Subject of power under Stalin

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

"Khrushchev, like Gorky's" Danko, "tore out the heart, but not his own, but Stalin's, and led the people to a dead end, where they led him to the abyss" …

To this phrase from personal correspondence, I received the following response from Andrey Kuptsov: “Ibraev! IT IS A MASTERPIECE! Taking off my hat! This is the Greatest Political Mini Pamphlet in History”!

Hundreds, thousands of pages published, conveyed the atmosphere of the state of the country before the historic XX Congress and after. According to the established traditions of historiography, the entire focus of both N. Khrushchev's report and subsequent pages of the history of the USSR was focused on historical figures.

The politicized history of the USSR, with its main emphasis on historical figures, exposed the main character of the state - the people, the union of workers and peasants - as victims of ideology. The entire biography of the period of great achievements: industrialization, collectivization was under the cover of dirty politics and innuendo.

Let's try to discover this hidden side of the life of the state.

In historiography and in our memory, the classic opinion has taken root:

Power to the Soviets means the dictatorship of the proletariat and the revolutionary peasantry. But the composition of the elected Soviets, in all branches of government of the new state, left much to be desired, for the most part it consisted of persons from the old tsarist administration.

In his article “Better less, but better,” Vladimir Ilyich says the following on the state of our state apparatus:

"We have so little time to think and take care of the quality of our state apparatus that it will be legitimate to care about especially serious preparation of it, about the concentration in the Rabkrin of human material of really modern quality, that is, not lagging behind the best Western European standards." And further:

“Our apparatus,” he wrote, “is to the greatest extent a relic of the old, to the least extent subjected to any serious changes. It is only slightly tinted on top, but in other respects it is the most typical old of our old state apparatus”(Lenin, vol. XVIII, part II, p. 121).

The low educational qualifications of peasants and workers did not allow providing state structures with a truly proletarian composition. Although the first Constitution of the RSFSR of July 10, 1918, provided for the rotation of personnel in the Soviets every three months. The second Constitution of the USSR of January 31, 1924, increased the rotation period to a year. But even these activities did not lead to the desired result.

“The bureaucracy has been defeated,” says Vladimir Ilyich, “the exploiters have been eliminated, but the cultural level has not been raised, and therefore the bureaucrats are still occupying their old positions. The bureaucracy can only be squeezed out by the organization of the proletariat and the peasantry on a much wider scale than until now, along with the actual implementation of measures to attract peasants and workers to the cause of state administration."

This was perfectly understood by the leaders of the state and the party, who firmly pursued the policy of organizing a socially proletarian state. The first step in the formation of truly peasant Soviets (village councils) against the elected Soviets with the "dictatorship of the pseudo-proletariat" belongs to Mikhail Kalinin.

The peasantry in Russia in most cases is a Community, many of which, for many years, had been formalized as an artel farm, they only had to be put on the rails of socialism. For this, Kalinin suggested sending workers to the village who had mastered the foundations of a socialist economy (movement of twenty-five thousand people).

At the turn of both centuries in 1900. the 1st volume of the most original and valuable work appears, K. R. Kachorovsky "Russian Community", in which the author, using the vast accumulated material on communal land tenure, gives a strictly objective, scientifically constructed theory of the emergence and types of transformations of the peasant community. Outlining its dynamics, growth, the author poses the task of resolving the question of whether Russian communal landownership, without decaying under the influence of new economic conditions (monetary economy and capitalist conditions), can not only be preserved, but also move into higher forms of collective ownership and land cultivation?

According to his accurate statistics, the communal land ownership is about 95 million. tithes in European Russia, which, as a percentage of the total amount of land in each category of peasants, is:

Ownership peasants - - 72, 3%

On state lands - 84, 2%

Specific peasants - - 97, 0%

Considering the size of the peasant population (in 50 gubernias of European Russia) equal to about 75 - 80 million souls, he calculated that about 56 million are in communal land tenure, and with the annexation of the population of the outskirts of Russia, up to 70 million or more will come out.

Community or Mir field land is arable land, mows, pastures and other lands, which is defined in article 113 of the "Local Great Russian situation". This Regulation determines the quantitative composition of the community from 3000 to 5000 souls), - this is not one village or village - this is a volost or several large villages. The manor land of each peasant household remains, according to the law (article 110 of the Regulations), in the hereditary use of the family living in that courtyard.

In central Russia and in general in the vast majority of Russian communities, pasture lands or pastures are in the undivided use of all householders, without being subject to any regulation on the part of the community.

