p During the years of the prewar five-year plans the socialist system became firmly established, grew into a powerful economic and moral-political force embodied in the Soviet state. However, nazi Germany’s treacherous and predatory attack on the Soviet Union in 1941 interrupted the Soviet people’s peaceful creative labours and arrested the onward motion of the socialist economy’s productive forces. There started the Great Patriotic War against the reactionary forces of world imperialism headed by German fascism, from which our country emerged the victor.

p It was a victory of the socialist system, of the indestructible alliance between the workers and peasants, of the moral and political unity of the Soviet people; it was the victory of the Communist Party’s Leninist policy, which had ensured the success of the country’s industrialisation and the collectivisation of agriculture. The successful application of this policy turned the Soviet Union into a mighty industrial and agricultural power capable of standing up to and defeating any aggressor who dared to assail the honour, liberty and independence of our socialist homeland.

p This great life-affirming force of our socialist system, however, was not recognised and was even slighted not only by the nazi clique, but by all the reactionary forces of the 243 bourgeois world. Even before the war the reactionary bourgeois press described life in the Soviet Union in the most gloomy colours, denigrated the Soviet social system in every way and tried to prove the instability and weakness of its political and economic underpinnings. A special target of this vicious propaganda was the collective-farm system and the collective farmers. These were regarded as the weakest and most vulnerable links in the system of the Soviet socialist state. No wonder that from the very first days of the war many bourgeois troubadours maliciously prophesied the inevitable collapse of the Soviet state in the first two or three months or within half a year at the latest.

p And so we see that before the war started world public opinion was incessantly being moulded by anti-Soviet propaganda. In attacking the Soviet Union Hitler was guided by the same motives that had been ground out day by day for many years by the machine of reactionary propaganda, by intelligence and diplomatic services and by all kinds of informants and informers. We now have quite a spate of literature on this score in the form of memoirs, diaries and documents. In this connection let us examine in brief outline some of the calculations which the leaders of fascist Germany banked on.

p First, in attacking the Soviet Union Hitler was convinced of the weakness of the socialist system and its whole political and economic structure. He counted on the Soviet socialist state, in the first place the collective-farm system, collapsing like a house of cards at the very first strong military strike. Proceeding from this false assumption, the nazi clique were convinced that Soviet socialist society was a myth of communist idealism having no foundation in real life.

p Second, in attacking the U.S.S.R. Hitler was convinced that the country’s workers and peasants had long been looking forward to their liberation from the "Bolshevik shackles" and that a single military blow from without would make the workers and peasants rise up in arms against the Bolsheviks. While there may have been some doubts in these calculations as regards the working class, whose revolutionary traditions were sufficiently well known, there were no such doubts in regard to the peasantry of whose support and bread-and-salt welcome for the fascist “liberators” the nazis were quite assured.

p Third, in planning his blitz victory over the U.S.S.R. 244 Hitler counted also on the weakness of the union of our multinational peoples. He viewed national relationships in our country with the eyes of an imperialist of the deepest dye. He believed it sufficient to intimidate, bribe and incite one nation against another to have the unity of Soviet nations collapse in an instant and the gates opened to him into the Ukraine, the Caucasus, Byelorussia, the Baltic republics, the Urals and Central Asia.

p All these calculations proved to be fatal miscalculations which led to the ruin of the sinister plans built by Hitler and his clique. The Soviet state proved in fact to be not a myth, but a fortress of steel; instead of falling to pieces the Soviet socialist system stood firm in face of superior enemy forces. If the Soviet Union had only fascist Germany to deal with it would have defeated the nazis in a short space of time. But the U.S.S.R., as we know, had to face the joint forces of practically the whole of Europe, whose military and economic potential had been used to the full. Nevertheless, as was to be expected, the upper hand in this mortal combat was gained by the socialist system, by its superior economic might, by the insuperable moral and political unity of its people, by the impregnable fortress of the socialist state.

p The nazi aggressors badly misreckoned in regard to the kolkhoz peasantry too. They were to experience on their own hide the full force of the peasants’ wrath and burning hatred of the foreign enslavers. The kolkhoz peasantry, educated by the Communist Party, evinced the greatest patriotic devotion to their socialist country and fought the fascist hordes tooth and nail. If, during the Civil War, the working class had to persuade and urge the peasants on to fight the internal and external enemies, in the Patriotic War one would have had difficulty in distinguishing the heroic deeds of the workers from those of the peasants. A great role in the creation of this monolithic force belonged to the Communist Party, to our socialist social system, which sealed the indestructible alliance of the working class and the kolkhoz peasantry.

