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p A prominent place in the Party’s work during the period under review has been the further promotion of all forms of ideological work, the political education of the masses and the raising of the people’s cultural level. A great project—the building of communism—cannot be advanced without the harmonious development of man himself. Communism is inconceivable without a high level of culture, education, sense of civic duty and inner maturity of people 417 just as it is inconceivable without the appropriate material and technical basis.

p The moral and political make-up of Soviet people is moulded by the entire socialist way of our life, by the entire course of affairs in society and, above all, by purposeful, persevering ideological and educational work by the Party, by all its organisations.

p The formation of a communist world outlook in the broad mass of the people and their education in the spirit of the ideas of Marxism-Leninism are the core of all the ideological and educational work by the Party.

p But even the most advanced ideology becomes a material force only when, having won the masses, it induces them to energetic action and determines the norms of their day-to-day behaviour. One of the paramount objectives of the Party’s ideological work is to foster in Soviet people the new, communist attitude to work. This is an immense task. Experience very convincingly shows that Vladimir Ilyich Lenin was right when he emphasised that it "will take many years, decades, to create a new labour discipline, new forms of social ties between people, and new forms and methods of drawing people into labour. It is a most gratifying and noble work".  [417•1  These are remarkable words! We must draw conclusions from them. (Applause.)

p The triumph of socialism in our country has given rise to unprecedented manifestations of mass labour enthusiasm such as the Stakhanovite movement, the movement for a communist attitude to work, and so on. The past five-year period has produced many new developments in this respect. Labour emulation has assumed truly nationwide dimensions.

p The task, as the Party sees it, is to support the mass movement for a communist attitude to work and give every encouragement to the creative initiative of Soviet people. In recent years, as you are aware, we passed a number of resolutions on encouraging and disseminating such mass initiatives of the people in town and countryside as the socialist emulation movement in honour of the 50th anniversary of the Great October Revolution and in honour of the centenary of the birth of V. 1. Lenin, and the nationwide 418 Lenin subbotnik. The Central Committee gave its approval to the outstanding initiative of workers’ collectives of Moscow and Leningrad, who, faithful to the glorious traditions of their cities, launched an emulation movement for the fulfilment of the Five-Year Plan ahead of schedule. Moreover, the Central Committee gave its support to the concrete production undertakings of metalworkers, oilmen, miners, car-builders, transport workers and other contingents of working people.

p In recent years much has been done in the way of fostering in Soviet people pride for their country, for their people and their great achievements, and a feeling of respect for the outstanding achievements of the past.

p Great importance attaches to the work that is being done by the Komsomol, the Voluntary Society for the Promotion of the Army, Air Force and Navy and also by other organisations and sports societies to train young people to defend their country. The patriotic theme is worthily mirrored in many works of Soviet literature and art. Initiatives by our young people, such as mass tours of places of revolutionary, military and labour glory and other undertakings, merit approval.

p Monuments to military glory have been erected in scores of our towns and in thousands of villages, and majestic monuments stand in Volgograd, Leningrad, around Moscow, in Smolensk Region, Byelorussia, the Ukraine, the Baltic republics and the Caucasus as testimony of the Soviet people’s unbounded respect for the memory of heroes who gave their lives for the motherland.

p The Party highly values the patriotic spirit of Soviet people and their readiness to devote themselves wholly to promoting their socialist motherland’s prosperity and defend the gains of the Revolution and the cause of socialism. (Stormy applause.}

p Comrades, the new make-up of the Soviet man, his communist morals and outlook are consolidated in constant and uncompromising struggle with survivals of the past. Communist morals cannot triumph without a determined struggle against such of their antipodes as money-grubbing, bribe-taking, parasitism, slander, anonymous letters, drunkenness and the like. The struggle with what we call survivals of the past in the minds and actions of people is a matter that requires constant attention by the Party and all 419 the conscious, advanced forces of our society. (Stormy, prolonged applause.)

p During the period under review the Party CC has taken steps to create in our society a moral atmosphere that would help to establish a respectful and solicitous attitude to people, honesty, exactingness to oneself and others, and trust combined with strict responsibility and a spirit of true comradeship in all fields of social life, in work and everyday relations. In short, our aim has been that in our country everybody should live and work better. (Prolonged applause.)

