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The following is an archived discussion of a featured article nomination. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the article's talk page or in Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates. No further edits should be made to this page.

The article was not promoted by Ucucha 23:30, 2 February 2012 [1].

Wage reform in the Soviet Union, 1956–1962

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Wage reform in the Soviet Union, 1956–1962 (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

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Nominator(s): Coolug (talk) 18:32, 16 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I'm nominating this for featured article because I feel I've written a well referenced and clear article that is detailed enough as to provide everything a reader could wish for, but is also written in a style that is accessible to the causal reader who does not know too much about Soviet History. There aren't a huge number of sources available on this subject, but I've taken as much as possible from the available sources, all of which are very high quality sources. The article is currently at GA, and since then has had also undergone a peer review. I'd love to hear other editors comments on the article. cya! Coolug (talk) 18:32, 16 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

  • (Dealt with) Scope & Weighting question: why haven't you used Filtzer's Labor process theory in the context of wage reform? You accept that wage reform ramifies into the construction of the labor process, "The number of different wage rates and wage scales was drastically reduced." etc., is this going to be part of a broader set of articles around the Soviet Labour Process in the 1950s-1960s. Even if it is, Filtzer's conclusion about skilling, deskilling and reskilling via LPT seems like it would be relevant to the article. (Obviously I'm going to "buy into" this review a lot more, because I saw the title and got excited. Wage determination FAC? Soviet wage determination FAC? From the mid 1950s?) Fifelfoo (talk) 09:50, 18 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Hi there. I'm happy that someone is excited about this FAC :) To be perfectly frank I do not really know anything about Labour Process Theory and how it might tie into this article. I was not planning on writing a broader set of articles at this stage in time, this is just a standalone article about one event in Soviet history. If you could point me in the direction of any additional works that would be considered a Reliable Source I'd be more than happy to read through them and see if there is more that can be added to the article. Thanks! Coolug (talk) 15:25, 19 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Academics get excited about wage rates because they provide the evidentiary data for large theoretical claims about Fordism and Taylorism and Labour process theory. In particular, Filtzer used the Soviet wage reform as part of an argument about Soviet labour process, and thus the political economic structure of Soviet society. It might pay to read the conclusion to Filtzer for this article. I'm going to try to see if I can't read the (potted) Google version today. Fifelfoo (talk) 20:44, 19 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]
See, for example, Filtzer p.229 and surrounding for why you need to read his conclusion for this article. Filtzer basically says here that shop floor wage bargaining incorporated skill components of socialist planning, due to the poor quality of management planning in Soviet Taylorism; and, that the only moments where this happened in the West was in areas where value didn't have to be "realised" in production. Fifelfoo (talk) 21:32, 19 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I've had a read of the area in the book you suggest and added something. However, one issue with this FAC is that it's going to take a hell of a long time if I need to go off to university and get myself a degree in Economics before I can add anything in more detail. The Filtzer text 'Soviet Workers and de-Stalinization' is some pretty complex stuff and there's 300 blooming pages of it. Frankly, the reason I've tried to write this article as something that is accessible to the layman is because I'm only a step or two ahead of the layman myself. For example, I don't really understand what Labour Process Theory is beyond it being a very complicated way of explaining that people do "stuff" for various "reasons". I had a read of some things last night with a couple of PhD friends of mine (admittedly they are scientists not economists, but they are people who are used to reading complicated things all day at work so I thought they might be able to make an educated guess) and they were completely flummoxed by it too (although we were consuming large quantities of Papa November's home made gin which didn't really help...)
Anyway, I shall struggle on regardless and see what more I can add, however, I'm definitely drowning here rather than waving :) Coolug (talk) 22:57, 21 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Okay, give me a tick, I'll help you out here with this point (it can be relatively quick, Filtzer is the only theorist I can locate either). Fifelfoo (talk) 23:05, 21 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks! BTW, I would still love to find out what this blasted Labor Process Theory actually is, the wiki article on it is a terrible example of what is wrong with some many articles about complicated things on this project. The article tells the reader who developed LPT, what it's been used for recently, but not what LPT is! Coolug (talk) 23:10, 21 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Tried to expand Labour process theory to better indicate what it is about. Much sociological theory is in this kind of poor state, particularly the serious academic socialist sociological theory. You can see why I got excited by this FAC? :) Fifelfoo (talk) 23:31, 21 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support on (1bcde; 2abc; 3 (limited); 4): Content depth, breadth and correctness; source & cite quality; structure; neutrality & stability; media (appropriateness and captions only) Fifelfoo (talk) 23:31, 21 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    • I am willing to spot check this FAC, but the copyeditors need to go through before me.
    • Publisher location for this press in the bibliography: Fontana
    • Correct the colon: "Soviet Growth : Routine"
    • Title caps for Russia: ""RUSSIA: End Five-Year Plan"" Fifelfoo (talk) 23:50, 21 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Hey, thanks for this. I have made these copyedits. If I've made any mistakes please let me know. Cya! Coolug (talk) 12:16, 22 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Because of the nature of Soviet industry, where materials were often in short supply and production would often be the result of "storming" practices, the ability to offer bonus payments had often been vital to the everyday running of Soviet industry, and therefore the reforms ultimately failed to create a more efficient system. — too "often"
  • their individual wage payments depended upon how much work they personally completed. — Do you need both?
  • stakhanovite — capitalised in its own article
  • however — Please check that every use is essential
  • great, great deal, greatly — greatly overused imho
  • Whilst the reform did succeed in removing some of the peculiarities of the Stalinist era, overall the reforms succeeded — two successful
  • Trade Union — why caps?
  • couldn't — unencyclopaedic ellipsis
Thanks for this, I have made some changes based upon your suggestions. As you can probably tell I am having a very exciting christmas indeed! Coolug (talk) 19:11, 24 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]
No further issues, changed to support above.
Thanks Papa November! I have been sat here at work scratching my head at what I'm supposed to do with these for the past 15 minutes and was just about to give up and ask for help on here when I saw you'd already fixed it. Good work. Coolug (talk) 12:11, 29 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]
OK, looks good now. —Andrewstalk 22:13, 29 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Comment from nominator - Hi, I thought I'd just state on here that whilst Fifelfoo did say he would be willing to spot check this FAC, it should be noted that he is not currently editing due to an unrelated conflict on wikipedia. I am certainly not suggesting that anyone be a scab and take up his tasks, but I am asking that if anyone is thinking of closing this FAC due to lack of interest they bear in mind that there certainly is interest, it's just the interest is not expressing his interest at this exact moment in time. I still welcome any comments from other editors. Thanks! Coolug (talk) 13:34, 6 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose. Lead is unsatisfactory:

