The Soviet Union

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Re: The Soviet Union

Post by blindpig » Fri May 06, 2022 2:31 pm

Valaam Home for the Invalids and liberal falsifications
May 5, 21:35

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Valaam Home for the Invalids and liberal falsifications

“It happened almost overnight. All of a sudden, all the lone invalids were gone. The cities were cleared of these people. What kind of action was it, who performed it - the police, social workers? To our inquiries to the archives of the FSB at Liteiny and Lubyanka, we received answers: "There are no such documents." But there was such an action, there was! And someone gave instructions to fulfill it. Lonely, brave and recalcitrant disabled people were cynically taken out of the cities. By the autumn of 1953 they were no longer in Moscow and Leningrad.

These words are heard in the “documentary” film by Zinaida Kurbatova “Boarding School. Betrayed and forgotten." And here is an excerpt from a conversation between two liberals in a 2009 broadcast on Ekho Moskvy:

“Boltyanskaya: Comment on the monstrous fact when, by order of Stalin, after the Great Patriotic War, disabled people were forcibly exiled to Valaam, to Solovki, so that they, armless, legless heroes, would not spoil the victory holiday with their appearance. Why is there so little talk about it now? Why are they not called by name? After all, it was these people who paid for the victory with their blood and wounds. Or are they now also not to be mentioned?

Daniel: Well, why comment on this fact? This fact is known, monstrous. It is completely understandable why Stalin and the Stalinist leadership expelled veterans from the cities.

Indeed, why comment on a fact that simply did not exist in nature! But which, thanks to a number of false media, has become a very tenacious anti-Soviet myth that distorts the truth about veterans of the Great Patriotic War. Every year, on Victory Day, another witness of the “terrible truth” about the “Stalinist concentration camp” on Valaam necessarily pops up. In recent years, this myth, for obvious reasons, has been very popular in the Ukrainian blogosphere.

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A typical example of liberal propaganda
Therefore, let us once again recall what kind of institution it was.

· The House of the Invalids on Valaam was founded in 1950 by decree of the Supreme Council of the Karelian-Finnish SSR. Only. That is, it was not even the decision of the central leadership of the country. Iosif Vissarionovich, who had enough other concerns in those years, most likely simply did not know about his existence.

· Everyone who has been to Valaam should be well aware that even ten thousand people cannot simply be accommodated on the island, much less regularly supplied there. And there were much more war invalids in the USSR. From the comprehension of this fact alone, it follows that the creators of the myth of Valaam, where they allegedly gathered all the invalids of the war, from the very beginning carried obvious nonsense. That clearly shows the level of their intellectual development. In fact, it is known from archival documents that the average number of disabled people who were on Valaam was about one thousand people.

· Why was the home for the disabled placed here? Apparently, the main reason was the presence of empty buildings of the former monastery. As you know, after the war, there were serious problems with the housing stock in the country, but here it was possible to use solid monastic buildings of 2-3 floors. That is, the task was not to isolate and hide the unfortunate invalids of the war from human eyes, but to find the most economical option for their accommodation.

· Is the Valaam archipelago located on Lake Ladoga a “terrible” place to live in? Well, anti-Soviet citizens, in fact, the Valaam archipelago, by the standards of our North, is almost a resort. A very picturesque place, with a special microclimate, with unique natural conditions. It is not for nothing that the modern Russian Orthodox Church has done everything to turn Valaam into its fiefdom. By the way, a few years ago, local guides liked, in passing, to show the guests of Valaam government houses for the rest of important people, including You Know Who!

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Houses on Valaam. 2015 Photo of the author.

· Regarding the assertion that all armless and legless invalids were caught and forcibly sent to Valaam. At one time, Vitaly Rystov, a local historian and publisher of the Serdobol almanac (an interesting conversation with him can be found here), published a special issue of the almanac dedicated to the history of Valaam. In it, with references to archival documents, it was proved that it was an ordinary social institution, all the expenses for the maintenance of which were assumed by the state. I'll just quote:

“Contrary to the legend, no one was forcibly driven to Valaam and no passports were taken away ... On the contrary, one had to try to get here. A typical situation - a soldier returns from the war without legs, no relatives; or there are old parents who themselves need help. Then he makes a statement: “I ask you to send me to a nursing home.” After that, representatives of the local city (if the case is in the city) or village Soviet (if in the village) administration inspect the living conditions. And then confirm (or not) the petition of the disabled person. And only after that the veteran went to Valaam.”

· Many disabled people had relatives with whom they corresponded. That is, no “secret” was made of the existence of a home for the disabled. Documents preserved in the personal files of disabled people testify that very often they were natives of Karelia, and few were sent to Valaam from big cities. Of course, there was another, specific category of disabled people, who after the war gradually became an inveterate drunkard and degraded. Alas, everything happens to people in life, such people also ended up in a boarding school. But what alternative would anti-Soviet citizens offer for them? Only one thing - to leave these people on the street so that they finally become drunk and die quickly. Just such a liberal approach, the most inhuman and cannibalistic, we could observe relatively recently. But in the USSR, the state considered it necessary to take care of everyone.

What did disabled people do on Valaam? Whoever could, worked in the garden, picked berries and mushrooms, fished in Ladoga. From archival documents it is known that milk and part of the products came to the home for the disabled from their subsidiary farm. The island had three baths, a laundry, an office, an outpatient clinic, a hairdresser's, a pantry, a library and a reading room, a red corner, a shoe shop, two sewing workshops, four kitchens and dining rooms.

Why were there workshops? As archival documents show, one of the tasks of the homes for the disabled was to give the provided a profession accessible to them. From Valaam, they sent accountants and shoemakers to courses, that is, they tried, if possible, to give a person the opportunity to work. And that means returning to normal life.

More about security from the article in the almanac "Serdobol":“We bought clothes: a winter coat - 200 pieces (x500 rubles), a winter short coat. men's - 200 pcs. (x300 rubles), autumn coat - 200 pcs. (300 rubles), jackets for men. - 100 (x450 rubles), knitted sweaters - 300 pcs. (x50 rubles), felt boots - 500 pieces (x160 rubles), cotton suits - 500 pieces (x140 rubles) ... "A total of 35 items for the amount of 495 thousand rubles."

The leisure of the disabled included the screening of films, lectures and concerts, including even guest tours of artists. The latter visited the boarding school infrequently, only 3 times a year.

Of course, all this could not make life easier for people who have lost their health forever. Their fate is tragic. Surely not everything was good, there could be some shortcomings and even abuses in the boarding school, manifestations of indifference and rudeness towards former front-line soldiers. Everything, as always and everywhere. But one way or another, the meaning of creating a home for war invalids on Valaam is completely different than the liberal myth claims. I needed to do something to help these people. Give them a roof over their heads, food, clothing and basic medical care. After all, in each department of the home for the disabled there was a doctor and qualified nurses. Of course, the level of medicine of that time did not allow many to really help. On the other hand, even modern medicine is very often powerless with those injuries and concussions

It can be argued that the funds were allocated little. Probably so. However, our country was also not rich, while its income did not then go to billions of dollars in foreign offshore accounts, 150-meter yachts and the education of elite children in prestigious English universities.

P.S. Still, I will tell a terrible story connected with this boarding school.

The Valaam boarding school, as an institution with a long history, still exists. Back in the 80s, he was moved to Vidlitsa, this is my native Olonets region. In a new, purpose-built building. I know from the words of eyewitnesses that many of its then old-timers did not want to go to the “mainland”, they liked living on the island more.

Since the 80s, the provided contingent of the institution has gradually changed. Participants in the war were dying and completely different people began to enter the boarding house. In the 90s, these were lonely grandmothers who were abandoned by children who went to the “market”. In other cases, their sons simply drank themselves in that glorious time of freedom and democracy. Someone killed them altogether, and again there was no one to look after the elderly. And on the other hand, the grandfathers, who spent most of their lives in the zone, were on the provision of the Vidlitsky boarding school. It is clear that such characters were also not really needed by relatives.

This last category was shaking money from the old women for themselves a drink, fighting among themselves, it seems that someone was even cut. The author of these lines in the late 90s was a correspondent for a regional newspaper and could read daily criminal reports on the region in the Olonetsky District Department of Internal Affairs. There was a period when the Vidlitsky orphanage appeared in them with frightening regularity. But not everything got into the police reports! Now imagine the feelings of a simple village grandmother, a hard worker, who found herself lonely in her old age and in a similar environment. "Holy 90s". That's what it would be nice to once again remind!

(c) A.Stepanov

https://zen.yandex.ru/media/id/61f99f54 ... 7799039464?&

https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/7598250.html

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"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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Re: The Soviet Union

Post by blindpig » Mon May 09, 2022 2:12 pm

Brief Warfare FAQ
05/09/2022
To remember

🚩Was it a war between Russians and Germans?

No. It was not a war of nations, but of systems.

On the one hand, thousands of “Vlasovites” fought on the side of the Nazis - Russian accomplices of Hitler, who dreamed of reviving the old order in Russia (those that were eventually returned in 1991).
On the other hand, volunteers and underground fighters from Germany fought on the side of the Soviet Union (see "Red Chapel") , and at the last stage of the war - even some German prisoners of war (see "Army of Seidlitz") .

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🚩Who fought with whom?

The war itself was called the Great Patriotic War of the Soviet people against the Nazi invaders.

In fact, almost all of Europe, as well as Japan, fought on the side of Nazism.
A vast resistance movement fought on the side of the Soviet Union, including the entire partisan armies of Yugoslavia and Greece. Also on the secondary fronts were the troops of Great Britain, the United States and their allies.

🚩What did the Nazis fight for?

Hitler in his book "Mein Kampf" wrote that Russia is the "living space" of Germany. On the other hand, he viewed Great Britain as an ally. Later, even when at war with Great Britain and the USSR, the Nazis made a clear difference between them.

With "Western partners" they are in 1939-40. waged a "strange war" - they only pretended to be at war. And later, in 1945, when Germany was on the eve of collapse, the Nazis were happy to expose the front to the West, just to delay the advance of the USSR.

With the Soviet Union, the Nazis waged a war of annihilation. Their plans included the physical extermination of the Soviet people. They wanted to turn the rest into slaves to serve the conquered territories. Moreover, capitalism was supposed to dominate in these territories themselves.

🚩What did the Soviet people fight for?

The Soviet people fought for the freedom and independence of their homeland, for the existing social system (socialism) and for their own survival. The enslavement of the country, a slave existence, life under capitalism - all this did not suit the Soviet people to the same extent.

🚩Was the block of the USSR, Great Britain and the USA natural?

No, it was a completely unnatural union. Just another alliance was natural - an alliance of capitalist states (Great Britain, Germany, France, etc.) against the country of socialism. And this is proved by numerous facts.

In the 1930s, Great Britain and France hindered the efforts of the USSR to ensure European security, dragged out negotiations, but encouraged Hitler to make new conquests in Europe (see Munich agreement) . On the eve of the Great Patriotic War, Great Britain and other "Western partners" were ready to act as a united front with Hitler against the USSR. They intended to help Mannerheim, the leader of Finland and Hitler's ally, in the war with our country.

Immediately after the end of the war in 1945, the “Western partners” seriously discussed the possibility of rearming Nazi prisoners and using them in the war against the USSR (see Operation Unthinkable) . And in some places they really used Nazi prisoners of war to fight the communist insurgents (for example, in Greece).

The fact that Great Britain and the United States during the War situationally ended up on the side of the USSR is the merit of Soviet diplomacy (see the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact) , the efforts of the peoples of these countries, and also partly of Hitler, who decided to bring the West to its knees before attacking the Soviet Union .

🚩Who led the war on our side?

All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks - VKP(b). It was the communists who took on the maximum burden, it was the communists who were the first to attack and die in battle, it was the communists who were the first to be exterminated by the Nazis. During the war years, the personnel losses of the CPSU (b) were enormous.

🚩Who led the Communist Party?

Joseph Stalin. It was he, being the Supreme Commander, who, in the end, managed to organize the defense of the country and the restoration of industry, which became the key to the Victory.

Of course, this is not his personal merit. The entire Soviet people fought, from the stoker to the people's commissar. But this was not done “in spite of”, but in full accordance with the party line and the plans of the Supreme High Command.

🚩Who was Stalin?

He was a Bolshevik (communist), a revolutionary, a follower of Lenin's ideas.

🚩Who nurtured fascism?

Fascism was raised by capitalist monopolies, incl. western. Their goal was to find an effective tool against the labor movement, embraced by socialist ideas. And thus preserve their power and property.

Subsequently, when fascism got stronger, the “Western partners” actively set it against the USSR in order to destroy the socialist country, the very existence of which indicated an alternative path of development for the whole world.

🚩Did you manage to defeat fascism?

No. It was only possible to destroy the war machine of German and Italian fascism. But even at the time of the Victory (May 1945), fascist regimes existed in the world: first of all, in Spain (Franco) and Portugal (Salazar). Soon these fascist regimes were accepted into NATO.

A little later, through the efforts of Great Britain and the United States, a fascist regime was established in Greece. Subsequently, the same regimes emerged in other countries (eg, in Latin America).

In the 21st century, fascist or close to fascist regimes exist in many countries of the world, from Ukraine to Turkey. Close to fascism and Russia.

The main conclusion of the Comintern, made back in the 30s of the last century: fascism is generated by capitalism, has been confirmed by life itself. Until capitalism is destroyed, fascism will be a constant threat to life.

https://www.rotfront.su/kratkij-faq-po-vojne/

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***************************

From Cassad's Telegram Account:

Сolonelcassad
An extract from my grandfather's award list for the Order of the Red Star:

Working as a battery commander, comrade Lobaev, with his courage and courage, showed an example of perseverance. Under heavy enemy fire, Comrade Lobaev rolled out guns 200-300 meters from the enemy and shot the enemy infantry with direct fire. comrade Lobaev, in an artillery duel with an enemy gun, shot the entire crew of the gun and smashed the gun. During the crossing of the Don, Comrade Lobaev provided the normal crossing of the river with the fire of his guns.
In the last battle, Comrade Lobaev's battery knocked out 3 enemy tanks, burned 2 vehicles and exterminated to a company of submachine gunners.
Being surrounded with his battery by superior enemy forces, Comrade Lobaev, thanks to his courage and resourcefulness, led the personnel of the battery out of the encirclement, inflicting great damage to the enemy in manpower and equipment.

You can find award lists of your ancestors on the website "Feat of the People"
https://podvignaroda.ru/?#tab=navPeople_search

https://t.me/s/boris_rozhin

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"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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Re: The Soviet Union

Post by blindpig » Fri May 13, 2022 2:42 pm

Night over Latvia
05/12/2022
The situation in Riga is heating up!

