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

October 7th

(Evening meeting)

Presiding L.M. Kaganovich.

The meeting concluded the discussion of the reports of the Central Committee of the CPSU (b) and the Central Auditing Commission of the CPSU (b). The congress unanimously adopts a resolution on the report of the Central Committee of the CPSU (b).

At the meeting, speeches of foreign guests of the congress begin.

N.G. Ignatov, (Krasnodar region )

Comrades, in the life of our Party, in the life of the entire Soviet people, the 19th Congress of the Communist Party is the greatest historic event. The 19th Party Congress and the brilliant work of Comrade Stalin, ʺEconomic Problems of Socialism in the USSRʺ, which was published these days, arm our Party, the entire Soviet people for new feats in the struggle for the victory of communism.

The Soviet people express their boundless devotion to the cause of communism with a new upsurge in nationwide socialist emulation in all spheres of the national economy, by the monolithic unity of the Party and the people, by even greater rallying around their own party, around their great leader and teacher, Comrade Stalin.

In a profound and meaningful report, Comrade Malenkov showed that our party came to its 19th Congress with outstanding victories in the struggle for communism of world‐wide historical significance. By implementing the program outlined by Comrade Stalin in his report at the 18th Congress, the Soviet people, under the leadership of our Party, have strengthened the might of the Soviet state. Our people won victory in the Great Patriotic War, achieved tremendous successes in economic and cultural development, magnified the international authority of the Soviet Union and proved the invincible strength of the socialist system, the all‐conquering ideas of Lenin and Stalin.

In the years that have passed from the 18th to the 19th Party Congress, the working people of the Kuban, like the entire Soviet people, under the leadership of the Central Committee of the All‐Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, have achieved significant success in the development of industry, agriculture and culture. The national economy of the Krasnodar Territory, which was destroyed and plundered by the German occupiers, by the heroic labor of workers, collective farmers and the intelligentsia, has been restored and now significantly exceeds the pre‐war size.

In the recent past, the Kuban was considered the land of agriculture. Now, thanks to the care of the Party and the Government, industry is developing in the Kuban. In recent years alone, 7 billion rubles have been invested in the industry of the region. The industry annually overfulfills the state production plans. The oil industry is developing rapidly. Struggling to fulfill the commitments made in the letter to Comrade Stalin, the oil workers gave many thousands of tons of oil by the 19th Party Congress.

The regional party organization will direct its efforts to eliminate the shortcomings noted in Comrade Malenkovʹs report, and will take all measures to fulfill ahead of schedule the task of drilling and oil production provided for by the fifth five‐year plan.

A large share in the region is occupied by the cement industry, which was completely destroyed during the war. The cement plants have now been restored and equipped with the latest equipment. This year, Novorossiysk plants alone have supplied the country with hundreds of thousands of tons of cement. Cement makers have mastered a number of high‐quality grades of cement for great construction projects.

The food industry has developed extensively. The enterprises of the canning industry of the region annually produce more than 200 million cans of canned vegetables, fruits, meat, fish, which is 180 percent of the pre‐war production. The butter and cheese industry produce about 100 thousand centners (about 100 KG each C. S.M) of butter and over 25 thousand centners of cheese. In the Azov and Black Seas, fishermen of the region annually catch about one million centners of fish.

The industrial enterprises of the Kuban produce metal‐cutting, twocolumn carousel machines, the latest measuring instruments, diesel hammers, machines for mechanization of track work in transport and other types of products. Large worsted‐cloth and cotton factories and other enterprises are under construction.

The Krasnodar regional party organization, guided by the instructions of the Central Committee of the All‐Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks), Comrade Stalin, fought for a new rise in the productive forces in agriculture, the organizational and economic strengthening of collective farms, MTS and state farms, the multiplication of the social economy of collective farms and an increase in the material well‐being of collective farmers.

