Leninist Standards Restored
p The 1950s were—for the Soviet Union—a period which witnessed the conclusive stages of socialist construction, the complete and final victory of socialism, including, more specifically, such outstanding achievements as a powerful industrial upswing, the pioneering and development of virgin lands, the 288 commissioning of the world’s first atomic power plant, the launching of a man-made satellite of the Earth, also a world’s first, and the attainment of a new high level in prosperity, culture and technology.
p These achievements were made possible by the creative activity displayed by the masses, by wider and closer contacts between the Party and the people, and by the Party’s greater role in directing and organising communist construction; all these developments, in turn, being primarily due to the restoration and further development of the Leninist standards of Party and state activity that had been grossly violated during the last years of Stalin’s life. After his death, in March 1953, steps were taken to assure genuinely collective leadership within the Party and the government. The Supreme Soviets of the USSR and the Union Republics expanded the range of their legislative activities, their presidiums regularly functioning in their capacity as collective bodies; local Soviets and public organisations widened the sphere of their activities and stepped up their tempo.
p Measures to strengthen socialist legality were vigorously implemented.
In 1953 the Central Committee of the Communist Party exposed and terminated the criminal activities of Beria and his associates, who had till then held important posts in the security services. Stern punishment was meted out to them by the Soviet courts for their crimes against the people. Political cases were reexamined and all those who had been illegally sentenced were rehabilitated.
Twentieth CPSU Congress
p The Twentieth Congress of the CPSU met in Moscow in February 1956.
p This was a Congress of historic significance, ushering in, as it did, a momentous era for the CPSU, for the development of the Soviet society, and for the world-wide communist movement. It gave clear proof that the Party and its Leninist Central Committee were a collective centre not only politically and organisationally but also as focussing the development of the Marxist doctrine. The Central Committee’s report, as well as the resolutions unanimously adopted by the delegates representing more than 7,200,000 members of the Communist Party, stressed that the salient feature of the current period was the expansion of socialism beyond the frontiers of a single country and its transformation into a world system. The Congress came to the momentous conclusion that it was actually possible at the present 289 time to avert world wars. It elaborated further Lenin’s proposition about the diversity of forms in which different countries could effect the transition to socialism. It also defined the aims of Soviet foreign policy, which were: to work consistently for peace, to strengthen by all available means fraternal relations with the People’s Democracies, and develop cordial relations between the Soviet people and the working people of all lands.
p A broad development programme was drawn up by the Congress for the national economy and in the cultural field designed to improve living standards. This programme was set forth in the Directives for the Sixth Five-Year Plan for the period 1956-60. In further developing socialist democracy the Congress firmly condemned the Stalin personality cult and urged that the standards applicable to the Party’s activities and the principles of collective Party leadership worked out by Lenin should be scrupulously observed.
The decisions of the Twentieth Congress were acclaimed by the Soviet people, who went to work with a will to carry them out.
New Developments in the Countryside
p In the early 1950s, the rate of development in agriculture was inadequate to meet the country’s growing requirements. The gap between supply of farm produce and demand had created a perilous situation.
p This lag in agriculture was caused by circumstances beyond human control, as well as by factors of a subjective nature.
p During the preceding years the country had been unable to maintain the same rapid pace of development simultaneously in heavy industry, light industry and agriculture. It had had no choice but to channel effort and means primarily into the production of means of production, which is the corner-stone of its socialist economy; and investments in agriculture had consequently been only moderate. Another factor that had held up for years the development of agriculture was the enormous destruction inflicted upon it by the war. And still another had been the drought of 1946. Having analysed the factors holding up development in the agricultural sector, the Central Committee of the CPSU, at its plenary meetings of 1953, 1954 and 1955, outlined a programme of action designed to increase agricultural production.
p Prime attention was given to the strengthening of the material and technical basis of agriculture. The deliveries of tractors, lorries and various other machines to the farms sharply increased. The machinery-farmer ratio of 1958 was nearly three times that of 1940. Government investments in the mechanisation of 290 agriculture over the period 1954-58 were 2.5 times larger than over the preceding five-year period.
p Provision of machinery was not the only form of aid offered by the city to the farm: over 120,000 technicians were assigned to jobs in collective farms. And the number of Party workers in collective farms increased, over the period 1954-58, by nearly 250,000. Party organisations existed in practically every collective farm in 1956, instead of in one out of eight, as in 1941.
p Procurement prices on farm produce delivered by collective farms to the state were appreciably raised, while the volume of obligatory deliveries of such farm produce as cereals, potatoes, vegetables, etc., was reduced. So was the volume of deliveries of produce grown on the collective farmers’ individual plots, which were entirely cancelled in 1958.
p A more rational system of income distribution in collective farms was introduced, including monthly and quarterly advances against work-day units earned for collective-farm labour.
p These measures stimulated interest in increasing the output of farm produce and furthered agricultural development, so that the output for the period 1954-58 increased by more than 50 per cent as against the output of the preceding five-year period. Collective-farm incomes grew. And rural living standards improved.