The Latvian bourgeois-nationalist authorities are doing everything to unleash a civil war in the country. Even before May 9, they threatened the people through all the media that those who would come to lay flowers at the Monument to the Liberators of Riga and Soviet Latvia were enemies. They specifically link (deliberately confuse) Putin's "special operation" with the peace-loving Soviet Union. They openly call the population of Latvia "occupiers" and urge them to "get away" or be silent.

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From the very beginning of its existence, this government introduced national segregation and on October 15, 1991, introduced non-citizen passports for part of the population. Non-citizens are deprived of their rights, do not have the right to vote, and cannot hold many positions in the country. Those who were not 18 years old at the time of October 15, 1991, never, even according to bourgeois-democratic laws, had the right to vote. And these authorities tell us about the "Soviet occupation" and the "totalitarian" system of the Soviet Union.

Despite the frantic propaganda of the Latvian regime, the announcement of May 9 as a day of mourning, many people came on Victory Day (it is not a public holiday in Latvia) and laid flowers on the Victors of the Great Patriotic War. In this terrible war against fascism, all Soviet citizens, the multinational Soviet people, fought and won together. These are Latvians and Russians, Ukrainians and Belarusians, Kirghiz and Georgians, and all the nationalities of our common Soviet Motherland.

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Monument to the Liberators of Riga and Soviet Latvia May 9, 2022

On May 10, the authorities of the Riga City Council, headed by the mayor of Riga , Stakis , issued an order to destroy the laid flowers at the monument to the Liberators of Riga. Employees of the Rigas darzi un parki enterprise cleared the square from flowers early in the morning with a tractor.

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Harvesting flowers at the monument with tractors

The response to this spit from the Latvian regime was a new mass laying of flowers at the Monument. Some laying flowers were detained by the Latvian policemen. Late in the evening, on May 10, the monument to the Liberators was cordoned off by police special forces. Power in a rage from the people's act. The ultra-right (and in Latvia this is not only nationalists, but also liberals and conservatives) openly begin to persecute those who laid flowers at the monument to the Liberators.

On May 11, the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Seimas (Parliament) of Latvia adopted a draft law for consideration by the Seimas plenary session, as a matter of urgency, on the demolition of the monument to the Liberators of Riga and Soviet Latvia.

The situation is heating up by leaps and bounds. Bans are being prepared for the activities of some bourgeois-democratic organizations, including, possibly, the party - the Russian Union of Latvia. Despite the fact that this does not directly apply to the activities of left-wing politicians, in fact, in Latvia there has long been a ban on the activities of the Communist Party of Latvia, the International Front of the Workers of the Latvian SSR, the Union of Communists of Latvia. And those whom the authorities have identified as members of the above-mentioned organizations in Latvia are struck down in political rights as well as non-citizens of Latvia. The absurdity comes to the point that even such well-known politicians as Rubiks (Socialist Party of Latvia) and Zhdanok(Russian Union of Latvia) is allowed to run for the European Parliament, but there is a ban on the nomination of a candidate for deputy in the local parliament (Saeima of Latvia).

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As of May 11, anti-fascist masses of people continue to carry flowers and lay them in the park, not far from the monument. Since access to the monument itself is cordoned off by a fence and policemen. All 30 years the Latvian regime spits on people. It is especially difficult to live in this state as a hired worker, especially if he is still struck in political rights. To the class oppression is added the oppression of the national. In the 21st century, the authorities call themselves a “free democratic” country, and consider the majority of taxpayers in Latvia to be “occupiers”.
On May 13, a rally (most likely uncoordinated) was announced in Riga for the resignation of the mayor of Riga , Stakis , and against the unleashed war with monuments by the Latvian regime.
Especially for the Russian Labor Front - the editors of the "Workers' Tribune" (Latvia), activists of the Geographical Society "Spilve",
Andrey Krasny


https://www.rotfront.su/noch-nad-latviej/

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Re: The Soviet Union

Post by blindpig » Thu May 19, 2022 1:41 pm

100 years of pioneering
May 19, 10:03

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Today marks the 100th anniversary of the All-Union Pioneer Organization. Lenin.
An organization that played an important role in the creation of the new Soviet society.

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Now the traditions of the Soviet pioneers are preserved in the pioneer organization of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation.
Various Western Scout organizations have not really taken root with us. As they say, the authorities intend to recreate the all-Russian pioneer organization with references to the traditions of the Soviet pioneers. The ideological content will of course be different.
Nothing better than pioneers in terms of organizing and raising children in our country for 100 years has not been invented anyway.

Happy holiday to all involved. I personally was not a pioneer, only an October.

https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/7623573.html

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Re: The Soviet Union

Post by blindpig » Thu Jun 09, 2022 2:45 pm

Nations and Soviets: The National Question in the USSR
Eugene PuryearJune 6, 2022 1,088 19 minutes read
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The past, as they say, is never truly past. In recent months, Soviet nationality policy, a topic many thought consigned to academic backwaters and communist happy hours, has been thrust into the forefront of public conversation. The war raging in Ukraine has brought to the forefront questions about the borders, languages, and ethnicities of the country. How did they get that way, who is responsible, and how do these questions impact the causes and consequences of the current crisis?

The conversation, however, has been something of a battle of dueling nationalisms. In response to far-right Ukrainian nationalism, Russian President Vladimir Putin has spun his own nationalist views, blaming the Bolsheviks for setting the stage for tensions between Russia and Ukraine today.

Taking the two sets of critiques, one might be led to believe that the Soviet Union was some sort of venal, brutal empire that held the just aspirations of its various nationalities and ethnicities captive, manipulating “national borders” to generate fake nations and false national consciousness.

The truth is far from the stories told by both the Ukrainian nationalists and Putin. The Soviet Union was the most advanced attempt at addressing national oppression, racism and discrimination at a country-wide level. Among many other things, the USSR was the first nation to engage in widespread affirmative action at levels no country before or since has reached.

The Soviets took hundreds of nationalities and brought them under one governmental authority that took on economic backwardness and cultural repression to open up a liberatory future for peoples who had spent centuries under the yoke of the Tsars’ imperial ambitions.

In fact, the depth of the tragedy afflicting Eastern Europe right now can only be fully understood in light of the decades-long Soviet effort to put an end to national antagonism and forge a future based on the unity of working and poor people for their collective benefit and that of humanity.

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Soviet poster reading, “More than 100 nations live in the USSR”

The prison house of nations

The Tsarist empire was known, in certain circles, as “the prison house of nations.” From the 11th to the 19th century the various Tsars from Ivan the Terrible to Catherine (and Peter) the Great, took control of a vast territory stretching from the Pacific into Central Europe and from the Arctic Circle to the Black Sea and Central Asian steppe. Under its banners fell nearly 200 nationalities and ethnicities and a veritable Tower of Babel of languages.

Across all nations, exploitation and inequality were rampant. Ninety percent of non-Russian peoples across the empire were illiterate — 75% of Russians were in the same situation. In an effort to create a successful divide and rule strategy, the Tsarist autocracy reserved higher education for the more privileged group of Russians, meaning most doctors, teachers and other professionals in the oppressed nationality regions were almost exclusively Russian. In Bashkiria, nestled between the Volga and the Urals, only 10 of the over four thousand secondary students were Bashkirs. In major cities, oppressed nationalities filled the ranks of the lowest paid workers. It was once said that every “shoe black” in Moscow was from the Caucasus region and that one-third of all Tatars were janitors, porters and “rag pickers.”1

The Tsars used land grants and colonization on the lands of oppressed nations by Russians as part of a broader effort of “Russification” designed to eliminate national languages and cultures. For instance, Karelians speak a language close to Finnish, but selling a bible in Finnish was punishable by exile and schoolchildren were forbidden from speaking Karelian. The deeply anti-semitic rulers deployed a KKK-style regime of terror against Jews, known as the Black Hundreds, whose murderous rampages were so notorious the term “pogrom” became known across the world. Ghettos were the norm in many of the cities and towns as the various nationalities were shunted into Russia’s developing capitalist enclaves.

Opposition to ethnic and religious intermarriage also went along with the official racism and bigotry. In addition, the Tsars were not above pitting various nationalities against one another over land and economic opportunities. National oppression, then, was also multi-layered, with some ethnic groups also oppressing others while still facing great Russian chauvinism.

This created a unique oppositional culture, particularly among communists. There were radical nationalists, representing the desire of national elites for economic supremacy in their own territory, connecting “liberation” to formal independence. There were socialists who believed nationalist antagonisms to be of secondary importance, stressing the unity of all workers against the Tsarist ruling class. There were other types of socialists and communists who believed that radicals should organize based on nationality, and by extension, in federations of nationalities. And then there were the Bolsheviks, who preached multinational unity of workers and peasants against the Tsar and the ruling capitalists and landlords — while also placing extensive focus on militant opposition to all forms of national oppression and bigotry.

Their overall approach was rooted in an understanding of national oppression as an outgrowth of capitalism and imperialism. The process of gobbling up nations by Tsars was linked to a hunger for land, resources and labor to grow their riches and compete with other imperial forces seeking the same.

Their main conclusion was that it would never be possible to build a coalition of the oppressed and exploited, and overthrow the rulers, without foregrounding that true liberation required total destruction of national oppression and replacing capitalism. As such, a major part of the Bolshevik program was “the right of nations to self-determination.” While stressing, as communists always have, that socialism and communism require multinational unity transcending the national borders set up by rival capitalists, they stated that their commitment to national liberation was such that if secession was what it took for oppressed people to feel free, they would support it. These would be the basic principles that would help bring them to power, and provide the foundation for the Soviet approach to nationalities.

Dawning of a new era

Following the 1917 revolution, addressing national oppression was among many deeply complex challenges: ending participation in WWI, feeding the starving population and redividing the great estates among the peasants. This was all happening in the context of extreme hostility from imperialism. Fourteen capitalist nations sent troops to try to, as Winston Churchill would later say, “strangle Bolshevism at its birth.” The same nations also sent arms, gold and other equipment of war to every would-be ruler — as long as they hated communism.

This immediately created a new set of issues as it concerns nationalities, principally that (as the Bolsehviks had long noted) the national struggle and the class struggle were intertwined. This meant that it quickly became weaponized by various forces looking to overthrow Soviet power.

Further complicating matters was the fact that the conglomeration of ethnicities and peoples, emerging as they did from the pre-capitalist world, rarely had a clear history of “national borders.” Meaning that the struggles kicked off by the 1917 revolution were as much about defining (and debating) the relationship between language, culture, religion and territory as resolving them. Many struggles for “national liberation” in the post-1917 period were also struggles over how a given area should be governed, and whether that was better done as formally independent states or a part of a broader Soviet federation uniting the various nations into a socialist project.

This led to a complex set of events that cannot be fully summarized here, but essentially boiled down to divisions between elements of oppressed nations who preferred to “go-it-alone” in alliance with imperialist powers and Tsarist revivalists, and those already part of the Bolsehvik movement or attracted by it’s “anti-racist” and pro-poor policies. In most cases these issues were settled by force of arms.

This led to a range of different struggles, between nationalists and communists (Ukraine), communists and nationalists vs. feudal lords (Bukhara), Bolsehviks vs. Mensheviks (Georgia) and just about everything in between. At the end, tens of millions of non-Russian peoples attached their homelands to the broader socialist federation that was the USSR.

By the mid-1920s the “shape” of the USSR, until Word War Two, was set — most of the Tsarist empire minus the Baltic states and elements of the western republics that went to various Central European empires. The next decade or so would be a time of experimentation, followed by a consolidation of the overall model that would remain for the rest of the Soviet period.

Socialism against oppression

Facing underdevelopment, lack of resources and without a roadmap, the Soviet leadership nonetheless set out to try to rapidly address the challenges of centuries of national oppression. Soviet policy emphasized supporting self-determining “national forms” that were also calibrated to exist within the broader framework of socialist construction. This process wasn’t without contradiction.

A socialist project is tasked with marshaling the resources of society in order to meet its democratically-determined collective needs and wants. But in the context of deep underdevelopment, almost everything becomes a trade-off. Do you build a bridge or a dam? And where? If illiteracy is high, but you only have the resources for so many schools, teachers and books, who gets priority? In other words, the dilemma was how to balance overall improvement in collective wellbeing while also closing the differential gaps between oppressed nations — all at varying levels of development/underdevelopment.

Over the years of the Soviet Union’s existence these issues were never fully resolved, but the core elements of the Soviet approach were: the creation of national territories, promoting national languages and cultures, and extensive affirmative action policies. Emphases on various aspects of these policies varied over time and across space, but generally held true and reflected the broader goals of the revolution to lift up the overall standard of living, while also significantly integrating oppressed nationalities, particularly into the scientific-technical intelligentsia.

As one study of the issue from 1991 noted: “the growth of mobility opportunities has been the highest among nationalities with the lowest levels of socio-economic attainment.”2

For instance, by 1975, Jews, Georgians, Armenians, Estonians, and Azeris were the top five ethnic groups as it concerned “specialists with a higher education.”3 As the table below reflects, the equalization over time speaks to Soviet priorities.4

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Relatedly, in 1970, the top six nationalities in terms of enrollment in higher education were: Estonian, Georgian, Lithuanian, Latvian, Russian and Kazhak. In Soviet Central Asia, what had been arguably the most undeveloped part of the Tsarist empire, by 1982 there were more doctors per population than any non-communist country except Israel and more college students per population than Japan, plus a higher proportion of women.5 In the Soviet Arctic the first real educational system was set-up by the 1930s and by 1975 in the Chukchi National Territory 99.1% of all Indigenous children were enrolled in school through high school.6

In 1978, there was one Indigenous doctor per every 1,000 people, the same year in the United States, there was only one Indigenous doctor for every 16,000 people.7 In Moldavia, before World War Two, there was one person with a PhD — by the early ‘80s there were 2,200. Moldavians increased 110% in professional and paraprofessional occupations between 1959 and 1973.8 Similarly, from 1950 to 1975 in the 14 non-Russian “Union republics” (Kazakhstan, Georgia etc.), the annual growth of scientific workers was 54% higher than among Russians.

The largest three nationalities in the USSR were — by a significant margin — Russians, Ukranians and Belorussians. By the 1960s all three were underrepresented in the Supreme Soviet — the main national legislative body – while Uzbeks, Georgians, Tajiks, Azeris, Armenians, Kirzighs, Turkmens, Latvians, Estonians, Lithuianians and Komis, among others, were all overrepresented.