On the basis of the unswerving implementation of the Partyʹs policy in collective farm construction, the regionʹs agriculture has achieved new successes. Two years have passed since the consolidation of collective farms was carried out in the region in accordance with the wishes of the collective farmers. The collective farm peasantry saw in the Stalinist idea of enlarging collective farms the right path to a new flourishing of collective farm life. The enlarged collective farms clearly demonstrated their advantages, which made it possible for them to get even stronger, use agricultural machinery more productively, and achieve a noticeable increase in the yield of all crops and the productivity of public livestock raising. Life has confirmed that through the enlargement of collective farms it is possible to more successfully solve the main task in the field of agriculture ‐ to raise the yield of agricultural crops and the productivity of animal husbandry, to quickly implement Comrade Stalinʹs instructions that all our collective farms become prosperous, and the collective farmers live richly.

What the enlarged Kuban collective farms represent now can be seen on the example of the collective farm named after Stalin in the Kamyshevatsky district. This 20,000‐hectare collective farm cultivates wheat, cotton, sunflower and many other industrial crops; there are gardens and vineyards. There are 87 tractors, 39 harvesters, 12 cotton pickers and hundreds of other machines in the fields of the collective farm. The collective farm has 23 vehicles. In 2 years, the collective farm has built 22 large production facilities, 3 artesian wells, 8 mechanized currents, installed 5 wind turbines, installed a water supply system, and installed drinking bowls, electric washing machines and electric shearing machines on farms. The collective farm has more than 2,700 head of cattle, 2,500 pigs, about 10,000 sheep, more than 50,000 poultry. In two years, the collective farm handed over to the state 1,250 thousand poods of wheat, 65 thousand poods of oilseeds, 2,450 centners of meat, more than 100,000 centners of milk, 630 centners of wool, over a million eggs. In 1951, the collective farm supplied the state with 8.324 centners of raw cotton. The collective farmʹs annual income is many million rubles. The collective farmers live a prosperous, cultural life.

The enlarged collective farms are becoming more and more productive. This year, according to preliminary data, the yield of grain crops will be 22 centners per hectare. Due to the high level of mechanization and the harvest achieved, the collective farms hand over to the state several tens of poods of wheat per hectare, provide themselves with seeds, fodder for public livestock, and provide high wages in kind to collective farmers.

At present, collective farm farms have more than in 1940: cattle ‐ by 45 percent, including cows ‐ by 50 percent; sheep ‐ by 82 percent, pigs ‐ by 98 percent; the number of poultry on collective farms has more than tripled. Since 1950, turkey breeding has been started in the Kuban. Now in the collective and state farms there are up to 300 thousand heads.

The Party has trained remarkable collective farm personnel. In the kolkhozes of the region, 55 percent of the chairmen of kolkhozes with higher and secondary agricultural education work. In 140 party organizations of collective farms, numbering from 45 to 100 or more communists, freed secretaries of party organizations work.

The kolkhozes and state farms of the region increase the delivery of agricultural products to the state every year. In the current year, wheat delivered to the state is 23 million poods more than in 1940. (Applause.) A lot of sunflower, rice, corn, raw cotton, hemp, kenaf, grapes, fruits, tea, vegetables and melons, essential oil and other agricultural crops are leased to the state. In 1951, delivered to the state: meat ‐ 33 thousand tons, milk ‐ 130 thousand tons, wool ‐ 400 tons, eggs ‐ 119 million pieces, cotton ‐ 25.5 thousand tons more than it were commissioned in 1940. In the current year, in 10 months, twice as much meat and milk has been delivered to the state than in the entire 1940 year.

In the region, 70 percent of collective farms have become millionaires. In 1951, the indivisible funds in collective farms increased by 175 million rubles. The overwhelming majority of collective farms are now capable of making large expenditures on capital construction, on the purchase of pedigree livestock and for other needs necessary for the successful development of the collective farmʹs social economy and for increasing the income of collective farms and collective farmers.

Comrades! Our achievements could have been much greater if we did not have shortcomings and mistakes in party organizational work, in the selection and placement of personnel, in the leadership of collective farms, machine and tractor stations and state farms. The fact is that the shortcomings and errors noted in the report by Comrade. Malenkov take place in our Party organizations. In the Krasnodar Territory there are many collective farms, machine and tractor stations and state farms that receive low yields, allow the death of livestock, and violate the Charter of an agricultural artel. Therefore, our region annually does not receive a large amount of bread, livestock products and other agricultural products.

