Livreur au café Allain

Robert Doisneau: Livreur au café Allain, rue de Seine, Paris 6º, 1953

The Stakhanovites

The Stakhanovite movement began during the Soviet second 5-year plan in 1935 as a new stage of socialist competition. The Stakhanovite movement took its name from Aleksei Grigorievich Stakhanov, who had mined 102 tons of coal in less than 6 hours (14 times his quota) on 31 August 1935. However, Stakhanovite followers would soon "break" his record.

The Stakhanovite movement, supported and led by the Communist Party, soon spread over other industries of the Soviet Union.

On November 14–17, 1935, the 1st All-Union Stakhanovite Conference took place at the Kremlin. The conference emphasized the outstanding role of the Stakhanovite movement in the socialist re-construction of the national economy.

Female Stakhanovites emerged more seldom than male ones, but a quarter of all trade-union women were designated as "norm-breaking". A preponderance of rural Stakhanovites were women, working as milkmaids, calf tenders, and fieldworkers.

The press, literature and films praised Stakhanov and other "model workers", urging other workers to emulate their heroic examples. The achievements of Stakhanovites served as an argument in favor of increasing work quotas.

Opposition to the movement merited the label of "wrecker".

The Shock Worker of Communist Labour

The Shock Worker of Communist Labour was an official title of honour awarded in the Soviet Union to those who displayed exemplary performance in labour discipline ("Udarniks"). It was awarded with a badge and certificate, as well as a cash prize.

 The title originated in the late 1950s in a competition in honour of the XXI Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, to further develop the communist attitude towards work and the creation of the material-technical basis for the development of communism and education towards a communist society. It was also awarded through the Young Communist League.

The aims of the movement were as follows:

•  Fight for the new man
•  Education on the communist attitude toward work
•   Education on collectivist principles
•   Increase in professional skills
•  Combining work and study
•  Strengthening of labour discipline
•  Overcoming and improving poor working conditions
•  Acquisition of related professions
•  Improvement of product quality
•  Development of modern technology
•  Overcoming small proprietors, religion, and other remnants of the capitalist past
• Improvement in morale and behaviour
•  Increased social activity among team members

Railway Blues

Typical in Workers Blues are the railroad workers; be it the engine drivers or the folks laying the tracks. 

French Work Jacket - unknown manufacture - 1920's

 
Repaired on numerous occasions, this 1920s French work jacket has some distinctive elements like a small collar and a top button. It is the witness of an era and an environment where clothes were repaired more than once, before they were dumped.

Adolphe Lafont

Vintage advertising by Adolphe Lafont, one of France's big bleu de travail manufacturers.

Mao Suits

A close relative of the Bleu de Travail is the Mao Suit.

After the end of the Chinese Civil War and the establishment of the People's Republic of China in 1949, such suits came to be worn widely by males and government leaders as a symbol of proletarian unity and an Eastern counterpart to the Western business suit. The name "Mao suit" comes from Chinese leader Mao Zedong's fondness for wearing them in public, so that the garment became closely associated with him and with Chinese communism in general in the Western imagination. Although they fell into disuse among the general public in the 1990s due to increasing Western influences, they are still commonly worn by Chinese leaders during important state ceremonies and functions.