Stalin at the reception of kolkhos members
who cultivited beet fields and became record-setters in productivity,
leaders of the party and the government. November 10, 1935
Yulia Ivanova
Works of Centuries Were Done for Years. Joseph Stalin. Threshold 21
'It was the deepest revolutionary overturn and a leap from old qualitative condition of society to a new qualitative condition; by its consequences it was equivalent to the revolutionary overturn in October 1917. The originality of this revolution was in the fact that it was done FROM ABOVE on the initiative of the state power and FROM BELOW with the assistance of millions of peasants who struggled against kulaks' bondage and for free Kolkhoz life' (The History of the SPSU(B), the Short Course).
In ten years at most we should run the distance we dropped behind leading capitalistic countries. For this we have all 'objective' possibilities but we don't have enough skills to use these possibilities in the right way. But this depends on us, ONLY on us! It's time to put an end to the rotten policy of non-interference in production. It's time to adopt another and new one which would correspond to the present period: interference in everything. If you are director of a plant, interfere in all works, go deep into everything, don't omit anything and learn one more time. Bolsheviks must become proficient in techniques. It's time for Bolshvics to become specialists. Techniques in the period of reconstruction solve everything' (J. Stalin).
***
We didn't have ferrous metallurgy, a foundation of the country's industrialization. Now we have it.
We didn't have tractor industry. Now we have it.
We didn't have machine-tool construction. Now we have it.
We didn't have serious and real construction of modern agricultural machines. Now we have it.
We didn't have aircraft industry. Now we have it.
In production of electric energy we took last place. Now we have advanced to one of premier places.
In production of petrochemical products and coal we took last place. Now we have advanced to one of premier places.
We had only one coal and metallurgical base in Ukraine, and we managed it with difficulty. We have not only revived this base but created a new coal and metallurgical base in the east, and it is a pride of our country.
We had only one base of textile industry in the north of our country. In the nearest future we will have two new bases of textile industry - in the Middle Asia and in the Western Siberia.
And we not only created these enormous branches of industry, but we created them on such scales and such dimensions that scales and dimensions of European industry pale before them. At last it led to the fact that from a week country which was unprepared for defense the Soviet Union turned into a powerful country in the sense of its defense capability, into a country which is able to produce all modern means of defense on a mass scale and provide its army with them in case of an attack from without.
***
'In Okhotny Ryad we went out to see the railway station and the escalator, unimaginable bustle arose, the crowd rushed to welcome leaders, shouted hurrah and ran after them. We were separated, and I was nearly pressed to death at one of the columns. Exultations and ovations were beyond human measures. It was good that by that time militiamen and guards appeared already.
The decoration and the beauty of the underground's stations are amazing; one involuntary admires energy and enthusiasm of young people who did all of that and those leaders who are able to induce masses to such an activity. All of that was built with lightning speed: both the brilliant decoration and the design' (the witness Maria Svanidze).
Illya Erenburg' message to Dusya and Marusya Vonogradovs:
You have experienced the most gladness, human gladness, and it is a discovery! No matter how many obstacles and anxieties you will have in future, your memory of this gladness will encourage you. People long ago understood how happy Newton was when he discovered the law of gravitation and how joyful Columbus was when he saw foggy shores of a new land. People long ago understood how happy Shakespeare, Rembrandt and Pushkin were when they discovered collision of human passions, color, sound and a new meaning of an ordinary word.
But for some reason people have always thought that there are high and low works. They have thought that inspiration is able to work with a brush but not with a pick. The dead wall between an artist and a weaver has fallen; muses don't despise noisy workshops of factories, and in stuffy heat of mines people get not only tons of coal but the highest satisfaction of a master we and you have the same pains and the same joys. Let's call them as they are: pains of creation' (Dusya and Marusya Vinogradovs set up a worldly record in productivity on weaving looms).
***
Capitalism is not only service to one's own flesh legalized by society but it is service to other people's lust, collective lust; it is a conspiracy against God and the Plan and compulsory service to the will of darkness, to multitude of vampires and apostates who seized power. For one cannot serve God and Mammon simultaneously. Vampires-capitalists take away your life and you soul from God! People self-forgetfully worked in Joseph's Antivampiria before the time when it started making them serve high-ranking guards and while its tasks were providing people with food, clothes, roof over their heads, free education and treatment, giving employment, liberating from slavery of bad endlessness of desires and protecting them from vampires.
'During 1928 trotskyists finished their transformation from an underground antiparty group into an underground anti-Soviet organization.
