“Three years ago Hitler declared for all to hear that his aims included the dismemberment of the Soviet Union and the wresting from it of the Caucasus, the Ukraine, Byelorussia, the Baltic lands and other areas. He declared bluntly: “We will destroy Russia so that she will never be able to rise again.” This was three years ago. However, Hitler’s crazy ideas were not fated to come true—the progress of the war scattered them to the winds. In actual fact the direct opposite of the Hitlerites’ ravings has taken place. Germany is utterly defeated. The German troops are surrendering. The Soviet Union is celebrating Victory, although it does not intend either to dismember or to destroy Germany.
Comrades! The Great Patriotic War has ended in our complete victory. The period of war in Europe is over. The period of peaceful development has begun.”
Read more“If the Red Army was able successfully to fulfil its duty to its country and drive the Germans from the Soviet land, it was because of the unreserved support it received in the rear from our whole country, from all the peoples of our country. “Everything for the Front!” has been the watchword this year in the selfless work of all Soviet people—workers, peasants, intellectuals—as well as in the directing activities of our Government and Party bodies.”
Read more“The Soviet State was never so stable and unshakable as now, in the third year of the Patriotic War. The lessons of the war show that the Soviet system is not only the best form of organizing the economic and cultural development of the country in the years of peaceful construction, but also the best form of mobilizing all the forces of the people for resistance to the enemy in war time. Soviet power, established 26 years ago, has transformed our country within a short historical period into an impregnable fortress. The Red Army has the most stable and reliable rear of all the armies in the world.”
Read more“The programme of action of the Anglo-Soviet-American coalition is: the abolition of racial exclusiveness; the equality of nations and the inviolability of their territories; the liberation of the enslaved nations and the restoration of their sovereign rights; the right of every nation to arrange its affairs as it wishes; economic aid to the nations that have suffered and assistance to them in achieving their material welfare; the restoration of democratic liberties; the destruction of the Hitlerite regime.”
Read more“The German invaders want a war of extermination with the peoples of the U.S.S.R. Well, if the Germans want to have a war of extermination, they will get it. From now on our task, the task of the peoples of the U.S.S.R., the task of the fighters, commanders and the political workers of our Army and our Navy will be to exterminate every single German who has set his invading foot on the territory of our Fatherland. (Loud applause. “Hear, hear!” Cheers.) No mercy for the German invaders!”
Read more“By waging a resolute struggle against militarism and imperialism, the revolutionary Kuomintang in Wuhan will become in fact the organ of a revolutionary-democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry, while Chiang Kai-shek’s counter-revolutionary group in Nanking, by severing itself from the workers and peasants and drawing closer to imperialism, will in the end share the fate of the militarists.”
Read more“Women workers and peasants are mothers who bring up our youth--the future of our country. They can cripple the spirit of a child or give us youth with a healthy spirit, capable of taking our country forward. All this depends on whether the woman and mother has sympathy for the Soviet system or whether she trails in the wake of the priest, the kulak or the bourgeois. That is why the political education of women workers and peasants is a task of primary importance, a most important task for real victory over the bourgeoisie today, when the workers and peasants have set about the building of a new life. That is why the importance of the first women workers' and peasants' congress, which laid the foundations for the task of politically educating working women, is really quite inestimable.”
Read more“Comrade Trotsky is absolutely in the wrong when he maintains that Lenin under-estimated the legality of the Soviet, that Lenin had not understood the serious significance of the seizure of power by the All-Russian Soviet Congress on October 25th, that just for this reason Lenin had insisted on the seizure of power before October 25th. This is untrue. Lenin proposed the seizure of power before October 25th for two reasons. Firstly because it was to be feared that the counter revolutionaries might at any moment hand over Petrograd to the Germans, which would have cost the rising insurrection blood, and that, therefore, every day was precious. Secondly because of the mistake of the Petrograd Soviet in fixing and publicly announcing the day for the insurrection (October 25th), which could only be made good by the insurrection actually taking place before the day legally fixed.”
Read more“There is the capitalist way, which is to make agriculture large-scale by implanting capitalism in agriculture—a way which leads to the impoverishment of the peasantry and to the development of capitalist enterprises in agriculture. We reject this way as incompatible with Soviet economy.
There is another way: the socialist way, which is to introduce collective farms and state farms into agriculture, the way which leads to uniting the small peasant farms into large collective farms, employing machinery and scientific methods of farming, and capable of developing further, for such farms can achieve expanded reproduction.
And so, the question stands as follows: either one way or the other, either back—to capitalism, or forward—to socialism. There is not, and cannot be, any third way.”
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