P. Golub was a low to mid-level employee of various People’s Commissariats during the 1930-1940s. He was a long time Party member (once he mentioned he was in the Party for 25 years) and judging by his letter, an honest and hard-working comrade dedicated to the communist cause.

In the summer of 1946 he sent a letter to the CC of CPSU(b) addressed to Stalin and Zhdanov concerning various ‘small matters’ of Soviet life, particularly of the functioning of state apparatus, which were disturbing him. There are indications that letter reached its address. Across the text, many paragraphs are marked by red pencil, and the line addressing the letter to com. Stalin was also underlined by red pencil. And lastly, the letter was found in the Stalin archive.

In his letter, Golub touched two main themes: 1) the widespread corruption in the Soviet society (see also a letter by Arbuzov published by RD previously), 2) the poverty in which Soviet people lived. There were also two relatively minor themes he touched briefly: 1) family relations and 2) democratic centralism inside the Party.

Drawing from his experience, mostly serving in the People’s Commissariat of Sovkhozes, Golub writes that the state apparatus functions ineffectively, that it doesn’t serve the interests of the people and the state. It is important to note here that Golub always assumes the interest of the people and the socialist state to be one. He describes how corrupt officials steal state property in order to make it their own de-facto private property, how state institutions and individual bureaucrats enter relations of exchange of stolen goods and services, de-facto market relations. Golub, to credit his insight, makes a correct conclusion that corruption in the socialist society is not just violating the law but represents the resurgence of capitalist relations. He mentions that many people who amassed great wealth during the war are waiting for the ‘change of policy’ from the above and mentions that this would be against all he believed and fought for.

One particular term he uses multiple times is worth some explanation. Blat means a service given by a person enjoying certain privileges (like access to limited goods) to a person he or she knows (not just anyone). It is not just about the money, but about having a privilege to spend it. Blat is not just corruption, it is a corruption inside certain group of people who tend to form a close circle. In this sense, it is opposed to the ‘free market’ and is a form of resurgent pre-capitalist formations.

Golub mentions that the rise of corruption was possible due to war and the great shortages produced by it. He gives many striking examples how difficult was life of ordinary Soviet workers and peasants and intelligentsia (particularly doctors). Golub considers himself better off just because he was having an apartment and will probably be able to find work.

We tend to view the last Stalin years (1945-1953) mechanically, as a period of post-war reconstruction and the revival of productive forces. In reality, and Golub’s letter shows this very well, it was a period of acute class struggle between forces which pushed to the restoration of capitalism (the state apparatus, the criminal elements, shadow private bourgeoisie) and the forces which stood for socialism and communism (the honest state and party officials and members, workers and peasants).

The question of quality of life which Golub finds crucial, was the key to winning this battle and the Soviet leadership understood this very well. During last years of socialism, many improvements had been made, including the financial reform and famous annual reduction of consumer prices. However, this wasn’t enough and Khrushchev after coming to power used this question opportunistically to gain mass support. How it turned out is another story.

Considering family matters, Golub is somewhat reactionary because he firmly believes the family should consist of mother, father and children. He opposes the law which let women not to name the father of their child. It is difficult to say what exactly Golub was proposing to rectify this, because no one can to forcibly create a family by issuing a decree. What he argues (from reactionary standpoint) is that such a law would ‘reduce morals.’

The question of democratic centralism Golub touches only briefly but is important. He says that the Party leadership stopped consulting ordinary Party members about important decisions and rank and file do not even know what is currently the Party line. Golub finds it offensive and a sign of distrust towards ordinary Bolsheviks. Indeed, the last Party Congress was in 1939 and it was not called again till 1952 (the fact which Khrushchev also used opportunistically to attack Stalin). During the late Stalin years, democracy inside the party was reduced and position of party apparatus strengthened which also contributed to the defeat of socialist forces after 1953.

Summing up, Golub’s letter offers an important insight into Soviet life immediately after the war and is also a human document of great emotional strength showing the will of a Bolshevik to fight and to go on despite immense difficulties.

