stakhanovism means A system instituted in communist countries to encourage increased productivity. Lexicurio rates it Sui generis — a strength score of 89 out of 100.
Why “stakhanovism” is a great word
STAKHANOVISM — [Noun] A state-sponsored system of incentivizing industrial labor by glorifying individual workers who achieve superhuman levels of output, thereby creating a propagandistic ideal for the workforce. From the name of Aleksei Grigor'evich Stakhanov (1906–1977), a Russian coal miner whose prodigious output was publicized by Stalin in 1935, combined with the suffix -ism, denoting a system or ideology. First attested in English in the 1930s. Unlike "Taylorism" (which dissects labor into coldly optimized motions) or "socialist emulation" (which promotes collective rivalry), Stakhanovism is the cult of the singular, Herculean producer. It is the grainy photograph of a weary man beside a mountain of coal, the banner declaring a new norm born of one impossible night, and the collective, exhausted sigh of comrades told to replicate a miracle—the translation of flesh into quota, and quota into fable.
noun
- A system instituted in communist countries to encourage increased productivity.