twenty-five-thousander

Twenty-five-thousanders (Russian: двадцатипятитысячники, dvadtsatipyatitysyachniki) was a collective name for the frontline workers from the major industrial cities of the Soviet Union who voluntarily left their urban homes for rural areas at the call of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) to improve the performance of kolkhozes during the agricultural collectivisation in the Soviet Union in early 1930. In November 1929, the plenum of the Central Committee of the Communist Party issued a decree on sending 25,000 workers with sufficient organizational and political experience to the rural areas to work in kolkhozy and in Machine and Tractor Stations (MTS). The decree found a broad response among the workers of the country, but they often had to fight resistance from their factories, ...