N. Svetlov

(Starting with File 36)

5.    Elements of indiscipline and fraud in the state apparatus flourished in full bloom. The reports – five-day, ten-day, monthly, quarterly, semi-annual and annual – are compiled so unscrupulously according to mass indicators that they cannot be seriously trusted. Conclusions are drawn from the same reporting, and planning is based on it. It is no wonder that the heads of departments have lost interest in economic analysis according to their reports.

I will give just one example from the little-known ones. At one time, the GKO [State Defence Committee, the supreme governing body of the USSR during 1941-1945] and the Council of People’s Commissars of the USSR received quarterly reports on the number of all those working in the system, and of those who were liable for military service and those who were exempt from it. I had to be directly involved in the preparation of these reports. In fact, it turned out that there were literally no primary reports without serious flaws, and the bulk of them were simply compiled at random. These lies were summed up and finally delivered as reliable data to the government. If you need documents on this issue, then the military department of the former NKSH [People’s Commissariat of Sovkhozes] has preserved copies of a thick pack that were written about these reports. They did not achieve their goal, because the system was so used to lying that pointing out a lie only on one question did not make an impression.

I was told in the former NKSH that “You must come to work on time, do not leave early, sometimes even stay in the evenings, but during the day do what you want, even if you do nothing.” When I said to the Deputy People’s Commissar of Sovkhozes Comrade Ivchenko, that such way of work is not in the interests of the people, and no one wanted to change the situation, and I asked him to fire me, he only asked me: “Do you have children?” The same question was recently posed to me by the Deputy Minister of Construction and Road Engineering, comrade Ivanov, when I asked for my dismissal from the Glavurs [Main Directorate of Work Supply] due to the fact that his boss leads the wrong line, supports those employees who do not work in the interests of the state (the people). Only now do I understand why they ask about children – in the name of children, one must accept and tolerate the wrong way of work.

I happened to read that when it was necessary to ensure the rapid deployment of mass production of a combat aircraft of a new design, you called the designer to you and asked him what he needed for successful work; as a result, the designer quickly got what he needed, a new personal car (even two) was waiting for him at home. This is the style of how to take care of an employee.

Of course, the state does not have the ability to provide every employee in this way, but it was always possible to provide a comfortable workplace – without a blat [this means to use acquaintances and connections] – an inkwell, a table, an abacus, a ruler, printing materials, reference literature, an apartment and everyday life (light, water, fuel). I do not know of a single case in the ministries that any of the main managers came to an employee’s workplace and asked how he works, checked the storage of cases and processing of incoming materials, found out whether the employee was working on the right issues and whether he used everything that was needed. The complete impression that no one needs your job, and if you work here, that’s what you need, because you have children and they want to eat.

If the head of the enterprise does not want to carry out the order of the minister, or wants to justify his shortcomings, because of which the work failed, then he turns to the Deputy Minister. Failing to get what he wants from this one, he will succeed at getting it from the other Deputy. This has developed an extreme indiscipline of the apparatus from bottom to top. It seems that a lot of deputies are introduced in order to tie and untie these knots.

There was a resolution of the Council of Ministers of the USSR, signed by you, number 705 of March 29 of this year, which said that the subsidiary farms of enterprises do not have the right to sow less than last year. Minister of Construction and Road Engineering, comrade Sokolov issued an order, established a plan for sowing. But by the end of sowing, the head of the Glavurs saw that the plan would not be fulfilled, and decided to reduce the plan, he went to the deputy and achieved his goal, and I was forced to leave because of this, I lost my job. I went to the Central Committee of the CPSU(b) to see some employees, but they did not help me. This is a small thing, but there are thousands of such small things. If we take into account that almost all decisions and orders of the Council of Ministers on economic issues, and especially on the distribution of material funds, are never fully implemented, then it becomes clear what happens to the orders of lower-level bodies, they are often not worth a penny. It is said of the Ministry of Commerce that its instructions on funds are not directives to the Regional Trade Authorities, but the right of the latter to act as they see fit. In order for the Minister of Industry or his deputies to achieve the fulfillment of their orders by the director of the enterprise, they often have to repeat their orders several times.

But it also sometimes happens with orders signed by you. Take for example the resolution of the Council of Ministers of the USSR on the transfer of a number of enterprises to the Ministry of Construction and Industrial Development. After that, there was a fight between the departments. Only after repeated instructions, the enterprises were transferred to the new ministry at the end of May.

