built by the factory on the Black Sea coast. Once the Stroguls went on a tour of Czechoslovakia, which cost 340 roubles. This, however, was only half the actual cost, the remainder being paid by the trade union. Nikolai Strogul went on a tour of Yugoslavia and Bulgaria on the same terms.
The Lvov Bus Works has its own Young Pioneer camp for the children of its employees. The Strogul boys spent a month there every summer when they were going to school. Though the actual cost of accommodation of a child at the camp is 61 roubles, the family paid only 20 roubles. Here too the state contributed several hundred roubles to the family budget of the Stroguls.
Nothing is “free” in the world. Though the Stroguls received many benefits free of charge or at a large discount, they cost the state a round sum. Where does the state get the means to cover these large expenses?
The Ukraine is a highly industrialised country with a well-developed enginering, power generating and metal making industries. The Kiev Aircraft Manucturing Works The iron and Steel Works in Donetsk.
In many countries social programmes are financed by taxes paid by the population. Under socialism the state proceeds from a different principle. For instance, of the 24,300 million roubles making up the state budget of the Ukraine for 1979, only 1,900 million came from taxes paid by the population. The main source of revenue consists of sums paid by enterprises out of their profits and turnover tax. These sums form what is known as the public consumption fund, which, as we have seen from the case of the Stroguls, provides economic guarantees of the social rights of citizens. The population does not contribute to the public consumption fund out of its earnings; on the other hand, it receives (in per capita terms) from the fund about 400 roubles a year, the total being one fourth of its aggregate earnings. The earnings of the Stroguls, for instance, amount to about 6,000 roubles a year, and they receive an additional sum of 1,600 roubles a year from the public consumption fund in the form of various benefits and services.
In the Ukraine the public consumption fund is growing rapidly. In 1965 it amounted to 7,400 million roubles (or 164 roubles per capita), in 1978—to 18,600 million (or 376 roubles per capita) and in 1980 it exceeded the 20,000 million mark.
By 1985 the public consumption fund will amount to 25,000 million roubles, which makes it possible to raise real per capita income by 16-18 per cent.
And on what does increased profitability of an enterprise depend?
Factory management invariably points out that the performance of a factory or plant largely depends on the activity of the workers.
The Communist Party, the political leader of Soviet society, believes that active participation of every member of society in the life of the collective is a cardinal condition for the country’s economic and social progress.
Today the Communist Party of the Soviet Union has over 17,480 thousand members; the Communist Party of the Ukraine, which is a component of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, has 2.9 million members.
Nikolai Strogul is a Communist. He sets a personal example to others and takes an active part in decision-making. He is one of the organisers of the socialist emulation movement at the plant. He says:
“The better the performance of my team and the whole collective of the plant, the higher will be our earnings and, what’s more, the larger will be the sums paid into the public consumption fund.”
In the USSR everybody knows what public consumption fund is: “It’s everything that you get free.”
Strogul’s argument is convincing because it is borne out by facts.
In Turkovo District (Lvov Region) there is a collective farm named after Yakov Sverdlov. At the turn of the century one out of every two children in the area did not live to its fifteenth birthday. Because of epidemic diseases and tuberculosis child mortality here was the highest in Europe.
Today the picture is entirely different. Past the collective farm club where people spend their evenings and go to see motion pictures is the village hospital, and further on is the village secondary (ten-year) school. There are very few people in the village without a secondary education.
Several young men and women from the collective farm are studying at agricultural institutes on scholarships provided by the farm. In the USSR some collective farms send young people to study at institutes and pay them allowances from the farm’s public consumption fund on condition that they return to their native village to work after completion of their studies. Some industrial enterprises practise this too.
Quite often several collective farms jointly build what is known as inter-collective farm sanatoria with money drawn from their public consumption funds. These are naturally smaller than state-run sanatoria, of which there are over 170 in the Ukraine providing preventive and other forms of treatment and facilities for rest and recreation for 1.800.000 people each year. But the inter-collective farm sanatoria and factory preventive medical centres have all the necessary facilities for treatment, such as mud baths, mineral water baths, inhalatoriums and physical therapy facilities.
At the Ukraine Collective Farm in Zhitomir Region the public consumption fund is also used for cultural purposes. This introduces something new into the life of rural residents. For instance, an exhibition of 300 pictures painted by artists from Moscow, Kiev, Leningrad, Minsk, Samarkand and Yakutia has been opened. At present the pictures are on display in a building which temporarily serves as an art gallery. But the design for a permanent art gallery has already been approved and the money for the construction is to come out of the farm’s public consumption fund. A member of the collective farm board says that in building the picture gallery the farmers exercise their constitutional right to enjoy cultural benefits.
Freedoms that Promote the Interests of the Masses
The mining town of Donetsk, the centre of Donbas Region, has a population of one million and one million well-cared-for rose bushes—one per inhabitant. Ivan Strelchenko, a miner, has been twice awarded the title of Hero of Socialist Labour. A bronze bust of Strelchenko was cast and is installed at his place of birth. In the USSR this honour is conferred on those who have been twice named Hero of Socialist Labour. Strelchenko has been elected deputy to the USSR Supreme Soviet four times running. This means that he commands the respect of his fellow workers and townsmen and has justified the confidence and trust of his electors.
