Speech at the Session of the Politburo of the CC VKP(b) on Questions of Party Propaganda in Connection with the Publication of the "Short Course of the History of the VKP(b)," October 10, 1938

Stalin: So it turns out that some study the history of the party and do not consider themselves obligated to study Marx; others study dialectical materialism and do not consider themselves obligated to study the history of the party.

And now, among the historians of the party, there is an uproar: there exists the history of the party, there exists historical materialism -- two different disciplines, they reason. This is functional compartmentalization, and it has muddled people's minds, which is why they consider the publication of the course of party history a momentous event.

There is no momentous event here. But because you split Marxism into parts -- into the history of the party, into dialectical materialism, into historical materialism -- nobody wants to study all these disciplines. And so a muddle arose in people's heads. Meanwhile, this book is remarkable precisely because it unifies all of them. That is the whole trick, the whole secret.

Bedin: That is entirely correct, Comrade Stalin.

Stalin: The historians of the party should be Marxist lecturers. Is that not so?

Bedin: An entirely correct observation, Comrade Stalin. Our task is to ensure that both philosophers and historians learn to study Marxism-Leninism as a single whole.

Stalin: And what kind of historians are they if they have not studied Marxism? Give me the floor.

Stalin: And so I say that things have become rather difficult for the propagandists in the confusion that has developed among them. As you see, there is talk about needing to retrain all the propagandists, to provide refresher courses. Why should this be? There is nothing new here. Marxism-Leninism is an old business. But everywhere people have found themselves faced with something new, as though the textbook sets before them new tasks. The proposal is to retrain everyone into historians, into Marxists, even those who teach Leninism, propagandists in general. And what does the course of history represent? Under no circumstances can this be called an ordinary history. Ordinarily, party history, like any other history, consists of the following: facts are presented, presented in a connected manner, certain suggestions are offered regarding the connections between phenomena, then come chronological dates, years, and so forth. There you have a history!

The Short Course of History represents an entirely different type of party history. Properly speaking, party history is used here as illustrative material for the connected exposition of the basic ideas of Marxism-Leninism. The historical material serves as auxiliary material. It would be more correct to say that this is a brief exposition of history, demonstrated by facts -- not invented facts, but historical facts that should be known to everyone. That is the course of party history. This is a course of history that is not ordinary. This is a course of history with an emphasis on theoretical questions, on the study of the laws of historical development.

Theory is the law of history. Theory is the sum of laws for the study of the laws of the development of society, the development of the workers' movement, the development of the proletarian revolution, the development of socialist construction. One thing must be borne in mind: no one has ever given a complete picture of events, nor is the time likely to come when history will exhaust all these laws. Always, depending on conditions, some new sides, new phenomena are uncovered. These are new laws, that is all.

How did it come about that we compartmentalized, broke up Marxism-Leninism, introduced a kind of functionalism into propaganda? Here, of course, we ourselves are to blame. We separated propaganda from the press. This is entirely incorrect. The best form of propaganda is indisputably the press, and since we separated two inseparable parts of a single whole from each other, it is clear that propaganda was driven into study circles. We separated oral propaganda from printed propaganda, which is fundamentally wrong. By this we pushed the propagandists into burying themselves in study circles, and we spawned a great many circles.

The task now is to unite oral propaganda with printed propaganda. Then the center of gravity of our propaganda work will shift to the press, to lectures. There is no better propaganda in the world than the press -- journals, newspapers, pamphlets. The press is a thing that makes it possible to bring one truth or another to the knowledge of all. Suppose that in a study circle there are 20 people. The propagandist may be remarkable, saying remarkable things, but who knows about this? Twenty people and no one else. Why not print the lecture, the explanation, the consultation? Then it becomes the property of all. That is the difference between oral and printed propaganda. Printed propaganda is stronger. I would say that oral propaganda is a kind of handicraft, small-scale production. Printed propaganda is large-scale machine production.