p It goes without saying that it is hard to express the results of this work in figures, in statistics. However, every Soviet citizen evidently feels the improvement of the moral atmosphere in our Party and our society. We shall continue steering this very course. (Applause.)

p Comrades, for the transition to communism it is necessary to achieve a higher level of development not only in the economic field but also in the culture of society as a whole.

p What can we say about the work of the Party and, generally, of the state of affairs in education, science and art in recent years?

p In the Directives of the 23rd Congress of the CPSU the task was set of completing the transition to universal secondary education in the main by the end of 1970. To this end the network of general education (day and evening) and special secondary schools (vocational schools, and so on) was additionally enlarged and the number of other vocational schools giving their pupils a complete secondary education was increased. As a result, although we were unable to reach the set target we have drawn much closer to it: today about 80 per cent of the pupils finishing an eight-year school go on to receive a complete secondary education. We feel that one of the most promising ways of implementing universal secondary education (while preserving the leading role of the general education school) is to build more vocational schools offering a secondary education. (Applause.)

p The number of institutions of higher learning has continued to grow. More than 60 new institutions of higher learning, including nine universities, were opened during the past five years. Today not only every Union republic but also many Autonomous republics have their own universities.

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p Extensive work has also been done to renew the content of the study process itself in our schools and institutions of higher learning. It is being brought more into line with the requirements of scientific and technical progress and with the general level of modern scientific knowledge.

p The development of all links of public education has resulted in the complete fulfilment of another important directive of the 23rd Party Congress: over seven million specialists with a higher or secondary special education have been trained in the country during the past five years. This is a good and extremely needed addition to the army of builders of communism. (Applause.)

p The public education system has to ensure the training of large contingents of specialists, including many new professions. Today progress is so swift in all fields that the education received by young people is only a foundation that requires the constant acquisition of knowledge. This makes the systematic improvement of the qualification of cadres extremely important.

p Our Party spares no effort to ensure the fruitful unfolding of the entire front of social and natural sciences.

p The total number of scientific workers in the country has increased 40 per cent during the past five years and today adds up to nearly 930,000. New scientific centres are being built in the Urals, the Soviet Far East and the North Caucasus.

p Extensive and fruitful work has been accomplished during the past five years by the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, which determines the strategy of scientific quests, brings to light the most promising trends and forms of research needed by society and unites the efforts of our scientists.

p We note with satisfaction that in a number of very important branches our scientists have won leading positions in the world. It would be hard and even practically impossible to name all the directions in which scientific research is developing in our country, or to list even the major achievements in the fundamental and applied sciences.

p In recent years Soviet scientists have given the motherland first-class automated transfer lines, laser devices, new types of electronic computers, the discovery of huge deposits of minerals, and much else. Further success has crowned space exploration. Much ground has been covered in this sphere during the past five years. Successful sustained group 421 flights have been accomplished in piloted Soyuz spaceships. Excellent results have been obtained with automatic space vehicles: from the first-ever soft-landing on the Moon to the building of such sophisticated systems as Luna-16, which brought lunar rock back to the Earth, and Luna-17 with its tireless worker Lunokhod; from the first flights to Venus to the receipt of scientific data directly from its surface.

p I have already spoken of the tasks of our scientists in the field of scientific and technical progress and the introduction of scientific achievements in production. The social sciences also face important tasks. In the period under review the CC CPSU adopted a special extended resolution on this question. The tasks of the Institute of Marxism-Leninism and of the Academy of Social Sciences under the CC CPSU have been enlarged and specified. In recent years a number of new humanitarian science institutes have been opened in the system of the Academy of Sciences and this has made it possible to intensify the study of problems related to the socio-economic development of the USSR and foreign countries and the world revolutionary process, and to improve scientific information. What we need is a more radical turn of the social sciences towards the elaboration of problems that are and will be pressing.

p Soviet science has impressive achievements to its credit. But there still are considerable shortcomings in the work of our scientific institutions. It is no secret, that there are scientific workers who are, to this day, occupied on work that is to a large extent divorced from both the country’s direct practical requirements and from the actual interests of the development of the fundamental branches of science. Actually, this is wasted effort. We cannot, of course, reconcile ourselves to this.

