Milkhail Suslov 1948
Written: By M. A. Suslov, January 1, 1948;
Source: For a Lasting Peace, for a People's Democracy! Vol. 2, no. 3; February 1, 1948;
Transcribed: David Adams, March 2022.
Comrades!
Twenty-four years have elapsed since Vladimir I1ych Lenin died. On Jan. 21, 1924, that genius of mankind, organizer of the Bolshevik Party, founder of the Soviet state and leader, teacher and friend of the working people of the world departed this life.
The Central Committee of our Party, in its message “To the Party and All Working People”, wrote in those days of mourning:
“Never since the time of Marx has the history of the great movement for the emancipation of the proletariat produced so gigantic a figure as our late leader, teacher and friend. Everything that is truly great and heroic in the proletariat—fearlessness of mind, iron, inflexible, stubborn and all conquering will sacred hatred, mortal hatred of slavery and oppression, the revolutionary fervor that moves mountains, boundless faith in the creative powers of the masses, and immense organizational genius— found their magnificent embodiment in Lenin, whose name became the symbol of a new world from West to East, and from North to South."
With every passing year the beloved and endearing image of Lenin rises before us in ever increasing grandeur. The unfading ideas of Leninism gain ever new millions of followers and exercise an ever-growing influence on the entire course of world history.
Nearly a quarter of a century after Lenin’s death, the Bolshevik Party is marching firmly and steadfast along the Lenin path, fighting and conquering under the banner of Leninism. All these years the victorious standard of Leninism has been held aloft by Lenin’s disciple and colleague the leader of the Bolshevik Party, the worthy successor and great continuer of Lenin’s cause—Comrade Stalin (applause.)
The Socialist society built in our country by the Soviet people. led by the Bolshevik Party is the living embodiment of the all- conquering ideas of Leninism.
Lenin dedicated his entire life to the cause of awakening the toiling millions to conscious constructive effort of making them the masters of their own lives; active builders of a new Socialist society. The struggle of the Communist Party, guided by Lenin and Stalin, for the triumph of the new Socialist order has yielded magnificent fruits. The masses, guided by Lenin’s ideas, have already built a Socialist society in our country and are confidently marching toward Communism.
The Soviet Union affords an inspiring example to the peoples of all countries of how to reconstruct society in the interests of the working people by mustering the revolutionary creative energies and constructive initiative and resourcefulness of the masses. The Soviet state, which Lenin founded, has stood all the tests of history. The Patriotic War against the fascist invaders demonstrated the unbreakable might of the Soviet state in all Its greatness. The ardent patriotism and unparalleled heroism of the Soviet people at the front and In the rear furnished vivid testimony of the greatness and virility of the Socialist system.
The post-war period In the development of the Soviet state has been marked by new victories for the working people of our country. Confidently proceeding along the Lenin path, the Soviet people are successfully coping with the tasks of post-war economic development.
The enemies of our state believed that the enormous damage caused in our country by the war and the exceptional drought of 1946 would undermine the vitality of the Socialist economy. They hoped that the strength of the Soviet Union would be sapped by the burden of economic difficulties, that it would bow the knee and consent to enter into servitude to the imperialists. But once again our enemies miscalculated. The Soviet people, trained by Lenin and Stalin, are accustomed to rely on their own strength and have learned to break down all obstacles on the path to victory.
Only two years have elapsed since the Soviet people resumed their peaceful constructive labors and devoted all their energies to eliminating the drastic aftermath of the war and to further strengthening and developing Socialism. But what striking changes have already taken place in our country in these two years! The economy and cultural institutions of the areas that were occupied by the German fascists are being rapidly rehabilitated. Thousands of factories and mines are rising from the ruins and ashes, restored and even better equipped than before the war. Hundreds of our Cities are being resurrected, and thousands of villages that were almost completely razed to the ground by the German invaders are being rebuilt anew.
In 1947 alone over 18,000 million rubles were invested in capital construction work on the economic restoration of the areas which had been occupied by the enemy.
Thanks to the devoted efforts of the Soviet people the program of gross industrial output in the first two years of the five-year plan was fulfilled. In 1947. the plan for gross output of industry in general was fulfilled 103.5%. Compared with 1946, total industrial output in the past year increased by 22%.