I can still understand that when we were underground, when the press was not in our hands, our people naturally gathered in circles because there was nothing else they could do. Now, when we are in power, when the press is in our hands, when we have so many newspapers and journals, we must under no circumstances confine ourselves to circles while neglecting the press. It is sheer nonsense! That is what we have come to.

The task now is to unite oral propaganda, which will play a subordinate role, with printed propaganda, which will play the commanding role in the field of propaganda. And indeed, we not only artificially separated oral propaganda from printed propaganda, but we compartmentalized and broke up the very content of propaganda. That is what happened. I say this not by way of justification, but the Central Committee had no time to attend to this matter. We were occupied with other, no less important questions, but now one cannot fail to notice that here, too, in the field of propaganda, we permitted a kind of functionalism from the standpoint of the content of propaganda. How can historical materialism be separated from Leninism? It is impossible. What Marx and Engels wrote and taught is the foundation. What Lenin contributed that was new compared with Marx and Engels is a continuation of the development. But without knowing the foundation, one cannot understand the new that was subsequently contributed. In order to understand the new that Lenin contributed, one must know the foundation, one must know what Marx and Engels contributed. But in our practice we separated this business. That is, of course, entirely wrong, absurd. Leninism is studied. In the program for studying Leninism, something is said about Marx and Engels -- mainly certain pamphlets by Marx and Engels, the "Communist Manifesto," and so on; a brief characterization of historical materialism is given in one page, and then comes what Lenin wrote. Is it possible to study in this way? Of course not. Leninism has been separated from Marxism, which is absolutely wrong. In order to understand Lenin, to understand what he contributed that was new -- and he contributed an extraordinary amount that was new -- one must know the sources, and these sources are Marxism. We should speak not of Leninism but of Marxism-Leninism, so that the foundation is not separated from its continuation. But it turns out that in the program for the study of Leninism, almost nothing is said about the works of Marx and Engels. Leninism cannot be studied in this way. Marxism and Leninism must be united, because they represent a single whole; they cannot be torn apart. We should henceforth teach Marxism-Leninism, that is, begin with how Marx and Engels arrived at the theory of historical materialism, on the basis of what premises they arrived at this, then study the works of Marx and Engels, and after that proceed to Lenin. Then Lenin, what he contributed that was new, will be understood. We have not only separated Marxism from Leninism in our teaching practice; we have separated historical materialism from Marxism-Leninism and teach it as a separate discipline. One cannot understand Marx without having a correct understanding of dialectical materialism. The fact that Chapter IV of the "Short Course" appeared is not accidental. We wanted to join these separated parts together. To split all these parts apart means to mutilate them. To join them together means to restore what should be, what actually is. How did we used to study this subject? We began with dialectical materialism, took up Plekhanov -- at that time we did not yet know Lenin's book "What Are the Friends of the People." We studied mainly Plekhanov's book on dialectical materialism, took the primary sources -- the works of Marx and Engels, the "Communist Manifesto," and others. It was extremely difficult -- we had to work on theory ourselves. That is how we studied, and then we proceeded to politics. Politics itself followed from dialectical materialism, from the study of the works of Marx and Engels. And we were, it seems, not bad Marxists.

So, in order for our propagandists to know scientific Marxism, they must join dialectical materialism with historical materialism, which is a logical conclusion from dialectical materialism. Only then can one study and understand the new that was contributed by Lenin. The "Short Course of the History of the VKP(b)" set itself the goal of joining all these separated parts together. In connection with this, it must be said that there is nothing new here. It was precisely along this path that we, the old Bolsheviks, in our time studied Marxism. What is being restored here is the old path that was split into several disciplines. We are now restoring this old path with the help of the "Short Course of Party History." So nothing special has happened; there is no revolution, either in thinking or in theory, not a single new word has been said; what was scattered and fragmented has merely been unified. Dialectical materialism has been linked to historical materialism, historical materialism to politics and economics; all this together constitutes Marxism-Leninism.

