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Death of Lenin
As he laid the foundation stones of social ist society Lenin dreamed of seeing backward, ruined, wretched and impotent Russia replaced by anew, mighty and happy land of flour ishing Socialism. He was destined, however, to see only the very first, comparatively small, successes of the grand reconstruction of the Soviet Union that he had planned. He who had caused such mighty transformations to take place was struck down by death at the very beginning of the historic road taken by our country towards the victory of » Socialism. From the beginning of his conscious life to the day ho drew his last breath, Lenin had devoted himself entirely to the cause of the revolution. The enormous, superhuman labours of this greatest man of our age had sapped his health, and his death wm hastened by the severe wounds that had been inilioted upon him by ihe vicious bullets of the enemies of the revolution. V. I. Lenin jmscd airay on Jannaiy 21, 1924. Tiie death of the leader filled the hearts of millions with grief. In its manifesto to the Party and to all the working people announcing the death of our great leader, the Central Coininittoe of the R,C.P.(B.) stated: "JSIover sinco Marx has the groat proletarian movement for emancipation produced such a titanic figure as our late leader, teacher and friend."
Briefly and concisely describing Lenin's greatness and the gigantic work he performed, the nia lifosto went on to say: "Lenin x^osscssod all the trul^r great and heroic virtues of the x^roletariat — b > fearless mind, an iron, inflexible and indomitable will which surmounts all obstacles, a holy and mortal hatred of slavery and tyranny, revolution ary ardour which moves mountains, boundless faith in the creativt* powers of the masses, and vast organizing talent. His name has be come the symbol of the new world fcomWest to East, and from South to North."
The Central Committee of the Bolshevik Party called upon the working class to mark the death of tlieir leader by mustering all tlieir strength to carry out Lenin's behests.
In the factories talks were delivered on the life of Lenin, after which the workers passed the curt but emjphatio resolution: "Wo vow to carry out Lenin's behests."
The workers of tl e Third Moscow Printing Plant, in sending a de legation to the funeral of the'r leader, handed it a banner bearing the inscription: "Lot us form a solid ring round the Communist Party and carry out Ilych's behests to the last!"
At a meeting held at the Moskvoretsky Textile Mills an old woman weaver mounted the platform and in a voice trembling with emotion said: "If I have wavered bill now, thinking that I was almost illit erate and w'thout trailing, then during these last days I have mihesitatingly decided to join the Party created by our infinitely be loved Ilyich, May ho rest in poace in his grave; we millions, the workers, will carry the cause begin by him to the end."
During those hours of grief hundreds of thousands of proletarians all over the country, like this old Moscow weaver, handed in applica tions to jom Lenin's Party.
At memorial meetings the workers passed resolutions pledging themselves to carry out Lenin's behests and to send their best sons to reinforce the Party.
The men in the Red Army passed similar resolutions. A meeting of Red Army men and commanders of the Sivash Division declared: "We must now guard not only our Red frontiers, but also the invio lability of the grave of our great leader and teacher."
Lenin's death caused profound grief and mourning in the settle ments of the Yakuts, in the camps of the nomad Nenets reindeer breeders, and in the villages of Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. The
working people in the most remote parts of the country sent delegations to Moscow to attend Lenin's funeral. The peasants in the Volga Region collected grain for a fund to build a monument to Lenin. The workers and peasants named towns, streets, factories and villages after Lenin. At the request of the workers, Petrograd, where Lenin had commenced his revolutionary activities as the leader of the proletariat and where he had led the working class in a victorious insurrection and to the capture of power, was named in his hon our, Leningrad.
On January 23, the peasants from the villages surrounding Gorki, where Lenin died, accompanied their friend and teacher on his last journey to Moscow. The workers of Moscow took their last leave of Lenin. For five days and nights a continuous stream of people flowed tlirough the Column Hall of the House of Trade Unions, where Lenin lay in state. Millions of working people waited their turn to bid their leader a last farewell.
Stalin's Vow
On the death of our beloved leader. Comrade Stalin, in the name of the Party and of the whole Soviet people, took a great vow .to carry out Lenin's behests.
At the Second Congress of Soviets of the U.S.S.R. on January 26, 1924, Comrade Stalin said:
"Departing jfrom us. Comrade Lenin adjured us to hold high and guard the purity of the great title of member of the Party. We vow to you. Comrade Lenin, that we will fulfil your behest with credit! . . .
"Departing from us, Comrade Lenin adjured us to guard the unity of our Party as the apple of our eye. We vow to you, Comrade Lenin, that this behest too, we will fulfil with credit! . . .
"Departing from us. Comrade Lenin adjured us to guard and strengthen the dictatorship of the proletariat. We vow to you, Comrade Lenin, that we will spare no efforts to fulfil this behest too, with credit! . . .
"Departing from us, Comrade Lenin adjured us to strengthen with all our might the alliance of the workers and the peasants. We vow to you. Comrade Lenin, that this behest too, we will fulfil with credit! . . .
"Departing from us. Comrade Lenin adjured us to consolidate and extend the Union of Republics. We vow to you. Comrade Lenin, that this behest, too, we will fulfil with credit! . . .
"More than once did Lenin point out to us that the strengthening of the Red Army and the improvement of its condition is one of the most important tasks of our Party. . . . Let us vow then, comrades, that we will spare no effort to strengthen our Red Army and our Red ISTavy. . . .
"Departing from us. Comrade Lenin adjured us to remain faithful to the principles of the Communist International. We vow to you, Comrade Lonin, that we will not spare our lives to strengthen and extend the Union of the toilers of the whole world — ^the Communist International!" {Stalin on Lenin, Moscow, 1946, pp. 30-36.)
Stalin's great vow became the program of action of the Party and the Soviet State which ensured our country's victorious progress along the road to Socialism.
At 4 p, m. on January 27, amid the thunder of an artillery salute, the body of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin was placed in the Mauso leum erected during those days in the Red Square, Moscow. A last and mournful salute to the leader was sounded by sirens and hooters. Life throughout the country came to a standstill for the space of five minutes. Trains stopped in their tracks, the buzz of ma chinery in the factories was silenced. Five minutes of silence was also observed by working people in all capitalist countries.
The End of the Period of Restoration in the U.S.S.R.
The First Year Without Lenin
On the death of Lenin the working class of the U.S.S.R. rallied more closely than ever around Lenin's Party. Thousands of workers handed in applications to join its ranlis in order the bettor to carry out the behests of the do]iarted leader. The Central Committee proclaimed a mass admission of advanced workers into the Party's ranks. Over 240,000 of the most class-conscious and revolutionary workers made up the "Lenin Enrol ment" into the Party. Interest in the study of Leninist theory increased to an enormous degree. "Lenin is dead, but Leninism lives!" said the workers, and souglit to acquire a better knowledge of the principles of Lenin's teachings.
To satisfy this urge, Comrade Stalin, in the beginning of April 1924, delivered a series of lectures on "The Foundations of Lenin ism" at the '"Sverdlov" Communist University. In these lectures, which shortly afterwards were published in book form, he gave a sys tematic exposition of Lenin's great teachings about the proletarian revolution and the dictatorship of the proletariat, of the historical roots and theory of Leninism, of Lenin's teachings about the Party, and of his views on the peasant and the national and colonial ques tions, He emphas'zed that Leninism was not only a Russian but an international doctrine. Leninism not only revived the reyolut ionary teachings of Marx and Engels, which had been distorted by the oxDpor tunists of the Second International, but developed them further, enriching them with the now experience of the proletarian class sti'ug gle in the epoch of imperialism. "Leninism," said Comrade Stalin, "is Marxism of the era of imperialism and of the proletarian revo lution." This splendid book, which is a further development of the Marxian theory, armed ideologically the working class of the U.S.S.R and of the whole world in their struggle for Sooialism. Comrade Stalin's book The Foundations of Leninism^ also played an enormous part in
bringing about the ideological defeat of Trotskyism.
Remember, love and study Lenin, our teacher and leader. Fight and vanquish the enemies, internal and foreign — as Lenin taught ns.
Build the new life, the new existence, the new culture — as Lenin taught us.
Never refuse to do the little things, for from little things are built the
big things — this is one of Lcnin*s important behests.
In May 1924, the Thirteenth Congress of the Party was hold. At
this congress Trotsky hypocritically stated that ho and his followers were giving up the factional struggle. Actually, ho had instruefcod his followers to make declarations about renouno ng Trotskyism while ill fact forming a counter-revolutionary underground organi zation.
The Thirteenth Congi'ess emphasized that tlie operation of the Party line laid down by Lenin at the time of the adoption of the New Economic Policy had strengthened the alliance between the proletariat and the peasantry and had created the conditions for the speedy liquidation of economic ruin. The congress called for assistance for the rural districts, for the organization of the rural poor and for the for mation of peasant mutual-aid committees. While demandirg an inten sification of the struggle against the kulaks and an improvement in activity among the poor and middle peasants, the congress confirmed the line of developing the co-operative movement as a means of achieving Sooialism. The congress indicated measures for improving the work of the state trading organizations and co-operativo societies, 'which under the New Economic Policy were to help in establishing the link between industry and peasant farming.
The New -Economic Policy created a considerable revival in the country after the ruin which had been caused by war and interven tion.
From 1924 to 1925 total industrial output increased 60 per cent and the number of workers employed in industry increased 27 per cent. The material conditions of the working class improved.
The currency reform of 1924 introduced a stable currency in place of the former depreciated paper money and strengthened the finan cial position of the Soviet State.
The revival of state and co-operative trade increased the proportion of the socialist forms of economy in the total economy of the country. Soviet trade began to squeeze the private trader out of the market. Peasant farming showed a marked improvement. The Soviet govern ment rendered the working peasantry considerable assistance. In the period from 1924 to 1925 the state assigned out of its limited re sources 290,000,000 rubles for the purpose of assisting the loovev peasants.
The Soviet Union's successes during the four years of tho operation of the New Economic Policy were achieved in a stubborn struggle against the resisting capitalist elements. In an endeavour to exploit the discontent of the peasant masses caused by tho shortage of manu factured goods, the high prices of these goodB, and tho survivals of "War Communism" that persisted in some parts of the rural districts, the kulaks tried to organize revolts.
The elections to the Soviets which took place at this time revealed that in a number of districts the middle peasants were inclined to swing over to the side of the kulaks. Comrade Stalin set the task of rallying the middle peasants around the proletariat and of enlisting the masses of the peasants in the work of building up the Soviets. At a plenary meeting of the Central Committee of the Party held on October 26, 1924, he said: "All those who are active, honest, possess initiative and are politically conscious, especially former Red Army men, who are politically the most conscious and possess most initiative among the peasants, must be drawn into the work of the Soviets."
The Soviets are bodies which establish a bond between the work ing class and peasantry, with the proletariat playing the leading role. Hence, enlivening and strengthening the Soviets meant strength ening the alliance between the proletariat and the peasantry in the joint struggle for Socialism.
Strengthening the Alliance Between the Proletariat of the U.S.S.R. and the Peasants of the Non-Russian Republics
After the U.S.S.R. was formed, the Russian proletariat increased its assistance to the peoples of the U.S,S.R. and thereby strengthened its alliance with the peasants in the non-Russian regions. The task of uniting the peoples in a single, fraternal union of state was hindered by three factors, viz,^ the actual inequality existing between the different na tionalities, the dominant-nation chauvinism of a section of the Russian Communists, and local nationalism. The Tenth and Twelfth Congresses of the Party, after hearing reports by Comrade Stalin, adopted a program of measures for combating the still existing ac tual inequality between the peoples of the U.S.S.R.
Under the New Economic Policy there was a revival and growth of dominant-nation chauvinism, a reflection of the former privileged position of the Great-Russians. This chauvinism found expression in tl.e neglect shown by certain Soviet and Party officials towards the needs and requirements of the non-Russian republics, and theatened to underini .ethe confidence of the peasant masses of the non-Russian areas in the U.S.S.R. towards the proletariat, which was exercising its dictatorship.
At the same time, there was a revival of local nationalism among the peoples who had not yet forgotten the national oppression they had suffered from Russian tsarism and the Russian bourgeoisie. The local nationalists sowed distrust in everything Russian, and tried to disrupt She alliance between the peasants of the non-Russian republics and the proletariat of the U.S.S.R. which was leading the struggle or Socialism in all the Soviet Republics.
In June 1923, the Central Committee of the Party held a joint conference with responsible officials from the non-Russian republics and regions. This conference, which was directed by Comrade Sialin, emphatically condemned both dominant-nation chauvinism and the nationalistic tendencies of individual Party members. At this con ference there wore exposed a group of Tatar bourgeois nationalists and a group of Uzbek nationalists.
The bourgeois-nationalists had become agents of foreign imperial ism and conducted subversive activities with the object of disrupting the work of building up the Soviet system in the border regions. The Georgian Mensheviks, assisted by the foreign imperialists, even at tempted to rouse the peasants of Georgia to revolt against the Soviets. In the summer of 1924, they captured Chiatury, the centre of the manganese industry in Georgia, dispersed the Soviets in Guria and other districts, and began to organize kulak and landlord fighting detachments. The Georgian peasantry, however, far from allowing themselves to be drawn into this reckless venture of the Georgian Mensheviks, resolutely helped in liquidati ig it in the course of a few days. The organizers of this revolt — a group of prominent Georgian Mensheviks — were tried before a Soviet court and mot with well-de served punishment.
The Soviet government rendered the peoples of the non-Russian republics considerable economic, organizational and cultural assist ance. A number of factories, with all their equipment, were trans ferred from Moscow to Georgia, Bokhara and Uzbekistan. Loans were granted to the industries and co-operative societies in the various republics. In all the non-Russian regions a drive was launched to enliven and strengthen the Soviets.
The National Delimitation of Central Asia
When the Soviet Republics in Turkestan were firmly established their national delim itation was carried into effect. The tsarist government, in intro ducing its administrative division of the country, had taken no ao oount of the specific national features and the territorial distribution of the peoples inhabiting it. The result was that the old boundaii 'S of gubernias and regions brought together into administrative units territories populated by different nationalities, and split up ho mogeneous nationalities. Particularly scattered 9,bout were the peoples of Central Asia. Some of the peoples Kad no administrative centre, •republic or region of their own, and this hindered their economic and cultural development.
In 1924, all the peoples of Central Asia reached a voluntary agree ment and established an absolutely new political and administrative •division of Central Asia, one that took into account the economic and •political interests of each nation. Two Union Soviet Socialist Republics were formed — ^the Uzbek and Turkmen Republics. Later, a third one, .the Tajik Republic, was formed, being detached from the Uzbek S.S.R., of which it had till then been a part, as an autonomous republic. Two autonomous Soviet Republics were also formed, namely, the Kirghiz and the Kara-Kalpak Republics. The part of Northeastern Turkestan inhabited by Kazakhs was incorporated in Kazakhstan. In the autumn of 1924, the Congresses of Soviets of Bokhara and Khiva resolved to rename their People's Republics, Socialist Republics. The Second Session of the Central Executive Committee of the U.S.S.R. ratified the decision of the peoples of Central Asia regarding national delimitation. The Uzbek and Turk men Republics joined the U.S.S.R. as Union Republics.
In an estimation of the importance of national delimitation, Comrade Stalin wrote: 'The time has now come when these scattered fragments can be reiinited into independent states, so that the toil ing masses of Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan can be united and welded with the organs of government. The delimitation of frontiers in Tur kestan is primarily the reunion of the scattered parts of these coun tries into independent states. The fact that these states then desired to join the Soviet Union as equal members thereof, merely signifies that the Bolsheviks have found the key to the profound aspirations of the masses of the East, and that the Soviet Union is the only volun tary union of the toiling masses of various nationalities in the world" (J. Stalin, Marxism and the National and Colonial Question, Moscow, 1940, pp. 182-183).
Thus, for the first time in their history, the Uzbek, Turkmen and Tajik peoples were able to unite in their national states. This they did on the basis of Soviet power, which is cherished and understood by the masses. National delimitation strengthened the alliance be tween the proletariat of the U.S.S.R. and the toiling peasantry of Central Asia and stimulated the economic and cultural development of the peoi)les of Soviet Central Asia.
The Struggle for Socialist Industrialization (1926–1929)
Steering a Course for Industrialization
The Soviet Republic's International Position Is Strengthened
After the prolonged post-war revolutionary crisis, world capitalism entered a phase of temporary, partial stabilization. As a result of the defeat of the revolutionary movement in 1923, counter-revolu* tionary coups were carried out in Germany, Italy, Bulgaria and Poland. The tide of revolution temporarily subsided in Western Europe and capitalism partially stabilized its position. This partial stabili zation of capitalism intensified the antagonisms between the differ ent capitalist countries and also between the workers and capitalists in each country. A desire to form a united front against the offensive of capital arose among the proletarian masses in the capitalist conn tries. Delegations of foreign workers streamed into the U.S.S.R.
Comrade Stalin made the following comment: "At the one i)ole we find capitalism stabilizing itself, consolidating the position it has reached and continuing its development. At the other pole we find the Soviet system stabilizing itself, consolidating the position it has won and marching forward on the road to victory. Who will defeat whom? — ^That is the essence of the question" (J. Stalin, Lenin ism, Vol, I, Moscow, 1934, p. 162).
The successes which the working class of the U.S.S.R, achieved on the economic firont strengthened and consolidated the Soviet Union's international position. In 1924 and in the beginning of 1926, Great Britain, France, Italy, Japan and many other bourgeois countries ofidoially recognized the Soviet Union. In the summer of 1924, a "Gen eral Treaty between Great Britain and the U,S.S.R." was signed, but the reactionary British bourgeoisie launched a campaign against this, their argument being that "Great Britain had surrendered to Bolshevism."
The Program for Building Socialism in the U.S.S.R
The process of restoring the national economy of the U.S.8.R. was draw ing to a close. In 1925–1926, agriculture in the U.S,S.R. reached the pre-war level and produced 103 per cent of the pre-war output. The volume of industrial output also approached the pre-war level. But it was not enough for the Land of Soviets, which was building Socialism, merely to restore its economy, merely to reach the pre-war level, for that was the level of a backward and poverty-stricken country. It was necessary to go beyond that.
At the end of April 1926, the Fourteenth Conference of the Party was held. Guided by Lenin's thesis that Socialism could be victorious in one country, the conference passed a resolution which stated that the Party "must exert all efforts to build socialist society in the con viction that this work of construction can be, and certainly will be, successful if we succeed in safeguarding the country against all at tempts at restoration."
In substantiating Lenin's thesis that Socialism could be victo rious in our country, Comrade Stalin repeatedly emphasized that it was necessary to distinguish between two aspects of this question, namely, the domestic and the international aspect.
'The domestic aspect of the question was the relationships between the classes within the country: the country possessed all that was needed to build complete socialist society; the working class, which had established its political dictatorship and had converted the land, factories, mills, banks and means of communication into public prop- erty, could now further socialist construction and, relying on its? alliance with the peasantry, economically rout capitalism within the country.
But there was also an international aspect to the question of the victory of Socialism. For the time being the U.S.S.R. was the only socialist country in the world; it still existed in a capitalist encircle ment, and this was fraught with the danger of capitalist intervention. Complete guarantees against intervention could be provided only by the victory of Socialism on an international scale. Hence, the final victory of Socialism, meaning that it was guaranteed against inter vention, was possible only if the proletarian revolution was victo rious in a number of countries. If the world revolution was delayed, the proletariat of the U.S.S.B. could overcome the economic and technical backwardness of the country and ensure its independence only by its own internal forces and resources, by creating the indus trial basis for Socialism and reconstructing the national economy on socialist lines.
The Fourteenth Conference of the Party emphatically condemned Trotsky's theory that the victory of Socialism in the U.S.S.R. was impossible, and called upon the working class to work with the ut most strain to ensure this victory. In May 1925, Comrade Stalin de livered a report in which, summing up the proceedings of this confer ence, he substantiated and amplified Lenin's teachings regarding the possibility of the victory of Socialism, and formulated the pro gram for the building of Socialism in the following few words: need from fifteen to twenty million industrial proletarians; we need the electrification of the principal regions of our country; we need the organization of agriculture on a co-operative basis; we need a highly developed metal industry. Then we need fear no danger. Then we shall be victorious on an international scale" (Lenin and Stalin, Selected Works ^ Vol. Ill, Russ, ed., p. 27).
The decisions of the Fourteenth Party Conference served as the basis for the proceedings of the Third All-Union Congress of Soviets which opened on May 13, 1925. The congress discussed the following reports: the state of industry; measures to raise and strengthen peas ant farming; agricultural co-operative societies; building up the So viets, and the Red Army. The congress passed a series of measures to improve the work of the Soviets, It also ratified the admission into the U.S.S.R. of the two new Union Republics — ^the Turkmen S-S.R. and the Uzbek S.S.R. and in doing so emphasized that "the entry of the afore-mentioned republics into the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics is fresh proof that the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics is indeed a voluntary union of equal nations and a reliable bulwark of the formerly 0 ]jpressed nations" {The Congresses of Soviets of the U.S.S,M. — Decisions and Resolutions, Moscow, 1939, Russ, ed., p. 78).
The congress devoted special attention to the problem of strength ening the defensive capacity of the country and the Red Army. Jn the resolution adopted on the report of M. V. Frunze it emphasized the general strengthening of the international position of the U.S.S.R. and went on to say: "The Third Congress of Soviets of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics deems it necessary to declare to the work ing people of the Soviet Union and of the whole world that notwith standing the efforts of the Workers' and Peasants' Government, and notwithstanding the treaties and agreements already concluded with a number of countries, the Soviet Union is not guaranteed against attempts on the part of world capital to disturb the peaceful labours of the workers and peasants" {The Congresses of Soviets of the TJ.S.SM . — Decisions and Resolutions, Moscow, 1939, Russ, cd., p. 82).
The congress approved the reform of tlio armed forces of the TT.S.S.R. carried out by the People's Commissariat of Military and Naval Affairs and which helped still further to improve the fighting efficiency of the Red Army and the Red Navy.
In the congrefcs' decision on M* V. Frunze's report the government was instructed to strengthen the defensive might of the country by the following measures:
"a) Secure a corresponding expansion of tlie armaments industry and run all the rest of tlie state industry of the Union in such a way as will in peacetime take into account the needs of wartime; b) improve armaments and saturate the Red Army with them; c) correspondingly improve and build a network of ways of communication — ^luilways, freight and motor traction; d) develop all forms of communication; e) develop horse-breeding, with the object of supplying the needs not only of agriculture, but also of the Red Army, and of its cava by in particular; f) pay profound attention to tiic military training of the entire population. ..." {The Congresses of Soviets of the U.S.S^R , — Decisions and Resolutions, Moscow, 1939, Russ, ed., j)* 83.)
The decisions which the Third Congress of Soviets adopted on Com rade Frunze's report were an important factor in strengthening the defensive capacity of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Comrade Frunze, however, was not destined to carry out this program of mil itary development; he died on October 31, 1925. His death was a severe loss to the Party and to the Soviet people. He was succeeded at the post of People 's Commissar of Military and Naval Affairs by that hero of the Civil War and comrade-in-arms of Stalin and Frunze — K. E. Voroshilov.
In December 1926, the Fourteenth Congress ofthe Party was opened. In his report to the congress, Comrade Stalin set the Party the immediate task of transforming our country from an agrarian into an industrial state. The congress approved of the leader's proposal and it resolved: "To ensure for the U.S.S.R. economic independence, which will safeguard the U.S.S.R. against becoming an appendage of ca];)italist world economy, and for this purpose to steer a course to wards the industrialization of the country, the development of the production of means of production. ..."
The Fourteenth Party Congress has gone into the history of the Party and of our country as the Industrialization Congress. In view of the formation of the U S.S.R. the congress decided to rename the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks), the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Bolsheviks).
In deciding firmly to steer a course towards industrialization, the congress denounced the bourgeois views of the so-called "new op position" which sought to drag the Party and the working class back — to the path of restoring capitalism. The Zinovievites had secured elec tion as delegates to the congress by downright fraud (at the Party Conference in Leningrad that was held before the congress, they hypo critically voted for the Party line). The congress decided to send to Leningrad a group of its delegates, consisting of Comrades Molotov, Kirov, Voroshilov, Kalinin, Andreyev and others, to explain to the members of the Leningrad Party organization the duplicity which had been practised by their delegates at the Party Congress.
An Extraordinary Conference of the Leningrad Party organiza tion unanimously condemned the hypocritical Zinovievites and elected a new Regional Committee of the Party, headed by S. M. Kirov, under whose leadership the Leningrad Bolsheviks launched a struggle for socialist industrialization.
The Difficulties and Successes of Socialist Industrialization
The U.S.S.R. Becomes an Industrial Country
During the period of restoration the task had been to put agriculture on its feet and to restore the existing mills and factories. But these were old enterprises equipped with obsolete machinery. The task now was to re-equip these old plants with up-to-date machinery.