With collective farms now on a firmer basis, it became possible to put through a timely reform, namely, to turn over tractors and other farm machinery to the collective farms. Before 1958, the farms were serviced by the machine and tractor stations (MTS) that possessed this machinery, which was a rational and advantageous enough system while collective farms were small and economically weak. Since they became amalgamated and economically stronger, however, they found it more advantageous to operate farm machinery at their own discretion. Accordingly, this issue was brought up for discussion on a nation-wide scale and, in 1958, the Supreme Soviet of the USSR passed a law providing that the MTS should be turned into repair shops and the farm machinery in their possession should be sold to the collective farms.
Reclaiming Virgin Land
p An important contribution to the country’s grain budget was made by the eastern parts, where a gigantic campaign was launched for reclaiming and developing virgin and long-fallow lands. An exhaustive study of the problem of reclaiming such lands with a view to rapidly augmenting the country’s grain supply was undertaken as soon as the September 1953 Plenary Meeting of the CPSU Central Committee was over. Economists, 291 agriculturists, Party and government workers were called in by the Party Central Committee and the government for consultation on related problems, and 47 combined expeditions with a staff of over 2,000 specialists in land use, agronomists, soil specialists, geologists and hydraulic engineers undertook a detailed survey of untilled areas in Siberia and Kazakhstan.
p In February 1954, a plenary meeting of the CPSU Central Committee adopted a decision to bring under cultivation up to 13,000,000 hectares of virgin and long-fallow land in two years, and the Party called for volunteers to go to the East to do the job. Its appeal evoked an enthusiastic response among the people.
p Steadfastly overcoming all difficulties Soviet people had ploughed up, by August 1954, more than 14,000,000 hectares of virgin land. Modern settlements, state farms and stations mushroomed all over the steppe.
As to the end results of this virgin land development campaign, a good illustration is furnished by Kazakhstan, where 337 state farms have been set up and where the grain crop of 1958 yielded 15,200,000 tons as against 2,336,000 tons in 1953, which means a 6.5-fold increase. In 1956 the Young Communist League was awarded the Order of Lenin for its contribution to the development programme, and 30,000 youngsters and girls were decorated with various orders and medals.
292Industrial Upswing
p Meanwhile industrial development, too, was given a new impetus. At Kuibyshev and Stalingrad on the Volga, at Kakhovka on the Dnieper, and on the Kama work on the construction of great hydropower stations was in full swing. Initial reports were coming in on the hydropower station project at Bratsk, and the name of the almost unknown backwoods Siberian village came overnight to focus attention all the world over, for here, on the Angara, 700 kilometres north of Irkutsk and 4,000 east of Moscow, a start had been made on the construction of the world’s biggest power station.
p A new metallurgical works was built and a great new blastfurnace commissioned, in the summer of 1955, at Cherepovets, 375 kilometres due north of Moscow. Here a new exhibit was added in the city museum in the shape of a lump of cast iron with the laconic inscription: "Cherepovets Metallurgical Works. August 24, 1955. First yield of cast iron.” Similarly was marked the birth of the Orsk-Khalilovo Metallurgical Combine, the Transcaucasian Metallurgical Works, the Baku Pipe-Rolling Works and many other industrial plants which made important contributions to the production of ores, coal, petroleum and shale, as well as to the output of machine-tools and chemicals.
p While the Soviet industry was thus scoring signal successes, certain defects were becoming increasingly apparent which were slowing the pace of industrial development. Some plants and even individual industries were slow to install modern equipment or introduce new production techniques, and the quality of their output was below foreign standards. Intolerably slow was the development of the chemical industry. Coal accounted for a major part of the country’s fuel budget, instead of petroleum and gas, as required by the national economy. Steam locomotives hauled most of the freight, as in times past. This in turn had a harmful effect on other branches of the national economy. Manual labour was still widely used in lumbering and the building industry.