One examination of the 1989 Soviet budget noted that government policy trended towards the redistributive principle, relaying how in 1989 the budget “transfers funds from more developed to less developed republics,” and further, “less developed republics have received higher rates of investment than their level of economic development would predict. And per capita expenditures on health and educational programs have been relatively equal among republics.”10

In 1920, Azerbaijan imported almost all products except oil. By 1958, they were exporting 120 different industrial goods and produced per capita more electricity than Italy and France, more steel than Japan and Italy, plus they had a larger catch of fish than France.11

On top of that, the national legislature had two tiers. In addition to the Supreme Soviet, there was also the Soviet of Nationalities, which had to approve all legislation for it to become law. Even if this body was a “rubber stamp” as is often alleged, the general thrust of nationalities policy clearly reflects that the very existence of multiple layers of affirmative action, language access and social uplift reflect they were putting a rubber stamp on relatively anti-racist policies.

One writer relayed a story from an encounter — a conversation with a professor — of the Gagauz peoples of Moldavia (population 125,000 circa 1977) whose written alphabet was created in Soviet times. The professor noted:

“‘We have artists, we have composers, we have our own poets and writers: those who write on the basis of folk themes … and those who collect our folklore. Among scholars we have linguists and historians. The anthropology of the Gagauz is being studied … in Moscow we have Comrade Guboglo.’

The writer further relayed that:

“I admit, I was surprised to learn Guboglo was Gagauz; I had translated articles of his into English … so one of the Soviet Union’s leading anthropologists, a man who theorizes on matters far beyond the bounds of his own nationality, is a member of a people who did not even have an alphabet little more than 20 years ago.”12

The same author notes: “In Dagestan, a tumbled Soviet mountain vastness of only a million and a half people, northwest of Iran, school is presently taught in nine languages … USSR-wide instruction is in 52 distinct tongues.”13

In an effort to address the pervasive Russification in Ukraine, Soviet authorities pursued an aggressive effort at “linguistic Ukrainization” in the 1920s where literally hundreds of thousands of people were put through courses in Ukrainian. In 1923, 37% of newspapers were in the Ukrainian language, by 1928 63% were. Fifty-four percent of books printed in Ukraine were Ukrainian in 1928, 31% had been in 1923.14

In 1991, the Soviets held a referendum on whether to break up the country or not, notably for our purposes, the vote in Russia was lower than all of the oppressed nations where the referendum took place. In the Central Asian republics over 90% voted to keep the USSR together, for instance, as opposed to the 73% in Russia. Notably, the national regions within the Russian socialist republic mainly saw higher pro-Soviet percentages than Russia writ-large, with 9 out of 16 voting over 80% in favor of not breaking up the USSR.15

Another way to look at this is through the lens of historical memory. In 2013, Gallup polled people in some of the former Soviet republics asking them if they felt the break-up of the Union did more harm than good to their current country. Armenia, Kyrgyzstan, and Ukraine all had a larger percentage of those saying it caused more harm than good than Russia, with Tajikistan just 3% behind Russia.16

In 2005, a survey was done in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan, asking people if they agreed or disagreed with the statement: “The Soviet government responded to citizens’ needs.” 82.4% of Kazakhstan agreed that the Soviet government did indeed respond to citizens’ needs. 87% of those in Kyrgyzstan felt similarly, 70.2% in Uzbekistan concurred.17

In a Reuters article from 2011, “Soviet nostalgia binds divergent CIS states,” a 46-year-old beauty salon owner from Kyrgyzstan told the newswire: “Maybe our wages weren’t that good, and I hated the ‘Iron Curtain’ most of all, but there was stability. There were the brotherly republics nearby, and you felt the shoulder of your neighbor.”18

In the same article, Saijon Artykov, a 67-year-old retired geologist, reflected that: “We had good wages and I bought an apartment in Dushanbe, Now we struggle … to survive.” Saying further that: “The Soviet Union gave me a first-class education, for which I did not pay.”19

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Challenging changes

The varying contradictions of the Soviet model impacted heavily on the issue of nationality. Particularly bedeviling for the Soviets were issues of land, resource distribution and language. While “national impulses” were seen as natural, they were not seen as inherently good. As socialists, the Communist Party of the Soviet Union was looking to build an “internationalist” society in keeping with socialist values.

Marxism posits that nationalism is ultimately a creation of capitalism, the struggle of rising capitalists to create a consolidated, politically distinct territory to conduct their commerce. The process of marking off boundaries within which languages, cultures and natural features combine to create smoothly working systems of buying and selling with unified “weights and measures” (money, taxes, etc.) is the process of “nation-building.”

Socialism, and ultimately communism, seeks to transcend capitalism by, among other things, eliminating these artificial barriers to better facilitate the use of the deeply interlinked “world market” to democratically meet the needs and wants of the people — as opposed to serving the whims of profit reaped by a tiny handful as exists under capitalism.

The Soviets then viewed their task in erasing national oppression as a bridge to a multinational state embodying the broader socialist principles. So that meant having the essentially simultaneous imperatives of erasing national oppression, celebrating national cultures and situating them within a new “all-union” culture based on collective economic uplift of the working class and peasantry who now commanded the resources of society.

On the language front, this created some clear challenges. The brutal history of the Tsars had already made Russian the common language for the broader Soviet population. However, this “Russification” was imposed through the brutality of the tsarist economic churn. It also came with the chauvinist conception that Russian culture represented a “higher form of civilization” — related to modern, urban culture in which many working-class people were integrated into to some extent. This was an issue of greater import given that one major area where society leapt forward after the revolution was opening up the traditional cultural realms to millions locked out before by dint of class status.

This meant that even among oppressed nations there could be resistance to new language policies among urban workers in particular, who associated national languages with the rural and often reactionary culture of the peasants.

The USSR and the preceding empires covered a vast territory, and as mentioned earlier, Russians were often given land grants in which to settle by the Tsar among various oppressed peoples. This policy intentionally created a favored population of settlers who often held preferential tracts of land. This laid the basis for sharp conflict over who rightfully belonged where and who held political power. It also led to serious questions about land as a resource, and moving forward, who had a right to veto who lived where if it conflicted with development needs.

An issue which bled into the deeper point of how exactly to distribute limited resources was that the Soviet Union was racing to reach a level of at least rough parity with the West in many regards as a safeguard against invasion and overthrow by those same hostile powers. These would become the faultlines of nationality policy in the USSR. Ultimately they were all resolved by leaning more towards the “all-union” side of things, than the “national” side of things. This meant conciliating to a degree with the existing “all-union” elements, which were mainly leftovers from the forced semi-homogenization of the Tsar’s time.

On language, this meant ultimately a step back from ambitious efforts at requiring use of various national languages, more or less limiting them to where it was most feasible: elementary education, national cultural activities, which were expanded and promoted heavily, and where voluntary adoption was taken up. This meant Russian remained the dominant language of the Union, but that previously suppressed national languages were in frequent use.

This was obviously a major step forward from tsarist times, and led to a fuller flowering of many more languages than had ever been possible previously. However, it did tend to mean that “Russian” culture remained ascendant to a degree, remaining the main language in which the crucial social, economic and political affairs of the country were conducted. For instance, this meant it would be easier for Tchaikovsky to become popular in Tajikistan than for a Tajik opera to take off in Moscow. Although it also meant a hugely expanded scope for Tajik opera in Dushanbe.

From a land perspective, ultimately the contextual realities of the USSR favored a less modified status quo. Until 1927, the Soviets closed vast swaths of territory, especially in central Asia, from any sort of new settlement. This, however, became untenable based on considerations related to food, economic development and national security.

The basis for sovereignty in the modern imperialist world is ultimately control over what you eat. Nations that can’t feed themselves are always at a great disadvantage. Many national territories contained land far beyond what could conceivably be farmed by simply those already there. And, even in more dense rural settings, sometimes the most productive land was inhabited by settlers. Additionally, the Soviets, haltingly then in a forced march, wanted to change the structure of agriculture away from large estates and atomized small farms and replacing them with a cooperative and collective sector. The imperatives introduced by these various issues could easily collide.

Firstly, if the overall level of food production for the entire country could be raised by having more of X people in Y place, that is a strategic imperative — ensuring both development and equitable distribution — that might end up reinforcing demographic changes favoring one nationality over another. A similar issue might arise if, for instance, an area of Ukraine that is roughly 45% ethnically German, and prior to the revolution that population controlled 75% of the land, but during collectivization the Germans more rapidly adopted collective policies. That might mean that the position of the Germans on the best lands would continue. In the wake of WWII, the total destruction the Nazi war machine levelled against the USSR meant that the only way to really revive production was to “open up” new lands, which of course might also exacerbate historical tensions.

Or you might have a situation where a certain population close to a border or key natural resource where imperialist scheming represented a special danger to the broader national security of the USSR required special policies to ensure these issues were not exploited.

These various issues related to land use are the underpinning of many of the more brutal policies implemented against portions of or entire national populations in the Stalin era. Nationalist themes often became rallying points for various grievances and especially where they concerned perceived national security interests that resulted in collective punishments like mass deportations.

Without a doubt many of these actions are without justification, but they are often falsely represented as “anti-national” when nationality was really secondary. Peoples were targeted because they were seen as oppositional to a particular goal of the leadership.

On the resource front, it is true as some have noted that there was never any “official” mechanism to direct a specific percentage of national resources to oppressed nations. On the other hand, there was often one-off levies in yearly budgets to address these issues, and as the overall record shows, the general thrust of Soviet policy meant that investment in the various oppressed nations was often equal to or greater than those in Russia on a proportional basis. In fact, it’s widely noted by scholars that dissatisfaction among Russians that they were being disadvantaged as compared to various nationalities was a major factor in driving anti-Soviet sentiment.

Similarly, the general thrust towards equality paradoxically created more competition between newly empowered national elites over the still relatively scarce resources of the USSR. Ironically enough then, the very success of the Soviets in lessening national oppression started to create new tensions on national lines that contributed to the Soviet collapse.

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Towards a socialist future

All of the various issues mentioned here of course merit fuller discussion. However, it’s possible to draw some broad conclusions. Firstly, the USSR embarked on the greatest experiment the world has ever known to draw peoples together across national boundaries for collective uplift. They eliminated the pogroms, allowed many languages to grow and bloom, put real resources behind promoting national cultures and made it a top national priority to place people from the formerly oppressed nations into positions of influence and power.

Secondly, they did this in the context of raising the living standards for the entire country far above what they had been in tsarist times, above every nation in the developing world, and achieved a rough parity with the most advanced nations on Earth with remarkable speed.

In that context, the inability of the Soviets to totally eliminate national antagonism has to be seen in a different light. Ultimately, how likely was it that they would succeed in that goal absent a broader transformation on a world level? Thousands of years of national oppression bound up in the material realities of capitalist development and feudal land ownership were never going to be unraveled in what, ultimately, was just a handful of decades in the historical sense.

Further, in the context of a massive campaign by the world’s most powerful nation to destroy the USSR, how is it possible that the USSR would not experience distortions imposed upon it for its own survival? That would also impact elements of policy from the social to the national.

Not just in nationalities policy, but in issues concerning everything from women’s rights to wages, Soviet policy backtracked from often pioneering (for the entire globe) policies to consolidate a greater sense of national unity around the socialist project or to solve practical problems with old methods when experimentation might risk losing more than would be gained.

The war in Ukraine further confirms just how tragic the Soviet collapse was, despite all its challenges and problems. The cultural-national pluralism of the Soviets has given way to the zero-sum agenda of the capitalist-oriented nationalists on all sides. These post-Soviet ruling classes have every reason to press claims (and not all without justification) that gain them territory, and ultimately the space to secure their profits in an actual commercial sense or as it concerns territorial integrity.

Twenty-seven million Soviets of all nationalities died in WWII. Despite the vigorous attempts by the Nazis to use nationality as an anti-communist weapon, they failed and multinational socialist unity powered the Soviet war machine to victory — a very fitting anti-racist funeral director to bury Nazism.

Socialist unity has collapsed into capitalist barbarism, which should not be a surprise. It is in fact what the genuine communist forces in the USSR always predicted would happen should the country collapse. Now more than ever it is important to remember the shining example of the Soviet Union in confronting hatred, bigotry and xenophobia, as we look for new paths to a more peaceful, sustainable and socialist future.

Sources

1.William Mandel, Soviet But Not Russian: The ‘Other’ People’s of the Soviet Union (Ramparts Press, 1985) pp. 40-42
2.https://www.sneps.net/t/images/Articles/Roeder_1991.pdf
3.Ibid.
4.Ibid.
5.William Mandel, Soviet But Not Russian: The ‘Other’ People’s of the Soviet Union (Ramparts Press, 1985) p. 133
6.Ibid. p. 157
7.Ibid. p. 160
8.Ibid p. 108
9.https://www.sneps.net/t/images/Articles/Roeder_1991.pdf
10.Ibid
11.https://www.marxists.org/history/ussr/o ... -bloom.pdf
12.William Mandel, Soviet But Not Russian: The ‘Other’ People’s of the Soviet Union (Ramparts Press, 1985) p.18
13.Ibid. pp. 22-23
14.Terry Martin: Affirmative Action Empire: Nations and Nationalism in the Soviet Union, 1923–1939 (Cornell University Press, 2001) pp. 92-93
15.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1991_Sovi ... referendum
16.https://news.gallup.com/poll/166538/for ... eakup.aspx
17.https://www.ucis.pitt.edu/nceeer/2005_818_09_McMann.pdf
18.https://mobile.reuters.com/article/amp/ ... 3O20111208
19.Ibid.

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Re: The Soviet Union

Post by blindpig » Fri Jul 22, 2022 4:49 pm

How the democratic intelligentsia prepared repressions against themselves
July 22, 14:20

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How the democratic intelligentsia prepared repressions against themselves

There is such a myth among the intelligentsia that the Soviet government didn’t like the intelligentsia, because it was the power of the workers and peasants, persecuted, infringed and repressed in every possible way, they considered the intelligentsia to be a useless and harmful layer, and they cited repressed poets, writers as an example, suffered from the fate of N. Vavilov, Meyerhold, Gumilyov and others.

But here it must be said that the Bolsheviks, when they came to power, were in no way hostile to the intelligentsia as such. In the first Council of People's Commissars, there was only one actual worker, and the rest were pure intellectuals. Lenin in the profession wrote "writer", Lunacharsky - "critic" or "playwright", some were written by journalists, some were engineers. And there was only one worker. Where does hostility come from if the Bolshevik Krasin, for example, was the technical director of Siemens and felt like a fish in water in a circle of techies? If Professor K. Timiryazev took a firm Bolshevik position, the best technical universities of the country loyally accepted the Bolsheviks, and G. Krzhizhanovsky managed to gather around him the color of Russian economic and technical thought. And what kind of hostility of the intelligentsia could be obtained from Lunacharsky, People's Commissar of Culture, who entered theatrical and literary salons as if at home long before his appointment as People's Commissar, and was married to a famous actress? The Bolsheviks were the flesh and blood of the Russian intelligentsia, all the leaders had an excellent education, and even the middle managerial cadres of the Bolsheviks, mostly workers and philistines, actively studied Hegel and Feuerbach.

