p The arrival of the group of workers and engineers from the Leningrad Kirov Plant in Veshenskaya has been a memorable event. We had some very useful conversations on literature, which were all the more interesting because our guests were themselves engaged in literary pursuits, writing the history of their plant whose publication is timed for the 50th anniversary of Soviet power. They asked me to write the preface for their book, which I am at present doing with pleasure.

p The history of the Putilov (Kirov) Plant was made by people like Mikhail Gavrilovich Alexeyev, the oldest gunner there, who has worked in the plant’s shops for sixty years; Nikolai Vasilyevich Skvortsov, a former sailor of the Baltic Fleet, one of the twenty-five thousand, a collective-farm chairman, and once again an industrial worker; milling-machine operators Yevgeny Savich and Ivan Leonov—innovators in their line; Hero of the Soviet Union Fyodor Dyachenko, a sharpshooter in the war; and hundreds and thousands of men like them. The history of the plant is a chronicle of working-class generations who accomplished the Revolution, defended the honour and freedom of their country in the war, and are now building communism.

p One should like to see more books about our factories and plants, written on the same lines as the history of the Kirov Plant which has been decorated with four Government Orders.

p I am addressing an appeal through the Pravda and the workers’ newspaper Trud to all the worker-correspondents to 197 compile a history of their enterprise. Books about the glory of the working class are very badly needed. Writers and journalists will help all they can.

1964