XIX Congress of the CPSU (b) - (October 5-14, 1952). Documents and Materials

October 6, (Evening meeting)

Presiding D.S. Korotchenko.

The meeting continued the discussion of the reports of the Central Committee of the CPSU (b) and the Central Auditing Commission of the CPSU (b).

I.T. Grishin, (Stalingrad region)

(...)

More than 13 years have passed since the XVIII Congress. During these years the Soviet people, under the leadership of the Bolshevik Party, under the leadership of Comrade Stalin, have traveled a glorious path. No state in the world could have withstood such a difficult test as the last war, without losing its economic and political independence. Our socialist state successfully overcame these difficulties and in a short time achieved a new powerful development of the economy, a significant increase in the welfare and cultural level of the working people. These successes confirm with all their might the correctness of the general line of the party, the advantages of the socialist system and its superiority over the capitalist system.

In solving the problems facing our country, both during the war and in the post‐war period, local party organizations have played and are playing an active role, which the Central Committee of the Party led daily with deep knowledge of the matter, noticed and corrected shortcomings in their work in time.

Comrade Malenkov rightly spoke in his report about the weakening of internal Party work in individual Party organizations. This was the case in our Stalingrad regional party organization. We had serious mistakes in the methods of guiding the regional party committee in socialist construction. We were overly carried away by economic issues and allowed the oblivion of party‐political work, ineptly combined party political, mass agitation work with the solution of specific tasks of economic development. All this led to a weakening of the work of the primary party organizations, to a decrease in the activity of the communists.

The Central Committee of the party corrected the regional committee in time. The instruction of the Central Committee of the Party helped our regional party organization to strengthen its fighting capacity, to activate the communists and to mobilize the working people of the region to solve the tasks that were set before the region by the party, the government, and personally by Comrade Stalin.

It is known that the city of Stalingrad with its industry during the war was destroyed to the ground. The economy of the region was also seriously affected. However, thanks to the efforts of the working people of Stalingrad and the region, with the daily help of the entire Soviet people, the party, the government, and Comrade Stalin personally, a huge amount of work was done in a short time to restore the destroyed economy. All factories were completely restored and significantly expanded, which made it possible to significantly increase the output of tractors, steel, rolled products, barges, ships, as compared to the prewar level, as well as to master the production of excavators, powerful suction dredgers for large construction projects and oil equipment. We surpassed the level of the pre‐war period in terms of gross output as a whole back in 1949.

During the post‐war period, many residential buildings were built in Stalingrad with a total area of 1.340 thousand square meters. m, 90 schools, hospitals, theaters, clubs, 7 universities have been opened.

Noticeable improvements have also taken place in agriculture. There are now 900 large collective farms in the region, which serve 180 machine and tractor stations and 46 forest protection stations. Improvement in land cultivation and the use of advanced agricultural technology allowed the regional collective and state farms, even in unfavorable climatic conditions, to increase the yield of agricultural crops. As a result, the collective and state farms of the region began to accurately fulfill the plan of grain deliveries to the state, fully meet their needs for seeds and forage, and began to give out more grain for the workday to collective farmers.

Improvements in the regionʹs agriculture are especially noticeable in the current year. Collective and state farms have harvested grain crops one and a half times higher than last year and handed over grain to the state by 25 million poods more than last year, and grain deliveries were mainly made with wheat.

But it is known that the agriculture of our region is often subject to the destructive effects of droughts and dry winds. In order to put an end to this eternal enemy of agriculture in the southeastern regions of the country and achieve high, stable yields of all agricultural crops and increase the productivity of public livestock raising, on the initiative of Comrade Stalin, a plan for transforming nature with a complex of hydraulic structures was adopted. According to this plan of gigantic transformation work in the Stalingrad region, not only the economy, but also the nature and climate are being rebuilt and completely changed. The plan provided for the construction of the Volga‐Don shipping canal with reservoirs and a large irrigation and watering system, as well as the Stalingrad hydroelectric complex, which should irrigate 675 thousand and water 2 million hectares of land in our region alone.

In addition, we are building and must continue the construction of thousands of ponds, reservoirs, planting, in whole or in part, six state field‐protective forest belts out of eight provided for by Stalinʹs plan for the transformation of nature. In general, the region needs afforestation on an area of 700 thousand hectares.

Millions of hectares of irrigated and watered lands, combined with a large number of ponds and reservoirs, with forest belts that will protect crops from winds and black storms, the introduction of correct crop rotations and the enhancement of the entire culture of agriculture, of course, create and create conditions in our places for obtaining high sustainable yields of all agricultural crops.

Stalinʹs plan for the transformation of nature is being carried out extremely quickly. The age‐old dream of the Russian people to unite the Volga with the Don has come true. Construction of the Volga‐Don navigable canal named after V.I. Lenin completed within the timeframe set by the government. The canal was put into operation by operating enterprises.

The construction of the second giant, the Stalingrad hydroelectric station with the Volga‐Ural gravity canal, began. Last year, the team of builders of the Stalingrad hydroelectric complex fulfilled two annual plans. Having launched socialist competition in honor of the 19th Congress of our Party, the hydro‐builders are striving to complete the plan ahead of schedule for the current year as well.

Large work is being done on afforestation. If before the adoption of the Stalinist plan for transforming nature in the region, forest belts were planted on an area of 22 thousand hectares, but now the plantings have been carried out on an area of 170 thousand hectares. Landings on the state strip Kamyshin ‐ Stalingrad, 250 kilometers long, have been completed ahead of schedule.

Huge, downright fabulous prospects for the development of the national economy are opening up for the southeastern region of the country in connection with the implementation of the majestic Stalinist plan for the transformation of nature. This plan, as we can see, is quickly being implemented.

