Letter to Comrade Choumiatsky

11 January 1935

Greetings and best wishes to the workers of the Soviet cinema on its glorious fifteenth anniversary.

The cinema, in the hands of Soviet power constitutes an inestimable force.

Possessing exceptional possibilities of cultural influence on the masses, the cinema helps the working class and its party to educate the workers in the spirit of socialism, to organize the masses in the struggle for socialism, to heighten their sense of culture and political awareness.

The Soviet power awaits more successes from you; new films glorifying, as did Tchapvaiev, the grandeur of historical achievements in the struggle of the workers and peasants for power in the Soviet Union, mobilizing them in order to accomplish new tasks and reviewing not only the successes but also pointing out the difficulties in socialist construction.

The Soviet power awaits from you a courageous investigation by your teachers in the new fields of art, into this most important sphere of art (Lenin) which above all reflects the character of the masses.

J. Stalin

Pravda
11 January 1935