  • "were intended to move Soviet industrial workers away from the mindset of overfulfillment of quotas that had characterised"—suggest two grammatical changes: "of overfulfilling quotas, which had ...". At least I think that's the intended meaning ... that it was the overfulfullment that had characterised, yes?
  • Personal pref.: "based on", not "based upon"; there's another "upon" shortly after. And you might consider "most" rather than "the majority of" (= 50%+, a bit fussy).
  • Comma again (do watch this issue: subset or not a subset? It's very easy to get the meaning wrong in English): "Workers' personal production quotas were also heavily manipulated by factory managers who were keen to protect workers' wages." It works grammatically, but you're referring to a subset of factory managers; if you want to say that all f ms were thus keen, you need a comma before "who". Just checking.
  • "incentivise"—could it be a simple, plain word, such as "motivate"? "Efficiently" -> "effectively".
  • I'm not understanding some of the lead. Why should standardised wages (not "wage practices", which doesn't make sense) motivate workers; I'd have thought the opposite. And I wonder why the reforms made workers less dependent on overtime or bonus payments? All a mystery to me. Why would these changes reduce pay? What is "storming" (in the lead, we need to know; otherwise use an easier word or phrase here). Where is the causal logic in the "Because ..., the ability to ...". The last clause, too, needs to be a separate sentence.

