The Soviet people meet the XXIV Congress of the CPSU with dignity. It has long been a tradition to organize a socialist competition in honor of the next party congress, to celebrate its work with labor exploits. When and how was this tradition born? Who initiated it? The Great October Socialist Revolution awakened the creative forces of the working class and the peasantry, and created the economic and political prerequisites for a conscious attitude to work. In the spring of 1919, during the days of deadly military danger, the first communist subbotniks were born in the Soviet Republic. Calling them the "great initiative", the heroism of the workers in the rear, V. I. Lenin emphasized their significance: "Communism begins where the selfless, overcoming hard work, concern of ordinary workers for increasing labor productivity appears."1 . The Ninth Congress of the RCP (b) (March - April 1920), in its resolution "On the immediate tasks of economic construction," noted the great role of labor education of the masses for "increasing the intensity and expediency of labor." The resolution stated: "Competition is a powerful force for raising labor productivity." 2 In the mid-1920s, socialist competition was already quite widespread. In the years of the first five-year plan, when the USSR was implementing the program of a full-scale offensive of socialism on the entire front and laying a solid foundation for the socialist economy, the competition was marked by a new scale. By this time, the country had created all the conditions for its transformation into a broad mass movement: the socialized industrial sector determined the development of the economy, the technical re-equipment of industry began, the political and labor activity of workers increased, and their role in economic construction increased. The heroic traditions of the first years of Soviet power were not only preserved, but also multiplied by the working people. The impetus for the development of mass socialist ... Читать далее