From the Editor
Diverse in content, publications of this issue expand the range of a retrospective analysis of the boundaries and possibilities of the Soviet state policy in the sphere of labour, and the reaction of society and individuals to the dogmas and principles of universality and obligation of labour contained in such a policy. The papers are placed in three sections reflecting the themes of the Soviet labour: etatisation of labour (general issues); labour as a socio-political resource of power; routinisation of work. In the first of them, the problems of the limits of monopolisation of the labour potential of the country's active population by the party state, the costs and results of the centralised management and control over population are posed and analysed. The second section includes papers in which the authors study various aspects of the practical implementation of the state labour policy, the core of which was the mechanisms for transforming the potential of various segments of the able-bodied population into a controlled socio-political resource of the party power. The third section is represented by the articles which reflect different aspects of everyday work, where the phenomenon of labour routinisation is visibly embodied (wages, material and living conditions of workers, organisation and management of labour processes at the level of individual production associations and enterprises, etc.).