p This was an outstanding feature of all the peoples of the Soviet Union. History knows of no such example of patriotism, international friendship and monolithic unity of all nationalities as that which the Soviet peoples demonstrated during the years of painful ordeal. And here too 245 the decisive role belongs to the strength and solidity of the socialist system, to the correct Leninist line of the Party’s national policy. All this meant that our multinational state had been built on a sound socio-economic, political and ideological foundation and had been growing and developing: in the right direction.

p Now let us examine the alignment of the embattled forces in the light of concrete facts. The Communist Party, of course, entertained no illusions of an easy struggle with a powerful and treacherous enemy. At the very outset of the war it told the people straight out the bitter truth about the deadly danger that hung over the country. It should not be forgotten that at the beginning of the war against the U.S.S.R. the whole of Europe with its economic and technical resources and manpower lay under the heel of fascist Germany. In addition to her own economy, which was fully geared to war, she exploited the productive forces of enslaved Western Europe. For example, fascist Germany had seized in France, Holland and Belgium about 8,800,000 tons of oil products and fully disposed of Rumania’s oil fields which yielded 5,500,000 tons of oil products a year. In addition, Germany had seized in France all the latter’s strategic stocks—42,000 tons of copper, 27,000 tons of zinc and 19,000 tons of lead.  [245•* 

p The occupied countries of Europe sharply increased the capacity of Germany’s war industry. The munitions turned out by the Czechoslovak Skoda factories alone could keep from forty to forty-five German divisions supplied with all kinds of armaments. Germany had at her disposal the motorcar industry of Italy and other European countries capable of producing 600,000 vehicles a year. She had a vast amount of transport equipment and railway rolling stock. During the first two years of the war the fascists took out from France alone 5,000 railway engines and 250,000 cars. Rich stores of industrial raw materials and food supplies in occupied Europe fell into the hands of Germany and were used in the war against the Soviet Union. The value of the material resources seized by the nazis in the occupied European countries in 1941 amounted to 9,000 246 million pounds sterling, which was double the annual national income of Germany before the war. To this should be added the wide use which the fascists made of foreign manpower. They mobilised for their munitions works twelve million foreign workers, thereby releasing a vast army of their own workers for military service, for the formation of new divisions.

p Such was the military and economic might which the Soviet state was faced with. In addition to this, the wareconomy potential of the country was considerably weakened by the occupation of Soviet territories. Suffice it to say that the German-occupied Soviet territories contained about 40 per cent of the country’s whole population, produced 63 per cent of the total prewar output of coal, 68 per cent of pig iron, 58 per cent of steel and 60 per cent of aluminium output. The temporarily occupied territories were important economic bases of agriculture, yielding as much as 38 per cent of the prewar output of grain and 84 per cent of all prewar output of sugar and having a livestock population amounting to 38 per cent of its cattle and 60 per cent of its pigs.  [246•* 

p Flushed with their temporary but nonetheless tangible success, Hitler and his imperialist clique were confident of the victorious outcome of the war in favour of Germany. But this too was a serious miscalculation revealing a complete forgetfulness of the specific features of the socialist system, a failure to understand that the Soviet state was not a walkover, not a field for fascists to ramble in, the way they did in capitalist Europe. Of course, our country’s position was a very dangerous one, but by no means a hopeless one. The people had boundless faith in the mighty will and wisdom of the Party and were utterly devoted to the Leninist headquarters—the Central Committee of the Party.

p In these extremely difficult conditions the Central Committee of the C.P.S.U. made titanic efforts, which will ever serve as an example of unbending will, courage, Leninist wisdom and revolutionary strategic action. On August 16, 1941 the C.C. of the C.P.S.U.(B-) and the Soviet Government made an historic decision by endorsing a war-economy plan. This plan provided for the translocation of industry into the eastern districts of the U.S.S.R. and the organisation 247 in these districts of munitions production for the needs of defence. This courageous, incredibly daring step testified to the wisdom and foresight of the Party and its confidence in the ultimate victory of the Soviet people over the enemy. There is no need here to go into the details of this plan, but that it was farsighted, thoroughgoing, bold and sagacious in the best Leninist tradition there is not the slightest doubt.

