Aleksei Gastev

Aleksei Kapitonovich Gastev ( _ru. Алексей Капитонович Гастев) (1882-1939) was a participant in the Russian Revolution of 1905, a pioneer of scientific management in Russia, a trade-union activist and an avant garde poet.

Biography

Youth of a Revolutionary

Born to a family of a teacher and a seamstress in Suzdal, Russia, Aleksei Gastev enrolled into the Moscow Pedagogical Institute, but was expelled as a result of his participation in a revolutionary meeting. He joined the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party in 1900. An active participant in the Russian Revolution of 1905, Gastev was the leader of a fighting squad in Kostroma and agitated workers to strike in the Northern Russian cities of Yaroslavl, Ivanovo-Voznesensk and Makariev. During this time, Gastev was closely associated with the Bolshevik faction of the Party. He was a correspondent of Lenin and received orders from him in 1905-1907.

As a result of his revolutionary activism, Gastev was arrested by the authorities and exiled to various parts of Northern and Eastern Russia in at least three separate incidents. He was nevertheless able to escape from his exiles each time, living illegally in Russia and sometimes managing to find his way abroad.

Split with the Bolsheviks

In 1907 Gastev dissociated himself from the activities of the Bolshevik faction. As a result of one of his exiles, followed by an emigration, Gastev has spent about three years working in the industrial factories of Paris, France in 1909-1912. At that time, he became familiar with French Syndicalism and adopted many of the views of that movement, seeing trade unions as a chief means of confronting capitalism by bringing concrete improvements into the lives of workers.

Trade Union Work

Between 1901 and 1917 Gastev spent most of his years between exiles, escapes and work in Russian or European factories. His experience as a factory worker led him to develop a rather practical approach to Marxism. Revolution for Gastev meant empowering workers by allowing them to control everyday matters related to work processes. Gastev became involved in the work of the Petersburg Union of Metal Workers, one of the most influential trade unions in the country, as early as 1906. In 1917-1918 Gastev has been elected Chairman of the Central Committee of the newly created All-Russian Union of Metal Workers. He actively participated in the 1918 Conference of the Union.

Scientific Management

In 1920, Gastev became the founder and Director of the Central Institute of Labor (C.I.T.) in Moscow, which he referred to as his "last work of art". The organization of the Institute was encouraged by V.I. Lenin, who allocated the initial funding of the project. The institution developed scientific approaches to work management, which in practical terms amounted to methods of training workers to perform mechanical operations in the most efficient way. Some simple repetitive operations, like the cutting of materials with a chisel, were studied in great detail. Recommendations on setting up the work processes efficiently were published.

In 1928, in an effort to increase the funding of his studies, Gastev organized the "Ustanovka" ("Setup") joint-stock company which audited the work of industrial enterprises and provided recommendations on efficient organization of their work processes on a commercial basis.

Educational Work

Gastev's ideas on education were based on his concept of "social engineering", meaning the creation of training methods based on the physiological and psychological study of humans in the work process, using both observational and experimental methods. This led to the creation of the "setup method" ("установочный метод"), which viewed the conditioning of human faculties as a basis for reform of the educational system in its entirety. The term "setup" ("установка") implied the formation of personal automated behaviors through "biological setups", "cultural setups", etc.

Gastev's methods were used in intensive trainings of qualified workers and were highly successful.

Poetry

Most of Gastev's poems may be fairly labeled prose poetry. The rhythm is usually not organized enough to qualify for verse, the rhyme is absent, the poems are written in the form of prose pieces. However, the use of metaphor, lyrical expressiveness, and repetitiveness of syntax undoubtedly make Gastev a true lyrical poet, with influences ranging from Verhaeren and Walt Whitman to the Russian Futurists.

Gastev's poetry energetically celebrates industrialization, announcing an era of a new type of human, trained by the overall mechanization of everyday life. In the 1920s Gastev abandoned his literary work completely, dedicating himself to his scientific management research. However, many of his later publications on non-poetic topics are written in the expressive language of prose poems.

Arrest and Death

On September 8, 1938 Gastev was arrested on false charges of "counter-revolutionary terrorist activity". He was detained in a Moscow prison and sentenced to death by a speedy trial on April 14, 1939. There was no defense attorney and no possibility to appeal against the decision. On April 15, 1939 Gastev was shot to death in the suburbs of Moscow.

October 1, 1941, the date of Gastev's death given by some sources, is based on false information given by the authorities to Gastev's family prior to 1991. No reliable information about Gastev's fate after his arrest was available until the KGB archive, where the interrogation and trial documents were kept, became accessible to relatives in the early 1990s.

Works

# "Poesija rabochego udara" ("Поэзия рабочего удара"). Moscow. 1964, 1971.
# "Kak nado rabotat" ("Как надо работать"). Moscow, "Ekonomika". 1966, 1972.
# "Trudovye ustanovki" ("Трудовые установки"). Moscow, "Ekonomika". 1973.

References

# Johansson, Kurt. Aleksej Gastev, Proletarian Bard of the Machine Age. Stockholm, 1983.
# Bailes, K.E. Alexei Gastev and the Soviet Controversy over Taylorism, 1918-1924 // Soviet Studies. Glasgow, UK. 1977.
# Maier, C.S. Between Taylorism and Technology: European Ideologies and the Vision of Industrial Productivity in the 1920’s // Journal of Contemporary History. London. 1970. Vol. 5. No. 2. P. 27-61.
# Sorenson J.B. The Life and Death of Soviet Trade Unionism, 1917-1928. New York, 1969.
# Williams, R.C. Collective Immortality: The Syndicalist Origins of Proletarian Culture, 1905-1910 // Slavic Review. Champaign, IL, USA. 1980. Vol. 5. No. 3. P. 389-402.