p A plenary meeting of the CPSU Central Committee, held in July 1955, made a careful study of the prospects of industrial development. The conferences of industrial leaders, builders and leading workers, held in advance of the plenary meeting, helped to reveal these shortcomings and bring them to light. A course was outlined for a speedy technological progress, for invigorating the creative initiative of inventors and innovators and removing any obstacles hindering specialisation and co-operation among industrial enterprises.
p Creative endeavour was winning an ever greater number of adherents among the masses, as may best be seen from the fact 293 that in 1958 there were 1,725,000 innovators and inventors in the country, or more than triple the number in 1950.
p In 1954 the world’s first atomic power station was commissioned in the USSR, and in 1958 the first section of a second such station became operational; while shortly before, towards the close of 1957, to be more precise, the world’s first atom-powered icebreaker Lenin was launched.
Crowning all these achievements came the launching of the world’s first man-made Earth satellite. This event took place on October 4, 1957; and in 1958 a third satellite weighing 1,327 kilogrammes was put in orbit.
Fifth Decade Begins
p A socialist society had been built, in the main, by the Soviet Union in the twenty years that elapsed between 1917 and 1937. That society, however, cannot be said to have reached perfection or to have been fully developed. It remained to carry the work of building that society through to the end, to a complete and final victory, and to make that victory secure.
p Two more decades passed. They were a difficult period, those twenty years between 1938 and 1958: they covered the pre-war period, the great ordeal of the war years, and the years it took to recover from the disastrous effects of the war. On balance, there had been rather few years in which the country could go about its work of peaceful construction. Which is why the country’s great achievements under Soviet rule tower all the higher.
p The period 1938-58 witnessed a tremendous growth of the socialist society’s material and technical basis. Some 18,600 important industrial enterprises were built, and a large number of lesser plants. The volume of industrial output in 1937 was only six times greater than that of 1913, but in 1958 it was 33 times greater, and 72 times greater in respect of the means of production. The aggregate capacity of Soviet power stations in 1937 was 8,200,000 kw, or seven times more than in 1913, but in 1958 it had reached 53,600,000 kw, or 47 times more than before the Revolution. The output of consumer goods had increased to 13 times that of 1913. This constituted a tremendous increase, yet it lagged sadly behind the growth of heavy industry and was in many respects unable to meet consumer needs.
p These great quantitative changes in Soviet industry were paralleled by radical qualitative changes. Great technological progress was made, and the workers’ cultural and technological level was now higher. This, in turn, contributed from year to year to the increase in labour productivity in industry; in 1958 it was ten 294 times that of 1913, despite a considerably shorter working day. By the end of the 1950s the Soviet Union possessed a first-class, highly developed, diversified industry with modern plant, producing all kinds of modern machines and equipment.
p The country’s socialist agriculture comprised, in 1958, 67,700 collective and over 6,000 state farms. Areas under cultivation totalled 195,600,000 hectares, or 77,400,000 more than in 1913. Definite progress had been made in supplying machinery and equipment to the farms, which now had in their possession over 1,000,000 tractors, over 600,000 harvesting-combines, 700,000 lorries and motor-cars and a large number of other farm machines.
p Living standards had risen markedly. By 1958 per capita national income, which determines the level of prosperity, was 15.4 times higher than before the Revolution. Three-fourths of the national income are distributed among the members of the society according to work performed, in line with the relative socialist principle, to satisfy consumer demand; and the remaining one-fourth goes into the accumulation fund in the interests of the society. Much was done in the 1950s to improve the socialist principle of distribution, as, for example, by reducing the gap between the higher- and lower-paid brackets and by raising the income of collective farmers.
p In the second half of the 1950s a seven-hour working day was introduced for all workers and employees and a six-hour day for underground workers and those engaged in work injurious to the health. Higher pension scales were established and tuition fees were abolished in respect of senior forms of secondary schools and higher educational institutions (these fees were introduced a year before the war, while tuition in respect of all other forms and schools remained free). Appropriations for all kinds of social security allowances were considerably increased. And substantial investments were made in the sphere of public health.
p Indicative of the profound changes in the lives of Soviet people since the Revolution and of the achievements under the socialist system, especially over the past twenty years, was the countrywide population census of January 15, 1959 (the previous census dates back to January 17, 1939). The size of the population, as of the date of the census, stood at 208,800,000, or 18,100,000 more than on the eve of the Second World War, despite the heavy loss of life suffered during that war. The birth rate reached a high level (25.3 per 1,000 population in 1958), while the death rate dipped sharply, especially infant mortality, which may be attributed to the financial aid extended by the state to mothers of large families and unmarried mothers (in 1959 such aid was received by 7,000,000 mothers), more effective maternity and child care, expansion of public health services and improved medical 295 care, and—which was most important—the consistently growing prosperity of the Soviet people.
