RUSSIA: Stalin On Everything

It was the greatest speech Dictator Josef Stalin has made in the six years since he assumed supreme power. Its delivery last week to the Communist Party Congress at Moscow required seven hours. It ranged every field of foreign and domestic policy. It occupied 37 solid columns next day in newspapers throughout the Soviet Union. Its keynote:

“The Soviet Government is now the strongest administration in the world.”

Excerpts:

Russia’s Debts. For the first time Stalin stated publicly his position regarding the debts of the Imperial Russian Government to foreigners, which have all been repudiated by the Soviet Government. Said he:

“Foreign demands for our payment of the War debts are merely tools in the hands of anti-Soviet elements for interventionist propaganda.

“Our policy is clear and sound. If foreign countries agree to give us credits, we will agree to pay a small percentage of the Tsarist debts, charging the debt payments to the account of the interest rate on credits granted.”*

The Young Plan: “To believe that the German proletariat will produce from its own veins 20,000,000,000 marks of the Young plan payments without terrific commotion is crazy. Let the French and German politicians pretend they believe this miracle. We Bolsheviks don’t believe in miracles.”

Depression: “The world economic crisis is merely the last and worst of the periodic crises inevitable under the capitalist system, whose production invariably outruns the demand every ten years or so because the capitalist producers withhold the profits from the working population and the gradual accumulation of this mass of profit becomes, so to speak, ‘frozen’ at the end of each period—or is exported—whereas under the Socialist system every cent of ‘profit’ is returned to the workers, not only in the form of wages but in material and cultural construction. Thus in the Socialist state—in Soviet Russia—there is no frozen money, so that supply and demand are adjusted automatically.”

Wage Cuts: “Capitalism’s economic crisis involves wage reductions and increased pressure on the workers, which will strengthen the revolutionary movement and increase the influence and authority of the Komintern [also known as the Third International, headquartered at Moscow, which is striving to foment ‘The World Revolution of the World Proletariat’]”

India & China: “The European bourgeoisie is now in a state of war with ‘its own’ colonies in India, French Indo-China, Malaysia and North Africa. There is a similar state of war in ‘independent’ China. The imperialist powers blame Bolshevik propaganda and say our embassy fomented the Chinese trouble. We have no such representative now in South China, yet the trouble there is worst of all. In ‘their’ colonies it is not propaganda but the misery of suffering and exploitation by alien conquerors that cause the revolt. The imperialists themselves are the best ‘propagandists’ for the Bolsheviks. . . . Every ruffian tries to blame Bolshevist propaganda for his own blunders.”

Russia: “We have solved the grain problem, but our meat and commodities supply is grievously deficient. It will take a year or more to rectify them. . . .

“Our agricultural production, including timber and fisheries, is now 14% above the pre-War level. Our industrial production is 80% above pre-War level [a phenomenal advance, possibly exaggerated, but solidly based on U. S. and German* exports of machinery to Russia]. . . . Our cotton production has more than doubled. . . .

“Our death rate has decreased by a third as compared with before the War and illiteracy has been reduced by nearly a half. . . .

“There are now 11,500,000 organized workers in our Soviet labor federations. The ‘real wages’ of Russian workmen have risen 67% above the pre-War level.”*

“The Nep†is not abandoned, but has entered a new period. Its first period allowed the growth of private enterprise. Its new period means the conquest of private enterprise, but not its sudden or violent elimination. Today is a period of Socialist attack on the whole front.”

Self-Criticism. Between chunks of cheer Dictator Stalin sandwiched thin but pungent slices of pessimism. “Many features of our transport system are a positive disgrace,” he cried. “It is high time to put an end to them, isn’t it?” From the back of the hall someone bellowed, “High time!”, perhaps someone who had come to the Congress from as far away as Dictator Stalin’s own birthland, the Socialist Soviet Republic of Georgia, adjoining Armenia.

As a man from Georgia, the Dictator angrily flayed “certain elements” in European Russia who wish to make Russian the universal language of the entire Soviet Union. While he is in power, Stalin thundered, all the little Soviet republics such as Georgia will retain their autonomy within the Soviet Union, their own languages, courts, schools, culture, customs, and “regional personalities.”

*Gencral Electric Co. has agreed to this mode of settlement, advancing to the Soviet Government a credit of $25,000,000 and keeping their books in such a way that part of the interest collected is credited as “extra interest” in payment for General Electric property in Russia confiscated during the Revolution.

*Stalin’s statistics (with which the speech bristles) show that in 1928 Russia possessed ‘slightly more horses, cattle and pigs than in 1916, whereas today she has not quite two-thirds as many as she had in 1928. If Stalin is not mistaken these figures, bewildering, mean that during the past twelve months Russia has slaughtered or exported over a third of her livestock.

†Novaya Economicheskya Politika (New Economic Policy), temporary compromise by which private manufacture and trade on a small scale is permitted.