Why East-Germany's Stakhanovite Movement failed.

EAST GERMANY - While the USSR's Stakhanovite Movement was a relative success and inspired other eastern bloc countries such as China and North Korea to implement a similar system, it never took hold in the GDR despite the attempt to create such a movement being made by the ruling SED party. Why did the attempt to replicate this model in the GDR ultimately fail when it succeeded elsewhere in the socialist world?

The Stakhanovite Movement was a mass movement aimed towards workers started by the Soviet Communist Party in the 1930s with the goal of increasing productivity and improving work morale. It was named after Alexei Stakhanov, a coal miner, and would award workers who contributed exceptionally well to the economy by working faster, harder, or by spreading socialist values.

In the USSR

Creating a competitive working environment, many Stakhanovites, both male and female, soon emerged. Soviet leadership announced that in the first five-year plan (1928-32), labor productivity increased by 41%, contributing it to the movement. Whilst the movement initially was popular with Soviet society and supposedly achieved its goals, criticism soon emerged as pressure was considered too strong by many, especially during the years of the Second World War. Nonetheless, it would continue until the eventual fall of the Soviet Union in 1991.

Adoption into China

The People's Republic of China adopted the system in the 1930s, where it would be called the Model-Worker system. In China the system also awards citizens for extraordinary contributions to science and environmental protection and is still in use to this day. While its contribution to the economic rise is not clearly measurable, it helped the Chinese Communist Party to strengthen loyalty to both Mao Zedong and later the party itself, as model workers were allowed certain privileges.

The Chollima Movement

North Korea's leader Kim Il Sung adapted the system as part of its Juche ideology in 1956 under the name “Chollima Movement” and as a core part of the 1957-61 five-year plan. At a meeting of the Workers' Party of Korea in 1956, Kim Il Sung is quoted as saying, according to state media, “Let us produce more, practice economy, and overfulfill the five-year plan ahead of schedule!" The goal of increasing productivity would be met by over 36% in 1960, one year early of the plan, and led to the construction of a statue in Pyongyang commemorating the movement in 1961. In the 1980s, the North Korean pop band Pochonbo Electronic Ensemble released a song honoring the movement called "Chollima on the Wing" which became a national hit. 

While sources are not conclusive about the end of the first Chollima movement, the regime tried reviving the movement to fight severe power and food shortages in the 1990s that caused a famine in the country.

Conditions in the GDR

While the USSR, China, and North Korea  were all relatively comparable in their conditions, the GDR was not. East-Germany had one of the most industrialized and technically advanced workforces in the eastern bloc. Workers in the GDR often understood production processes well and lacked the ideological enthusiasm that was present in other bloc states, as East-Germany never experienced a natural revolution but was forcefully converted to socialism after the Second World War. The population was generally more skeptical of the government and saw a massive decrease in numbers as citizens fled to the west. Additionally, the GDR faced massive shortages in power, resources, and materials, which often led to workers not being able to work. These factors combined led to a workers uprising in 1953, which fundamentally threatened the ruling party's grip on power and could only be brought down with the help of Soviet tanks.

After the uprising, the ruling party, SED, saw itself pressured to make concessions. While an implementation of a movement like the Stakhanovites was planned and tested by the GDR's regime prior to the uprising, it was now forced to abandon these efforts, lower quotas for production, and focus more on consumer products. It would not pick up on them again until the reunification with West-Germany in 1990.

Conclusion

A mass movement can only be successful with a mass that supports its cause and conditions that enable it to spread. Both the support and conditions were given in the USSR, China, and North Korea but not in the GDR, which led the attempt to motivate workers to backfire into an uprising.