The law “On the Protection of Collective Farm Land from Squandering” has actually been repealed, and local organizations dispose of collective farm land at their discretion. Documents on the boundaries of land use of state farms are lost in a huge number of cases. The same can be said about other laws issued before the Patriotic War, and because of this, it is difficult to determine where the beginning of expediency is in violation of the law, and where it is the end of criminal lawlessness.

Here is the law on propiska [registration]. How can it be observed if during the elections to the Supreme Soviet of the USSR only at one polling station revealed about a hundred unregistered policemen working in Moscow and receiving supplies here? If representatives of the rule of law act as violators of it, then how can one demand the execution of laws from other citizens? Here is another small fact – the head of the ORS [Department of Work Supply] of the Ministry of Power Plants enrolled me as the chief agronomist of the state farm without any documents and without my written request. This is important for another reason. During the war, there was a movement of huge masses of people, but documents about them (sheets on personnel records, workbooks, etc.) remained in organizations. If many people shamelessly steal people’s goods, then it is all the more easy for such a type to steal and use other people’s documents, and this is especially important for those who want to cover up the traces of their criminal work forever. There is no verification of how personal files and documents of employees are used and where they have gone.

The cases of unregistered police officers and the situation with the storage of personal documents also indicate that the matter of protecting the personal security of citizens and their rights requires, to put it mildly, serious improvement. Verification of the correctness of the registration was not carried out. Quite often, people are registered fictitiously, and this is done with the knowledge of even big managers. The service staff (elevator operators, janitors, cleaners, etc.) in large houses are selected quite simply, since for 114 roubles and 50 kopecks of a monthly salary, it is not possible to choose quite reliable persons to whom you can entrust the personal safety and property of residents, and if a good person is selected, then he or she uses a significant part of the service time to make a living [on side jobs]. There are many facts that reveal the fear of the police, train car conductors, etc. to annoy the criminal world, and it operates with impunity and freely.

Most often, for many, the form is observed, but the essence is unceremoniously trampled on. They make sure that reports are provided on time, that subordinate enterprises make plans and balance sheets in time, and what is written in them, and how reliable it is, few people care. In terms of the development of animal husbandry, for example, a table must be filled in, a plan for mating animals, this is what attention is drawn to, if the plan is viewed, but according to the plan sometimes there are such incidents as getting foals from geldings, then this is in the order of things.

Usually, the heads of central organizations do everything in their power to ensure that the documents to the government are drawn up as well as possible, competently, and concisely. It’s good. If for other cases there is no vellum paper to write a particularly important request, then they will try to commit a blat, but get such a thing.

It is a different matter if it concerns sending a paper to a grassroots organization. No special energy is spent on paperwork. Not to mention the fact that all orders and other mass documents are certified by anyone, the names of the grassroots leaders are impersonal or confused, the press and editorial staff are sloppy, the paper is grey, but often even in important documents blotches are made, the leaders allow even after their signature to make corrections to the text or correct it themselves. The director of the state farm “Karavaevo” repeatedly submitted reports on labour with false data. An order was prepared for this occasion. Deputy People’s Commissar of Sovkhozes Balyasny in the copy that went to the addressee, made a correction with his own hand and so ordered it to be sent. This is also a style of work. But this is not the only fact, there are many of them.

The storage and the procedure for passing the papers are grossly violated. Actually, there is no order at all. The originals and main copies of the documents sent to the government are kept by the executors in different departments. If it was decided to check how many times and on what issues this apparatus applied to the government, and what grounds there were for this, then it is impossible to find many documents. What is worst of all, these orders, petitions and projects for the distribution of material funds are kept by their authors. I believed that in this regard, the ideal order should be in the NKVD of the USSR, which is obliged to monitor the order in other departments, since this is also important for the protection of state secrets. Unfortunately, this is not the case. I had to go there several times and I saw that the “poetic disorder” is also characteristic of this department. The same piles of papers on the tables of the employees, they also go out, and the visitors are left alone, apparently to protect the scattered papers, and then they find it, and it turns out that the paper was not registered and got to another employee not by affiliation, they also forward individual requests and letters “for consideration and for action” sometimes (maybe often) exactly to the same persons that the petitioners complain about.

