-volitional, and moral qualities) showed that this process pro—

^15) See, for example, “Knowledge and Deed” (V. Mityko, rector of the Kiev Medical Institute), Izvestia, No. 46 of February 23, 1969.

^16) From the unpublished manuscripts of K. Marx. Journal Bolshevik, 1939, No. 11–12.

affect the two-with-the-extra work shift at the construction site more than during ideological-political and cultural-mass work among the local population and in the detachments. Thus, in a number of cases a disproportion arises in the student labor movement between economic and educational activity, a striving to elevate labor into an absolute. This is confirmed by several generalized indicators.

Every fifth or sixth respondent in the surveyed aggregate stated that the working day was excessively lengthened. Let us refer to the most typical answers:

1. “Much time is allotted to labor activity, and therefore there can be no close contacts with young people and the local population.” (T-39).

2. “The working day ended at 10 o’clock in the evening.” (Vish.-4).

3. “There was no time to do ‘useful’ things. The working day was 12 hours.” (K-38).

A mediated connection with the same course is also traced in the analysis of answers to the questionnaire question: “Did participation in labor benefit you in strengthening your health?” On average, 8–17 percent of those surveyed said either “no” or else refrained from answering altogether.

Not without some basis, in 1966 and 1967 the number of girls in the Tomsk regional student construction detachment fell sharply. Whereas at the virgin-land construction sites of Kazakhstan in 1964 and 1965 they made up about one third of the total contingent of volunteers, in the surveyed sample they averaged 11.6 percent. The reason, apparently, is that some consider women’s labor less productive and, consequently, less “profitable” for the detachment.

The persistence of such opinions was revealed, in particular, at the scientific-practical conference on the problems of the labor semester, held jointly by the staff of the Department of Scientific Communism and the Komsomol Committee of the Tomsk Polytechnic Institute. In the speeches of competent persons and veterans of the movement, harmful and dangerous tendencies were decisively rebuffed; the unanimous judgment was expressed: girls in construction detachments—painters, plasterers, educators in Pioneer-camp satellite camps, and those mastering other professions—work productively and with quality. They are also the first instigators in sponsored assistance work, skillful organizers of mass activities and inventors of amusements. In their circle, young men become more restrained, more discriminating in their behavior¹⁰.

It must be said that over the last holidays of 1968 and 1969 the disproportion between the number of young men and young women in the Tomsk regional construction detachment decreased.

Another argument confirming certain tendencies to turn work on the construction site into an end in itself may be a definite shift in the motivational structure of the participants in the summer semester. As follows from the studies conducted, it occurs in the direction of motivations stimulated by material interest. This was discussed at a meeting of the bureau of the Tomsk Regional Committee of the CPSU when considering the question “On increasing the role of construction detachments in the labor and political education of students.” The adopted resolution stated, in particular, that in certain groups of students there were profiteering attitudes, a desire to receive more money regardless of the labor expended. It pointed to the intolerance of profiteering and money-grubbing attitudes.^18

1. Significant damage is done to the educational process of the Tomsk student body by the labor movement that is not organized by the university Komsomol, the spontaneous, so-called “wild” student brigades. A pilot survey in some of them showed that the majority of such formations do not recognize the Statute of construction detachments and do not engage in patronage or properly educational work. Their sole reference point is “economic incentives,” the desire to “make a ruble.”

In such collectives, as a rule, not positive but negative personality traits are formed: profiteering, dishonesty, a mercenary attitude toward labor, envy, and others; ethical norms are trampled upon, for labor not supported by ideological and educational work becomes a neutral process.^19 Subsequently, turning into attitudes, they give rise to negative patterns of behavior and potentially may become character traits. The task is to reduce their negative influence to nothing.

1. In a number of cases construction detachments are regarded by economic managers one-sidedly—as a seasonal labor force called upon only to overcome lagging in the fulfillment of the plan. Usually, with such an approach, students are used on secondary jobs requiring great expenditures of muscular strength; equipment is not entrusted to qualified specialists from among them.

^18 The stated resolutions of the bureau of the Tomsk Regional Committee of the CPSU were published in the newspaper Krasnoe znamya, No. 53, March 4, 1969.

^19 A. S. Makarenko. Works, vol. V, p. 112. Publishing House of the Academy of Pedagogical Sciences of the RSFSR, 1951.

In a similar situation was, in 1966, the control construction detachment from the Novosibirsk Institute of Railway Transport Engineers, sent to build the Asino—Bely Yar main line. As a result, it had the lowest educational return in the surveyed aggregate: only 18.2 percent of those questioned noted a positive connection with professional orientation in the higher educational institution. The level of educational work in the detachment and beyond its bounds also proved low. In 1967 the situation did not improve; part of the detachment from NIIZhT had to be removed from the main site and placed in nearby timber-industry enterprises. It should be noted that this was a specialized detachment.

1. Genuine educational influence is exerted not by just any work, but by skillfully and well-organized work. Some economic managers fail to reckon with this truth. In 1967, student detachments working in Tomsk Oblast were loaded to only 70–80 percent. As of August 10, the oblast detachment had 80 thousand man-hours of downtime on its account¹¹. This was the consequence of interruptions in material and technical supply, shortcomings in preparing the work front, and inflated requests by construction and other organizations for the required quantity of labor. It is no accident that more than half of the comments and proposals expressed in the course of the mass survey concern these aspects of production activity. Naturally, irregular work and rush work disrupted the habitual rhythm in the detachments, had a negative effect not only on labor productivity but also on the mood of the young men and women, and reduced the educational significance of the labor semester.

Since in the student labor movement there exist a number of fairly separate links, there arises the need to bring them “to a common denominator,” to systematize them and subordinate them to the main goal—the improvement of the quality of training of the specialist and his all-round development. Such an attempt has been made by the author and is considered as a possible variant for solving this problem. A unified system of educating the student in productive labor is included in the comprehensive program for the education of higher-education youth¹².

1. See, for example, the collection Komsomol and Higher School, “Molodaya gvardiya,” 1968, Moscow, pp. 182–184, 216, 216–217, 235–240, 259. ↩

2. A report on the meeting in the Central Committee of the CPSU with the leaders and participants of student construction detachments was published in the central press. See: newspaper Pravda, Nos. 280 and 283 of October 7 and 10, 1966. ↩

3. Current archive of the Tomsk Oblast Committee of the Komsomol. Report on the work of the medical service of the Tomsk Oblast Student Construction Detachment in 1968. ↩

4. “For Cadres,” No. 28, September 22, 1965. ↩

5. Data cited at one of the sessions of the Bureau of the Central Committee of the Komsomol. (See newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda, No. 144 of June 21, 1966.) ↩

6. K. Marx, F. Engels. Collected Works, vol. 26, part III, p. 96. ↩

7. See the newspaper Izvestiya, No. 170, July 23, 1968. ↩

8. Data used here were obtained in an interview with the deputy commander of the All-Union Student Construction Detachment. See the newspaper 60-ya parallel’, No. 14–15, October 14, 1968. ↩

9. N. E. Kryazhev, For a Scientific Organization of Educational Work in Higher Education. Krasnoyarsk, 1964; B. Rubin, Yu. Kolesnikov, The Student Through the Eyes of a Sociologist. Rostov University, 1969. ↩

10. See materials of the conference published in the newspaper Za kadry, No. 36, May 18, 1968. ↩

11. Current archive of the Tomsk Oblast Committee of the CPSU. Certificate of the Tomsk Oblast headquarters of student construction detachments for 1967. ↩

12. See: “Program for the Education of Full-Time Students for the Period of Study at the Institute,” Tomsk, 1968. ↩