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

October 6, (Morning session)

Presiding N.S. Khrushchev.

At the meeting, the report of the Central Auditing Commission of the CPSU (b) is heard. Then the congress goes on to discuss the reports of the Central Committee of the CPSU (b) and the Central Auditing Commission of the CPSU (b).

A.Yu. Snechkus, (Lithuanian SSR)

Comrades! (...)

The Lithuanian people became convinced of the great strength of the Stalinist leadership from their own experience. Thanks to the fraternal help of the entire Soviet people, of Comrade Stalin personally, the working people of Lithuania escaped from the yoke of capitalism, put an end to backwardness, darkness and humiliation forever and embarked on the bright and broad path of building socialism.

During the years of bourgeois rule Lithuania was a semi‐colony of the imperialists of the West. The American‐British and other imperialists blatantly trampled on the vital rights of the Lithuanian people. With the help of their loyal servants, the Lithuanian bourgeois nationalists, the imperialists completely ruled Lithuania. They tore away from Lithuania its capital Vilnius, the port of Klaipeda, enslaved the Lithuanian people. By plundering and enslaving the Lithuanian people, the imperialists of the West, with the help of their henchmen, hindered the development of industry in order to export cheap raw materials and sell their products at high prices. Agriculture in Lithuania fell into decline more and more. The working peasants were subjected to ruin, driven from their plots, in search of a piece of bread they rushed overseas, where they fell into bondage to American capitalists, to Brazilian planters or Argentine landowners.

That is why, when the Soviet Union protected the Lithuanian people from the tyranny of the imperialists of the West and extended a fraternal helping hand to us, the working people of Lithuania rose to the fight to overthrow the corrupt bourgeois clique and established Soviet power. In the fraternal family of the peoples of the Soviet Union, the Lithuanian people have risen to a new, free and happy life.

The perfidious attack of the German fascists on our Motherland interrupted the peaceful creative work of the Soviet people. The Communist Party, the great Stalin, inspired the Lithuanians, like all the peoples of the Soviet Union, to a sacred struggle for their liberation and instilled confidence in victory over the enemy. Warriors of the Lithuanian national formation of the Soviet Army, valiant partisans wrote more than one glorious page in the history of the Great Patriotic War.

The Union government, the Central Committee of the All‐Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, and personally Comrade Stalin in the post‐war period rendered tremendous assistance to the Lithuanian people. Such assistance is possible only in our country, in the country of victorious socialism, where all peoples live in friendship and brotherhood, unthinkable under capitalism.

At a time when the American‐British invaders enslave the peoples and trample on their statehood, the Lithuanian people, under the conditions of Soviet power, gained true freedom and independence, true statehood. Lithuanian lands became reunited only by the will of the mighty Soviet Union.

The bosses of American imperialism dream of turning Lithuania back into their fiefdom and Lithuanians into slaves of American imperialism. It was these predatory designs that Eisenhower recently revealed in one of his incendiary speeches. But this will never happen! No one will be able to turn the Lithuanian people off the path of development they have chosen ‐ the Soviet path. The Lithuanian people are and will continue to succeed in the fraternal family of the peoples of the Soviet Union. The Lithuanian people are immensely happy and proud that in the fraternal family of the peoples of our country they, as an equal among equals, participate in building a communist society.

The Lithuanian people come to the 19th Congress of the CPSU (b) with great success. The economy and culture of the republic are growing and flourishing. Industry is successfully developing in the republic ‐ machine building, instrument making, machine tool building, turbine building, shipbuilding, a powerful cement plant has been built. The fishing industry has been re‐established.

During the years of Soviet power, the share of industry in the national economy of the republic has almost doubled and is now 61 percent. The working class has grown in size. In 1952 there are almost three and a half times more industrial workers than there were in 1940.

In the course of the nationwide socialist emulation, thousands of Stakhanovites have grown up, noble workers become foremen, heads of shops, directors of enterprises; workersʹ political activity is growing.

During the years of Soviet power, the Lithuanian countryside has changed beyond recognition. Raising the consciousness of the working peasants, their further rallying around the Soviet regime, the Communist Party, the enormous assistance provided by the Union government in the mechanization of agriculture, the tireless concern and attention of Comrade Stalin to the construction of our young collective farms ensured the success of the socialist reorganization of the republicʹs agriculture.

Today the collective farm system in Lithuania has won finally and irrevocably. In the Lithuanian countryside, the socialist economic system reigns supreme. The Lithuanian peasant was forever freed from kulak bondage and exploitation, became a free builder of a new, collective‐farm life. The times when the Lithuanian peasant used primitive tools are irrevocably gone. Thousands of tractors combine, and other sophisticated agricultural machines are now working in the Lithuanian countryside.

The collective farm system opens up unprecedented prospects for the further development of agriculture in the republic, for raising the culture and prosperity of the collective farm village. This is evidenced by the steady growth of the social economy of the collective farms, the increase in their indivisible assets, the growth of livestock, and the extensive construction of production facilities. The collective farms of our republic are approaching the end of this agricultural year with good indicators.

