AIK Kuzbass

Almost from the very beginning of its existence, the Soviet government considered it desirable to use foreign capital, knowledge and experience through the conclusion of concession agreements , which was reflected in the corresponding decision of the First All-Russian Congress of Councils of the National Economy held in December 1917 ^[1] .

Since 1921, the country began the restoration of the national economy, significantly undermined by the policy of " war communism ." The restoration of the heavy industry of Kuzbass was proclaimed one of the paramount tasks. At the Tenth Party Congress , V.I. Lenin said that the fuel crisis led to the need to spend gold on the purchase of coal abroad, the fuel hunger that swept the country threatened with grave consequences .

V.I. Lenin, realizing that the economic crisis in Russia is too deep and that industry in the young Soviet Republic cannot be restored on its own, wrote the "Letter to the American Workers . " In this letter, Lenin called on the workers of the Communist Parties of the advanced countries to help organize a new industrial base for the new workers' state.

Foreign workers, mostly Americans, led by Sebald Rutgers , Bill Heywood and G.S. Calvert , responded to the Soviet government. The response contained a proposal to establish a colony of foreign workers and specialists in Kuzbass. They met with V.I. Lenin in Moscow in September 1921. On behalf of the Industrial Workers of the World, this group expressed its desire to commission the Nadezhda Metallurgical Plant and part of the Kuznetsk Coal Basin in Siberia and the Urals and organize an industrial colony of American workers there.

The Kuzbass Society was created in the United States, combining American organizations that recruited volunteers to work in the colony. In March 1922, an announcement was published in a number of US communist publications: “Pioneers are needed for Siberia! .. For industrial construction ... to support the Russian revolution and to demonstrate to the world what free workers can do when their talent is not hindered by the profit system and when they themselves are the owners and sole owners of the products of their labor. ” The negotiation process between representatives of the Soviet authorities and the American initiative group continued until the end of 1921 ^[2] .

The agreement between the Council of Labor and Defense (STO) and the board of colonists composed of Bill Haywood , D. Bayer, Sebald Rutgers and others on the creation of an autonomous industrial colony "Kuzbass" was signed on December 25, 1921 in Moscow. Under this agreement, the colonists received at the disposal of a mine in the Kemerovo region, a plant under construction for the production of coke and 10 thousand hectares of land for agricultural purposes. Foreigners, in turn, pledged to work in Russia for at least 2 years, live according to the laws of the RSFSR and obey all resolutions of the service station. The colonists pledged to restore all the enterprises transferred to them and to purchase the advanced equipment necessary for mines and production abroad. The Soviet government categorically insisted on the condition that all financing and supply of American workers would be carried out without raising funds from the Soviet budget. At the initiative of Lenin, the leaders and members of the colony had to give a “subscription” in that they pledged and would collectively be responsible for ensuring that “only people capable and willing to consciously endure a number of hardships inevitably associated with the restoration of industry in the country came to Russia” very backward and unheard of ravaged ” ^[2] .

The American side, represented by Rutgers, equally categorically objected to the Supreme Economic Council’s interference in the affairs of the "autonomous industrial colony." Serious contradictions between the Soviet authorities in the person of V.V. Kuybyshev and S. Rutgers prevented the practical steps to transfer Kuzbass to operation, including the financial conditions and the composition of the members of the board (organizing committee) of the colony from American workers, subject to approval by the Labor and Defense Council (only during 1921-1922 the question of creating a colony was discussed at meetings of the STO more than 20 times). In addition, L. K. Martens received skepticism about a group of American enthusiasts, who described Calvert as “not solid”, Haywood as “only an agitator, semi-anarchist,” and Rutgers as “a wonderful comrade, propagandist,” but “hardly an administrator " ^[3] .

Foreigners examined many areas of Kuzbass ( Kuznetsk , Bachaty , Guryevsk , Kiselevsk , Kolchugino ). The Kemerovo Rudnik turned out to be the most suitable, in which there was the necessary infrastructure and labor resources.

The official registration of the AIC took place on December 22, 1922. About 8 thousand people were employed at the colony enterprises by the end of 1923. The majority were represented by Soviet workers. At the first stage, the colony was handed over the mines of the Kemerovo mine and coke ovens, by 1923 the Kolchuginsky, Prokopyevsky and Kiselevsky mines were added.

Then two representative offices of AIK in New York and Berlin opened, which were engaged in the search for workers for the colony and made purchases of equipment. The colony's activities were covered in the Kuzbass Bulletin, regularly published in New York, published by the Kuzbass Society ^[2] .

About 750 workers and specialists arrived from abroad to work at AIC enterprises in the Kuznetsk basin. The ethnic composition of the colonists was quite diverse, there were Americans, Finns, Germans, Yugoslavs, Russians (about 30 nationalities in total). Despite the fact that the basis of the colony was represented by foreigners, a significant percentage of the workers were Russian miners, their number was in the region of 5000 people. According to the data of 1923, about 500 Americans were enrolled in it instead of the planned 3 thousand (in total, 560 foreigners worked in the colony) ^[2] . The official name of the colony did not mention the predominantly American composition of the volunteer contingent that worked in it, but in the press and even in official documents it often appeared under the name “American Colony” ^[2] .

The colony was headed by an engineer, the Dutch communist Sebald Rutgers , who left this post in 1926 for health reasons ^[2] .

The colonists, together with the Soviet government, sought to make AIK an independent industrial unit on the territory of the Kuznetsk basin. Moreover, AIK claimed the right of a model enterprise, which the rest should equal. But the main task for foreigners was the restoration and development of the heavy coal industry of Kuzbass. The center of their activity was the Kemerovo region , where the main enterprises and the board of the entire organization were located.

Kutkin, a Russian engineer who replaced Rutgers as the head of the AIK, turned against himself the entire foreign colony, which led to its gradual elimination. Judging by the absence of any mention of the initiative of Rutgers and his associates in the Soviet official reference sources after 1921, the activities of the AIK did not bring the expected results ^[2] .

AIK Kuzbass, during its existence, has reconstructed a number of mines, built and put into production the first chemical plant for coke processing in Russia, and organized an advanced agricultural farm. Under the AIK, villages and villages were massively electrified in the Kemerovo region, well-maintained areas were built in the cities of Kuzbass.

Despite some successes, the contract with AIK was terminated on December 28, 1926 . Some specialists ^{[ what? ]} they believe that the industrial colony paid off in the recovery period with its limited production, but when socialist industrialization began, the pace of development increased sharply, the scale of industry expanded, the AIC could no longer maintain efficiency with its own special form of organization.

Since 1923, foreign experts, in particular Americans, began to be arrested and repressed , some were shot in the 1930s. A significant part of the Americans returned to the United States ^[2] .

By 1926, no more than 10 colonists remained in Russia, who soon left for other cities of the country. One of the leaders of the AIK is the hereditary worker of the Ford plant in Detroit and the first elected mayor of the American village in Kuzbass, John Tuchelsky, after the liquidation of the AIK (1927), transferred to the Gorky Automobile Plant and was repressed in 1938 . In the Soviet encyclopedic reference books, there is no mention of AIC and its noticeable contribution to the industrial development of Siberia .

• Industrial workers of the world

• Coal industry of Kuzbass: 1721-1996 / K.A. Zabolotskaya, A.A. Haliulina, Z. G. Karpenko and others. - Kemerovo Book Publishing House, 1997. - P. 39-301 - ISBN 5-7550- 0430-7
• History of Kuzbass Ch. 1-2 / A.I. Martynov, M.G. Yelkin, V.I. Matyushchenko; [Ch. ed. A. P. Okladnikov] - Kemerovo Book Publishing House, 1967. - P. 340—355.
• JP Morray Project Kuzbas: American Workers in Siberia (1921-1926) - NY: International Publishers, 1983.