For over 20 years Ivan Strelchenko was the leader of a miners’ team with practically the highest record of productivity in the country. Strelchenko graduated from a polytechnical institute (correspondence division) with a degree in mining engineering and is now section superintendent at the Trudovskaya pit.
Like all Soviet citizens, the miners enjoy freedom of speech, he says. They speak out at meetings and rallies and express their views on TV and radio and in the press. The miners of the Trudovskaya pit have a paper and radio station of their own. In Donetsk there are two regional papers (one in the Ukrainian and another in the Russian language), an evening city paper, and a young people’s paper. The regional section of the Ukrainian Union of Writers publishes a literary journal, Donbass, which sometimes carries stories written by miners. Ivan Strelchenko says:
“If you take any issue of our papers, you are likely to find an article by a worker published in it. Many of such articles are of a critical nature.”
A total of 1,755 newspapers, including 1,305 in the Ukrainian language, are published in the Ukraine with an annual total circulation of 4,500 million copies. Most of the non-Ukrainian papers are Russian-language papers. Ivan Strelchenko says that this is because the Ukraine is a multinational Republic. He frequently writes for the press both in the Ukrainian and Russian languages.
As a Soviet MP, he lives and works right in the midst of the people, so to speak. Thus he is well acquainted with their problems and needs. Several years ago he brought up the question of water supply of Donbas region, which has dozens of towns and cities and thousands of industries, at a session of the USSR Supreme Soviet. He said that the problem should be solved at least two years ahead of schedule. He recalls: “I realised even then that the Dnieper-Donbas Canal is a most complex hydraulic engineering project and that it would be extremely difficult to have it completed at an earlier date than planned. To convince my listeners I had to carefully weigh my arguments.”
Several months later Ivan Strelchenko received a letter from the Ukrainian Council of Ministers informing him that the first section of the canal would be put into service in 1976, i.e. two years ahead of the planned date. He says: “People know best. I am for freedoms that promote the interests of the masses.”
At the same time he notes that there is no state in the world that guarantees its citizens absolute, unrestricted freedoms. He thinks it is a good thing that in the USSR there is no freedom of exploitation of other people’s labour and that there is a ban on racist and nationalistic propaganda. He thinks the freedom to conduct war propaganda is disgusting. His father was killed in action in 1944. He says: “I will never agree with those who hypocritically justify this freedom by referring to objective historicism as was done in connection with the publication of new editions of books by Hitler and his clique.”
Not far from Donetsk is another mining town called Shakhtyorsk, where the Shakhtyorskantratsit Coal Mining Association, which directs the work of several dozen pits, is located. The Association is headed by Aleksandr Astrakhan, a mining engineer who holds the degree of Candidate of Science (Technology), and a deputy to the Supreme Soviet of the Ukraine.
Aleksandr Astrakhan is of Jewish nationality. His father took part in the defense of the Caucasus and fought in the battles in the Crimea during the Great Patriotic War.
There is a rather large Jewish population in the Ukraine. Most of them live in towns, cities and urban-type settlements in various parts of the Republic. It is worth noting that before the 1917 socialist revolution Jews in Russia lived in Jewish ghettos.
In 1979 a meeting dedicated to the 120th anniversary of the birth of Sholem Aleichem, a classic of Jewish literature, was held in Pereyaslav-Khmelnitski, where Sholem Aleichem was born. The main theme discussed at the meeting was the modest Jewish worker whom Sholem Aleichem held dear. The worker was poverty-stricken, could not go beyond the “Jewish pale” and lived in an overcrowded house where poor people were packed “like herring in a cask”.
Today among Ukrainian Jews there are many scientists, composers, lawyers, writers, architects, engineers, workers and economic executives. Their talents and industriousness are much appreciated and valued in the Republic.
A foreign tourist will find many interesting sights and diverse cultural events in the Ukraine, including exotic clilfs , on the shore of the Black Sea and excisting concert programmes
A Few Words on Religion
The Constitution of the USSR and the constitutions of all the Union Republics including the Ukrainian SSR guarantee freedom of conscience to all citizens. This means that a Soviet citizen has the right to profess any religion or not to profess any religion at all.
The Soviet State wants its citizens to be free of religious bias and be educated (above all young people) in the spirit of the materialistic world outlook. That is why it actively conducts atheistic propaganda. The overwhelming majority of the Soviet people are atheists.
But this does not mean that believers are in any way harassed. They have all the conditions for religious worship. In addition to Orthodox Christians, in the Ukraine there are Evangelical Christian-Baptists, Catholics, Seventh Day Adventists, Old Believers, Pentecostalists, Judaists and Reformists.
In the Ukraine there are 18 Orthodox Christian dioceses headed by metropolitans and archbishops, and each diocese has its parishes.
The exarchate is headed by the patriarchal exarch of the Ukraine, Filaret, who is Metropolitan of Kiev and Galicia.
“The religious life of the Orthodox believers and clergy in the Ukraine” he explains in an interview, “is based on canons and traditions of the Church that have been preserved throughout the nearly one-thousand-year-old history of the Russian Orthodox Church.
“The Russian Orthodox Church is actively working for peace. This effort is above all part of our moral duty. That is why, working together with the Russian Orthodox Church, the Ukrainian Exarchate— believers, clergy and episcopate—takes part in all endeavours aimed at preserving peace on earth.