Sure, the lead is hard to write; but will I expect to see better writing in the body of the article when I get to it? Tony (talk) 10:05, 11 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I have made some minor changes to the start of the lead so that it might read a little easier. And I've changed the "storming" bit so readers who do not wish to read the rest of the article (or perhaps search for "storming" in the main body of the article and read the explanation) will not feel left out.
However, I don't think it's a good idea to change "incentivise" to something else, "incentivise" has a very clear meaning (and I don't think it's a particularly obscure word that people reading an article on Soviet economics will fail to understand) that is different to the meaning of "motivate". Also "efficiently" has a different meaning to "effectively". The point of the reform was to give workers an incentive that would not result in so much waste. If you read the rest of the article you will discover what this was. Therefore the use of the word "efficient".
As for why the wage reform did the things it did, that is what the rest of the article is about! Coolug (talk) 12:15, 11 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Incentivise, incentivisation, are just so ugly. I would strike it out of any text except an advertising billboard or TV commercial, where cheapness of language is a device.

Efficiently as currently worded refers to this incentivising (that is, motivating—what exactly is wrong with a plain word?). I think you mean effectively; as you say, "The point of the reform was to give workers an incentive that would not result in so much waste."—right, so that workers would work more efficiently. But the incentives were intended to effectively achieve this. And we've just had inefficiencies three lines back, where it refers to Soviet industry, which is fine. So you effective motivate the workers to be more efficient in their production. If you persist with efficiently motivate, I hope it's clear from the article what inefficient motivation would be. Right now it looks like an unfortunate repetition, aside from being the suboptimal lexical choice per se.

