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SOVIET WOMEN-EQUAL BUILDERS OF THE SOCIALIST SOCIETYWomen in the Land of Socialism
N. Popova
Conclusion
Remarkable new achievements of the Soviet people marked the year 1948. The program for the third, decisive year of the five-year plan was fulfilled 106% in industry, with output 18% above the pre-war level. Workers in socialist agriculture also accomplished great things. Over seven billion poods of grain were harvested in 1948, which is almost as much as was harvested before the war.
Thanks to these achievements in the national economy the conditions were created for a further rise of the material and cultural standards of our people. The financial reform and abolition of rationing considerably raised the standard of living of the Soviet people.
On March 1, 1949, retail prices of food and manufactured goods were again cut by decision of the Council of Ministers of the U.S.S.R. and the Central Committee of the C.P.S.U.(B). This decision was another manifestation of the great solicitude of the Party, the Government and Comrade Stalin personally for the welfare of the Soviet people.
Soviet women play an outstanding part in the effort for the rehabilitation and development of the country’s national economy, and take an active part in the all-Union socialist emulation for fulfilling the post-war Stalin five-year plan ahead of schedule. A patriotic movement for Stakhanovite methods of work of whole shops and factories, for economy and socialist accumulation, over and above the plan, for accelerated turnover of funds and for high quality was initiated in Moscow factories and swept the country.
The Soviet people’s ardent love for their country and for the Bolshevik Party is vividly expressed in the numerous letters sent to Comrade Stalin reporting achievements in fulfilling the post-war five-year plan ahead of schedule.
The names of the workers leading in fulfilment of the post-war five-year plan are well known in our country, and women are prominent among them. In almost all branches of industry workers followed the patriotic examples set by the Orekhovo weaver Maria Volkova, by youth brigade leader Anna Kuznetsova at the low-power automobile works, by brigade leader Klavdia Zenova of the Krasny Bogatyr Plant, by Lyubov Ananyeva, spinner at the Glukhov mills.
In 1948 new names were added to the galaxy of eminent workers of Moscow industries. They include: Nina Vasilieva, core-maker at the Stalin Automobile Plant, Valentina Khrisanova, brigade leader at an electric bulb plant; Klavdia Zheltova, weaver at the Trekhgornaya Textile Mills; Alexandra Kuzmina, motorwoman at the Krasnaya Shveya Needlework Factory; Ludmila Nemitsheva, frame operator at the Glukhov Cotton Mills, and many others. All these women display initiative and resourcefulness and are outstanding organizers and innovators of production.
Vying with the best core-makers of her shop – Alexandra Byelova, Olga Chechetkina, and Nina Sadovskaya – the young Stakhanovite Nina Vasilieva, of the Stalin Automobile Plant in Moscow, put out in one shift 1,400 cores for casting the body of ZIS-150 carburetors instead of the 228 called for by the quota. This was a splendid achievement. The third foundry shop, where Nina Vasilieva works, completed its 1948 plan by November 28 and was named a Stakhanovite shop. Nina Vasilieva herself completed by December 5 – Soviet Constitution Day – as much as she was supposed to do in five and a half years.
Over one year ago Valentina Khrisanova’s youth brigade at the Moscow Electric Bulb Factory began to work on an hour-by-hour schedule, i.e., planning their work and checking it by the hour. The brigade regularly fulfills its shift assignment, putting out one hundred, two hundred and more radio tubes. It completed the 1948 plan by September 25. Output per worker increased almost twenty-five per cent. “We got these results,” says Khrisanova, “without any extra expenditure, merely by improving organization and technology. Moreover, the brigade freed a number of workers for other jobs.”
At the Glukhov Cotton Mills, where Lyubov Ananyeva began her fine work of tending extra spindles, a young spinning-frame operator, Ludmila Nemitsheva, Young Communist League member, improved the technological process and speeded up the spindles so that output increased ten per cent. The valuable example was followed by the spinning, flyer and twist frame operators of the Trekhgornaya Textile Mills, Orekhovo mills, the Istomkino mills and other factories in Moscow and all over the Soviet Union.
A new splendid movement for putting out goods of the highest possible quality was started by Alexander Chutkikh, assistant foreman at the Krasnokholm Worsted Goods Mill. His example was followed with enthusiasm not only by textile workers but also by the workers in other industries. Brigades of workingmen and working women all over the country are vying with one another for the honour of being called excellent quality brigades.
