This story begins and ends at the gates to the working class. These “gates” have served as a metaphor for policy, or, more specifically, for the state's attempts to define and control the size, composition, and behavior of the working class. By dividing those who were permitted to enter from those who would remain outside, the state used the gates to construct the working class from above. The gates were not, however, maintained by the state alone. Put up in the 1920s to exclude women and peasants, the gates also privileged and revived an older “kadrovye” working class that had all but disappeared during the civil war. The gates were staunchly defended by the unions and contested by the Zhenotdel. In 1930, they were toppled by a vast and mobile crowd of peasants, women, and other unemployed people in search of work. As job opportunities opened up and managers everywhere faced severe labor shortages, new workers streamed into jobs and onto construction sites, forming a new working class that now encompassed formerly excluded elements. The Party struggled to keep pace with a labor-market expansion that its own industrial policies had created. Veterans of the Zhenotdel, organizers from KUTB, and female members of the planning brigades cheered as the gates fell and women edged forward toward the best of the once-protected working-class positions: production jobs in heavy industry. The unions, labor exchanges, and local labor organizations all lost their place as gatekeepers.