In most communities, the Osmaks (a group of peasants of neighbors or one village) distribute hay land, like arable land, between individual owners, each of whom already mows his own plots. But in most cases, the octopus groups of owners harvest hay together, then distributing it among the yards, according to the number of allocation units of each, there are also cases that the hay is harvested by the whole community, after which each yard receives its share of the finished product.

Forest land is allocated to families on the same basis as arable land. Sometimes, for this purpose, all the trees of the plot to be divided are counted at the root and divided into several categories: scaffolding or timber for firewood, having determined the number of roots of each category per octopus, the entire space of the converted forest is distributed accordingly to the octopus shares, the owners, which are part of the octopus, distribute the trees they inherited among themselves with no less accuracy.

There are other ways of regulating the use of the communal forest, but they always determine the timing, assign a certain time for felling and all householders collectively harvest, sometimes the community prohibits selling the forest outside.

Arable land, hayfields and forest lands in most communities are located several tens of miles from the place of residence (in some provinces up to 60 miles). So the delivery of implements and agricultural products, hay and firewood was carried out collectively. Since not all households have a cart and even a horse.

A part of the secular land was assigned by the community for "communal" lands, where each member of the community was obliged to work. Products from the "communal" lands were distributed for the needs of the community itself and among the crippled, widows, "soldiers" and orphans (social community).

So, when one "literate" wrote that the peasants were driven into the collective farm almost under arms, this is the purest propaganda profanation, which has taken root in the minds of the generation. The current policy did not even try to refute this nonsense. Even the word "collective farm" and artel (a smaller part of the community) are taken from everyday peasant slang.

The Soviet government provided all peasants with free land and by providing equipment at state expense (since 1928, MTS), the government also made purchases of agricultural products. The peasants only needed to explain that the collective farm is your community, and the village council is the administrative body for managing rural life and culture, which they themselves form, which is what the twenty-five-thousanders did. At the call of the party, the number of 25 thousand people exceeded sixty thousand advanced workers, central cities, among which party members were just over 56%.

It was much easier to organize the work councils. The Bolshevik Party decided to use trade unions, which served as an arbiter between workers and employers. The main goal pursued by the trade unions is wages. This function of the trade unions was ardently defended by the leader of the trade union movement Tomsky, an ardent supporter of Trotsky.

With the adoption of the five-year plan, a crisis broke out in this matter. At the VIII All-Union Congress of Trade Unions in 1928-1929. there was a sharp conflict. Tomsky, chairman of the All-Union Central Council of Trade Unions, directly defined the position of trade unions in the USSR, in essence, the same as their position in capitalist countries. On January 1, 1930, the working stratum in the apparatus of the All-Union Central Council of Trade Unions was only 9 percent. People from other parties made up the total number of communists: 41.9% in the All-Union Central Council of Trade Unions, 37% in the Central Committee of Metalworkers, 24% in the Central Committee of Printers, and so on. There were 53 unions in the Central Committee of eleven unions that were alien and hostile to the proletariat. person."

The party nominated Kaganovich to lead the trade unions and reorganize the work of the unions in accordance with the requirements of the socialist state. Since 1928, all work collectives have reissued collective agreements between workers and employers, in this case state enterprises.

“The main task of the trade unions of the Soviet Union,” said Shvernik, secretary of the All-Union Central Committee of Trade Unions, in a speech to 130 foreign workers' delegates at the Moscow Palace of Labor, Moscau Daily News, November 12, 1932, “is to explain to workers what they are like the only owners of the means of production must learn to be responsible for these means."

“Consequently,” he continued, “the Soviet trade union is not an isolated organization, but a constituent element of the entire Soviet system, helping to carry out production programs through the organization of socialist competition and shock brigades, and taking care of meeting the cultural and material needs of the workers.”

All those working in one enterprise - the director, engineers, clerks, accountants, foremen, skilled and unskilled workers, factory doctors and nurses, and even cooks and cleaners - all these enterprise personnel are interested in the final output of products. Therefore, the attendance of meetings when discussing draft new collective agreements reached 95 and 100% in a number of enterprises. At the Hammer and Sickle plant in Moscow, the percentage of participation in the development of the collective agreement is 98.6%, at the Stalingrad Tractor Plant - 97%, at Krasny Oktyabr - 97%, at the Yaroslavl Brake Plant - 100%, at the Shuiskaya Manufactory - 100 % etc..

The workers undertake to fulfill the one and a half or double production rate, with the timely provision of materials and tools, in return the administration (plant, factory) builds and provides kindergartens and schools, summer camps and art houses for children, a palace of culture for the leisure of workers, libraries, stadiums, etc.. cultural institutions.

