Two faces of socialism

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

Abuse is the greatest enemy of power, for what is order?

- A power that is not afraid to moderate itself.

A very significant photograph caught my eye, which captures the procession of two state leaders on foot (!), Without a retinue of assistants and secretaries, without a cortege, apparently, either to a meeting or to work places. According to the advertisement, the photo was taken in April - May 1941. (The film "The First Horse", directed by Efim Dzigan, was released in early 1941). And the image of MI Kalinin already betrays his advanced age, he - the designer of Soviet power, deserves a separate article.

What else is remarkable about photography? The absence of numerous guards, this characterizes the complete trust in the people and, conversely, the people's respect for the authorities.

Where or how is the presence of an autocratic regime of personal power manifested in the photograph, which was so generously inscribed in the annals of history?

Would the removal of one person change the course of the country's development? Unlikely. Or more specifically - no! It was a large collective of like-minded Bolsheviks imbued with a fanatical goal of social and economic change.

Most governments, in all countries and at all times, are not seeking change of any kind. Their purpose is primarily to "maintain order", that is, the existing order, and to defend or repel an attack from inside or outside.

The Soviet government openly exists with the deliberate goal of changing the existing order, and not sometime, in a distant time, but now, within the life of the existing generation; and this change applies not only to general principles, but also to the most intimate aspects of the life of the people.

This was well understood, both by the foreign enemies of the Soviet power, and by the internal ones, in the confessions of the Trotskyists, in the trials of the 37s, it was said that the goal was to eliminate the top of the Party Central Committee.

Stalin expressed himself very accurately about the collegial government of the country in an interview with the German writer Emil Ludwig on December 13, 1931. To the question: - “There are sixteen chairs around the table at which we are sitting. Abroad, on the one hand, they know that the USSR is a country in which everything must be decided collectively, and, on the other hand, they know that everything is decided individually. Who decides?"

Stalin's answer is expressive and definite. He said:

“No, you cannot decide on your own. Single-handed decisions are always, or almost always, one-sided decisions. In every collegium, in every collective, there are people whose opinion must be reckoned with … Based on the experience of three revolutions, we know that out of approximately 100 individual decisions that have not been tested, not collectively corrected, 90 decisions are one-sided.

Our governing body, the Central Committee of our Party, which directs all our Soviet and Party organizations, has about 70 members. Among these 70 members of the Central Committee are our best industrialists, our best co-operators, our best suppliers, our best military men, our best propagandists, our best agitators, our best experts on state farms, our best experts on collective farms, our best experts on individual peasant farming, our best experts nationalities of the Soviet Union and national politics.

The wisdom of our party is concentrated in this Areopagus … Everyone has the opportunity to contribute their experience. If this were not the case, if decisions were made individually, we would have had serious mistakes in our work. Since everyone has the opportunity to correct the mistakes of individuals, and since we reckon with these corrections, our decisions are more or less correct."

For clarity about the collegiality of the decisions: "Treaty on the creation of the USSR", from four contracting parties, four republics at least 15 murals, a draft of the decision "to send troops to Afghanistan", the decision of the Central Committee was signed by 12 members of the Central Committee and below, separately by Brezhnev.

This is how all the documents of Soviet power, signed by ALL members of the Presidium of the Central Executive Committee or the Bureau of the Central Committee of the Party of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks), look like, and not those "Filkin's letters" that appear in the press, allegedly extracted from the archives …

The Bolsheviks who came to power were well aware that in order to raise the people from barbarism to an advanced civilization, it was necessary to free the entire people from the subordination and control inevitably associated with the institutions of private ownership of the means of production.

In wartime, full coordination of the forces of the people is achieved through autocratic orders, the execution of which is ensured by severe punishments. The transformation of the social and economic life of each and every one seems, however, to be a different and more difficult task than to repulse the invading army, and it cannot be achieved by peremptory orders and prohibitions.

It is connected with the need to change the consciousness of an entire people. It requires universal education, persistent propaganda, patient explanation and personal example, influencing every person, of any age, everywhere and everywhere.

It is clear that such a transformation of society cannot be a matter that a simple dictatorship can handle, even if it is in the hands of the greatest of men. In essence, we are not talking about creating another "leader" or even a single "leader" at all. This requires the active participation of millions of leaders.

Influencing people's lives, changing consciousness, teaching new personal skills - all this in most cases requires direct personal contact at work and during leisure hours. In the Stalinist era, this specific influence is carried out in practice not by one person, not by the statesmen standing at the top, although they can direct it; it is carried out everywhere by the millions of elite proletarians, members of the Communist Party, who never cease their personal contacts with fellow workers.

“Communists Forward” is not only a call - it is an example that inspired the people to liberate the country's territory and suppress fascism in Europe. After the Second World War, it was the communists who led the restoration of the country, after the barbaric destruction inflicted by hordes of European "liberators".

Already in 1947, the industrial potential of the USSR was fully restored, and in 1950 it more than doubled in relation to the pre-war 1940. None of the countries affected by the war had even reached the pre-war level by this time, despite the massive financial infusions from the United States.

Only in the 5 post-war years on the collective and state farms were established field-protective forest plantations on an area of 1, 7 million hectares; in addition, state forests have been planted and sown 2.9 million hectares.

