p Comrades!

p Allow me to thank you for the great honour you have done me and the trust you have shown by nominating me your deputy to the Supreme Soviet of the USSR.

p It gives me pleasure to appear before you, people of my native stanitsa. All of you know me well, and I know every one of you very well too. So there is no need for me to tell you about myself. I shall say a few words about the tasks confronting you and me. The Soviet Government and our Party require us to repair the ravages of war as soon as possible. We must bend our efforts to the rehabilitation of economy. The restoration of agriculture will increase the potential of our Motherland.

p Apart from the general problems which we shall tackle together with the entire Soviet people, we have our own task of restoring its former glory and beauty to our district. The Government has allotted large sums of money for the restoration of Veshensky District, but we must make every endeavour to utilise our local possibilities to the best advantage. Our task is to make our ravaged Veshenskaya stanitsa, within a year or two, the beautiful, urbanised place it was before the war.

p A deputy has many complex duties to perform. A deputy must lend an attentive ear to all the requests and complaints of his electorate. A deputy must be an active functionary, zealously supervising the implementation of the Government’s decisions in his own constituency.

p I promise to serve your interests. My main profession is writing, and I promise to do good work in the literary field, so that you will not need to be ashamed of me.

1946