There is no external coercion … Collective agreements in capitalist countries are the conditions for an armistice between two warring armies. In the course of negotiations, entrepreneurs are trying to impose their own enslaving, worse conditions on the workers … But there are no enemies here. Nobody tries to give as little as possible and get as much as possible."

The collective of the enterprise itself is strongly interested in the fact that its representatives in the factory committee, the elected council is formed when drawing up the collective agreement, fully meets the important duties assigned to them, both by the state and the collective, where everyone will willingly sacrifice their time to resolve public affairs.

An American observer ventured, not without reason, to state that “the trade union factory is a growing force in the Soviet Union. It involves the workers not only in the union, but also in the entire economic activity of the country. It is the main organ of workers' democracy under the state and economic system, which is controlled by the workers and exists for them. In no other country does this type of workers' council have such power … In no other country does it have so many varied and important responsibilities. Nowhere do its members enjoy such freedom and are not vested with such responsibility as in the USSR. It serves as the main link through which the worker begins to take part in both factory and social life, to exercise his rights as an employee of this society and to participate in industry. (Robert W. Denn, Soviet Trade Unions, New York).

Councils of branch trade unions began to publish their own newspapers: Uchitelskaya Gazeta, Gudok, Literaturnaya Gazeta, etc.

The elected Council of the Writers' Union organizes, at the expense of the trade union, numerous trips, both within the Union and abroad. Writers and poets not only got acquainted with the life and atmosphere of giant construction projects, but also talked about life in other regions they visited. They were the messengers of culture and disseminators of knowledge.

Scientists and engineers are united in a central body called the Inter-Union Bureau of Engineers and Technicians under the All-Union Central Council of Trade Unions. They have their own executive bureaus, elected at these congresses … The bureau congress, which, according to statements, represented 125,000 section members, was held in 1932.

“Local trade union organizations,” Shvernik urged, “should strengthen their ties with engineers and other specialists, support them in their activities, relieve them of all small matters so that they can provide true leadership. The unions must ensure that these specialist managers receive the best material conditions."

The oldest and in the scientific world the most important of these associations of specialists is the Academy of Sciences, chaired by Academician Karpinsky. The Academy relied on the activities of over a thousand professors and researchers at 90 institutes. These institutions are scattered throughout the USSR, but most of them are concentrated in Leningrad, Moscow, Kiev and Kharkov. The equipment and facilities of many of these institutes are the envy of scientists in other countries. Councils, consisting of employees of these institutes, and formed an order for equipment, which was carried out by the Trade Union.

In addition to numerous scientific meetings, which read reports on each branch of science. The academy now hosts a known number of public receptions at which special "orders" are made. At the request of the USSR Pedagogical Council, scientists have developed a school desk that meets the standards of hygiene and sanitation. The angle of inclination of the table did not spoil the vision. (the older generation still studied at such desks). We corrected and approved textbooks for schools, for all programs.

Small artels, trade cooperatives and individual producers are united into regional councils, through which they can freely purchase waste, refuse and industrial residues from any state enterprise, and enterprises are invited to conclude agreements with the artels at conciliatory prices.

Artels can get the loans they need from the State Bank and sell their products where and how they want, in open markets and in their own retail stores. Except when they process raw materials obtained from state funds, the artels are no longer obliged to provide any share of their production to any state institutions, and all government departments are encouraged to place as many orders among the artels as they can.

Each artel can now seek and receive orders for its own products directly from consumer cooperative enterprises, from state and municipal institutions, from any of the state trusts, as well as from individual buyers. Prices can in each case be fixed by agreement or contract. The only transaction that is strictly prohibited is "speculation", that is, the purchase of goods for resale in order to make a profit. In other words, artels are not allowed to engage in simple trade.

The trade union hierarchy, as well as the production hierarchy, Councils are created in every union, enterprise, collective farm, as well as in other parts of the constitutional building of the USSR, through a series of multi-stage elections, based below on direct general elections by members of this union, receiving both wages and salaries, regardless of their gender, profession, vocation, qualifications, or degree of reward. These elections are made in relatively small gatherings of men and women.

For the first time in world history, the government made the greatest revolution in full unity with the broadest masses of its people, finally overthrowing the exploiters and abolishing exploitation forever. In contrast to the revolutions known in history, this revolution was carried out from above, at the initiative of the state power, with direct support from below from the millions of peasants, the millions of hands of the new proletariat, who were building not only the New Life, but also their relationship with the state.

No one can give a person complete happiness until he wants to, only he is competent in his desires and when he gets his hands on the reins of managing his life - this is self-government.