And among the Bolsheviks, after the seizure of power, there was in a certain sense a benevolent mood that the intelligentsia, having received the most favored nation treatment in the matter of raising popular culture, education, scientific and technical equipment of industry, would not only help the Bolsheviks solve the problems of the long-suffering Russian people, pull them out of ignorance and backwardness, but will also create works of a high level of world culture. Indeed, many honest intellectuals saw in the Bolsheviks a force that, in their actions, would untie the hands of the intelligentsia in the implementation of cultural and technical projects. People's Commissariats and Lenin were personally besieged by inventors and scientists, artists, writers and teachers with numerous projects, both technical and artistic. And the Bolsheviks made every effort to to provide the intelligentsia with the opportunity to create. Michurin and Pavlov received an experimental base, Bekhterev founded the Institute of the Brain, Zhukovsky headed TsAGI, a whole galaxy of artists and sculptors crowded around Lenin's plan for monumental propaganda, Blok read poetry to the workers, Andrei Bely gave lectures at Proletkult. Russianists finally pushed through the reform of Russian spelling, which was hampered by tsarism. In a word, part of the intelligentsia experienced an unprecedented creative upsurge. which tsarism held back. In a word, part of the intelligentsia experienced an unprecedented creative upsurge. which tsarism held back. In a word, part of the intelligentsia experienced an unprecedented creative upsurge.

But this was one side of the coin and not the most popular. The bulk of the intelligentsia in the Soviet government saw only a source of fatter rations and behaved accordingly. But even for rations, they could not guarantee even minimal loyalty, and even more so, they did not care about the people living in savagery and ignorance.

The whole history of the relationship between the Central Committee and the People's Commissar of Culture Lunacharsky is Lunacharsky's constant attempts to provide patronage to one or another cultural worker. Moreover, in these attempts, Lunacharsky constantly exposed himself to ridicule. I will quote the document in full.

Note of the Chairman of the Cheka F.E. Dzerzhinsky in the Central Committee of the RCP (b) with objections to the petitions of the People's Commissariat for Education of the RSFSR on the departure of artists abroad on April 19, 1921:

“Dear comrades. Recently, cases of applications by various artistic circles - individuals and entire theaters - for permission to travel abroad have again become more frequent. These petitions are systematically supported by Comrade. Lunacharsky. The Cheka, on the basis of previous experience, categorically protests against this. Until now, not a single person who was released (such as Koussevitzky, Gzovskaya, Gaidarov, Balmont) has returned, some - in particular Balmont - are waging a vicious campaign against us. Such an indulgence on our part is an unjustifiable plunder of our cultural values ​​and a strengthening of the ranks of our enemies. Now Comrade. Lunacharsky filed a petition for permission to leave the 1st studio of the Art Theater abroad. Meanwhile, according to quite reliable information, a group of artists from this theater is in close contact with American circles, which are very closely related to the intelligence agencies. The theater was promised financial assistance abroad. The actress Sukhacheva was in close relations with a number of these persons. Before that, the Chamber Theater also filed a petition. References to rest and treatment are by no means convincing, since artists can easily use their vacation time to travel around the provinces. Speaking strongly against such petitions, the Cheka asks the Central Committee to take this question seriously. With communist greetings Chairman of the Cheka Dzerzhinsky Before that, the Chamber Theater also filed a petition. References to rest and treatment are by no means convincing, since artists can easily use their vacation time to travel around the provinces. Speaking strongly against such petitions, the Cheka asks the Central Committee to take this question seriously. With communist greetings Chairman of the Cheka Dzerzhinsky Before that, the Chamber Theater also filed a petition. References to rest and treatment are by no means convincing, since artists can easily use their vacation time to travel around the provinces. Speaking strongly against such petitions, the Cheka asks the Central Committee to take this question seriously. With communist greetings Chairman of the Cheka Dzerzhinsky
PS I am appealing to the Central Committee, since comrade. Lunacharsky stipulates in his address that he will apply to the Central Committee on this matter.
(AP RF. F. 3. Op. 35. D. 35. L. 3. Original. Typescript. Published: History of Soviet political censorship. Documents and comments. M. 1997. P. 421-422).


Dzerzhinsky's indignation is understandable here. The Soviet government trusts the intelligentsia, Lunacharsky vouches for it, and it betrays and pours from abroad both the authorities and Lunacharsky with selective dirt.

Lunacharsky, as the people's commissar of culture, probably suffered the most from the outright disgusting and dishonorable behavior of the Russian intelligentsia. He vouched for Balmont - Balmont did not return and poured slop on the communists from Paris, for Chaliapin - Chaliapin did not return, the gesheft in Europe turned out to be dearer and dearer to him than his native aspens, about which he sang so wonderfully. Repin did not return, and his heirs also did not consider it necessary to keep the promises given to some "dog and crustacean deputies", as the "progressive liberal intelligentsia" then expressed it. And the paintings are more profitable to sell at auction.

Lunacharsky vouched for Gumilyov (together with Gorky vouched), entrusted him with work in the editorial office of World Literature, and at that time Gumilev, with his colleagues in the Tagantsev conspiracy, considered how many workers should be hanged when taking Petrograd - 10 or 15 thousand.

Why is there Gumilyov - Z.I. Grzhebin, a close friend of Gorky himself, heated the RSFSR for hundreds of thousands in hard currency at the publishing house of this World Literature and settled comfortably in exile: he received at least 1 million marks and did not publish a single book in Germany. In 1921, this “publisher” was characterized by the Cheka as a fraudster:


“An unscrupulous counterparty in Russia: he received more than 23 million rubles from a number of institutions (the Moscow Council, the Central Press, the Military Institution, the State Publishing House) as an advance payment for the books that he was supposed to publish, but So far, I haven't given a single book to anyone.Unscrupulous counterparty abroad. On November 15, 1920, in Berlin, he concluded an agreement with a Swedish firm for 5 million books in the amount of 5 million crowns. The prices of the Swedish company ... are no less than 4 times more expensive than the prices that the same Grzhebin had at that very time in Germany. Grzhebin made an attempt to enter into a strike with German publishers by raising prices.

The situation in 1917-early 20-ies. was destructive for the authority of Gorky and Lunacharsky before the Central Committee - the intelligentsia systematically framed them. Gorky takes care of Korolenko - Korolenko at the same time writes open letters to the Bolsheviks with frank indulgence of the White Guards, in the best spirit of the Kadetshchina.

In such a situation, the Bolsheviks in the first few years of their power came to a firm conviction: if an intellectual is not in the party, if he is not a Marxist, he absolutely cannot be trusted. At best, the loyalty of the intelligentsia was only a mimicry.

About mimicry in the behavior of the intelligentsia, the head of the Glavlit Lebedev-Polyansky wrote in 1927:

"There is a lot of crudely opportunistic literature printed solely for the purpose of making money."
At the same time, he also quoted V. Veresaev's frank statement:
“Our work is becoming more and more two-story. One we write for ourselves, the other - for the press.
(RTSKHIDNI. F. 17. Op. 113. D. 271. L. 129 143. Original. Typescript. Published: "Happiness of Literature". State and Writers. 1925-1938. Documents. M. 1997).

It must be said that opportunism and duplicity were an open secret - the same Osip Mandelstam wrote both an ode to Stalin and a notorious verse about a highlander. That is, the intelligentsia itself, by its behavior, prepared the ground for total distrust in itself, carefully created among the party members in general and party leaders in particular, an opinion about the intellectual as a person a) bourgeois b) duplicitous.

One way or another, the party broadcast this attitude to the masses. Even if some of the intellectuals managed to dress up as "proletarian artists" and deceive the lower classes, it was difficult to deceive the party. And if Molotov, Zhdanov or Voroshilov, educated people, could quite confidently separate the sheep from the goats, then for many honest, but semi-literate workers, the intellectual appeared in the form of a sly enemy who is trying to covertly spoil. And in the proletarian environment, "rats" were never loved. And when the question of repressions arose, it was hard to believe that the intellectual, who had been observed for years with nothing but a fig in his pocket, had not become a foreign agent or just a pest during this time.

https://teletype.in/@prorivists/lbov_intell - zinc

It's funny how a little less than 100 years later, history to a certain extent repeated itself, though so far without camps and executions.
Some things do not change, including "the best people of the national intelligentsia and the creative elite." Both the tsarist regime and the Bolsheviks faced this problem. This cup has not passed and the Russian Federation.

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Re: The Soviet Union

Post by blindpig » Sat Jul 30, 2022 4:58 pm

Truth and fiction about "Stalinist autonomization"
July 29, 17:20

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On the issue of unitarism and federalism during the creation of the USSR and the views of Lenin and Stalin on these issues.

Truth and fiction about "Stalinist autonomization"

But let's go back to the summer of 1922, when the said commission started its work. Soon the initial one was developed - we emphasize this especially! - a draft resolution "On the relations of the RSFSR with the independent republics", which really provided for the entry of Ukraine, Belarus, Azerbaijan, Armenia and Georgia into the Russian Federation on the rights of autonomous republics. The project was supported by a majority vote of the members of the commission, including I.V. Stalin. Let us pay attention once again: this was just an initial version, and a version of just a draft resolution of the commission, that is, only the very first stage of a huge intellectual work was passed, which still had to be continued and completed. And at this stage, the most diverse proposals and options, opinions, including controversial ones, are quite natural - unless, of course,

And the exchange of views was very heated. The draft resolution sent for further discussion to the Central Committee of the communist parties of the Soviet national republics was resolutely rejected by the Georgian communists. In turn, the Central Committee of the Communist Party (b) of Belarus pointed to the need to preserve in the new Union “contractual relations between independent republics”, and the Central Committee of the Communist Party (b) of Ukraine did not discuss the draft at all at this stage, which in itself indicates the position of the Ukrainian communists regarding entry ideas. Once again, we pay attention: there was no emergency, let alone a catastrophe; it was a tough, but at the same time absolutely free exchange of opinions, which was - contrary to the screeching of modern anti-Soviet - characteristic of the Communist Party in Lenin's times.

In this regard, it is more than significant how V.I. Lenin belonged to the disagreements that appeared at first with I.V. Stalin. One very important remark must be made here. To listen to today's anti-communists, including the highest-ranking ones, some citizens may get the impression that Stalin "ardently defended" the "autonomization" project, but Lenin, they say, actually "twisted his arms." And how was it in reality?

In a letter with the self-explanatory title “On the Formation of the USSR”, written to Lev Kamenev, a member of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the RCP (b), already in September - after the exchanges of views held at the first stage - and intended to familiarize other members of this highest party body, V.I. . Lenin speaks extremely mildly about the position of his younger comrade and colleague: “Stalin has a little desire to hurry up” (emphasis added by me. - O.Ch.). What is this - excessive refined diplomacy? But, as we know, the adherence to "diplomacy" in solving problems of principle for the fate of the party and the country was not at all characteristic of Lenin. Obviously, it's something else.

Firstly, as we can see from the above words, there is no hostility towards the opponent or “hard pressure” on him at all. IN AND. Here again, as in a number of other cases, Lenin does not want to use his colossal authority to put pressure on his party comrades, preferring to convince them by the force of arguments and the impeccability of logic. Secondly, based on the expression “a little hurry”, we can conclude that Lenin just did not consider the position of I.V. Stalin on such a fateful issue finally formed and reasonably believed it possible in the course of further discussion to convince him of his innocence. What was the position of Lenin himself?

It is in the cited letter - a very small in volume, but the most important document from a historical point of view - V.I. Lenin clearly formulates the principles of the formation of a new Union: “We (the RSFSR. - O.Ch.) recognize ourselves as equal in rights with the Ukrainian SSR and others, and together and on an equal footing with them we enter a new union, a new federation” (highlighted by me. - O.Ch. .). This Leninist definition would not hurt to chop on the nose of all figures of any rank who, at the subconscious level, still cannot accept an indisputable fact: today Russia (Russian Federation) is the same republic, the same sovereign state, like, say, Belarus or Kazakhstan equal to them, but not superior to them.

Further in the same letter, literally in one line, V.I. Lenin constitutes a genuine breakthrough in the entire theory and system of international relations, the significance of which to this day is not understood by nationalists of the most diverse stripes and ranks. Lenin sees the new Union as "a new stage, a federation of republics with equal rights", some of which are themselves federations. Federation of federations - in the case of a multinational (and for our country one could even say - multinational) composition of the population, this is a truly unique option for building truly equal relations between peoples that are completely different in size, history and customs.

After reviewing the remarks of V.I. Lenin and following the conversation between them, I.V. Stalin radically reworked the resolution of the commission in accordance with all Lenin's proposals, that is, he completely withdrew his own previous proposals for "autonomization". And he also convinced the majority of the members of the commission of the rightness of this step, including such capable of resolutely defending their opinion as G.K. Ordzhonikidze and Secretary of the Central Committee of the RCP(b) V.M. Molotov.

As a result, the first paragraph in the text of the new resolution was the fundamental system-forming provision put forward by Lenin:“To recognize as necessary the conclusion of an agreement between Ukraine, Belarus, the Federation of the Transcaucasian Republics and the RSFSR on their unification into the “Union of Socialist Soviet Republics” (originally the name sounded in that order. - O.Ch.) with leaving for each of them the right to freely withdraw from composition of the Union.

From this document, in which every word is important, it clearly follows:I.V. Stalin, on mature reflection, resolutely abandoned his original idea of ​​"autonomization" in favor of Lenin's plan for the formation of a Union of Equal Republics. And no one “twisted” any of his hands. The plenum of the Central Committee of the RCP(b) that took place soon fully supported the new draft resolution, adopted it in its final form and instructed the new commission, chaired by Stalin, to prepare on its basis a draft law on the formation of the USSR for submission to the Congress of Soviets.

I.V. Stalin also supported Lenin's proposal for a name that opened a new historical era and eventually began to sound like the "Union of Soviet Socialist Republics." It was in this interpretation of the abbreviation "USSR" that the history of the great state, formed at the First All-Union Congress of Soviets on December 30, 1922, began. The Union Congress adopted the Declaration on the Formation of the USSR, considered and approved the Treaty on the Formation of the USSR. Initially, the Union included the RSFSR, the Ukrainian SSR, the Byelorussian SSR and the Transcaucasian Federation, which took shape in the ZSFSR (at that time it was deciphered as the Transcaucasian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic).

Anyone who got acquainted with the activities of I.V. Stalin, not “on the spurt” and not with the deliberate goal of discrediting, he knows: he never made a final decision on fateful issues hastily, without considering it comprehensively, but having already accepted it, he defended it, as they say, not only with his heart, but also with his head and his iron logic. That is why, recognizing the arguments of V.I. Lenin convincing and supporting them, Stalin fought for their implementation all his subsequent life and activity.