p In keeping with this war-economy plan over 1,360 big enterprises, most of them munitions works, were rebased in the eastern districts in the course of three months. Of this number 455 were redislocated in the Urals, 210 in Western Siberia and 250 in Central Asia and Kazakhstan. Thus, in the course of three months ending 1941 a huge mass of industrial units were on wheels. Bv the end of the second half-year, however, the evacuated industry was put in operation and increased production from 3,100 million rubles in the first half-year to 5,100 million rubles in the second half-year of 1941. During the war years that followed socialist industry produced a volume of goods which was more than sufficient to cover the needs of defence and finally ensured victory over the enemy. Despite enormous losses, socialist industry quickly regained its feet. Already by 1944 the total industrial output in the Soviet Union’s eastern districts rose 180 per cent compared with 1940, while that of the war enterprises increased 6.6 times.  [247•*  All this was achieved thanks to the viability of the Soviet Union’s war economy based on the socialist mode of production.

p The picture in socialist agriculture at the time was as follows. The evacuation of social property, first and foremost livestock, machines and grain stocks, into the interior passed off in a fairly organised manner and with a minimum of loss. Our collective farms and state farms were able in a short space of time to reorganise production in accordance with wartime demands and keep the front and the country at large regularly supplied with raw materials and foodstuffs. Despite the serious depletion of agriculture’s material and technical resources and manpower, the land under cultivation in the unoccupied areas—the central region, the Volga region, the Urals, Siberia, Transcaucasia, Central Asia, Kazakhstan, the Soviet Far East and North—increased considerably.

p The highest rate of increase in grain crop cultivation took place in the Far East (30 per cent), and Central Asia (20 per cent). The acreage under cereals increased considerably in Siberia and Kazakhstan. Groats, especially millet, and industrial crops accounted for a sharply increased share of the sown area. For example, in 1942 compared with 1940 the area under industrial crops (oil-bearing crops and sugar beet) increased in the Far East by 37 per cent and in Siberia by 27 per cent. Vegetable crops went up sharply, showing an increase in 1942 over the prewar level of 44 per cent in Siberia, 37 per cent in the Urals, 30 per cent in the Far East and 32 per cent in Central Asia and Kazakhstan.  [248•* 

p The following figures illustrate the development of social livestock farming. The collective farms and state farms of the Soviet Union’s eastern districts under the difficult conditions of wartime considerably increased the commercial livestock population: cattle rose from 11,400,000 at the beginning of 1941 to 12,500,000 at the beginning of 1943; sheep and goats, during the same period, from 28,100,000 to 34,200,000. The turning point in agriculture could be said to have been reached in 1944. With the liberation of enemy-occupied territory there was a perceptible increase in the resources of agriculture. By 1944 the country had received 1,100 million more poods of grain than in 1943. By the beginning of 1945 the animal population had grown considerably: cattle by 15,800,000, sheep and goats by 8,400,000 and pigs by 2,800,000. Although the prewar level in livestock had not been attained agricultural production on the whole increased as the liberation struggle of the Soviet Army gained momentum.

p Having built up immense powers politically, morally and economically prior to the war the collective farms acquitted themselves of their tasks during the Great Patriotic War with flying colours. The world bourgeoisie and its servants weaved a web of lies around the collective farms and the Soviet peasantry, and the German fascists, as mentioned above, regarded the collective farms as the weak link in the Soviet state, and in attacking the Soviet Union they hoped to receive the support of this peasantry. All the hopes of the enemy were dashed.

p The collective farms during the war acted as a powerful 249 political and economic force of the Soviet state, and the kolkhoz peasantry, educated by the Communist Party, demonstrated the greatest patriotic devotion to their country and were a formidable force which the fascist invaders had not reckoned with. During the war the kolkhoz peasantry took the lead in numerous patriotic undertakings. On the initiative of the Tambov collective farmers a fund collection movement was launched throughout the country for building tank columns and air squadrons. Farmers, men and women, purchased tanks, aircraft and weapons to equip whole military units out of their own money. Suffice it to say that during the four years of war the villagers, together with all other Soviet patriots, donated 94,500 million rubles towards the country’s defence.

p Similar facts pointing to the peasantry’s unfaltering devotion to their country and to the Soviet government, their selfless labour for the sake of securing a speedy victory over the hated enemy could be cited without end. History knows of no other such sweeping patriotic movement among the peasants as the one that embraced all the country’s collective farms and the millions of its members, men and women, during the Great Patriotic War. They supplied the army and the country with food without any serious interruptions. Clearly, but for the selfless labour of the collective farmers we would not have been able to cope with this formidable task. The fact that all through the war our army experienced no shortage of food and the population was supplied with food and industry with raw materials is proof of the strength and viability of the kolkhoz system and of the patriotism of the peasantry.

