There was a particular kind of person on a Soviet factory floor who didn't need an important title to be taken seriously.

He might have spent twenty years working with the same machines. He knew the production line, understood how the equipment behaved and could often tell what was wrong before anyone else had figured it out.

His boss might have had the office, the paperwork and the official authority.

But when something went wrong, people knew who to ask.

That difference between a position and real authority was an important part of working life in the Soviet Union.

During industrialization, millions of people moved from villages into new industrial jobs. A person who had recently been working on a farm could become a machinist, mechanic, metallurgist or train driver.

Over the following decades, many of these workers became highly skilled professionals.

They weren't simply doing physical labor. They spent years learning complicated equipment and production processes. Some became the people everyone else depended on when something went wrong.

That experience could matter more than a title.

A young engineer might have the diploma and the official position, while an experienced worker knew the actual production far better. If a machine stopped working or a difficult problem appeared, the person with the answer wasn't necessarily the one sitting in the office.

There was another surprise in the Soviet system: a skilled worker could sometimes earn very good money.

This was particularly true at large enterprises, in heavy industry, mining, oil and gas, or in northern regions. A highly qualified worker could sometimes earn more than a young engineer or an ordinary manager.

A university diploma did not automatically mean a higher salary. Experience and a high professional grade could be worth a great deal.

And being a worker didn't necessarily mean having no career.

There was a progression from trainee to skilled worker, then to higher grades, brigade leader, foreman and eventually management. Some workers eventually became enterprise managers themselves.

But not everyone wanted to leave the shop floor.

For a really good specialist, reaching a high grade could already be a successful career. He could remain at his machine, earn a respectable income and become the person younger workers went to for advice.

In some cities, the factory was much more than a workplace.

Places such as Magnitogorsk, Tolyatti and Norilsk grew around major industrial enterprises. The factory could be involved in housing, kindergartens, cultural centers, sports facilities and sanatoriums.

People could spend decades connected to the same enterprise. Sometimes several generations of one family worked there.

There was a contradiction inside Soviet society, though. Officially, the worker was presented as the foundation of the country. But at home, parents could tell their children to get an education so they wouldn't have to work with their hands.

The factory worker was a hero on posters. A university education increasingly looked like a way to find a more comfortable and prestigious life.

That changed how young people looked at industrial professions, even though the workers who actually stayed on the floor often knew more than the people replacing them.

Saying that Soviet workers were "more respected than their bosses" is both true and a little misleading. Not every worker got that kind of respect, and plenty of managers stayed genuinely close to production.

Sometimes the most respected person on an entire factory floor wasn't the one behind the office door. It was the person who had spent twenty years beside the same machine and knew exactly what to do when everyone else was still trying to work out what had gone wrong.

That may be what older people mean when they say that being a worker once "sounded proud." There's nostalgia in that phrase, but there's something real behind it too.