Your response asserts that the reader needs to read the whole article to make sense of the lead: this is not the function of a lead. It opens into the article, but should not be impenetrable as it now is on a few counts. The piece work system would have encouraged workers to turn out pieces, but not necessarily to work hard. We all know the stories of goods that fell apart soon after purchase, the generally sloppy practices that placed numbers of outputted units above basic quality. The lead doesn't even go there, but it is central to the failure of the system, both before and after the wage reform that is the topic of the article. This is why I gag on the sentence: "The wage reforms sought to remove outdated wage practices and more efficiently incentivise Soviet workers by making their wages more standardised and less dependent upon overtime or bonus payments. However, industrial managers were loathe to go ahead with actions that would effectively reduce workers' wages, and often ignored the directives, continuing to pay workers high overtime rates." I can't see the logic, and thus it fails in a lead. Tony (talk) 02:31, 12 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Comment - I'm not an economist but as I understand it, "incentivise" has a very specific meaning in economics. It refers directly and explicitly to the introduction of an incentive into an economic system. "Motivate" doesn't quite work - it lacks the explicit economic context of "incentivise". I guess it would be better to be even more explicit, lose the verbal form and say something like "The wage reforms were intended to introduce a financial incentive..." Papa November (talk) 10:07, 12 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Good idea, acted upon. Coolug (talk) 10:22, 12 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
(edit conflict) I am happy to accept constructive comments on this article. I can see that you have now read the entire article, so if you think the lead is missing something important then please put it in.
However, I am not happy to accept rude edit summaries. Just because you do not think my writing is up to scratch it does not mean it's ok to write things like "Time to update your writing" or other sarcastic comments. Please try to be civil. Coolug (talk) 10:15, 12 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
It's an extremely interesting topic and I'd like to see the article promoted at some stage. I'm not sure the details are sufficiently fleshed out at the moment. Tony (talk) 15:19, 12 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you for your message on my talk page. Now, regarding what the lead does not mention, you ask that the lead makes reference to "sloppy" practices and how they were central to the point of the reform. The problem is that saying this would unfortunately be original research. The sources I have used do not actually mention that the soviet economy was churning out a load of rubbish, just that the progressive piece rate system was inefficient. I suppose this may be because the sources I have used are a little on the highbrow side and so don't mention anything as 'obvious' as that. There are other sources elsewhere saying that soviet goods were badly made, but don't mention the wage reform and therefore to link the two might be original research too. I'm as frustrated as you that the article and it's lead fails to explain this, but until someone writes a high quality source saying that the wage reform had something to do with sloppy production I'm unable to do anything about it. Coolug (talk) 17:54, 12 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Serious question, then: since everyone in the east and the west knew the quality of goods behind the iron curtain was pretty bad (don't mention the Trabie), and intuitively a system that imposes quantity quotas but little or no quality control is bound to lead to this outcome, why isn't more written about it in reliable sources? I can't believe western economists and the establishment in general had no interest in analysing the quality of goods, which was a major factor in the failure of that system (I didn't download it, but does the CIA source provide no leads?). Your ref list isn't all that big; I wonder whether there's more to discover. This article is important enough to expand and deepen with more evidence, since it ultimately involves an economic system that consumed (no pun) a huge proportion of the global population for many decades. Other articles, including, for example, that on East Germany (among many), could benefit from the leadership you show in this article. The treatment of the Soviet empire is not really very good on WP; and something tells me it's not good in the German or Russian WPs either. BTW, are there analogous articles in any other language WP? Tony (talk) 13:12, 13 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
    • I'm going to claim expert: Western ideologs seriously didn't care that much about the internals of payment structures in the Soviet Union. IR worked at a different level of theoretical engagement; and labour history hasn't caught up with the 1950s in the Soviet Union (the 1920s and 1930s resolve more serious academic issues). The ref list looks about reasonable for one component of a three pronged attack on the quality problem. Fifelfoo (talk) 13:35, 13 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Tony, just to be clear, are you opposing this nomination because the writing is rubbish? because the sources don't say as much as we'd like them to say? Or for both of these reasons? Coolug (talk) 16:53, 13 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Support Comments. Support on everything but comprehensiveness and well-researched-ness; also have not done a source check or image check. Prose is fine if not sparkling and everything else looks good. An interesting read.

  • The first sentence doesn't seem right: "Wage reform was a process that took place in the Soviet Union from 1956 through 1962". Clearly that's not what wage reform is, or was. This is a hard article to write a first sentence for, but per WP:LEADSENTENCE the title doesn't have to appear verbatim, so I think we could go with something like "From 1956 through 1962, the Soviet Union attempted to implement wage reforms in order to address ...." That's not ideal, but the current version seems quite wrong to me.
  • "where materials were frequently in short supply and production would be the result of rushed production" -- I don't understand the second half of this.
  • You have "for example" twice in the first paragraph of "Existing system".
  • "This method of calculating and paying wages ...": I think you're too far away from the definition of the method to refer to it in this way. I'd say something like "The piece-rate approach to wages", or " Stalinist-era wage policies", or something like that. Actually I think that whole sentence could be recast: perhaps "The piece-rate approach to wages, which had been introduced in the first Five-Year Plan and had changed very little since then, was in practice highly inefficient."
I've made all of the above changes as you suggest. Coolug (talk) 20:52, 15 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • "... could better incentivize workers ...": I accept that "incentivize" is a real word, but I think this is not quite precise. It sounds to me as though the workers had plenty of incentive already, but the managers of the factories did not. Or is this in fact what Bulganin said, regardless of whether it reflected reality? If in fact there was a problem with worker incentives then I don't understand it at this point in the article. And if we could change "incentivize" to "motivate" or "encourage" in at least one or two places I'd like that; it's one of those words that some readers find annoying.
I have no idea of the exact wording that Bulganin used, but the source (Fearn page 13) states that he said the idea was to "provide better incentives". I think it's important to accurately reflect the source here. Coolug (talk) 20:52, 15 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • "The Five-Year Plan stated several key changes that would be made to Soviet workers wages": could this be simplified to "The Five-Year Plan made several key changes to Soviet workers wages"? If it didn't make the changes, but instigated or proposed them, then we could use those verbs instead, but I think "that would be made" is verbose.
  • "overall the reforms succeeded more in simply creating new problems for Soviet workers": a bit clumsy; how about "overall the reforms created more new problems for Soviet workers"?
  • "to attract workers into roles that had lost much of their attraction" -- can we avoid the repetition of "attract"?
  • In the first paragraph of "Conclusions" you have "Filtzer stresses" and "Filtzer cited"; please make the tense consistent.
  • "Storming" isn't defined till the conclusion section; if the definition is important (and I think it is) it should come much earlier, in the background section.
  • "This had led to a situation where workers who could not count on a western style meritocracy would have to rely on the decisions of their managers who needed to be able to reward workers based on their own arbitrary decisions rather than sticking to a centrally directed system of wages": I don't follow this; can you explain?
  • "hegemonic culture of consumerism": does "hegemonic" add anything to the explanation here? I think it can be cut.
  • "Filtzer notes that Soviet workers were constantly forced into a position of exerting more skill than called for in plans or norms, a condition only seen to such an extent in the West where industries were insulated from market forces, and as such workers and managers in the Soviet Union had many reasons to collude over setting wages, norms and skill expectations, even after the wage reform": another sentence I really don't understand.

-- Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 18:22, 15 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I've also made changes for all of these points now. I hope this makes the article a bit clearer. By the way, thanks for your helpful copyedits too! cya Coolug (talk) 21:14, 15 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Looks good. I will reread tomorrow and I hope to be able to support, on prose at least. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 02:31, 16 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I've switched to support above. I copyedited a little more; please fix anything I broke. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 02:01, 17 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Support (primarily prose) Comments from Noleander

  • Note: I did the Peer Review of this article, and already submitted several suggestions for improvement at that time.
  • Explain: "The reform's clearest effect was in reducing the proportion of Soviet industrial labour that was paid by way of piece-rate, ....". Probably should explain the other payment method that increased. Hourly wages?
Added an extra sentence to this part. I hope this helps clear things up. Coolug (talk) 09:51, 21 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Russian word: "a process known as "storming" was endemic ...". It would be great if the original russian word were supplied, since it is clearly an important idiom for this practice.
I've looked this up and stuck it in. If it's not formatted properly please do go ahead and amend it. I'm going to Kiev soon so I'll have to try and use this in a sentence :) Coolug (talk) 20:22, 21 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Why attribute? "Alec Nove wrote in 1966 ... that the lack of transparency ..". This attribution to Nove seems out of place. The assertion by Nove doesnt seem particularly controversial. Omit?
The earlier sentence reads "some academics believed" etc etc, which is followed by Nove writing about how these academics were missing the real reason that statistics were so rarely published. Because of this I think his name should be kept in, since his point goes against the more common perception. Coolug (talk) 09:43, 21 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Clarify socialism: " The Soviet elite would not radically change the labour process by democratising it and introducing socialism,...". I thought the USSR was socialist? If so, how could socialism be introduced? Please re-cast sentence to clarify for readers that may fall victim to similar confusion.
I've written this in more understandable language. Coolug (talk) 19:01, 22 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Current situation: It would be nice if the Conclusions section brought the reader up to date with a brief statement of how wages/payment evolved until the fall of the USSR. No need for a big treatise: but the article abruptly stops at 1962 ... what happened form 1962 to 1989? Did quotas remain common? Did the USSR experiment with hourly wages more? For example, see the article 1965 Soviet economic reform about a 1965 reform effort: would it be useful to readers to mention that in this article? Is the 1965 reform a logical follow-on to this article's reform?
Hey, I'd like to add something like this myself, however, there's not a huge amount of stuff out there in the world that deals with wages in the Soviet Union. I shall have a look to see if I have any sources knocking about, but I think it's doubtful I'll find anything. The 1965 Reform was basically a completely separate entity. In a nutshell it was about trying to get industrial enterprises to behave in a more 'market friendly' fashion. There were pay incentives included in the 65 reform, but they were aimed at industrial managers rather than the workers. Coolug (talk) 19:10, 22 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Footnote format: FN 25 is "Central Intelligence Agency (1961), page 2"; yet when I look down in References, I do not see CIA as I scan down the bullets. When using shortened footnotes, I believe the FN must contain an identifier that corresponds to a left-most text in the associated Reference. I know the blue link takes me to the correct place, but that is not reliable. I suggest either move CIA to the left of the Reference (as the author); or put "An Evaluation of .." in the Footnote text.
Done this one. Coolug (talk) 09:43, 21 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Leaning towards Support; if these items are resolved.