“The believers and clergy of the Ukrainian Exarchate always welcome Christian delegations from other countries. Representatives of the Ukrainian Exarchate, in turn, go on visits to other countries. We believe that this promotes mutual understanding.”
There is a theological seminary in Odessa, a big port on the Black Sea. It is located in a picturesque spot in the city, in the Assumption Monastery surrounded by orchards and vineyards. Founded in 1837, the seminary was closed down by the Hitlerites from 1941 to 1944 when the city was under enemy occupation.
Young men of various nationalities—Ukrainians, Russians, Byelorussians and Moldavians—study at the seminary, which has spacious classrooms, lecture halls, an assembly hall, a church-archeological exposition hall and a hostel with all modern conveniences. Its library and reading hall receive 50 newspapers and journals and church publications from many countries. The seminarians study theology, church history and general educational subjects, including the Scripture, dogmas of the Church, history of the Russian Orthodox and other Slavic Churches, and the Ukrainian, Greek, Russian, Church-Slavonic, Latin, English and French languages.
Before the 1917 Revolution the state religion of the Ukraine as of the whole of Russia was the Orthodox Christian faith. All other faiths were merely “tolerated” and their followers were referred to as unfaithful. In the Ukraine, besides Orthodox Christians, there are thousands of believers who belong to other Christian denominations. It should be mentioned that no official documents, such as passports, questionnaires, official census forms, etc. contain reference to religious faith.
The overwhelming majority of believers who belong to the Evangelical Baptist Church are affiliated with the All-Union Council of Evangelical Christian-Baptists which has its seat in Moscow. Members of the Council are elected at congresses of representatives of Baptist communities.
Yakov Dukhonchenko, Head Presbyter of the All -Union Council of Evangelical Christian-Baptists for the Ukraine, says in an interview that in Soviet times Protestant communities in many Ukrainian cities, towns and villages have built new or rebuilt existing meeting-houses. Houses of worship of Protestant faiths are maintained at the expense of believers.
Under the Council there are All-Union Correspondence Biblical Courses which train Protestant ministers. Yakov Dukhonchenko, incidentally, completed the Courses. Ukrainian Baptists also send their members to study in other countries. For instance, Matvei Melnik, assistant Head Presbyter for the Ukraine, graduated from Baptist College at the University of Bristol (Great Britain), and Grigori Komendant, Presbyter of the Irpen community, from a Baptist seminary in Hamburg (FRG).
The Ukraine Through the Eyes of Foreign Visitors
There are many things about the life of Soviet people, and that includes Ukrainian people, which differ from the ideas that foreigners have about the USSR. Visitors find trips to the Soviet Union enlightening.
Gerald Gooman, a Canadian of Ukrainian origin, is a painter. On a trip to the Ukraine in 1979 he did a series of pictures which he called “Ukrainian Landscapes”. They were exhibited at a one man show in Montreal. He is now preparing for a second show. This is what he said about his trip to the land of his forefathers:
“I was a guest of the village of Vyazovoi, where my parents came from. This village is in Lvov Region. I walked and rode in a car wherever I wanted. What I liked particularly was that members of the local collective farm lived together in peace and harmony. A collective farmer earns 150 roubles a month, and he has a kitchen garden, an orchard and domestic animals of his own. After settling all accounts in 1979 the collective farm deposited 2.5 million roubles in the bank. All this money goes into the farm’s public consumption fund.”
Within the framework of cooperation between the USSR and industrialised Western countries joint teams of engineers, economists, and other specialists from Soviet and foreign firms have been working at Ukrainian factories, plants, construction sites and research establishments. Many foreign specialists have visited the town of Komsomolsk which rose on the bank of the Dnieper about two decades ago. Among them is Ardonald Bower, head of a group of experts from Allis-Chalmers Manufacturing Co. of the USA. He said: “Every year I pay a visit to my hometown, Milwaukee, which is on the bank of Lake Michigan, and I see practically no change there at all. In this respect Komsomolsk is different. When I came here the first time there was nothing but an open stretch of steppeland, where there is a factory now. At present another factory is being built, and at a pace which is amazing.”
Charles Tyler, a superintendent of assembly work from Allis-Chalmers Manufacturing Co., said: “My family, that is, my wife and three children, are with me in Komsomolsk. Romani and Jonathan go to the local school, and they are making good progress at the local music school which charges a very small tuition fee. Generally speaking, the Soviet system of education and recreation for children is totally different from ours. In the USSR the state pays all the expenses involved.”
In Zaporozhye, another city on the Dnieper in the Ukraine, an In-plant Group Training Programme in Iron and Steel Industry has been conducted for UN scholarship holders at the Zaporozhstal Works for over 15 years. During this period more than 500 engineers and technicians in blast furnace, open-hearth and rolling mill work from 42 countries have improved their professional skills at the plant.
Mohammed Shaher Qassem, an engineer, is from Iskanderia, Iraq. This is what he says:“I have been to many countries, so I can compare ... Half of Zaporozhye lay in ruins after the war. And now it is a beautiful city. This could have been accomplished in such a brief space of time only through the effort of the whole people united by a common goal.”
Students from many countries are enrolled in higher educational establishments in the Ukraine. Many have completed their studies and returned home. But they will long remember the time they spent as students in the Ukraine.