During the years of Soviet power, major successes have been achieved in the development of Lithuanian culture, national in form and socialist in content. The doors of schools for the children of working people opened wide. The number of students in schools has almost doubled. If during the years of bourgeois power in Lithuania there were about 4 thousand students, and higher schools on average graduated about 100 specialists a year, now there are 14 higher educational institutions in the republic with a total number of students about 15 thousand people, i.e. ... more than four times more. The annual graduation from universities is about 2 thousand people, i.e. 20 times more than in the days of bourgeois power. During the years of Soviet power, the Academy of Sciences of the Lithuanian SSR was created. The Academy of Sciences is rendering ever greater assistance to the development of the national economy and culture of the republic. The allied government provides constant assistance to the Academy of Sciences of the Lithuanian SSR in improving its work.

These facts speak of the flourishing of the Lithuanian national culture under the conditions of Soviet power; they convincingly show that the Soviet government created all the conditions for introducing the working people to culture and education. The party organization of the republic is also widely conducting cultural and educational work among the Polish population in their native language in the areas of the Vilnius region with the Polish population.

In the light of all these achievements in the development of the national economy and culture, the Lithuanian people again and again turn their thoughts to the great Russian people. With the help of the Russian people, the Lithuanian people freed themselves from the oppression of tsarism. The great Russian people helped the Lithuanians to throw off the hated yoke of capitalism.

The great Russian people saved the Lithuanians from the threat of extermination by fascist cannibals. With a generous hand, the Russian people are helping us in the development of the republicʹs national economy and culture.

That is why the Lithuanian people are filled with ardent love and gratitude to their elder brother and friend ‐ the great Russian people. (Applause.)

One of the conditions for the successful development of the economy and culture of the Lithuanian SSR is a decisive struggle against bourgeois‐nationalist ideology and its concrete carriers. Bourgeois nationalists have been exposed as the worst enemies of the people, servants and loyal dogs of foreign invaders, selling their people, their country, not stopping before any crime against the people in the name of preserving their class privileges, in the name of the right to exploit the working people, to profit from their sweat.

The bourgeois nationalists did not live up to the hopes of their imperialist masters. Their bit rates. The years of Soviet power in Lithuania are the years of the triumph of Soviet ideology, the ideology of Marxism‐Leninism, friendship and brotherhood of peoples, the ideology of life‐giving Soviet patriotism, uniting all the peoples of our country into a single fraternal Soviet family.

The complete defeat of the exploiting classes and their parties ‐ bourgeois nationalists of all stripes, the consolidation of the socialist system, the strengthening of the Soviet ideology of brotherhood and friendship of peoples created all the conditions for the growth and development of the new Lithuanian Soviet socialist nation.

In the draft directives of the 19th Party Congress on the fifth five‐year plan for the development of the USSR, the concern of the party and the government for the further development of the Lithuanian SSR, for the growth and prosperity of the economy, culture and welfare of the Lithuanian people found their new vivid expression. This document outlines a detailed program for the further industrialization of Soviet Lithuania, the development of agriculture, and the rise of the culture of the Lithuanian people.

The Lithuanian people greeted this document with the greatest approval as a program for the further struggle for the prosperity of the republic in the fraternal family of the peoples of the Soviet Union. We understand that all this requires an improvement in work, an increase in the fighting efficiency of the party organization of the republic and its governing bodies. Success in the development of the national economy and culture of the Lithuanian people would have been greater if serious mistakes, omissions and shortcomings had not been committed in our work.

These mistakes were pointed out to us by the Central Committee of the CPSU (b), these mistakes and shortcomings were sharply criticized by Bolsheviks at the reporting and election party meetings, conferences, at the 7th Congress of the CP (b) of Lithuania.

The party organization of the republic is not fighting enough for the fulfillment by each enterprise of the production plan in the established range, poorly revealing unused capacities and reserves at enterprises, and insufficiently exercising party leadership in socialist competition.

The Central Committee of the CPSU (b) rightly pointed out to us the shortcomings in collective farm construction. On collective farms, violations of the Charter of an agricultural artel are still allowed, there are cases of theft of collective farm property, illegal seizure of collective farmland, in some places kulaks have crept into collective farms to harm collective farms from the inside. The struggle for the solution of the main problem in agriculture ‐ increasing the yield, increasing the number of livestock and its productivity ‐ is not being sufficiently pursued. The party organization of the republic is taking the necessary measures to eliminate these shortcomings.

An important condition for the further strengthening of collective farms in the republic is the elimination of the farm system ‐ the legacy of tsarism and the Lithuanian bourgeoisie. The farm system complicates the use of technology, lowers the productivity of collective farm labor, prevents the introduction of correct crop rotations, and is a brake on the struggle for further organizational and economic strengthening of collective farms.

The collective farms of the republic, along with the solution of the main production tasks in agriculture, have the opportunity to begin resettlement from farms to collective farm villages. The Central Committee of the Communist Party (Bolsheviks) of Lithuania and the Council of Ministers of the Lithuanian SSR developed measures to resettle collective farmers from farms and submitted them to the Council of Ministers of the USSR. We ask you to help us in solving this issue.