p It is necessary to be more exacting in the selection of cadres for scientific work. It is important that in every scientific collective there should be a really creative situation, an atmosphere of bold quest, fruitful discussion and comradely exactingness. Soviet people highly value the achievements of their scientists and they expect them to redouble their efforts in order to resolve the most pressing problems of communist construction. (Prolonged applause.)

p Comrades, with our society’s advance along the road of communist construction a growing role is played by 422 literature and art in moulding the outlook, moral convictions and spiritual culture of Soviet people. Quite naturally, therefore, the Party continues, as it has always done, to devote much attention to the ideological content of our literature and art and to the role they play in society. In line with the Leninist principle of partisanship we believe that our task is to direct the development of all forms of creative art towards participation in the people’s great cause of communist construction.

p During the past five years our literature, theatre, cinema, television, fine arts and music have given Soviet people many new, interesting and talented works. New works and productions have appeared which deal with our people’s past and present realistically, from Party positions, without embellishment and without playing up shortcomings, and concentrate attention on truly important problems of communist education and construction. These works are further confirmation that the closer the artist is to the many-faceted life of the Soviet people the surer is the road to creative achievement and success. (Applause.}

p During the period under review a prominent place in literature and art was held by the Lenin theme. A number of interesting novels, plays and films about Lenin, all of them permeated with revolutionary passion and the grandeur of devotion to Leninism, were brought out.

p A highly satisfying fact is that literature and art are fruitfully developing in all our republics, in dozens of languages of the peoples of the USSR, in the vivid diversity of national forms.

p The congresses held in recent years by the unions of writers, artists, composers and film-makers of our country have been noteworthy landmarks in the development of Soviet art. They mirrored the indisputable growth of the ideological and political maturity of our creative intelligentsia, and of their responsibility for the content and artistic value of the works created by them.

p Thus, much has been done in recent years by workers in Soviet art. Our people highly value their achievements, which are noteworthy contributions fostering communist consciousness in Soviet people. (Applause.)

p However, it cannot be said that all is well in the realm of artistic creative work, particularly as regards quality. It would not be amiss to note here that we are still getting 423 quite a few works that are shallow in content and inexpressive in form. We sometimes even get cases of works being dedicated to a good, topical theme but giving the impression that the artist has taken too insubstantial an approach to his task, that he has not put all his effort, his talent into it. It seems to me that we all have the right to expect workers in art to be more demanding of themselves and of their colleagues.

p The achievements of Soviet literature and art would have been unquestionably greater and shortcomings would have been eradicated quicker if our literary-art criticism pursued the Party line more vigorously, adopted a more principled stand and combined exactingness with tact and a solicitous attitude to the creators of artistic values.

p Furthermore, sight must not be lost of the fact that in the development of our art there were complicating factors of another order. There were some people who sought to reduce the diversity of present-day Soviet reality to problems that have irreversibly receded into the past as a result of the work done by the Party to surmount the consequences of the personality cult. Another extreme current among individual men of letters was the attempt to whitewash past phenomena which the Party had subjected to emphatic and principled criticism, and to conserve ideas and views contravening the new, creative elements which the Party had introduced into its practical and theoretical work in recent years.

p Essentially, both these cases were attempts to belittle the significance of what the Party and the people had already accomplished, and divert attention from current problems, from the Party’s constructive guideline and the creative work of Soviet people.

p Workers in literature and art are in one of the most crucial sectors of the ideological struggle. The Party and the people have never reconciled nor will ever reconcile themselves to attempts, no matter who makes them, to blunt our ideological weapon and cast a stain on our banner. If a writer slanders Soviet reality and helps our ideological adversaries in their fight against socialism he deserves only one thing—public scorn. (Stormy applause.)

