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About the workers:
Conversation with an employee of the magazine "Working Correspondent"54

A source: Stalin I.V. Works. - T. 6. - M.: OGIZ; State Publishing House of Political Literature, 1947, pp. 261–263.

Note 54: Ibid. S. 411.

The significance of the workers' participation in the management of the newspaper lies, first of all, in the fact that it - this participation - creates the possibility of transforming such a sharp weapon in the class struggle as the newspaper, from a weapon of enslaving the people into a weapon of liberation. Only workers and rural correspondents can accomplish this great transformation.

Only as an organized force can workers' and rural correspondents play the role of an exponent and conductor of proletarian public opinion in the course of the development of the press, an exposer of the shortcomings of the Soviet public, a tireless fighter for the improvement of our construction.

Should worker correspondents be elected at meetings of workers, or should they be selected by the editors? In my opinion, the second method (selection by editors) is more appropriate. The case should be based on the independence of the correspondent from the institutions and persons with whom he comes into contact in one way or another in his work, which [c.261] does not at all signify its independence from that elusive but continuously active force which is called proletarian public opinion and whose conductor the worker correspondent must be.

Workers' and rural correspondents cannot be regarded only as future journalists or factory public workers, in the narrow sense of the word, they are, first of all, exposers of the shortcomings of our Soviet public, fighters for the abolition of these shortcomings, commanders of proletarian public opinion, trying to direct inexhaustible forces this greatest factor to help the Party and the Soviet government in the difficult task of socialist construction.

From this follows the question of educational work among workers and rural correspondents. It is, of course, necessary to train workers and rural correspondents in a certain minimum of journalism technique. But that's not the point. The main thing is that workers and rural correspondents learn in the course of their work and develop in themselves that instinct of a public journalist, without which the correspondent cannot fulfill his mission and which cannot be instilled by any artificial measures of training in the technical sense of the word. .

The direct ideological leadership of workers and rural correspondents should belong to the editorial offices of newspapers associated with the party. The censorship of correspondence should be concentrated in the hands of newspaper editors. [c.262]

The persecution of workers and rural correspondents is barbarism, a relic of bourgeois mores. The protection of its correspondent from persecution must be undertaken by the newspaper, which alone is capable of launching cruel accusatory propaganda against obscurantism.

I wish "Working Correspondent" every success.


I. Stalin

"Working Correspondent" No. 6,

June 1924

NOTE



54 "Working Correspondent" - a monthly magazine, published from January 1924 to June 1941. From January 1925 it was published under the title "Workers' and Peasants' Correspondent".