Piecework, Signalling And The Sovietisation Of The East German Workplace

This paper examines the introduction of piecework, a key aspect of the Soviet workplace, in occupied East Germany. As elsewhere, its implementation encountered persistent hostility from the workforce. What made this episode different, though, was that this process occured within a context of acute economic and political uncertanty. As this paper demonstrates, the party's various efforts to control the workplace helped to lay the foundations for the Sovietisation of East Germany. This paper utilises a wide range of primary souces to recount this story. It focuses its attention not juston worker resistance, but also on the interactions between party and worker, between the Soviet military and German communists and within the party accquired control of the economy and then learnt how to direct it. To achieve the latter, it first needed to learn how to control and direct itself. This paper also illustrates the importance of signalling mechanisms in a planned economy.