During the period of restoration it was mainly light industry that was developed. The task now was to expand and strengthen heavy industry, without which neither light industry nor agriculture could grow. It was necessary to build a number of new plants and to create new branches of industry that had not existed at all in tsarist Rus sia, Le., to build plants for the manufacture of machines, machine tools, automobiles, chemicals, aircraft and tractors, a new defence industry, etc. The cun*ent task was to bring about the socialist industrialization of the country.
The erection of industrial plants involves huge expenditure. Caj) italist countries, as a rule, build up their industries out of funds obtained from outside, by plundering colonies, by wars of conquest, by foreign credits and loans, and also by exploiting their own workers and peasants. The Land of Socialism could not on principle resort to such sources for its industrialization. There was only oire way open for the proletarian state, the way of the socialist accumulation of in ternal revenues and savings, of industrialization out of the internal resources of the country. The most important source of accumulation was the revenue of nationalized industries, state trade, and also the current funds of credit institutions and savings banks. Wide masses of the working people took up the slogan of the "'fight to effect econ omies." Stern measures were undertaken to eliminate the unproductive expenditure of state and public funds. At the same time the Soviet government permitted no reduction in expenditure on the protection of labour, and prohibited economies to be effected at the expense of the workers.
In capitalist countries industrialization usually starts with the development of light industry. Only after light industry has accumu lated the necessary funds docs the development of heavy industry begin. This process takes a long time; that was why the Communist Party did not take this path. "The Communist Party of our country therefore rejected the ^ordinary' path of industrialization and commenced the industrialization of the country by developing heavy industry" (J. Stalin, "Speech Delivered at an Election Meeting in the Stalin Election District, Moscow, February 9, 1946," Moscow, 1946, p. 16).
The very first year of the Party's course towards industrializa tion produced positive results. In 1926, the year's state grain purchases plan was carried out and the market price of grain dropped. The rate of the chervonets became stabilized. Trade turnover increased. Large scale industry also fulfilled its plan and showed a 40 per cent increase in output, the heavy industry showing an increase of nearly 60 per cent. The metal industry developed with exceptional rapidity; in 1924 its output had been less than half of the pre-war output, but in 1926 it already exceeded that of 1913.
Investments for the re-equipment of old i)lants and the building of new ones amounted to 811 ,000,000 rubles, compared with 385 ,000,000 in the preceding year.
Old plants which had been idle wore restarted, and now plants which had been built by the Soviet government were put into opera tion. In the spring of 1925, the first blast furnace of the Dniepropet rovsk Steel Plant, the largest in the South, which had been idle since 1917, was started. A month later the Karabash Copi)er Smelting Plant in the Urals was started. In the beginning of December 1926, the Shatura district power plant near Moscow, the largest peat-fuel power plant in the world, was opened. During the May Day festival in 1926, two large hydroelectric power stations were opened, one in Tashkent and one in Erevan.
In July 1926, traffic was started on the first electric railway in the U.S.S.R., that connecting Baku with the oil fields and the town-* ship of Sabunchi; and the foundation stone was officially laid of the Stalingrad Tractor Plant,
The enormous increase, xmder the leadership of the Party, in the activities and constructive initiative of the masses resulted in rapid economic successes. In September 1926, the output of Soviet industry for the first time exceeded the pre-war level. Beginning with the new economic year of 1926-1927, the industries of the U.S.S.Rf. produced more than in tsarist Russia at the peak of her economic development, viz., in 1913. Agricultural output and the national income of the Land of Soviets reached the pre-war level.
When the first decade of the existence of the Soviet State was reached the results of socialist industrialization were already palpable. Over a billion rubles had been invested in capital construction and a number of new large plants had been put into operation. The build ing of new giants of socialist industry was commenced. In December 1926, the Volkhov Electric Power Plant, the first-born of Soviet electrification, was officially opened. The building of this plant was begun on Lenin's proposal as far back as 1918. In 1927, the Trans caucasian district hydroelectric plant, which provided power for Tbi lisi, the capital of Soviet Georgia, was opened, the Red Putilov Plant turned out its first twenty-one tractors, and the AMO Automobile Plant (now the Stalin Plant) in Moscow turned out its first ten motor trucks. In the same year the construction was begun of the Turksib Railway which, running through the waterless desert of Kazakhstan, was to unite Siberia with Central Asia. Thus, all over the country intense work was in progress in building new factories, mills, mines, power stations and railways.
The proportion of industry to the entire national economy rose to 42 per cent and reached the pre-war level. Still more rapid was the growth of large-scale socialist industry, the output of which was 18 per cent higher than the preceding year. This was a record in crease, such as the large-scale industry of the most advanced capitalist countries never reached even in the period of their highest develop ment.
The jubilee session of the Central Executive Committee of the U.S.S.R. held on the occasion of the Tenth Anniversary of the victory of the October Revolution took a decision to introduce a 7-hour day in industry.
The Successes of Industrialization in the National Republics
Very considerable sncccss was achieved by various non-Russian national republics. In the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, large scale industry was quickly restored and agriculture was put firmly on its feet. Progress was also made in national culture. Two million school children received instruction in the Ukrainian language, and more Ukrainian books were published in two years than had been publishi'd in the entire century before the Great October Socialist Revolution.
Similar economic and cultural progress was achieved in the Bye lorussian Soviet Socialist Republic. Before the October Revolution there was not a single technical school or higher educational estab lishment in Byelorussia, but in 1927, there were already four higher educational establishments and thirty technical schools. Schoolchildren received instruction in their native language. The Jewish language became officially recognized in the Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Repub lic. Over 100,000 Jewish working people found employment in industry and in agriculture. These achievements were the result of the policy of industrializing the formerly backward non-Russian regions.
Great success in the building of Socialism was also achieved in the Transcaucasian reimblios. Uniting their efforts in the task of reorganizing their national economy, the numerous nationalities of Transcaucasia established such a reign of pcac^e among themselves as they had never known before.
In the period of 1025-J927 there was carried out in the young republics of Central Asia an agrarian and water-resources reform which abolished the survivals of feudal relationships in the utilization of the land and water resources, and stimulated the development of the dekhan (peasant) farms which became the principal suppliers of So viet cotton for the textile mills in the U.S.S.R. Over 100,000 dekhan families (possessing little or no land) received a total of over 300,000 hectares of land which had been taken from the landlords and bai (kulaks).
The Provocative Conduct of the Imperialists and Their Trotskyite Agents
Socialist industrialization encountered the op position of the capitalist elements in the country, who were supported by foreign governments. In the endeavour to frustrate, or at least to hinder, the socialist industrialization of the U.S.S.R., the imperial ists tried to drag her into another war.
In February 1927, Austen Chamberlain, the British Foreign Sec retary, sent the government of the U.S.S.R. a note demanding the cessation of anti-British propaganda and threatening to abrogate the trade agreement and break off diplomatic relations. At this time also the Chinese militarists made a bandit raid on tlie U.S.S.R. Em bassy in Peking. In May the police raided the promises of the Soviet trade agencies in London. In retaliation to this gross violation of the trade agreement, the Soviet government stopped sending new orders for goods to England. Chamberlain broke cfE diplomatio relations with the U.S.S.Br. in the expectation that this would be followed by a rupture of relations between other capitalist countries and the U.S.S.B,, and the isolation of the latter.
In answer to this act of war provocation and attempt to institute an economic blockade against the U.S.S.R., the workers appealed to the Soviet government to issue a loan. The first Industrialization Loan in the sum of 200,000,000 rubles, was subscribed in a very short space of time.
The Aviation and Chemical Society founded in January 1927 issued an appeal for funds to build an aircraft squadron of the Red Air Fleet to be named "Our Answer to Chamberlain." This appeal met with a warm res])onso among wide masses of the people.
The imperialists, however, continued their acts of provocation. On June 7, 1927, a Wliiteguard killed the Soviet ambassador in War saw, Voikov, and the Polish rulers took this assassin under their pro tection.
Within the U.S.S.R. the agents of imperialism plotted to assas sinate leading members of Party and Soviet bodies. Several indus trial plants and army stores were set on foe.
The intensification of the class struggle in the country and the deterioration in the relations between the U.S.S.R. and the capital ist countries encouraged the Trotskyites to launch a new attack upon the general line of the Party. In 1926, the remnants of all the defeated factional groups formed what was called an "anti -Party bloc" headed by Trotsky, and that year became a secret agency of the British In telligence Service.
In the endeavoui' to disrupt the alliance between the working class and the basic mass of the peasantry, the enemies of the prole tarian dictatorship demanded that higher taxes be imposed uj)on the middle peasants. The Trotskyite provocateurs tried to induce the masses to believe that it was not worth while defending the U.S.S.R. because, so they said, the victory of Socialism in the U.S.S.R. was impossible anyhow.
The Trotskyites organized an underground party which stood for the restoration of capitalism. They had their leading central bodies and secret printing plants, formed secret anti-Soviet groups, and enlisted in their ranks the remnants of the enemies of the people who had been expelled from the Party, On the Tenth Anniversary of the Great October Socialist Revolution the Trotskyites and Zinovievites tried to organize anti-Soviet demonstrations in the streets of Moscow and Leningrad, In November 1027, the Bolshevik Party expelled the traitors Trotsky and Zinoviev from its ranks.
Characterizing the international position of the U.S.S.R. at the end of 1927, Comrade Stalin said: "iP/ic growth of interventionist tend encies in the cam'p of the imferialisis and the danger of loar {against the U.S,S.B,) is one of the main facts of the •present sitmtion^^ {Polit ical Report of the Gentral Committee to the Fifteenth Congress of the G.P.S.U.[B.}, Moscow, 1936, Russ, ed., p. 13).
The government and the Party called upon all the working people to display increased vigilance and to wage a relentless struggle against the enemies of the proletarian dictatorship. In 1927, a "Defence Week" was held throughout the country, the watchword being "In the struggle for peace strengthen the defences of the Land of Soviets." The working class demonstrateii its readiness to defend its socialist homeland. In the capitalist countries of Europe mass demonstrations and meetings of working people were also held to protest against the threat ening intervention.
While exposing the hostile designs of the imperialists, the Soviet government firmly pursued a peace policj^ and strove to improve relations with a number of capitalist countries. In the autumn of 1927, a trade agreement was concluded with Latvia, a treaty of neutrality and a trade agreement were concluded with Iran, and a convention permitting Japanese to fish in Soviet waters, and several concessions agreements were concluded with Japan. The economic ties between the U.S.S.R. and capitalist countries were strengthened in 1927.
Amid continuous acts of provocation and threats of war, the So viet government remained calm and determined to fight for the cause of peace to the end.
The First Five-Year Plan
Steering a Course Towards the Collectivization of Agriculture
The Tenth Anniversary of the existence of the proletarian dictator ship was marked by the achievement of considerable success in the socialist industrialization of the country; but agriculture, and grain farming in particular, still lagged very much behind. Individual peas ant farming could not achieve high productivity as it was unable to employ machines, fertilizers and the achievements of science and technique.
The raising of the entire national economy of the U.S.S.E. was hindered by the scattered character and backwardness of agriculture. The amount of grain available for the market was lower than before the war, the landlords, the former big suppliers of grain, having been liquidated. The breakup of peasant farms into small farms which began in 1918, continued through all the years of the revolution. The small peasant farms became hardly more than self-supplying. Al though the output of grain in 1927 was almost on the level of 1913, the amount of grain that reached the market was only a third of the pre-war quantity of marketable grain. The kulaks, whom the Soviet government was restricting and dislodging, sold only 2,080,000 tons of grain as against 10,400,000 tons which they sold before the revo lution. In 1927, the collective farms and state farms placed only about 560,000 tons of grain on the market. The grain problem facing the national economy was one of the utmost acuteness. To solve this prob lem it was necessary to eliminate the backwardness of agriculture, to supply it with machines and organize it on the basis of large-scale production; but this could be done only on the basis of the collective cultivation of the soil.
This was the solution jDroposod by Comrade Stalin in the report he delivered at the Fifteenth Congress of the G.P.S.U.(B.) which was held ill December 1927, Ho said: "The way out is to turn the small and scattered peasant farms into large united farms based on the common cultivation of the soil, to introduce oolku^tivo cultivation of the soil on the be sis of a new and higher tec]im(pie. , . . There is no other way out'* (Political Report of the Oeninil Committee to the Fifteenth Congress of the G.P.S.U.lB,], Moscow, 1930, Russ, od., p.26).
The Fifteenth Congress of the C.P.S.U.(B.) has gone into history as the Collectivization of Agriculture Congress. It adopted a plan for extending and strengthening the network of collective farms, and issued directives to develop further the offensive against the ku laks. The congress also passed a resolution calling for the drafting of the First Five-Year Plan for the development of the national economy.
Commenting on the importance of this transition to a Five-Year Plan, Comrade Stalin said; "Our plans are not forecast plans, not guesswork plans, but directive plans, which are binding upon our lead ing bodies, and which define the trend of our futnre economic develop ment on a coantrg-wide (Political Report of the Central Committee to the Fifteenth Congress of the Moscow, 193G, Russ, ed., p. 40).
The Offensive Against the Kulaks
A start was made on the First Five-Year Plan in the autumn of 1928 in the midst of an intense ola^s struggle. Taking advantage of the grain dilhcultios, the kulaks did everything to sabotage the state purchase of grain. In conformity with the directives of the Fifteenth Congress, the Party launched a determined offensive against the kulaks. In retaliation to their re fusal to soil their suiplus stocks of grain to the state at fixed prices, emergency laws were passed by which the surplus stocks of the kulaks wore confiscated by order of a court. The poorcT peasants were granted additional rebates and the right to receive 25 per cent of the grain that was confiscated from the kulaks. These measures isolated the kulaks and their resistance was broken.
The bourgeois specialists also greatly inteiiKsified their opposi tion to the Soviet State. In 192S, a sabotage organization of bourgeois specialists was discovered in the Shakhty coal field region. These sa boteurs operated on the instructions of the former mine owners, White guard emigres and foreign capitalists, and set out to ruin the coal industry of the U.S.S.R, They wrecked mines and factories, organized fires and explosions, wrecked machinery, caused roof falls in miiaos, and did everything to worsen the coiaditions of the miners in order to rouse their discontent. The wreckers were tried and received the punishment they deserved.
The Central Committee of the Bolshevik Party called upon all Party organizations and all the workers to learn the lesson of the Shakhty case and to develop self-criticism on a wids scale in order to reveal tlie deficiencies in the work of economic and Soviet bodies and organizations. At the same time Comrade Stalin pointed out that Bolshevik business executives must themselves become experts in matters of production so that wreckers from among the old bourgeois specialists should not be able to deceive them. The Party and the Soviet government took measures to improve the training of young specialists, and thousands of capable and devoted men and women from the ranks of the working class were sent to study.
The Party's offeisive against the kulaks evoked the open defence of them by the Bakliarin-Rykov grouji. The Bukharinites demanded the repeal of the emergency laws against the kulaks and most strongly opposed the course taken by the Party aimed at the collectivization of the countryside.
They also opposed industrialization, and the creation of heavy industry in particular, and demanded that the funds assigned for heavy industry should be transferred to light industry.
The Party sternly rebuffed the Bights and denounced them as agents of the kulaks in the Party. Comrade Stalin said: . The
triumph of the Bight deviation in our Party would unleash the forces of capitalism, undermine the revolutionary positions of the proletariat and increase tlic chances of restoring capitalism in our country" (J. Stalin, Problems of Leninism, Moscow, 1947, p. 233).
A Year of Great Change
In April 1929, the Sixteenth Conference of the O.P.S.U.(B.) endorsed the First Five-Year Plan which had been drawn up under the direction of Comrade Stalin.
This Five-Year Plan provid I cd for capital investments in the national economy, in the period of 1928-1933, amounting to 64,600,000,000 rubles. Of this sum, 19,500,000,000 rubles were to be invested in in dustry, including electrifica tion, 10,000,000,000 rubles in the transport system and 23,200,000,000 rubles in agri culture. This was a plan to equip the entire national economy of the U.S.S.R. with up-to-date technique.
The enormous tasks set by the Five-Year Plan roused the workers to new heights of labour enthusiasm and evoked a widespread wave of socialist emulation. Workers proclaimed themselves shock brigad ers of socialist labour and organized shook brigades in the factories. The workers and collective farmers not only fulfilled but more than fulfilled the plans proposed by the government; they also advanced counter-plans in excess of the government's proposals. A change took place in the attitude of people towards work, which from a compul sory duty began to turn, as Comrade Stalin has said, into "a matter of honour, a matter of glory, a matter of valour and heroism,"
Gigantic industrial construction was carried on all over the country. The building of the Dnieper Hydroelectric Power Station (Dniepro ges), which was begun in 1927, was vigorously proceeded with. Where the rooky rapids had for ages prevented the passage of ships, a huge dam was built 760 metres long and 60 metros high. The water level was raised, the dangerous rapids were submerged and the Dnieper was converted into a navigable river along its whole length. The power of the waterfall was utilized to set up a huge hydroelectric plant. Intensive operations were conducted in building a giant steel plant on Mt, Magnitnaya, in the South Urals. For ages this mountain had concealed just below the surface of the ground enormous deposits of high-grade ore which could now be utilized by the vast new Soviet plant. In the Donetz Basin work was commenced on the erection of the Kramatorsk and Gorlovka Steel Plants, and on the reconstruction of the Lugansk Locomotive Works. N'ew collieries were opened and new blast furnaces were erected. The Urals Machine Building Works and the Berezniki and Solikamsk Chemical Works were midor construction; work was developed on the erection of large automobile plants in Moscow and Gorky and of gigantic tractor plants and harvester-combine plants in the Volga Region and in the Ukraine, In the course of eleven months a huge tractor plant rose up in the steppe near Stalingrad. In building the Dnieper Power Station and the Stalingrad Tractor Works the workers beat world records in productiv ity of labour. The enormous scope of the new industrial construction, and the heroism displayed by the millions of the working class, W'ere without parallel in human history.
The work of building up heavy industry was directed by the vet eran Bolshevik and pupil of Lenin and Stalin, G. K. Orjonikidze (1886-1937). During the Civil War, Sergo Orjonikidze was one of the creators and organizers of the Red Army, and during the years of the upbuilding of Socialism he became one of the greatest organizers of victory on the front of socialist construction. His uncompromising hostility towards all the enemies of Socialism, his strict adherence to principle and pursuit of lofty ideals, his straightforwardness and sterling honesty and his cordial, plain and solicitous attitude to wards people, won for him the profound love and respect of all work ing people. The First Five-Year Plan and its execution cannot be separated from the enormous work performed by Sergo Orjonikidze, whom the workers and business executives called the "command er-in-chief of heavy industry."
The wave of labour enthusiasm among the masses of the workers was followed by a wave of enthusiasm in the building of collective farms. An important part in swinging the masses of the peasants over to collective farming was played by the state farms and the ma chine and tractor stations.
In the spring of 1929, the Council of Labour and Defence adopted a decision to set up machine and tractor stations on a mass scale and vigorous measures were taken to carry out this decision. Peasants came to the state farms and machine and tractor stations, and after seeing the tractors at work asked for assistance in uniting in collective farms so as to be able to cultivate the soil with the aid of up-to-date machinery. This started the mass collective-farm movement.
Whereas in 1928, the area cultivated by collective farms amounted to 1,390,000 hectares, in 1929, it amounted to 4,262,000 hectares. That year the state farms and collective farms produced over 6,400,000 tons of grain of which 2,080,000 tons were available for the market. In 1929, the peasants joined the collective farms not individually, as had been the case hitherto, but in whole villages and districts. The middle peasants had joined the collective farms. In North Caucasus, in the Ukraine and in the Middle and Lower Volga Regions, entire districts became collectivized. This was the beginning of solid col lectivization.
The year 1929 has gone into the history of our country as "the year • of great change.'* It was signalized by sweeping victories for Social ism in industry and in agriculture, the swing of the middle peasants towards collective farming, and the beginning of tlie establishment of collective farms on a mass scale.
U.S.S.R.—Land of Socialism
The U.S.S.R. in the Period of the Struggle to Collectivize Agriculture (1930–1934)
The Struggle for the Socialist Reorganization of Peasant Farming
Further Provocation of War
Tho successes achieved in so cialist industrialization facilitated the Soviet government's struggle for peace and against new acts of war provocation. The fact that the capitalist countries which encircled the Soviet Union continued active ly to prepare for war against the Land of Socialism made it urgently necessary still further to develop large-scale industry and to strength en the military might and defensive capacity of the U.S,S.E.
In 1929 an acute world economic crisis broke out, as a result of which 24,000,000 workers were thrown out of work. The industrial crisis was interwoven with an agrarian crisis, which gravely affected tens of millions of peasants. The bourgeoisie sought a way out of the crisis by suppressing the working class, on the one hand, and by driv ing towards another imperialist war for the redivision of the world, on the other.
Again the bourgeois press all over the world raised a howl that ^'Bolshevism is the enemy of civilization." The columns of the venal newspapers were filled with scurrilous legends about "Soviet dump ing," and "forced labour in the U.S.S.R." The Pope proclaimed an other "crusade" against the Soviet Union. The imperialists again tried to organize an economic boycott of the proletarian state. The govern ments of the United States, France, and Rumania passed laws impos ing a ban on imports from the Soviet Union. A new series of provoc ative anti-Soviet acts was perpetrated, one of the gravest of which was the confiiot on the Chinese Eastern Railway, organized by the counter-revolutionary groups in Manchuria in obedience to the or ders of the imperialist countries. On July 10, 1929, Whiteguard Chi nese forces seized the Chinese Eastern Railway, and shelled and ma chine-gunned Soviet frontier villages. The Soviet government called upon the central govermnent of China and the Manchurian authorities to settle the conflict in a pe«aceful way and demanded that the former situation on the Chinese Eastern Railway be restored. The Chinese government rejected the Soviet Union's legitimate demands, whereupon the Soviet government broke ol¥ dijiloniatic and commer cial relations with China and took a series of measures to protect the Soviet frontiers in the Far East. In August 1920, the Special Far Eastern Army was formed by order of Iv. E. Voroshilov, the People's Commissar of Military and Naval Affairs. In October and November 1929, the Special Far Eastern Army struck a number of crushing blows at the Whiteguard Chinese forces. Only then was an agreement signed by which the Chinese Eastern Railwaj?^ was returned to the Soviet Union.
This turn of affairs sobered the advocates of intervention. The British government resumed diplomatic relations with the U.S.S.R, The attempt to introduce an economic boycott of the U.S.S.R. also failed. In the beginning of 1930, the Soviet government signed new trade agreements with Great Britain, Italy and Turkey.
Thus, the Soviet Union repelled this new attack of international imperialism and ensured for herself the opportunity of peacefully continuing the work of building Socialism.
The Elimination of the Kulaks as a Class
The succossc^s achieved in socialist industrialization brought tiearor the decisive clash with the last capitalist class in the U.S.S.lV — the kulaks. The growth of socialist industry and of the agricultural co-operative movement, which gradually accustomed the peasants to collective farming, and the resolute struggle that was waged against the kulaks in 1S23 and 1929, prepared the ground for the transition to solid collectivization.
The socialist reorganization of agricultme in the U.S.S.R. was the most difficult and complicated task the revolution had to face. In 1929, there were in the U.S.S.R. 25,000,000 individual peasant farms, of which 35 per cent were poor peasant farms, 60 per cent were middle peasant farms and 4 to 5 per cent kulak farms. Although the number of poor peasants had been reduced to half the number that had existed in pre-war times, capitalism had not been uprooted in the rural districts, for small individual farming still predominated.
Up to 1929 the Soviet State had pursued a policy of restricting and dislodging the kulaks. It imposed higher taxes upon them, compelled them to sell their grain to the state at fixed prices, kept the size of kulak farms within definite limits by the law which restricted the rent ing of land, reduced the scale of kulak farming by means of tho law which restricted the hiring of labour on individual peasant farms, etc.
At the end of 1929, in view of the growth of collective farms and state farms, the Soviet State abandoned the policy of restricting and dislodg ing the kulaks for tho policy of eliminating tho kulaks as a class.
The 'vvatehword concerning the elimination of the kulaks as a class on tho basis of solid collectivization, was issued by Comrade Stalin on December 27, 1929, and incori)orated in a special resolution of the Central Committee of the C.P.S.U.(B.) dated January 5, 1930, enti tled: "Tho Rate of Collectivization and State Measures to Assist the Development of Collective Farms." Taking into account the differ ent degrees of ripeness for collectivization in the various regions, this resolution provided for three groups of regions to carry through collecti vization at dififarent speeds. The first group included the most important grain regions — ^North Caucasus and the Middle and Lower Volga Regions — ^where the largest number of tractors were available, where there were the largest number of state farms, and where most experience had been gained in fighting the kulaks. This group was to complete the process of collectivization in the spring of 1931. The second group, which included the grain regions of the Ukraine, the Central Black Earth Region, Siberia, the Urals and Kazakhstan, was to complete the process of collectivization in the spring of 1932. For the other regions — ^the Moscow Region, Transcaucasia, Central Asia and others, the completion of the process of collectivization was put off until 1933, i.e., to the end of tho Five-Year Plan period. On the basis of this resolution tho Central Committee of the C.P.S.U.(B.) and the Council of People's Commissars of the U.S.S.R., in February 1930, adopted a decision to prohibit the employment of hired labour in individual peasant farms and to grant the local Soviets in the districts where solid collectivization had been accomplished the right to take all measures necessary to combat the kulaks, including that of confiscating kulak lands and of deporting the kulaks from the given districts.