At one time, on your initiative, the party apparatus was put in order. Small things were not spared. It was to be expected that measures would also be taken in relation to the state apparatus, since without this it is unthinkable to instill a careful attitude to the people’s goods, but the war prevented it. If in the party apparatus, which has always been distinguished by the greatest scrupulousness and accuracy, so many egregious violations were found in the office work and its technique, then in the other apparatuses these violations increase exponentially.

What is the main occupation of the existing huge state apparatus? I do not know how many employees of the central state apparatus there are in Moscow. But if there are 100 thousand people, then at least 50 thousand of them are busy every day writing draft resolutions and orders of the government, as well as orders for their departments, distributing, implementing and extracting material funds. Actually, everyone is engaged in obtaining material funds, up to the typist and the courier (the first obtains carbon paper and tapes for the typewriter, and the second items for cleaning the office, since often no one cares about the latter). Now the person who is valuable in the business is the employee who knows how to get the items, while the employee is not asked how he actually gets it. This is my personal tragedy, I admit my complete worthlessness in obtaining various material funds for my department.

In the image and likeness of the central office, grassroots organizations write orders and decisions, and the primary recipients put everything in a pile, without even reading it, there is no time, no time to read everything.

The state apparatus has the main task of guarding socialist property, but in view of the above, it has neither the time nor the opportunity to monitor the saving and proper use of the people’s goods.

The Patriotic War created an acute shortage of everything. А director of the state farm or MTS needs up to ten thousand, and sometimes more, items, parts and materials to ensure smooth operation, the same can be said about a director of an enterprise. Sometimes there is not enough of a trifling thing, a detail, but this is enough to slow down the work (sowing, harvesting, etc.) In search of the right item directors go to all sorts of combinations, meeting insurmountable obstacles, go to exchange, and even to bribe in the interests of fulfilling the production tasks of their enterprise. In this connection, with the huge industrial apparatus of the country, a farmer became an additional industrialist, organizing expensive artisanal production of the necessary items, parts and even “golden” [meaning: very expensive] machines, in turn, with a powerful agriculture capable of producing the necessary products and raw materials, the industrialist became an additional farmer. Now there is no director of the enterprise who would not be engaged in agriculture, in all its diversity. This made it extremely difficult for the personnel to work. Their workload has tripled.

But the same difficulties in material supply are met by managers, directors of hospitals, schools and other organizations. This is used by the dark elements, material funds are alienated from the state in various ways and through the market or in other ways they get to large consumers in need.

On this basis, unwritten rules have grown and taken root, which now cannot be circumvented or circumvented – “everyone should only take care of themselves” and “you do it for me, I do it for you”, that is, blat. This puts a terrible weight on the enterprise. It is not uncommon for a superior to help his subordinate only on the basis of reciprocity. The director helps the agronomist or zootechnician, if it will be profitable for him, otherwise they are obliged to provide their own work. Something similar takes place in the relationships of employees of the same apparatus.

Touching on the shortcomings of the apparatus, you cannot ignore another important detail. The fact is that grassroots organizations are interested in a particular issue until the overall plan is implemented. If it concerns agriculture, then this approach gives rise to lagging collective farms.

6. The attitude towards the needs of the working people on the part of those who are obliged to take care of them tirelessly also has many small but serious shortcomings, which give rise not only to simple discontent, but also to laxity in the work of individual organizations, and sometimes of entire branches of the national economy or individual systems.

Take healthcare, for example. No other country has done as much in this area as we have. A truly great thing was accomplished by the Soviet government in the field of public health. But the material and household provision of medical personnel in the mass is so unsatisfactory that it has led to a decrease in the quality of medical care, the formal attitude to the work performed and the protection of the health of specific people even in this system has its own development. Wage rates in relation to the high cost of living are extremely low. Junior medical staff are poorly provided. There is something to compare it with. In your memory, the provision of zemstvo doctors who treated mainly the rich. Why is it that now, when doctors are appointed to protect the health of workers, their standard of living has fallen so much? If there are a lot of doctors and medical staff, and the state does not have enough funds, then is it not possible to charge a small fee from visitors to use these funds to build good apartments for doctors and improve their material security, and thus increase their interest in better public services? Look at what is being done – some charlatans in private practices earn up to a thousand roubles or more a day, and people go to them. Even the police are forced to organize their special protection due to the large earnings. Strange thing, in private practice, a doctor can earn a lot of money and not deny himself anything, and the doctor of the clinic is half-starved and is forced to occupy up to a dozen positions and thus compensate for the insufficiency of basic salary. But this also turns the bearers of a noble profession into rude artisans, and the main thing is that the interests of the working people suffer. Can a doctor who does not have not only a good apartment, which he must be provided with, but even a decent room, no sheets for changing the bed, no bed, no soap to wash the laundry, no opportunity to hand over underwear to the laundry (there are no laundries) –can such doctor make the necessary requirements for the service of patients in clinics and hospitals?