Many women have distinguished themselves in 1948 by their efforts to raise the standard of agriculture and stockbreeding, and to obtain abundant and stable crop yields on collective farms. For example, Antonina Gudkova, Maria Lyamina, Alexandra Shishkina – field-group leaders on the Borets Collective Farm, Dmitrov District, Moscow Region – obtained a potato crop of 561, 540 and 555 metric centners per hectare, respectively; Yevdokia and Anna Kozhukhantseva – field group leaders on the Tretya Pyatiletka Kolkhoz, Ukhtomskaya District, Moscow Region – gathered over 500 metric centners of potatoes per hectare; Anna Sokolova, of the Soviet Army Collective Farm, Kolomna District, grew 503.6 metric centners of potatoes per hectare; Alexandra Kislyakova, pig tender at the Novy Put Collective Farm, Kim District, raised 228 suckling pigs to the age of two months, average weight 15.9 kilograms each, in the past year; Agafya Yermakova, field-group leader on the Budyonny Collective Farm, Mozhaisk District, harvested 531 centners of potatoes per hectare.
These achievements reflect the great strength of the collective-farm system, the ardent patriotism of the Soviet farmers, who are working with enthusiasm to raise the country’s agriculture to an even higher level.
Advanced Soviet women working in factories, mills, or on collective-farm fields are active builders of Communism. They are helping to further the material and intellectual culture of the U.S.S.R. And they owe all their achievements and successes to the Bolshevik Party, to its great leaders Lenin and Stalin.
Only the socialist system could have inspired millions of women with creative initiative, could have brought to the fore heroines of labour – Stakhanovites in industry, transportation and agriculture, outstanding cultural workers, Heroes of the Soviet Union and Heroes of Socialist Labour, women Stalin Prize winners and women statesmen.
Soviet women fulfil their lofty duty of raising the younger generation with honour and credit. They educate their children in the spirit of selfless loyalty to the Party of Lenin and Stalin, in the spirit of love for their country. They teach them to strive for knowledge and to work for the benefit of their people, of Soviet society. The Soviet Union is proud of the mothers who brought up their sons to be fearless, valiant soldiers in the Great Patriotic War. That war showed the whole world what a heroic generation the Bolshevik Party has brought up – a generation that is beginning to spread its eagle wings.
Together with the whole Soviet people the women of the Soviet Union made an invaluable contribution to the defeat of Hitlerite Germany and the liberation of the peoples of Europe from the fascist enslavers. Soviet women’s selfless struggle against fascism won them the universal respect of the freedom-loving peoples of the world. Soviet women play a leading part in the efforts to strengthen the international movement of democratic women of all countries, to unite their efforts for the fight against the instigators of a new war, against imperialist reaction.
The influence of the Party of Lenin and Stalin has produced a lofty spirit in Soviet women. Boundless love for their country, patriotic pride in its glorious achievements, staunchness and courage, perseverance in forging ahead towards the goal they have set themselves, ability to surmount difficulties – all these qualities have truly become national characteristics of Soviet women.
The hearts of patriotic Soviet women are filled with boundless love for the Bolshevik Party. Unshakable and impressive is their faith in the strength and truth of the Bolshevik Party, “which is the highest expression of the moral and political unity of our people which is confidently advancing to Communist society and which, under the leadership of the great Stalin, is pointing out the road to universal peace, to the abolition of bloody wars, to the overthrow of capitalist slavery and to the great progress of nations and of all mankind.” (V. M. Molotov)
The self-respect of Soviet people – heroes and creators of a new life – is based on their awareness of the great advantages of the Soviet social and state system as compared with the capitalist system, on the knowledge that our socialist culture is superior to bourgeois culture.
Soviet women are proud of their socialist country, which has become a pillar of civilization and progress, of durable democratic peace throughout the world.
They jealously guard the honour and dignity of their great country.
The work of Soviet women, their creative activity contributes to their country’s might, adds to its prestige, to its greatness and glory.
Soviet women will continue to march in the front ranks of those who are helping to accelerate the development of socialist economy, who are working to fulfil the five-year plan in four years and to further improve the material and cultural standard of the Soviet people. Deeply conscious of their patriotic duty to their country, filled with boundless love and gratitude to the Party of Lenin and Stalin, and to the great leader of the peoples, Comrade Stalin, Soviet Women devote all their energy and all their creative powers to further the prosperity of the Soviet country, to the construction of a Communist society in the U.S.S.R.
