Setting the stage: an unhappy komandirovka

At the end of May 1946, the Minsk tractor factory (MTZ) despatched a contingent of 714 young workers to the Stalingrad tractor factory (STZ) for training. Minsk, of course, had been occupied during the war, and the Stalingrad factory was itself still completing restoration. Nearly three-quarters of the group were aged sixteen to eighteen; just under a quarter were between eighteen and twenty-five. Their education levels were not high: 23 were illiterate; 336 (47 per cent) had finished primary school; 337 had completed grades 5 to 7; just 18 had gone beyond grade 7. Well over 90 per cent of them were from the countryside. In all respects the group was fairly typical of the young workers coming into Soviet industry during the postwar period. Unfortunately, so too was their experience. From the very outset the Minsk factory had lied to them about what they would encounter at STZ.