End Noleander comments. --Noleander (talk) 21:19, 20 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Hey, thanks for these helpful comments. I'll go through them as I get the chance and make some changes. cya Coolug (talk) 09:36, 21 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Opening two sentences. Logic problem.

"From 1956 through 1962, the Soviet Union attempted to implement wage reforms. The reforms took place during the Khrushchev era and were intended to move Soviet industrial workers away from overfulfillment of quotas, a mindset that had characterised the Soviet economy during the Stalinist period."

Whoever last edited this would have had a feeling it's unsatisfactory, but not known why. The problem lies in the placement of "The reforms took place during the Khrushchev era" in a sentence that otherwise explains the intention of the reforms, not the historical timing. Better, unless you can think of something better, might be:

"During the Khrushchev era, from 1956 through 1962, the Soviet Union attempted to implement wage reforms intended to move industrial workers away from the mindset of overfulfilling quotas, which had characterised the Soviet economy during the Stalinist period."

You might prefer a split, because the sentence is now rather long—either way would be OK: "... from the mindset of overfulfilling quotas; this mindset had characterised the Soviet economy during the Stalinist period."

I know I'm firm in tone when reviewing, but I didn't expect the "rubbish" comment: "Tony, just to be clear, are you opposing this nomination because the writing is rubbish? because the sources don't say as much as we'd like them to say? Or for both of these reasons?" It's for both reasons. But as I've said, I think this is an important topic, and I want to see it featured. I haven't re-read it, and will try to get time. I just want to demonstrate here that the first thing I spot-checked, the opening, is faulty. Tony (talk) 10:39, 21 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I've changed the opening sentence as you have suggested. I'll be the first to admit that I'm not the greatest writer in the world, and alone I'm never going to write an article where the prose is absolutely perfect. If anyone out there thinks something could be worded better please do be bold and fix it. Noleander, I shall have a look at the remaining point's you've raised when I'm at home and in front of the books. Thanks! cya Coolug (talk) 12:35, 21 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]


I think it's odd that this archived due to having "little support" - it's an article about wage reform in the soviet union - one of the most boring subjects in the universe - that four people could manage to read the whole thing through and support it without slipping into a coma is practically a miracle. Naturally something like this is never going to attract same level of attention as some family guy episode. Anyway, ce la vie. I have to say however, I have found this whole FAC quite demoralising. This is supposed to be a collaborative project and the one and only person who opposed the nomination could quite clearly see that I was never going to be able to write to his exacting standards, yet as is seen so often seen on wikipedia, those who hold this wonderful hidden knowledge of where exactly we should insert a comma and whether one should use a dash or an endash or something else entirely (presumably gained when the rest of us were reading books on soviet history) are not willing to just make a few changes to the article and fix the blasted thing. Anyway, life goes on, and I will always have that ridiculous day in october..... Coolug (talk) 09:10, 3 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.
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