But in the worst situation are the agricultural workers, from the ordinary worker and employee to the director of the state farm and the MTS. How can these people devote all their time to the protection of the state (people’s) interests, if their personal needs and interests are essentially in the last place for the state? It is not necessary to look for many reasons for the poor performance of agriculture, except for this, especially since the most difficult work is the work of the director, specialist and employee of an agricultural enterprise.

How many resolutions and decisions on carrying out various agricultural works are written and printed, everything is described as what to do, up to the fact that a highly specialized method of how to determine the foal numbers for mares, is publicly published. But if we compare the powerful energy capacity of agriculture, its saturation with specialists, with what was before collectivization and state farm construction, then we cannot say that agriculture has gone far in terms of crop yields and livestock productivity. Previously, the peasant was armed with a plough and the precepts of his grandfather. Now he has powerful technology and science. The entire herd of productive cattle, if not completely pedigreed, is metatized, a variety renewal has been carried out over the entire area of crops, grass crops have increased many times, there are many hundreds of experienced institutions, but the results are disproportionately small.

It’s all about ensuring the material, household and cultural needs of agricultural workers. During the war, the specialists of the MTS and state farms, especially the latter, were virtually excluded from rationing. If we take into account that even before the war, the supply and earnings were not brilliant (the senior zootechnician received 325 roubles a month, and the shepherd in the Zagotskot [office for procurement of livestock] office received 500 roubles), then this is the reason for the huge turnover of specialists and senior personnel in agriculture, and their departure to other industries. During the existence of the Soviet government, so many specialists with higher education were trained that if they all had remained in agriculture, they would have been more than enough even for all collective farms. However, they are not fully staffed at MTS and state farms. In the role of senior and junior specialists, there are (quite often) practitioners who do not have any education at all. If the latter is appropriate, then what is the need to have a large number of higher educational institutions for the training of agricultural specialists?

It is also appropriate to say that so many agrotechnical and zootechnical instructions are written in the legislative order that the impression is created about the exceptional illiteracy of the specialists working at the bottom. A specialist who has been studying at a university for 5 years does not need much guidance, often on the spot he knows better what to do to achieve good results. From him it is necessary to demand a high harvest and a high yield of livestock, and in return to take care of him, creating appropriate conditions. If this happens, then without any solutions, tens, and maybe hundreds of thousands of specialists who have not yet lost their qualifications and who love this job, will return to agriculture.

Compare the material security and care for the workers of the first political departments and agricultural specialists, compare the security of the district agronomist when he served a private farm, and now. This is the reason for the fluidity of cadres – the scourge of any economy that generates irresponsibility.

There is a state farm in Bolychevo in the Ostashevsky district of the Moscow region, where the old personnel workers of this state farm, great specialists in their field, have been preserved, and yet they live in the worst conditions. They certainly deserved to be awarded the medal “For Valiant Labour during the Patriotic War”, but no one thought to organize their household support and to celebrate their good work. If it is necessary to start every business with the care of housing for a person and food for him, then in this sense the organization of state farms and MTS is not yet finished. In most large state farms, only the central estates are well equipped for the main workers, but their farms are a parody of a cultural socialist agricultural enterprise. For the first years, people lived in the hope that everything would be improved, but these hopes are not realized, which gives rise to a huge turnover of labour, or even worse, the organization of individual peasant farms by workers within a large, socialist one, leading to the disintegration of the latter.