In the light of the new tasks set in the report by Comrade. Malenkov, the regional party organization will direct its efforts towards eliminating shortcomings and mistakes in order to achieve organizational and economic strengthening of all collective farms, better use of available reserves to increase the productivity of agriculture and animal husbandry, increase the gross harvest of agricultural products and further increase the monetary and in‐kind income of collective farmers.

Comrade Stalin teaches that the source of the growth in the wealth of the collective farms is in modern technology, in the numerous modern machines serving collective farm production.

The Communist Party and the Soviet Government have equipped our agriculture with first‐class machinery. At present, tens of thousands of tractors and combines are working on the fields of the kolkhozes and state farms of the region. 6 thousand electric motors are used in the agriculture of the region. About 20 percent of the regionʹs able‐bodied collective farmers now work on agricultural machines.

All this made it possible to bring the level of mechanization of basic agricultural work in the kolkhozes of the region for plowing and sowing up to 100 percent, for harvesting cereals and sunflowers ‐ up to 99 ‐ 100 percent, for the care of row crops ‐ up to 96 percent, for haymaking ‐ up to 90 percent and for ensiling feed ‐ up to 70 percent.

ʺ... The mechanization of labor processes,ʺ teaches Comrade Stalin, ʺis that new and decisive force for us, without which it is impossible to maintain either our rates or new scales of production.ʺ The regional party organization mobilizes agricultural workers for the implementation of wider mechanization of agricultural production. Scientific and technical councils have been created in many regions to summarize the experience and direction of activity of innovators and inventors.

Ordinary people ‐ collective farmers, MTS workers, agricultural specialists ‐ make thousands of valuable proposals that made it possible to mechanize labor‐intensive processes more widely. Noble brigade leaders of tractor brigades ‐ Ivan Shatsky, Ivan Buneev, combine operator Dmitry Gontar and hundreds of other advanced machine operators of the region are very active in maximizing the use of internal reserves and increasing labor productivity. At the suggestions of rural innovators in the workshops of MTS and collective farms, thousands of mechanisms and devices of various designs were manufactured.

Hundreds of machines, fixtures and valuable improvements could be named. For example, on the collective farm. Kalinin, Pavlovsky district, a grain‐cleaning unit with a capacity of 360 tons of grain per day was manufactured; on the collective farm named after Stalin, Ivanovo district, a mobile stacker was made; on the collective farm. Chapaev, Plastunovsky District, a self‐propelled grain loader was manufactured, which loads 3 tons of grain in three minutes; on the collective farm ʺPobedaʺ, Steingart region, a unit for the simultaneous cultivation and minting of cotton was manufactured.

This remarkable movement clearly shows how thousands of rank‐andfile collective farmer machine operators, educated by our Party and the Soviet government, become on a par with the engineering and technical workers, correct and supplement their work. For outstanding services, over 300 agricultural workers received the title of Hero of Socialist Labor and more than 10 thousand were awarded orders and medals of the Soviet Union.

In the current year, in the region, all work on harvesting and processing grain using currents was mainly comprehensively mechanized. It must be said that without comprehensive mechanization we would not have been able to keep up with the rates of harvesting and grain delivery that were carried out this year. Grain procurement (excluding corn and rice) was completed in 20 days this year.

The implementation of extensive mechanization has become a vital necessity and a well‐known regularity in the further development of the Kuban collective farms, machine and tractor stations and state farms. Experience has confirmed that the implementation of extensive mechanization creates exceptionally favorable conditions for the further development of the productive forces of agriculture, opens up unlimited possibilities for its expanded reproduction, and an increase in the gross yield of agricultural products. The wider introduction of mechanization of labor processes made it possible to shorten the time frame for a number of agricultural work (and the timing in agriculture, as you know, is of paramount importance), to facilitate the work of collective farmers, free up to 40 thousand collective farmers for other urgent agricultural work.