In a decision it adopted on January 5, 1930, the Central Committee of the C.P.S.U.{B.) laid it down that the main type of collective farm to be established was to be the agricultural artel, in which the prin cipal means of production are collectivized.
At the same time the Central Committee of the C.P.S.U.(B.) deemed it necessary to accelerate the erection of plants for the manu facture of tractorsjharvester combines and other agricultural machin ery required for large-scale farming. To cover expenditure on surveying of tho land and on other farm measures, tho government, in 1929-1930, advanced the collective farms credits to the amount of 500,000,000 rubles. The kulaks were expropriated in the same way as the capitalists in industry had been expropriated in 1918, but the means of production owned by the kulaks passed not to the state, but to the collective farms. This was a most profoimd revolution.
"The distinguishing feature of this revolution is that it was ac complished /rom ahove^i on the initiative of the state, and directly supported from below by the millions of jieasants, who were fighting to throw off kulak bondage and to live in freedom in the collective farms.
"This revolution, at one blow, Holved three fuiulameiital 3)roblems of socialist construction:
"a) It eliminated the most miuiorons class of exploiters in our conntiy, the kulak class, the mainstay of ca])italist restoration;
"b) It transfciTed tlie most numerous labouring class in our coun try, the iieasant class, from the path of individual farming, wliich breeds cajiitalism, to the path of co-operative, collective, Socialist farming;
"c) It furnished the Soviet regime with a Socialist base in agri culture — ^the most extensive and vitally necessary, yet least devel oped, branch of national economy.
"This destroyed the last mainsprings of the restoration of capital ism within the country and at the same time created now and decisive conditions for the building up of a Socialist economic system" (Hu* tory of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union \_Bolshev%k8'\^ Short Course, Moscow, 1945, p. 305).
The kulaks waged a fierce struggle against the collect ivizatiou of agriculture. They killed active x>roponents of tiio collective farms, set fire to collective-farm projierty, and urged the peasants to slaughtei* their cattle before joining the collective farms; but all their atlemjits to turn back the wheel of history utterly faiUnl. The elimination of the kulaks as a class on the basis of sulitl collectivization was effected with the outright sup])ort of the poor and middle 3 )easants. But this does not at all im])ly that the process was accomplislied without all sorts of difficulties.
The Party and the government had to overcome enormous difficul ties. Por example, some Soviet administrators and Party workers, instead of x)atiently explaining tho Party's policy to those individual farmers who still hesitated to join the collective farms, resolved to complete the process of collectivization at tlio earliest date without any regard for local conditions. They violated tlie Bolshevik principle that collective farms were to be formed on a voluntary basis, and in some cases they applied the kulak-elimination measures against middle peasants and even against poor peasants. It transpired later that these "distortions of policy" had been deliberately practised by the Bukharinites and Trotskyites in order to turn the peasants against collectivization and to prevent its successful advance. These gross and pernicious distortions threatened to discredit tho collective-farm movement in the eyes of the peasants and to disrui)t tho alliance between the working class and the peasantry.
On March 2, 1930, Comrade Stalin published in Pravda an articlc^ entitled "Dizzy with Success," in which he urged tho irecessity of taking measures to put a stop to distortions of ])olicy in tho oolloctivo farm movement. In another article entitled: "Reply to Collcctive Parm Comrades," Comrade Stalin explained the essence of the Party line in collective-farm development and the importance of the collective farms for the working peasantr}^. He emphasized that the establish ment of collective farms must be on a purely voluntary basis, and reminded his readers that the main link in the collective-farm move ment was the agricultural artel. After this, the peasants who had left the collective farms as a result of the pigheaded distortions of the Party line began to join them again.
The Successes of the Socialist Offensive
On June 26, 1930, the Sixteenth Congress of the C.P.S.TJ.(B.) was opened. This congress lias gone into history as the congress of the sweeping offensive of So cialism along the whole front. In the preceding stages of the struggle for Socialism the Party had conducted the socialist offensive on sep arate sectors (trade, industry, collective -farm development). Now a general socialist offensive was launched for the purpose of tearing up the very deepest-grown roots of capitalism. As the resolution of the Sixteenth Party Congress stated: '-The task set by Lenin of convert ing '^NEP Russia' into "^Socialist Russia' is being carried out."
The Sixteenth Party Congress summed up the first results of the socialist offensive. Industry had reached a level nearly twice as high as the pre-war level. For the first time in the history of our country industrial output constituted more than half and agricultural outjmt less than half of the total output of the country. The collectivization plan was overfulfilled. On May 1, 1930, collectivization in the prin cipal grain regions already embraced 40 to 50 per cent of the peasant farms and the total sown area of the collective farms amounted to 36,000,000 hectares. During the three years the amount of produce available for the market from collective farms increased more than 40-fold.
The collective-farm peasantry had been converted into a genuine and firm bulwark of the Soviet State. The U.S.S.R. had entered the period of Socialism; Socialism had triumphed not only in industry but also in agriculture.
The successes of the socialist offensive were achieved in a struggle against the furious resistance of the moribund classes. In their struggle against the collective farms the kulaks resorted to new tactics in the effort to disrupt the collective farms from within. They wormed their way into the collective farms, some even got themselves elected to the management boards, or obtained jobs as business managers, team lead ers, bookkeepers, stablemen, etc. Employing the tactics of "quiet sapping" they tried to undermine labour discipline in the collec tive farms, spoiled tractors and agricultural machinery, infected the horses with glanders, mange and other diseases, piffered the col lective-farm crops and so forth. By these means they wanted to fright en the peasants and undermine their confidence in the collective farms .
But the best of the collective farmers staunchly defended the cause of collective farming. Self-Bcacrilicing fighters for the collective faring were also to be found among schoolchildren and Young Pioneers. Thus in the Urals, in 1032, a twelve-year-old Young Pioneer, Pavlik Morozov, exposed his own father, tl\e chairman of tho village Soviet, as an ac complice of tlie kulaks. Tho kulaks then ambushed Pavlik in the forest and killed him.
The Soviet authorities took resolute measures against the sabotage and wrecking work of tho kulaks; tho latter were cleaned out of the collective farms which they had managed to join, wore deported for wi*ecking work, and so forth. On August 7, 1932, a law was passed for the protection of socialist property. A plenary meeting of the Central Committee of the O.P.S.U. (B.) tliat was held in January 1933, re solved to set up Political Departments at Machine and Tractor Stations and in state farms. During the two years that these Departments existed they did an enormous amount of work in training leading collective farm personnel, consolidating the collective farms and purging them of kulak elements and wreckers.
The underground counter-revolutionary organizations which found . no support among tho masses and acted as agents for the foreign im perialists tried to take advantage of the intensification of tho class struggle in tlje rural districts. In 1930, tho State Political Administra tion discovered a counter-rovolutionaTy oi-ganization which called itself the Industrial Party and consisted of a group of engineer-sabo teurs who worn fulfilling tlie instructions of foreign capitalists. Tho members of the Industrial Party tried to cause disruption and chaos in industry and to prepare the ground for intervention, which their foreign masters had timed for 1930. Operating in contact with the Industrial Party was the kulak so-called Toiling Peasants ' Party which, led by So cialist Revolutionaries working underground, conducted wrecking and counter-revolutionary activities in the field of agriculture. A Menshevik sabotage organization, working in alliance with the above-mentioned counter-revolutionary organizations, was operating in the higher eco nomio and planning bodies. In September 1930, a gang of miscreants was discovered who made food supplies the sphere of their wrecking work; they vented their hatred iipon the Soviet people by deliberately spoiling and poisoning meat, fish, vegetables, etc., in order to spread starvation and thus rouse discontent among the working people. In 1930-1932 several counter-revolutionary groups of Bukharinites and Trotsky ites were discovered. It transpired later that all these groups were branches of a joint Trotskyite-Bnkharinite espionage, wrecker, sabotage and terrorist organization which was working deep underground. The loaders and members of this organization were ex posed and convicted by the proletarian court in 1936-1938.
A great part in defeating the enemies of Socialism was played by V. M. Molotov, who, in 1930, was the head of the Soviet government. After the victory of the October Revolution^ Vyacheslav Mikhailovich Molotov — faithful disciple of Lenin^ and Stalin's close collab orator — became one of the foremost organizers and builders of the Soviet State. He was unswerving and uncompromising in carrying out the Leninist political line, strengthening the Soviet State and ensur ing the successful building of Socialism.
The Five-Year Plan in Four Years
The next task that faced the Party and the Soviet State after heavy industry, and the machine building industry in particular, had been built up, was to reorganize all branches of the national economy on the basis of new, up-to-date equipment. Technique acquired decisive importance, but many busi ness executives underrated its role in the period of reconstruction and did not concern themselves with problems of the technique of production as they regarded this as the business of the experts.
In a speech he delivered at the First All-Union Conference of Man agers of Socialist Industry in February 1931 , Comrade Stalin condemned this pernicious underrating of technique. "We are fifty or a hundred years behind the advanced countries," he said. "We must make good this <listance in ten years. Either we do it, or they will crush us" (J. Stalin, Problems of Leninism, Moscow, 1947, p. 356). He went on to say that the Bolsheviks must master technique, that in the period of recon struction technique decides everything. In answer to the objection that it was dificult to master technique, Comrade Stalin said: "There are no fortresses which Bolsheviks cannot capture."
Following Comrade Stalin's advice, the Party and the working class began to promote and train new, Soviet experts. Gradually a new, Soviet industrial-technical intelligentsia came into being, drawn from the ranks of the working class and the peasantry, an in telligentsia that was vitally interested in achieving success in socialist construction.
The First Five-Year Plan for the development of the national economy was to have been carried out in the period from 1928 to 1933, but the workers advanced the watchword: "The Five-Year Plan in Four Years." The workers in the factories and the peasants in the collective farms examined the possibilities of speeding up the fulfilment of their plans, of cutting down expenditure and of increas ing productivity of labour. Factory challenged factory, work team challenged work team, and workers challenged one another individu ally, to engage in socialist emulation. Teams and individuals under took to work like shook workers. The first "shock brigades" came from the ranks of the Young Communist League. The workers and collective farmers began to work in a new way and steadily increased the productivity of labour.
An enormous role in placing the whole of economic activity on a new footing was played by the six conditions for success in industry which Comrade Stalin enumerated at a conference of business executives held in June 1931.
The first condition advanced by Comrade Stalin for the successful development of industry was that industrial undertakings must reoi'uit manpower in an organized way by concluding contracts with collec tive farms. The second condition was that an end be put to the fluctua tion of manpower, for this was having a serious effect upon production. He further proposed to do away with "wage equilization^' and to givti the principal categories of workers an inducement to remain at their particular factories by properly organizing wages and improving their living conditions. The third condition for the successful develop ment of industry, in Comrade Stalin's view, was properly to organize labour, to do away with "depersonalization" and make every employee strictly and personally responsible for the task with which he is en trusted. Comrade Stalin's fourth condition was that resolute steps be taken to train an industrial and technical intelligentsia from the ranks of the working class, while rank-and-file workers with initiative and organizing ability must more boldly be promoted to loading posts. His fifth condition was a change in attitude towards the en gineers and technicians of the old school; he urged greater attention to their needs, more solicitude for their welfare and a bolder attitude in enlisting their co-operation. His sixth and last condition for the development of industry was the introduction and enforcement of strict accounting and the development of capital accumulation within industry itself, by mobilizing internal resources and eliminating mismanagement .
In concluding his historic sxieech at the conference of business executives Comrade Stalin said; "What makes our production j^lan real is the millions of working people who are creating a new life. What makes our plan real is the living people, it is you and I, our will to work, our readiness to work in the now way, our determination to carry out the plan" (J. Stalin, Problems of Leninimi, Moscow, 1947, p. 377).
The Results of the First Five-Year Plan
The execution of the Five-Year Plan in four years called for a very rapid rate of devel opment of industry. In 1931, the third year of the Five-Year Plan, which was called the "third decisive year," over a thousand new plants were planned to be built. The capital invested in industry and agriculture in that year amoimted to 17,000,000,000 rubles, compared with 10,000,000,000 in 1930. Traffic was started on the Turkestan-Siberian Railway, 1,500 kilometres long, which ran through the steppes of Kazakhstan where only recently goods were carried solely by horses and camels. In February 1931, the first Soviet tractor was put out at the Chelyabinsk Tractor Plant, and in August the Kharkov Tractor Plant turned out its first tractors. The first Soviet blooming mill was built at the Izhevsk Plant, and the Eed Putilov Works completed its five-year tractor program in three years. The AMO (now the Stalin) Automobile Plant, built on the site of the old automobile assembly workshops, started production, and the erection of the Gorky Automobile Plant was also completed. In that year the harvester-combine ];)lant in Saratov also started production.
A new iron and steel centre had sprung up in the eastern part of the Land of Soviets. The first mine was already in operation at Mib. Magnit naya, pre})arations were being made to start new blast furnaces, and the socialist city of Magnitogorsk was rapidly taking shape and grow ing. The first section of the huge Kuznetsk Iron and Steel Plant began to operate.
New large-scale building projects were put into operation, such as the White Sea-Baltic Sea Canal in Karelia, and in Moscow plans were being drawn up for the construction of an underground railway.
The "third decisive year" also witnessed an unprecedented growth of the collective farms. In the principal grain regions, the collective farms already united four-fifths, and in the other grain regions more than half, of the peasant farms; 200,000 collective farms and 4,000 state farms sowed two-thirds of the total sown area in the country. The number of tractors in operation in 1931 rose to 125,000. The collective farms and state farms became the principal producers of grain and agricultural raw materials. This was an enormous victory for Socialism in the rural districts.
The fourtli year of the Five-Year Plan was called the "fourth, culminating year." It gave an unprecedented impetus to socialist emulation. In May 1932, Nikita Izotov, a coal hewer at Gorlovka, having mastered to perfection the technique of coal production, ful filled his plan 10-fold. Izotov shared his experience with the best minors in the Donetz Basin and soon the Izotov movement spread over the whole coimtry.
In the "fourth, culminating year" the gigantic Dnieper Power Plant project was completed and in October of that year, 1932, the entire country celebrated the birth of this giant first-born of the Five Year Plan.
In 1932, vigorous construction work was carried on in the remote taiga, on the banks of the river Amur. Here came many thousands of Young Communist Leaguers who, under the most difficult conditions, set to work with tremendous enthusiasm to build a shipyard and a now socialist city that was named Komsomolsk (Young Communist League City).
Thus, enthusiastic, intense and tireless building activities were proceeding all over the country. During the years of the fulfilment oi the Five-Year Plan 2,400 new plants were built . A number of extreme ly important branches of industry that were created, such as tractor and automobile production, an up-to-date chemical industry, machine-building, and aircraft production, etc., were quite new in Russia, The output of electric power, oil, and coal increased immensely. A number of large power plants of over 100,000 kw. capacity werc^ started. The Soviet Union was transformed from an agrarian into an industrial country.
As a result of the execution of the First Five-Year Plan, by the heroic efforts of the working class led by the Party of Lenin and Stalin, the foundation was laid of socialist economy. This brought about tremendous changes in the material conditions of the working people. Unemployment was totally abolished and the working people of the U.S.S.E. had now no fears for the morrow.
In the rural districts a new, collective-farm system was built. At the end of 1932, the collective farms united over 60 per cent of the peasant farms in the country and accounted for over 70 per cent of the sown area. In the principal grain regions 80 to 90 per cent of the total peasant farms were already united in collective farms,
The rural districts were supplied with tractors, harvester combines and the most up-to-date agricultural machinery. Agriculture in the U.S.S.R., equipped with the most up-to-date machinery was now conducted on a scale unequalled in any other country in the world. The oollectivo farms destroyed the basis of class exploitation and poverty in the countryside. As Comrade Stalin expressed it, the coun tryside had ceased to be a stepmother to the peasants. The collective farms brought security into the lives of the former jyoov and middle peasants. The collective farms had become strong organizationally, economically and politically.
An imj)ortant factor in strengthening the collective farms was the First All-Union Congress of Collective-Farm Shock Workers, held in February 1933, at which Comrade Stalin issued the slogan: "Make the collective farms Bolshevik farms and all the collective farmers prosperous," Indicating to the collective farmers how this prosperity could be achieved, Comrade Stalin said: "Of you only one thing is demanded — and that is to work conscientiously; to distribute collective -farm incomes according to the amount of work done; to take good care of collective-farm property; to take care of the tractors and the machines; to organize proper care of the horses; to fulfil the assignments of your Workers' and Peasants' State; to consolidate the collective farms and to eject from the collective farms the kulaks and their toadies who have wormed their way into them" (J. Stalin, Problems of Leninism, Moscow, 1947, pp. 445-446).
During the period of the First Five-Year Plan enormous work was accomplished in industrializing the formerly backward non Russian national republics. In the former tsarist colonies — m Central Asia, Transcaucasia, in the steppes of Kirghizia and Kazakhstan, and in the remote northern regions — factories, mills, power j)lants, machine and tractor stations and state farms arose.
The victory of the
First Five-Year Plan was a world-historiu victoiy of tlie working class and peas antry of the tj.S.S.R., a victory which signified their liberation from the yoke
of exploitation and opened for all the working people of the U.S.S.R. the road
to a life of happiness and prosperity.
The victory of Stalin's Five-Year Plan showed the supei'iority of the social ist economic system.
As Comrade Stalin said in his report to the Joint
Plenum of the Central Com mittee and the Central Control Commission of the C.P,S.U.(B.) that was held in January 1933:
*The results of the Five-Year Plan have shown that it is quite possible to build a Socialist society in one country; for the economic foundations of such a society have already been laid in the U.S.S.R." (J. Stalin, Problems of Leninism, Moscow, 1947, j). 42G).
In summing up the international significance of the Five-Year Plan, Comrade Stalin said that the plan was not the private affair of the Soviet Union but the affair of the entire international proletariat . that "Hhe successes of the Five-Year Plan are mobilizing the revolutionary forces of the working class of all countries against capitalism'^ {Ibid . jp . 397 )•
In January 1934, fche Seventeenth Congress of the Bolshevik Party was held. This congress summed up the results of the historic victory of Socialism in our country.
As early as 1918, and later, when the New Economic Policy was introduced, Lenin pointed out that there were the elements of fivt* social-economic formations in our country. These were: 1) patriarchal economy; 2) small-commodity production; 3) j^riviTte capitalism; 4) state capitalism; and 6) the socialist formation.
Now tlie socialist formation had undivided sway over the whole of our national economy. At this time socialist industry already consti tuted 99 per cent of the total industry of the country. Socialist agricul ture (colioctivc farms and state farms) already covered 85.5 per cent of the total area under grain. The capitalist elements were com])letely eliminated from the sjihere of trade.
Comrade Stalin's report at this congress was, as S.M. Kirov ex ]>ressed it, the mosb striking document of our epoch. In this report Comrade Stalin drew a picture of the grand work of socialist construc tion that had been carried out and the successes it had achieved. In it he also presented a jirogram for the building of socialist society in the psi'iod of the Second Kvo-Year Plan.
The Seventeenth Congress also heard reports from Comrades Molotov and Kuibyshev on the Second Pive-Year Plan for the develop ment of the national economy, the tasks of which were even greater than those of the First Five-Year Plan; it provided for an increase in the industrial output of the U.S.S.R. that would bring it eight times above the level of pre-war output by 1037, the last year of the plan.
At the Seventeenth Congress, Bukharin, Rykov,Tomsky,Kauicnev and Zinoviev delivered s])ecches of ropontanco, but these utterances were merely the oamoiiflagc of double-dealing enemies of the people. While verbally admitting that tlic Party line was correct, they were actually cons]3iring to assassinate Comrade Stalin, the leader of the Party, and other leading members of the Party and the goveriiment. The}'wore selling our country to the imperialists and counted on their aid in restoring capitalism in the U.S.S.Ii.
The first victim of the Trotskyite-Zinoviovite bandits was the favourite of the Party and the working class, Sergei Mironovich Kirov, whom the Zinovievites treacherously assassinated in the Smolny, Leningrad, on December 1, 1934. The evidence of members of this counter-revolutionary group revealed that they were connected with representatives of foreign capitalist coimtilos and received money from them. It transpired later that this assassination was organized by Zinoviev, Kamenev and Bukliarin, on the orders of Trotslcy. The miscreants were annihilated on the unanimous demand of the people and by sentence of the proletarian court, which expressed the will of the Soviet people.
The Struggle to Complete the Building of Socialism. The Stalin Constitution
The Second Five-Year Plan for the Building of Socialism
Beginning of the Second World War and the U.S.S.R.'s Peace Policy
The Great Stalin Constitution
Prom the end of 1933 to the latter half of 1937, the capitalist countries were in a state of economic depression. In the latter half of 1937, a new economic crisis broke out, first in the United States and then in Great Britain, France and other countries
This new crisis broke out at a time when the Second World War had in fact commenced. In 1933, Italy attacked Abyssinia without declaring war upon her and annexed that country'-. In the summer of 1930, the imperialists organized military intervention in Spain. Ill 1937, Japan, after seizing Manchuria, invaded North and Central China. In 1938, Germany annexed Austria and Czechoslovakia. Europe, Africaand Asia were being forcibly changed. The entire system of the post-war, so-called Versailles, peace settlement, was shaken.
The new economic crisis led to the further intensification of the struggle among the imiDerialist powers. The question of making a new' redivision of the world, of spheres of influence and colonies, was now being settled by war. Japan justified her aggressive action on the ground that when the Nine-Pow'er Pact was concluded in 1922, she was not allowed to enlarge her territories at the expense of China . Italy demand ed that the losses she had sustained in the First World War should be made up out of the colonial acquisitions of Great Britain and France. Hitler Germany, on the pretext of wanting to regain the colonies she had lost by the Treaty of Versailles and of acquiring territories inhabit ed by Germans, was openly preparing for a war to establish her world domination. All the capitalist countries, big and small, began feverishly to arm and jDrepare to take part in a new world war.
The Soviet Union was the only cotmtry that undeviatingly upheld the cause of peace. But while pursuing its peace policy, the Land of Soviets strengthened to the utmost its defensive cax^acity and its international position. At the end of 1934, at the request of thirty four countries, the Soviet Union joined the League of Nations in the endeavour to utilize even this feeble organization as a means of hinder ing the unleashing of war.
With the object of maintaining peace, the Soviet government concluded a scries of pacts for mutual assistance in the event of aggression. The Soviet repre«eiitativori to the League of Nations demanded that aasistaiieo should be rendered the Spanish and Chinese peoj)les who were heroically lighting the interventionists to jjreserve their
iudepeudeiico.
In July 1938, the Ja]3anes(5 government presented the Soviet Union with a totally grouiulless claim to U.S.S.E;. territory near Lake Hasan, oil the Manchurian frontier. The Soviet govermnent rejected this claim.
After this, on July 29, taking advantage of the foggy weather, a Ja])anese dotachinent suddenly invaded Soviet territory and captured Bezimyanny Hill near Lake Hasan. The frontier guard, numbering eleven men in all, heroically kept the Japanese detachment of 150 men at hay until reinforcements arrived and beat the Japanese off. The Japanese then launched a wider offensive with larger forces of infantry and artillery. The Far Eastern Red Army was sent to the aid of the Soviet frontier guards and a battle was fought for Zaozerny and Bezimyanny Hills which lasted from August 2 to 0. Among the ffapanese forces there wore large numbers of Russian Whiteguards. On Augusb 6 Soviet bombing-plaiics v/ere brought into action against the Ja^jancsc. While the Soviet airmen were drox)i)ing hundreds of bombs on the tfapaneso fortifications on the hills, an offensive was begun by Soviet tanks anti infantry, who wont forward with the battle (try: "Forward! For our Motherland! For our Groat Stalin!" The Com munists and the Young Communist Leaguers wore in tlie front ranks. Right tliert^ in the trenches, in an atmosphere of impending battle, hundreds of noii-party Rod Army men handed in applications to join the Party. For example, Lieutenant Glotov, one of the heroes of Hasan, wrote in his application: "I ask to be accepted into membership of the C.P.S.TJ.(B.), and should an enemy bullet strike me down on the battlefield, I request to be counted a Bolshevik."
The Red Army routed the Japanese forces and drove them from Soviet territory.