I. Stalin in his speech at the First All-Union Congress of Collective Farmers - Shock Workers in 1933 said:

“Sometimes they say: if socialism, why still work? We worked before, we are working now - isn't it time to stop working? Such speeches are fundamentally wrong, comrades. This is the philosophy of idlers, not honest workers. Socialism does not deny labor at all. On the contrary, socialism is built on labor. Socialism and labor are inseparable from each other. Lenin, our great teacher, said: "He who does not work does not eat." What does this mean, against whom are Lenin's words directed? Against the exploiters, against those who do not work themselves, but force others to work and enrich themselves at the expense of others.

And against whom? Against those who themselves idle and want to profit at the expense of others. Socialism requires not idleness, but that all people work honestly, work not for others, not for the rich and exploiters, but for themselves, for society."

In the country of the Soviets, there are only THREE officials whose signatures on decrees and resolutions must be adopted and executed by all governing bodies - these are:

M. I. Kalinin Chairman of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee, since 1937 Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR.

V. M. Molotov People's Commissar of the USSR, later Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the USSR.

N. M. Shvernik chairman of the All-Union Central Council of Trade Unions.

It is not superfluous to remind the reader of the notorious economic levers on which the self-government of administrative units was based. Production was allocated for social needs from profits.

All-Union Central Council of Trade Unions. The amount of money that the union will manage in addition to membership dues is astounding. The social insurance budget in 1933 was 4,432 million rubles, collected in the form of a tax on each enterprise at 1.5%, or 2% of its salary fund. Of this amount, 814 million rubles were allocated for sickness benefits, 532 million for old age and disability benefits, and 203 million rubles.- for holiday homes, 35 million for dietary meals for sick people, 930 million for hospitals, 189 million for nurseries and 600 million for workers' dwellings.

Moreover, this area of activity is rapidly expanding. The budget of the All-Union Central Council of Trade Unions for 1934, excluding the expenses of the 154 unions themselves for their usual activities, amounted to 5,050 million rubles. This included 1,514 million rubles for sickness benefits and pensions for disabled people, 1,040 million for the cost of medical care and hospital operation, 57 million for dietary meals for sick workers, 215 million for rest homes, 327 million for for nurseries and kindergartens that give mothers the opportunity to work in industry, 70 million for education, 885 million for workers' dwellings, 41 million for factory inspections, 50 million for organizing insurance and 170 million for for unforeseen needs or reserve. The corresponding budget for 1935 was no less than 6,079 million rubles.

All health resorts and rest houses throughout the Union were on the balance sheet of the All-Union Central Council of Trade Unions.

Local Councils were financed from republican budgets, regardless of Moscow or the central government of the Union:

20. The revenue side of the republican budgets of the ASSR includes:

1) The following tax revenues received in their territory:

a) 99% of all receipts from the unified agricultural tax;

b) 99% of all income tax receipts;

i) 99% of all proceeds from the trade tax;

d) tax on property transferred by inheritance and donation;

k) court fees and charges for institutions that are on the republican budget of the ASSR;

c) fees levied by the bodies of the People's Commissariats of Internal Affairs of the ASSR for the issuance of general civil foreign passports, visas for entry into the USSR and exit from the Union

SSR and residence permits for foreigners;

g) hunting fee.

2) The following non-tax revenues:

a) forest income;

b) income from industry and trade of local republican significance;

c) income from the exploitation of all state land property of state significance;

d) income from the lease of fishing and hunting grounds of state significance;

e) income from subsoil of republican and all-Union significance;

f) income from the sale of all state material funds located in the territory of the ASSR, except for funds of local importance;

g) income from the sale by institutions and enterprises of the republican budget of the ASSR of the property under their jurisdiction;

3) income from the participation of bodies on the budgets of the ASSR in joint-stock

societies (share partnerships);

i) receipts of fines imposed by the bodies on the republican budgets of the ASSR (except for fines for violations of the rules on excise taxes), as well as receipts from the sale of property confiscated by decisions of these bodies;

j) income from the return of loans issued from loans included in the budgets

ASSR, and from the return of expenses made at the expense of loans of the ASSR;

k) proceeds from the transfer of property escheated and ownerless into the ownership of the state;

l) income from loans of republican significance;

i) other non-tax income that can be provided by the ASSR by the legislation of the RSFSR;

o) a subsidy to the budget of the RSFSR to cover the deficits in the republican

the budgets of the ASSR.