Rita Peltonen from Finland, who studied at the Shevchenko State University of Kiev, recalls: “When I came here five years ago I could not understand the source of optimism of the people. Somewhat later I understood: the source is the social system itself. In those five years I watched the Ukrainian capital change before my very eyes as new neighbourhoods appeared and more and more people moved into new flats. What impresses me most is that cultural benefits in this country are within the reach of all. We students never missed a premiere.”
Ganna Polevaya, a member of the Committee for the International Year of the Child, a professor of child psychology at University of Vancouver (Canada), says: “In the Soviet Union I was impressed by the methods of teaching small children, which rest on a sound scientific basis. The programme for teaching mathematics and the native Ukrainian language is most interesting. Three-year-olds do not just answer questions, but also take part in conversations using rather compex sentences. The programme for developing their artistic abilities is simply wonderful.”
Olga Peelard-Danilyuk from Belgium says: “Wherever you look you see new buildings and construction cranes. People are laying roads, growing orchards and modernising industries. Would they have time to think about war? What other proof of the Soviet people’s peacefulness do you need?”
“UNITY” IN THE LANGUAGE OF ECONOMICS
After the first world war (1914-1918) and the Civil War (1918-1920) the country’s economy suffered from serious dislocations. Twenty years later, during the Great Patriotic War (1941-1945), the enemy seized and devastated a territory of more than two million square kilometres. Unless one knows these facts of the tragic and at the same time heroic history of the Soviet Union, one cannot understand the problems confronting it or its achievements. As a result of these wars the country lost 39 million lives. To rehabilitate the war-ravaged national economy the country spent nearly 20 years out of the 64 years of its existence.
The year 1913 was the “peak” year of economic performance for pre-revolutionary Russia. The Ukraine was one of the most industrially developed regions of the Russian empire. Its economic “prosperity”, however, was illusory for a number of reasons.
On the one hand, 22 per cent of Russia’s working class was in the Ukraine, which accounted for 24 per cent of the country’s gross output, including 68 per cent of the production of pig iron, 58 per cent of steel and 57 per cent of rolled stock, and 26 per cent of Russia’s exports.
On the other hand, its economy was dominated by foreign capital, mainly French, Belgian and British capital, which controlled 80 per cent of pig iron and 70 per cent of coal production. Foreign capital artificially held back industrial growth, and this was particularly true of the engineering industries. The Ukraine had to import many goods ranging from machine tools to ploughs; the share of engineering products in total industrial output was only 10 per cent. The Ukraine exported mostly grain, coal and metal.
Agricultural produce made up 51.8 per cent of the country’s gross output. It should be noted that grain exports increased with the years despite low grain yields (9.4 metric centners per hectare in 1913). The peasants were being rapidly ruined. In Western Ukraine landed estates accounted for one third of all farmland although their share in the total number of farms was only 0.2 per cent. Meanwhile 57 per cent of the poor peasants lived at subsistance level by cultivating plots that made up less than 12 per cent of the farmland.
“Myth” or “Miracle”?
The first national economic development plan (Plan for the Electrification of Russia—GOELRO) was drawn up in 1920 when the Civil War was raging and the economy was in a state of disruption. The plan provided for the construction of 30 big (for those days) electric power stations. The New York Times called the plan a myth of fanatics. When the Burshtyn State District Thermal Power Station was completed in the 1960s, its twelve units having a total capacity of 2.4 million kw, the very same New York Times described it as a miracle.
Many such stations have been built in the USSR, among them the 3.6 million-kw Uglegorsk Thermal Power Station in Donbas region.
Today the 6 big hydroelectric power stations of the Dnieper cascade, the hydraulic complexes on the Volga and the huge power generating complexes of Siberia form what is known as the United Power Grid of the USSR. The USSR generates more than 1,200 million megawatt-hours of electricity a year. The Ukraine accounts for about one fifth of the total output, or 236 million megawatt-hours, which is approximately as much as the electricity output of Belgium, the Netherlands, Norway, Finland and Luxemburg taken together.
Speaking of miracles, one could say that the geographical distribution of industries that supplied the equipment for the Burshtyn Station is indeed something of a “miracle.” The factories that made the equipment were located not only in such traditional industrial centres as Moscow, Leningrad, Kiev, and Kharkov, but also in Armenia, Kirghizia and Kazakhstan, which were backward outlying regions of the Russian Empire before the 1917 revolution.
Improvement of Sectoral Structure of Industry
The 26th CPSU Congress, held in February-March, 1981, approved the Guidelines of the Social and Economic Development of the USSR for 1981-85 and for the Period Ending in 1990.
The Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic now has a big economic potential capable of ensuring the further growth of its people’s well-being. Here are some figures. Compared with the Ninth Five-Year Plan period the Republic’s national income in the Tenth Five-Year Plan period increased by 70,000 million roubles, or 22 per cent, with 80 per cent of the national income being used for further improving the people’s well-being. During the Eleventh Five-Year Plan period (1981-85) national income is to grow by another 20 per cent. Increase in labour productivity, a major indicator of the efficiency of production, by 20-22 per cent, will be responsible for 93 per cent of the increment in national income.
During the Tenth Five-Year Plan period industrial output of the Ukraine grew by 123,000 million roubles, or some 33 per cent. In the Eleventh Five-Year Plan period it is to increase by 20-23 per cent.