Authorities of proletarian dictatorship cannot allow an underground anti-Soviet organization to exist, though it would be small by number of its members but having its own press and committees, trying to organize anti-Soviet strikes and preparing their supporters for a civil war against authorities of proletarian dictatorship.
Slander to the Red Army and its leaders, which is spread by trotskyists in underground and foreign renegade press and through it in foreign White Guard press, testifies that trotskyist don't disdain to set international bourgeoisie against the Soviet state' (J. Stalin).
'Old Bolsheviks are held in respect not because they are OLD but because they are always new and not growing old revolutionaries. If an old Bolshevik has turned from the revolutionary way, let him be even a hundred years old he has no right to be called an old Bolshevik and he has no right to demand respect to himself from the party.
Problems of personal friendship also cannot be placed on the same footing as problems of politics because as the saying goes, 'Business and friendship don't mix'. All of us serve working class, and when interests of personal friendship differ from interests of revolution, then personal friendship should be sidelined' (Joseph Stalin. A fragment from his speech at the Plenum of the Central Committee of the CPSU(B), 1920).
We have one policy and only shades exist between us. Then why did Bukharin run to yesderday's trotskists who have Kamenev as their head and try to create a factional bloc with them against the Central Committee and its Political Bureau?
If we have one policy, then why did Bukharin conspire with yesterday's trotskyists against the Central Committee and why did Rykov and Tomsky support him in this affair?
In fact, what collective leadership can be discussed here when the majority of the Central Committee members, being yoked into the state cart, move it forward with all their strength, asking Bukharin's group to help them in this difficult work, and Bukharin's group not only doesn't helps their Central Committee but on the contrary hinders them in every possible way; it throws sand in the wheels, threatens to resign and conspires with the party's enemies, trotskyists, against the Central Committee of our party?' (J. Stalin).
***
'We have hundreds and thousands young and capable people who by all their strengths try to make their way from bottom to up so as to contribute their mite to common treasure of our construction. But their attempts often remain to be vain because they are hindered here and there by self-conceit of literary 'names', bureaucracy, heartlessness of some of our organizations and envy (which haven't turned into competition yet) of their peers. One of our tasks is to break this dead wall and give vent to young strengths whose name is legion.
My preface to a small pamphlet by an unknown author in the literary world is an attempt to make a step towards solution of this problem' (J. Stalin).
'Kulaks who came to ruin but didn't lost their influences, former white officers, former priests, their sons, former managers of landowners and sugar manufacturers, former constables and other anti-Soviet elements, including their bourgeois and nationalistic intelligentsia who settled in the country, by every possible way try to corrupt kolkhozes and hamper the party's and the government's action in the sphere of agriculture, using limited consciousness some kolkhoz members against interests of social and kolkhoz economy and against interests of kolkhoz peasantry.
Penetrating into kolkhozes as accountants, managers, storekeepers, crew chiefs and so on, and sometimes as leading employees of kolkhozes' managements, anti-Soviet elements try to organize sabotage, spoil machines, sow with defects, plunder kolkhoz goods, undermine labor discipline, organize stealing of seeds, secret barns and sabotage of grain procurements, and sometimes they succeed in ruining kolkhozes.
Penetrating into sovkhozes as managers, accountants, field crop growers, storekeepers and so on those anti-Soviet elements damage kolkhoz construction by deliberate breakage of tractors and combines, by bad cultivation of land, by bad cattle care, by corrupting of labor discipline, by plundering of sovkhoz property, particularly its production (grain, meat, butter, milk, wool and so on).
All those anti-Soviet and anti-kolkhoz elements pursue one common goal: they try to restore power of landowners and kulaks over working peasants; they try to restore power of factory and plant owners over workers. Some members of the party who penetrated into the party to make carriers unite with enemies of kolkhozes, sovkhozes and the Soviet power and together with them organize stealing of seeds when it is time to sow, stealing of grain when it is time to harvest and thresh, concealment of grain in secret barns, sabotage of grain procurements, and by this they involve groups of backward members of kolkhozes and sovkhozes in their struggle against the Soviet power.
Revealing facts of subversive work and basing on the concrete facts of everyday work, political departments of machine and tractor stations and sovkhozes should organize broad masses of sovkhozes' workers to struggle for safety and inviolability of social kolkhoz and sovkhoz property, for rise of kolkhozes' and kolkhoz members incomes and for timely and complete fulfillment of all their liabilities to the state.
The party and the Komsomol members shouldn't be fear to struggle inside kolkhozes and sovkhozes for isolation and expulsion of antisocial and anti-kolkhoz elements, erroneously thinking that such a struggle can break unity of kolkhozes and sovkhozes. Not every unity is necessary to us' (J. Stalin).
