Department of esoteric allusions

From a New Yorker profile of Elon Musk, CEO of electric carmaker Tesla:

Although more than a quarter of Tesla’s employers come from the Big Three, and although the company has begun to cultivate the Stakhanovite mind-set necessary for mass production…

If hadn’t spent so much time in college taking seminars on communism, I would never have recognized Stakhanovite as an adjective derived from the name of Aleksey Stakhanov, a sort of Soviet John Henry, famous for mining extraordinary amounts of coal.

Although I consider myself a fan of esoteric allusions, especially those that involve communism, I have to wonder whether they serve any purpose in the New Yorker, other than to show off the erudition of its correspondents.

Incidentally, while you’re reading the current issue of the New Yorker, be sure to check out my old classmate Ben McGrath’s profile of Michael Bloomberg. Ben and I took freshman economics together. No evidence remains that either of us learned anything. But Ben sure can write.