One of the most graphic proofs of the vitality of our national economy is the steady growth of industrial output from year to year. The number of gainfully employed persons in our country is steadily increasing, chiefly by training of young skilled workers in the trade, railway and factory schools. Railway transport is making continuous progress. Big achievements are being registered in agriculture. The gross output of farm produce in 1947 compared with 1946, increased by 32% and the produce of agriculture alone by 48%. In 1947, grain yields reached pre-war level. The program of grain deliveries to the state was fully fulfilled.
Thanks to the achievements in production, as a result of the persistent efforts of the Soviet people, the state was able last year considerably to improve the living standard of the working people. Industrial progress and the accumulation of reserves of food and manufactured goods made it possible to abolish the ration system and to inaugurate distribution through normal trade channels, to successfully reform the currency and to reduce prices for consumer goods. The currency reform and the abolition of rationing will facilitate the further improvement of the material welfare of the working people, the rehabilitation and development of the national economy, and the further strengthening of the might of the might of the Soviet state. The abolition of rationing and the currency reform were a vivid reflection of the Socialist and truly popular character of our system. As distinguished from the capitalist countries, where there is a pronounced growth of inflation, where prices are rising and the masses are becoming more and more impoverished and forced to consume less, the USSR the abolition of rationing and the currency reform denote a big improvement in the welfare of the people and a rise in their standard of living.
To what are these splendid achievements of the Soviet country due? They are due to the tremendous superiority of the Socialist system over the capitalist system, to the superiority of that Soviet order the foundations of which were laid by Lenin. The economy of the capitalist countries is declining under the blows of a growing crisis, output is diminishing and the army of unemployed running into the millions is increasing. The capitalist countries of Europe, which suffered immeasurably less from the war than the USSR, are groping helplessly in search of means of resolving the acute economic and class contradictions of the post- war period. The masters of these countries are selling their national sovereignty in return for the enslaving “assistance” of the American plutocrats. The Soviet Union, where crises and unemployment are unknown, and which relies solely on its own strength and resources. Is steadily expanding its economy. The facts have demonstrated that both in war and in peace, as Stalin said, “the Soviet social system is a better form of organization of society than any non-Soviet social system.”
The great Lenin held that the source of the strength and invincibility of the Soviet state lay in the fact that it is essentially a people’s state, that it was founded for the benefit of the people, and is governed by the people. The Soviet power is invincible, Lenin said, precisely because it is the power of the laboring people, the power of the millions of workers and peasants. Lenin proved scientifically and it has been borne out by the thirty years development of the Soviet state that the Soviet form of government is a million times more democratic than the most democratic of the bourgeois republics, where democracy, as Lenin put it, is hypocritical and utterly false because it “is always restricted by the narrow framework of capitalist exploitation, and consequently always remains in reality a democracy for the minority, only for the possessing classes, only for the rich.”
Another vivid proof of the flourishing state of the Soviet democracy was the recent elections to the local soviets in the Union republics. The election campaign was distinguished by remarkable enthusiasm in industry and political activity by the Soviet people. Practically every elector voted for the candidates of the bloc of the Communists and the non-Party people. With immense political enthusiasm and unanimity the people elected Comrade Stalin as the first among the deputies to the local soviets. (Prolonged applause.)
The results of the elections were a demonstration of the unbreakable moral and political unity of the Soviet people and once more confirmed that our people fully approve of the policy of the Bolshevik Party and the Soviet Government and regard it all their own vital cause.
One of the greatest advantages of our Socialist system is that, having made the working people the masters of their destiny. It has for the first time in history elevated the common man, the toiler, to an unparalleled height and enlisted in active creative endeavor millions and millions of people who were crushed and downtrodden by the system of capitalist slavery. In doing so Socialism awakened and called into being new and gigantic forces for the development of society. Shortly before the October Revolution. Lenin wrote: “Only with Socialism will there begin a rapid, genuine, really large-scale progressive advance in all branches of public and individual life. In which the majority of the population, and then the whole population, will participate.” These prophetic words of Lenin have been fully confirmed by the experience of the Land of Socialism.