During the years of Soviet power, numerous cadres of party, Soviet, economic and other workers have grown in the republic. In this matter, the Central Committee of the CPSU (b) provided us with constant and great assistance. However, we are still not fulfilling the task set by the Central Committee of the All‐Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) of promoting and educating Bolshevik national cadres in the republic. At party conferences, party organs were severely criticized for insufficient work in this area.

Fulfilling the instructions of the Central Committee of the All‐Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks on the creation of its own Soviet intelligentsia, the party organization has done significant work in training the cadres of the intelligentsia, in the matter of their Bolshevik education. A great deal of work is also being done to re‐educate the old intelligentsia, the overwhelming majority of which is actively involved in socialist construction.

Success in raising the national cadre of the Soviet intelligentsia would have been unthinkable without resolutely overcoming and eradicating the remnants of the influence of bourgeois‐nationalist ideology among certain groups of the Lithuanian intelligentsia.

The bourgeois nationalists, exposed as enemies of the people, do not come out openly now. They and their overt and secret henchmen are trying by deceit to smuggle in their views, to mask them, so that the backward elements can be poisoned with the poison of chauvinism. This is done mainly by distorting the past of the Lithuanian people, idealizing feudal times, by idealizing the so‐called bourgeois‐national movement of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. This movement itself is falsely portrayed as supra‐class, and its leaders as progressive fighters for the cause of the people. At the same time, the nascent revolutionary and workersʹ movement, its role and significance in the liberation of the Lithuanian people, the influence of the revolutionary movement in Russia, the leading role of the Russian working class, the

Bolshevik party are hushed up.

On the basis of Comrade Stalinʹs writings on the national question, the party organization exposes this false idealization of the past, this disguised smuggling of bourgeois nationalism.

At the reporting and election meetings, at the Congress of the Lithuanian Communist Party, the views of the bourgeois‐nationalist persuasion, smuggled through by individual workers, met with severe unanimous condemnation. The communists rightly demanded from the party bodies to intensify the struggle against the manifestations of bourgeois‐nationalist influence still taking place, to prevent them, because where the work of the communists is weakened, hostile influence can penetrate there.

The party organization of the republic will continue to tirelessly fight for the eradication of all remnants of bourgeois nationalism, no matter how they are disguised, and will intensify the work on the communist education of the working people, which is the most important condition for our successful movement forward towards communism.

In conclusion, let me make a few remarks about some Union ministries, which do not always sufficiently fulfill the instructions of the Union Government.

At party conferences in Vilnius and Kaunas, where the republicʹs universities are located, at the congress of the CP (b) of Lithuania, the communists criticized the Ministry of Higher Education. This ministry is extremely bad at enhancing methodological assistance to universities in the republic and improving the cultural and living conditions of students. The ministry made especially many mistakes in staffing our universities. More than once there have been cases when the ministry sent in unsuitable and even politically dubious workers. The USSR Ministry of Agriculture and the USSR Ministry of State Farms pay great attention to the republicʹs agriculture. However, it must be said that these ministries are doing very poorly with an important decree of the Union government on land reclamation. But the implementation of these reclamation works means a further increase in yield and expansion of the fodder base for animal husbandry.

The Ministry of the Electrical Industry and the Ministry of the Automobile and Tractor Industry are extremely poorly concerned with the needs of their factories. The noted shortcomings in the activities of the Union ministries, which we feel, must be eliminated in further work.

Comrades! We are aware that there would be far fewer shortcomings in our work if we did better in the party‐organizational and partypolitical work.

There are still facts when Party bodies take the path of petty tutelage and substitution of Soviet and economic bodies, lose the Party leadership, weakly exercise Party control and verification of implementation.

Criticism and self‐criticism, especially criticism from below, are still underdeveloped in the party organization of the republic. Party organizations and the press ignore serious shortcomings, barely expose them, and struggle insufficiently to eliminate them.

Report comrade. Malenkova directs party organizations to further improve party work, to raise the fighting efficiency of every party organization, every communist. This is of particular importance for our young party organization ‐ the Communist Party of Lithuania, which was admitted to the glorious Bolshevik party after the establishment of Soviet power in Lithuania.

Our party came to its 19th Congress united and monolithic, closely rallied around the Leninist‐Stalinist Central Committee, around its teacher and leader, Comrade Stalin.

The changes in the Rules of the All‐Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) introduced by the Central Committee of the All‐Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) to the present Congress are permeated with the desire to further strengthen and even more rally the ranks of our party, to increase the activity and combat effectiveness of all its organizations. This issue was devoted to a significant part of the report of comrade. Malenkov. To raise the level of all our organizational‐party and party‐political work, to improve the selection and education of cadres, to increase the exactingness of cadres and their responsibility for the assigned task, to strengthen party and state discipline, to multiply ties with the working masses, to expand self‐criticism, especially criticism from below ‐ this is what the Central Committee of our Party teaches us. Fulfillment of these tasks will make it possible to rouse our entire Party, our entire people to fulfill the resolutions that will be adopted by the 19th Congress, to implement the grandiose Stalinist program of communist construction.

Long live the glorious party of Lenin and Stalin!

Long live our great Stalin! (Applause.)