Management of Labor Resources in the USSR in the Context of Addressing Contemporary Personnel Issues

Abstract

The paper examines methods of labor resource management in the USSR during the 1950s—1970s. It analyzes materials from CPSU congresses in which shifts in labor policy can be traced. The study identifies certain problems in the organization of labor that bear similarities to contemporary issues. The key questions of labor organization in the postwar period were personnel selection, growth in productivity, material incentives, and the strengthening of labor discipline. In the 1960s, such methods of cultivating a proper attitude toward labor as persuasion and education were widely employed. Idleness, drunkenness, and bureaucratism were declared survivals of capitalism. The article notes that in the late 1960s and early 1970s the role of law as a means of governance in the sphere of labor increased, which led to the further development of Soviet labor legislation, including the drafting and promulgation of the 1971 Labor Code of the RSFSR.