Under the Eleventh Five-Year Plan over 4,600 new industrial products will be manufactured, 8,400 shops and sections will be mechanised or automated, and about 11,000 automated flow lines will be commissioned.
A higher technical level of production will provide for a 66-per cent rise in labour productivity or for saving the labour of about 630,000 workers.
Much work is being done to shape a more progressive structure of the economy, to develop the major branches of industry and improve the fuel and energy complex. Particular attention is being paid to the development of the atomic power industry, for the Ukraine’s hydropower resources have practically been exhausted and its coal will be consumed by the metal-making industry and the existing thermal power stations.
The planned growth of electricity generation by 44,000-54,000 million kilowatt-hours for the 1981-1985 period will be achieved with the commissioning of the Chernobyl, South Ukrainian, Rovno, Zaporozhie, Khmelnitsky and Crimean atomic power stations.
Such a dynamic development can be undertaken only by a country with a diversified economy. And the Ukrainian economy is a multi-structural complex embracing 150 or more industries. The Ukrainian economy was not so diversified in the past. Of course, all countries constantly try to improve their sectoral structure. But the way the process is carried out varies from one country to another. What are the specific features of this process in the Ukraine?
We put this question to Vitali Masol, Chairman of the State Planning Committee of the Ukraine. He says:
“In the Ukraine we have favourable conditions for agriculture and considerable deposits of vital minerals. Under capitalism the Ukraine was turned into a raw material base for the commodity market of tsarist Russia.
“Under socialism, with the basic means of production being public property, the economic policy of the state is based on totally different principles. These are the principles of planned economic development formulated by Lenin. He emphasised the importance of locating the processing industries close to the sources of raw material, including industries that turned out the finished product.
“Both in the 1930s, that is, during the first five-year-plan periods, and in the first decades after the war, the Ukraine produced for the Soviet economy not only large quantities of coal, metal, and electricity, but also machine tools, tractors, mineral fertilisers and fabrics. In 1940, the iron and steel, fuel, food and engineering industries in the Republic accounted for more than 80 per cent of its gross output.”
The southern coast of the Crimea is famed for its beauty and salubrious climate. Here are dozens of sanatoria, rest homes, and hotels where thousands of people receive treatment and spend their holidays every year
Now, the Union Republics have different raw material resources. What enables the USSR to improve the distribution of productive forces in the country as a whole and in the Ukraine in particular? Vitali Masol says:
“The national economy of the USSR, which accounts for one fifth of world industrial output, is a single complex. Centralised planning and management ensures efficient territorial division of labour on a national scale and optimal specialisation of all the Union Republics.
“For instance, the extractive industries of the Ukraine are now showing a declining rate of growth. But on the other hand, the development of those sectors that determine scientific and technological progress is being speeded up. In the last 10 years the output of the Ukraine’s fuel industries has increased by 22 per cent, iron and steel industries—by 28 per cent, engineering and metal working industries—by 144 per cent, and chemical engineering and petrochemical industries—by 114 per cent.
“This reorientation has been made possible largely thanks to the intensive buildup of the economic potential of Siberia and the Soviet Far East, where the main fuel-and-energy and raw material base of the USSR’s integrated economy is being created.
“The Ukraine still produces more steel than the FRG or France and Italy taken together, and it meets a sizable part of the country's requirements for fuel and metal. At the same time it is pushing ahead with its program of accelerated development of the sectors which can more effectively use raw materials and other materials and more rationally employ skilled manpower and utilise available scientific and technical facilities. As a rule, these sectors consume less fuel, energy and water, and this has a beneficial effect on the energy balance and on the state of the environment. The Ukraine is expanding its engineering, instrument-making, and food industries and its light industry and also some of the most important chemical industries.”
How does the improved sectoral structure of the industry of the Ukraine affect its economic ties with the other Union Republics?
“Since the Ukraine is expanding its petrochemical industries, the other Republics, notably the Russian Federation, have been supplying a large part of the oil and oil products that it needs. Chemicalisation of the economy has led to an increase in the supply of mineral fertilisers, sulphuric acid, certain types of plastics, paint and varnish to the Ukraine. On its part the Ukraine delivers to the Russian Federation, Byelorussia, Moldavia and the Baltic Republics products of its chemical industries, such as certain types of mineral fertilisers, soda ash, caustic soda, sulphur and weed killers.
“Mutual exchange of engineering products plays a particularly important role. The Ukraine delivers to the federal market steel-making and mining equipment, turbines, diesel engines, electric motors, metal cutting lathes, tractors and other agricultural machinery, trucks, buses, excavators, bulldozers, and forge presses. It receives in exchange practically an equivalent amount of machines and mechanisms, though, naturally, designed for different use. Division of labour of this kind is regular practice in the Soviet Union, and it raises the efficiency of social production.
“Without importing products from other Union Republics the Ukraine would not have been able to achieve rapid and steady progress in all the sectors of the economy. One seventh of the Ukraine’s economic requirements is met by such imports.”
The western regions of the Ukraine embarked on the road of socialist development in 1939, 22 years later than all the other regions of the USSR. What economic problems has this situation posed for the Republic?
