The processes and difficulties of postwar reconstruction of the labor force can be seen clearly in the following two case histories. At the Kirov Machine-Building Works in Leningrad (formerly the Putilov Works), the number of workers fluctuated erratically in the three years after the siege. In 1944 the plant's work force grew by 5,638 workers, in 1945 it shrank by 430, and then in 1946 it rose by 1,178.106 Each change seems to have caught plant officials by surprise and made planning for training and production nearly impossible. Higher labor turnover afflicted the entire heavy machine-building industry. Overall, 27.2 percent of work- ers in the industry'S plants reportedly left their jobs in 1945 and 30.5 percent in 1946. 107
Living and working conditions for the plant's labor force were difficult. A doctor at the plant's clinic reported in 1945 that the factory did not have even one functional women's bathroom and that in the cafeteria there were only 100 plates and 10 glasses for every 300 people. 108 In addition, 40 percent ofthe plant's workers in late 1945 lived in barracks- a hardship that many workers found particularly irritating because alternate housing had been found for all the engineering-technical personnel. 109 Compared to the horrors of the siege, these difficulties seem trifling, and it is probably fair to say that Kirov workers were better cared for than most residents ofpost-siege Leningrad. But, as the Soviet Union began peacetime reconstruction, the Kirov plant had to compete for workers, especially skilled workers, with enterprises across the country, and the deprivations of war-ravaged Leningrad weakened its drawing power. As a consequence, in the 1940s the Kirov plant's work force, like the Leningrad population as a whole, went from being one of the most educated and most highly skilled in the Soviet Union to one that was relatively unskilled and undisciplined.