1) V.I. Lenin, Collected Works, 3rd Russ. ed., Vol. XIX, pp. 316-17.
2) Lenin and Stalin, Collection of Works for the Study of the History of the C.P.S.U. (B), Russ. ed., Vol. III, P. 642.
3) Domostroi – a Russian book of the sixteenth century laying down the rules of household management and family life for the wealthy sections of the population. – Trans.
4) V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, 3rd Russ. ed., Vol. XXV, p. 40.
5) Joseph Stalin, A Short Biography, Moscow 1947, pp. 102-03. (All references are to English editions, unless otherwise stated. – Ed.)
6) V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, 3rd Russ. ed., Vol. XVI, p. 516.
7) Ibid., Vol. IV, p. 289.
8) V. I. Lenin, Selected Works, Vol. III, Moscow 1935, p. 350.
9) History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Bolsheviks), Short Course, Moscow 1949, p. 215.
10) V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, 3rd Russ. ed., Vol. XXIV, p. 468.
11) Ibid., Vol. XXV, p. 63.
12) V. I. Lenin, Selected Works, Vol. VI, Moscow 1935, p. 273.
13) V. I. Lenin, Selected Works, Two-Vol. ed., Vol. II, Moscow 1947, p. 499.
14) V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, 3rd Russ. ed., Vol. XXIX, p. 379.
15) Joseph Stalin, A Short Biography, Moscow 1947, pp. 103-04.
16) V. I. Lenin, Selected Works, Vol. VI, Moscow 1935, p. 272.
17) V. I. Lenin, Selected Works, Vol. IX, p. 500.
18) V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, 3rd Russ. ed., Vol. XXIII, p. 285.
19) J. V. Stalin, Collected Works, Russ. ed., Vol. V, p. 319.
20) Resolutions and Decisions of the C.P.S.U. (B.), Russ. ed., 1940, Vol. I, p. 311.
21) Ibid., p. 522.
22) Resolution and Decisions of the C.P.S.U.(B.), Russ ed., 1940, Vol. I, p. 620.
23) V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, 3rd Russ. ed., Vol. XXV, p. 40.
24) J. V. Stalin, Collected Works, Russ. ed., Vol. V, p. 349.
25) Ibid., p. 350.
26) N. K. Krupskaya, Women of the Land of Soviets – Equal Citizens, Russ. ed., Partizdat, 1938, p. 42.
27) V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, 3rd Russ. ed., Vol. XXIV, p. 472.
28) Joseph Stalin, A Short Biography, Moscow 1947, p. 102.
29) History of the C.P.S.U.(B.), Short Course, Moscow 1949, p. 365.
30) A dessiatine is about 2.7 acres. – Trans.
31) V. I. Lenin, Selected Works, Two-Vol. ed., Vol. II, Moscow 1947, p. 257.
32) History of the C.P.S.U.(B.), Short Course, Moscow 1949, p. 376.
33) J. V. Stalin, Problems of Leninism, Moscow 1947, pp. 450-51.
34) History of the C.P.S.U. (B.), Short Course, Moscow 1949, p. 423.
35) V. I. Lenin, Selected Works, Two-Vol. ed., Vol. II, Moscow 1947, p. 482.
36) J. V. Stalin, Problems of Leninism, Moscow 1947, p.492
37) V. I. Lenin, Selected Works, Two-Vol. ed., Vol. II, Moscow 1947, p. 670.
38) Ibid., Vol. I, p. 730.
39) V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, 3rd Russ. ed., Vol. XXV, p. 509.
40) V. M. Molotov, Articles and Speeches, Russ. ed., Profizdat, 1937, pp. 200-01.
41) J. V. Stalin. On the Great Patriotic War of the Soviet Union, Moscow 1946, p. 36.
42) J. V. Stalin, On the Great Patriotic War of the Soviet Union, Moscow 1946, pp. 164-65.
43) M. I. Kalinin, The Moral Complexion of Our People, Russ. ed., Gospolitizdat, 1947, pp. 31-32.
44) M. I. Kalinin, The Moral Complexion of Our People, Russ. ed., Gospolitizdat, 1947, p. 32.
45) J. V. Stalin, Problems of Leninism, Moscow 1947, pp. 43-44.
46) V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, 3rd Russ. ed., Vol. XXV, pp. 343-44.
47) V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, 3rd Russ. ed., Vol. XXIV, pp. 517-18.
48) A. A. Zhdanov, The International Situation, Moscow 1947, .p. 19.