Vitali Masol says:
“We faced a situation similar to the one we faced two decades before, when we had to eliminate the social and economic backwardness of Russia’s national outlying regions of Transcaucasia and Soviet Central Asia. The effort was interrupted by the war. After the war, in the 1946-1970 period, we not only modernised the existing industries in Western Ukraine, but also built over 400 new factories and plants there. All the Union Republics helped the Ukraine in this effort. Moscow, Gorky, the cities and towns of the Urals and Siberia, and even Leningrad, which had experienced a most terrible siege in the war, sent machine-tools, metal and equipment to Western Ukraine. New educational establishments including institutes, specialised secondary schools and vocational schools were opened to meet the growing demand for local skilled and qualified personnel.
“To create an industrial potential in Western Ukraine comparable to that of the rest of the country, the Soviet state set a rate of industrial development there that was higher than the average rate for the whole country. In the 1971-1978 period the output of the Ukraine as a whole increased by 60 percent; the output ofVolyn, Transcarpathian. Ivano-Frankovsk and Rovno Regions nearly doubled, that of Lvov Region increased by 80 per cent and that of Chernovtsy Region—by 70 per cent. The industries of that area turn out all of the Ukraine’s buses and truck loaders, 92 per cent of oil refining equipment, 37 per cent of instruments and means of automation and 56 per cent of linen fabrics. Western Ukraine produces electricity, chemical goods, programme controlled machine tools, synthetic diamonds, colour TV sets and artificial leather.
The Sozvezdie Ensemble of Lvov. Its repertory includes many folk songs .The Ukrainians love handicrafts
“However, we still face a number of problems, such as rational employment of labour resources. The planning bodies are working on them. It has been proposed that more labour-intensive industries be located in Western Ukraine. In the small and medium-sized towns we are planning to open small enterprises that will be branches of big industrial associations.”
Does economic integration within the framework of the national economy of the USSR help expand export-oriented industries?
“The facts speak for themselves: Today the Ukraine accounts for one fifth of the USSR’s exports to 109 countries. Quite a number of Ukrainian products are readily bought on the world market, including drilling machines (from Odessa), multi-spindle automatic and semi-automatic lathes (from Kiev), pumps (from Sumy), magnetic stations (from Kharkov), buses (from Lvov), trunk line diesel locomotives (from Voroshilovgrad) and metal-making equipment (from Kramatorsk). The share of machines and equipment in our export is steadily rising. Among our recent export items are a transformer of unique design for the USA, a press for France, the biggest in Europe, and a complete set of equipment for an atomic power station for Finland.”
Scientific Potential of the Ukraine
The Ukrainian Academy of Sciences was founded in 1919, during the Civil War years. Its four institutes had a staff of 140 researchers. Today the academy has about 80 research institutes employing more than
70,000 people, among them 331 full members and corresponding members of the Academy and 7,500 holding the degrees of Doctor of Science and Candidate of Science.
Jointly with the academies of sciences of the other Union Republics the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences takes part in drafting and implementing major scientific, technological and social-economic programmes.
Academician Boris Paton, twice Hero of Socialist Labour, and President of the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences, says that the work of Ukrainian scientists covers practically the entire spectrum of modern science, including basic research (which has always been the basis for scientific and technological progress), and study of the laws of nature and society.
Among the distinguished scientists who laid the foundation of a Ukrainian science are Academicians Vladimir Vernadski, a geochemist, Vladimir Lipski, a botanist, Daniil Zabolotny, a microbiologist and epidemiologist, Aleksandr Bogomolets, a specialist in pathophysiology, and Aleksandr Palladin, a biochemist. The works of the following scientists and the schools they founded are known throughout the world of science: Dmitri Grave and Nikolai Krylov, mathematicians, Nikolai Vavilov, a geneticist, Nikolai Kholodny, a botanist, Vladimir Filatov, an ophthalmologist, and Nikolai Strazhesko, a therapeutist. Ukrainian scientists pioneered in the development of Soviet radar, production of heavy water which is of exceptional importance for the development of nuclear physics, and peaceful uses of atomic energy.
Science has always been closely linked with practice. It was the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences that put forward the idea of using the waters of the Dnieper in the region of the rapids. This was later realised in the Dnieper dam project. The Academy is also the first in the world to develop a process using gas in blast furnaces and open hearth furnaces. The Ukraine has developed high-yielding wheat varieties.
Ukrainian scientists are working on the questions of rational distribution of labour resources in the Republic and of an overall expansion of fuel and energy supply. All subdivisions of the Academy are working to turn science into a direct productive force.
The Ukrainian Academy of Sciences holds first place in the USSR in research in the following fields: cybernetics, hydraulic extrusion (i.e. processing of metals with high pressure liquids), welding, special metallurgy, manufacture of artificial diamonds, powder metallurgy, electrochemistry of ionic alloys, neurophysiology, and membrane physiology. Its achievements in these fields are known all over the world.
Academician Boris Paton is an outstanding specialist in welding and electrometallurgy. Besides being the Academy’s President he is also director of the Institute of Electric Welding under the Academy. He took over this post from his father—Yevgeni Paton, founder of the technology of manufacturing welded structures (armoured structures manufactured on the basis of the Patons’ recommendations played an important role in the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945). Today the institute bears the name of Y. O. Paton. Without the techniques of electroslag welding and high-speed automatic shielded welding, developed by the institute, scientific progress would have been impossible in dozens of industries.
