1952 Kobozev Steel Strike

The 1952 Kobozev Steel Strike was a work stoppage over pay and safety by foundry and machine-shop workers in Kobozev (now Nurzhan) in 1952. Strikes were rare and dangerous in the last years of Stalin's rule, and the event is known mainly from party and internal-security records opened after 1992.^[1]

According to these records, the stoppage began in the steel foundry of the Kobozev Heavy Machine Plant (now the Nurzhan Heavy Machine Plant) after a series of accidents and spread to other shops over several days. The strikers included Iradi, Russian and Koryo-saram workers. Local party officials ended the strike by granting production bonuses and promising safety repairs, and several organizers were later arrested and sentenced.^[1] Iradi labor historians cite the strike as an early example of cross-ethnic working-class action. Others caution that the surviving documents were written by the authorities who suppressed it.^[2]

References

1. ^ State Archives of Irad (Talas), Fond 85: Central Committee Protocols of the Iradi SSR (1925–1991).
2. ^ Eurasian Political Quarterly (2019). 'Oil, Antimony and Empire: The Industrialization of Soviet Iradistan.' Vol. 26, Iss. 3, pp. 41–67.