The history of Stakhanov's feat, however, tells a somewhat different story. The push for a record on the night of Aug. 30 was, in fact, carefully planned and prepared by the Communist Party organization of the Tsentralnaya-Irmino mine in the Donets basin.
The mines, short of skilled workers and machinery, were failing to produce their quotas of coal. The party tapped Stakhanov, a little-educated, hard-working peasant-turned-miner, to set a record that would become an inspiration and example.
Konstantin G. Petrov, the chief of the mine's party organization, recalled that Stakhanov's wife strenuously resisted his attempt to make her husband a hero until she was silenced with the gift of a cow.
To increase Stakhanov's chances, the pattern of work was changed to free him from his usual task of shoring up the tunnel as he dug into the seam. Instead, two timberers followed after him, and Mr. Petrov himself held a light to the coal-face.
What Stakhanov did, to be sure, was still impressive, especially with the unreliable jackhammers of those days. Contemporaries described the big miner wrestling his hammer for hours, coal dust choking his throat and nose and grinding between his teeth.
''I suppose Stakhanov need not have been the first,'' said Mr. Petrov in an interview several years ago. ''It could have been anybody else. In the final analysis it was not the individual face-worker who determined whether the attempt to break the record would succeed, but the new system of coal extraction.
https://www.nytimes.com/1985/08/31/world/in-soviet-eager-bea...