About Ya.M. Sverdlov

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About Ya.M. Sverdlov


A source:
Stalin I.V. Works. - T. 6. - M.: OGIZ; State Publishing House of Political Literature, 1947, pp. 277–279.


There are people, leaders of the proletariat, about whom they do not make noise in the press, perhaps because they themselves do not like to make noise about themselves, but who, nevertheless, are the lifeblood and true leaders of the revolutionary movement. Among these leaders is Ya.M. Sverdlov.

An organizer to the marrow of his bones, an organizer by nature, by skills, by revolutionary upbringing, by instinct, an organizer of all his ebullient activity - such is the figure of Ya.M. Sverdlov.

What does it mean to be a leader-organizer in our conditions, when the proletariat is in power? This does not mean picking up assistants, setting up an office and issuing orders through it. To be a leader-organizer in our conditions means, firstly, to know the workers, to be able to grasp their advantages and disadvantages, to be able to approach the workers, and secondly, to be able to place the workers in the following way:

1) to make each employee feel at home;

2) so that every worker can give the revolution the maximum of what he is generally capable of giving according to his personal qualities;

3) that this sort of arrangement of workers should result not in interruptions, but in coherence, unity, and a general upsurge in work as a whole;

4) that the general direction of the work organized in this way serve as an expression and implementation of the political idea in the name of which the distribution of workers is carried out.

Ya.M. Sverdlov was precisely this kind of leader-organizer of our party and our state.

The period 1917-1918 was a turning point for the party and the state. The party during this period became the ruling force for the first time. For the first time in the history of mankind, a new power arose—the power of the Soviets, the power of the workers and peasants. To transfer the party, hitherto illegal, to a new track, to create the organizational foundations of a new proletarian state, to find organizational forms of relations between the party and the Soviets, ensuring the leadership of the party, and the normal development of the Soviets - such was the most difficult organizational task that faced the party then. There are no people in the party who would dare to deny that Ya.M. Sverdlov was one of the first, if not the first, who skillfully and painlessly solved this organizational task of building a new Russia.

The ideologists and agents of the bourgeoisie are fond of repeating worn-out phrases to the effect that the Bolsheviks do not know how to build, that they are supposedly only capable of destroying. Ya.M. Sverdlov, all his work is a living refutation of these stories. Ya.M. Sverdlov and his work in our Party are not accidental. The party that gave birth to such a great builder as Ya.M. Sverdlov, [c.278] can boldly say that she is just as good at building the new as she is at destroying the old.

I am far from claiming to be fully acquainted with all the organizers and builders of our party, but I must say that of all the outstanding organizers I know, I know - after Lenin - only two of whom our party can and should be proud: I.F. Dubrovinsky, who died in Turukhansk exile, and Ya.M. Sverdlov, who burned down while working on the construction of the party and the state.


"Proletarian Revolution"

No. 11 (34), November 1924

Signature I. Stalin