All this is illustrated by historical facts. The historical facts are not invented; they passed before our own eyes. And it is precisely on historical facts that the basic ideas of Marxism-Leninism can be demonstrated better, more naturally, and more comprehensibly. Some assert that the "Short Course" says too little about individuals. Our textbook takes a different approach. The old textbooks presented events in a narrow historical vein and often relied upon individuals. The CC considers this pedagogical method unsatisfactory; it contributes little to education. The CC considers that education should not be based on who was sent to exile how many times, who was in prison how many times, and so forth, although this too has a certain significance. History focused on individuals contributes nothing, or very little, to the education of our cadres; history must be focused on ideas...

It is precisely for this reason that the Short Course says little about individuals; it is precisely for this reason that all the material is arranged around the nodal points in the development of our party, around the nodal points in the development of the ideas of Marxism-Leninism. This contributes more to educating people, creates less interest in individual persons and leaders, contributes more to the development of the consciousness needed to become a genuine Marxist-Leninist.

This is what I wanted to explain, so that comrades do not get confused, do not say that in connection with the publication of the Short Course they are encountering something new, do not talk about a revolution, an epoch, and so on. Nothing needs to be overturned. The old Marxism-Leninism needs to be restored. We are restoring this business on the basis of the facts of history.

The second question on which I would like to dwell. I am speaking here in order to forestall a certain misunderstanding of the question that some comrades are displaying.

To whom is the book addressed? To the cadres, to our cadres. And what are the cadres? The cadres are the commanding personnel, the lower, middle, and higher commanding personnel of our entire state apparatus, including here the economy, the cooperatives, trade, industry, culture, medicine -- in a word, everything the state lives by and through which the state directs the national economy and the people.

We are accustomed to calling the narrowly defined party cadres simply "cadres." This is not offensive. But as for all the rest, we call them, somewhat contemptuously, "functionaries." And yet without these functionaries, without this intelligentsia, without people who live by intellect, the state cannot exist. No class can hold power and govern the state if it does not succeed in creating its own intelligentsia, that is, people who have left physical labor behind and live by mental labor. Comrade Khrushchev thinks that he is still a worker, but he is actually an intellectual (cheerful stir in the hall). He has ceased to be a worker because he lives by his intellect, works with his head, has left physical labor behind, has emerged from the working-class milieu. Some of our people had a kind of Makhaevist attitude toward cadres. Makhaevsky was a Social Democrat; I met him in exile. He made a name for himself by berating the party intelligentsia. He believed that the party intelligentsia had to be destroyed, and only then would order be restored in the party ranks. Makhaevsky was a party member, but in practice he was, of course, an anarchist. This is what is known in the history of the party as Makhaevism -- this hatred of the party intelligentsia. Of course, Makhaevsky was a fool, a complete idiot, because he did not understand that one must not only value one's own intelligentsia but make the entire working class, the entire peasantry, into an intelligentsia.

Among us, the old attitude toward the bourgeois intelligentsia, which is alien to us, is sometimes transferred to our new, worker-peasant intelligentsia. And what does our Soviet intelligentsia represent? On the one hand, it is we -- the old Bolsheviks, who have given our souls to the cause of the revolution and who cannot be budged from the Bolshevik position, and on the other hand, nine-tenths of the young people, people who have come from the workers and peasants, as well as from the petty toiling intelligentsia. That is what our Soviet worker-peasant intelligentsia represents. They constitute the basic core of our functionaries. Among us, it often happens that a worker was working at a lathe, then he went to study, became an educated man, and immediately all respect for him vanished. I consider this savagery. With such views, we can indeed ruin the state, ruin socialism. What is management? Some people issue directives! Directives are an empty space if they are not carried out. That means others carry out these directives. How they carry them out is also important. There must be a correct understanding, a readiness to carry out directives, and the people who verify the execution and sum up the results must suggest to the leaders where the directives were deficient, and so on. It would be unreasonable and naive to think that all directives that come as orders, as resolutions, from Moscow, are all correct. That would be naive to think. If Moscow, the center, is not helped, and its errors are not corrected by the practical workers on the ground, who can feel what came of these directives -- if there is no such contact and interaction between the center and people on the ground, then nothing will come of all our work. This entire apparatus, from the top to the lowest link, which carries out directives, resolutions, orders, and so on, constitutes the cadres of our intelligentsia. We shall continue to draw these people from the workers and peasants, creating and educating from them our Soviet intelligentsia. And those who think that a person, having left the lathe or the tractor and become an intellectual, is lost to society, are people of the past. I would say they are worse than enemies, these people who take such an attitude toward our intelligentsia, toward people who were workers yesterday and have become intellectuals today. Those who treat our intelligentsia with contempt are pitiable, wretched people, Makhaevists who have nothing in common with Marxism.