We are witnessing how, with the broader development of mechanization and electrification of labor processes in agriculture, the labor of collective farmers is exalted, how the cultural and technical level of the collective farm peasantry is rising. In carrying out mechanization, our collective farms, machine and tractor stations and state farms are following the path of further technical progress and economic prosperity. But only the first steps have been taken to implement comprehensive mechanization on the kolkhozes and state farms of the region.

Comrade Stalin points out which way the mechanization of agriculture should go under socialism. “The point here is not only in technology in general,” teaches Comrade Stalin, “but in the fact that technology cannot stand in one place, it must be improved all the time, that old technology must be put out of action and replaced with a new one, and a new one with the latest. Without this, the forward course of our socialist agriculture is inconceivable, neither large harvests, nor an abundance of agricultural products are inconceivable. ʺ

Claims must be made against the Ministry of Agricultural Engineering. In our opinion, the ministry shows little initiative in the broad mechanization of labor‐intensive processes in agriculture, does not always support valuable undertakings coming from below.

Our inventors and rationalizers have created many different machines and devices that fill, to a certain extent, some of the gaps in agricultural engineering. Perhaps these machines are not perfect, but they meet the needs of the enlarged collective farms. With close contact of the ministry with innovators, as well as with due efficiency, it would already be possible to organize the serial production of a number of new machines, which agriculture is in need of. Unfortunately, the Ministry of Agricultural Engineering did not start manufacturing new agricultural machines for the MTS of the Krasnodar Territory. As for the manufactured cars, some of them do not meet the requirements. Itʹs time to organize the production at industrial enterprises of powerful grain cleaning units, grain loaders, stackers, as well as the necessary machines for harvesting sunflower, hemp, kenaf, corn, etc.

Comrades! In order to further develop the agriculture of the Kuban, we would consider it necessary to envisage in the fifth five‐year development plan of the USSR the implementation of a water management system in the Krasnodar Territory through the use of the water resources of the Kuban River and its tributaries. The solution of this problem will be extremely important for the national economy for a further increase in gross harvests of agricultural products, an increase in the productivity of public livestock raising, for a significant increase in energy capacities. Through the use of available water resources, it is possible to irrigate at least 750 thousand hectares and water up to 3.5 million hectares of land in the northern regions of the Krasnodar Territory, parts of the southern districts of the Rostov region and the adjacent districts of the Stavropol Territory. Irrigation of land will make it possible only in the Kuban to annually receive up to 50 million poods of rice, more than 10 million poods of raw cotton, 10 million poods of wheat, a large amount of vegetables, fruits, grapes and other agricultural products. The identified hydro resources will make it possible to build a hydroelectric power plant with a capacity of up to 400 thousand kW and on irrigation canals and hydraulic units ‐ up to 150 thousand kW.

It should be noted that the proposed activities are extremely beneficial. Almost the entire area will be irrigated by gravity, with extensive watering of dozens of dry and low‐water rivers. A significant part of the work on irrigation and watering of land can be carried out due to the broad labor participation of the collective farm peasantry of the Kuban. The construction of hydroelectric power plants on mountain rivers also has a number of important advantages. Due to the fact that the water management system can be put into operation in parts, the development of irrigated lands will take place from the next year, after the start of construction. Consequently, the costs of the first years will be beneficial to the national economy already in the course of construction and will be covered by the cost of additional agricultural products from irrigated areas.

On this issue, the region has developed a scheme for using the water resources of the Kuban River and its tributaries. But this scheme was stuck in the USSR State Planning Committee. We ask you to give it a go.

Comrades! The Krasnodar regional party organization came to the 19th Party Congress as a single fighting detachment, closely rallied around the Lenin‐Stalin Central Committee, around the great leader and teacher, Comrade Stalin. (Applause.)

The communists of the Krasnodar Territory will raise the workers of the Kuban to fulfill the tasks set by the 19th Congress, and under the leadership of the Central Committee of the Party, under the leadership of our beloved, dear Comrade Stalin, they will fulfill these tasks with honor.

Long live our beloved, dear comrade Stalin! (Stormy applause.)