The institute has developed many new processes unknown in other countries. Among its pioneering projects are a wholly welded bridge across Europe’s third biggest river—the Dnieper and the Vulcan installation which was used in 1969 to conduct an experiment in welding and cutting of metal in space aboard the Soyuz-6 spaceship.
One of the latest processes developed by the institute is the electroslag casting technique based on the electroslag smelting method. The electroslag casting technique makes it possible to produce a metal which combines high strength with plasticity, purity, density of macro- and micro-structure and chemical homogeneity. Forged metal lacks many of these properties. Moreover, the electroslag casting technique simplifies the manufacture of elements of the most elaborate design and helps save metal. The technique is being increasingly applied in engineering.
The electroslag casting process and equipment developed by the Y. O. Paton Institute in Kiev have been patented in the USA, Great Britain, France, the FRG, Japan, Denmark, Austria, Sweden, Canada and Belgium.
Every year the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences carries out research in up to 2,000 subjects and introduces over 1,000 innovations.
When the country began to organise serial production of programme controlled automatic manipulators, it was the Institute of Cybernetics of the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences in Kiev that did the basic research for setting up a totally new industry— robot manufacture. The Institute of Cybernetics is one of the country’s biggest research centres working in the field of computing technology and computing mathematics.
Academician Viktor Glushkov, director of the Institute of Cybernetics, thinks that the memory of future robots will store a model of the external world either created by man or accumulated by artificial intellect. This will create a situation in which the robot will not only function in accordance with an assigned programme or with the method of trial and error, but may act like man, i.e. model and plan its activity before undertaking a move, with account taken of the specificities of the situation and the set aim.
The first Soviet electrostatic charged particle accelerator was designed in the Ukraine back in the 1930s. The Institute of Nuclear Research in Kiev, founded 10 years ago, is carrying on the traditions of Ukrainian physicists of those days. It has an isochronal cyclotron—an electrophysical installation for acceleration of charged particles (ions).
The works of Ukrainian nuclear physicists is of great theoretical importance and is highly regarded by specialists both at home and abroad. In 1978, the American Physical Society awarded the Bonner Prize in nuclear physics to Vilen Strutinski, a Corresponding Member of the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences.
Working in cooperation with their colleagues in Byelorussia and Moldavia, researchers of the Institute are elaborating the scientific and technological principles of fast neutron reactors. The main advantage of such reactors is that they can “burn up” all the uranium isotopes. But this is still a question for the future. At present they are building atomic power stations based on technologies confirmed by world practice. The first section of the Chernobyl Atomic Power Station located 100 kilometres from Kiev, having a capacity of two million kilowatts, has been commissioned. Atomic power stations are being built in the northern, southern and western parts of the Ukraine.
Ukrainian scientists, like their colleagues all over the world, are searching for new sources of energy.
They have built installations that store solar heat. Some of them are now in operation.
They are also conducting experiments in the utilisation of the energy of the wind and the heat of geothermal waters.
Ukrainian scientists are studying problems of environmental protection.
Konstantin Sytnik, a Member of the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences, is chairman of the Ukrainian National Committee for the UNESCO Man and the Biosphere Programme. He cites two figures which indicate the formidable character of the problem. In per capita terms the Ukraine has only one tenth of the accessible water resources and one twenty-fifth of the accessible forest resources in the whole of the USSR. The Presidium of the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences has approved a thirty-year Environment Programme.
The purpose of the Dnieper Programme, for instance, is to protect the water resources of a beautiful and vitally important river in Europe. The Donbas Programme is aimed at developing effective measures to considerably decrease or prevent altogether the discharges of harmful substances into the atmosphere. The scientists of the botanical gardens in Donetsk are carrying out an interesting project—to turn the rock piles (which have accumulated as a result of coal extraction) into man-made hills planted with trees and shrubs.
Scientists are working on outstanding ecological problems in the Carpathian Mountains, in Polesye and in Black Sea coastal regions.
Academician Konstantin Sytnik is confident that the programs will be successfully carried out since under socialism environmental protection measures are planned, like all other social-economic measures. Thus, under the economic development plan of the Ukraine for 1976-1980, 4.300 million roubles were allocated for environmental protection. Abolition of private ownership has ruled out all possible conflicts between the interests of individuals and those of society. For instance, on the recommendations of the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences, 150,000 hectares of land in Polesye, where the waters of the Dnieper accumulate before drainage, has been designated as a preserve.
Worker and Factory Manager are Partners
Ivan Doroshenko, a 50-year-old worker, is also an inventor. To explain his inventions he either draws on a piece of paper or in the air. He says:
“In the past they used to stamp a trade mark on pipes by hand. I worked for two weeks on the design of a machine that stamps the trade mark. It is a pendulum with a relief trade mark and a photounit. As a newly rolled hot pipe is drawn along the conveyor the photounit is exposed to light. Actuating the pendulum the photounit causes it to descend onto the pipe and stamp the trade mark. It takes only a second.”
