Time, Forward!

Time, Forward! (Russian: Время, вперёд!, Vremya, vperyod!) is a 1965 Soviet drama film directed by Sofiya Milkina and Mikhail Shveytser based on a novel with the same name and a screenplay by Valentin Katayev. The film produced by Mosfilm, a unit of the State Committee for Cinematography (Goskino). The famous score was composed by Georgy Sviridov.

The title is derived from Vladimir Mayakovsky's play Banya (Russian: Баня).

Plot summary

The action takes place in the 1930s. The film depicts one day of the construction work of Magnitogorsk Iron and Steel Works (or Magnitka). The characters are simple construction workers and Komsomol members who are eager to work. Learning that their colleagues in Kharkov have set a record, they are mobilized in order to beat them. Everyone at construction site has embraced socialist competition. They are ready to win at any cost to speed up construction and complete the work on time. A Moscow journalist comes to cover the scope of the great construction project, seeking a hero for his story.

Time, Forward! (novel)

Time, Forward! (Russian: Время, вперёд!, Vremya vperyod!) is a novel by Valentin Katayev published in 1933. The book takes place over the course of one day and describes the attempts of a group of shock workers to break the record for most batches of concrete mixed in a day.

The novel was adapted by Katayev into a screenplay for a 1965 movie.

Plot Summary

The whole book takes place over a 24-hour period on a construction site in the Ural Mountains during the early 1930s, the heyday of Stalin’s Five-Year Plans. The novel is centered on an attempt to beat a concrete-pouring record set elsewhere in the Soviet Union by a shock brigade in Kharkov.

In the morning, Margulies, chief of the construction’s sixth sector, wakes up and hears that Kharkov beat the concrete-pouring record. Many workers, like Mosya, immediately propose a counterplan to beat the record. In order to ascertain whether beating the record is feasible, he decides to call his sister in Moscow to obtain a recent report on the limits of concrete pouring. Margulies soon examines the day-to-day operations of the site to figure out how he can optimize production, but he initially forbids Ishchenko, a leader of one shock brigade, from trying to beat Kharkov’s record.