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This article seeks to fill a void in historical research by studying the formation of the worker’s community of Kuznetskstroy in Western Siberia during the first Soviet five-year plan. The construction of the Kuznetsk metallurgy complex, often touted by Soviet propaganda, was achieved by a combination of free wage-earning employees, prisoners and “special settlers” (deported “kulaks”). The author has relied on printed sources and Siberian archives to describe how normal, everyday life co-existed with barbarian forced labour and reaches the conclusion that the degree of divisiveness among the personnel kept them from forming a working class that could stand up to the authorities.