In 1939, Japanese forces invaded the Mongolian People's Republic in the region of the river Khalkhin-gol. In conformity with the pact of mutual assistance which it had concluded with the Mongolian People 's Republic, the Soviet Union came to the assistance of the latter. Red Ai*my units, in conjunction with the Mongolian People's Army, struck a shattering blow at the Japanese troops and drove them from Mongo lian territory. The U.S.S.R. thus demonstrated to the whole world how faithfully it carries out its treaty obligations to other countries.
The Results of the Second Five-Year Plan
While the capitalist countries were in tlie throes of an economic crisis and then depression, socialist production continued steadily to rise in the U.S.S.R. By the middle of 1937, world capitalist industry barely reached 95 to 96 per cent of the 1929 level, but the industry of tlie U.S.S Jt. on that date had reached 428 per cent of its 1929 level. In the U.S.S.Ef. the building of Socialism was successfully nearing completion. Operations were begun by new industrial giants like the Krivoi Rog Steel Plant and the Stalin Machine-Building Plant in Kramatorsk, the first section of the Moscow subwaj^^, and the Moscow Volga Canal, 128 kilometres long, which connected the Soviet capital with the Volga.
In industry the Second Pive-Year Plan was completed by April 1 , 1937, that is to say, in four years and three months. With the execution of the First Five-Year Plan the U.S.S.R. had already outstripped France in volume of industrial production. After executing the Second Five-Year Plan it outstripped Great Britain and Germany, and remained second only to the United States. In 1936, the Dnieper Power Plant ^ alone produced more electric power than all the power stations in tsarist Russian put together. The Magnitogorsk plant smelted two and a half times as much pig iron as did all the blast furnaces in Poland. Exceptionally rapid during the Second Five-Year Plan period was the growth of industry in the non-Russian national Soviet Republics. The effect of the wise and farsighted policy pursued by the Party of Lenin and Stalin was that a new centre of heavy industry, coal and oil production, new centres of the machine-building and defence industries, were created in the Eastern regions of the Land of Soviets^ out of the range of the enemy.
The main task of the Second Five-Year Plan, namely, to complete the teclinical reconstruction of the whole of the national economy of the U.S.S.R., was accomplished. The machine-building industry increased its output almost 3-fold. In 1913, the output of machinery in tsarist Russia was only one-tenth of the amount produced in Great Britain, one-eighteenth of that produced in Germany and one-twenty third of that produced in the United States. At the end of the Second Five-Year Plan period the United States was the only country with an output of twice the amount of machinery produced in the U.S.S.R.
As regards the production of electric power, the U.S.S.R. moved up from fifteenth to second place in Europe, and to third place in the world. In output of tractors the U.S.S.R. reached first place in Europe, and in output of harvester combines it reached first place in the world.
During the period of the two Stalin Five-Year Plans the transport system of the Soviet Union was entirely reconstructed. The production of locomotives, of the most uiD-to-date types, increased 4-fold compared with 1913. The output of automobiles increased 8-fold in five years. In 1932, the Stalin (formerly AMO) plant turned out 50 cars a day; in 1937, it turned out 205 a day. The number of motor buses in the streets of Moscow and other towns increased and trolley buses were introduced. In 1935, after the heroic Arctic Yojages of the icebreaker Chelyuskin and other vessels, there began the exi)loitation of the Northern Sea Eoute.
The ];)eriod of the two Stalin Five-Year Plans also witnessed the consummation of the technical reconstruction of agriculture. Soviet agriculture was now not only conducted on a larger scale than in any other country but had become the most mechanized agriculture in the world. The sown area of all crops increased from 105,000,000 hectares in 1913 to 135,000,000 hectares in 1937. The collective farms in 1937 provided the market with over 27,300,000 tons of grain which was nearly 6,500,000 tons more than the landlords, kulaks and peasants together placed on the market in 1913. The collectivization of agricul ture was in the main completed. In 1937, 18,500,000 peasant households, constituting 93 per cent of all the peasant farms in the country, were organized in collective farms, while the grain area of these collective farms covered 99 per cent of the total peasant grain areas in the country.
Industry, agriculture and the transport system received an enor mous quantity of new machines and machine tools.
The Stakhanov Movement
The Party, headed by Comrade Stalin, di'cw the masses into the struggle to master the now technique, and the slogan, master technique, became the loading slogan of the Second Stalin Five-Year Plan. An enormous amount of work was done to train workers to become complete masters of modern technique. At the end of 1934, Comrade Stalin said that tlio most valuable thing that had been created in tlio ])rocoss of industrializing the country was skilled cadres. At the beginning of the ])eriod of reconstruction, when the country sufiEered from a lack of modern technique, the Party issued the slogan: "In the period of reconstruebion toohnique decides •everything." But when the process of reconstruction was in the main completed, the country suffered from an acute shortage of skilled personnel, that is to say, men and women able to handle the new machines. The Party therefore devoted special attention to the train ing of such cadres.
In his address to the graduates from tlio Bed Army Academies in May 1935, Comrade Stalin said: "Without people who have mas tered technique, technique is dead. In the charge of people who have mastered technique, technique can and should perform miracles," ' (J. Stalin, Problems of Leninism, Moscow, 1947, p. 523.) In his address "Comrade' Stalin advanced the new slogan, "Cadres decide everything."
The best men and women in the country responded to the leader's call with new achievements in their work, achievements which upset * all hitherto existing rates of output. On August 31, 1935, Alexei Stakhanov, a hewer in the Central Irmino Colliery, Donotz Basin, in one shift hewed 102 tons of coal as against the sliift rate of 7 tonsj 'thus performing the latter 14 1/2-fold. Stakhanov initiated a mass ' movement: among the workers and collective fanners to increase rates of output, to raise productivity of labour to a higher level. In honour of its initiator, this movement is known as the Stakhanov movement.
Stakhanov's example was followed by workers in other branches of industry, for example, by drop-hammer man Busygin at the Gorky Automobile Plant, the locomotive driver Krivonos in the Donetz Basin, the weavers Vinogradova at the Vichuga Textile Mills, and by maiiy others.
At the First All-Union Conference of Stakhanovites that was held in the Kremlin, Moscow, in November 1935, Comrade Stalin showed that the Stakhanov movement had sprung up on the basis of the success es achieved by Socialism in our country. It bore within itself, he said, the rudiments of the transition from Socialism to Communism, and of the elimination of the distinction between physical and mental labour, and it marked the beginning of a tremendous cultural and technical development of the working class. "The basis for the Stakha nov movement," he said, "was first and foremost the radical improve ment in the material welfare of the workers. Life has improved, comrades. Life has become more joyous. And when life is joyous, work goes well. Hence the high rates of output. Hence the heroes and heroines of labour" (J. Stalin, Problems of Leninism^ Moscow, 1947, pp. 531-532). Comrade Stalin called the Stakhanovites innovators in our industry.
The Stakhanov movement spread all over the country, first in the towns and then in the rural districts.
In the period of the Second Five-Year Plan the collective -farm system became fully consolidated. Of exceptional importance for the development and prosperity of the collective farms were the rules for agricultural artels drawn up under Comrade Stalin's direction and adopted at the Second Congress of Collective-Farm Shook Workers held in February 1935. Another extremely important factor was the securing to the collective farms in perpetuity of the land they occu pied. Basing their activities on the rules promoted by Stalin, the collec tive farms made rapid progress towards a prosperous and cultured existence.
In the winter of 1935-36 a series of conferences was held of out standing workers in the various branches of agriculture and leading members of the Party and of the government. These conferences re vealad what splendid people the collective-farm system had produced. The conferences showed the whole country the new heroines of labour produced by the collective-farm system, such splendid women as Maria Demchenko, Pasha Angelina, and many others.
Liquidation of the Remnants of the Trotskyite-Bukharinlte Spies, Wreckers and Traitors
In their preparation for war against the U.S.S.R. the imperialist governments utilized the services of those traitors to their country, the Trotskyites and Bukharinites. The trials which took place in the i)oriod from 1935 to 1938, revealed that the Bukharinites and Trotskyites had long constituted one com mon gang of enemies of the people, the bloc of Bights and Trotskyites.
In obedience to the orders of their masters, the foreign, bourgeois intelligence services, the Trotskyites and Bukharinites set out to undermine the defences of our countiy, to facilitate foreign military intervention, pave the way for the defeat of the Bed Army, to dismember the U.S.S.B., surrender the Far Eastern Maritime Begion to the Japanese, Soviet Byelorussia to the Poles, Soviet Ukraine to the Germans and the Soviet North to the British, to abolish the gains won by the workers and collective farmers and restore capitalist slav ery in the U.S.S.B, The members of the counter-revolutionary Trots kyite-Bukharinite terrorist organizations were exposed, and after trial sentenced by the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the U.S.S.B. to death by shooting.
The fact that these camouflaged enemies of the people had re mained undetected for so long was due to the political complacency of many of the members of the Party.
Comrade Sfcalin urged the necessity of abandoning this political complacency forthwith. Bevoaling the causes of it, lie emphasized that many comrades had forgotten that we were in a capitalist encircle ment, and the enemies of the people had taken advantage of this. Ho called upon the members of the Party and the entire Soviet people to display greater political vigilance and to master the principles of Bolshevism.
The Great Stalin Constitution
The enormous social and economic changes which had taken place in the country expressed in the fact that socialist society had in the main been built, and the greater political consciousness and activity of the Soviet people, raised the issue of changing the Constitu tion of the U.S.S.B. which had been adopted in 1924.
In February 1935, the Seventh Congress of Soviets of the U.S.S.B. instructed the Central Executive Committee of the U.S.S.B. to draft a new Constitution. A Constitution Commission headed by Comrade Stalin was set up, which after making the draft, submitted it to the Central Executive Committee of the U.S.S,B. for consideration.
In June 1936, the Central Executive Committee of the U.S.S.B. approved the draft of the Stalin Constitution and submitted it for public discussion in order that the workers, collective farmers and the Soviet intelligentsia might express their opinion on it and propose any amendments they deemed fit. The draft of the new Constitution was publicly discussed by the Soviet people all through the summer and autumn of 1936 and mot with universal approval.
On December 5, 1936, the Extraordinary Eighth All-Union Congress of Soviets adopted the first Constitution of victorious Socialism in history.
In his report on the draft Constitution, Comrade Stalin summed up the magnificent results achieved in the building of Socialism in the U.S.S.R. During the preceding twelve years (from 1924 when the first Constitution was adopted, to 1936) immense changes had taken place in the economy and class structure of society, he said. The socialist system had fully triumphed, the exploiting classes had been liquidated. The landlord class and the big imperialist bourgeoisie had already been utterly routed during the Civil War. During the period of socialist construction, all the exploiting elements — capitalists, merchants, kulaks, and profiteers — ^were liquidated.
Under the Soviet system the workers, peasants and intelligentsia had undergone a profound change. The working class had ceased to be a proletariat in the strict sense of the term, had cjeased to he an exploited class. It has been converted into a new working class, a class which had abolished the capitalist economic system and had established the socialist ownership of the means and instru ments of proiuction. An entirely new peisantry, a collective-farm peasantry, had grown up in the U.S.S.R., for collective farming was based not on private , but on socio. list property , the product of collecti ve labour.
The intelligentsia in the L.S.S.R. had also undergone a radical change. Having sprung in the main from the ranks of the workers and peatanls they had become active builders of socialist society.
As regards the different nationalities in the U.S.S.R. Comrade Stalin said: , .their feeling of mutual distrust has disappeared,
a feeling of mutual friendship has developed among them, and thus real fraternal co-operation among the peoples has been estallished within the system of a single federated state" (J. Stalin, Problems of Leninism^ Moscow, 1947, p, 547).
Soviet socie^y consists of two friendly classes — the workers and the peasant's, between whom there is no antagonism, although some class distinctions still remain betveen them. The Constitution of the U.S.S.R. recorded the fact that the Soviet Union is a socialist state of workers and peasants.
The political foundation of the U,S.S.R. is the Soviets of Work ing People 's Deputies which grew and became strong as a result of the overthrow of the power of the landlords and capitalists and the conquest of the dictatorship of the proletariat.
The economic foundation of the U,S,S.R. is the socialist system of economy and the socialist ownership of the means of production.
The U.S.S.R. is a voluntary, fraternal union of equal nations. Each of the sixteen republics comprising the Union independently settles all questions of state, except those that affect the Soviet Union as a whole.
The state structure of the U.S.S.R. guarantees the equality and the protection of the national interests of all the peoples of the U.S.S.R., big and small. The Supreme Soviet consists of two chambers with equal rights — ^the Soviet of the Union and the Soviet of Nationalities, which safeguards the specific interests of the work ing people arising from their specific national features.
All over the world, wherever the bourgeoisie rules, some nations are oppressed by others. Our Socialist Motherland carefully safeguards the rights of every nation and proclaims the preaching of national or race exclusiveness or hatred and contempt, as a crime against the state pimishable by law.
The Soviet Union unites about sixty nations, national groups and nationalities. A multi-national state has been built up with Social ism as its foundation. It is based not on oppression, but on the fraternal co-operation and friendship of the peoples. As Comrade Stalin has said; . . Priendship among the peo])lcs of the U.S.S.R. is a great and important achievement. Por as long as this friendship exists, the peoples of our country will bo free and invincible" ("Sjjeechcs," Part 2. '"Speech at a Conference of the Poreinost Collective Farmers of Tajikistan and Turkmenistan," Moscow, 1935, j). 23).
The state power and state administration in the U.S.S.R. are built u]j on tlie principles of genuine domoci-atism imd on drawing large numbers of the working people into the work of governing the Soviet State. The local organs of state pov^er in our country — ^the Terri torial, Regional, Area, District, City and Village Soviets of Work ing People's Deputies — enjoy wide powers.
The election of all Soviet organs takes place on the basis of univer sal, equal and direct suffrage, and secret ballot. The Stalin Constitution abolished the restrictions on electoral rights that had existed hitherto, as the exploiting classes had been abolished in the U.S.S.R.
The Soviet system is the most democratic system in the world, for it safeguards the interests of the overwhelming majority of the people, whereas bourgeois democracy in any form is democracy for a ruling minority. The Stalin Constitution shows that our system of state is a model of the most consistent socialist democracy.
The Soviet system places no restrictions upon electoral rights, whereas in all bourgeois countries various qualifications such as prop erty, domiciliary and educational qualifications, are widely imposed in the interests of the capitalists. In capitalist countries the elector al rights of the inhabitants of colonies and of so-called "national minorities" are, as a rule, restricted.
A disgraceful blot on many bourgeois Constitutions is that they either entirely deprive women of electoral rights, or restrict those rights for women.
In the U,S.S.Er. women enjoy equal rights with men in all spheres of the economic, governmental, cultural and public and political life of the country. The most distinguished daughters of the Soviet people are members of the Supreme Soviet of the U.S.S.R., of the Supremo Soviets of Union and Autonomous Republics, and of local Soviets of Working People's Deputies.
Thanks to the victory of Socialism in the U.S.S.R., the dream of the best representatives of human society has come true ; everybody is ensured the right to work, to rest and recreation, to education and to maintenance in old age and in the event of disablement.
The Constitution guarantees for the citizens of the U.S.S.R. freedom of speech, press, assembly and meetings, street processions and demon strations, and safeguards the right of citizens to unite in public organi zations (trade unions, co-operative societies, etc., and for the most active and politically conscious citizens the right to unite in the Com munist Party).
The Stalin Constitution not only proclaims all the rights of the citizens of the U.S.S.R. (as the Constitutions of bourgeois countries do in relation to the rights of citizens), but also ensures the material conditions for enjoying these rights.
The Soviet system, while guaranteeing great rights to the citizens of the U.S.S.R. imposes upon them a number of lofty and honourable duties. Work in the U.S.SR. is a duty and a matter of honour for every able-bodied citizen. It is the duty of citizens of the U.S.S.R. to abide by the Constitution of the U.S.S.R., observe the laws, main tain labour discipline, honestly perform public duties and respect the rules of socialist intercourse. It is the duty of every citizen of the U.S.S.R. to safeguard and fortify socialist property. It is a duty of honour for citizens of the U.S.S.R, to serve in the ranks of the armed forces of the U.S.S.R.
The Land of Soviets received a new Constitution, the Constitution of victorious Socialism. The adoption of the Constitution of the U.S.S.R. caused tremendous rejoicing among the peoples of the Soviet Union.
During the elections to the Supreme Soviet of the U.S.S.R. which were held on December 12, 1937, the Communist Party put forward can didates in a bloc with non-party people. The Central Committee of the C,P.S.U. (B.) called for votes to be cast for the candidates of this bloc. It was a call addressed to all those who wanted our country to remain mighty, cultured and free, the working people to be free from exploitation forever, our industry to continue to develop and outstrip the capitalist countries, our collective farms and state farms to con tinue to flourish and provide our country with an abundance of agri cultural produce; it was addressed to all who wanted our working people to contimie to be free from unemployment and uncertainty as to the morrow, and our women to continue to be free and equal in all branches of economy and administration, who wanted the science, literature and art of the peoples of the Soviet Union to develop and the peoples themselves to remain free and equal, and the working people of the U.S.S.R. to continue to enjoy the blessings of peaceful labour.
In response to this appeal about 90,000,000 voters (98,6 per cent of all those who went to the poll) cast their votes for the candidates of the bloc of Communists and non-party people.
The first candidate that the towns, collective farms and national republics unanimously nominated was the leader of the peoples, the creator of the Constitution, their beloved father and friend, Comrade Stalin. Comrade Stalin consented to stand for the Stalin electoral dis trict of Moscow. On December 11, 1937, on the eve of the election, Comrade Stalin addressed his electors, and said, Deputy should know that he is the servant of the people, their emissary in the Supreme Soviet, and that he must follow the line laid down in the mandate given him by the people. If he turns off the road, the electors are enti tled to demand new elections, and as to the Deputy who turned off the road, they have the right to send him packing . . , Dealing with the rights and duties of the electors. Comrade Sfcalin also indicated the sort of person a Deputy elected by the people should be. Comrade Sbalin said: *Tt is the duty and right of the electors to keep their Deputies constantly under their control and to impress upon them that they must under no circumstance sink to the level of political Philistines, impress upon them that they must be like the great Lenin" ("Speech Delivered at a Meeting of Voters of the Sbalin Electoral Area, Moscow, December 11, 1937, in the Bolslioi Theatre," Moscow, 1945, pp. 11-15).
The elections to the Supreme Soviet were virtually a nation-wide festival. The unanimity then displayed has never been witnessed in any election in any other country in the world.
The Supreme Soviet of the U.S.S.R. is a genuine people's Soviet parliament. The Supreme Soviet (first convocation) settled a number of extremely important questions of state.
The first elections to the Supreme Soviet were a mighty demon stration of the moral and political unity of the Soviet people, a demon stration of its close solidarity with the Party of Lenin and Sbalin and with its leader. As Comrade Molotov said: "The moral and political unity of the people of our country has its living incarnation. Wo have a name that has become the symbol of the victory of Socialism. That name is also a symbol of the moral and political unity of the Soviet people. You know that that name is — Stalin!"
The U.S.S.R. Enters the Phase of Completing the Building of Socialism
The Third Five-Year Plan
The Great Stalin Constitution leg islatively enacted the world-historical fact that the U.S.S.R. had entered a now phase of development, the phase of the comple tion of the building of socialist society and of the gradual transition to Communism.
The Stalin Constitution records the main pillars of Socialism as follows: the absence of exploitation of man by man, the conversion of the means of production into socialist property, the fulfilment of the fundamental principle of Socialism: 'Trom each according to his ability, to each according to his work."
In the U.S.S.R., Socialism — ^the lower phase of Communism — has already been achieved. At this stage the distinctions between town and country and between mental and physical labour have not yet been abolished. Under Socialism, the survivals of capitalism still remain in the minds of men.
The victory of the two Stalin Eive-Year Plans created all the conditions for the gradual transition from Socialism to Communism, under which the principle "from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs" will be applied. The productive forces in our country are freed from the fetters of capitalism, the U.S.S.R.'s com plete independence of capitalist countries is ensured, the socialist reconstruction of the entire national economy on the basis of new, most up-to-date technique has been completed, the nation-wide Stakha nov movement is steadily raising the productivity of labour, the material and cultural well-being of the entire Soviet people is im proving and the borderlines between town and country and between mental and physical labour are gradually being obliterated.
In March 1939, the Eighteenth Congress of the Party was held. In the historic report that he made at this congress, Comrade Stalin said that Communist society could not be built unJess the fundamental condition was carried out of overtaking and outstripping the capitalist world not only as regards level of technical development but also economically. As regards the level of technical development the Soviet Union had outstripped the principal capitalist countries; but it still lagged behind them in respect to output per head of the population. As regards pig iron, for example, the U.S.S.R. produced per head of the population less than half of that produced in* Great Britain and Prance, and one-third of that produced in the United States. The electricity generated in our country per head of the popula tion was half that of Prance, one-third that of Great Britain, two sevenths that of Germany and one-fifth that of the United States.
Comrade Stalin said:
"We have outstripped the principal capitalist countries as regards technique of production and rate of industrial development. That is very good, but it is not enough, Wc must outstrip them economi cally as well. We can do it, and we must do it. Only if we outstrip the principal capitalist countries economically can we reckon upon our country being fully saturated with consumers' goods, on having an abundance of products, and on being able to make the transition from the first phase of Communism to its second phase" (J. Stalin, Problems of Leninism, Moscow, 1947, p. 610).
In this report Comrade Stalin also dealt with extremely important theoretical questions such as, for example, the intelligentsia and the state. As regards the latter question he emphasized that under Commu nism the state will remain"unless the capitalist encirclement is liquidat ed, and unless the danger of foreign military attack has disappeared" (J, Stalin, Problems of Leninism, Moscow, 1947, p. 637).
At this congress Comrade Molotov delivered a report in which he summed up the triumphant fulfihnent of the Second Five-Year Plan ahead of time and outlined the Third Stalin Five-Year Plan, The Third Five-Year Plan was a continuation of the Second and First Five-Year Plans, and its keynote was the furtlier industrialization of the country.
The Third Five-Year Plan provided for the strengthening of the defensive power of the Soviet State on a larger scale tlian was the case in the first two Five-Year Plans. It took into account the possibility of an attack upon the U.S.S.R. from the West, and provided for the erection' in the Eastern regions of the country of duplicate plants in the machine-building, oil-refining and chemical industries. It also provided for the creation of a new centre of the textile industry in Central Asia and for an exceptionally rapid increase in the output of coal and cement in the Soviet Far East. The pride of the Third Five Year Plan was the "Second Baku" and the Kuibyshev hydroelectric power project — ^the largest of its kind in the world — ^that was to ir rigate the arid lands of the trans-Volga Region. In the first years of the Third Five-Year Plan period hundreds of new industrial plants were completed and put into operation. In particular, the Magnitogorsk Steel Plant in the Urals was completed. The grand program for the further transformation of our motherland was to have been completed in 1942. After that a Fifteen-Year Plan for the development of our national economy was contemplated with the object of converting our motherland economically into the most advanced and richest country in the world.
During the first three years the fulfilment and overfulfilment of the plan proceeded successfully, but in the summer of 1941, our peaceful labours were interrupted by the perfidious attack of th<>! German fascist robbers upon the Soviet Union.
Labour and Political Enthusiasm in the Land of Socialism
The decisions that were adopted by the Eighteenth Congress of the C.P.S.U. (B.) placed in the hands of the working people of our country a powerful weapon for the achievement of further victories and roused them to unprecedented .heights of labour and political enthusiasm. Socialist emulation in honour of the Third Stalin Eive-Year Plan developed on a wide scale throughout the country. The ranks of the heroes of labour grew with unprecedented rapidity. New names of workers and oollecbive farmers, men and women, of people working in the si)here of culture and technology, science and art, became famous throughout the country and roused thousands to perform new feats of valour. As the popular Soviet song says: "Any one of us can become a hero."
The title of Hero of Socialist Labour was instituted in the U.S.S.R.
The government conferred the title of Hero of Socialist Labour on Comrade Stalin on his sixtieth birthday".
The high title of distinction — Hero of the Soviet Union — ^was also instituted. The first Heroes of the Soviet Union were the valiant airmen who rescued the passengers of the wrecked Ghelyushin from the i03 in the Arctic. The rescue of the "Chelyuskinites" was a model of the unexampled heroism and Bolshevik capacity for organization displayed by Soviet people. The roll of Heroes of the Soviet Union was augmented by the names of valiant commanders and men of the Red Army who won fame for themselves and their Soviet Motherland by their unprecedented deeds.
The first women to have the title of Hero of the Soviet Union con ferred upon them were those splendid aviators Valentina Grizodubova, Marina Baskova and Paulina Osipenko.
