p With a feeling of profound devotion and gratitude the working people of our country are marking the 50th birthday of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. In 1917, the people confidently entrusted their fate to this party, founded by the great Lenin, seeing in it their only true defender capable of realising their long-cherished dreams and hopes, and infinitely trusting in the justice of the cause it was promoting and in its unseverable blood ties with themselves, the people.

p This faith in their own Party, born in the depths of the Russian revolutionary working class, inspired Soviet people to perform feats of matchless valour in the years of the Civil War and foreign armed intervention. This faith gave them the confidence and strength to overcome all the enormous difficulties and hardships of postwar rehabilitation.

p In the years of Soviet power and under the guidance of the Party, the people who had become true masters of their land and thus acquired a new mentality made tremendous strides in their social, political and cultural development. Their socialist Motherland inspired in them an even more ardent patriotism, they came to love it in a new way and acquired the strength which enabled them not only to repel but actually to squash the nazi aggressors to death in the Great Patriotic War.

p In fierce, bloody clashes with the enemy, the Soviet people who had been reared and tempered by the Party confirmed the prophetic words spoken by Lenin in 1919: “A nation in which the majority of the workers and peasants realise, feel and see that they are fighting for their own Soviet power, for the rule of the working people, for the cause whose victory will ensure them and their children all the benefits of culture, of all that has been created by human labour—such a nation can never be vanquished.”

p The Party and the people have been fused together by years of peaceful endeavour and by the blood shed in the battles for the country’s freedom and independence. Could anything separate them now? No, there is no such power on earth and there never will be.

p In a very short space of time after the victorious conclusion of the Great Patriotic War, the Soviet Union, guided by the Party, fully rehabilitated its national economy, healed the bleeding wounds inflicted on its body by the war, and became mightier than ever with an ever greater power of attraction for all progressive mankind. Our quick recovery gladdened our friends and sorely disappointed our enemies.

p But what happened to those big political leaders and shabby newspaper small fry from the imperialist camp who in the war years predicted our defeat and gloatingly awaited it? What happened to those prophets who after the rout of German nazism, shouted themselves hoarse that the Soviet Union has been thrown far back by the war and that restoring its shattered economy would take scores of years and necessitate the assistance of the capitalist powers? Strangely there’s no sight or sound of them, and no one knows where they are hiding their shameless eyes, dimmed with hatred for the land of soralism. The clear, open, steadfast glance of the peace-loving Soviet people does not want to meet the shifty glances of this human scum. Soviet people look confidently and calmly into the future, into our radiant tomorrow.

p Today, all the thoughts and deeds of the Party and its 117 Central Committee are aimed at further consolidating the country’s economic and defence potential, at preserving and strengthening peace in the world, and at steadily raising the living standard of the working people. By accelerating the development of the country’s productive forces and by raising the technical efficiency of the labour processes through the introduction of the newest machinery on a mass scale, the Party wants to relieve the people of physical toil which until not so very long ago had lain as a heavy burden on shoulders that had always been broad and strong.

p How can the people help loving and following this Party which has for fifty years been upholding and defending their vital interests, which warns them against danger, wisely directs their actions, teaches them vigilance, and always speaks with them in the plain and courageous language of truth? How can the people help loving and following a party whose concern for their welfare and happiness is the supreme law governing all its activities? And the people do love their Party with infinite devotion, they believe in the Party’s clear, collective wisdom and are always ready to give full support to all its undertakings.

p From the glowing heights of the historic victories they have won, the Soviet people review with justifiable pride the road they have traversed under the leadership of their standardbearing Party. The people know that they have much more to achieve and many reverses and difficulties to overcome before they can attain their great goal of establishing a communist society. But, with complete confidence in the titanic strength and inexhaustible energy of the Communist Party, their collective leader and their vanguard, they look proudly ahead into the future where victory awaits them.

p Long live my fearless Party, unaging in labours and heroic exploits!

1953