Istoriia Fabrik I Zavodov

(History of Factories and Plants; IFZ), the title for a series of books and the publishing house that issued them.

Worker-correspondents and local committees for the history of the Communist Party and the history of the trade unions initiated the first works in the 1920’s. An article by A.M. Gorky appeared in Pravda and Izvestiia on Sept. 7, 1931, with an appeal to the masses for organized work on the history of factories and plants.

On Oct. 10, 1931, the Central Committee of the ACP (Bolshevik) adopted a resolution for the publication of anthologies under the title Istoriia zavodov (The History of Plants). It also confirmed the main editorial board. Among its members were A.M. Gorky, P.P. Postyshev, A.A. Andreev, N.M. Shvernik, A.V. Kosarev, L.Z. Mekhlis, D.E. Sulimov, N.N. Popov, A.I. Stetskii, A.M. Pankratova, V.V. Ivanov, L.N. Seifullina, and Iu. N. Libedinskii. Republic, regional, and factory commissions of the IFZ were formed.

The participation of workers, writers, historians, and archivists put the series on the grand scale of a collective creative work. Twelve issues of the methodological bulletin Istoriia zavodov came out between 1932 and 1934. Approximately 250 books on the history of enterprises were published from 1931 to 1938, including more than 30 in the IFZ series. Publication of the IFZ series declined sharply in subsequent years. On Oct. 21, 1958, the Central Committee of the CPSU adopted the resolution On Books on the History of Factories and Plants. Histories of many enterprises were published, including Daybreak Over the Gate (Serp i Molot Plant, 1959), In the Name of Vladimir Il’ich (1962), History of the I.A. Likhachev Moscow Automobile Plant (1966), and History of the Kirov Plant, 1917–1945 (1966).

Histories of factories and plants are also being written in the German Democratic Republic, the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic, and in other socialist countries.