In the USSR, there was no unemployment.There was a complete opposite of this regrettable phenomenon - a constant shortage of labor resources. This problem was especially acute for the country's leadership after the 20th Congress of the CPSU, which marked some liberalization of public relations. The labor army of GULAG prisoners decreased significantly, the peasants were able, albeit limited, to avoid the dreary fate of a lifelong serf-kolkhoznik. Nevertheless, the need for builders remained high. This was especially felt in the fifties, during the development of virgin-fallow lands in Kazakhstan. It was then that the WSSO movement, inspired, like any other mass phenomenon, by the Communist Party, the only ruling force in the Soviet Union, arose.
Hunters went to virgin lands was not enough.The first wave of immigrants consisted of two unequal parts, romantic enthusiasts (there were a minority of such) and those who were tempted to lift, being in an extremely difficult situation due to different life circumstances. In other words, those who had nothing to lose, including people with a criminal past, made up the second, more numerous category. Caught in the bare steppe, not provided with housing and supplies, enthusiasts and adventurers equally began to understand the complexity of the situation, many attempted to go back, but it was not possible for everyone. Then the party threw a cry to the students, and the Komsomol, as always, answered “there is!” The first construction teams, as the people in the USSR called the VSSO movement, went to Tselina in 1959 and were made up of students of Moscow State University. Over the summer, 339 students were erected in northern Kazakhstan, where political prisoners were exiled, 12 houses, an rabbitry, and a couple of poultry houses. These modest achievements were propaganda rather than practical. Without the participation of however qualified builders and the considerable costs of transportation, food and accommodation of young people, the erection of these objects would be impossible. The story is silent about how much each of them earned, and whether this idea was at least self-sustaining.
Попытки привлечения трудовых ресурсов учащейся youth were earlier and later. Starting from the first five-year plans, the leadership of the party considered that students should not spend their summer holidays in idleness. During the years of “mature socialism,” the tradition continued with regular shipments for autumn agricultural work to subsidized collective farms. In this case, most often the tasks performed by the Komsomol members were not related to the construction. In this connection, by 1983, the need for renaming had matured, since in the USSR the people called the VSSO movement as the construction detachments. Now they were designated by a shorter abbreviation of CO (that is, student groups), thereby expanding their scope. Students used in industrial enterprises experiencing difficulties, including seasonal, in the workforce. Typically, in such factories and mills, labor was hard, the rates were high, and payment was very modest.
Komsomol since its inception has been trueAssistant Communist Party. As in the CPSU, democratic centralism has become the fundamental principle in this organization. He also passed on to the offspring of the Komsomol, to the construction detachments, as the people in the USSR called the VSSO movement. Structurally, all units were controlled by the central headquarters, working under the Komsomol Central Committee. Each individual unit (detachment), consisting of thirty to forty people, submitted to the appropriate functionary of the Komsomol district committee. It was commanded by the commander and commissioner. The first dealt with general management issues, the second regulated the ideological side. There were other positions necessary for the correct work of the detachment, such as an accountant or a cook. Top commanders, selected throughout the vast country, took part in regularly organized gatherings.
WSSO movement in the USSR reached its peakin the late sixties - early seventies. The student’s life was often poor. The scholarship was 40 rubles (increased - 50), and the nonresident living in the hostels had to look for extra money, especially if the parents could not help. Stroyotryad allowed for the summer to stock up on money, sometimes significant. Their geography was extensive, and in some cases paid surcharges, northern or for remoteness. To earn during the holidays is common for a student in any country, but nowhere has it received such an organizational scale as in the USSR. The people called the VSSO movement the student groups, construction teams, and sometimes simply shabashniki, but this did not matter. As long as the main incentive was relatively high pay, it developed, and the number of students taking part in it increased. Already by 1970 it exceeded the figure of 300 thousand, doubled in five years, and by 1980 exceeded 800 thousand. Then there was a recession.
Until the stroyotryad possessed a certainthe possibility of choosing objects on which they had to work, things went relatively well. But by 1983, the party leadership realized that such a significant working-class "mass" could be used more efficiently, which translated into an economic language was expressed by the simplest formula: "pay less, work more and not where they want, but where they say." The number of people willing to work under such conditions decreased, and administrative measures were used, up to the threat of expulsion from the university in case of refusal to work out summer in the construction team.
And yet those who today remember 50-60 yearsStroyotryady kind word. Young people, who do not even know how the WSSE movement was called, and how these letters are deciphered, it is difficult to understand the joy of the kind of a barn built together, a sense of independence and happiness in overcoming difficulties, and there were a lot of them. Mosquitoes bit, living conditions often left much to be desired, and the diet was not at all what my mother cooked, but all this did not matter. The songs around the fire are not always the ones that Pakhmutov composed about the “furious construction team”, baked potatoes, first lovers and a magical feeling of freedom, supported by the gentle crunch of self-earned money in your pocket - this is what is remembered by the then stroyotryadovtsam, and now quite solid uncles and aunts. Such nostalgia can be wished for the current twenty years.