The profound creative activity of the Soviet people finds its expression in the development of Socialist emulation.
Lenin revealed and demonstrated that in Soviet society, capitalist competition, which operates blindly, spontaneously and destructively, would be replaced by a new, creative and constructive driving force— Socialist emulation. Lenin regarded Socialist emulation as a profound, inexhaustible source of development of Soviet society. “Socialism” he said “does not extinguish emulation; on contrary, it for the first time creates the opportunity for employing it on a really wide and on a really mass scale, for drawing actually the majority the population into an arena of labor in which they can display their abilities, apply their gifts to the full, reveal their talents, which are an untapped spring among the people and which capitalism crushed, suppressed and stifled in thousands and millions.”
The Bolshevik Party has given embodiment to Lenin’s ideas Socialist emulation, and made it the Soviet method of building a new society.
Today emulation has assumed a really nationwide character and become a powerful motive force of the constructive efforts of every republic, every region, territory, city and district. Emulation is continually engendering new forms of initiative among the people, discovering thousands and thousands of talented individuals among the masses, and revealing countless reserves for promotion of the productive forces of the Land of Soviets. The noble and patriotic initiative of the people of Leningrad to complete their five-year plan in four years has been taken up by the whole country.
The remarkable successes of Socialist emulation in the collective farms, machine and tractor stations and state farms have uncovered powerful reserves capable of increasing the productivity of agriculture. Our foremost people on the farms are leaving behind established production standards, demolishing outworn “dogmas” of agricultural science, and securing big harvests.
The successes achieved in economic and cultural fields gladden and inspire all our Soviet people, but do not make them complacent. Lenin and Stalin teach us to regard every achievement as a foothold, as a step on which to rise to higher achievements. In the third year of the post war five-rears plan our country must make a new leap forward in every branch of the national economy. We shall meet with not a few difficulties in coping with the problems before us. But these are difficulties of growth. The Soviet people, guided by the Bolshevik Party, know the ways and means of settling these problems and overcoming the difficulties.
Now, when the Soviet people are infused with the desire to complete the five-year plan in four years, the work of the Party, Soviet, economic, trade union and Young Communist League organizations must be directed toward developing Socialist emulation to the full, spreading it far and wide, securing the speedy and widespread dissemination advances achieved by the people in production, improving Socialist methods of management, more efficiently utilizing the hidden reserves of the national economy, strictly enforcing economy and combating mismanagement, and thus systematically raise the productivity of labor of every worker in every in every factory.
The keynote of Socialist emulation today is the maximum introduction of up-to-date technique and the speedy and efficient mastery of that technique. Lenin and Stalin have taught us that the guiding principle in the development of Socialist emulation is maximum mechanization, and the consequent electrification of the processes of labor, so as to economize labor and to improve and lighten the conditions of labor.
It is necessary emphatically to stress what Comrade Stalin said on this subject as far back as 1931: “Mechanization for us is the new and decisive factor, without which we shall not be able to stand either the tempo or the new scale of production.”
It may be said without exaggeration that rapid mechanization of the processes of labor is one of the major conditions for the fulfilment of the post-war five- year plan in four years. Increased mechanization is particularly important in such labor consuming branches of industry as coal mining, iron and steel, lumbering and building.
Now that rationing has been abolished, it must be one of the prime concerns of all our organizations considerably to increase the production of consumer goods, to expand and improve Soviet trade, to insure efficient and attentive service for the consumers and to mobilize additional local resources for the expansion of trade. If these problems are properly settled it will be an effective means of further raising the standard of living of the Soviet people.
Comrades, surveying the progress our country has made since the death of Lenin, we may lay that our Party and all our working people have spared no effort to give living form to Lenin’s ideas, and that, thanks to our loyalty to Leninism, we have overcome all difficulties and stood all tests with credit. The cause of Lenin has triumphed, and the peoples of the Soviet Union, cementing more closely their bonds of fraternal cooperation and inspired by Lenin’s ideas, are continuing their great constructive labors for the benefit of the Socialist Homeland.
