GalleryCommon Aspirations
As in the other Soviet republics, there is a widespread movement in Latvia to increase mechanisation and automation.
At each industrial enterprise the workers are making every effort to raise labour productivity steeply and increase output, and thereby to accelerate technical progress.
In the course of the first four years of the seven-year period thirty-two Latvian enterprises will be turned into models of comprehensive mechanisation and automation. Their experience will then be followed by other factories and mills of the same type.
Comprehensive automation and mechanisation are the major factors in achieving the 50 per cent rise in labour productivity called for by the seven-year plan. By the end of the seven-year period Latvian industry will have saved 1,340 million roubles through higher labour productivity and lower production costs. This sum is sufficient to build 670 five-storey blocks of flats.
Another way in which money will be saved is by implementing innovation proposals and inventions, which more than 19,000 workers have offered this year alone. This will lead to a saving of about 1,000 million roubles during the seven years.
Among the scientists, technicians, writers and actors of the Latvian Republic who were recently awarded State Prizes is V. Bush of the VEF electrical works in Riga. He and a group of fellow workers were given a first prize for original designs of automatic machine tools, semi-automatic machine tools and automatic lines that yield an annual saving of 14 million roubles.
Bush is one of the best workers at the VEF factory. In recent years he has made dozens of suggestions on ways of improving automatisation in production. Some of them have made work one hundred times more productive.
No one, however, is left unemployed when machines are introduced to perform his work. He is given other work that is often more highly paid.
Emulation for the right to the title of Communist Work Team is wide-spread in Latvia. This emulation is playing an important part in instilling a yet higher standard of ethics in Soviet people.
Members of the competing teams pledge to work in exemplary fashion, support any proposal for innovation at their enterprise, add to their general and political knowledge, behave in communist fashion both at work and at home, help one another, and set an example of good citizenship.
Latvia now has more than 700 teams competing for the title.
Every Soviet citizen, no matter where he works, is concerned with how he can help to fulfil the seven-year plan ahead of schedule.
Alfred Kliva, lathe operator at the "Kompressor" works in Riga, has proposed that each worker should try to calculate how he can carry out his personal seven-year plan ahead of time.
After making a thorough study of the machine he operates, Kliva decided that his quota for the seven years can be fulfilled in four-and-a-half years. He intends to raise his labour productivity 30 to 35 per cent by employing highly-productive tools and devices on his lathe.
He has already suggested two innovations, but feels he can do more. To acquire the knowledge that will enable him to advance, Kliva has enrolled at the Riga special courses for technical progress.
Kliva's example is being followed at industrial establishments all over the republic. At the "Kompressor" works alone more than 120 men and women have pledged to fulfil their personal seven-year plans ahead of schedule.
The initiative shown by lathe-operator Kliva is evidence of the high technical standards and patriotic attitude of this rank-and file worker reared by the Communist Party. His thoughts and aspirations are shared by every Soviet person.
as part of the series "THE FIFTEEN SOVIET SOCIALIST REPUBLICS OF TODAY AND TOMMORROW."
We do not endorse the Soviet account of historical events or their circumstances contained therein as factual.
