Much of Soviet history and culture seems straight out of a pretentious satire: there were prisoners becoming wardens, flying tanks and an attempted elimination of middle-class farmers. It was a strange and turbulent time when many old ideas were getting thrown out and replaced by new ones, however terrible they might have been. Part of this purge involved art. Socialist Realist art, as it was called, depicted the New Soviet person: hard-working, selfless, lean and trusting of Stalin and the Party's omnipotent leadership. The best way to teach the simple-minded peasants-turned-laborers how to live was to depict examples in simple paintings, movies and books that related to their lives. With that mindset, a nail-biting novel about a concrete-pouring competition only made sense.
It’s the Communist page-turner "Time, Forward!" by Valentin Kataev. After receiving a list of characters (there are many), the reader learns that the first chapter is “omitted for the time being.” How Communist. The reader is then introduced to David Margulies, a shock worker so cool that he wakes up before his alarm clock goes off. While reading his morning paper, Margulies notices that an impressive concrete-mixing record was set and decides, like any normal New Soviet laborer would, to break it. What follows are the 24 hours leading up to and concluding with the attempt (spoiler alert: he breaks the record). Along the way are the stories of characters related and unrelated to Margulies’s pursuit. There’s the bumbling Mr. Ray Roupe (the “Mister” denotes oppressive bourgeois class), an American coddled by frivolous technology like the automobile. While visiting Margulies’s worksite, Mr. Roupe is astonished by the workers’ incredible use of technology and ability to transcend time (you read that right) to get the job done faster. There’s Georgi Nalbandov, the chief engineer that doubts the good worker’s ability to break the record. There’s Foma Yegorovich (formerly Thomas George Bixby), an American worker that has joined the far superior, time-traveling Soviet people.
The line between propaganda and entertainment is blurred considerably. Each of the book’s 29 plus characters are meant to teach a lesson and provide an example, good or bad, for the captivated Soviet laborer reading on the way to his job. Themes of hard work, conservative technology use and struggle against time are weaved throughout. Time was perhaps most import: Stalin’s impossible Five Year Plans for developing Russia’s industry were unpopular among overworked citizens that saw through the ruse. The ideal worker therefore time-traveled to get the job done when they needed, since the real workers weren’t making their deadlines. Convinced that the Soviet Union was ahead of schedule (it wasn’t), Stalin turned back the clock and made his Five Year Plan a Four Year Plan, giving birth to an infamous poster that insisted 2+2=5.
Fictional creations like Margulies were only the tip of the iceberg. Real workers were turned into celebrities with exaggerated, often fabricated feats of labor. The first and most famous was Alexey Stakhanov, a worker that reportedly mined an impossibly large amount of coal, setting a record (sound familiar?). His accomplishment was widely publicized in the Soviet Union in order to inspire the people to pick up the pace. It even earned him renown abroad, complete with a Time Magazine cover. His record was likely as fictional as the books and movies he’d inspire: he allegedly received help, had preparation and used top-notch equipment. Regardless, his accomplishment inspired a “Stakhanovite” movement, one that spawned imitators and completely fictional versions like Margulies, the Concrete Wizard.