The capitalist encirclement of the U.S.S.Br. and the growing war danger arising from the fact that the capitalist countries were "creep ing" into the Second World War created the necessity of strengthen ing the defences of the U.S.S.Ri., of reinforcing the Red Army, the Red Air Force and the Red Navy.
The people surrounded their army with love and care. In the speech he delivered on the Tenth Anniversary of the Red Army, Comrade Stalin said: "Nowhere in the world do the people treat the army with such love and solicitude as our people do. . . . Our army is the only army in the world that enjoys the sympathy and support of the workers and peasants. Herein lies its power, herein lies its strength" (J. Stalin, Tht Three Specific Features of the Bed Army, Moscow, 1940, Russ, ed., p. 6). The men, commanders and political instructors of the Red Army and the Red Navy are the finest sons of the people, selflessly devoted to their great motherland. The army and the navy live in unison with the whole country.
The Cultural Revolution in the U.S.S.R.
The almost two-fold increase in the national income during the Second Five-Year Plan period and the growth of prosperity among the working people of the TJ.S.S.II. created a firm foundation for the steady improYoment of their cultural standards.
During the period of the fii'st two Five-Year Plans universal com pulsory elementary education was introduced throughout the country, with universal seven-year education in the towns.
The number of pupils attending elementary and high schools rose to 33,000,000 at the end of the Second Five-Year Plan period, compared* with 8,000,000 in 1914. More schools were built in the U.S.S,R. in the course of twenty years than were built during 200 years in tsarist Russia. After the revolution a wide network of higher educa tional establishments (universities, etc.) was created, and in 1939, they were attended by 600,000 students, nearly six times the number that attended such establishments in tsarist Russia. The number of students attending higher educational establishments in the U.S.S.R. exceeds that of twentythroe capitalist countries put together. Before the revolution there were seventy higher educational establishments in the territory of what is nowtheR.S.F.S.R.jin 1937 there were 436. In the Ukraine there were nineteen higher educational establishments before the revolution; at the end of tlie Second Five-Year Plan period there were 123. In Georgia there was only one before the revolution, but during the iieriod of the Stalin Five-Year Plans nineteen were opened. In the other non-Russian national republics there was not a single higher educational establishment, but under Soviet rule over one hundred were opened. The number of pupils and students attend ing schools and higher educational establishments of all typos in the U.S.S.R. in 1939 was 47,500,000, or over one-fourth of the entire population.
Many of the nationalities which had not possessed an alphabet before, acquired one under the Soviet system, opened schools in which instruction was conducted in the native language, and created their •own literature, theatre and intelligentsia.
In 1936 alone, 183,000,000 copies of books printed in the lan guages of the various peoples of the U.S.S.R. were published, not counting books published in Russian. Newspapers in the U.S.S.R. are published in fifty-nine languages and books in 111 languages. The total circulation of newspapers increased 14-fold, by compari son with the figures for tsarist Russia. The number of libraries, reading rooms, recreation clubs, theatres, cinemas, stadiums, athletic grounds and village laboratories gtows from year to year.
The Soviet intelligentsia, which during the Second Five-Year Plan period grew to 9,600,000 persons, will grow still more as the main task is fulfilled in the sphere of cultural development, namely, to raise the cultural and technical level of the entire working class to that of the engineer and technician.
Exceptionally great is the role played in the Soviet Union by science, that progressive science which does not divorce itself from the people and which serves the cause of Socialism, Comrade Stalin referred to Papanin and Stakhanov as innovators in science, for they had set examples of how bold practice can be combined with serious scientific research.
In the U.S.S.R. science is closely connected with the practi cal work of building Socialism.
Soviet science helps to build huge hydroelectric power stations, to carry out such gigantic projects as the MoscowVolga Canal, the White Sea-Baltic Sea Canal, the Moscow Subway, the finest in the world, and others. Soviet designers have designed scores of new types of machines, machine tools and instruments. Exceptionally great are the successes which Soviet scientific and technical thought has achieved in the sphere of aviation. The excellent design and high technical equipment of Soviet aeroplanes, hydroplanes, etc., have enabled Soviet airmen to establish world records.
In July 1936, that great airman of our time, Valeri Pavlovich Chkalov and his comrades performed a tremendous circular flight over the Soviet North and East. In March 1937, an expedition flew to the North Pole. The aircraft which took part in this expedition were flown by our finest aviators, headed by Hero of the Soviet Union Vodopya nov. In May the aircraft landed at the North Pole and left on the ice four valiant Soviet patriots, headed by Papanin. Papanin and his comrades drifted on the ice for 274 days and covered 2,500 kilometres, conducting, under exceptionally difficult conditions, in tense scientific research work which enriched world science with new data on the Arctic.
On June 18-19, 1937, our hero aviators Chkalov, Baidukov and Belyaliov, in spite of cyclones and ice crust, flew from Moscow to America across the North Pole; and a month later this flight was re peated by Gromov, Yumashev and Danilin, who established a new record in long-distance flying. All these flights were undertaken with the scientific object of finding a route to , America across the North Pole.
Similarly important scien tific work was conducted in 1938-1939 by the valiant crew of the icebreaker Sedov,
Soviet agricultural science is helping to change nature in our country. The discoveries made by that brilliant geneticist Mi churin remained unrecognized for forty-five years before the revolution, and it was only under the Soviet regime that they acquired wide fame. Mi churin was given the opportu nity to continue, on a huge scale and on a wide scientific basis, his experiments in crossing plants and obtaining now species, hybrids. Academician Lysenko, the son of a peasant, who is continuing the work of Michurin, has applied that great horticulturist's methods to the development of field crops. He worked out the theory of stages in the development of plants and found a method of vernalizing wheat which greatly increases the yield. Academician V. R. Williams, a Bolshevik, worked oufc the theory of the rotation of grass crops. Academician Tsitsin, By crossing wheat with couch grass, produced a new variety of perennial wheat that is impervious to drought. In a conversation he had with Academician Tsitsin, Comrade Stalin said: "Be bolder in your experiments, we will support you." Together with our Soviet scientists, and under their direction, thousands of front rank collective farmers are carrying on scientific research in village laboratories and experimental fields to produce varieties of drought resisting, high-yielding agricultural plants.
Physics, mathematics, physiology and other sciences have made enormous progress in our country. Problems of agro-physics, solar radiation and photo-chemical conversion are being successfully solved. Our Soviet mathematician. Academician Vinogradov, found a brilliant solution for Ho Ibaoh's problem, on which the greatest matlj ematioians all over the world had been working for nearly 200 years.
The work of the great Russian scientist and father of modern physi ology, Academician I, P. Pavlov, enriched world science with now achievements in the study of the higher nervous activity of animals. This work was able to assume the dimensions it deserved only under the Soviet system, a whole townlet of laboratories having been built for Pavlov and his assistants in Koltushi, near Leningrad.
In the U.S.S.E>. not only scientific experimental work, but also scientific theoretical work is being developed as in no other country in the world.
In the U.S.S.R. the great Marx ist-Leninist theory has unlim ited possibilities for develop ment. The works of Marx and Engels, Lenin and Stalin are publisJied in editions running into millions. Extremely popular among the broad masses of the working people of our country are works on the history of our motherland and of the Bolshevik Party. The year 1938 saw the appearance of Stalin's work* the History of the Gommunisi Party of the Soviet Union [Bolsheviks']^ Short Course, This splendid sci entific work contains a concise and vivid account of the long and glorious historical road traversed by the Party of Lenin and Stalin and of the fighting experiance it gained, as well as an exposition of the foundations of the Marxist-Leninist theory.
In the U.S.S.R. there have been established treasure stores of scientific books that are of world importance. These are the Lenin Li brary in Moscow, the Saltykov-Shchedrin Library in Leningrad, and others.
Enormous scientific work is being conducted by the Academy of Sciences of the U,S.S.R.and its numerous institutes, and also by such world-important scientific-research institutes as the Marx-Engels-Lenin Institute, and others.
Socialism created fertile soil for the vigorous growth of the art of the peoples of the U.S.S.R. The Great October Socialist Revolu tion, which emancipated the peoples, gave the broad masses access to all the treasures of culture and art created by mankind.
An enormous contribution to the development of revolutionary literature in the Soviet period was made by the great proletarian writer and devoted friend of the working people Maxim Gorky. In 1921, Gorky fell very sick and on Lenin's insistence he went to Italy to recuperate; but while there he Rept in close touch with his Soviet Motherland, with the working people of the U.S.S.E. In Italy he wrote ifefy Unii'ersities, The Rise and Fall of the Artamojiovs, and the first volume of The Life of Klim Scmgin. When, in 1928, he returned to his native land he enthusiastically de voted his efforts to the creation of a new, socialist culture in the U.S.S.B. He was the initiator and inspirer of numerous literary and educational undertakings. For the outstanding services ho had rendered the working class of the U.S.S.R. he was awarded the Order of Lenin.
The great humanitarian Gorky passionately hated the enemies of the j^ople and of Socialism, and above all ho hated fascism. He defined his attitude to the enemies of the people in the words: "If the enemy does not surrender, he must be destroyed." The enemies of the people — ^the Trotskyites — ^Icilled the great, popular writer and fighter.
The revolution gave an impetus to the development of the art of the most talented poet of the Soviet epoch V. V. Mayakovsky (1893 1930). His versos and poems of the pre-revolutionary period breathe hatred for the bourgeois system; to the service of the revolution he devoted all his tremendous talent. He wrote verses, drew posters and created splendid poems on the revolution, such as^ 160,000 fiOO^ Vladimir Ilyich Lenin^ Good, and others. During the Civil War lie founded the ROSTA "Windows," f.e., a series of political propaganda posters which called for the struggle to establish the power of the Soviets and praised thfe heroes of labour.
Soviet authors have produced a number of vivid stories dealing with the proletarian revolution, the Civil War and the building of Socialism. Of these mention can be made of Sholokhov's And Quiet Flows the Don and The Soil Upturned, Fadeyev's Defeat and The Last of the Udegei, Furmanov's Chapayev, Serafimovich's Iron Flood, Bagritsky's The Lay of Opanas, and others. Extremely popular are the historical novels written by Soviet writers such as A, N. Tolstoy's Peter /, Novikov-Priboi 's Tsushima, Tynyanov's novels on Griboyedov and Pushkin, and others. Extremely popular among Soviet readers are How the Steel Was Tempered and Born of the Storm by Nikolai Ostrov sky, whose life and work were im bued with genuine revolutionary fervour. Altliough blind and para lyzed as a consequeiioe of the severe wounds he received during the Civil War and the illness he suffered after it, this young Bolshevik writer found the courage and strength to continue to serve the Party and the revolution with his pen until he drew his last breath.
Comrade Stalin described Soviet writers as the "engineers of human souls," and called upon them to pro duce works that harmonized with the great epoch we are living in. At a congress of writers, Comrade A. A.
Zhdanov spoke of the tasks that con fronted Soviet writers and said: "To be an engineer of human souls means standing with both feet on the ground of real life. . , . Soviet literature must be able to portray our heroes, must be able to see into our future."
The culture of the Land of Soviets, uniform in its socialist trend and heroic content, and with its rich variety of form, was built up as the sole, socialist culture of all the peoples who inhabit the U.S .S .R. The culture of each people, national in form and socialist in content, develops in close alliance with the culture of all the other peoples of the Union, and primarily with progressive Russian culture. Nation al culture springs from the depths of the people.
The most outstanding and characteristic representative of this cul ture was the aged popular poet of Kazakhstan, the akyn (bard) JambuL He began to compose his beautiful songs while still a youth when wan dering through the steppes of Kazakhstan; but his art seemed to have faded before he reached the age of fifty. The great proletarian revolu tion, however, rejuvenated the heart of the seventy-year-old bard.
The proletarian revolution performed the same miracle on the popular ashug (poet) of Daghestan, Suleiman Stalsky. The son of a poor Lezghian peasant, he grew up amidst great privation. His songs were composed in tones of grief and melancholy. When he composed songs that sounded the call to battle the tsarist authorities put a ban upon them. The art of Suleiman Stalsky, this Homer of the 20th cen tury, as Maxim Gorky called him, revived and blossomed forth again under Socialism. His poems "'Daghestan" "A Song of Comrade Stalin," "Thoughts about My Country," "A Poem about Sergo," and others, are truly magnificent.
P. G. Tyohina, the most outstanding modern poet in the Ukraine, is closely connected with the working class. His book of verse entitled T/ie Party Leads, breathes deep sincerity and love for the people.
Yanka Kupala, the outstanding j)eople's poet of Byelorussia, the son of a peasant, started work as an unskilled labourer, became a writ er and was eventually elected a member of the Academy of Science's. He commenced his literary activities as early as 1905, but his art really blossomed forth only under the Soviet system. His verses and poems dealing with collective-farm life are particularly popular.
Akop Akopyan, the people 's poet of the Armenian Soviet Social ist Republic, was the first Armenian proletarian writer to devote his poems to the life and labours of the workers.
The folk songs of the peoples of the Soviet Union have revived. The'people 'shards, poets and narrators compose an exceptionally large number of songs about Lenin and Stalin.
Art is making tremendous strides in our country. The Soviet theatre occupies first place in Eurox3e for artistic achievements. It has rich clas sical traditions and presents classical Russian and foreign plays with profound artistic realism, and in portraying former Russia it culti vates among our people a hatred of oppression and a love for our Soviet Motherland.
The first Soviet plays dealt with the revolution and the Civil War, .and they have become a permanent i)art of the repertoire of the Soviet theatre.
Soviet and historical revolutionary themes also inspire our com posers, who have composed symphonies and operas remarkable for their design and the ideas they express.
The Soviet cinema — ^that most important and most popular form of art — is flourishing. The Soviet films Oha/payev, We Are From, KroU'^ AStadt, Lenin in October, Lenin in 1918, the Maxim trilogy, Shchors, The (heat Oitizen, Member of the Government and others, thrill millions of spectators not only in the U.S.S.R. but also abroad.
Great successes have been achieved by the theatre and music of the non-Russian Soviet Republics. In the Ukraine a galaxy of young composers has sprung up who utilize the rich folklore of the Ukraine for their symphonies and operas.
The creator of Georgian opera music is the '"Georgian Glinka," Zakhari Paliashvili, who before the revolution composed the opera Abessalom and Eteri and in 1924 the opera Daissi, which is popular not only in Georgia but all over the U.S.S.R.
• The founder of Soviet opera in Azerbaijan is the composer Hajibe kov, who after the revolution composed the opera Ker Ogly, Of the works he composed before the revolution exceptionally popular is his opera Leyly and Medjnun,
One of the creators of Armenian music was the pre-revolution com poser Komitas, who skilfully utilized Armenian folklore and exercised considerable influence on the subsequent development of Armenian music. An important part in developing the theatre and' music in Armenia under the Soviet system was played by the composer Spen diarov, whose best productions are the opera Almost and his Erevan ^tudeSe
Considerable success was also achieved by the theatre and music in Uzbekistan, where there had been no theatres at all before the revolution. The oiieras Farhhadand Shirin, Oulsara, and others are extremely popular,
Kazakh and Kirghiz theatres came into being. Peoples who not long ago had no knowledge of written music, have now produced their own composers, musicians and opera singers.
The Party and the government search out and carefully train thousands of talented people who* would have had no opportunity for developing their talent under tsarism . Often singers and musicians may be heard in the theatres of the capital who only recently have been working in the collective-farm fields or in the factories. Soviet musicians carry off the prizes at international pianoforte and violin competitions.
Poets, singers, actors, musicians and artists enjoy the love and respect of the Soviet people. Many of them have been elected as Depu ties to Supreme Soviets. The flourishing culture of the U.S,S.R. demon strates to the whole world how much brilliant talent is produced under the socialist system. It is with legitimate pride that the Soviet people look back on the historical road they have traversed and re member the words of the great Stalin;
'Tt is pleasant and joyful to know what our people fought for and how they achieved this victory of world-wide historical importance. It is pleasant and joyful to know that the blood our people shed so plentifully was not shed in vain, that it has 2 ^roduced results. This arms oiir working class, our i)easantry, our working intelligentsia spiritually. It impels them forward and rouses a sense of legitimate pride. It increases confidence in our strength and mobilizes us for fresh struggles for the achievement of new victories of Communism" (J. Stalin, Problems of Leninism, Moscow, 1947, p. 668).
The Fight for Peace amidst the Conditions of the Second World War
The U.S.S.R.'s Fight for Peace
In the reiiort he delivered at the Eighteenth Congress of the C.P.S.U.(B.) that was held in March 1939, Comrade Stalin formulated the U.S.S.E«.'s foreign policy in the following words:
"The foreign policy of the Soviet Union is clear and explicit.
'TWe stand for peace and the strengthening of business relations with all countries. That is our position; and we shall adhere to this position as long as these countries maintain like relations with the Soviet Union, and as long as they make no attempt to trespass on the interests of our country.
"3. We stand for 2 )eacoful, close and friendly relations with all tl)c neighbouring countries which have common frontiers with the U .S .S .K . That is our position; and we shall adhere to this 25osition as lung as these countries maintain like relations with the Soviet Union, and as long as they make no attempt to trespass, directly or indirectly, on the integrity and inviolability of the frontiers of the Soviet State*
"3. We stand for the support of nations which are the victims of aggression and are fighting for the independence of their country.
"4. We are not afraid of the threats of aggressors, and are ready to deal two blows for every blow delivered by instigators of war who attempt to violate the Soviet borders" (J. Stalin, Problems of Leninism^ IToscow, 1947, pp. 605-6).
Comrade Stalin proposed that this peace policy be continued so as to prevent the provocators of war from dragging theU.S.S,R. into a conflict.
Taking into account the growing danger of the outbreak of another world war and the direct menace of an attack upon the U.S.S.R., the Soviet government opened negotiations with the representatives of Great Britain and France for the conclusion of a pact of mutual assistance against fascist aggression in Europe; but these negotiations failed owing to the intrigues of the extreme reactionary circles in those countries who were hostile to the U.S.S.R., and who wanted, by striking a bargain with fascist Germany, to turn the latter's aggression exclusively against the Soviet Union.
Meanwhile, the German government offered to conclude a pact of non-aggression with the U.S.S.R. This pact established a basis for ensuring peace between the two biggest states in Europe, the re lations between whom had been very strained since the fascists came into power in Germany. It also gave the Soviet Union the opportunity to prepareher forces appropriately for the contingency of fascist Germany attacking her. In view of this, the Soviet government consented to conclude the pact of non-aggression which Germany proposed.
This pact, which was signed in Moscow on August 23, 1939, stat ed: "The two high contracting parties engage to refrain from all violence, from all aggressive actions, and from any attack upon each other either singly, or in conjunction with other powers."
In the radio address which he delivered on July 3, 1941, Comrade Stalin summed up the historic significance of the pact of non-aggression that was concluded between the Soviet Union and Germany in the following words:
"It may be asked: How could the Soviet government have con sented to conclude a non-aggression pact vdth such perfidious people, and such fiends as Hitler and Ribbentrop? ... A non-aggression ]3act is a pact of peace between two states. It was precisely such a pact that Germany proposed to us in 1939. Could the Soviet government decline such a proposal? I think that not a single peace-loving state could decline a peace treaty with a neighbouring country even if that country is headed by such monsters and cannibals as Hitler and Ribbentrop. But that, of course, only on the one indispensable condition that this peace treaty did not jeopardize, either directly or indirectly, the territorial integrity, independence and honour of the peace-loving state. As is well known, the non-aggression pact between (Jermany and the tJ.S.S.Ef. was precisely such a pact.
"What did we gain by concluding the non-aggression pact with Germany? We secured our country peace for a year and a half and the opportunity of preparing our forces to repulse fascist Oermany should she risk an attack on our country despite the pact" (tf. Stalin, On the Great Patriotic War of the Soviet Union^ Moscow, 1946, p. 11).
Subsequent events proved that the Soviet government had taken a correct stand. On September 1, 1939, fascist Germany attacked Poland. Shortly after that, the war spread over the whole of Europe. First, Great Britain and France, who wore bound by treaty obligations with Poland, entered it. In April 1940, Germany commenced to seize the Scandinavian countries, and started with Norway. In May 1940, Germany invaded Belgium, Holland, Denmark and Luxemburg,
In this way a bridgehead was created in Europe for developing an offensive against Franco and against Great Britain. In June 1940, Italy joined Germany and declared war on Groat Britain and France.
Adhering faithfully to its peace policy, the Soviet government took a series of steps to avert the war danger. It proclaimed the neu trality of the U.S.S.R. and while strictly adhering to it, took meas ures to ensure the country's security against foreign enemies.
The wise foreign policy pursued by the Soviet government still further enhanced the role the U.S.S.R. was playing in the settlement of international questions and raised its prestige in the eyes of the working people all over the world.
The Re-Union of Western Ukraine with the Ukrainian S.S.R. and of Western Byelorussia with the Byelorussian S.S.R.
Soon after the opening of hostilities the Polish forces were crushed and the Polish government went abroad, leaving the people of Poland to their fate.
In view of these circumstances, the Soviet government could not remain indifferent to the fate of its kinsmen, the Ulcrainians and Byelo russians who inhabited Western Ukraine and Western Byelorussia. Moreover, the situation in Poland was fraught with contingencies that were dangerous to the U. S.S.R.
On Soptombor 17, 1939, Comrade Molotov, then the head of the Soviet government, delivered a radio address in which he announced that the Soviet government had instructed the Supreme Command of the Bed Army to order our troops to cross the frontier to protect the lives and property of the inhabitants of Western Ukraine and Western Byelorussia.
The Byelorussians and Ukrainians living in Poland were bereft of rights. Their languages, culture and national customs were subjected to perse cution. The Ukrainian and Byelorussian national schools had been suppressed and the majority of the inhabitants of Western Ukraine and Western Byelorussia were illiterate.
Ukrainians and Byelorussians were barred from posts in the service of the state. In the east ern borderlands, called "kresy'* by the Polish government, almost the entire land belonged to Polish landlords and the peasants possessed tiny plots of land which were barely enough to provide an existence of
semi-starrotion. I-urthermore, government colotihe Red Army and the Working People nized these regions with ^'setof Western Ukraine and^Western Byelo tlers," that is, Polish kulaks.
More than once the peasants of Western Ukraine and West ern Byelorussia rose in revolt against the Polish gentry, but the Polish government sent punitive detachments into these regions and the revolts were suppressed with great cruelty. The Polish government prevented the development of industry in the "kresy." Notwithstanding the immense natural wealth, in dustry in Western Ukraine and Western Byelorussia was cut down, as the Polish government regarded the "kresy" merely as an agri cultural and raw-material base for the industry of Poland proper. The workers in Western Ukraine and Western Byelorussia suffered from unemployment, and the wages they received were only a half or even a third of those paid to workers in the central and western regions of Poland.
The conditions of the intelligentsia in these regions were also extremely hard. Ukrainians, Byelorussians' and Jews were almost entirely barred from high schools and colleges, and even if some managed to obtain a university education at the cost of enormous sacrifice, they found no outlet for their knowledge and abilities.
All this explains why the working people of We stern Ukraine and Western Byelorussia welcomed thoir liberator, the Red Army, with tremendous rejoicing.
In Wostorn Ukraine and Western Byelorussia Popular Assemblies were elected on the broad democratic basis of universal, equal and direct suSrage and secret ballot. Tn obedience to the will of the peopJ^e, the Popular Assemblies of Western Ukraine and Western Byelorussia proclaimed the establishment of Soviet power in their respective territories and decided on the confiscation of the land of the landlords, monasteries and high government offioialSj and the transfer of this land, without compensation, to the Avorking peasants. They also proclaimed the nationalization of the banks and large-scale industry. The Pop ular Assemblies requested the Supreme Soviet of the U.S.S.R. to accept the peoples of Western Ukraine and Western Byelorussia into the great family of Soviet people. At its session on November 1 and 2, 1939, the Supreme Soviet of the U.S.S.R. granted the request of the working peoi)lo of Western Ukraine and Western Byelo russia.
Strengthening the Security of the Northwestern Frontiers of the U.S.S.R.
The outbreak of the Socotul World War confronted tho^ Soviet government with the iii*gent task of streiigtliening the se curity of the northwestern frontiers of the U.S.S.R.