p The part played by the collective farms in helping to win the war emphasises the wisdom, sagacity and foresight of our Party, which pressed forward with its policy of industrialisation and collectivisation as the bedrock of our country’s defensive power and its independence of the capitalist world. The kolkhoz system came out of the long and painful ordeal of the war with flying colours and proved itself an unconquerable force. The collective farms emerged from the war stronger than ever before morally and politically, although economically they were reduced to a very low state.

p There now remains to be answered the question as to wherein lay the strength and indestructible might of the 250 Soviet socialist stale. It is clear to everyone that its economic foundation _ proved to be incomparably more secure than that of nazi Germany, whose economy had been considerably augmented at the expense of pillaged Europe. The explanation is to be sought in the nature of the socialist system, which was put to a crucial test during the grim years of the war. Here are some of the main factors to which we owe the brilliant victory of our socialist system.

p First, the Soviet socialist system, brought into being by the October Socialist Revolution, is built on such a solid foundation as social ownership of the instruments and means of production. Upon this foundation there has arisen a socialist society, a socialist system of economy based on the laws of economic development. It was this that made it possible in the first place to mobilise all the resources of the national economy for inflicting a military defeat upon nazi Germany.

p Second, the Soviet socialist system is grounded on a fruitful foundation _in which there is no room for the exploiter classes, and this made it possible to consolidate and unite the fraternal peoples, all the men and women of creative labour. On the basis of the liquidation of private property in the means of production and the elimination of the exploiter classes there arose the monolithic moral and political unity of all the Soviet peoples the likes of which the history of human society has never known.

p Third, the socialist system cultivated a highly conscientious attitude towards work on the part of the workers, peasants and intellectuals, who performed feats of labour valour and self-sacrifice in defending the great gains won by the labour and heroism of past generations. It was this circumstance that united the soldiers at the front and the workers on the homefront in a single close union. It can truly be said that the land of socialism was converted into a great military camp, a united combat commune, capable of routing any enemy.

p Fourth, a noteworthy feature of the socialist system was its technical and economic independence of the capitalist countries. Already before the war the Communist Party had seen to it that the world’s only land of socialism was not only economically independent, but capable at a critical moment of gearing its entire economic might to the defence 251 of socialism and mustering all its moral and political strength to secure victory.

p Fifth, the Party of Lenin performed a deathless deed in that it educated in the spirit of Lenin’s ideas the millions of fighters who heroically bore aloft the invincible banner of their indomitable predecessors—the brave fighters for the cause of communism.

p Severe trials fell to the lot of our people, who can rightfully be called a hero-people, a people of bogatyrs. At the same time it was propitiously fated to have in the person of the Leninist Communist Party a mighty insuperable power that led it courageously from victory to victory. The Party led our people through the flaming barrage of war, through the heroic flaming years of creative, constructive labour. That is why the Soviet people experienced not only the bitter of want, privations and adversity, but the sweet and joy of brilliant victories, the joy of creating a new beautiful world. It can rightfully be proud of its revolutionary, creative and fighting exploit.

p In the difficult years following the war our people, under the leadership of the Party, performed miracles of heroism in labour. Vast expanses of the country lay in smouldering ruins. It seemed as if the gutted, vitrified earth would remain for years a lifeless desert. It can be said without exaggeration that no other social system could have survived such a test, and its economic and cultural recovery would have dragged on for decades. The Soviet people was able to restore its war-devastated economy in so short a time because it was deeply convinced of the righteousness of its cause. And as in its previous difficult hour, it made titanic efforts to lead the country out into the forefront of the world scene, to make it more beautiful and powerful than ever before.

p Our socialist system made it possible to develop construction on such a scale as secured for the U.S.S.R. a rate of progress that amazed the world. Owing to the rapid advance of science and technology our country was first to use atomic power for peaceful purposes, first to probe the secrets of space, to place the country’s economy on advanced scientific and technical foundations, to develop on a sweeping scale public education and culture, to train on an unheardof scale scientific, teaching, medical, engineering and other personnel for all branches of the national economy.

Leaning on the great gains which the Soviet people had 252 won, our Party was the first in the history of the international communist movement to tackle the task of building communism. The work of creating the material and technical basis of communism and the solution of ever new problems of communist construction reveal the great transformative role of Marxist-Leninist science by which our Party is invariably guided. The majestic meaning of Marxist-Leninist theory is that it provides a key to the remodelling, reorganisation of the world and steers the revolutionary locomotive of history in the right direction.