21. The following are included in the expenditure part of the republican budgets of the ASSR:

expenses:

a) expenditures on financial estimates of Tsiks, Council of People's Commissars and non-united departments of the Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic (NKVD, NKYu, NKPros. NKZdrav, NKSO, NKZem). included in

republican budgets of the ASSR based on the delineation of the functions of the republican

and local budgets of the ASSR in accordance with the Regulations on Local Finances of the RSFSR:

b) the costs of financing the national economy, which is of republican importance for the given ASSR (except for those allocations that may be released according to the state budget of the RSFSR), namely, to finance industry, trade, agriculture, cooperation, electrification and construction;

c) expenses for repayment and payment of interest on concluded loans;

d) reserve funds of the Council of People's Commissars of the ASSR;

e) subvention funds of the ASSR;

f) local funds of republican significance for the given ASSR, as

established and may be established by the legislation of the USSR

and the RSFSR;

g) deductions to the local budgets of the ASSR from state taxes and revenues on the grounds and in the amounts established by the Regulations on Local Finances of the RSFSR;

h) subsidies provided to the local budget '! ASSR according to the decisions of the ASSR Council of People's Commissars

(SU 1930 K 19, art. 245)

According to this extract from the "Regulations on the budgetary rights of the ASSR" on the expenditure side, it is clear that the police, the court were the prerogative of the local authorities, which independently formed law enforcement agencies, security and the court.

The cooperative, which involved over 12 million people, also had an elective, collegial management of its economy.

From all of the above, it can be seen that many features of management and management, learned in the USSR, continue to live in many countries. The same cannot be said about the USSR after the 20th Party Congress. Nine months after Stalin's death, namely on August 27, 1953, the Constitution of the USSR was amended.

Art. 130 of the Stalin Constitution of 1936, the phrase: "in their struggle to strengthen and develop the socialist system" was replaced by: "in their struggle to build a communist society." A beautiful play on words. We walked along Socialist Street, took us out of the outskirts, in search of the hearth of Pope Karl, where puppets without a director play the main role.

But this is not the only change, in September of the same year, the editorial of the Pravda newspaper, repeated by all the media, recognized and suggested:

“Socialist property in its two main forms - state, that is, national, and collective farm, that is, group - constitutes the economic basis of the Soviet state, a condition for the continuous growth of social wealth, material well-being and culture of the working people …

… It is known that in state enterprises the means of production and all products are public property. On collective farms, the state owns the most important means of production - land and machinery, and the products of collective farm production are group property. In addition, the land assigned to the collective farms for perpetual use, the collective farms actually dispose of as their property, although they cannot sell it, buy it, lease it or mortgage it."

The new “Socialist economic system, public socialist property in the city and in the countryside do not separate people, like private property and capital, and unite the entire Soviet people, the working people of all nations inhabiting the USSR, into a single, friendly fraternal family. The workers, peasants and intelligentsia that make up Soviet society live and work on the basis of friendly cooperation, together they are building communism."

This is how the Stalinist era of socialism ended, where self-government was the main motivating factor in which epoch-making industrialization took place, and the centuries-old dream of the peasantry to freely own land and independently use the results of their labor came true.

Administrative and managerial personnel were in the service of the state! The country's budget had a separate item of expenditures for management. For example: the state budget for 1947:

Of the total budget expenditures, 371.4 billion rubles. the share of expenditures on the national economy and culture in the total volume of the state budget for 1947 is 64.3%, and on the country's defense - 18.0%.

According to the articles: for the national economy - 131.8 billion rubles, for social and cultural events - 107.1 billion rubles, the Ministry of the Armed Forces - 67.0 billion rubles, for the maintenance of government bodies, courts and prosecutors - 12, 8 billion rublesThis direction of funds is fully consistent with the tasks of the post-war development of the Soviet state, the tasks of the new five-year plan.

In 1946, the government adopted a number of decisions to reduce the cost of maintaining the administrative and managerial staff. In particular, in accordance with the government's decision of August 13, 1946 to prohibit the expansion of the staff of the administrative and managerial apparatus, 730 thousand vacant posts were canceled in all budgetary and economic organizations registered by financial agencies.

In 1947, a further reduction in the size of the administrative and managerial staff and expenses for its maintenance is planned.

After 1953, the Command-Administrative System of Management began to form, which everyone remembers, in which the budget item for management costs disappeared, socialism was swallowed up by the bureaucracy. In the center, in Moscow, representatives of all republics have become frequent visitors to beg and to knock them out. Homo Soveticus has acquired a unique psychological trait: "When the master comes, the master will judge us."

And since then I often see

Kholuy shine, servile eyes.