The Evolution of Mass Production

In 1932, following an agreement with Ford, it was overtaken by a car plant, the Gorky Automobile Factory, erected in Nizhny Novgorod and employing 32,000 workers (a quarter ofthem young women). Conditions in these Soviet behemoths were better than in factories in the early phase of industrialisation in England or America, and certainly better than in the countryside. In the “workers’ state” it was better to be a factory worker than a peasant (even if we discount the horrors of collectivisation).