And one of the most striking evidence of such a position of I.V. Stalin are the whole process and procedure for the adoption of the new Constitution of the USSR in 1936, which for many decades the people began to call Stalin. In the report “On the Draft Constitution of the USSR”, which Stalin, as chairman of the Constitutional Commission, made on November 26, 1936 at the Extraordinary VIII All-Union Congress of Soviets, as if answering future falsifiers, he touches on the fundamental issues of the further development of Soviet federalism, I.V. Stalin especially emphasizes that "in addition to common interests, the nationalities of the USSR also have their own special, specific interests related to their national characteristics." And further: “Can these specific interests be neglected? No, you can’t ” (emphasis added by me. - O.Ch.).

These Stalinist postulates contain strict adherence to the Leninist principles of unconditional equality, friendship and mutual respect of peoples, which lie at the basis of the Soviet multinational state. As well as emphasizing another key principle of state socialist construction - the voluntariness of unification into the Union. And then I.V. Stalin formulates and announces to the whole world the programmatic and political directive of the Soviet leadership and, of course, his own as the leader of the Communist Party and successor to V.I. Lenin.

“The USSR,” Stalin reminds everyone who has a bad memory, “is a voluntary union of equal Union republics. To exclude from the Constitution an article on the right to freely secede from the USSR means to violate the voluntary nature of this union ... I think that we cannot and should not take this step.(highlighted by me. - O.Ch.).

Simply and clearly - to everyone, with the exception of those who are trying to cover up their own inability to maintain equal relations with their neighbors by attributing I.V. Stalin of the mythical "alternative" Leninist point of view on the structure of the Soviet Union. And thus, as always, divert the attention of society from the multiplying real problems and challenges.

https://gazeta-pravda.ru/issue/81-31284 ... omizatsii/ - full link


Regarding the whole issue of "differences", in my opinion, everything is shown much better by the fact that after the death of Lenin, Stalin did not fundamentally deviate from the original concept of the USSR, including after gaining full power in the 30s, when he could easily change the structure states in the Stalinist Constitution.
The system created by Lenin and Stalin eventually withstood the most difficult test during the Great Patriotic War and allowed the USSR to become a superpower. Subsequent generations and party leaders were able to destroy what the enemies from outside could not break. Including along the line of national faults, which began to form when destructive processes began within the CPSU and the Soviet system began to become less and less Soviet - the bond that made the created state machine working was destroyed. The USSR as a union of Soviet republics could exist only within the framework of socialism.
Well, the fact that the killers of the USSR, starting with Yeltsin and Gorbachev, tried to shift their responsibility to those who created the USSR, is nothing more than an attempt by criminals to escape historical responsibility.

https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/7767686.html
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Re: The Soviet Union

Post by blindpig » Mon Aug 01, 2022 4:01 pm

Theses on the Victory in the Great Patriotic War
Translated by Geo

I
In regards of its world-wide historic importance, the Victory was won by communism over capitalism, by working class over the worldwide bourgeois class, by science-based planning over the chaotic nature of market. It became possible to evacuate manufacturing industries and ensure the manufacture of combat equipment, excelling the equipment manufactured all over the occupied capitalist Europe in both quantity and quality, only and exclusively due to the dominance of communistic relations of production and regulated nature of monetary relations. Endless debates of comparison of separate tank or airplane units, as well as temporary disadvantages of soviet military equipment, such as absence of radio communications in soviet airplanes, are irrelevant in face of the clear superiority in terms of production rates, production output, labour cost and equipment reparability.

Nothing but capitalism itself having profit as its sole interest had stopped the german versions of T-34 and Il-2 from being designed and constructed. At the same time State Planning Committee, endued with the authority of managing all of the production of the Soviet state, was comprehensive in its physical measures of the whole supply chain from the metal mining up to tank armament, and soviet workers and engineers, brought up with communist labour ethics, were discovering the ways to lower the production cost, german capitalists were busy counting profits and returns and using thee budget granted in the most capitalist way possible: by stuffing it into their own pocket, and making as many „Wunderwaffe“ projects as worthy weapon pieces. Capitalism lost in economic warfare against the USSR. And with it, it did lose in the war itself.

II
Heroic feats of labour, recognized with high regard by the leaders of bourgeois Russian Federation, in fact was a materialized form of communist labour ethics of tens of millions of soviet men. In capitalist dictionary you will find this defined as „working for nothing“. The heroic ability of the soviet nation was caused not by primitive reflexes like „we’re under attack by an enemy“ but was purposefully grown during long years of communist policies, having a goal of complete eradication of private property relations, deviant mentality grown from it and deviant behavior caused by it.

As such, no capitalist country of the time could exhibit the labor feats of soviet proportions, let alone cause mere working enthusiasm, honesty, self-sacrificing attitude and creative impulses on a massive scale.

III
The military feats of the soviet soldiers were likewise a consequence of purposeful eradication of ugliness that capital was infecting the minds of people with. If not for the communist ideology being dominant in the soviet society, a conscious self-sacrificial mindset would not show itself. No deep-rooted call of self-sacrifice can be possible where there is nothing to sacrifice one for: whether a friendly exploiter is deposed by a foreign one, or foreign one is repelled means nothing.

IV
The Victory manifested a repeated proof of omnipotence of marxist dialectics, which guided Stalin and top soviet officials through organizing and coordinating the soviet people against the fascist invasion. The highest level of marxist dialectic proficiency by Stalin personally allowed him to take correct solutions, thoroughly consistent with the realistic situation. Once again the communists have won the battle of knowledge, which allowed them to withstand a monstrous strike from the world capital powers, and, eventually, defeat capitalists and stay on the winning side in another episode of class struggle.

V
It is clear to us that contemporary capitalist Russia has no relation whatsoever to the victory of the working class. The bourgeois, once returned to power, have twisted the meaning of a Victory Day to suit their own goals, reducing it to „a celebration of national unity“ in form, if not in name. For many years the Victory celebration has been used for propaganda of thoroughly bourgeois patriotism, which has been always used to mask the interests of the exploiters as the „interests of the nation“. Many popular historical examples are exploited in a similar fashion.

But unlike some modern left-wingers might think, this interpretation does not bear any threat to communism and is not even an instrument of anti-communist propaganda.

In conclusion

Under the present circumstances, communists advice not to waste your resources trying to combat bourgeoisie propaganda. This is an ultimately futile battle on the strength of the tremendous difference of propaganda capabilities and limitations. The importance of Victory to communists is not how its historical day is celebrated, or if it is celebrated at all. It is important to understand in what ways it influenced the world-wide communist movement, what reasons were behind the communist Victory, what changes the Victory had made in the soviet society, why (due to what material laws) the communist labor ethics gained momentum during the war, etc. All of this will be important during the building of communism in the future. Therefore, studying marxist dialectics is a better commemoration than walking down a street as part of the „Immortal regiment“. The better we study it, the shorter the age of capital and its mythology is.

N. Fedotov

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Re: The Soviet Union

Post by blindpig » Tue Aug 16, 2022 10:55 pm

The true history of the USSR 1925 - 1940.

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Editorial Preface
We bring to your attention a really useful extract from the first TSB, which is a short course in the history of the USSR from 1925 to 1940, replete with facts and truly scientific assessments.


In 1926 the country entered a new period of development. Having defeated capitalism politically, it was necessary to “unfold the construction of a new, socialist economy throughout the country and thereby finish off capitalism also economically” [History of the CPSU (b). Short course].

11/XII 1925 XIV Congress of the CPSU(b), according to the report of I. V. Stalin, set a course for the industrialization of the country.

“To transform our country from an agrarian into an industrial one, capable of producing the necessary equipment on its own — that is the essence, the basis of our general line,” Stalin pointed out.

Against the line of the Bolshevik Party and the Soviet state for the deployment of the socialist. construction, all the enemies of the socialist state, external and internal, took up arms. The imperialist governments and their agents in the country—Trotskyite-Zinoviev traitors—tried to turn the Soviet Republic into an agrarian appendage to industrial Europe. But they failed. The Bolshevik Party firmly embarked on the path of industrialization of the country. In April 1926, I. V. Stalin pointed out:

"The center of gravity has now shifted towards industry."

Funds were needed to industrialize the country. The capitalist countries refused to give loans to the Soviet state. To embark on the path of enslaving concession deals with the capitalist states meant making them the masters of industry. It was impossible to go for an increase in the taxation of the peasantry and an increase in prices for manufactured goods, since this would lead to a break in the alliance between the working class and the peasantry, to a delay in the development of agriculture - the raw material base of industry.

The new path of the country's industrial development - without external credits, without foreign capital, indicated by I. V. Stalin, lay in the use of internal socialist accumulation in the country. Profit from state industry, trade, banks was supposed to provide the necessary funds for industrialization. This required the strictest economy in everything, raising labor productivity, drawing new millions of workers into the construction of industrial enterprises, into work in factories and plants. The Party and the Soviet state, overcoming all difficulties, embarked on this path.

By the autumn of 1926 the industry had exceeded the pre-war level. The recovery process has ended. The period of restructuring the national economy on the basis of new, higher technology began. In July 1926, the first tractor plant in the USSR was founded in Stalingrad. At the same time, the construction of Turksib began. Lenin's plan for the electrification of the country was successfully carried out. In the autumn of 1926, a new stage of the Shterovskaya power plant in the Donbass was put into operation. In December 1926, the Volkhov hydroelectric power station was put into operation, the construction of which had begun during the years of the civil war on Lenin's orders; Shaturskaya and other power plants came into operation. The power of all electrical installations in 1927 was 2.5 times greater than pre-war.

The planning of the national economy has become of great importance. The annual control figures for the national economy, first drawn up in 1925-26, became insufficient for planning the enormous growth of construction. Summing up the successes achieved, the 4th All-Union Congress of Soviets (April 1927) instructed the government to work out a five-year plan for the development of the national economy, emphasizing the enormous importance of the planning principle in a socialist economy. The congress approved the government's measures for the industrialization of the country and the development of agriculture and called for the further development of industry in the national republics.

In a number of other issues at the congress, there was a report by the People's Commissar for Military and Naval Affairs, K. E. Voroshilov, on the state of the Red Army and the country's defense. Voroshilov stressed the need to equip the Red Army and Navy with military equipment and the enormous importance in this connection of the socialist industrialization of the country.

The 4th Congress of Soviets of the USSR adopted a decision on the further development of agriculture and outlined the implementation of a number of measures to increase productivity. But the implementation of the planned measures rested on the nature of the peasant economy, which was small, fragmented. The solution of the question of agriculture could only be found in the enlargement of the peasant economy, in large-scale collective farming. The 4th Congress of Soviets of the USSR decided to help and encourage the development of collective farms in every possible way.

The industrialization of the country aggravated the class struggle. All anti-Soviet elements united against the policy of industrialization—kulaks, NEPmen, and the bourgeois-technical intelligentsia. The most serious hostile force was the fist, the most numerous exploiting class. Relying on his strong economic position in the countryside, he tried to lead the middle peasants, penetrate the Soviet apparatus, and interfere with the activities of Soviet power.

The Bolshevik Party and the Soviet government, relying firmly on the poor and strengthening the alliance with the middle peasants, waged a struggle against the kulaks. The class struggle became especially aggravated after the decision of the XV Congress of the CPSU(b) on the collectivization of agriculture and the need to move to a further, more systematic and persistent restriction of the kulak and the private owner.

By the end of 1927, the socialist industrialization of the country had made further serious progress. The pace of development of the national economy grew rapidly. In the field of industry, the question of "who-whom" was a foregone conclusion in favor of socialism. The industrialization of the country, the growth of cities increased the demand for marketable bread. However, despite the fact that the gross output of the grain economy exceeded the pre-war level, marketable grain was produced half as much as before the First World War. This was primarily due to the backwardness of technology and the dispersal of small individual peasant farms (by 1928 there were 24–25 million of them). By 1928, collective farms and state farms produced only slightly more than 2% of agricultural production. products and 7% marketable bread. Speaking at the XV Congress of the CPSU (b), Stalin pointed out,

The 15th Congress of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, following a report by Stalin, decided on a course towards the collectivization of agriculture. The class struggle in the countryside intensified throughout the country. The kulaks declared a grain strike - they stopped handing over grain to the state, they began to use terror against Party and Soviet workers and advanced collective farmers, set fire to collective farms and state sump points. It was, as Stalin said in April 1928,

"The first, under the conditions of the NEP, a serious action by the capitalist elements of the countryside against the Soviet regime."

The Soviet state applied "extraordinary measures" against the kulaks—confiscation of grain from speculators, individual taxation of kulak farms, and an increase in agricultural production. tax on kulaks while simultaneously exempting 35% of small-scale farms from the tax, etc.

The aggravation of the class struggle was also reflected in the acts of sabotage in industry, the organizers of which were the old bourgeois specialists, who acted on the instructions of the imperialist states and the former owners of enterprises. In 1928, the Shakhty case was uncovered. The counter-revolutionary organization of bourgeois specialists in the Shakhtinsky coal region, in an effort to destroy the coal industry, arranged collapses and flooding of mines, explosions, disabled mechanisms, etc. industry. They were associated with foreign capitalists who, until 1917, had capital in the industry of the Donbass. It was an economic intervention whose task was to prepare the conditions for a new military intervention against the USSR and the restoration of capitalism. Shakhtintsy were defeated. The facts of the influence of the class enemy on some part of the Soviet apparatus were revealed. At the beginning of 1929, the Soviet apparatus was purged of decayed pests, saboteurs, and enemies of Soviet power who had penetrated the Soviet apparatus. JV Stalin, in connection with the lessons of the Shakhty case, put forward the task of training a new, Soviet technical intelligentsia from the people of the working class.

The 16th Conference of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks (April 1929) adopted the Stalinist program for the first five-year plan of socialist construction. The 16th Party Conference, in an address to all the workers and laborers and peasants of the Soviet Union, called for socialist emulation for the speedy fulfillment of the five-year plan.

“The Five-Year Plan is a plan for the struggle of the working class to overcome capitalist elements, a plan for the socialist re-education of the masses, a plan for laying the foundation for a socialist society,” the appeal said. five years are inextricably linked.

The implementation of the Stalinist plan for the offensive of socialism against the capitalist elements in the city and countryside met with resistance from the right-wing opportunist Bukharin-Rykov group, which at this stage became the main danger. This kulak agency in the party demanded the rejection of collectivization and the attack on the kulak, opposing the pace of the country's socialist industrialization, it put forward the theory of "fading the class struggle", "peaceful growing of the kulak into socialism." In June 1928, the Right opportunists negotiated with the Trotskyites and Zinovievists for a joint struggle against the Party.

