In 1985, "The New York Times" printed a story alleging that though Stakhanov had indeed succeeded in his feat, it was only because the Communist Party had arranged the event as a way of boosting public morale, with many other miners working to help Stakhanov beat the mining record. The "Times" quoted the chief of the Tsentralnaya-Irmino mine branch of the Party, Konstantin G. Petrov, as saying that "I suppose Stakhanov need not have been the first... It could have been anybody else. In the final analysis it was not the individual face-worker who determined whether the attempt to break the record would succeed, but the new system of coal extraction." In 1988, the Soviet newspaper "Komsomolskaya Pravda" claimed that the widely cited achievements of Stakhanov were puffery. The paper insisted that Stakhanov had used a number of helpers on support works, while the throughput was tallied for him alone. Still, according to the newspaper, Stakhanov's approach had eventually led to increased productivity by means of a better work organization, including specialization and task sequencing. It has also been claimed that his record was beaten by Alija Sirotanović of Yugoslavia and Sergej Scemuk of Ukraine. At birth, Stakhanov was given the name Andrei, but the telegram reporting his record only contained his initial, and the editors of Pravda reported his name as Alexey. Rather than admit such a high-profile mistake, authorities decided to replace his passport and other official documents, changing his name to Alexei. Stakhanov had two partners and six children.