p The individual and the universal are found in dialectical unity in any object. On the one hand, the individual contains the universal. It exists only in the connection that leads to the universal. Each individual organism is thus connected with the universal, the species to which it belongs and with which it has common features; and through the species it is connected with what is even more universal, the genus. Taking into account the connection of the particular with the universal, the existence of the universal in the particular, dialectical materialism considers that each particular is universal in one way or another.

p On the other hand, the universal exists only in the particular or through the particular. There is not a single species of plant or animal outside individual plants or animals. Being universal in relation to the individual, the species does not embrace all the features of the individual organisms it includes, but only the essential, recurring ones. That is why Lenin described the universal as a side or essence of the particular.

p The individual and the universal are not only interconnected but also change constantly. The boundary between them is not fixed. In certain conditions, during development, they pass into one another: the particular becomes the universal, and vice versa.

p In the development of organisms there have been instances when a new, useful characteristic acquired by an individual organism is transmitted by heredity, and in time 124 becomes common to the mass, the vast number of individual organisms, i.e., it turns into a universal characteristic, a distinctive of the species. If, however, a universal characteristic loses its significance for the vital processes of the species, it gradually withers away, becomes atrophied and in succeeding generations will only seldom occur; it may be met in individual organisms as an atavism, a reversion to the organisation of remote ancestors. Here the universal has turned into the individual.

p Dialectics of the universal and the individual manifests itself in social phenomena as well.

p Let us examine the rise and significance of communist subbotniks in the light of their principled assessment that was made by Lenin who perceived in a single, and what seemed to be an ordinary, fact a general law of the development of communist society.

p The participation of the workers in the first subbotnik turned the latter into a great beginning because it inaugurated a mass movement for a communist attitude to labour which developed into a method of building a new society.

p In the incredibly difficult conditions of the civil war, economic dislocation and famine the workers set the first examples of communist labour; they voluntarily participated in the subbotnik in their off-work hours without expecting to receive any benefits or honours, and their labour productivity on that day was the highest ever attained in those times.

p In Lenin’s opinion this was a turning point in the consolidation of the new system.

p He regarded this as a revolution in the consciousness of the working people, a revolution in the attitude to the future of society, a revolution in the attitude to labour. Were it not for this revolution it would have been impossible to build a new society. He pointed out that it was up to the masses themselves to build living, creative socialism, that the strength and invincibility of the new social system lay in the consciousness of the people, in the fact that the masses, displaying unprecedented heroism and self-sacrifice, did this willingly, fully convinced that the new system was consistent with their fundamental, vital interests. That explains why the emergence and development of the sense of 125 being master of his land is a distinguishing feature of the new man.

p Lenin believed that communism really began when masses of workers and peasants started to show concern for rehabilitating and promoting production, for protecting the products which were made available to society as a whole, to all the working people.

p Of course, a revolution in the consciousness of the working people, development of a communist attitude to work, did not take place instantaneously; it was a gradual process but one which developed and is continuing to develop in all fields of activity on the basis of a new system, embracing ever new sections of the working people and acquiring ever new forms.

p Today there is every reason to say that these individual shoots of communism have turned into universal ones and have become part and parcel of the life of the new society in the USSR and in other socialist countries; they are also becoming universal in the socialist-oriented developing countries where their new forms are of international theoretical and practical interest.

p The competition for the title of shock-workers and communist-labour collectives is the highest form of socialist emulation in the USSR. In Moscow, for instance, there are more than two million shock-workers of communist labour and about 200 communist-labour collectives (enterprises and organisations).

p The working masses in the People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen, demonstrating a highly conscious attitude to the solution of acute economic problems, voluntarily agreed to a temporary reduction in wages and an increase in the working day.

p The citizens of Cotonou in the People’s Republic of Benin cultivated thousands of acres of vacant land near their city in the course of “red Saturdays”. As a result, factory and office collectives and the personnel of educational institutions now have their own plantations which contribute to a higher living standard of the working people. Thanks to these same “red Saturdays" in the course of which all people come out into the streets with brooms and spades, Cotonou is now one of the tidiest towns on the Western coast of Africa.

p In order to speed up the solution of the housing problem in the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan the workers and employees of the Kabul housebuilding factory voluntarily turned up for wcrk on their day off thus accelerating the production of items needed by the people’s state.

And so, the “great beginning" is turning into a universal initiative reflecting the growing role and diversity of forms of the history-making activity of the masses.