And so, it is to these cadres, to the cadres of our intelligentsia, that we first and foremost appeal, that our book addresses. This does not mean at all that we are not addressing the workers at the lathe or the peasants at the tractor, at the plow. If you understood Comrade Zhdanov's report that way, that is incorrect. We want to direct the attention of our comrades to the party, Soviet, economic, and collective-farm cadres. These are all remarkable people. It is to these people that we first and foremost appeal, because it is precisely the attention to them, to our intelligentsia, that we have been lacking.

The whole approach went, I would say, along the lines of semi-Makhaevistic errors. It was considered good if a propagandist had a circle at a factory. Well, the peasants were forgotten, too; people thought more about peasant grain; to give them new thoughts, new ideas -- little care was taken about that. If propaganda is conducted among factory workers -- good, but propaganda among the cadres who lead -- is that needed? That is how this matter was viewed. If you check all our circles, it will turn out that ninety-nine hundredths are factory circles. (Voices: Correct.) As for the cadres -- former workers, former peasants who have now become intellectuals, who govern -- no attention was paid to them. Now we are turning attention precisely toward the cadres. Workers at the lathe will not suffer from this, because so many circles have been set up, shortened and unshortened, that plenty will remain for the workers, and there will be no shortage of propaganda for them.

As for propaganda among the cadres, there is a very serious gap here. These people must be educated. We will eventually make all workers educated, make them intellectuals. Another 5-6 years and we will not have a single young person who has not completed an 8-year school. That is already a certain foundation for eventually making all workers and peasants into intellectuals. But we will not stop at that; we will go further, we will push workers and peasants to all become intellectuals. Then we will be invincible. Well, that is the business of the future, and the present reality is that young people go to factories, they work 8 hours, they get tired, and then they are forced to attend circles. It is difficult to believe that they all go willingly. There are 70,000 circles; if 10 people per circle, that is 700,000 -- nearly a million. I am certain that more than half of the workers went to these circles under compulsion. Who told you that you can enlighten a person by dragging him to a circle on a rope? Give him something to read himself; he will understand, and if he does not, he will ask. It is foolish and unreasonable to think that the circle is the sole and principal means of Marxist education of workers. Let him read on his own, and do not think that the education of workers at the lathe exhausts our work.

The most serious evil that has recently come to light is that our cadres have proved insufficiently grounded politically. If cadres decide everything, and these are cadres who work with their intellect, cadres who govern the country, and if these cadres have proved politically poorly grounded, that means the state is in danger. Take the Bukharinites. Their upper echelon consists of hardened factionalists who, having lost their ground among the people, began to rely on collaboration with foreign intelligence services. But apart from the ringleaders -- Bukharin and the others -- they also had their rank and file, and not all of them were spies and intelligence agents. One must suppose that some ten or fifteen or twenty thousand, if not more, people followed Bukharin. One must suppose that the same number, if not more, followed Trotskyism. Were they all spies? Of course not. What happened to them? These were cadres who could not digest the sharp turn toward collective farms, who could not comprehend this turn, because they were politically not grounded, did not know the laws of the development of society, the laws of economic development, the laws of political development. I am speaking of those rank-and-file and middle-level Trotskyists and Bukharinites who held quite serious posts with us -- some were obcom secretaries, some were people's commissars, some were deputy people's commissars. How does one explain that some of them became spies and intelligence agents? After all, among them were people of ours who then went over to their side. Why? They proved politically ungrounded, proved theoretically uneducated, proved to be people who did not know the laws of political development, and therefore they could not digest the sharp turn known as the turn toward collective farms. This was an unprecedented experiment, of exceptionally great significance. It was necessary to draw the peasant into socialist construction. Nothing of the kind had ever been done before. Marx and Engels said something about the possibility and necessity of involving the peasants in socialist construction. We began this from the first years of the revolution, but that was a declaration. The transition from words to deeds began in 1930 and continued in 1931 and 1932. Since many of our cadres proved politically poorly grounded, theoretically poorly prepared, people who did not know the laws of historical development, who believed that nothing would come of it -- on this basis we lost quite considerable cadres, capable people. What does this mean? It means that we missed the boat on the theoretical preparation of our cadres. This mistake can be explained by anything you like -- by the fact that we were occupied with more serious matters, and so on. During this time we lost some cadres, but we acquired an enormous number of rank-and-file workers, received new cadres, won over the people on the basis of collective farms, won over the peasantry. Only this explains why it was so easy for us to sweep aside yesterday's people's commissars and deputy people's commissars...