The peoples of our country were the first In the world to smash the grip of imperialism and to lay the road to freedom. They achieved this because they followed the path indicated by Lenin.
Over 30 years ago, Lenin disclosed the profound contradictions and ulcers of imperialism and proved that imperialism is decaying, moribund capitalism. Lenin’s analysis of imperialism equipped the working class with an ideological weapon of tremendous power.
Lenin showed that imperialism means reaction all along the line. “For the working class”, he said, “imperialism means incredible accentuation of the class struggle, poverty, unemployment, high prices, the oppression of the trusts, militarism, and political reaction, which is raising its head in all, even the freest, countries.” Lenin disclosed that imperialism means more severe economic crises, heavier national oppression, sharper imperialist struggle between capitalist states, and unprecedentedly bloody wars.
Developments during these past decades have followed precisely the course predicted by Lenin. Imperialism engendered so brutal a form of reaction as fascism, with its sanguinary regime of terror. The periodic crises of capitalism have become more frequent and destructive. The first world war was followed by the second. and the period between the wars was filled with almost continuous “little wars.” Imperialism has brought endless hardship and suffering to the peoples.
Lenin advanced and demonstrated the thesis that imperialism is the eve of Socialist revolution, the last stage of capitalism. This fundamental conclusion reached by Lenin from his analysis of the imperialist stage in the development of capitalism has been confirmed by all subsequent developments.
Thirty years ago, our country broke away from the capitalist system and set out on the path of Socialist reconstruction. Since the first world war and the October Revolution, the anti-popular capitalist system has been in the grip of a general crisis that is growing ever more acute. The second world war still further, shook the foundations of capitalism. A number of countries of Central and Southeastern Europe have broken with imperialism and having established people’s democracies are successfully laying the foundations for the transition to the Socialist way of development. The most aggressive of the imperialist power — Germany, Italy and Japan—which only recently constituted the bulwark of imperialism and reaction in Europe and Asia, were smashed in the war. A powerful national liberation movement is developing’ in the colonies and dependencies.
In these post-war days the imperialists of the United States are aspiring to be the gendarmes of the world, stranglers of the liberty and independence of nations. “predatory American imperialism,” as Lenin called it, is striving for world domination, for the enthrallment and enslavement of all countries of the world. The American imperialists are clearly anxious to occupy the place of fascist Germany and Japan and are preparing for a new imperialist war.
In order to crush the movement for emancipation of the peoples and to suppress the growing discontent of the masses in their own country, the American imperialists are going all out to institute a regime of unbridled reaction. “Democracy” to the imperialists means the unrestricted rule and tyranny of the bankers and industrial monopolists, barbaric suppression of democratic elements, savage persecution of Negroes, and an attack on the elementary rights of the working people. On the pretext of combating Communism, the American imperialists are planning and executing armed intervention against the freedom loving peoples of Greece, China and Indonesia; they interfere in the domestic affairs of other countries, employing blackmail, intimidation and economic and political pressure.
The reckless policy of the American imperialists is fraught with serious consequences. One would have thought that such a historical lesson as the downfall of Hitler Germany and its associates would have taught the ringleaders of American imperialism and their junior partners in Britain a thing or two. It is appropriate to recall what Lenin said after the first world war:
“We see that Britain and America, who have greater opportunities than others to remain democratic republics, have become just as rabid and insensate as Germany was, and they are just as rapidly, and perhaps even more rapidly, moving toward the end which German imperialism has managed so successfully to reach. First it expanded incredibly until it swallowed three-quarters of Europe, grew fat, and then simply burst, leaving a terrific stench behind it. This is the end to which British and American imperialism is now speeding.”
It is becoming more obvious and apparent from day to day that the American imperialists have by their policy incurred the universal hatred of the freedom-loving nations.
The anti-imperialist, democratic camp is rallying its ranks closer and closer, and offering a vigorous rebuff to the American imperialists and their satellites and accomplices. The working masses are rising in their millions in defense of the independence and sovereignty of their countries and of their elementary rights. The movement of the people against imperialism is headed by the Communist parties, which have been tempered and tested in the fire of the struggle against fascism. The Communist parties are opening the eyes of the working people to the fact that tile Truman-Marshall plan is a noose which the bosses of the American monopolies are trying to fling around the necks of the peoples of Europe and Asia.