***
'We are coming forward in the country which is illuminated by the genius of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin and where the iron will of Joseph Stalin tirelessly and miraculously works' (ovation). From the opening speech of Maxim Gorky at the 1st All-Union Congress of writers.
***
From the letter by Nadezhda Alliluyeva, Stalin's wife:
'Joseph, please send me about 50 rubles if you can. I will get money only on 15 August in the Industrial Academy, and now I'm penniless. If you send them, it will be good. Nadya.'
***
The witness Svetlana Alliluyeva:
"It was the nicest old woman; she was clean, neat and very kind. Mum entrusted all our modest budget. She looked after adults' meals and mastered the house. Of course, I'm talking about the time I can well remember, i.e. about 1929-1933 years when at our house some order was organized within the limits which were allowed to party workers in those years. Before mum mastered the house by herself, received some rations and food cards, and as for household servants, it was out of the question. The only 'guard' accompanied only my father in his car and had nothing to do with the house, and he was not allowed to it.
All the 'Soviet top' lived in the same way. Nobody aspired to luxury or acquisitiveness. They aspired to educate children, hired good governesses and German women 'from the old time', and their wives worked and worked and tried to read as much as possible. Sports just came into fashion: they played tennis, established tennis and croquet courts at their cottages. Women were not carried away with rags and cosmetics; they were beautiful and attractive even without those things.'
'In those years people were not troubled by 'ethnic issue'; they were more interested in universal values. Those days my brother Vasiliy once told me, 'Do you know that formerly our father was a Georgian?' That was all we knew about our national background. Father was very angry when comrades from Georgia came and, as it was accepted because Georgians cannot live without it, brought generous gifts: wine, grapes and other fruits. All of that was sent to our house and was sent back with father's curses, and the guilt was fallen to his 'Russian wife' - my mum'
'Father treated 'foreign luxury' in a puritanical way and could not bear even a smell of perfumes; he thought that a woman should smell of freshness and cleanness.'
All my born days father asked me with a dissatisfied face, 'Is a thing you wear a foreign one? and cheered when I told that it was our home one. It continued even when I was grown-up already. And when, God forbid, I smelt of cologne he wrinkled and grumbled,' Why do you use so much perfumes?'"
THE AG'S WITNESS FOR JOSEPH
What is our life, what is its purpose or its sense if they exist at all? Is it senseless and purposeless sailing the worldly seas until you sink with fateful inevitability or sensible and difficult movement to the promised seashore?
Depending on an answer to the first question a next one arises: about the Promised Land. What does it mean for you and what is your Creed? And how to reach it - by lonely sailing in waves or together with fellow believers and fellow travelers (who think the shore to be right in that direction) by a sailing vessel, a reliable ship, though you may get to Titanic? And so on.
Or in case of a negative answer to the first question you may swim and frisk by the shore to your heart's content and go boating by a pleasure boat with your girl friends or without them because you believe that there will be no other life.
Suppose that life is purposeless sailing the worldly seas. You may enjoy yourself until an hour strikes to go to the bottom. Sometimes you have to row up the stream, struggle against winds and waves and overload your boat with goods and relatives, i.e. live in order to live, or more exactly, to keep your head above the water. You may swim and try to enjoy this process. Some people manage to do it even while Rome is burning. And, of course, they do it at the cost of others under the slogan 'the state is myself' or 'after us the deluge'.
Here is a different answer: the sense is in the things that are happening on the shore: continuation of family, obtaining glory and wealth, scientific, creative or political career.
An egoist endeavors for himself, an altruist for humanity and a wise egoist: you give to me and I give to you.
Most people live so; let them leave alone. We are interested in those who believe that their ship sails to the Promised Land. They dream to reach the Heavenly City, the kingdom of Light, Love and Immortality where humanity that was disunited as a result of the fall will unite in God again. It is a dream of new Adam and God-humanity.
Those who believe in communism call this Promised Land the Bright Future. Unlike socialists they reject the idea of 'fair life on the shore'; they sail to boundlessness. Communism of devotees establishes an order of life at the ship at the time of sailing according to the Heavenly Law. In this case their captain is not subject to military service; he didn't swear to the Almighty. He is able to navigate the ship obeying his inner compass or move 'to the Call'. Passengers may trust in their captain but they also may get completely drunk, destroy the ship, jump overboard, kill their captain, turn the ship back or get on another ship sailing to an unknown place, to forbidden shores.
If captain and his crew change their course, they are responsible for it before Heaven. Wrong behavior of a passenger on a ship is dangerous to everyone. Ideally there should be everyone's voluntarily submission to captain, but in practice it is impossible. It happens that a passenger or a crew itself rebel and is at war with each other. In this case you have to use force or repressions towards them; then even the innocent inevitably suffer from it. But guards also can degenerate, become pirates and begin to rob passengers. Or they can turn the ship back, away from specified course.