During this time, of course, we did not work in vain. We won over the people, the peasantry, the working class, but they need leadership. We had to lead through the apparatus, and in the apparatus there turned out to be many people alien to us who followed us up to collectivization and departed from us during collectivization. Thus, having won over the people, we missed the boat on the cadres. This fact must be acknowledged, and this mistake must be corrected. How is it to be corrected? By the political and theoretical preparation of our cadres of functionaries. Functionaries are not workers at the lathe or collective farmers who will stand for us heart and soul, because they see the results of our policy in practice. A functionary is a person who reasons with his head, who works with his intellect. He wants to know what is going on, raises questions, gets confused because he lacks political grounding, buries himself in routine affairs, overloads himself, and loses the desire to engage in his own Marxist education, his own Bolshevization. It is this gap that we must fill.

This begins with the publication of the Short Course of History. This is a book that demonstrates the basic ideas of Marxism-Leninism on historical facts. Precisely because it demonstrates them on historical facts, it will be convincing for our cadres who work with their intellect, for people who reason, who will not follow us blindly. We missed the boat on this matter; we must now make up for it.

That is why we say that we must address ourselves first and foremost to our cadres. We are opposed to showing any contempt toward our intelligentsia; on the contrary, it must be respected, because it helps us carry out the governance of the country, and we must help it study the laws of historical development. Without theory, without knowledge of the laws of historical development, one cannot work, one cannot govern the state. And in order to carry out this governance, one must know well the history of our party, one must know the basic ideas of Marxism-Leninism. That is why, I repeat once more, the book addresses itself first and foremost to our cadres, whom we missed the boat on. We have this gap, but we will undoubtedly succeed in filling it.

Comrade Zhdanov's words about the book being addressed first and foremost to the cadres must not be understood to mean that we are turning our backs on the workers or the peasants. That will never happen. We have always paid and continue now to pay great attention to the workers. But what we have not done is pay enough attention to the preparation of our intelligentsia, the people who work in our governing apparatus. Do not think that to govern means to issue directives or good resolutions. That is nonsense! What matters is the execution of these directives. And this entire procession of people -- the higher, middle, and lower links, the functionaries -- this is the governing apparatus: those who issue the resolutions and those who carry them out.

That is why you too -- propagandists, people who are engaged in working on the heads of other people -- must pay serious attention to the functionaries, not sneer at them and not display toward them the contempt that was so often displayed. And I particularly advise you to pay attention, first and foremost, to the students, because tomorrow these young people will be the commanding personnel of our economy, our industry, our culture -- in a word, of everything that is called the governance of the state.

These are the remarks I wanted to make.

Voprosy Istorii [Questions of History]. 2003. No. 4. Pp. 16-22.
RGASPI. F. 17. Op. 163. D. 1218. L. 33-56.

Note:
Unfortunately, it has not been possible to reliably establish the identity of Bedin, whose remarks are recorded at the beginning of the transcript. It is possible that this refers to V. Bedin, who two years later, in 1940, held the post of Secretary of the Leningrad Oblast Committee for Propaganda.