However, I would like to point out that there are some drawbacks to this enormous work. First of all, it seems to us that the preparatory work is still not being carried out to the full for the full use of the enormous economic opportunities that are being created by the construction projects of communism. Some ministries, planning and research organizations are clearly lagging behind the tasks set before them by the party and government.

In the draft directives of the 19th Party Congress on the fifth five‐year plan, great attention is paid to the construction projects of communism. But the questions connected with the gigantic hydraulic engineering structures and the richest prospects for the development of all branches of the national economy in the zone of these construction projects are so significant and vital that it is necessary to say a little more fully about them in the decisions of the Congress.

Hydroelectric power plants will make it possible to develop industry on a large scale in the South‐East. There will be an opportunity, in addition to a significant expansion of existing enterprises, to create new large factories and entire industries. Agriculture is also gaining a new, unprecedented scale. This obliges the relevant ministries, the State Planning Commission, and scientific institutions to think in advance about drawing up a comprehensive plan for the development of the economy in the regions of the southeast of the country. Care must be taken in advance to make more correct and fuller use of all the favorable conditions created here for the growth of industrial and agricultural production. Unfortunately, these issues are still being slowly resolved.

To study and prepare economic justifications for the development of productive forces in the area of the Stalingrad hydroelectric complex, it would be necessary to create a complex group of employees of research organizations, academies, interested ministries, to define a more clear program and terms of work, obliging them to submit their views to planning authorities.

It would be good for a better study of the productive forces of this economic region to organize a branch of the Academy of Sciences in the south‐east of the country, located, say, in the city of Stalingrad. (Animation in the hall).

The large scale of construction work required a significant increase in electricity generation, an increase in cargo transportation, and the production of building materials. Unfortunately, these works are developing slowly.

The railways do a poor job of transporting goods for industry and the construction of a hydroelectric power station. Construction materials from the right bank of the Volga to the left bank, in particular brick, are sometimes sent in a roundabout way through Saratov. The Ministry of Railways cares little about the development of the Stalingrad railway junction and the improvement of the ferry crossing over the Volga.

In Stalingrad, 300 million bricks are now being produced, while the construction of the hydroelectric station alone requires 150 million bricks a year. In addition to a hydroelectric power station, bricks are needed for the construction of new factories and residential buildings. We already lack about 130 million bricks. Such a serious problem cannot be viewed as just a local problem. The relevant ministries should provide substantial assistance to local organizations in expanding the production of building materials.

There are also some shortcomings in the irrigation of land in the VolgaDon canal zone. The Ministry of Agriculture and the Ministry of State Farms are to blame for this, which delayed drawing up a plan of necessary measures for both Rostov and Stalingrad regions.

Next year we must get water for irrigation of the first 25 thousand hectares of land. Irrigation canals are being built, and the irrigation scheme has not yet been approved by anyone. In addition, the highvoltage line, which is supposed to supply the pumping stations with electricity from the Tsimlyanskaya HPP, has not been connected. The Ministry of Agriculture and the Ministry of Power Plants of the USSR cannot agree on joint actions and the timing of the construction of the power line.

Great construction projects will make it possible to irrigate and water a huge area. Therefore, it is necessary to mechanize the exploitation of irrigated lands in every possible way. This problem is urgent. However, the Ministry of Agriculture is slowly meeting this challenge. It seems to us that there is a need to create a special body, if not a ministry, then the main department under the USSR Council of Ministers for the construction of irrigation systems and the development of irrigated and watered lands. You canʹt do such a big thing along the way.

Comrade Malenkovʹs report spoke of the major successes in agriculture, especially in grain farming. Comrade Malenkov also noted serious shortcomings in the management of agriculture: the template in agricultural technology, lack of knowledge of remote areas on the part of ministries and local governing bodies. This is an absolutely correct statement. And in this connection, I would like to make one more remark to the address of the Ministry of Agriculture. It has little knowledge of the actual state of affairs in agriculture in the localities and does not differentiate itself in remote areas, and in relation to the Volga region, it makes a mistake, not waging a struggle to expand winter wheat crops.

Our country now requires not grain at all, but the most valuable food crop ‐ wheat. And in the Volga region, there are still disputes among agricultural specialists whether or not it is possible to sow winter wheat. And they hardly sow it, they are more engaged in rye. The experience of our region in recent years in sowing winter wheat is viewed with skepticism, while winter wheat in our conditions gives higher yields.

In 1945, we sowed only 45 thousand hectares of winter wheat, in 1949 ‐ 215 thousand hectares, last year we already sowed 394 thousand hectares, and, despite unfavorable climatic conditions, wheat gave a higher yield, and wheat cannot be equated with a pood of rye. Our collective farms have grown fond of winter wheat and this year they have sown about 500 thousand hectares. The question is, what more proof is needed, is this an experiment on a small garden bed or on a plot? However, in the Volga region this year too little winter wheat is sown. This is a state task, and it must be solved more boldly.

Comrades! The Stalingrad regional party organization, preparing for the XIX Party Congress, actively discussed issues of the agenda of the Congress. Discussion of the draft directives on the fifth five‐year plan for the development of the USSR and the text of the amended Party Charter caused an enormous political growth of the Communists, the unity of their ranks, an unyielding desire to fight in a Bolshevik manner for the solution of the tasks outlined by the XIX Congress of our party.

Great are the victories and achievements of socialism in our country, realized according to the plans and designs of Comrade Stalin. Our people are happily and confidently following the party, following their wise leader to the complete triumph of communism, to the complete triumph of the great ideas of Marx‐Engels‐Lenin‐Stalin.

Long live the great Communist Party of the Soviet Union!

Long live our dear and beloved Comrade Stalin! (Stormy applause.)