{"title":"<i>Tukhta</i>: labour and resistance in the audit regime of the Soviet Gulag","authors":"John Welsh","doi":"10.1080/0023656x.2023.2253155","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"Working from the memoir literature of Soviet Gulag survivors, the article explores the curious practice of tukhta as contrived by the toiling zeks of the archipelago. In a labour regime tasked with accumulating surplus, destroying political dissent, and transforming the subjectivity of the imprisoned, tukhta proved to be a tactical means for resisting the logic of Gulag as an audit regime. The subtle labour control of numbers effected by Gulag demanded equally sophisticated practices of resistance on the part of the zeks subjected to its technique, and tukhta was one of those practices. When treated as a kind of phronesis, the informal and ethical quality to the practice of tukhta can be appreciated in a way that more formal social scientific epistemology and historical method would miss. Perhaps the most salient counter-conduct to be found in the experiences of Gulag’s orchestration of labour control, tukhta has the potential to reveal a great deal about audit regimes generically beyond the historical bounds of Soviet Russia. Historical inspiration for engaging audit regimes can therefore be derived from the ethico-political practice of tukhta, where otherwise there might just be pessimism, demoralization, and resigned acceptance to the awesome power of those regimes.","PeriodicalId":45777,"journal":{"name":"Labor History","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.7000,"publicationDate":"2023-09-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Labor History","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1080/0023656x.2023.2253155","RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"HISTORY","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Working from the memoir literature of Soviet Gulag survivors, the article explores the curious practice of tukhta as contrived by the toiling zeks of the archipelago. In a labour regime tasked with accumulating surplus, destroying political dissent, and transforming the subjectivity of the imprisoned, tukhta proved to be a tactical means for resisting the logic of Gulag as an audit regime. The subtle labour control of numbers effected by Gulag demanded equally sophisticated practices of resistance on the part of the zeks subjected to its technique, and tukhta was one of those practices. When treated as a kind of phronesis, the informal and ethical quality to the practice of tukhta can be appreciated in a way that more formal social scientific epistemology and historical method would miss. Perhaps the most salient counter-conduct to be found in the experiences of Gulag’s orchestration of labour control, tukhta has the potential to reveal a great deal about audit regimes generically beyond the historical bounds of Soviet Russia. Historical inspiration for engaging audit regimes can therefore be derived from the ethico-political practice of tukhta, where otherwise there might just be pessimism, demoralization, and resigned acceptance to the awesome power of those regimes.
期刊介绍:
Labor History is the pre-eminent journal for historical scholarship on labor. It is thoroughly ecumenical in its approach and showcases the work of labor historians, industrial relations scholars, labor economists, political scientists, sociologists, social movement theorists, business scholars and all others who write about labor issues. Labor History is also committed to geographical and chronological breadth. It publishes work on labor in the US and all other areas of the world. It is concerned with questions of labor in every time period, from the eighteenth century to contemporary events. Labor History provides a forum for all labor scholars, thus helping to bind together a large but fragmented area of study. By embracing all disciplines, time frames and locales, Labor History is the flagship journal of the entire field. All research articles published in the journal have undergone rigorous peer review, based on initial editor screening and refereeing by at least two anonymous referees.