[12] The hope behind promoting shock labour was that through socialist emulation the rest of the workforce would learn from the vanguard.
[15]: 57 Cultural theorist Susan Buck-Morss contrasts shock work's stimulation of productivity in rushes of labor with the standardization of Taylorism.
[15]: 57 In People's Republic of Poland a similar title was przodownik pracy (translated into English as "model worker"),[16] a calque from another Soviet/Russian term peredovik proizvodstva, literally "leader in production".
[19] In the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic, an udarnik was called úderník[20] (with slightly different pronunciation in the Czech and Slovak languages).
Most importantly, úderníci usually did not perform any minor tasks mandated by the job standards they were supposed to follow.