The Soviet government offered to conclude with tlie Finnish gov ernment a treaty on terms that were to the advantage of both coun tries and wliicli would liave guaranteed the security of the northwest ern frontiers of the U.S.S.R. and of Leningrad in xiarticular. The Finnish government entered into negotiations with the government of the U.S.S.R., but during the course of them it took an uncompro misingly hostile stand. The Finnish militarists began to commit acts of provocation on the Soviet-Finiiish frontier and went to the lengtli of shelling the Soviet frontier posts near Leningrad. In view of tiiis, Comrade Molotov, as head of the Soviet government, announced in the radio address he delivered on November 29, 3930, that, faced with the fact that Finnish troops had attacked the Soviet frontiers, the Soviet government was obliged to recall its political and business rep resentatives from Finland and to order the Red Army to repel every sortie by the Finnish militarists. In this address Comrade Molotov exposed the slanderous inventions of the foreign bourgeois press which falsely asserted that the U.S.{iJ.R. intended to seize and annex Finland, or establish Soviet rule there. Comrade Molotov said: "We stand firmly for allowing the Finnish people thomselves to settle their internal and foreign affairs in the way they doom fit. . . . The only object of the measures wo have undertaken is to ensure the security of the Soviet Union, and particularly of Leningrad with its three and a half million population/'
The Finnish militarists, who had long been in contact with the German fascists and were egged on by anti-Soviet quarters in certain imperialist countries, commenced war against the Soviet Union. De spite the exceptional difficulties of the terrain and the temperature, being 50® below zero Centigrade — ^the Red Army broke through the fortifications of the Karelian Isthmus, which had been built in con formity with the most up-to-date rules of military engineering and had been regarded as impregnable.
The White Finnish army was defeated, losing over half its man power in killed and wounded.
The Finnish government was obliged to sue for peace.
On March 12, 1940, peace was signed with Finland. A new state frontier was drawn between the U.S .S .R . and Finland which ensured the security of Leningrad and Murmansk. The whole of the Karelian Isth mus with the city of Vyborg and Gulf of Vyborg, were incorporated in the U.S.S.R. The governments of Finland and the U.S.8.R. mutually engaged to refrain from aggression against each other and to take no part ill any alliance directed against either of the contracting parties.
The peace treaty between the U.S.S.R and Finland once again demonstrated what policy the Soviet Union pursued in relation to small countries. After routing the Finnish army, the Red Army could have occupied the whole of Finland and the U.S.S.R. could have demanded an indemnity to cover war expenditure; but the Soviet government showed its magnanimity by restricting itself to the minimum nec essary to ensure the security of Leningrad and Murmansk.
On March 13, 1940, the Sixth Session of the Supreme Soviet of the U.S.S.R. adopted a decision to transfer the incorporated territory to the Karelian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic and to trans form the latter into a Union Karelo-Finnish Soviet Socialist Republic. Thus, another Union Republic was added to the family of fraternal Union Republics. This was another step towards strengthening the multi-national socialist Soviet State.
The Peaceful Settlement of the Soviet-Rumanian Conflict over Bessarabia
Another extremely important victory for Stalin's peace policy was the peaceful settlement of the longstanding Soviet-Rumanian conflict over Bessarabia.
The Soviet government had never resigned itself to the forcible annexation of Bessarabia by Rumania, who occupied that country in 1918, when Soviet Russia was hard pressed by her foreign enemies. For over two decades the Moldavian people had been forcibly divided, on one side of the Dniester Soviet Moldavia flourished, but on the other side, Bessarabia, inhabited by Moldavians and Ukrainians, groaned under the heel of the Rumanian boyars. Rumania had converted Bessarabia into her colony, and the country became poverty-stricken, ruined and economically still more backward than it had been before. Even of&oial Eumaiiiaii figures showed that infantile mortality in the Bes sarabian rural districts had reached horrifying dimensions as the result of poverty. The Rumanian landlords, capitalists and high government officials seized the land and factories and reduced the people of Bes sarabia to slavery. Tons of thousands of the progressive people of Bessarabia were killed or tortured to death in the dungeons of the Sigurmxta, the Rumanian Secret Police, The working people of Bes sarabia rose in revolt against the sanguinary oppression of the invad ers; exceptionally big revolts took place in Khotin in 1919, and in Tatar Bunar in 1924. All through this period they fought continuously for their liberation from the yoke of the Rumanian boyars and for their reunion with the family of fraternal peoples of the IT.S.S.R.
The same heavy yoke was borne by the people of Northern Buko vina, who had been forcibly divorced from their brothers, the Ukrain ians, The land of Bukovina was seized by landlords, and the country was subjected to a reign of colonial oppression and exploitation. Time and again the people of Northern Bukovina rose in revolt against the Ruman ian conquerors. In November 1918, a meeting ofrei)rescntatives from nearly every town and village in the country was held in Chernovitsi, and passed a resolution in favour of Bukovina joining Soviet Ukraine.
The Soviet Union came to the aid of the fraternal peoples of Bes sarabia. On June 28, 1940, the Soviet government called upon the Rumanian government to restore Bessarabia to the Soviet Union and to cede to the Soviet Union the Northern part of Bukovina, which was inhabited by Ukrainians.
The Rumanian government accepted this proposal , and the 3 ,200 ,000 working people of Bessarabia and the 600,000 people of Northern Bukovina joined the family of Soviet peoples. The inhabitants of Bes sarabia and Northern Bukovina welcomed their liberator, the Red Army, with great rejoicing. The liberated peoples sent their delegates to the Seventh Session of the Supreme Soviet of the U.S.S.R. with the request that it should form a Union Moldavian Soviet Socialist Eepubho and reunite in it the Moldavian people of Bessarabia with the Moldavian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic. On August 2^ 1940, the Seventh Session of the Supreme Soviet of the U.S.S.R. grant ed this request and adopted a decision to form the Union Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic. It also adopted a decision to incorporate Northern Bukovina and the tliree counties of Bessarabia that were inhabited by Ukrainians in the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic.
The Entry of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia into the U.S.S.R.
The change in the international situation and the consistent peace policy which the Soviet Union pursued gave a new asj)oct to the ques tion of relations between the U.S.S.R. and the Baltic countries. Lithuania, like the other Baltic countries, acquired national state independence as a result of the victory of the Great October Social ist Revolution. The Soviet government was the first to recognize the Lithuanian Republic. On July 12, 1920, a peace treaty was signed between the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic and Lithua nia, by which a large part of the former Vilna Gubernia, with the city of Vilna, passed to Lithuania. Vilna became the capital of the Lithua nian Republic.
From the moment it was formed, the Lithuanian Republic became the object of the intrigues of the European governments and, in partic ular, of the Polish government, which openly aimed at seizing Lithua nia. In 1920, despite the signing of a Polish-Lithuanian treaty, Poland seized Vilna and the Vilna Region. The League of Nations sanctioned this act of aggression. The Soviet government alone sujjported Lithua nians protest and refused to recognize the legality of Poland's action.
Soviet -Lithuanian relations were based on the mutual respect of the interests of the two countries. On September 28, 1926, a Soviet Lithuanian pact of non-aggression and peaceful settlement of disputes was signed. In 1934, this pact was prolonged for another ten years.
The Soviet Union had always strongly supported the Lithuanian Republic. In 1927, it averted war between Poland and Lithuania which was being provoked by reactionary Polish circles. In 1937 > Polish troops were again concentrated on the Lithuanian frontier, and it was only the intervention of the U,S,S.R, which prevented this conflict from developing into a war between Poland and Lithuania.
The policy of peace and friendship which the Soviet Union pur sued met with the profound satisfaction and gratitude of the working people of Lithuania, but the foreign imperialists tried to convert Lithuania into a flace d^armes for war against the U.S.S.R. During the Sejm elections in 1926, the reactionary nationalist party headed by Smetona sustained utter defeat. After this, Smetona, backed by the landlords, the militarists and the Catholic clergy, carried out a military coup and established his dictatorship. The working people of Lithuania were subjected to a reign of tyranny and oppression. Smetona extended the landlord system and imposed an unbearable burden of taxation upon the small peasants. The Lithuanian people rose against Smetona 's bloody regime time and time again. After war broke out between Germany and Poland the Soviet government, in October 1939, anxious to ensure the security of the Soviet and Lithua nian frontiers, invited the Lithuanian government to conclude a treaty of mutual assistance, and without compensation transferred to Lithuania the city of Vilna and the Vilna Region which had been liberated by the Red Army. Instead, however, of honestly abiding by Lithuania 's treaty obligations, the Smetona clique plotted new acts, of provocation against the Soviet Union.
The government of the U.S.S.R. demanded that a change be made ill the composition of the Lithuanian government, and that additional contingents of the Red Army be permitted to enter Lithuania for the purpose of guaranteeing the security of the XJ.S.S.R. and Lithuanian frontiers. The Lithuanian people welcomed the Red Army with great rejoicing. On July 14-15, 1940, a new government held democratic elections for the People's Sejm, and in these elections the candidates of the Lithuanian Labour Alliance polled 99 per cent of the votes. The People's Sejm unanimously resolved to proclaim Lithuania a Soviet Socialist Republic and sent a plenipotentiary delegation to the U .S .S.R . to request the Supreme Soviet to accept Soviet Lithuania into the Soviet Union.
The request of the representatives of Soviet Lithuania was granted, and on August 3, 1940, the Seventh Session of the Supreme Soviet of the U.S.S.R. accepted Lithuania into the Soviet Union as a Union Republic possessing equal rights with the others.
The same road was traversed by the Latvian bourgeois republic.
Soviet-Latvian relations were governed by the peace treaty of August 1920, which had also provided for the revival of economic I'clations between the two countries. But the bourgeois and kulak cir cles which dominated Latvia, instigated by the foreign imperialists, refused to sign a trade agreement with the U.S.S.R. It was not until the end of 1926, after the fall of the reactionary Ulmauis government, that more normal relations were established between the two countries by tlio couclusioii of the Latvian-Hoviet guarantee treaty of 1927 and the Latvian-Soviet tiuile agreement of June 1927. Subsequently Ulmanis, the leader of the so-called Peasant Union, carried out a counter-revolutionary coup and the last traces of bourgeois-democratic liberties were wiped out in Latvia. Notwithstanding the pact of mutual assistance that was concluded with the U.S.S.R. on October 5, 1939, the Latvian bourgeoisie continued its intrigues and, hohind the back of the U.S.S.R., formed a military alliance of Baltic countries against U,S.S.R., utilizing for this purpose the '"Baltic Entente" which had been formed as early as 1934.
Realizing that the ruling circles in Latvia were incapable of hon estly carrying out the pact of mutual assistance the government of the U.S.S.R. called fora change in the composition of the Latvian govern ment and demanded permission for Rod Army units to enter Latvia.
The free elections to the Latvian Sejm that followed resulted in a sweeping victory for the candidates of the Bloc of tho Working People of Latvia. The Sejm unanimously proclaimed Latvia a Soviet Republic. On tho application of a plenix)otoiitiary delegation which the Sejm sent to Moscow, the Seventh Session of the Supremo Soviet of the U.S.S.R. on August 6, 1940, accepted Soviet Latvia into tho Soviet Union as a Union Republic possessing equal rights with the others.
Estonian-Soviet relations were governed by the peace treaty signed in the beginning of 1920, which caused the first breach in the Entente 's blockade of the U.S,S.R. The Estonian bourgeoisie, however, had con nections with countries that were hostile to the U.S.S.R., and on their instigation it more than once supported anti-Soviet adventures. IiiMay 1922, the Estonian authorities in Reval executed the Estonian ])opiilar hero Victor Kingisepp, a member of the All-Russian Central JBJxccutive Committee, and even sent a protest to the government of the U.S.S.R. for changing the name of the town of Yambur, near the Estonian frontier, to that of Kingisepp.
In 1924, the workers of Reval heroically rose in revolt against the reign of White terror in Estonia; the Estonian government used this as a pretext for launching another anti-Soviet campaign.
In 1925, the Estonian bourgeoisie, on the direct orders of the for eign imperialists, refused to conclude a trade agreement and guarantee treaty with the IJ.S.S.R. The Estonian government sabotaged the pact of mutual assistance that was concluded between the U.S.S.R. and Estonia on September 28, 1939. The Estonian governing clique entered into a military alliance with the other Baltic countries and began to prepare for war against the IJ.S.S.R. The vigilance of the Soviet government, however, frustrated these designs.
On June 21, 1940, the working people of Estonia swept away the warmongers and put a i^eople's government in power. The elections to the Estonian State Duma that took place on July 14-15 resulted in a sweeping victory for the democratic elements. At the very first meeting of the Duma a resolution was unanimously adopted to proclaim Estonia a Soviet Republic and to affiliate the republic to the U.S.S.R.
At its meeting on August 6, 1940, the Seventh Session of the Su l^reme Soviet heard the statement of the plenipotentiary delegation from the Estonian Soviet Republic and unanimously accepted the republic into the Soviet Union as a Union Republic possessing equal rights with the others.
The Great Patriotic War of the Soviet People
Hitler Germany's Perfidious Attack upon the U.S.S.R
While carrying out the immense tasks of the Third Stalin Five-Year Plan and firmly and undeviatingly pursuing a peace policy, the So viet government did not for a moment lose sight of the possibility of the imperialists making another attack upon our country. When fas cist Germany began openly to unleash war in Europe, Comrade Stalin called upon the people of the Soviet Union to put themselves in a state of mobilization and preparedness. As early as February 1938, in his reply to the letter of the Young Communist Leaguer Ivanov, he wrote: "'Indeed, it would be ridiculous and stupid to close our eyes to the fact of the capitalist encirclement and to think that our external enemies, the fascists, for example, will not, if the opportunity arises, make an attempt at a military attack upon theU.S.S.R."
Comrade Stalin strongly urged the necessity of strengthening tiie defensive capacity of our country. He wrote; "Our Bed Army, Bed Navy, Bed Air Fleet, and the Aviation and Chemical Society must be increased and strengthened to the utmost.
"The whole of our people must be kept in a state of mobilization and preparedness in face of the danger of a military attack, so that no ^accident ' and no tricks on the part of our external enemies may take us by surprise. ..."
Comrade Stalin's warnings put the Soviet people on the alert and prompted them more vigilantly to watch tlie intrigues of their enemies and in every way to strengthen the Bed Army.
The Soviet people understood tiiat the German foscists, headed by Hitler, were aiming to unleash another sanguinary war with the object of winning world domination. Hitler had jn'oclaimed the Ger mans the "superior race" and all other peoples as lower and inferior races. The Hitlerites particularly hated the Slavonic peoples, and primarily the groat Russian people, who had fought the German aggres sors more than once in the course of their history. The Hitlerites in tended, after they had achieved victory in the World War, to di*ive a large section of the Slavs out of Europe beyond the Urals and totally annihilate tlie other section.
The Hitlerites dreamed of utilizing the immense resources of the Land of Soviets — oil, coal and food — ^for the purpose of carrying out their further plans of conquest. Hitler counted on defeating the Soviet Union in a short space of time and then on utilizing all his forces for the purpose of subjugating the rest of the world.
The Hitlerites based their designs on the plan for an attack upon^ and the lightning defeat of, .Russia drawn up by General Hoffmann during the First World War. This plan provided for the concentration of vast armies on the Western frontiers of our country, the seizure of its vital centres within a few weeks and for a rapid march into the in terior right up to the Urals. Subsequently, this plan was supplemented and endorsed by the Hitler High Command who called it the "Bar barossa plan."
On the night of June 21-22, 1941, Hitler's army suddenly and perfidiously attacked the U.S.S.R. in spite of the pact of non-aggres sion which had been signed between Germany and the U.S.S.B. Hitler expected to win the war in a matter of two or three months. He based his calculations on the considerable numerical superiority of the German army, which had long been mobilized, was well armed and had already gained war experience. Hitler also calculated that the Soviet rear would prove unstable; he believed that the Soviet system would break down as a result of military reverses, that con flicts would break out between the workers and the peasants, and that national strife would break out among the peoples of the Soviet Union.
The monstrous war machine of the Hitler imperialists began it* devastating drive in the Baltic countries, Byelorussia and the Ukraine, and threatened the vital centres of the Land of Soviets.
The U.S.S.R.'s War Against Germany, a War of Liberation
The Land of Soviets was in mortal peril, and in his radio address of July 3, 1941, Comrade Stalin warned the Soviet people of thisHe called upon them to abandon the complacency and carelessness of peacetime, to rise up in defence of their motherland and the gains of the October Revolution, and to wage a patriotic war against the fas cist invaders. In this historic address, Comrade Stalin clearly defined the character of the Great Patriotic War which the Soviet Union was waging as a just war for liberation. On the other hand he showed that Hitler Germany, which had launched a perfidious and predatory attack upon our country, was waging an unjust war of conquest. He exposed the predatory designs of the Hitlerites and warned that a victory for Germany would mean enslavement and oppression for the peoples of the U.S.S.R. "The enemy is cruel and implacable," he said. "He is out to seize our lands which have been watered by the sweat of our brow, to seize our grain and oil which have been obtained by the labour of our hands. He is out to restore the rule of the land lords, to restore tsarism, to destroy the national culture and the na tional existence as states of the Russians, Ukrainians, Byelorussians, Lithuanians, Latvians, Estonians, Uzbeks, Tatars, Moldavians, Georgians, Armenians, Azerbaijanians and the other free peoples of the Soviet Union, to Germanize them, to convert them into the slave* of German princes and barons. Thus, the issue is one of life and death for the Soviet State, of life and death for the peoples of the U.S.S.R., of whether the peoples of the Soviet Union shall be free or fall into slavery" (J. Stalin, On the Great Patriotic War of the Soviet JJnion^ Moscow, 1946, p. 13).
Comrade Stalin pointed out that the war against Hitler Germany must not be regarded as an ordinary war* It was not only a war be tween two armies, he said; it was a nation-wide patriotic war against the fascist oppressors, the object of which was not only to remove the danger that was hovering over our country, but also to help all the peoples of Europe who were groaning under the yoke of German fas cism.
Comrade Stalin's speech was an example of scientific foresight and at the same time a jDrogram for the struggle of the Soviet x^eople against Hitler Germany. In response to Comrade Stalin's call, all the peoples of the U.S.S.R. rose up to defend the honour, freedom and inde])endence of their inotherJand.
Collapse of the Fascists' Plan for a Blitzkrieg
The very first months of the .war revealed the total unsoimdnoss of thoplaais of the fascists, of their calculations on the Soviet armies suffering lightning like defeat, and on the Soviet rear being an unstable one. The enemy'^s temporary advantages — suddenness of attack, numerical superiority in tanks, aircraft and automatic weapons and the absence of a second front in Europe — enabled him to achieve certain tactical and operative successes .
But in the course of the war the armed forces of the Soviet Union expanded and became strong. The Soviet Army fought stubbornly for every inch of Soviet soil. The Soviet Supreme Command countered the enemy's onslaughts with Stalin's strategy and tactics of active defence. Wearing clown the enemy and sapping his manpower, tlie Soviet Army strove to liquidate the enemy's temporary advantages in the shortest possible time. The men of the Soviet Army sclf-sacri ficingly defended our Soviet towns and villages to the last. The battle of Smolensk, for example, lasted nearly thirty days. The German tank division which broke into Smolensk was annihilated in the streets of the city. Tens of thousands of German soldiers wore wi]ied out in the vicinity of Smolensk.
The defence of Odessa was even more j)rolongod and stubborn, last ing nearly seventy days. The Germans and Rumanians hurled eight een divisions against this city, while the defenders had at their com mand only four infantry divisions and small units of sailors and people's volunteers. Nevertheless, the Gormans failed to take the city by storm; it was abandoned by the Soviet troops for strategical reasons.
Stubborn fighting procooclod along the whole frontier from the Arctic Sea to the Black Sea. Emx>loying Stalin's tactics of active de fence, the Soviet Army stubbornly held at bay the mighty onslaught of Hitler's hordes. Hitler's army sustained immense losses.
The calculations oftlie Hitlerites on being able to inflict lightning like defeat on the Soviet Union proved baseless.
The Defeat of the Germans Near Moscow
Exceptionally fierce was the enemy's onslaught on Moscow, the capital of the Soviet Union. On October 2, 1041, the German High Command launched a general offensive with the object of surrounding and seizing Moscow. Tlio Ger mans tried to capture Moscow by an enormous "])ineer" movement via Rzliev-Kalinin from the North and Orel-Tula from the South. Hitler was so confident tliai this i)laii would succeed that he gave orclei's for a parade of German troops to be held on the Red Square on November 7. The Soviet Army, however, frustrated this insane plan of the Hitler ites,
At the very outset of the war a State Committee for Defence, head ed by Comrade Stalin, was set up . Under the direction of this Commit tee the entire country began actively to put itself on a war footing. A general mobilization and training of replenishments for the Soviet Army was undertaken. The armament industry was expanded. Whole plants were transported from the regions threatened by invasion east wards to Siberia, the Urals and Central Asia. The inhabitants of Mos cow formed people's volunteer units to repel the enemy. Over 120,000 Moscow volunteers were formed into new divisions which constituted a powerful barrier against the enemy's advance upon the capital. With in a short space of time tens of thousands of Moscow citizens encircled the city with strong defence lines. A state of siege was proclaimed in Moscow. The defence of the capital was directed by Comrade Stalin in person.
On November 6, 1941, at the moment when the enemy was fighting his way towards Moscow, Comrade Stalin delivered an address at a meeting of the Moscow Soviet on the occasion of the 24th Anniversary of the Great October Socialist Revolution. In his speech he enumerated the causes of the Soviet Army's temporary reverses, showed how the evil designs of the enemy had collapsed and drew the conclusion that the defeat of the German imperialists and their armies was inevitable. He depicted the prospects of the war and pointed to the three main factors which would lead to the inevitable defeat of the Hitlerite im perialists. The first factor, he said, was the instability of the European rear of imperialist Germany, against whom all the peoples of Europe enslaved by the Germans would inevitably rise. The second factor was the instability of the German rear itself, which would be more and more shaken as Hitler's army sustained defeat. The third factor was the establishment and strengthening of the fighting coalition of the U.S.S.R., Great Britain and the United States against the German fascist imperialists.
Taking all these factors into account, Comrade Stalin forecast an inevitable turn in the whole course of the war in favour of the Soviet Union and. its Allies.
Next day, November 7, 1941, Comrade Stalin spoke at the Soviet Army parade on the Red Square. Recalling the fighting traditions of the great ancestors of the Russian people, he called upon the men and commanders of the Soviet Army and the Soviet Navy to follow their example in this heroic struggle for the freedom and independence of our Soviet Motherland. He said: "Lot the heroic images of our great forebears — ^Alexander Nevsky, Dimitri Donskoi, Kuzma Minin, Dimitri Pozharsky, Alexander Suvorov and Mikhail Kutuzov — inspire you in this war I May you be inspired by the victorious banner of the great Leiiinl" (J. Stalin, On the Oreat Patriotic War of the Soviet Union, Moscow, 1946, p. 41.)
These historic utterances of Comrade Stalin's inspired the Soviet Army and the entire Soviet people to perform new heroic deeds. The men of the Soviet Army fought the enemy at the approaches to Moscow with unprecedented courage. The Guards Division commanded by General Panfilov in particular covered itself with glory. In a battle lasting over four hours, twenty-eight guardsmen of this division, led by Political Instructor Klochkov, held at bay fifty powerful German tanlcs on an important line in the defences of Moscow. Almost all of these heroes were killed in this unequal battle, but the enemy was halted and, with the arrival of reinforcements, hurled back.
Thousands of Moscow volunteers fought at the approaches to the city side by side with fighters from different Soviet nationalities. The entire Soviet people defended Moscow — ^tho heart of the Soviet Union.
In October 1941, as many as thirty-five Gorman divisions were almost wiped out by the heroic defenders of Moscow. The Germans' October offensive against the Soviet capital failed.
After this Hitler called upon his troops to strike another decisive blow. In November, fifty-ono divisions were hurled against Moscow, among thorn being thirteen tank and motorizoddnfantry divisions. The Germans tried to capture Moscow by employing new "pincers" and "wedges." But the Soviet Army, now steeled in battle, put up a staunch resistance and wore the enemy out by means of powerful counter strokes. Meanwhile, the Supremo Command of the Soviet Army made preparations for a decisive offensive. On December 6, 1941, Comrade Sfcalin issued the order for the offensive to bo launched, and the Soviet Army routed the Germans near Moscow within forty days. Daring this period the Soviet Army captured or destroyed about 1,600 enemy tanks and large quantities of artillery and other weapons. The Gormans sustained heavy losses in manpower. As a result of the Soviet Army's offensive operations, the enemy was hurled back from the capital, in some places as much as 400 kilometres.
The defeat of the Germans near Moscow was the decisive event in the first year of the war and the first important defeat of the Germans in the Second World War. It revealed that the Soviet Army was a powerful fighting force that was capable not only of withstanding the onslaught of the Gorman fascist troops, but also of defeating them in open battle. The Soviet Army thus dispelled the myth that had gained currency in Euroi)e to the offcob that Hitler's army was in vincible. The defeat of fcho Germans near Moscow inspired both the Soviet people who had temporarily fallen under the yoke of the German invaders, and all the peoples of Europe whom the Hitlerites had enslaved, to rise up and fight the aggressors.
Simultanconsly with the defeat they sustained near Mosow the Germans sustained defeat in the North — in the region of Tikhvin — and in the South — in the region of Rostov-on-Don. This showed what a formidable fighting force the Soviet Army had grown into. By February 23, 1942, Soviet Army Day, the wliole of the Moscow and Tula Regions, a considerable part .of the Kalinin Region, and parts of the Leningrad and Smolensk Regions, had been cleared of the enemy. During the entire winter campaign of 1941-1942, the Soviet Army lib erated over* sixty towns and 11,000 inhabited centres.
