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