Imperialism would have collapsed long ago under the weight of its crimes, were it not backed up by its agents in the working class, the Right Socialists, who are playing the despicable role of henchmen of capital. These pseudo-Socialists poison the minds of the working class with lack of faith in its own strength, and justify the vile policy of imperialism. However, times change and even with the help of its “Socialist” lackeys, imperialism is unable to hold the masses in submission. The forces of imperialist reaction are growing weaker from day to day, and the forces of democracy and Socialism are growing stronger.
Neither the stratagems nor the savage fury of the imperialists can stop or suppress the growth of the forces of democracy and Communism all over the world. How prophetic do Lenin’s words about the invincibility of Communism sound, today: “Let the bourgeoisie toss and rage until they are black in the face... The bourgeoisie behave as all classes behaved when doomed by history... In all circumstances and in all countries Communism is becoming steeled and is growing. Its roots are so deep that persecution does not weaken or exhaust it but strengthens it.”
Striking evidence of the vitality and invincibility of the ideas of Communism, their attractive power and spread among the masses, is the growth of the Communist parties in all countries of the world. In France the Communist Party before the war had 300,000 members; it now has nearly a million. There were 15,000 Communists in Italy before the war; now there are 2,283,000. The Chinese Communist Party now has 2,700,000 members, as compared with 600,000 before the war. Communist influence has particularly grown in the new democracies, where the Communist parties are influential government parties and have many hundreds of thousands of members. The Communist parties enjoy the profound and increasing confidence of the working people all over the world as faithful and consistent defenders of the interests of the people, as genuine champions of lasting peace, popular democracy, and Socialism.
The growing resistance of the democratic, anti- imperialist camp to the aggressive plans of imperialism finds powerful support in the Soviet Union and its Stalin foreign policy. Soviet foreign policy is waging a consistent and indefatigable struggle against the instigators of a new war, for a lasting democratic peace and for the equality of nations. In the second world war the Soviet Union saved world civilization and the freedom and independence of the nations from the fascist barbarians; today, after the war, our great Soviet country stands in the vanguard of the struggle of the entire anti-imperialist, democratic camp, safeguarding the freedom and independence of nations, big and small, and the interests of mankind and civilization.
As early as 1920, Lenin said “... the course of events are teaching peoples to regard Russia as a center of attraction.” The course of historical development has made the Soviet Union more than ever a center of attraction to all laboring mankind.
Despite the provocations of the imperialist, anti- democratic camp, especially of its leading element, the USA, Soviet foreign policy is consistently striving for international cooperation. “Lenin,” Stalin said, “was the first to express the idea of cooperation between the two systems. Lenin is our teacher, and we Soviet people, are Lenin’s disciples. We have never swerved, nor will we swerve, from Lenin’s directions.” Soviet policy is guided by these directions.
In the great leader and teacher, Comrade Stalin, the masses of all countries see a noble standard bearer of peace and security, a steadfast defender of the freedom and independence of nations against the criminal designs of the imperialists. (Applause.)
The banner of Lenin and Stalin has become the banner of the peoples in their struggle against imperialism for lasting peace, national independence, people’s democracy, and Socialism.
Our Party alone has been able to accomplish the epoch-making task of transforming a capitalist society into a Socialist society. It was trained for this great task by its founder and leader, V. I. Lenin.
Today, when we are honoring the memory of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, we may proudly say that the Party, whose unity Lenin adjured us to guard as the apple of our eye, is now, under the leadership of its Leninist Central Committee, headed by Comrade Stalin, as strong, firm and monolithic as never before. (Applause.)
The Party of Lenin-Stalin has grown into an army many millions strong which is leading the whole Soviet people. The Soviet people look upon our Party as the guiding force of their might and well-being, of their invincibility and glory.
During the Patriotic War, when our country was menaced by formidable danger, when the enemy threatened all the achievements of Socialism, the Party roused the people to a man to repulse the fascist invaders, and led them to an epoch-making victory.
