science

Twenty-five-thousander

Twenty-five-thousander is a science topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Twenty-five-thousander rather than just read about it. In short: 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 No…

Key takeaways

Twenty-five-thousander belongs to science; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Twenty-five-thousander to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Twenty-five-thousander from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

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, which needed them to fill production quotas. In her history of the movement, Lynne Viola wrote:

The recruitment drive illustrated the sometimes contradictory nature of the first five-year plan revolution, which aimed for the maximum in economic modernization while at the same time insisting that modernization occur within the parameters of the social and political guidelines of the proletarian dictatorship. The factories were required to increase production while releasing their best workers for participation in the numerous mobilizations of skilled workers for promotion in the bureaucracy, the purge of the state administration, enrollment in higher technical education, and work in the countryside. The consequences of these contradictory demands were frequently inconsistency, disorder, and an uneasy balance between different institutional concerns, revealing a side of Soviet politics lacking unity of purpose and divided by differing interests. In the recruitment of the 25,000ers this meant that ultimately the state had to circumvent factory officialdom and, with the aid of the party organs, appeal directly to workers over the head of resistant factory officials for support in the campaign. And the result was that, in spite of the opposition of factory officials and problems in campaign implementation, the recruitment drive was an enormous success.

As a result, 27,519 people were selected from all over the Soviet Union and sent to work in the kolkhozy. Analysis of the social structure of 23,409 twenty-five-thousanders with personal files reveals:

Males - 92.3%, females - 7.7% Members of the CPSU - 69.9% Members of the Komsomol - 8.6% Members of the Metal Workers Union - approx. 16,000 Individuals with no party affiliation - 21.5% Up to 5 years of work experience - 13% 5 to 12 years of work experience - 39% More than 12 years of work experience - 48% To prepare the twenty-five-thousanders for work in the rural areas, the Soviets organized special courses. Some volunteers were sent to sovkhozy for two or three months as interns. Most of the twenty-five-thousanders were sent directly to kolkhozy in the principal cereal regions of the country, such as Ukraine, North Caucasus, Lower and Middle Volga, the Black Earth Region and others. The twenty-five-thousanders took part in establishing new kolkhozy and in strengthening the weak ones, conducting political, educational and cultural work among the inhabitants of the rural areas. They assisted kolkhozy in organizing stock, strengthening work-discipline and establishing "correct" product-distribution. Some of the twenty-five-thousanders were elected board members and chairmen of kolkhozy. However, the twenty-five-thousanders encountered fierce resistance from the so-called kulaks, who opposed the socialist re-organization of agriculture. Soviet literature treated the phenomenon of the twenty-five-thousanders extensively. Mikhail Sholokhov wrote one of the most famous books on this subject: Virgin Soil Upturned (Russian: Поднятая целина, romanized: Podnyataya tselina, 1932 and 1960).

References

See also Virgin Lands Campaign This article includes content derived from the Great Soviet Encyclopedia, 1969–1978, which is partially in the public domain.

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Twenty-five-thousander

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Twenty-five-thousander claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In science, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Twenty-five-thousander before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Twenty-five-thousander ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Twenty-five-thousander

In research: Twenty-five-thousander appears in science research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Twenty-five-thousander in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Twenty-five-thousander is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 1930s in the Soviet Union, Agriculture in the Soviet Union, Economy of the Soviet Union, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Twenty-five-thousander outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Twenty-five-thousander in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Twenty-five-thousander means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Twenty-five-thousander out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Twenty-five-thousander in simple terms?

Why does Twenty-five-thousander matter?

Because it connects several science ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Twenty-five-thousander?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Twenty-five-thousander.