Fragment of the Speech at the Graduation of Red Army Academy Students, May 4, 1935

Of course, one could have presented the situation as follows: we could have taken the 2.5 or 3 billion in foreign currency drawn from the depths of the national economy and spent these billions on the purchase of raw materials, so that, as they say, there would be more consumer goods and the people would complain less. This is also a plan.

But then we would have had no industry; our agriculture would not have been developed; we would have had no transport, which is now already climbing out of the mire, and to feed the railways, transport needs 100,000 freight cars per year. Was transport truly transport then, with its little boxes, small number of locomotives, and only 30,000 tons of freight? We now want 70,000 tons of freight, and even this is not enough for 100,000 cars. And for this, a developed industry is needed...

If industry had well-forged cadres who had mastered technology, we would have three times more output, even more, I assure you. If our agriculture, with the machine base it possesses — over 300,000 tractors — had experienced, even somewhat experienced cadres of agricultural leaders, we could gather three times more harvest, I assure you — this is not boasting.

We have about 400,000 collective farms. This means about 400,000 large estates, speaking in the language of old history. This means we need to have a minimum of 400,000 managers of these large estates — a collective farm is a large estate — and each manager must have two deputies, which also makes 800,000 people. And if you add it up, it comes to an enormous mass of people.

Where to get these people? We draw them from the peasant milieu, people with little education. So we are creating these cadres; they are growing stronger, but they have not yet been fully created, and when this happens, we shall be able to work wonders...

Now we have reached the stage of development when cadres decide everything, not horses and machines. We have plenty of horses and machines, and there will be still more. But cadres — they are very difficult to cultivate. Our pilots, in order not to lose the airplane — they feel sorry for it — risk their lives but will not descend by parachute. This is a crime. A hundred machines are not worth one even mediocre pilot. He must not only be born but also forged. Lenin said that in order to have a genuine, reliable politician, one must forge him for no fewer than 15 years. We can produce several dozen large machines every day. We do not value cadres.

I drink to you, to the senior cadres of our Red Army, and wish you every success in the work of organizing the defense of our Motherland, in the work of practically directing this defense, because you will be directing the defense. We here will be directing through speeches, but you there will be directing in practice...

Pravda. May 6, 1935.
RGASPI. F. 558. Op. 11. D. 1077. L. 43–49.