Speech at the All-Union Komsomol Conference on Preparation for the Spring Sowing Campaign, February 2, 1933

There can be no doubt that the present All-Union conference will play an enormous role in mobilizing the Komsomol for the key sectors of the spring field campaign.

Until now, in a number of Komsomol organizations, instead of practical preparation for the spring sowing, general phrases, "general guidelines," the summing up of already summed-up results, and so on have held sway. At the same time, these organizations forget the main Bolshevik rule in mobilizing the masses for the solution of current tasks — concreteness.

All Komsomol workers must grasp the truth that the spring sowing cannot be ensured with "general guidelines." What is needed here are concrete deeds. The masses of Komsomol members need to assimilate the results of our successes primarily in order to move forward even more successfully. One must remember well that this forward movement is ensured not at all by general wishes, promises, and paper resolutions, but by concrete, living, real deeds.

Instead of inventing "general directives" on the tasks of the Komsomol in preparing for the sowing, Komsomol committees are now obligated to take up in practice entirely concrete tasks, on whose resolution the timely start and success of the spring sowing depend above all else at the present moment.

There are at least three such concrete, urgent, and entirely pressing tasks in the preparation for sowing.

The first task is the repair of tractors, the combat readiness of the tractor fleet for spring. Our country now has 150,000 tractors. But an enormous number of them require repair and are in a disassembled state. The CC of the Party and the government have recognized the situation with tractor repair at the MTS and state farms as unsatisfactory, and have indicated that "the timely completion of tractor repair is a combat task of the organs of the People's Commissariat of Agriculture and the People's Commissariat of State Farms, determining the successful conduct of the spring sowing campaign."

Very often, tractors that do not at all need it are put into complete disassembly for capital repair merely because they have worked 1,500 hours, without regard for the actual condition of the machine. At the same time, there are many cases when tractors that do need repair are repaired extremely poorly, in a shoddy manner.

At the MTS, undetected wreckers are nesting, who do everything possible to put as many tractors out of commission as possible. At the MTS, there are still quite a few such "workers" who do everything to work as little as possible, to put as many tractors out of commission as possible, to classify as many of them as "scrap" as possible, and to sit with folded arms since "they pay the salary anyway."

It is precisely here, to this concrete struggle for tractor repair, for the efficient work of repair workshops, for the exposure, apprehension, and expulsion from the MTS and MTW (machine-tractor workshops — Ed.) of scoundrels who artificially create difficulties in our path, that the Komsomol must now throw its forces.

Komsomol workers, instead of armchair calligraphy, must themselves penetrate the repair workshops, putting the work of Komsomol members there on a combat footing, thoroughly examining which specific tractors have been put out of commission and why this happened, what specific repairs they need and how these repairs are proceeding. The resolution of the CC of the VKP(b) and the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR on the repair of the tractor fleet is a combat program of immediate action for Komsomol organizations.

The second task is the collection of seed funds. In a number of districts of Ukraine, the North Caucasus, and the Lower Volga, the situation with the accumulation of seed funds is unsatisfactory. Who is to blame for this? To a significant degree, the Komsomol organizations of these districts themselves. General words here too prevail over concrete deeds. In many districts, there are collective farms in which there are still no seeds at all collected for sowing.

What needs to be done? Instead of writing general directives, in each district one must take a list of the lagging collective farms, and in each territory take a list of the lagging districts and send reliable people there to help collect seeds, for the concrete organization of this work. A campaign of Komsomol members is needed in the districts lagging behind in seed collection, in order to pull these districts out of the breach, so that these districts will meet the sowing fully armed, in full readiness.

The third task is the production of spare parts for tractors. The situation here is also unsatisfactory. The CC of the VKP(b) and the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR have indicated that the production of spare parts is now "the most important state task."

Here too, instead of composing "general instructions," Komsomol committees must take up concrete work at the factories producing spare parts. It is necessary to truly stir up the people in the Komsomol organizations of these factories, placing all their activity at the present moment under the especially vigilant control of the entire Komsomol. It is necessary to show initiative in finding local resources for organizing the production of missing spare parts.

In the struggle for the resolution of these tasks, we once again test the class vigilance and combat readiness of the rural Komsomol members, for the remnants of the routed but not finished-off kulak class are doing everything to sabotage and harm the successful conduct of the sowing. In the process of the struggle for seed collection, we must do everything to cleanse the Komsomol ranks of class-alien, demoralized, and wavering people, mobilizing the masses of Komsomol members for the struggle to expel kulak and wrecking elements from the collective farms, MTS, and state farms.

One must remember that the Komsomol's struggle for the resolution of these urgent concrete tasks of sowing preparation must be conducted at the most combat tempo. An immutable rule applies here: "miss a month — suffer the whole year," since during sowing "each day feeds the year." That is why, in the face of these concrete tasks, rambling about "general tasks" and "general guidelines" is absolutely intolerable. What is needed is action — and immediate action!

Very often, wishing to demonstrate their "efficiency" and "concreteness" in the solution of these current tasks, Komsomol committees like to brandish the quantity of brigades sent to the countryside, the quantity of people sent to the collective farms. In this brandishing of quantity alone — there is very much that smacks of formalism. It must be emphasized once again that what matters here is not quantity but quality. To hastily assemble people, caring only about quantity, to hurriedly instruct them and send them off as quickly as possible — this means essentially to throw off the concern for the creation of cadres, this means to care not about the work itself but about an impressive figure in reporting summaries.

Cadres — real cadres of real workers — grow only in living work. It is not enough to send people; one must know how they work on the ground and help them in this work, follow up on them, for it is only in practical work, in concrete struggle, that people grow, cadres are forged, workers are tested.

Concern for the quality of the cadres sent is the main concern! It is better to send people by the dozen rather than by the hundreds and thousands, but in return to genuinely ensure the high quality of those sent and the high quality of their work on the ground.

Sending people to their posts — this is only the very beginning of the work. The main thing is to follow how they work, to make sure they are not crushed by bureaucrats, that they are not shoved aside, depersonalized, or undermined. Are there not known cases when even good workers sent to their posts were targeted by hostile elements and various "comrades from the bureaucratic ranks" who tried to undermine, discredit, and knock them out of commission?

To ensure quality in the matter of helping the countryside with cadres — such is the combat task of Komsomol committees.

In their operational leadership of the fulfillment of the enumerated concrete tasks in the preparation for sowing, Komsomol committees must ensure maximum assistance to local organizations, down to the collective farm cell.

If in one or another district, one or another collective farm or state farm, things are going badly, then one must not engage in general speechifying, but go to these places and actually help the Komsomol members there.

For the grassroots organizations, such help is far more useful than "general guidelines." And for the Komsomol leaders themselves, such work in local organizations is an excellent school, which teaches them the ability to lead concretely on the basis of familiarity with the actual situation on the ground. A Komsomol worker who does not teach the localities and does not learn himself from work in the grassroots organization is a poor worker. The intolerability of these bad qualities becomes especially obvious now, when the matter concerns the solution of those concrete tasks which now face the Komsomol in the struggle for the combat preparation of the spring sowing.

To declare a decisive war on the general phrase, to fight wreckers and kulak elements in deed and not with "incantations," to roll up one's sleeves and take up practical work on the resolution of concrete tasks in preparation for the spring sowing in the first year of the Second Five-Year Plan — such is now the duty of the Komsomol leadership.

The Party expects concrete struggle from the Komsomol for the successful preparation of the sowing. The Leninist Komsomol must respond to this with concrete, militant, living deeds.

Komsomolskaya Pravda. February 3, 1933.