Today, in time of peace, the Bolshevik Party is organizing the self sacrificing efforts of the Soviet people to restore and then further develop the country’s economy in accordance with the post-war five-year plan. The Party is directing the advance. of Soviet society toward Communism, and all our economic and cultural endeavor, the whole work of the Party, is harnessed to the attainment of this great aim.
Under present conditions the Communist Party is paying especial care and attention to raising the cultural level and the Communist consciousness of the working people. In this the Party is guided by the precept in Lenin’s program that our state “is strong by virtue of the consciousness of the masses. It is strong when the masses know everything, are able to form their judgment on everything, and undertake everything with a conscious purpose." The Party stands by the belief that the greater the knowledge of the Soviet people, the sooner will our society effect the transition to Communism.
Soviet society has every right to be proud of its great achievements in the advancement of culture. Cultural development in the Soviet Union, both as regards its content and unprecedented range, may in all truth be said to be the affair of the whole people. “Nowhere”, Lenin said, “are the masses so interested in real culture as in our country; nowhere are cultural matters handled so profoundly and consistently as in our country.”
The cultural growth of the working masses finds its expression in an efficient system of universal elementary education, in the training of millions of intellectuals from the ranks of the workers and peasants, in the sphere of culture and technical knowledge among the working class and the collective farmers.
Culture in our country has become an essential and important part of Communist construction. Soviet culture is the most advanced culture, a culture with higher ideals, a culture infused with the noble ideas of friendship among nations, a Socialist attitude among people, respect for the man of labor, and hatred of all oppression.
An inalienable feature of Soviet culture is Socialist patriotism. Lenin taught us that our national pride and the Socialist interests of the workers coincide, and this idea of Lenin lies at the foundation of Soviet culture.
Servile worship of bourgeois culture, however manifested, is a departure from Soviet patriotism, from Socialism. It must not be forgotten that the imperialists endeavour to exploit for their own perfidious ends the servile bowing before everything foreign on the part of individual easily influenced Soviet citizens.
Present-day bourgeois culture is in a state of regression and decay; it has long since become the servant and kept mistress of a handful of big capitalists. Bourgeois culture, especially in the United States, is deeply impregnated with the poison of the misanthropic ideology of racialism, the ideology of the superiority of the “American race.” American “culture” cynically extols the rapacious designs of the American imperialists, justifies all oppression, lauds the most vile and bestial instincts. Exponents of true culture, who refuse to glorify American imperialism and the “American way of life,” are persecuted as state criminals.
The bourgeoisie of all countries and their “Socialist” menials rage and fume over the fact that in our country we uphold the principle of partisanship in ideology, partisanship in literature and the arts. They would like to see in our country ideological confusion and disunity, and the spread, under the label of “freedom for the arts” of that intellectual opium with which the minds of the workers in the bourgeois countries are doped. They dislike the principle of Bolshevik partisanship in ideology because it deprives them of the possibility of poisoning the working people of the USSR with the bourgeois ideology.
Lenin denounced the bourgeois preachers of “neutrality”, non-partisanship in the arts as servitors of capital, whose talk about creative freedom only masks the dependence of’ art on the moneybags. “Non- partisanship in bourgeois society”, Lenin said, “is only a fraud, a screen, a passive expression of affiliation to the party of the well-fed, to the party of the masters, to the party of the exploiters.”
Lenin’s principle of partisanship in ideology is of inestimable value for the elevation and triumph of the most progressive ideology and culture, the Soviet ideology and culture, over the corrupt culture of bourgeois society. The Bolshevik Party, faithful to the behests of Lenin, and protecting the spiritual interests of the Soviet people, stands guard over the purity of principle, the lofty ideas, and the militant partisanship of art and culture, vigorously repelling every attempt to reanimate the survivals of capitalism in the minds of men and to smuggle into Soviet culture political indifference, unprincipledness and formalism, which are fruits of the corrupt influence of bourgeois ideology.
Today, when our successful progress depends on the Communist mentality of the masses, the task of eliminating the survivals of capitalism from the minds of men has acquired particular importance. If we still meet with lack of discipline and lack of zeal at work on the part of individual workers, collective farmers, or office employees, with instances of pilfering of public property, mismanagement, conservatism, bureaucracy, with servile worship of things foreign on the part of individual members of the intelligentsia, all these are due to the survivals of capitalism in the minds of men.
