12 Millions Of Workers Beeome Stakhanovites KUIBYSHBEYV. HE number of workers receiving Stalin Prizes this year shows great expansion of the Stakhanovite movement during the last year, Ivan Gudov, one of the founders of Stakhanovism and now a deputy to the Supreme Soviet and assistant director of the heavy machine-building industry, said this week. “Tn the course of the war, mil- lions of new workers haye become Stakhanovites,”’ Gudovy said. ‘Out of scores of thousands of inven- tions developed by workers in Soviet mines and factories, the production committees in the fac- tories nominated 750 for Stalin Prizes.” The highest awards this year, running from 50,000 to 200,000 rubles ($10,000 to $40,000) went to Ivan Zavertailo, a young Ukraini- an iron miner now working in the Urals, for a high-speed drilling method; Stepan Smirnov, a lathe hand in the Krasni Proletari am- munition factory, who worked on a rush war order from one Sat- urday morning till Wednesday night with only four hours sleep; Ivan Dmitirenko, a foreman in the Magnitogorsk steel mill, for a new mechanism for charging open-hearth furnaces; Sergei Davydoyv, a die maker in the Stalin Auto Works, for an im- proved process for manufactur- ing cutting tools; Ibrahaim Valeev and Alexander Chalkoy, Urals steel workers, for new smelting methods; and Feodor Mironoy, a Kuzbas coal miner, for a new drill for cutting heavy coal seams. In the summer of 1935 Ivan Gudov was one of ten workers in different industries who launched the Stakhanovite movement, named after Alexei Stakhanov, a Donbass coal miner. A year earli- er, Gudov had entered a class for milling machine operators at the Ordjonikdize plant and had failed an examination in mathe- matics because he had never got beyond grammar school. He went to night school, found out how his machine was put together, and worked out a series of im- provements making it possible to mill cast-iron valves in a fourth of the usual time. Cost of Living Soars in British India Indian Labor Demands Wage Bonus BOMBAY. PEeceD with a 100 percent rise in living costs since the start of the war, India’s workers are demanding wage increases and a bigger government dearness allowance (cost-of-living bonus). The All-India Railwaymen’s Federation, at its con- vention in Delhi, March 25, put forward the following demands to the govenment Railway Board. 1. A 30 rupees ($7.50) monthly dearness allowance to all work- ers earning up to 250 rupees 4 month—the average railwaymen's wage is 30 rupees a week. 2, Abo- lition of the zonal system, which fixes different allowance rates for different parts of the coun- try. 8. The dearness allowance to be on a sliding scale, 4% rupees rise for every 5 points increase in the cost of living—similar to Alter-Erhlich Chique Is the sliding scale bonus recently won by the Bombay Kirni Kam- gar (Red Flag) Union, on behalf of 100,000 textile workers, from Bombay Millowners Association. (4) Government grain shops, with controlled prices, to be set up in all railway stations employing more than 100 workers. (5) Strict rationing of all essential foods. Of India’s 750,000 railway work- ers, less than one quarter are or- ganized. Twenty-five thousand textile workers in Madura, Tuticorin and Ambassamudram — cities in the south of India — recently de- manded a cost-of-living bonus out of the huge war profits being made by their employers. Harvey and Company, one of the old- est and richest British firms in India, granted its employees a bonus amounting to 6 percent of total annual earnings—but at the same time withheld half of the bonus for compulsory investment in war bonds. The British government of In- dia and employers’ associations favor this compulsory saving as a means of checking inflation, but it is bitterly opposed by the workers, who are faced with star- vation in view of the rise in living costs. Hit By Czech Socialists LONDON. ‘HE anti-Soviet campaign over Alter and Ehrlich is pretty much of a fizzle here in London, and the only real excite- ment is caused by the repudiation by the Czechoslovak Social- Democratic Party here of a certain Joseph Abelina, who spoke at the Alter-Ehrlich meeting allegedly as representative of the Czech Socialists. The original meeting held some weeks ago with very scant press notice was chaired by George Dal- las, a member of the Labor Party executive committee. Gamille Suysmans, the Belgian Social-Democrat, and head of what's left of the Second Interna- tional delivered a bitter speech, attacking Stalin and raking up all the 25-year-old anti-Soviet libels. Finally, there was this Joseph Abelina, who paraded as s¥okes- man for the Czechoslovak Social- Democratic Party. On April 7, however, a number of leading Czechoslovak socialists, including three members of the Fovernment-in-exile here, declared that they, members of the socialist executive elected at the last normal conference in 19387, de- nounce Abelina as never haying ben a member of the executive committee and having no right to act or speak in its name. As regards the Alter-Bhrlich case, say these Czechoslovak So- cialists ‘“‘we are of the opinion that the internal affairs of the Polish socialist movement shouldn’t be made a matter-of international politics. The Soviet Union is in- volved in a terrible war and we believe the means chosen for her defensé is carefully selected. Therefore we can associate our- selves with the action taken in this unfortunate incident.” torious advance. British Union to Adopt} Eighth Army Regiment PROPOSAL that his union “adopt” the Royal Elec and Mechanical Engineers, army regiment now fig) in North Africa, is made by Jack Tanner, president oj - Amalgamated Engineering Union, writing in the curren of the AKU Journal. AEU membership is now near one million mark. “There ean be no question to- day between the war front and the home front,” Tanner writes. “Anti-fascist zeal is common to the workshop and the battlefield, and is directed to a commom aim. Why should not the AEU, as a ereat national union, ‘adopt’ a regiment or regiments? There is® one whieh is our particular counterpart in the Army — the REM®E. Born in October, 1942, this modern regiment was called into existence by the needs of modern warfare, and very large- ly as a result of the representa- tions made by our union on the misuse of skilled labor in the Forees. REME has none of the regimental traditions of other wars and ages, but its traditions are ours: the traditions of the craftsman and of sound work- manship.” At El] Alamein last October, Tanner says, REME Recovery Sections cleared the lanes through the minefields; REME mobile workshops covered the Highth Army’s tremendous advance of 1,- 400 miles in 80 days to Tripoli; out of 1,200 tanks incapacitated in action, 1,000 were repaired by ~ REME units and put back into battle within a bonth. WNearly 19,000 Army ears and trucks were repaired. “The REME is a combatant corps, required to keep its head under al] circumstances,” Tanner adds. “Small units are required to repair guns in the front line, under fire, REME detachments are first on the landing beaches One of Rommel’s most vital ports for the landing of sup) incessantly attacked by bombers of the Allied Air Fo fore its final capture in the course of the 8th Army LONDO: and prepare the way fo troops.” Pointing out that the Times, in its. tribute to th Army on Feb. 22, attribul success of that army to that for 25 years it has ne touch with the people or to draw its strength fro people’s life,” Tanner | 52 “W want our army also tO — strength from the people’ and to look to us at bh only to supply weapons, give the abounding and inex ible moral support which | from the people. By comin any attempts to divide us one section against the 0} maintaining wage sta safeguarding the interest: workers in industry, we ing for those in the much as for our selve the separation between wi prolonged, this fact may sight of by the poorly-pai bers of the forces. = “Tt is true that our resp ties are great, and grow for every individual in as the urgency for thi Front increases. It is our hours are long. But equally true that we are and even those who hav gone transfer have not bei upon to make the sacrif face the dangers and hi which active service di