Aleksei Gastev

Portrait of Gastev by Z. Tolkachev, 1923.

Aleksei Kapitonovich Gastev (Алексей Капитонович Гастев) (1882, Suzdal - 1939) was an early proponent of the scientific management of labour and an avant-garde poet.

Chronology

Taken from Johansson 1981: 7-8.

• 1882 Born in Suzdal'.
• 1898 or 1899 Enters the Moscow Teachers' College.
• 1900 Joins the Social-Democratic Party.
• 1902 Expelled from the college. Arrested.
• 1903 Sentenced to three years exile.
• 1904 Flees to Paris. Pubhshes short story "The Accursed Question" in Geneva.
• 1905 Professional revolutionary, active in the cities of Ivanovo-Voznesensk, Kostroma and Jaroslavl'.
• 1906 Delegate to the RSDRP's fourth congress in Stockholm. Arrested in Moscow. Sentenced to three years exile. Escapes to Paris. Returns to Russia in the fall.
• 1907 Work and family life in Petersburg under assumed names.
• 1910 Contributor to Zhizn' dlya vsekh. Moves to Paris.
• 1913 Returns to Russia. Contributes to Pravda.
• 1914 Arrested. Exiled to Narym for four years.
• 1915 Flight to Tomsk and then to Novo-Nikolaevsk.
• 1916 The poem in prose "Ekspress". Contributor to the newspaper Golos Sibiri.
• 1917 Returns to Petrograd. Writes for several journals and newspa­pers. Elected general secretary of the All-Russian Metal­-Workers' Union.
• 1918 First edition of Poeziya rabochego udara. To the Ukraine in the fall.
• 1919 Appointed Commissar of the All-Ukrainian Art Soviet in Kharkiv.
• 1920 Moves to Moscow. The beginning of the Institute of Labour.
• 1921 Publication of Pachka orderov in Riga.
• 1923 Fifth edition of PRU.
• 1926 Sixth edition of PRU.
• 1931 Becomes member of Communist Party.
• 1932 Appointed chairman of the Soviet Bureau of Standardiza­tion.
• 1934 Takes part in international congress on standardization in Stockholm.
• 1936 Organizes training of Stakhanovites.
• 1938 Arrested.
• 1941 Officially declared dead on 1 October.
• 1956 Rehabilitated.

Works

• Vosstanie kultury, Kharkov: Molodoy rabochiy, 1923. (Russian)
• Novaia kul'turnaia ustanovka, Moscow: VtsSPS-TsIT, 1924. (Russian)
• Poeziya rabochego udara [Поэзия рабочего удара], Moscow: Sovetskii pisatel', 1964; 1971. (Russian)
• Kak nado rabotat': prakticheskoe vvedenie v nauku organizatsii truda [Как надо работать?], Moscow: VDSPS, 1924; Moscow: Ekonomika, 1966; 1972. Compilation of pamphlets and articles issued under the title of a work originally published in the 1920s. (Russian)
• Trudovye ustanovki [Трудовые установки], Moscow: Ekonomika, 1973. (Russian)

Kurt Johansson, Aleksej Gastev: Proletarian Bard of the Machine Age, Log, PDF.

Literature

• Kendall A. Bailes, "Alexei Gastev and the Soviet Controversy over Taylorism 1918-1924", Soviet Studies 3 (1977). (English)
• Zenovia A. Sochor, "Soviet Taylorism Revisited", Soviet Studies 33:2 (1981), pp 246-264. (English)
• Kurt Johansson, Aleksej Gastev: Proletarian Bard of the Machine Age, Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell, 1983, 170 pp. (English)
• Rolf Hellebust, Flesh to Metal: Soviet Literature and the Alchemy of Revolution, Cornell University Press, 2003, x+221 pp. [1]. Reviews: Anemone (SEEJ 2004), Brintlinger (CSP 2005), Jenks (TC 2005). (English)
• Ross Wolfe, "The ultra-Taylorist Soviet utopianism of Aleksei Gastev; Further notes on Taylorism and socialism", The Charnel House blog, 7 Dec 2011. (English)
• Julia Vaingurt, "Poetry in Motion: Aleksei Gastev and the Aesthetic Origins of Soviet Biomechanics", ch 2 in Vaingurt, Wonderlands of the Avant-Garde: Technology and the Arts in Russia of the 1920s, Northwestern University Press, 2013, pp 25-53. (English)

See also

• Computing and cybernetics in CEE#former Soviet Union

Links

• Gastev at Wikipedia