p We mention these negative phenomena not because they have become appreciably widespread. The Central Committee feels that the Party’s frank and principled attitude 424 towards these phenomena helps writers and artists to work with greater confidence and conviction in the general direction of the development of Soviet literature and art in which they have been fruitfully working during the past five years. (Applause.}

p Soviet writers and artists have been educated by the Communist Party. They draw their inspiration from the deeds and thoughts of their people, and their creative destiny is inseparable from the interests of the socialist motherland. (Applause.}

p We are for an attentive attitude to creative quests, for the full unfolding of the individuality of gifts and talents, for the diversity and wealth of forms and styles evolved on the basis of the method of socialist realism. The strength of Party leadership lies in the ability to spark the artist with enthusiasm for the lofty mission of serving the people and turn him into a convinced and ardent participant in the remaking of society along communist lines. (Prolonged applause.}

p Comrades, in addition to giving the working masses broad access to cultural values, socialism has made them the direct makers of culture. Striking evidence of this is the unparalleled scale of folk art. Today there are 13 million adults and 10 million schoolchildren in amateur art groups. The creative art of the people is a specific feature of Soviet reality, of our life.

p Mass media—newspapers, magazines, television, radio and news agencies—are a powerful instrument in the important and complex work of moulding the new man and in the ideological struggle against the capitalist world.

p During the period under review the Party’s Central Committee has time and again considered questions relating to the mass media with the aim of securing an improvement of their work and further enlarging their audience.

p Our press, radio and television are doing much to ensure quick reporting of the pressing problems of the life of the country and international affairs that really interest Soviet people. They help to disseminate the advanced experience of communist construction and give a rebuff to the ideological sallies of the class enemies.

p The mass media have been given larger technical facilities and more material resources. The daily circulation of the newspapers in our country runs to nearly 425 140 million, while the magazines have a circulation of over 150 million. There has been a particularly large increase of subscriptions to newspapers and magazines in the countryside, where the circulation has exceeded 107 million as against 65 million five years ago.

p The demand for books is enormous in our country. It is rightly regarded that the Soviet people read more books than any other nation in the world. Suffice it to say, that books with a total printing of over 6.5 thousand million copies, including more than one thousand million copies of socio-political books, have been published since the 23rd Congress of the CPSU. In 1969 and 1970 alone the total printing of the works of Lenin and books on Lenin and Leninism exceeded 76 million copies. During these years there has been an increase in our country of the demand for books from the fraternal socialist countries. From 1966 to 1970 their translations have been published in the USSR in a printing of 72 million copies. (Applause.}

p Our TV network now has a huge audience—70 per cent of the country’s population. The Orbita TV network covering the Extreme North, the Soviet Far East, Siberia and Central Asia, has now become operational.

p Comrades, ideological work, propaganda and mass agitation are an important and responsible field of the Party’s activities. A lot has been done in this field. But it must be noted that we are not yet fully satisfied with the state of affairs in it. The Central Committee feels that it is necessary to intensify our entire ideological work, above all, to make more active and purposeful the propagation of communist ideals and the concrete tasks of our construction. In the immediate future a central place in the Party’s propaganda and mass agitation must be occupied by work aimed at giving the working people a thorough understanding of the purport and significance of our Congress decisions. Our cardinal task in this sphere is to be able really to convey our ideological conviction in full to the masses, and approach the work of the communist education of the Soviet man in a really creative manner. (Applause.}

p We are living under conditions of an unabating ideological war, which imperialist propaganda is waging against our country, against the world of socialism, using the most subtle methods and powerful technical means. All the instruments that the bourgeoisie has of influencing minds— 426 the press, cinema and radio—have been mobilised to delude people, make them believe that under capitalism they are living in a near-paradise, and slander socialism. The ether is virtually clogged with all sorts of fabrications about life in our country and in the fraternal socialist countries.

It is the duty of our propagandists and mass agitators to give a timely resolute and effective rebuff to these ideological attacks and tell hundreds of millions of people the truth about the socialist society, the Soviet way of life and the building of communism in our country. This has to be done with purpose, convincingly, intelligibly and vividly. ( Prolonged applause.) The voice giving the truth about the Soviet Union must be heard in all the continents. (Stormy applause.)

p Thus, comrades, a considerable place in the Party’s activities during the period under review was occupied by questions relating to the socio-political development of Soviet society, the ideological and political education of the working people and the development of science and culture. Substantial headway has been made in these fields of communist construction, but there are big and difficult tasks ahead. We are certain that the Party will carry them out successfully and that it will have the unanimous and vigorous support of the entire Soviet people. (Stormy, prolonged applause.)

The strength of our country lies precisely in the unity and political consciousness of the people. The Party will tirelessly reinforce this source of our strength—the inviolate ideological and political unity of the Soviet people. (Prolonged applause.)