I hail your initiative in organising emulation for the exemplary carrying out of the election campaign to the Soviets.

Elections to the Soviets—the organs of the dictatorship of the working class—should be the vital concern of the workers themselves.

Your participation in the election campaign should not be confined to carrying out in proper, Bolshevik fashion the elections in your own town, the elections to the town Soviets.

A more difficult, but no less necessary, task is to take a direct part in the election campaign in the countryside. The outcome of the Soviet elections will largely depend on the extent to which the working class in the towns and the agricultural labourers and poor peasants in the countryside take part in the campaign, exert their influence on its progress, take the lead of the middle peasants, force the kulaks into the background, and thus assure the leadership of the working class in the countryside. Therefore, the interchange of challenges to emulation that you have initiated in the press will be of great significance in rousing the workers for a wide participation in the election campaign.

I wish you success.

J. Stalin

Pravda, No. 274,

November 25, 1928