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The Will to Labor: A Conceptual History of the Will in the Stakhanovite Movement and Stalinist Ideology
This article integrates an examination of major philosophies of the will, their interpretations by Bolshevik theorists, and their manifestations in the Stakhanovite movement. Through empirical analysis, it has distilled three major non-Marxist philosophical currents in the discourse on the Stakhanovite movement: Nietzsche’s will to power, Kant’s will as practical reason, and Rousseau’s general will. Each of these philosophers articulated distinct theories of the will and were widely read among the Russian intelligentsia of the early twentieth century. Bolshevik thinkers engaged with the works of these philosophers, whose ideas would find resonance in the Stakhanovite movement: the rational will, anchored to the categorical imperatives of the Communist Party, enabled the Stakhanovites to transcend human nature and become new Soviet men. Even if Nietzsche, Kant, and Rousseau may not have directly influenced the Stalinist leadership, the present article contends that their works can help to elucidate the meanings and functions of the will in Soviet ideology.
Arising from a synthesis of intellectual traditions, the Stalinist will was able to exhibit various properties in different contexts and assume functions not available from a strictly materialist Marxist worldview. In practice, it resolved tensions and contradictions between dialectical opposites, bridging the subjective and objective, the individual and the collective, the spontaneous and the conscious. It was to unite creative enthusiasm with historical necessity, the energy of the collective with the imperatives of a single leader, spontaneous initiative with conscious ideological conviction. This multifaceted nature of the will lent itself to the Stalinist agenda of mobilizing labor to construct the Soviet industrial base and the world’s first socialist society.