Historian Rustam Alexander explains how the Soviet system of compulsory job placement for university graduates functioned and why it repeatedly broke down. The account opens with a piece published in Ogonyok: in 1963, Yermilov, a fitter at the Krasny Proletary plant and a Hero of Socialist Labor, complained about a student’s letter describing placement as an affront to human dignity.
The system began in 1933 and was intended to cover staff shortages in the regions, above all in Siberia, the Far East, and Central Asia. At first, graduates were required to work five years. Even in the Stalin era, some refused to move far from home: in 1939, Uralsky Rabochy wrote about a medical graduate who faced criminal prosecution for refusing her assigned post.
Under Nikita Khrushchev, the term was reduced to three years and criminal liability was abolished. At the same time, propaganda intensified. On March 21, 1961, Literaturnaya Gazeta urged young doctors to go to the virgin lands in Kazakhstan and Siberia, publishing enthusiastic statements about duty to the country.
“If a doctor is told that he is needed somewhere, can there really be a question of whether to go or not?”
But the campaign had limited effect. Absenteeism remained widespread, and in 1963 the authorities even ordered that diplomas be issued only after the required service was completed, though that rule was отменed after Khrushchev’s removal. Many young specialists arrived, served their term, and left immediately. Izvestia wrote in 1961 that hospitals and schools were once again left without personnel.
Graduates from Moscow, Leningrad, and Kyiv resisted the system most strongly, while assigned locations often lacked decent living and working conditions. In 1980, a deputy head of the Oryol regional administration told Izvestia that only 187 of 323 assigned specialists had arrived. During perestroika, the system weakened further and by the end of 1991 had effectively ceased to exist.