In May 1929, the 5th All-Union Congress of Soviets approved a five-year plan for the development of the national economy. The main task of the first five-year plan was to reconstruct the entire national economy, to transform the USSR from an agrarian country into an industrial country, to create in the USSR an industry capable of re-equipping the entire national economy on the basis of socialism; to transfer the small fragmented peasant economy to the rails of a large-scale collective economy; to create in the country all the necessary technical and economic prerequisites for the economic independence of the USSR, for the maximum strengthening of its defense capability. The five-year plan outlined a significant industrial and cultural development of the national republics. On the initiative of I. V. Stalin, a second coal and metallurgical base was created in the east. In the first year of the five-year plan, the construction of such giants as the Magnitogorsk and Kuznetsk metallurgical plants began. Uralmashstroy, Berezniki and Solikamsk chemical plants were built in the Urals. In the Donbass, the construction of the Kramatorsk and Gorlovsky plants began, the reconstruction of the Lugansk locomotive plant, and the construction of the Dneproges began. In Moscow, Gorky, the construction of large automobile plants began. Giant tractor factories and harvester factories were built in the country. A huge tractor plant was built in Stalingrad in 11 months. A giant agricultural plant was being built in Rostov-on-Don. machines. Socialist emulation and shock work grew and expanded, and labor productivity rose significantly.

The country exerted every effort to fulfill Stalin's instructions and, in a relatively short historical period, "catch up and overtake the advanced capitalist countries in technical and economic terms." In the article “The Year of the Great Turning Point” (7/XI 1929), Stalin wrote: “We are advancing at full steam along the path of industrialization — towards socialism, leaving behind our age-old ‘Russian’ backwardness.”

The rapid pace of the country's socialist industrialization brought about profound changes in the balance of class forces within the country. The size of the working class grew and its leading role in relation to the poor and middle peasants intensified. Under the conditions of equality of nationalities and fraternal cooperation of the peoples of the USSR, their economic and cultural development proceeded rapidly.

The capitalist countries saw the strengthening of the socialist economy of the USSR as a threat to the existence of the capitalist system. Despite the contradictions between the individual imperialist countries, they all united in their hatred of the Soviet state.

The anti-Soviet campaign intensified again, the machine for preparing war and intervention against the USSR was in full swing. Pope Pius XI called for a "crusade" against the USSR. The main inspirer and organizer of the anti-Soviet policy was British imperialism. The Conservatives were at the head of the English government. Their leaders - Baldwin, Chamberlain, Churchill - led the line of breaking the established diplomatic relations and preparing for a new intervention. The reactionary French bourgeoisie acted in alliance with the British imperialists, trying to encircle the Soviet country with a ring of hostile countries. Romania, Poland, the Baltic countries, Finland were being prepared as springboards for an attack on the USSR. Germany was also drawn into the anti-Soviet bloc through the Locari Treaty, concluded in October 1925.

The Western imperialists continued their internal subversive work, using the remnants of the hostile class elements in the USSR. They sought primarily to thwart socialist construction. The Trotskyists, Zinovievites, and the rightists worked on assignments from foreign intelligence agencies, created underground anti-Soviet organizations, provoked counter-revolutionary actions against the Soviet government, acted as organizers of sabotage in agriculture and industry, and prepared the conditions for a new intervention against the USSR. Former members of the defeated parties hostile to Soviet power (Socialist-Revolutionaries, Mensheviks, etc.), having penetrated into Soviet bodies, harmed, created counter-revolutionary organizations, finding support abroad from the imperialist rulers in their anti-Soviet activities.

At the head of the People's Commissariat of Agriculture, under the guise of agricultural specialists, defending the interests of the kulaks, the enemies of the people were operating. In industry, a counter-revolutionary organization has made its nest, calling itself the "Industrial Party" (Industrial Party). The Industrial Party united the top of the old engineers. It was led by the Trade and Industrial Union (Torgprom), located in Paris and uniting the former capitalists of Russia. Ryabushinsky, Lianozov, Nobel, Konovalov and other capitalists were at the head of Torgprom. The Industrial Party received funds from abroad, had contact with the leaders of the French government and the French General Staff, and planned a counter-revolutionary coup to overthrow Soviet power. Not pinning hopes on internal forces, the Industrial Party relied on a new military intervention of foreign powers. In their practical activities in Soviet bodies and in industry, the members of the Industrial Party tried to frustrate the fulfillment of the five-year plan. They were engaged in sabotage in the main industries.

The Mensheviks also revived their activities, setting the task of restoring capitalism in the USSR. Their "Union Bureau of the RSDLP" established contact with other counter-revolutionary groups. They were actively engaged in wrecking, acting mainly in the State Planning Commission, Tsentrosoyuz, Narkomfin.

These wreckers and counter-revolutionaries were closely aligned with the "right" and Trotskyists, who united in the struggle against the industrialization of the country for the restoration of capitalism and took the path of espionage, sabotage and terror. Trotskyists and Bukharinites became paid agents of foreign intelligence services.

At the same time, the USSR continued its struggle for peace in the international arena, signing non-aggression and neutrality pacts with a number of countries in the period 1925-27. The USSR in December 1927 began to take part in the preparatory commission for disarmament at the League of Nations. The Soviet delegates proposed a plan for complete and general disarmament. When this plan was rejected, they submitted a partial disarmament project, which was also rejected. However, the Soviet delegates continued to fight for disarmament. The Soviet government acceded to the Kellogg Pact and, without waiting for its general ratification, set about putting it into practice. In February 1929 in Moscow, the USSR, Estonia, Latvia, Poland and Romania signed the so-called. Moscow Protocol on the Immediate Entry into Force of the Pact on the Renunciation of War as an Instrument of National Policy. Later this protocol was signed by Turkey,

In 1929, the imperialists tried with a bayonet to test the defense capability of the USSR on the Far Eastern border. In the summer of 1929, a conflict began on the CER. As it turned out at the trial of the Industrial Party (November - December 1930), the conflict on the CER was an attempt by the French and British general staffs to reveal the state of the Red Army, the attitude of the general population to a possible war, and the degree of strength of Soviet power. In order to protect the legitimate rights of the peoples of the USSR to the CER and Soviet citizens and employees on the road from violence, the Soviet government took decisive measures. The created Special Far Eastern Army defeated the troops of the White Chinese invaders. On 3/XII in Nikolsk-Ussuriysky and on 22/XII 1929 in Khabarovsk, protocols were signed according to which the situation on the CER was restored to the position that existed before the capture of the road by the White Chinese military.

The plan of the first five-year plan was carried out in excess. The face of the country was changing. The Turkestan-Siberian railway was being built, which was supposed to connect Siberia, rich in grain and forests, with Central Asia. An unprecedented labor boom was observed in the country; a powerful movement of socialist emulation and shock work unfolded. Industrialization of the country, emergence of tractors, page - x. machines in the countryside, the policy of abolishing the kulaks, the growth of agricultural cooperatives, the growth of collective farms and state farms, which in practice proved the advantage of the collective use of new technology, convinced the peasant masses of the correctness of collectivization.

On this basis, “that mass collective-farm movement of millions of poor and middle peasants arose, which began in the second half of 1929 and which ushered in a period of great turning point in the life of our country” (Stalin).

Relying on the successes of industrialization, the Soviet government embarked on a socialist reorganization of agriculture - complete collectivization and, on its basis, the elimination of the kulaks as a class and the creation of state farms - large state agricultural enterprises. For the most expedient use of advanced technology in the collective farms, the state began to create machine and tractor stations (MTS). The first MTS arose in 1927 in the Shevchenkovsky district of the Odessa region. In 1930 there were already 159 MTSs. In 1929 about 40,000 tractors were working in the country's fields.

Under the leadership of the advanced workers of the country, sent to the countryside, the collective-farm movement was strengthened. The kulaks met with hostility the turn of the countryside onto the path of collectivization. With shots from around the corner, the kulaks killed communists, workers of village councils, and activists from the poor. The enemy hand set fire to houses and warehouses, spoiled tractors, s.-x. cars. For work in the countryside, the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks mobilized 25,000 advanced workers, who were instructed by the party to carry out collectivization. The 25,000ers played a major role in the struggle for the socialist transformation of the countryside. They brought to the countryside Bolshevik organization, discipline, and perseverance in achieving the task set by the Party and the Soviet government.

On the basis of complete collectivization, the country moved from a policy of restricting and ousting the kulaks to eliminating the kulaks as a class. Land lease laws and labor hiring laws were abolished. The kulaks were expropriated. The means of production that belonged to the kulaks passed into the hands of the collective farms.

“It was a profound revolutionary upheaval, a leap from the old qualitative state of society to a new qualitative state, equivalent in its consequences to the revolutionary upheaval in October 1917” [History of the CPSU (b). Short course].

The agents of the kulaks in the Party—the Right opportunists—were dealt a crushing blow. The November plenum of the Central Committee (1929) recognized the propaganda of the views of the right opportunists as incompatible with being in the party.

The collective-farm movement grew, sweeping the kulaks out of the way. On January 5, 1930, the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks adopted a resolution "On the pace of collectivization and measures of state assistance to collective farm construction." This resolution, taking into account the peculiarities of various regions of the USSR, established different terms for collectivization in the countryside. But on the ground, this most important decision was violated, local conditions and the degree of readiness of the peasantry to join the collective farms were ignored. In a number of areas the principle of voluntariness was violated. For provocative purposes, class enemies immediately tried to organize communes instead of the s.-x. artels, socialize residential buildings, small livestock, poultry. The kulaks and their agents called for the slaughter of cattle before joining the collective farms. In some places, the kulaks managed to incite the peasants to anti-Soviet demonstrations. On 2/III1930, by decision of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, JV Stalin's article "Dizziness from Success" was published; 3/IV JV Stalin published "An Answer to Comrade Collective Farmers". These articles, together with the decision of the Central Committee of the Party of March 15, 1930, "On the fight against distortions of the party line in the collective-farm movement," played a decisive role in the Bolshevik correction of mistakes made locally during collectivization. The collective-farm movement began to grow successfully again. The peasantry became the real and lasting support of Soviet power. The collective-farm movement began to grow successfully again. The peasantry became the real and lasting support of Soviet power. The collective-farm movement began to grow successfully again. The peasantry became the real and lasting support of Soviet power.

In the summer of 1930 (June-July), the 16th Congress of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks convened—“a congress of the full-scale offensive of socialism along the entire front, the liquidation of the kulaks as a class and the implementation of complete collectivization” (Stalin). By this time, the first-born of the first five-year plan had come into operation. On 26/IV 1930, through traffic was opened along Turksib. The Stalingrad Tractor Plant, whose productive capacity was 40,000 tractors per year, and the Rostov Agricultural Plant were launched. machines. The construction of the Ural-Kuznetsk plant in the east was started. The socialist restructuring of the countryside proceeded successfully. The rapidly growing socialist sector of agriculture, collective farms and state farms, which became the basis in agriculture, expanded the area under crops. The offensive of socialism developed along the entire front, despite the fierce resistance of hostile elements - the kulaks, bourgeois intelligentsia, bureaucratic elements among state employees. device.

The country's successes in the field of socialist industrialization have set a new task—the socialist reconstruction of the entire national economy on the basis of new modern technology. The next step was a difficult task - to master the new technology.

“The Bolsheviks must master technology,” Stalin taught. "It's time for the Bolsheviks to become specialists themselves."

In June 1931, JV Stalin delivered a speech at a conference of business executives entitled "The New Situation—New Tasks in Economic Construction." In this speech, he put forward 6 conditions, the fulfillment of which was to lead to the restructuring of all economic activity in connection with the new situation and to overcome the backlog of individual industries:

“1) To recruit labor in an organized manner in the manner of agreements with collective farms, to mechanize labor.

2) Eliminate the turnover of the labor force, abolish leveling, properly organize wages, improve the living conditions of workers.

3) Eliminate depersonalization, improve the organization of labor, and correctly place forces in the enterprise.

4) Ensure that the working class of the USSR has its own industrial and technical intelligentsia.

5) Change the attitude towards the engineering and technical forces of the old school, show them more attention and care, more boldly involve them in work.

6) To introduce and strengthen self-financing, to raise intra-industrial accumulation.”

- The six conditions of I. V. Stalin became a program of struggle for the fulfillment of the plan of the first five-year plan.

Under the leadership of the party, a new, Soviet production and technical intelligentsia emerged from the ranks of the working class and the peasantry.

In order to consolidate the victory of the collective-farm system in the countryside and put an end to kulak sabotage on the collective farms, the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks in January 1933 decided to organize political departments at machine and tractor stations. 17,000 party workers were sent to the countryside to help the collective farms. The political departments coped in the Bolshevik way with the task of organizational and economic strengthening of the collective farms, after which they were transformed into ordinary party bodies.

In February 1933, the First All-Union Congress of Collective Farm Shock Workers was held, at which JV Stalin spoke. The congress was of great importance in raising the activity of the collective-farm masses and strengthening the collective farms.

The first five-year plan was completed in 4 years and 3 months. In a report at the January (1933) plenum of the Central Committee and the Central Control Commission of the Party, JV Stalin summed up the results of the first five-year plan. As a result of the implementation of the five-year plan, industry has taken a leading place in the national economy of the country. By the end of the five-year plan, the USSR took 2nd place in the world in general engineering. In coal mining, the USSR stepped over from 6th place in 1928 to 4th; for oil - from 3rd to 2nd, for pig iron - from 6th to 5th, etc. During the years of the five-year plan, 16 new blast furnaces were blown out. In 1928, instead of 3.2 million tons of pig iron, ferrous metallurgy produced 6.2 million tons in 1932. Electricity generation increased by 2.5 times compared to 1928.

During the years of the first five-year plan, plans for the collectivization of agriculture were blocked. During the five-year plan, 210 thousand collective farms were created, 61.5% of farms were collectivized. By the end of the five-year plan, 84.2% of all marketable output was provided by collective farms and state farms. All these achievements in agriculture became possible only thanks to mechanization. Instead of one MTS, by the beginning of the five-year plan, by the end of it, there were 2,446 MTS.

The first five-year plan destroyed private trade. The five-year plan changed the social composition of the population of the USSR. It played an enormous role in the development of the national republics, in which a local national working class grew up. The number of workers and employees employed in industry increased throughout the USSR from 3.5 million to 6.8 million people. The bulk of the peasants became collective farmers.

Capitalist elements were expelled from the national economy. Cities and urban populations grew rapidly. The implementation of the five-year plan was of great importance for strengthening the country's defense capability. The industrialization of the country made it possible to equip the Red Army with the most advanced weapons and in sufficient quantities. Soviet aircraft and tank building began to develop.