To combat the survivals of capitalism, the Party utilizes the tried and tested weapon of criticism and self criticism, directing the fire of public opinion on all that is obsolescent and hinders our progress. Of immense service in exposing and combating all manifestations of bourgeois influence in the ideological field were thy decisions of the Central Committee of the Party on literature, art, and the cinema, as well as the discussion of philosophy undertaken on the initiative of the Central Committee of the Party. The measures taken by the Party to improve ideological work have stimulated a fresh advance in literature and the arts and have raised the ideological level of artistic creative endeavor.
The entire work of the Party in the sphere of Communist education of the working people and eradicating the survivals of capitalism in the minds of people is based on the invincible teachings of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin. Marxist-Leninist theory is the Party’s guiding star pointing the way to the victory of Communism.
One hundred years ago appeared the Communist Manifesto of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, in which the new most advanced and only scientific philosophy. Marxism, was first expounded. The birth of Marxism ushered in a veritable revolution, a new epoch in the science of society and the history of mankind. The Manifesto scientifically proved the inevitability of the downfall of capitalist society, and that it was the historical mission of the proletariat to be the grave digger of capitalism and the builder of a new, classless society.
The vitality of the Marxist teaching has been confirmed by the whole course of social development. The victory of Socialism in the USSR, the growth of the Communist forces all over the world, and the impending collapse of capitalism, are irrefutable proofs of the cogency of the Marxist theory.
Marxism is a creative theory which is constantly developing, and therein lies its invincible strength. In the new phase of history, Lenin, that master mind of science, developed Marxism further, raised it to a new and higher level, enriched it with new discoveries, and equipped the Party with an invincible ideological weapon in the struggle for the victory of Communism.
The Bolshevik Party, conscious of the immense value of progressive theory, has insured the wide dissemination of the ideas of Marxism-Leninism among the masses. Publication of the works of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin has made the immortal teachings of the founders of Marxism-Leninism accessible to the people. The works of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin have been published in the Soviet Union in a total of 721 million copies. The Party will continue to work indefatigably to equip all Communists with the invincible teachings of Lenin, to educate all the working people in the Communist philosophy. In view of the fact that the CPSU(B) has grown very considerably in recent years, Party organizations must now chiefly concentrate on the ideological education of Communists.
Mastery of Leninism is a vital necessity for all active and conscious builders of Communist society, and especially for our Party and Soviet cadres, for all our intelligentsia. To cope successfully with the task of educating the working people in the Communist spirit, of waging an uncompromising struggle against the various manifestations of bourgeois ideology, of efficiently directing all branches of economic, political and cultural activity, Party and Soviet cadres, and all our intelligentsia must persistently study the science of Marxism-Leninism.
The Party is strong by virtue of the progressive theory with which it has been armed by Lenin and Stalin. If, since its foundation, the Party, in the most diverse historical situations and in the most complex conditions, has been able to follow a correct course, has always had a correct, scientifically founded policy, and has achieved epoch-making victories, this has been due to the life-giving power of the Marxist- Leninist teaching “There can be no doubt”, Comrade Stalin has said, “that as long as we remain faithful to this doctrine, as long as we possess this compass, we shall be successful in our work”.
Comrades, it is nearly a quarter of a century since Vladimir Ilyich Lenin departed from us forever. Through all these years the Soviet people have been fighting and winning, and marching forward with a firm stride along the Lenin path, the path to Communism. Lenin’s great behests have been given living shape and form, have found their embodiment in the new society built in our country on the principles of Leninism. The Communist, Bolshevik Party is triumphantly leading the Soviet people along the Lenin path towards new epoch-making victories. Our Party has grown into a great united army, many millions strong. It has won the affection of the whole people, the unbounded confidence and support of the working people. This it owes to its founder, Lenin, and to his faithful comrade and continuer of his work, Comrade Stalin. (Stormy, prolonged applause).
Long live our invincible battle standard—Leninism!
Long live our Bolshevik Party!
Long live the great Soviet people!