The work of Church on such a ship is to watch indications of a compass, devices and right course which would be coordinated with captain.
The work of communists is to watch regulated behavior of passengers and crew.
The work of different churches of a multiethnic ship is to watch condition of their flocks' souls who differently believe in the Promised Land, personal immortality and so on.
Captain in a multiethnic state shouldn't raise a flag of any particular confession over his ship even if he gives preference to any of them. His creed is his own business as well as his crew's and passengers'. Let everyone perform his own sacraments and mysteries according to his own faith, obeying the only course (commandments) which was given by Heaven.
One can say that captain navigates his ship to the Call and Heaven determines his way.
The USSR was a multiethnic ship which sailed away from Vampiria according to the command 'Come out of her, my people'. This command of Heaven, though it sounds differently, is present in many religions and corresponds to 'indications of devices'.
Earthly kingdom is disorderly and casual gathering of ships, yachts, boats and individual swimmers who bustle along the shore and don't want to have any other existence. 'Democracy and human rights' allow everyone to swim to every direction or not swim at all. It is his personal business.
The way to God is a secret internal affair of everyone, and forcible unification of religions in one state is blasphemous and inadmissible. But admissible is everybody's consent to the course of a ship-state. For example the course away from Vampiria, as it was in case of the Soviet Union. Away from Vampiria which contradicts God's Plan. Unselfishness, mutual help, morality and other commandments are universal for many religions.
For some people this is a ship going to immortality, for others to the Bright Future, for the third to the God's Kingdom.
On the Russian ship things were wrong for a long time already. Only a small part of passengers kept the Heavenly Law. As for the majority of them, they confessed it in word only but mercilessly exploited and robbed their neighbors. They abandoned the main thing in the law: judgment, mercy and faith. They became painted tombs, loved feasts and bound heavy burdens and grievous to be borne, and laid [them] on men's shoulders; but they [themselves] did not move them with one of their fingers' (Mathew 23).
Inequality, cruelty and injustice in a society breed sin every moment. Religious hypocrites make their proselytes twofold more children of hell than themselves', i.e. the same hypocrites
'But woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye shut up the kingdom of heaven against men: for ye neither go in [yourselves], neither suffer ye them that are entering to go in.'
These strict words of the Savior have to do with those who don't keep the Word, including shepherds-priests. On the Russian ship it became impossible to save oneself. 'The Holy Russia' remained to be so only in a pharisaical way, in word but not in deed. Intelligentsia sought deliverance form pains of conscience by 'going to people' and instigating them to riots.
'No one will grant us deliverance.' Here are three aspects: a) faith in God as in some superior supernatural being who influences or doesn't influence our personal fates and fates of the world; b) faith in God as in a bearer of our immortality and salvation; c) faith in God as in moral law inside us, in conscience and determined standard of behavior in the world that 'lieth in wickedness'.
These three aspects can be united or separated. This means that human intellect can reject divine origin of man but human soul can accept the Law inscribed in heart, follow it and intently search for God beyond rejected image of the Creator that was distorted by human evil mind.
The best part of Russian society began to seek the truth beyond church (difference between spiritual thirst, pangs of conscience and longing for 'godly life' and social policy of official church together with temptation of materialism).
Disbelief that 'God would grant deliverance' to the week and oppressed, save them from predators who gorged brothers' bodies and souls under the disguise of 'non-resistance to evil' caused revolution. Slaves in the hold rebelled against lords from the upper deck, deposed captain and its crew and captured the ship. Blood was shed and slaves who were drunk of wine, blood and grabbed riches broke devices and shouted they knew where to sail. They killed navigators and captain with his family. Survived passengers of the first class also put red bands on their arms or jumped overboard and swam to other ships.
The steering wheel passed from hand to hand. The ship was in distress, hardly defending itself from pirates and collapsing.
At last the wheel got to Joseph's hands. He managed to pacify the crew and passengers, get rid of pirates, close up holes and sail to the direction which was commanded by the Fathers of the Church: away from Babylon. All property is common, all is given by God to everyone - here communism looked like Christianity. All things on the earth are given for hire, for some time, and nobody have his own property.
Once two monks tried to quarrel because of property like people who are there in the world. 'The brick is mine,' said one of them and drew the brick to himself. 'Of course, it's yours,' consented the other. Russian faith is a childish one. They declared that all people are not so brothers but comrades broke locks of separate staterooms and sailed.
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