The fulfillment of the first five-year plan radically improved the material situation of the working people, and unemployment disappeared. Universal compulsory primary education was introduced. The network of preschool institutions has grown. Illiteracy was eliminated among the adult population of the country. The network of cultural and educational institutions has doubled in the country - clubs, libraries, museums, cinema, radio, etc.

Soviet science achieved major successes during the years of the first five-year plan. The network of scientific-research institutions has grown, the number of scientific employees has sharply increased. The Academy of Sciences turned its face to the tasks of socialist construction. Soviet literature, headed by M. Gorky, Soviet art experienced a period of upsurge and flourishing. Millions of people, previously deprived of all the benefits of culture, reached out to art and literature.

The national culture developed. With the help and under the guidance of the most advanced culture of the Russian people, the working people of the formerly backward nationalities built their own culture, national in form and socialist in content.

The 17th Congress of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks (January 1934), based on the reports of V. M. Molotov and V. V. Kuibyshev, adopted a decision on the plan for the second five-year plan (1933–37). It was even grander than the first. By the end of the second five-year plan, the output of large-scale industry had increased 8 times compared to the pre-war level, and the technical reconstruction of the main branches of industry and the mechanization of agriculture were basically being completed. By the end of 1934, the collective farms united 75% of the peasant farms and about 90% of all sown area. 276.4 thousand tractors and 32 thousand combines worked on the fields of the USSR. Collective farms have become a strong, invincible force.

The successes of socialist construction provoked the last major attempt by the internal counter-revolution, led by the enemies of the people, traitors to the motherland and the working class, the Trotskyist-Bukharin gang, to intensify their criminal activities.

On 1/XII 1934, they villainously murdered S. M. Kirov, secretary of the Central Committee of the party and the Leningrad party organization, a loyal ally of Lenin and Stalin. In 1935-36, the villainous murders of V. R. Menzhinsky, V. V. Kuibyshev, and M. Gorky were committed. The trials (1935-1938) revealed the role of these conspiratorial groups of assassins, terrorists, spies and saboteurs, who, on the instructions of foreign intelligence services, were preparing an intervention against the USSR, the dismemberment of the Soviet Union and the restoration of capitalism in the USSR. By decision of the court of the Soviet people, these political murderous bandits suffered a well-deserved punishment; most were sentenced to capital punishment.

While the industry and agriculture of the Soviet Union were steadily developing and growing, the capitalist countries were going through a severe economic crisis. The 24 million unemployed in the cities and tens of millions of peasants ruined by the agrarian crisis were doomed in the capitalist countries to starvation, poverty and slow extinction. The crisis has further sharpened the contradictions of imperialism. Imperialism sought a way out of the crisis in a new redivision of the world, in suppressing the working class by establishing an open terrorist dictatorship, and in preparing for war against the USSR.

On the initiative of the French Foreign Minister Briand, in 1930 a project was put forward to create a European federal union. A European committee was set up to work on this issue. In fact, it was an attempt to create a united front against the USSR. War danger hung over the world. The hotbeds of a new imperialist war were being formed.

The first focus of the new imperialist war was in the Far East. In 1931, the Japanese imperialists captured Manchuria, then began the capture of the North. China. Japan withdrew from the League of Nations, began to arm heavily. On the Far Eastern borders there were continuous provocations organized by the Japanese imperialists.

The second hotbed of war was created in the center of Europe. In 1933, with the help of German capitalists, the fascist party (“National Socialists”), headed by Hitler, seized power in Germany. Having dispersed the workers' organizations, the Nazis banned the Communist Party, arrested and destroyed its leaders. Other democratic parties and organizations were also crushed. Fascist Germany began furiously preparing for a war to conquer the whole world, to turn all peoples into its slaves. Plans were developed for the conquest and capture of small states in Europe and war against large states like England and France. The main blow was being prepared against the Soviet Union - the stronghold of the world and the most significant Slavic state.

The European imperialists began to prepare a new imperialist war for the redivision of the world. The Soviet state with its peace-loving policy tried to prevent a new world war. Pursuing a consistent policy of peace, the Soviet government in 1932-33 concluded non-aggression pacts with a number of countries. In 1932, non-aggression pacts were concluded with Latvia, Estonia, and Finland. After the Herriot government came to power in France in 1932, a non-aggression pact was concluded with France. In the same year, a non-aggression pact was concluded with Poland, and in 1933 with Italy. Diplomatic relations were established with Spain, Czechoslovakia, Romania, Hungary, and Bulgaria. In 1933, the new US President F. Roosevelt began negotiations with the Soviet government, which resulted in the establishment of diplomatic relations with the United States.

The actions of the Soviet Union on the world stage in the struggle for disarmament and for peace, its consistent peace policy attracted the sympathy of all those who yearn for peace. In September 1934, at the invitation of 34 states, the USSR, in order to strengthen the cause of peace, joined the League of Nations and tried to use it in the struggle against the fascist aggressors.

At the same time, the aggravation of the international situation forced the Soviet Union to pay great attention to strengthening the country's defense capability and protecting its borders in the east and west.

While the bourgeois countries again entered an economic crisis in 1937, the USSR steadily advanced the development of industry and agriculture, and raised the culture and well-being of the country's masses. The Stalinist slogan of mastering new technology became the leading one in the second five-year plan. Socialist emulation rose to a higher level—the Stakhanovite movement unfolded, which overturned the norms of output that had existed up to that time and was the beginning of an unprecedented cultural and technical upsurge of the working class, preparations for the transition from socialism to communism. In his historic speech at the 1st All-Union Conference of the Stakhanovites (November 1935), Stalin revealed the significance of the Stakhanov movement for the USSR, to carry out a gradual transition from socialism to communism and to abolish the opposition between mental and physical labor. As a result of the successes of the Stakhanovite movement and the tremendous upsurge in production among the working class, the second five-year plan for industry was completed ahead of schedule (by April 1, 1937, i.e., in 4 years and 3 months).

Of great importance for the rise and flourishing of the collective farms was the Charter of the Agricultural Artel, developed under the direct supervision of Stalin and adopted by the 2nd Congress of Collective Farm Shock Workers (February 1935).

The Second Five-Year Plan completed the socialist reconstruction of industry and agriculture. In terms of gross industrial output, the Soviet Union ranked first in Europe and second in the world. The Soviet country has overtaken all countries of the world in the production of combines; It ranked first in Europe and second in the world in terms of the number of tractors and ore mining; in the production of electricity, the USSR took 2nd place in Europe, 3rd in the world.

The success of the industrialization of the country has completely changed agriculture. By the end of the second five-year plan, over 243,000 collective farms had united 28.5 million small peasant farms. 350 thousand tractors and 100 thousand combines worked on the fields of the Soviet country. People of new professions appeared in the village - hundreds of thousands of tractor drivers, combine operators, mechanics. The production of grain increased significantly: instead of 4-5 billion poods a year, by the end of the first five-year plan, grain production reached 7 billion poods.

A real cultural revolution took place in the country. Illiteracy among the adult population was completely eliminated, and universal primary compulsory education was implemented. The total number of students in schools increased to 28 million, the number of students in higher educational institutions reached 542,000. Millions of women who had previously been only housewives were attracted to work in production and social activities. In 1936, 8.5 million women worked in industry, in transport, and in Soviet institutions (except collective farms), which accounted for 34% of all workers.

(Continued on following post.)
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Re: The Soviet Union

Post by blindpig » Tue Aug 16, 2022 10:57 pm

(Continued from previous post.)

The achievements of Soviet science and technology, the bravery and courage of the Soviet people were vividly expressed in a number of heroic flights made by Soviet pilots, Stalin's falcons, who set world aviation records in conquering the North Pole. The most important of these heroic deeds was the air expedition to the North Pole in May 1937 by the crews of M. V. Vodopyanov, V. S. Molokov, A. D. Alekseev, and J. P. Mazuruk, headed by O. Yu. Schmidt; the creation of a drifting station by I. D. Papanin, E. T. Krenkel, P. I. Shirshov, and E. K. Fedorov; flight of B. P. Chkalov, A. V. Belyakov and G. F. Baidukov in June 1937 through the North Pole to the territory of the North. America to San Jacinto (USA); flight in July 1937 by M. M. Gromov, A. B. Yumashev and S. A. Danilin from Moscow to the USA via the North Pole; flight in September 1938 by V. P. Grizodubova, P. D. Osipenko and M. M. Raskova from Moscow to the Far East; flight in April 1939 by V. K. Kokkinaki and M. Kh. Gordienko on the route Moscow-Miskoe Island (North America).

The USSR has come a long way from the moment of its formation to 1936. As a result of the implementation of the Leninist-Stalinist national policy, the economic basis for the flourishing of the national regions of the country was created. Factories, plants, and railroads appeared in the former backward national regions—the colonies of tsarism. Previously purely agrarian regions of the country have turned into industrial ones.

By 1936, the industrial output of the Ukraine had grown 7 times in comparison with 1913, and that of Georgia, 19 times. The share of industrial output in the Kazakh Republic at the time of its formation in 1920 was 6.3% of the gross output of the national economy, by 1936 it reached almost 57%. New cities appeared in the national regions of the country. Former nomads settled on the ground. Schools and universities were built. Dozens of the peoples of the Soviet country, who previously did not have a written language, received their own written language and thus the basis for their cultural development. Cadres of their own intelligentsia grew up in the national regions. With the help of the Russian people and their advanced culture, the national republics reached an unprecedented economic and cultural flourishing.

In 1922 the USSR was formed as part of four republics—the RSFSR, the Ukrainian SSR, the BSSR, and the ZSFSR. On the basis of the growth of the national republics, already in October 1924 the Turkmen and Uzbek SSRs became part of the USSR. In December 1929, the Tajik Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic was transformed into a union republic and directly became part of the USSR. In 1936, in Transcaucasia, instead of the Transcaucasian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic, which played a huge role in eliminating interethnic friction in Transcaucasia, strengthening the friendship of peoples and economic prerequisites for flourishing, 3 new union republics were created: Georgian, Armenian and Azerbaijan. By this time, the Kazakh and Kirghiz SSRs were formed. Thus, by 1936 the Soviet Union included 11 republics: the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, Ukrainian, Belorussian, Georgian, Armenian, Azerbaijan, Uzbek, Turkmen, Kazakh, Kirghiz, Tajik Soviet Socialist Republics. This was the greatest achievement of the Soviet power. The Soviet Union has become a new type of multinational state:

“As a result,” I.V. Stalin said, “we now have a fully formed and withstood all the tests of a multinational socialist state, the strength of which could be the envy of any national state in any part of the world.”

In November 1936, the Extraordinary 8th Congress of Soviets met and adopted the Constitution of victorious socialism in the USSR. Since 1924, when the first Constitution of the USSR was adopted, profound socio-economic changes have taken place in the country, capitalist elements have been completely eliminated, and socialism has triumphed in all areas of the national economy. In his report at the Eighth Extraordinary Congress of Soviets on the draft of a new Constitution of the USSR, JV Stalin clearly outlined these changes. As a result of the complete victory of the socialist system in all spheres of the national economy, the exploitation of man by man has been abolished in the Soviet country; socialist ownership of the instruments and means of production has been established as the unshakable foundation of Soviet society. These changes in the field of economics led, I. V. Stalin said, that

“In the field of the national economy of the USSR, we now have a new, socialist economy that knows no crises and unemployment, knows no poverty and ruin, and gives citizens every opportunity for a prosperous and cultural life.”

Changes in the economy led to changes in the class structure of Soviet society. All exploiting classes were liquidated in the USSR. The working class has become an entirely new class, having established socialist ownership of the instruments and means of production and directing Soviet society along the path of communism; such a working class has not yet known the history of mankind.

The position of the peasantry in the USSR changed radically. The exploiters of the peasantry—the landowners, kulaks, merchants, usurers—were eliminated. Instead of two tens of millions of fragmented peasant farms with their backward technique, the overwhelming majority in the Soviet country is the collective farm peasantry, whose economy is based not on individual labor and backward technique, but on collective ownership of the means of production and collective labor armed with advanced modern technology. The Soviet peasantry, I. V. Stalin said, “is a completely new peasantry, the like of which the history of mankind has not yet known.”

The Soviet intelligentsia also became completely new. For the most part, she came from a working and peasant milieu, she serves not the capitalists, but the whole people. As an equal member of socialist society, the Soviet intelligentsia, together with the workers and peasantry, is building a new socialist society. This is also a completely new labor intelligentsia, which does not exist in any country. These changes, which took place in the class structure of Soviet society,

“They say, firstly, that the boundaries between the working class and the peasantry, as well as between these classes and the intelligentsia, are being erased, and the old class exclusiveness is disappearing. This means that the distance between these social groups is shrinking more and more. They say, secondly, that the economic contradictions between these social groups are falling, are being erased. They say, finally, that the political contradictions between them are also falling and being erased” (Stalin).

There have been changes in the field of national relations in the USSR. As a result of the victory of the Leninist national policy, I. V. Stalin said,

"The experience of forming a multinational state, created on the basis of socialism, was a complete success."

The image of the peoples of the USSR has changed radically. The feeling of mutual friendship has replaced the feeling of mistrust towards each other. Genuine fraternal cooperation between the peoples of the Soviet country has been established in the system of a single union state. As a result of these changes, the basis for the moral and political unity of Soviet society was created.

The Constitution legislated all the socialist gains of the working people, fixed the rights and obligations of citizens of the USSR - a fraternal union of equal republics. The Soviets of working people's deputies form the political basis of the USSR; The supreme body of state power in the USSR is the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, which consists of two equal chambers: the Council of the Union and the Council of Nationalities, elected for a term of 4 years. Elections to the Soviets of Working People's Deputies are universal, direct, equal, by secret ballot. Implementing the principle of socialism “from each according to his ability, to each according to his work,” the Stalinist Constitution ensured the citizens of the USSR the right to work, the right to rest, the right to education, and the right to material security in old age.

At the same time, the Constitution imposes duties on all citizens of the USSR: to protect and strengthen socialist property, to observe labor laws and discipline, and to defend the socialist fatherland. On the basis of the Stalinist Constitution of December 12, 1937, elections were held for the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, in which more than 91 million people took part, i.e., 96.8% of all voters. The elections showed the moral and political unity of the Soviet people and gave victory to the Stalinist bloc of communists and non-party people (89,844 thousand people voted for the candidates of this bloc - 93.6%). 12/I 1938 opened the 1st session of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR. The Council of People's Commissars of the USSR was formed, headed by V. M. Molotov. Mikhail Kalinin was elected Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR. In June 1938 elections were held for the Supreme Soviets of the Union and Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republics; in December 1939 elections were held for local Soviets of Working People's Deputies. This completed the restructuring of the Soviets on the basis of the principles of the great Stalinist Constitution.