But the German war machine was not yet demolished. It was still formidable, and was employed exclusively on 'the Soviet Front. In 1941 the Soviet Union actually fought Germany single handed, but at that time an anti-Hitler coalition of the Great Powers — the U.S.S.R., Great Britain and the U.S.A. — ^was already being formed. In July 1941, the governments of the U.S.S.R. and Great Britain signed an agreement for joint operations in the war against Hitler Germany. In 1942, Great Britain and the Soviet Union con cluded a treaty of alliance in the war against Germany and her ctm federatos in Europe and of co-operation and mutual assistance after the war. This treaty was signed for twenty years. The United States also concluded a military agreement with the Soviet Union,
But the conclusion of tlicso treaties did not do away with the anti-Soviet trends in those countries. The reactionary elements as serted that the unity among the Groat Powers was a temporary phe nomenon, and that only the war had imposed it on them.
The German imperialists had always dreaded a war on two fronts* All their strategy and tactics were designed to beat their enemies one by one, but they were not always able to do this. During the First World War Germany fought against Great Britain and France in the West, and against Russia in the East. Of the 220 divisions which the Garmans had at their command in 1914-1016, eighty-five divisions (and counting the forces of Germany's allies, 127 divisions) fought on the Russian Front. The rest of the divisions at the command of Germany and her allies were on the Western Front. During the Second World War Hitler Gennany waged war for a long time mainly on the EasternFront, utilizing her main forces to fight the Soviet Union, Of the 256 divisions wliich the Germanshadat their command in 1941 1942 no loss than 179 operated against tho U.S.S.R. The Soviet Army was obliged to repel the mighty onslaught of Hitler's armies singlohandod.
Tho intrigues and machinations of tho reactionaries headed by Prime Minister Cliurohili and his adherents in Groat Britain and the U.S.A. were aimed at weakening tho Soviet Union in every way in its struggle against Hitler Germany, and at dragging out, at all costs, the military operations in progress on the Soviet-German Tront.
Taking advantage of the absence of a second front, the Hitlerites, in the beginning of May 1942, launched another offensive. Scores of German divisions wore withdrawn from the Western Front and bronglit into action on the Soviet-German Front. After capturing Ketch, the Hitlerites resinned the assault on Sevastopol, The defence of Sevastopol lasted 260 days. The sailors of the Black Sea Fleet defended the city with unprecedented valoiir.
When the battle of Sevastopol was at its height, Comrade Stalin sent. greetings to its defenders in which he said: "'The self-sacrificing struggle waged by the defenders of Sevastopol sets an example of' heroism to the entire Red Aimy and the Soviet people."
The Battle of Stalingrad
In the summer of 1942, the Hitlerites, having established a considerable numerical superiority of forces on the southwestern direction of the Soviet-German Front, achieved important tactical successes and reached the region of Voronezh^ Stalingrad and STovorossiisk. Hitler still regarded as his main objective the capture of Moscow, but this time his intention was to outflanl?: the capital on the east and cut it off from the rear areas of the Volga and the Urals. Especial importance in Hitler's new plans was attached to the capture of Stalingrad, which was of enormous strategical significance. Situated at the junction of vital water and railway communications, it linked the centres of the country with the Caucasus and Transcaucasia, with Astrakhan and Baku and witli the Volga area and the Eastern Regions of the U.S.S.R. Stalingrad was also a vital arsenal which supplied the Soviet Army with tanis and other weapons.
The Hitler High Command hurled against Stalingrad their Sixth Army, under the command of General von Paulus, who had gained fame by his victories in Europe. Over 1,500 guns shelled the city from every side. Many thousands of aeroplanes dropped high-explosive and incendiary bombs on it every day.
Stalingrad staunchly and bravely repelled the vicious onslaughts of the enemy. The workers at the Stalingrad Tractor Plant, and at the other plants in the city, continued to work under enemy fire, supplying the city's defenders with tanks and ammunition. An active part in the defence of Stalingrad was played by heroes of the Civil War who had taken part in the valiant defence of Tsaritsyn (as Sta lingrad was then called) xuider the personal direction of Comrade Stalin.
The entire country went to the aid of Stalingrad. Everybody was aware that the outcome of the battle of Stalingrad would determine the fate of our motherland. The heroic defence of the city enabled the Supreme Command of the Soviet Army to muster reserves and to draw up and put into operation a plan forthe defeat of the Gormans at Stalingrad,
At dawn on November 19, 1942, after terrific artillery preparation, the Soviet Army forces of three fronts launched an offensive and broke througli the enemy's defences. After routing the enemy's iianks the Soviet Army surrounded the j)ioked German uiiitKS and proceeded to annihilate them. By the beginning of J?ebruary ]043, two Gorman armies, numbering 330,000 men, ceased to exist. Nearly a third of this force, headed by Goiioral von Paulus, was taken prisoner. »
The Stalingrad operation, which was carried out in conformity with plans which had been drawn up by Comrade Stalin, was unprec edented in world history both in scale of operations and skilful gener alship. This was the first time in the history of war that such a vast mass of enemy troops was surrounded and annihilated. In an address he delivered on November 6, 1943, Comrade Stalin appraised the battle of Stalingrad in the following words: "To form an idea of the slaughter on the battlefield of Stalingrad, which was on a scale unprec edented in history, one should know that after the battle of Stalin grad 147,200 dead German men and ofiicers and 46^700 Soviet men and offioors were picked up and buried. Stalingrad marked the beginning of the decline of the German fiiscist army. It is common knowledge that the Germans never recovered from the Stalingrad slaughter" (J. Stalin, On tha Qrmi Patriotic War of the Hovi&t Union, Moscow, 1946, p. 116).
The victory at Stalingrad brought about a radical turn in the whole course of the Great Patriotic War. The heroic defence of Sev astopol and Odessa, the defeat of the Germans near Moscow, the stubborn battles fought near Leningrad, and the greatest battle in history fought at the walls of Stalingrad, laid a firm foundation for victory over the German fascist armies.
The Radical Turn in the Course of the War
In the winter of 1942-1943, the Soviet Army, despite difficult conditions, was on the offensive on a front of 1,500 kilometres, and at nearly every point struck the fascist army blow after blow. The enemy troops were hurled back great distances from Vladikavkaz, Stalingrad and Voronezh.
The relation of forces on the Soviet-German Pront had now changed. During the twenty months of the war the Soviet Army, in the course of defensive and offensive battles, had put out of action several mil lions of Hitlerite soldiers and officers, including the Rumanian, Italian and Hungarian armies, flung by Hitler over to. the Soviot-G^rman Front, who were utterly routed. Thus, tlie Gorman fascist army lost the advantage it had possessed in conducting large-scale military oper ations. After acquiring exporionoo in modern warfare tho Soviet Army became a fully seasoned army which had mastered tho tactics of manoeuvring, surrounding and annihilating tho enemy's manpower.
In the spring of 1943, a temporary lull in military operations set in. Both sides made preparations for decisive battles. The Hitler ites mustered forces for another big offensive. In (Jermany '"totah' mobilization was proclaimed, and the number of German divisions on the 8ovict-German Front was brought up to 257. The industry of oocu})iod Eui'oiie worked, at top speed manufacturing weapons for the German army,
, At the beginning of the summer of 1943, the Germans launched an offensive against the salient that had been formed at Kursk as a re*sult of the Soviet Army 's offensive during the preceding winter in the region of the Ore 1-Kursk-Be Igor od Railway. The Germans' plan was to strike from two directions — ^from their Orel flace d 'armes in the North, and the region of Belgorod in the South — sur round and annihilate the Soviet troops that were concentrated inside the Kursk salient, and then commence a drive against Moscow. To carry out this plan, the Germans concentrated on a relatively short front seventeen tank and eighteen infantry divisions and a vast number of aircraft. Never before had such a huge quantity of the weapons of war been brought into action as in the battle of Kursk. The density of armaments amounted to 100 to 150 tanks and 100 to 200 guns per kilometre. Notwithstanding this, the Germans failed to pierce the Soviet Front. The Soviet Army had organized a deeply echeloned defence and the Soviet artillery exterminated the enemy's "Tigers" and "Ferdinands."
After wearing down the main forces of the German fascist army and bleeding them white, the Soviet Army undertook the offensive in its turn. On August 5, 1943, exactly a month after the Germans had launched their offensive, the Soviet Army captured Orel and Belgorod, thus liquidating the enemy's fortified bridgehead at Orel, the most powerful and dangerous one for our country at that time, and which the Hitlerite High Command had antieijpated using for another offensive against Moscow.
The battles of Kursk, Orel and Belgorod marked the opening of the Red Army's powerful summer offensive. The Soviet troops made a drive for Kharkov, and on August 23, 1943, the city was liber ated from the German invaders. At the same time operations were commenced for the liberation of the Donetz Basin. On September 8, 1943, Stalino was liberated as the result of an impetuous assault. The Gorman High Command attempted to halt the advance of the Soviet trooi)s at the water's edge at the River Desna, and particularly at the River Dnieper; but the Soviet Army successfully forced the Desna, and later the upper reaches of the Dnieper, and on September 25, 1943, liberated Smolensk, a most important German strategical centre of deftuice in the western direction.
Tile Soviet Army's summer offensive cMilminated in stubborn jaghting for the Dnieper. The German High Command concentrated vast forces for the defence of their powerful Dnieper defence line. They occupied the well-fortified hilly right bank of tlie river, blow up all the bridges, and destroyed everything that could be used for crossing the river; they were convinced that the broad and deep Dnie per, the middle and southern reaches of which were as much as 600 metres wide, could not be forced. But to the enemy's surprise the Soviet troops did begin to cross the river at a number of points. Tl^e crossing proceeded not on pontoon bridges, but on rafts and every thing else at hand that could float. In this crossing the Soviet Army received enormous assistance from the Ukrainian partisans who had prepared rafts and improvised boats and on these rowed the Soviet Army men across to the right bank. In a number of places the partisans had dislodged the G3rmans from important strategical points and held them until the Soviet Army arrived.
After capturing several important bridgeheads on the right bank of the Dnieper, the Soviet Army began an offensive with the object of liberating Kiev. On November 6, 1943, after stubborn fighting, Kiev was captured by assault. In liberating Kiev the Soviet troops were assisted by the Czechoslovak Brigade which had boon formed in Russia,
After this, in the course of one week, the Soviet Army advanced 130 kilometres beyond Kiev. Developing the offensive, the troops under the command of General Vatutin captured Zhitomir on Decem ber 31. At this time the troops on the Byelorussian Front liberated Gome land thereby made a beginning in liberating the whole of Byelo russia.
The Soviet Army's drive through the Ukraine and Byelorussia was supported by operations on all the other fronts from Finland to the Crimea.
The Soviet Army's offensive operations in the summer of 1943 created a critical situation for Hitler's army and upset all the Germans' oxj^eotations of being able successfully to wage a long-drawn-out defensive' war on the Soviet-German Front.
The year 1943 marked a radical turn in the course of the war. Notwithstandiiag the fact that the Soviet Army still bore the whole brunt of the fighting against the German fascist hordes, it achieved a brilliant victory over them.
The Wholesale Expulsion of the German Fascist Invaders
The fourth year of the war proved to be a year of decisive victory for the Soviet Army. In the beginning of 1944, the Leningrad group of German troops was routed. The Soviet Amy forces which were defending Leningrad had heroically held the Gormans at bay for two years. In the autumn of 1941, the fascists attempted to capture Leningrad by assault, but when this attempt failed they, with the assistance of the Finns, laid siege to the city. Completely blockaded, the inhabitants of Leningrad suffered hunger and cold. Day after day the Oormaiis battered the residential quarters from the heavy long-range guns with which they had encircled the city. But neither starvation, artillery bombardment, nor daily bombing from the air could crush the heroic spirit of the defenders of the city of Lenin.
In January 1943, the Soviet troops on the Leningrad and Vol khov Fronts broke through the blockade. The food situation in the ha-oic city considerably improved. But the Germans, building several belts of strong fortifications around the city, continued the siege. On January 14, 1944, after thorough preparation, the troops on the Lenin grad Front launched a determined offensive with the object of completely liberating Leningrad, The Germans were hurled into Estonia. The Soviet Army was thus enabled to commence a drive in the Baltic Regions and in Finland.
At the end of January 1944, the Soviet Army undertook an offen sive with the object of liberating Ukranian territory west of the Dnie per. In the Korsun-Shevchenlcovsky Region, Soviet troops surrounded and wiped out ten divisions and one brigade of the enemy. Early in the spring of 1944, in spite of the spring thaw and the thick layer of sticky mud that covered the roads, the Soviet Army launched an offensive with the object of completely liberating the Ukraine west of the Dnieper. Pursuing the retreating Germans the Soviet Army sur rounded largo and small enemy forces and wiped them out. The enemy lost a great deal of his manpower and materiel in this way.
After forcing the Dniester, the Soviet Army entered Moldavia, and on March 26, 1944, after a swift drive, reached the river Pruth, the frontier between the U.S.S.R. and Rumania. In the beginning of April the Soviet troox)s defeated the Germans in the foothills of the ■Carpathians and reached the frontier between the U.S.8.R. and Czecho slovakia. Thus, the war was carried across the frontiers of our country.
After routing the German troops in Right-Bank Ukraine, the Soviet Army proceeded to liberate the Crimea. The Germans had tried to keep the Crimea as a base for another drive into the Kuban Region; moreover, their occupation of the Crimea imperiled the existence of the Soviet Black Sea Fleet. The Hitlerites had strongly fortified Per ckop, the gate to the Crimea, and had transformed the region of Sevastopol into a powerful fortress.
The fighting to liberate the Crimea began on April 8, 1944. After forcing the Sivash Shallows, the Soviet Army drove into the interior of the Crimea. The remnants of the defeated German fascist troops fortified themselves in Sevastopol. On May 7, the Soviet Army launched an assault upon the Sevastopol fortress, and after three days of fierce fighting Sevastopol was liberated. The liberation of the Crimea changed the whole situation in the Black Sea and brought the Soviet Army near to the Balkans.
In the summer of 1944, the liberation of the Karelo-Binnish Ile public began. On June 19, 1044, after smashing the Einnish defences in the centre of the Mannerheim Line, the Soviet Army captured Vy borg. A week later it cleared the Murmansk Kailway of enemy forces and liberated Petrozavodsk, the capital of the Karelo-Pimiish Be publio. Fascist Germany's Finnish allies found themselves faced with disaster. Finland sued for peace and on September 19, 1944, signed an armistice treaty. Thus, Hitler Germany lost her faithful ally on the northern sector of the Soviet Front.
During these same summer months decisive battles were fought for the complete expulsion of the Germans from Byelorussia and Lith uania. The chief objective of the offensive in Byelorussia was to isolate the main forces of the German central group concentrated east of Minsk. Hear Minsk the troops of the three Byelorussian Fronts enclosed the Gormans in an iron ring. In the morning of July 3, Minsk was liberated. About 60,000 German soldiers and officers wore taken prisoner in Byelorussia, and these wore sent via Moscow to prisoner of-war camps.
The Soviet troops continued their iriiini])hant drive westward.
On July 13, Vilna, the caihtal of the Liiluianiaii Soviet Bcpublie,. was liberated. The German garrison in the city was wijied out. The liberation of the whole of Sovi(?t Byelorussia and of part of Soviet Lithuania enabled the Soviet Army to reacii the frontier between the Soviet Union and East Prussia.
Meanwhile, the Soviet Array was continuing its oflensivo in the south, in Bessarabia. On August 23, Kishinev, the cajiital of the Moldavian Republic, was liberated. The German and Rumanian troops, tried to make a stand in the region of Jassi, but hero a large group of them was encircled and completely wiped out. The swift drive begun by the Soviet Army culminated on August 30, 1944, in its entry into Bucharest, the capital of Rumania. Unable to continue the war any further, Rumania was obliged to capitulate. The new Rumanian government that was formed signed an armistice with the U.S.S.R. and declared war on Germany.
On September 5, the Soviet govornment sent the government of Bulgaria a note stating that since Bulgaria was in fact fighting the Soviet Union, the latter would regard herself at war with Bulgaria. The Bulgarian people, however, liaving no desire to be at war with the Soviet Union, on S<^ptemb('r 9 overthre^w the fascist governinont and set nj) a democratic government, which deedared war on Germany.
Thus, as a result of the victori('s which the Sf)vi(',t Arm^' had achieved, Germany lost her most imiiortant allies. Hiis still furtlu^r aggravated the military, economic and political situation for fascist Germany.
The Anti-Hitler Coalition is Strengthened
Faced with dis aster, Hitler Germany exerted all efforts to disrupt the united front of the Allies wlio were fighting against her. After the '"blitzkrieg" failed the Hitlerites based all their strategy on the jJrolongation of the war and on preventing the cementation of the alliance and friend shij) between the U.S.S.II., Great Britain and the United States. The fital interests of all the freedom-loving iDeoples, however, called for the speedy and complete defeat of the armed forces of fascist Ger many and of her vassals.
For the purpose of discussing concrete measures to bring about the speedy termination of the war a conference of the Ministers of Foreign Affairs of the United States, Great Britain and the Soviet Union was held in Moscow in October 1943. This Moscow Conference drew up the measures necessary for shortening the war against Ger many and her allies, and formulated the basic i)rinciples upon which a system of international co-oi)eration and security was to be estab lished. The conference expressed itself in favour of restoring the free dom and independence of Austria, and stressed the necessity of creating a democratic government in Italy. It also adopted a declaration to the effect that the Hitlerites would be called to book for the atrocities they had committed. This declaration was published over the signa tures of Stalin, Eooscvelt, and Churchill.
A month later, in November 1943, the leaders of the Three Pow ers — J. V. Stalin, Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars of the U.S.S.R., Franklin D. Roosevelt, President of the United States, and Winston Churchill, Prime Minister of Great Britain — ^met in Teheran. The Teheran Conference adopted a "Declaration of the Three Powers" which expressed unanimous determination to crush Hitler Germany and ensure peace and security for the peoples. The leaders of the Three Powers who signed this declaration stated: "We express our determination that our nations shall W'ork together in war and in the peace that will follow." As regards the Allies' war plans, the declaration emphasized their firm determination to strike Hitler Germany the finalblow and demolish her armed forces on land, on sea, and in the air. The leaders of the Allied Powers reached complete agreement on the scojDe and timing of the operations to be undertaken against Hitler Germany.
In the succeeding period, however, Churchill, bent on satisfying the mercenary interests of British imperialism, resorted to all sorts of devices to hold up the opening of the second front, and to inflict as much damage as possible on our state.
The Soviet Army's victories were a decisive factor in ensuring tho Allies' military successes in North Africa and in Italy; and the fact that the Germans' main strategical reserves had been withdrawn from the West and that the finest Gorman divisions had boon anni hilated on the Soviet-German Pront, enabled the Allies successfully to develop large-scale oSensive operations in Europe,
The second front was opened only when it became clear that the Soviet Union was in a position, unaided by the Allies and with its own forces, to oceux^y the whole of Germany and to liberate the peoples of Eurox}e. On June 6, 1944, Allied troops landed in northern France. The second front tied down nearly seventy-five of Hitler's divisions, and, to some degree, helped the Soviet Army to carry out its task of utterly defeating the German troops. However, the main burden of the war continued, as heretofore, to be borne by the Soviet Army, which tied down over 200 divisions. The fourth year of the war proved to be a year of decisive victories over the German troops achieved by the Soviet armies and the armies of our Allies. ' The Liberation of the Peoples of Europe. The course of the war totally upset all the plans and calculations of the Hitler imperial ists in the sphere of foreign j^olicy. Tlio predatory Hitler bloc col lapsed, Tlio peoples of Euro|)o who had been enslaved by the Germans intensified tlioir resistance, fur their hatred of the fascist invaders grow the longer the German occupation lasted. In all the countries they had conquered the fascists liad established their so-called "new or der," which, in fact, was only a replica of tlio old order of slavery or serfdom. The Germans conquered and enslaved advanced European nations like the French, Czechs, Slovaks, Polos, Norwegians, Dutch, Belgians, Serbians and others, and everywhere the Hitler party, the party of tho most rapacious and predatory imperialists in the world, applied their cannibal race theory. In all the countries they subju gated the Germans introduced the methods of slavery and serfdom, covered Europe with gallows, and destroyed tho finest treasures of tho culture of all nations.
The German fascists treated tho inhabitants of tho Soviet regions they had occupied with exceptional ferocity and cruelty. Tho fright ful atrocities which tho German fascists perpetrated were systemat ically reported by the Soviet Information Bm*oau and also by the Extraordinary Commission which the Soviet government set up to collect information about them. But during tho war years the atroc ities were only partly brought to tho light of day. When the Gtermans were defeated, the whole world received convincing proof of tho ghastly crimes committed by the fascist monsters. The Nuromburg trial also yielded a shocking picture of the sufferings endured by Soviet people in tho occupied areas, subjected, as they were, to torture and insult of every kind,
Tho Hitler authorities condemned Soviet people to death for tho slightest resistance or opposition. The Gorman butchers shot, burned to death, hanged and tortured Soviet people in thousands. The eollective farms in the occupied regions were broken up and the land was given to Gar man landlords and kulaks. The collective farmers, driven o£E their land, were compelled to work for the new landlords, or else were driven oflE to Germany to work like galley slaves. Millions per ished as a result of the unbearable toil which the German conquerors forced upon them. The Germans destroyed the finest monuments of Russian national culture. They wrecked the estate of the great Russian author Leo Tolstoy at Yasnaya Polyana, the home of the great Rus sian composer Chaikovsky in Klin, and the house of the famous Russian author Chekhov in Taganrog, all of which had been converted into museums. They also defiled great relics connected with the name of Pushkin, and so on.*
As early as 1941, Comrade Stalin had said that the 'hiew order" in Euroi)e was a volcano which was ready to erupt at any moment. The enslaved peoples of Europe were only waiting for the opportunity to rise up against their enslavers. It was the liberating mission of the Soviet Army to help the peoples of Europe in their struggle to free themselves from Hitler tyranny. As the Soviet Army neared the frontiers of the U.S.S.R., the peoples of all the countries that were occupied by the Germans rose to wage a general struggle for liberation against the invaders.
The Soviet Army came to their aid. As soon as it crossed the Ru manianYugoslav frontier, it rendered substantial assistance to the People 's Liberation Army of Yugoslavia, who had been heroically fighting the Germans from the very first day the latter invaded their country. On October 20, 1944, the Soviet Army, jointly with the People'sLiberation Army liberated Belgrade, the capital of Yugosla via, In the beginning of 1945, the Soviet Army helped our ally Poland to liberate a number of important Polish towns, and on January 14, 1945, Soviet troops, in conjunction with the First Polish Army, lib erated Warsaw, the long-suffering capital of the Polish Republic. The Soviet Army also rendered considerable assistance to the freedom-lov ing peoples of Czechoslovakia who had been resisting the German invaders all the time. Thus, the Soviet Army carried out its liberating mission in relation to all the peoples of Europe and helped them to throw off the yoke of the German tyrants.
The Heroic Struggle Waged by the Soviet Partisans
An ex tremely important part in the war against the Hitler robbers was played by the patriotic Soviet partisans who operated in all the Soviet regions that were temporarily occupied by the Germans. In the radio address he delivered on July 3, 1941, Comrade Stalin called upon all the Soviet people in the occupied regions to make conditions ^'unbearable for the enemy and all his accomplices." "They must be hounded and annihilated at every step, and all their measures must be frustrated," he said (J. Stalin, On the Great Patriotic War of the Soviet Union, Moscow, 1946, p. 15).
Thousands and hundreds of thousands of Soviet patriots respondfid to Comrade Stalin's call. Men and women of all ages and professions withdrew to the forests where they joined the partisan units. The Soviet people will never forgot the name of one of the first women-partisans, the Moscow high-school girl, Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya, In 1941, Zoya voluntarily joined a partisan unit and bravely fought against the Hitlerites. During one of the partisan operations she was taken, prisoner. She was subjected to frightful torture, but nothing could break the heroic spirit of this patriotic Soviet girl. Failing to compel the young heroine to give them any information, the Hitlerites decided to hang her in public. As the noose was being put round her neck she turned to the peasants who had been driven to the scene of the execution and made a passionate appeal to them to exterminate the fascists. "Don't be afraid," she said. "Stalin is with us. Stalin will come!"