In the September 1953 issue of the National Business magazine, Herbert Harris' article "The Russians Are Catching Up" noted that the USSR was ahead of any country in terms of growth in economic power, and that the current growth rate in the USSR was 2 -3 times higher than in the USA.

After Stalin's death, the incoming nomenklatura dealt a severe blow to all the country's development projects. Hundreds of pages have been written about this, but the most colossal blow, which the new history "modestly" is silent about, was a blow to the community!

Two centuries of Christianization, three hundred years of tsarist rule, the Stolypin reforms could not crush the Russian peasant, for which the "new" nomenklatura, usurping the power of the party, trade unions, cooperatives, in a few years realized the centuries-old dream of the feudal lords - landowners - by overthrowing the Russian community.

According to the Stalinist constitution of 1936, Article 5 of the Constitution of the RSFSR, socialist property in the RSFSR has either the form of state property (public property) or the form of cooperative-collective farm property (property of individual collective farms, property of cooperative associations).

Collective ownership of the means of production and collective labor, armed with advanced modern technology. The Soviet peasantry, said JV Stalin, "is a completely new peasantry, the likes of which has not yet been known in the history of mankind."

In the USSR, by 1956, there were 93 thousand collective farms, 4857 state farms and 8985 MTS, (including MES - machine-excavator stations for irrigation). What is the difference between state and collective farms? State farms and MTS were created with state funds, were financed by the state, and the leadership was appointed by the state.

Collective farms are formed at the expense of farm income, independent election of the board and distribution of income. By 1936, 600 households were already millionaires. The land was transferred to collective farms for unlimited (eternal) use.

The cooperation is the property of shareholders, owns a chain of stores (80% of trade in rural areas), industrial cooperation, construction and full supply of building materials to collective farms, warehouses, procurement offices, processing enterprises. For January 1954. there were 19,960 rural consumer societies. All activities of which were carried out on the basis of self-financing.

By the beginning of 1956, there were: cattle - 70,421 thousand heads; pigs - 56482 thousand heads; sheep and goats - 145653 thousand heads, of which more than 60% belonged to the collective property of collective farms, adding here the entire infrastructure of collective farms, consumer and industrial cooperatives, with one stroke of the pen became state property!

The Russian community, represented by more than eighty million collective farmers, artel workers, tradesmen and cooperators, was brutally robbed. The era of Stalinist socialism has ended, the motto of which was: "Let's preserve and increase"! From now on, the motto of the era of the decline of socialism has become: "This is all ours." And there were robbers, thugs and consumers of all levels - to live on gratis.

The conclusion is automatically formulated as to how the leaders, the communists of the Stalinist era, differed from the subsequent one - the decline of socialism.

The communists of the Stalinist era, and the majority of the country's population, did a common cause and bore personal responsibility.

The communists after the Stalinist period have acquired a personal "file" and are characterized by collective irresponsibility.

The defense of the "honor" of the uniform, the party, the ministry - the department came to the fore. "The system does not abandon its own people!" became the motto of an entire era and firmly established itself in modern society. The unsinkability of the bureaucracy resulted in ignoring laws, in the inability of leaders at all levels. The result of collective irresponsibility is uncontrolled disposal of budgetary funds, embezzlement and corruption of the system.

It was in the second period of socialism that the Soviet ideological apparatus and the Soviet censorship were mired in political squabbles of the highest echelon of power, the social life of the people was left without attention, it was exposed as a “victim” of politics. Take, for example, the deputy corps of all levels of government, who executed and formed the Power of the Soviets of the Stalin era. And these are millions of honored workers, workers and peasants. Honored, not favored.

For some reason, they did not pay due attention to this important aspect of the functioning of the Soviet system. Perhaps this was due to the fact that among the nomenklatura party workers, the mandate of a deputy of the Soviet was only an appendix to the main, party position. There was little time left to carry out parliamentary duties. Voters did not always manage to deal with real servants of the people, as the Soviet mass media called the deputies.

The people's representatives, of the Stalinist period, tried not to advertise their activities, did not push themselves out, did not "PR", as they would say in our days. Most of the deputies were united by adherence to certain written and unwritten norms and principles of parliamentary ethics. Serving the people was considered their only privilege.

Well-known scientists, doctors, theater and film actors, other prominent people of the Stalinist period, as deputies, carried out a huge painstaking work. They raised important public issues, sought solutions to the real life problems of their voters, the institutions in which they themselves worked. How much they managed to do, using their deputy status, served as their availability at any time. It was the face of power and at the same time the mouthpiece of the people to power.

Throughout the entire Stalinist period, the voters' right to recall a deputy who did not justify the confidence of the majority of voters was preserved and used. The deputies had to regularly report to the voters, listen to the voices of the masses, to criticism from below, to really deal with the needs of the voters and the solution of their problems. Orders and requests of voters were considered as priority documents in the work of the deputies. The right to recall the deputies determined their control over the people and the complete dependence of the deputies on the voters.

“… The last phrase is remembered,” the hero of Yulian Semyonov put it. Thus, the social system, which will be remembered by most of the readers, was the decline of the socialist era, a return to which would be undesirable.

I. Stalin's interview with the German writer Emil Ludwig: