Personal Stories
The Story of Yakov Zhuk - a foreman of a shop at the Solikamsk Potash Combine
Before the war, Yakov Filippovich Zhuk worked as an engineer at the Dnieper Magnesium Plant in the city of Zaporozhye, Zaporozhye region of the Ukraine Republic. In the autumn of 1941, he was evacuated to the city of Solikamsk, Molotov region, where he began working as a foreman of a shop at the Solikamsk Potash Combine. In a short time, Yakov achieved the fulfillment of production standards through the workers of his workshop. He was attentive to his subordinates and enjoyed a well-deserved authority in the workshop.
In June 1943, a group of workers arrived at the Solikamsk Potash Combine from the Uzbek Soviet Socialist Republic. Earlier, almost all of them were engaged in agriculture, worked in collective and state farms in the Fergana Valley and had no experience of working at industrial enterprises. The situation was aggravated by the fact that many of the Uzbek workers sent to the Urals through labor mobilization had little or no command of Russian.
Some of the Uzbek workers were supposed to work in the Zhuk’s workshop. Seeing the bewilderment of the new workers who found themselves in a noisy factory hall, quite unusual for them, Yakov greeted them in a friendly way, shaking hands with each of them. Then he led the Uzbek workers through the shop, explaining the purpose of the equipment and the nature of the production, sometimes in words, and sometimes with the help of gestures and facial expressions. Then Zhuk assigned experienced workers to the Uzbek team who were supposed to teach them the basics of production. Despite the fact that the foreman of the shop had a huge number of things to do, Yakov Filippovich for several weeks approached each of the Uzbek workers, found out how he was doing and whether the worker had any requests or wants. Having quickly identified which of the Uzbek workers had a good command of the Russian language, Y.F.Zhuk asked them to be translators when communicating with those who spoke Russian poorly.
Once Yakov Filippovich invited a group of Uzbek workers to his home and they had a long friendly conversation. The Uzbeks told Y.F. Zhuk about their families, about life in the Fergana Valley, about the customs of the Uzbek people. Yakov Filippovich, in turn, told them about the city of Zaporozhye, where he used to live and work before the war, and about the difficulties he himself faced when he was evacuated to the city of Solikamsk. The guests spoke to Y.F. Zhuk about their relatives serving in the Red Army, and he, in turn, instilled in them the understanding that Uzbeks working at the Solikamsk Potash Combine help their relatives to bring victory over the enemy closer.
All this led to the fact that Yakov Filippovich quickly gained a well-deserved authority among the Uzbek workers and it affected the quality of their work. Soon, almost all Uzbek workers in the workshop of Y.F. Zhuk mastered the technological process well, began to work independently on their sites and carry out production tasks. There were advanced among them workers who far exceeded production standards.
At the end of 1944, Uzbek workers who worked at the Solikamsk Potash Combine were given the opportunity to return to their republic. However, many of them remembered for many years the foreman of the workshop Y.F. Zhuk, whose attentive and sensitive attitude towards the representatives of the Uzbek Republic helped them not only to cope with the difficulties caused by the harsh Ural climate and unusual working conditions, but also to become good workers of the Solikamsk Potash Combine capable of performing the work entrusted to them with high quality and on time.
PermGASPI. Form 5738. Op. 27. D.149. L. 78
Lysva
Solikamsk
Berezniki