Doroshenko says that it takes him relatively little time to solve a technical problem because he makes the drawings himself. But then he spends a good deal of his leisure time at his drawing table at home. The graying worker has developed several new devices on his own initiative. He explains as follows:
“When I saw the square shaped pipes turn this way and that on the table of the quality control team it made my heart ache. The operation was carried out by primitive pushers. I developed a wire conveyor device which carries a whole bundle of pipes.” Doroshenko wrote down a description of how the device worked in a special “invention” book kept by the factory, which is studied by the administration at the end of each month. When they came to Doroshenko’s entry they called it a most efficient device.
Ivan Doroshenko lives at 88 Cosmonaut Gagarin Street in the city of Nikopol situated in an industrial area in the southern part of the Ukraine. From 1946 to 1950 the first secretary of the Party committee of Zaporozhye Region and then of Dnepropetrovsk Region was Leonid Ilyich Brezhnev, now General Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee. In his book Rebirth he describes the piles of concrete and crushed brick and mounds of twisted steel girders left after the war. The Yuzhnotrubny plant where Ivan Doroshenko has been working for many years experienced all this.
Doroshenko came to work at the factory from his native village, and within a year he qualified as a fitter. A few years later, in 1951, he entered a five-year school of foremen, which gave its students a specialised secondary technical education and a general secondary education. It was an unusual educational establishment in a way. It admitted young workers of promise, on the recommendation of the factory administration. The administration made no mistake in Ivan Doroshenko’s case. After working for several years as an automatic pipe rolling mill operator, he was promoted to the job of senior roller. As a fitter he earned 160 roubles a month, as an operator—250 roubles and as senior roller—300 roubles a month.
Any worker at the Yuzhnotrubny plant has an opportunity to learn a trade or improve his professional skill. Pyotr Kutsenko, the director, encourages this.
Every year from 500 to 600 unskilled manual jobs are eliminated. An approximate estimate shows that Ivan Doroshenko’s inventions have helped eliminate at least 100 unskilled jobs. What do the workers themselves think about this, those whose jobs are abolished as a result of the introduction of efficiency proposals put forward by Doroshenko and others?
Sergei Kovbasyuk works in the team of Ivan Doroshenko, his father-in-law. Both are deputies to the city Soviet. They regularly receive members of their constituencies and discuss with them a wide range of questions, including complaints. Neither of them (none of the deputies to the Soviet of Nikopol, for that matter) remembers having heard complaints about unfair dismissals from jobs. In the Soviet Union reduction of work places at factories and dismissals are two different things; one does not imply the other. The Yuzhnotrubny plant is expanding—it is building two new sections and will need workers. This means that nobody will be left without a job.
As one stands on a bridge spanning a “river” of red-hot pipes one cannot help being fascinated by the huge automatic pipe rolling mill. All operations are synchronised. The 2.5-kilometre conveyor production line operates at an unusually high speed.
Suddenly the mill comes to a standstill. The stoppage lasts only 30 seconds. In the stream of materials, however, there is already a big “gap” several dozens of metres wide.
Ivan Doroshenko says:
“When I see this sort of thing happen I get terribly upset. The stoppage was caused either by the fact that one of the operatives is not sufficiently skilled for this job or by a hitch in a section where manual labour has not yet been abolished. This is one of our ‘bottlenecks’. The country needs these pipes badly. They are especially needed by workers in the oil, and gas industries and by builders of atomic power stations.”
We ask Pyotr Kutsenko, the director, if shortcomings in the rolling mill design are responsible for the workers’ having put forward so many suggestions for improvement.
There is always room for improvement, according to Pyotr Kutsenko. He considers the contribution of workers to making production processes more efficient and modernising equipment to be extremely important.
Ivan Doroshenko says:“We, mill operators and rollers, are asked to give our opinions on the arrangement of push buttons on the control panels, the design of the operator’s cab and the kind of materials that should be used for making it. Participation of the worker-operator helps the designer better understand the requirements of the project at hand.”
Workers participation has led to the development of a better lubricant at the pipe-making works.
“Like pipe-makers of other countries,” says Pyotr Kutsenko “we first used a lubricant based on graphite with oil additives. But it had one big disadvantage. It soils the equipment and lowers the quality of the rolling. At our request chemists developed what seems to be an ideal lubricant, sodium tripolyphosphate. But we had to learn to use it. Ivan Doroshenko helped us in this.”
Ivan Doroshenko: “My job was to establish the optimal dosage. That wasn’t as easy as it may sound. As soon as you fed more lubricant, adhesion disappeared and the machinery ‘skidded’. But finally we solved the problem.”
Instructions on how to use the lubricant were worked out by the researchers, members of the administration and Ivan Doroshenko who was the first to introduce the new lubricant in practice. Many firms in other countries have shown an interest in the sodium tripolyphosphate lubricant.
Today rolling mill 30-103 operates at a rate twice as high as the world’s highest for mills of this class. Workers and engineers are entitled to bonuses for overfulfilment of production plans. And when the factory’s profits grow, so does the material incentive fund which is used by the factory to build housing, nurseries, kindergartens, health centre and polyclinic for its employees and their families.
A part of the material incentive fund is spent on the development of production. Technological improvement naturally increases the number of skilled workers at the factory. At present the number of jobs for skilled workers is growing at a rate of about 1,300 a year. Pyotr Kutsenko says: “The more skilled the workers, the more eager they are to take part in the management of production.”
At the Yuzhnotrubny plant there are about two dozen public organisations. Their members are taking an active part in the management of production.