On the basis of the Stalinist Constitution, the construction of the Soviet country developed powerfully in the coming years (1937-40), marked by remarkable achievements in all areas of labor and culture. The country fulfilled the main economic task - to catch up and overtake economically the main capitalist countries. The volume of gross industrial output increased continuously. In 1937 it was 95.5 billion rubles, and in 1940 it was already 138.5 billion rubles. At the same time, a special rise was noted in metallurgy and the fuel industry. The socialist agriculture of the USSR also steadily grew and developed. The production of grain crops in 1940 amounted to 7.3 billion poods. In the total harvest of grain crops, the share of the eastern regions increased significantly; in the southeast and east, a new granary of the Soviet Union was created.

In 1940, the Party and the government adopted a number of measures aimed at strengthening the collective farm system: to protect the public lands of the collective farms, to calculate the supply of field crops and livestock products (per 1 hectare of land), to stimulate an increase in crop yields and livestock productivity. In 1939, the All-Union Agricultural Exhibition opened in Moscow, which was a remarkable review of the achievements of socialist agriculture.

In his speech at the pre-election meeting of voters of the Stalin electoral district of Moscow on February 9, 1946, I. V. Stalin cited figures characterizing the state of the national economy of the USSR in 1940. In that year, the USSR produced: 15 million tons of pig iron, i.e. almost 4 times more than in tsarist Russia in 1913; 18,300,000 tons of steel, i.e., 4.5 times more than in 1913; 166 million tons of coal, that is, 5.5 times more than in 1913; 31 million tons of oil, that is, 3.5 times more than in 1913; 38 million 300 thousand tons of marketable grain, i.e., 17 million tons more than in 1913; 2,700,000 tons of raw cotton, i.e., 3.5 times more than in 1913.

Despite the growing danger of war and the war that had begun in Europe, the people's income in the USSR was constantly increasing. If in 1937 it amounted to 96 billion rubles, then in 1940 the national income reached the figure of 125.5 billion rubles. As a result of this growth, appropriations for the cultural needs of the working people were continuously increased. Forced to allocate significant funds from its budget for defense needs, the Soviet Union nevertheless constantly increased the number of schools in the country, took all measures for the development of science and art. In 1939–40 there were 32.2 million students in schools and 600,000 students in higher educational institutions in the USSR. In 1937 there were already 697 theaters in the country, in 1940 their number increased to 831. Significant success was achieved by the headquarters of the scientific life of the country—the Academy of Sciences of the USSR. In 1939 the Academy had 126 full members and 187 corresponding members.

In 1937–40 the national republics of the Soviet Union experienced a period of tremendous economic and cultural growth. In the all-Union budget of 1937, the largest growth in capital investment was in the Kirghiz and Armenian SSRs, once economically backward regions. The number of incomplete secondary and secondary schools in the Azerbaijan SSR in 1937–38 was 1,342 versus 278 in 1930–31. Decades of national art held in Moscow in 1936–41 were a real celebration of socialist culture. In 1936, decades of Ukrainian and Kazakh art were held with great success; in 1937 - Georgian and Uzbek; in 1938 - Azerbaijani and Armenian; in 1940 - Belarusian.

Even more striking, a review of the achievements of socialist culture was the awarding of the Stalin Prizes in 1941. The Stalin Prizes were established by the Decree of the Council of People's Commissars to commemorate the sixtieth birthday of Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin on 21/XII 1939.

In March 1941, the Stalin Prizes were awarded for outstanding work in the field of science, for outstanding inventions, and for outstanding work in the field of art and literature. Among the awarded were figures of advanced Soviet science - academicians, professors, who put their knowledge at the service of the socialist Motherland.

The Stalin Prizes were also awarded to industrial workers, innovators of production, designers of weapons for the Red Army. The Stalin Prizes were awarded to the most prominent figures in Soviet literature and art. Many of the first winners of the Stalin Prizes were representatives of the national culture of the USSR.

JV Stalin's work A Short Course in the History of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, published in the second half of 1938, summarized the vast revolutionary experience of the Bolshevik Party and the building of socialism in the USSR.

The results of the struggle and the great victories of socialism were summed up by the 18th Congress of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, which met in March 1939. Stalin's report at the 18th Party Congress is an example of the creative development of the teachings of Marx-Engels-Lenin. Stalin gave a brilliant analysis of the internal and international situation of the USSR and highlighted the paths along which the country must go to the victory of communism. Stalin creatively developed the doctrine of the socialist state in the period of transition from socialism to communism and under communism, of the tasks of the socialist state in a situation of capitalist encirclement. He noted the birth in the USSR of a new, popular, socialist intelligentsia, which was "one of the most important results of the cultural revolution in our country." Noting that "the reporting period was a period of complete victory for the general line of our party," Stalin launched a grandiose program for moving forward, program of the third five-year plan. He pointed out that the USSR had entered a phase of completing the building of a classless socialist society and a gradual transition from socialism to communism, when the center of gravity was transferred to questions of the communist education of the working people. V. M. Molotov made a report on the tasks of the third five-year plan at the congress.

At the 18th Congress of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, I. V. Stalin defined the tasks of the foreign policy of the USSR as follows:

"one. Continue to pursue a policy of peace and strengthening business ties with all countries; 2. Be careful and not let our country be drawn into conflicts by provocateurs of war, who are accustomed to rake in the heat with the wrong hands; 3. To strengthen in every possible way the combat power of our Red Army and the Red Navy; 4. Strengthen international ties of friendship with the working people of all countries who are interested in peace and friendship among peoples.

The XVIII All-Union Conference of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, held on February 15-20, 1941, which reviewed the economic results of 1940 and the plan for the development of the national economy for 1941, was marked by the strengthening of the defensive power of the Soviet Union. On May 6, 1941, JV Stalin was appointed chairman of the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR by decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the CCCP.

Moreover, the entire course of development of the post-war capitalist world indicated that a new world war was brewing. The capitalist world did not leave the period of economic crises. Following the crisis of 1929–33, a new economic crisis began in 1937. Contradictions in the capitalist world became more and more acute, and hotbeds of a new war arose.

The trials of the chief German war criminals in Nuremberg and the chief Japanese war criminals in Tokyo in 1945–46 fully revealed the mechanism by which the aggressive states were preparing a new war against the peace-loving democracies, and above all against the USSR, which was successfully building socialism.

And this time, the aggressor, who pushed the world into an unprecedented new war, was Germany; Japan and Italy were her allies in the preparation and unleashing of the war. Neither the League of Nations nor the governments of the Western European states did anything to curb the fascist countries. On the contrary, many of them desired an attack by the fascist states on the Soviet Union.

Outwardly persuading the fascist governments of Germany and Italy to refrain from aggression, in fact they contributed to the unleashing of a new world war. Already in 1931, Japan, preparing a bridgehead for an attack on the Soviet Union, began to seize Manchuria. Having captured Manchuria, she created in it the puppet state of Manchukuo, in which she remained the true master. Earlier, Japan invaded China. Using the connivance of the League of Nations, which did not want to apply sanctions to the aggressors, Italy attacked Ethiopia in 1935. 1936 Germany and Italy began military intervention against the Spanish Republic. No assistance was provided by the League of Nations, which included the states that were victims of fascist aggression. The Western European powers decided to adhere to the principle of "non-interference", which was only help to the fascist aggressors.

In 1937, Germany, Italy, and Japan concluded an "anti-Comintern pact" among themselves. While outwardly concluding an alliance to fight communism, the fascist countries actually entered into a military alliance. Preparations for a war against the whole world and, above all, against the Soviet Union went even faster. Nazi Germany captured Austria in 1938 and Czechoslovakia in 1939. The British and French governments in Munich recognized these seizures, as did the Italian seizure of Ethiopia. So the "Munichians" encouraged the fascist states to further aggression.

The Japanese predator was the first to come out against the Soviet Union. Provocations began on the Soviet border. The Japanese imperialists decided to test the combat might of the Soviet Republic. On July 29, 1938, Japanese troops crossed the border near Lake Khasan and occupied two hills: Zaozernaya and Bezymyannaya. The blow inflicted by the Soviet troops on the Japanese near Khasan was crushing. The Japanese retreated. On May 11, 1939, Japanese troops crossed the border of the Mongolian People's Republic in the region of the Khalkhin-Gol River. A protocol on mutual assistance was signed between the Soviet Union and the Mongolian People's Republic on 12/III, 1936. The Red Army came to the aid of the Mongolian people. In August 1939, units of the Red Army, surrounding the Japanese troops, struck them and almost completely destroyed them. A large grouping of Japanese troops was defeated. The Japanese lost about 60 thousand people, of them, up to 25 thousand were killed. The territory of the Mongolian People's Republic was liberated from the Japanese invaders. In the east, provocations against the Soviet Union failed.

Meanwhile, the international situation was getting worse. Germany was preparing to unleash war in the west. The governments of Chamberlain in England, Daladier in France, and the reactionary rulers of Poland criminally renounced an agreement with the USSR on a joint struggle against fascist Germany. And when Germany offered the Soviet Union to conclude a non-aggression pact, the Soviet Union agreed. This agreement was concluded on 23/VIII 1939.

“We ensured peace for our country for a year and a half and the possibility of preparing our forces to repulse if fascist Germany would risk attacking our country contrary to the pact,” said I.V. in 1939 non-aggression pacts. “This is a definite win for us and a loss for Nazi Germany.”

I / IX 1939 the German attack on Poland began the Second World War. 3/IX England and France declared war on Germany. Within 17 days Poland was defeated. The Polish reactionary government was unable to organize the defense of the country. Leaving the Polish people to their fate, it fled from Poland. Left without leadership, without command, the Polish people and individual military units courageously resisted the German invasion. The defenders of Warsaw and the sailors of Gdynia fought heroically. These scattered pockets of resistance were broken. The fascist troops, having occupied Poland, approached the territory of Western Ukraine and Western Belarus, preparing to capture them as well. 7 million Ukrainians and 3 million Belarusians could fall into the German bondage, and the territories of Western Ukraine and Belarus could turn into a springboard for an attack on the Soviet Union.

The liberated Ukrainian and Belarusian peoples, who were previously under the yoke of the Polish lords, decided to reunite with their brothers Ukrainians and Belarusians of the Soviet Union, which they asked the government of the USSR to do. The Supreme Soviet of the USSR, by Decree 1/XI 1939, granted the request of the People's Assembly of Western Ukraine and 2/XI - the request of the People's Assembly of Western Belarus for their entry into the Soviet Union and for the reunification of Western Ukraine with the Ukrainian SSR, and Western Belarus with the Byelorussian SSR.

Fascist Germany also attempted to create a threat to the Soviet Union on the northwestern border. Under the leadership of German officers, the Finnish army was preparing to attack the USSR. The governments of Britain, France and the USA willingly provided Finland with all the necessary means to prepare an attack on the Soviet Union. Finland threatened Leningrad (the border was 30 km from Leningrad). The great and multi-million dollar industrial and cultural center of the Soviet country was under the muzzles of Finnish guns, capable of shelling Leningrad from the border. From Finnish airfields to Leningrad it was only 2-3 minutes of flight. Finns along the entire border were preparing for war. The Soviet government was forced to take measures to strengthen the security of Leningrad and the northwest. the borders of the Soviet Union. Finland rejected the proposal of the Soviet government to conclude a mutual assistance pact. The proposal of the Soviet government to push back the border on the Karelian Isthmus by several tens of kilometers and to lease the Khanko Peninsula to the Soviet Union for organizing military bases on it necessary for the defense of Leningrad was also rejected, in exchange for a significant territory - real compensation - in other border areas.

The Finnish government announced a general mobilization, and on 30/XI 1939 Finnish troops carried out a series of provocations on the Soviet border. The Red Army went on the offensive. She had to wage war with a well-trained army in the extremely difficult conditions of the northern winter. On the border, with the assistance of foreign specialists, Finland created a powerful fortified "Mannerheim Line", which was considered impregnable. The Red Army crossed the "Mannerheim Line", passed through non-freezing swamps. For 3 months the Finnish army was defeated. Soviet troops were moving towards the Finnish capital, and the Finns sued for peace. On 12/III 1940 a peace treaty was signed. The Soviet Union received the Karelian Isthmus with the city of Vyborg, the western and northern coasts of Lake Ladoga. The Soviet-Finnish border has been fixed in several other places. Finland agreed to lease the Hanko Peninsula to the Soviet Union. The Petsamo region and the non-freezing port of Petsamo, voluntarily ceded by Soviet Russia to Finland in 1918 and occupied during the war, were again handed over by the Soviet Union to Finland.

On March 31, 1940, the Karelian ASSR was transformed into the allied Karelian-Finnish SSR, with the inclusion in its composition of the territory that had ceded to the USSR under a peace treaty with Finland.

In 1939, treaties of mutual assistance were concluded between the USSR and the Baltic states—Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia. However, the pro-fascist governments of these states that were in power at that time, following the lead of the German fascists, secretly concluded a military alliance against the USSR. The Baltic States became a springboard for the German attack on the Soviet Union, which was being prepared.

The Soviet government was forced to demand from these governments consent to the deployment of Soviet troops on the territory of the Baltic States in order to actually implement the mutual assistance pact. In Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia, governments were created from genuinely democratic elements, who for many years fought against the fascist regime in the Baltic states, against the transformation of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia into colonies of German fascism. Elected for the first time by direct, secret and equal voting - the Seimas in Lithuania and Latvia and the State Duma in Estonia, at the request of their peoples, decided to restore Soviet power in these states, which had fallen under the blows of the interventionists in 1918 - German, in 1919 - the Entente. The Lithuanian, Latvian and Estonian Soviet republics appealed to the Supreme Soviet of the USSR with a request to admit them to the Soviet Union.

In the summer of 1940 another important event took place in the history of the Soviet state. For 22 years, the Romanian boyars ruled in Bessarabia, captured by them with the help of German troops in 1918, when the Soviet country was militarily weak. The Soviet Union never recognized this takeover. The military weakness of the USSR has receded into the past. The international situation demanded the speedy resolution of past unresolved issues in order to lay the foundations for a lasting peace between countries. 26/V1 1940 The Soviet government demanded from Romania the return of Bessarabia and the transfer to the Soviet Union of Northern Bukovina, the population of which had already decided in 1918 to join the Soviet country. The Red Army moved to liberate Bessarabia and the Ukrainian-populated Northern Bukovina. The Romanian government understood

The 7th session of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR (1-7/VII 1940), having heard the requests of the representatives of Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina, decided to accept the Lithuanian, Latvian and Estonian Soviet republics into the Soviet Union and create the Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic, uniting Moldavian ASSR with most of Bessarabia. Several counties of Bessarabia (Khotin, Akkerman and Izmail) with a predominance of the Ukrainian population and Northern Bukovina were included in the Ukrainian SSR.

https://prorivists.org/doc_ussr-25-40/

Google Translator
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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