p Intensive industrial development was conducive to a substantial growth of the urban population, which now numbered 100,000,000 or 40,000,000 more than in 1939; and 503 new towns and 1,354 urban-type settlements were put on the map of the Soviet Union since that year.
p The 1959 census testified to a rapid rise of the cultural level, with literacy standing at 98.5 per cent. In 1959 the proportion of workers and collective farmers having a secondary and even a higher education had reached 39 and 21 per cent, respectively, whereas only 4.3 per cent of those engaged in manual labour had a secondary education in 1939. The creation of a multi-million intelligentsia truly of the people has been one of the greatest achievements of the Soviet system.
p These achievements, put together, meant that the Soviet people, under the leadership of the Communist Party, had succeeded in building a matured socialist society. It meant that the socialist system had been put on a firm footing.
p Meanwhile, a radical change had occurred in the power balance as between the capitalist world and the socialist. Gone forever were the times when the USSR was the only socialist country in the world and the military intervention of the imperialist powers threatened it with a restoration of capitalism. In the 1950s the world had to reckon with a community of socialist countries. Moreover, the military might of the USSR and the socialist community was now incomparably greater than ever before. Any imperialist military effort to destroy the socialist system in the USSR was now destined to fail.
p Socialism, to sum up, had been victorious in the USSR both in its internal and external aspects. Its victory, in other words, had been complete and final.
p That being the case, the dictatorship of the proletariat may be said to have accomplished its historic mission and outlived its usefulness. With the development of those fundamental features that had been inherent in the Soviet state ever since its inception, the state of the dictatorship of the proletariat had developed into a socialist state of the whole people. The working class, being eminently advanced, astute and well organised, has retained leadership within the Soviet society, but it has deliberately renounced its dominant role. Leadership in all the activities of the socialist state of the whole people is exercised by the Communist Party, which now represents the people as a whole and acts on its behalf.
p The Fortieth Anniversary of the October Revolution was a solemn and joyful occasion. The Soviet people had every reason to 296 be happy and proud. The celebration in Moscow was attended by representatives of all the socialist countries and sixty-four foreign Communist and Workers’ Parties, as well as hundreds of visitors from abroad, many of whom had been in the Soviet Union on previous occasions.
p Very soon after the Revolution Lenin spoke on one occasion of the tremendous tasks confronting the Communist Party and the Soviet people, and in this connection recalled some famous lines of Nekrasov, nineteenth-century Russian poet, in which he spoke of Russia as being at once abundant and wretched, mighty and impotent. And, voicing the will of the Bolsheviks, Lenin proclaimed their "... unbending determination to ensure that at any price Russia ceases to be wretched and impotent and becomes mighty and abundant in the full meaning of these words". [296•1
p This was largely achieved during the first four decades of Soviet rule. In 1913 the industrial output of the United States was 14.5 times that of Russia by volume and 21.4 per capita, but in 1958 that lead had shrunk to 2 and 2.5, respectively. In regard to certain important items of industrial output, such as iron ore, petroleum, coal, steel, cast iron and cement, the Soviet Union had forged ahead of the United States both in pace of growth and absolute increase.
p The English Times, which cannot be suspected of pro-socialist sympathies, wrote, in October 1957, as follows: "When the Winter Palace was being stormed and the All-Russian Congress of Soviets met to proclaim the victory, the date on the Russian calendar was October 25. Russia—then thirteen days behind the western calendar—was a hundred years behind western industry and at least a hundred and fifty years behind in her political and social structure. Now the Soviet Union and its Allies are having their grand stock-taking as they prepare for the fortieth anniversary of the Great October Revolution on November 7. They have certainly much to rejoice in. There is no country in the world that has not been changed in some way by the swing in the balance of forces. The upsurge of Russia to be the second greatest industrial Power and possiblv the strongest militarily; the spread of Communist rule over China and eastern Europe; the growing impact of the Soviet Union, as a State, in the Middle East and Asia; the growth and diligence of Communist parties—all these forces have shaped the world, and no one can say that they have reached their peak." [296•2
Those first four decades of Soviet rule that elapsed between the storming of the Winter Palace and the bold venture into outer 297 space were a truly heroic epoch in the history of mankind, ending in the complete and final victory of socialism in the USSR. Standing on the threshold of its fifth decade, the Soviet Union began to consider the targets immediately involved in the building of a communist society.