The article is devoted to the labor motivation of the Soviet workers on the basis of micro-historical approach on the example of the largest agricultural engineering enterprises in Siberia - Altai Tractor Factory which emerged after the evacuation of industrial enterprises during the Great Patriotic War. The article discusses the implementation of incentives to work as a combination of the impact of coercion, compensation and commitment. The authors analyze the level of labor discipline, the dynamics of labor productivity as important indicators of the incentives effectiveness. The system of the incentives, developed during the Great Patriotic War, operated successfully on the whole, but it was not adequate for the peacetime functioning of the plant. The transformation of the labor state policy in the 1950s in the direction of the leveling of wages and rejection of coercive measures in favor of educational measures to ensure labor discipline, without significant improvement of working conditions was not capable of stimulating disciplined and highly productive work. The authors conclude that the effective model of labor motivation in the period under consideration was not developed, which became one of the main causes of the crisis of the Soviet economy.