The same staunchness and devotion to his country was displayed by the sixteen-ycar-old schoolboy and member of the A^oung Commu nist League, Shura Chekalin. Shura voluntarily joined an Extermi nation Battalion. One day, while a battle was in lungross, he found himself cut oft in the enemy's rear. He succeeded, however, in estab lishing contact with a i)artisan unit and served in it actively as a scout. Evcutxmlly ho was caught hy the Germans who, after subject ing him to inhuman torture, took him out to be hanged. Under the gallows the heroic lad proudly faced the Germans and said: "You can 't hang us all! Wc are far too many for you!" The young patriot went to his death singing the "International."
Outstanding among the j)opnlar heroes, the organizers and leaders of the partisan movement, were tlie Bolsheviks wJio in peace time had been managers of collective farms and factories, Soviet administrators or loaders of Party organizations.
The "avengers of the people" as these heroic partisans were called, struck at the enemy's most vulnerable ])ohits. They wrecked factories and ojBGlces in the enemy's rear, cut the Germans' communications, attacked and wiped out supply columns, struck at enemy reserves and blew up bridges, In this extensive war of liberation the partisans en listed the masses of the people who were groaning under the heel of the German invaders. The forests in which the partisans operated be came a nightmare to the Gerinans.Tho Gorman Command re])catodly sent punitive detachments to "comb"t]io W'oods and wij)o out the ])artisans, but through their scouts the partisans learned ofthe movements of these punitive detachments and took couuter-measui*(?s against them. The enemy wore caused exceptional difficulties and damage from the "rails war" waged by the Soviet partisans, who tore up thousands of kilometres of railway lines, tlms hindering the retreat of the Germans and facilitating their pursuit by the Soviet Army. They also saved Soviet civilians from extermination or from being driven off into slavery in fascist Germany. They liberated prisoners and restored to the civilian inhabitants the proi)erty which the Germans had plun dered.
During the course of the Great Patriotic War the partisan detach ments wiped out hundreds of thousands of Hitlerites, wrecked innumer aUo German trains, blew up thousands of railway and road bridges and destroyed thousands of tanks, armoured cars, guns, motor trucks and aircraft.
The outstanding partisan leaders Sidor Kovpak, A. P. Fyodorov, P. Vershigora and others were awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union.
Before the war S. A. Kovpak was the chairman of the Soviet of the small Ukrainian town of Putivl. When the Germans occupied the town, Kovpak and a comrade named Rudnev organized a partisan detachment which became famous all over the Ukraine. In 1942, Kovpak and other partisan leaders were called to Moscow to see Stalin, and there it was decided to organize a partisan raid deep into the in terior of the Ukraine west of the Dnieper for the purpose of rousing the people to fight the Germans and of striking at the enemy's communica tions. Kovpak 's detachments conducted devastating warfare on a large scale in Carpathian Ukraine where, among other things, they destroyed several oil refining plants and over 50,000 tons of oil. To combat Kovpak 's partisan detachments the Germans drew troops from Galicia and Hungary, but the partisans broke through the enemy encirclement and returned to the Ukraine.
All the Soviet people who had temporarily fallen under the fascist yoke waged a heroic struggle in the enemy's rear. The Germans tried to break the spirit of resistance of the Soviet patriots by means of frightful atrocities, but to no avail. An example of this heroic re sistance is provided by the struggle that was waged by the Young Communist iLeaguers in Krasnodon. In this small mining town an un derground Young Communist L3ague organization was formed which called itself the "Young Gaard." This organization, which was led by seventeen-year-old Oleg Koshevoi, set out to wage an uncompro mising struggle against the German invaders. The "Young Guard" distributed leaflets, repeatedly destroyed lists of names of people who had been marked off for deportation to Germany, and liberated prisoners from concentration camps. OvV^ing to treachery and trickery tlie Young Guard organization was discovered by the Gestapo and its mombors wore arrested. The Germans subjected these young heroes of underground warfare to frightful torture, but not one of them be trayed weakness or cowardice. Failing to break their spirit, the inlnunan fascist trutes flung them, while still alive, to the bottom of a wreeketl colliery shaft.
The Heroic Effort of the People in the Rear
The successes which tlio Soviet Army achieved ou the battlefield wore facilitated by the tremendous patriotic enthusiasm that was displayed by the entire Soviet peoj)lc in the roar. Within a short space of time the mu nition plants in the threatened areas were evacuated to tho remote eastern regions of the country and soon began to supply the Soviet Army with all it needed. Tho coal and metallurgical centres whrch had been built in the East in the course of the fulfilment of the Stalin Five-Year Plans partly compensated for the loss of the plants in the western and southern regions occupied by the enemy. In many cases the evacuated plants were put up and operated in districts where there had been no industry whatever before. 'Now plants were erected at war-time tempo. The local inhabitants and tho 6vacu6es worked with self-sacrificing zeal under the most trying conditions.
The scale of tho organizing work done in the rear by Soviet people during the Great Patriotic War is unprecedented in the history of war. Within a short space of time the output of tho Kuznetsk Steel Plant began to make good the temporary loss of the Donetz Basin. Huge new blast furnaces wore erected in Magnitogorsk. In Chelyabinsk, a giant steel plant was erected. Many oftlie old plants in the Urals were entirely reconstructed. Tho Urals became an enormous arsenal for the Soviet Army. In Siberia and Central Asia, now machine-building, automobile, electrical engineering and chemical plants were .erected.
Socialist emulation was undertaken on an unprecedented scale, Stakhanov methods of working became extensively employed and tlu^ movement for producing now inventions assumed mass pro])ortions. All this testified to tho enormous creative energy of the working class and to its indomitable will to achieve victory. An extremely important part in the armament industries began to bo played by women and juveniles. Dmung the war tho trade and factory training schools j)ro-. vided industry with over 2,000,000 trained workers, and women learned the most complicated trades, so-called men 's jobs, and were exemplary in their labour heroism.
In the factories the young workers formed themselves into what were called "front brigades." The young Moscow worldngwoman, Yekate rina Baryshnikova, started a movement among the young workers to overfulfil production plans with fewer workers. Katya Baryshnikova overfulfilled her own plan with three workers assisting her instead of six as formerly. Her example was followed by young workers all over the country with the result that tens of thousands of workers became availahlo for other jobs.
In his Order of tho Day of May 1 , 1944, Comrade Stalin paid a tribute to tho working class, which, amidst tho trying conditions of the war, had achieved decisive successes in the mass production of arms, ammunition, equipment and provisions for the Red Army.
Equally self-sacrificing was the effort exerted by the collective farm peasantry to bring about victory over the German fascist invaders. During the Great Patriotic War collective farmers, men and women, displayed an understanding of the interests of the State that reached a high level. By their intense labours they ensured regular supplies of food and raw materials for the Soviet Army and the country as a whole. The women collective farmers proved to be a great force in the countryside. For example, in the Ryazan Region, the women's tractor team led by Darya Garmash showed record results all through the war of area covered per tractor. The All-Union contest between women 's tractor teams begun on her initiative was of great benefit to her native land. The young people in the collective farms were pioneers in introducing new methods of labour into agriculture and thus increasing output.
The Soviet intelligentsia too made a priceless contribution to the cause of victory, boldly resorting to innovations in the spheres of technology and culture, developing science, and applying its achieve ments to the manufacture of weapons for the Soviet Army. Soviet physicists, chemists, mathematicians, medical men and other scien tists achieved great success in their respective spheres, and employed their achievements to help bring about the defeat of the enemy. Acad emicians Burdenko, Abrikosov, Orbeli, Bogomolets and Lena Stern achieved wonderful results in the field of medicine and thus saved the lives of innumerable wounded fighters. Academicians Bardin and Baikov, by their researches in the field of metallurgy, helped to develop Soviet industry still further. Academicians Lysenko, Tsitsin, Pryanish nikov and others, devised new methods of increasing agricultural output. The botanists, Academicians Komarov and Keller, and the geologists, Academicians Persman, Obruchev and others, worked very hard during the Patriotic War to develop further the natural resources of the U.S.S.R. As a result of the labours of Soviet scientists immense deposits of ores and various other valuable minerals wer3 discovered. The Academy of Sciences of the U.S.S.R. and the Academies of Sci ences of the Union Republics achieved great successes in all branches of science.
The entire Soviet people displayed exceptional solicitude for the needs of the Soviet Army. One of the manifestations of this was the broad popular movement for the collection of contributions for the Soviet Army Fund. At the end of 1942, when the battle of Stalingrad was at its height, the collective farmers in the Tambov Region with in a few days collected a considerable sum of money to build tanks. The example of the Tambov collective farmers was followed by col lective farmers all over the country. On the initiative of F.P. Go lovaty, a collective farmer in the Saratov Region, many collective i armors contributocl all their savings to the Soviet Army Fund. Golovaty wrot '3 a letter to Comrade Stalin saying that he had contrib utod 100,000 rubles, all his savings, for the ])urp{)so of building a fight er pianoHo was allowed to pick out a fighUu' plane at an aircraft factory and to have the following inscriiitiou made on it: "A gift to the Stalingrad Front from Golovaty of tJie Stakhanov Collective Farm," Comrade Stalin sent Golovaty a message ofgreetings and thanks for his gift. Comrade Stalin wrote: "Thank you, Fera]R)ut Petrovich, for your coucerii for the Red Army and its air force. The Red Army will ix)t forget that you gave up all your savings to huilda combat aircraft."
The example of collective farmer Golovaty was followed by many thousands of working i)eople in the provinces and non-Russian repub lics. By March. 31, 1943, over 7,000,000,000 rubles and large quantities of provisions and miscellaneous articles had been contributed to the Soviet Army Fund, and throughout the war about 13,000,000,000 rubles in money and a huge sum in state loan bonds were contributed to the Defence Fund. In addition to contributing to the Defence Fund, the Soviet people rendered the state enormous assistance by sub scribing to war loans.
The close unity between the rear and the front during the Great Patriotic War not only upset all the enemy's calculations on the So viet system lacking stability, but was a vital factor in bringing about his utter defeat.
The Rout of Hitler Germany in 1945
The year 1945 arrived, the year in which the Soviet Army's historic victories reached their cuhninatiou, and saw the utter defeat of fascist Germany. In January 1945, the Soviet Army began to liberate Poland and Czechoslovakia, The troops of the U.S.S.R.'s allies were successfully pushing towards Germany 's vital centres. During these decisive days of the beginning of February 1945, a conference of the loaders of the great Allied Powers — Stalin, Roosevelt and' Churchill — was held in the Livadia Palace near Yalta, in the Crimea. The conference drew uj) a plan for the final defeat of Germany. At this time Germany was lield in the vise of two fronts. The heads of the three Great Powers agreed that they would demand fascist Germany's unconditional surrender. In their joint declaration on the conference, the leaders of the Great Allied Powers said: 'Tt is our inflexible purpose to destroy German militarism and Nazism and to ensure that Germany will never again be able to disturb the peace of the world."
The loaders of the Three Powers also stated that it was not their purpose to destroy the German jieople. When Nazism and militarism were extirpated, they said, the German people would find ways for a decent existence in the comity of nations. To maintain peace and security the Crimea Conference decided to set u]> with the other Allied Powers a world-wide, international organization of United Nations. The Crimea Conference also adopted a "Declaration on Liberated Europe" which proclaimed the principle that the Three Powers would co-ordinate their policies and adopt joint decisions on the major po litical and economic questions concerning liberated Europe.
The united action of the Allies ensured their victory over Germany. The military situation became catastrophic for the latter. As a result of the onslaughts of the Soviet Army, which had pushed into German Silesia in tlie south and into East Prussia and Pomerania in the east and north, the German forces retreated into the interior of Gfermany. The Soviet Army's uninterrupted offensive resulted in the defeat of the Koenigsberg group of German troops. On April 9, 1945, the Soviet Army stormed and captured the city of Koenigsberg. Sev eral days later, on April 13, the Soviet Army liberated Vienna, the capital of Austria.
The road to Berlin was open for the Soviet Army. The Germans hurled all their reserves against it. The Soviet assault on Berlin was launched simultaneously from different directions. On the night of April 19, tens of thousands of guns opened fire on the city. By order of Marshal Zhulcov, the Soviet Army launched a sudden night attack. After artillery preparation, thousands of tanks made a drive for Ber lin; about 6,000 aircraft rained bombs on the German positions. On April 21, the Soviet troops, after breaking through the defences of Berlin, engaged the enemy in its suburbs. The ring closed tighter and tighter around the city. At last the forward units forced their way to the centre of Berlin and hoisted the Red flag over the German Reichstag. The Order of the Day of the Supreme Commander-in-Chief Comrade Stalin of May 2, 1945, contained the long-awaited announce ment: "The Red Army has captured Berlin."
While the Soviet i^y's assault on Berlin was at its height, the Allied troops were rapidly advancing through German territory, meet ing with no resistance on the part of the Germans. In an endeavour to cause a split in the ranks of the Allies the Germans offered to sur render to the United States and Great Britain, but refused to ca pitulate to the Soviet Union.
But this time too the German fascist manoeuvre failed. The Allies demanded unconditional surrender from Germany. On May 8, 1945, the leaders of Germany's armed forces signed an act of unconditional surrender. The Germans reported the suicide of Hitler, Goebbels and of other of Hitler's accomplices. The rest of the rulers of the fascist state, including Goering and Field Marshal Keitel, were arrested and delivered up to an International Tribunal, which tried the major war criminals in Nuremburg.
On May 9, 1945, Comrade Stalin issued an address to the people announcing that the great day of victory over Geiroany had arrived. In this address Comrade Stalin said: "We now have full grounds for saying that the historic day of the final defeat of Germany, the day of our people's groat victory over German imperialism has arrived* The great saorifioos we have made for the freedom and independence of our country, the incalculable privation and suffering our people have endured during the war, our intense labours in tlie rear and at the front, laid at the altar of our motherland, have not been in vain; they have been crowned by complete victory over tlio enemy. The age-long struggle of the fclavonio peoples for tlieir existence and independence has ended in victory over the German aggressors and German tyranny. Henceforth, the great banner of the freedom of the peoples and peace between the peoples will fly over Europe" (J. Stalin, On the, Great Patriotic War of the Soviet Union, Moscow, 1946, pp. 196-97).
The Defeat of the Japanese Imperialists
After the defeat and capitulation of fascist Germany, the Allies were faced with the task of defeating imperialist Japan, which continued the war despite the fact that Hitler Germany had capitulated.
Faithful to its duty as an ally, the Soviet Union adhered to the Potsdam Declaration of the United States, Great Britain and China of July 26, 1945, which demanded Japan's unconditional surrender.
The Japanese imperialists had been long-standing enemies of the Russian people and had made repeated attempts to seize our Ear Eastern territory. As far back as 1904, during the Russo -Jaiianeso War, Japan tried to cut off our country from the Pacific and the outlets to the ports of Kamchatka and Chukotsk. In 1918-1922, wlion the Soviet Republic was beating off the attacks of tho interventionists and uphold ing its independence, the Japanese imperialists tried to seize the So viet Far East. The young Red Army, in arduous battles, drove tho Japanese aggressors from Soviet soil. In 1038, the Japanese made another predatory attack upon the Soviet Union in tho region of Lake Hasan, and in 1939 they attacked, in tho region of Khalkhin-gol, the Mongolian People's Republic, with which the Soviet Union iiad signed a treaty of mutual assistance. These attempts wore also frus trated by the valiant Red Army. During the Soviet Union's Great Patriotic War against Germany the Japanese hold their Kwantung Army, consisting of picked troops, on the Soviet frontier, threaten ing to cross it at any moment.
The Soviet State could no longer tolerate this constant menace in the East, and so the Soviet government announced that as from August 9, 1946, tho Soviet Uniqn would bo at war with Japan,
Tho Soviet Army launched an offensive in the Far East in several directions, and within a short space of time routed tho Kwantung Army— the largest group^of Japanese armies — and liberated Manchuria.
The U.S.S.R, 's entry into tho war against Japan and the suc cesses achieved by tho Soviet Army hastened the defeat of imperialist Japan. On September 2, 194:5, uuuuie to continue the war any longer, the Japanese capitulated and the Soviet people were able to present to the Japanese aggressors their just demand for retribution.
Commenting on the capitulation of imperialist Japan, Comrade Stalin said: "We of tlie older generation waited for this day for forty years, and now this day has arrived. Today Japan admitted defeat and signed an act of unconditional surrender.
' 'This means that the southern iiart of Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands revert to the Soviet Union and henceforth ivill serve not as a bciffrier between the Soviet Union and the ocean and a base for Jap anese attack upon our Far East, bub as a direct means of communi cation between the Soviet Union and the ocean and a base for the defence of our country against Japanese aggression.
"Our Soviet people spared neither strength nor labour for the sake of victory. We experienced extremely hard years. But now every one of us can say: We have won. Henceforth we can regard our coun try as being free from the menace of German invasion in the West and of Japanese invasion in the East, The long-awaited peace for the peo ples of all the world lias come" (J. Stalin, On. the Qrmt PalrioUc Wnr of iha Soviet Union, Moscow, 1946, pp. 209-10).
The Causes and the Sources of the Victory of the Soviet Union
The victory of the Soviet Union in the Great Patriotic War roused the admiration of all ])rogres.sive mankind. The wiiole world recognized tlie great merits of the Soviet Army, which by its heroic and" scdf-sacrificing struggle had saved world civilization from the Gorman fascist barbarians and the Japanese imperialists. The Soviet Army stood before the whole world as an army of liberation, and the Soviet Union as the saviour of civilization and progress in Europe and throughout the world.
What was th<^ source of the Soviet Aimy's great victory?
The Soviet Army was able successfully to perform its duty to its country and cany out its liberating mission in relation to the peo ples of Europe primarily because it received tlie devoted support of all the peoples of the Soviet Union; because its victory was ensured by the entire state and social system of our country.
As Comrade Stalin emphasized in the speech he delivered on Feb ruary 9, 1046, the victory of the U.S.S.R. signifies first of all, that the. Soviet social system was victorious and had successfully passed the test of the fire of war and proved that it is fully viable; secondly, the victory of the U.S.S.R. signifies that our Soviet state sj^stem was viotiorioiiH, tJiat our multi-national Soviet State })assed all the tests of the war and proved its viabilit}^; thirdly, the victory of the U.S.S.R. signifies that the Soviet armed forces, the Soviet Army, was victoi*! ous, the Soviet Anny which had heroically withstood all the hard ships of the war and had routed most powerful enemies. The socialist system which arose out of the October Revolution lent mtr people and our Red Ai*my groat and invincible strength. The victory of Socialism in the U.S.S.R., the successful executicn of the tlu'ee Five-Year Plans for the development of our national economy, made it possible to prepare the countiy for active dcfonco even amidst the extremely unfavourable conditions created by the enemy's perfidious and unexpected attack. The victory of the policy of industrializing the cciintry and of collectivizing agriculture citi ated the material possibilities for organizing the defence.
Amidst the unprecedented difficulties created by the Patriotic War the Soviet multi-national state proved to be strong and invin* eible. Being a model of what a multi-national state should be, and built on the basis of Socialism, the Soviet Union draws strength fiom the indestructible friendship that exists among the peoples of our coun try. Ukrainians and Byelorussians, G.^oj-gians and Armenians, Uz beks and Turkmenians — 'll! the peojiles of the boundless Land of Soviets, led by the great Russian people — fouglit heroically on the different fronts during lhv:i Great Patriotic War. The glorious roll of Heroes of the Soviet Union contains tlie names of Soviet patriots of the most diverse nationalities. The Russian airman, thrice Hero of the Soviet Union, Alexander Pokryslikin, the Ukrainian partisan Sidor Kovi)ak, the Byelorussian partisan Sosnovsky, the Kazakh Tulegen Tokhtarov, the Georgian Mikhail Takhokidzo, the Latvian Janis Wilhelms, the Estonian Meri and the Jew Gorelik are bub a few of the names of the long list of men and women who today are the pride of the peoples of the Soviet Union. Valiant reprosentiitives of all the peoples of the U.S.S.R. fearlessly rushed into battle with the cry: "For our Motherland For Stalin!"
Under the leadership of the Bolshevik Party headed by the great est leaders of manl^ind, Lenin and Stalin, the Soviet State, that prod uct of the age-long struggle of the great Russian peojilo, converted our country into an impregnable fortress. ^
The greatest source of the Soviet Union's strength is the leading and directing role played by the Bolshevik Party among the masses of the people. During the Patriotic War, the Bolshevik Party was the inspirer and organizer of the nation-wide struggle againstj>he fascist invaders; and it was as a result of the organizing activities of the Parly that all the efforts of the Soviet people were united and directed to wards the common goal.
The Great Patriotic War revealed the mighty strength of Soviet patriotism, which is linkedwiththe entire glorious past of the peoples of our country. The splendid qualities and fighting traditions of tJjo Soviet people found expression in the mass heroism which they dis played at the front and in the rear in defending the honour, freedom and independence of their Soviet Motherland. Many of the names of Soviet lioroes have iiO'w* become legendary. Such, for example, is the immortal name of Captain Gastello, who in the first days of the war sent his burning aeroplane hurtling down upon an enemy supply column; suoli is the name of Hero of the Soviet Union, Guardsman Alexander Matrosov, who with his body blocked the embrasure of a pillbox, the continuous firing from which was hindering the advance of attacking Soviet Army forces; such are the names of the twenty eight guardsmen of Panfilov's Division, who gave their last drop of blood in defence of their positions near Moscow; such are the names of the sixteen guardsmen who at the cost of their lives repulsed the fierce attack of twelve eujiny tanks at a decisive moment in the enemy's offmsive at Stalingrad. The entire Soviet people reveres the memory of Heroes of the Soviet Union, members of the Young Communist L3ague, Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya, Liza Chaikina, Sasha Chekalin and Victor Talalikhin, of the girl snipers Natasha Kovshova and Maria Polivanova, of the young Krasnodoii heroes headed by Oleg Koshe voi, and of many others like them.
The victory of the Soviet armed forces was also ensured by the Soviet military art and the wi.so strategy of Stalin. Generalissimo of tho Soviet Union, Comrade Stalin, trained splendid Generals of a now t>T^)e like Zhukov, Konev, Vasilycvsk}^ Toibuldiin, Govorov, Vatutin, Antonov and otliers, who proved themselves outstanding front commanders and everywhere successfully applied the Stalinist sciioiico and art of war in all their strength and might.
Lastly, tho Soviet Army was victorious because the organizer and iuspircr of its liberating struggle was tho loader of the i>ooples, tho greatest of strategists and generals, Comrade Stalin. It was with thc^ name of Stalin on their lips tliat tho Soviet peo]ple went into battle, and with it tliey emerged victorious.
The Five-Year Plan for the Restoration and Development of the National Economy of the U.S.S.R.
The historic victories which the Soviet people achieved in the Great Patriotic War enabled the U.S.S.ll* to pass back to peacetime socialist construction. On Feb ruary 10, 1946, the Soviet people, with splendid unanimity, elected now Deputies to tho Supreme Soviet of the U.S.S.R. which was to pass measures to promobe tho immense task of post-war restoration. The people's first candidate, Comrade Stalin, in the historic speech he delivered on February 9, 1J46 at a meeting of voters in the Stalin District of Moscow, revealed to the Soviet peoi>le wide prospects of fixrfchor (lovelojmKmt of tho Land of Socialism, of a tremendous ad vance in tho oGimomio aii<l cultural development of our country, of the eonsolidalion of tho ocononiic and military might of the Soviet State and of an increase in the well-being of tho masses of the people.
Stalin's vitnvs on tho post-war restoration and further develop ment of tho Soviet State wore embodied in a new Five-Year Plan which tho First Session of the Supremo Soviet of the U.S.S.R., Second Convocation, passed as a law entitled The Five-Year Plan for the Hiosto. ration and Development of t lie National Economy for 104G-1950'
The U.S.S.U/s victory in the Patriotic War was achieved at the cost of iinmctiso sacrifice. The German invaders caused our country untold damage. The Supreme Soviet therefore gave priority to the task of restoring the devastated regions and of raising industry and agriculture to the pre-war bvol. Aftei* that the ])ro-war level is to Ue exceeded to a considerable degrc-(^ This means giving first place to restoring and further developing the heavy industry and the' railways, a further increase in the outimt of agriculture and of the industries wdiich produce consumers' goods, the creation in the country of an abundance of the prinoij)al consumers' goods, and a general improve ment in the material welfare of the peoples of the U.S.S.R.
To ensure the powerful development of tlie national economy of the U.S.S.R. the new Five-Year Plan provides for further techni cal progress in all branches of the national economy; this will ensure higher productivity of labour.
The new Five-Year Plan also calls for the exertion of the efiorts of i'ho entire Soviet ])ooplo to carry out the main economic task of the U.S.S.R., namely, to overtake and outsfcri]) the princij)le capitalist countries economical ly .
Thus, the now Stalin plan opens for our Soc/ialist Motherland the great prospect of completing the building of Socialism and of the gradual transition from Socialism to Communism, Under the leader ship of the Party of Lanin and Stalin, the Soviet iieople will carrj?' out this historic task and usher in a new ora in wwld history.