Last year, Pravda wrote an editorial entitled “Taking care of the needs of the working people is the first duty of a Bolshevik.” In the state farms, this editorial did not find any response in the sense of increasing care for people. But after a while, the Sovkhoz Newspaper published its editorial “To provide cattle with a warm and well-fed winter”. This is a very specific editorial. State farm people do a lot to carry out this, get by all sorts of ways some glass and other building materials to insulate, whitewash and carry out other necessary repairs to the premises for livestock. For the people themselves, the concern is less specific. Maybe because it’s harder for people to get what they need. If it were the other way around, I think there would be no need to write editorials like the editorial of Sovkhoz Newspaper, just as there would be no need to write laws on agricultural technology, since local people, under the guidance of specialists, know quite well what to do to successfully complete the tasks that the Motherland sets for them.

Your words that the most valuable capital is people, personnel, especially all the Soviet people, who with their blood and heroic work, full of hardships for decades saved humanity from a terrible catastrophe, I understand quite literally.

So why do we have such facts when even the cadre workers of state farms, not only in the zones that were subjected to occupation, are forced to live in rooms worse than pigsties, and in order to eat at least some tolerable food and not to walk in rags, they are forced to steal?

And another issue that is important for the productive work and life of the Soviet people is the issue of its provision in the event of long-term disability or old age. The fact is that only a limited number of employees receive a sufficient superannuation pension, and the rest, hundreds of thousands of them, maybe millions, like me, receive it on a general basis, that is, in amounts that do not provide for the possibility of at least somehow existing. The unstable value of the rouble made it impossible to make savings for an accident. If the economic life of the country and earnings were always such that a person with a modest behaviour could make savings, then of course, this issue would not be so acute for the country.

I speak of myself as an extra example. My life is still good – I have an apartment and maybe I will still be able to work. But here sometimes I met a lot of completely homeless people, people from the grassroots, inconspicuous, meekly and persistently fulfilling the tasks of the Party. The fate of many of them is to end their lives somewhere in the “Stolbovaya”, a branch of a psychiatric hospital, since they do not even have a small corner of their own and no means of subsistence. They must be dear to the party, and the socialist country was built by their hands, by these inconspicuous propagandists, agitators and organizers. The Bolsheviks must constantly take care of the needs of the working people, and who will take care of those Bolsheviks who have outlived their time? I can be punished for this letter, I am ready to take it down, but I ask you to explain why in our country, where much has been done to improve the present and future life of a person, facts like the three listed below are possible.

At one of the railway stations of the Sverdlovsk-Tyumen railway in 1945, a worker cleared the road of snow, in the crackling frosts and in bad weather in winter, in one jacket, in torn shoes and without gloves, for a meager fee, she worked conscientiously. No one noticed this, including the leaders of the party and trade union organizations. She herself began to ask for help – to give her some shoes. After a long walk, “help” was provided – covers were issued for mittens for up to 6 months, but suitable for one day (very poor quality). When it was time to subscribe to the state loan [state borrowing from the people], and the employee signed up for a small amount, the indignant secretary of the party committee literally an hour later called this employee for a threatening explanation. On the same stretch of railroad, the workers of a large depot prepared firewood on their own near the railway line, but 40 km from the place of consumption. The Minister of Railways, Comrade Kovalev, allowed the use of local wagons for transporting firewood to housing. It remained to resolve the issue of transport for the delivery of firewood to the railway line. The depot had a tractor, two cars and working horses, which in the fall were used mainly for the needs of the management staff, the district authorities (mutual services) and various combinations. The depot workers were unable to get transport until December, and many sat in unheated apartments or gave their wages for armfuls of firewood at speculative prices. I don’t know if they got the transport after that. Both of these facts may be known to you, and action has been taken on them.

In the Moscow Bolshevik last year (in November or December), there was published a material like a feuilleton with a caricature and an evil satire in verse about the fact that a tram driver, seeing a birch log near the tram line, got out of the tram and picked it up. Of course, this is not right, if everyone gave up work to provide for their personal needs, then what would it be? But why didn’t the newspaper just as vigorously find out the specific reason for this wrong action of the employee? Perhaps the worker had no firewood, could not get it, could not buy it at the market, and probably her children were cold. Why didn’t the newspaper pay attention to this side as well?

Callousness and indifference to a person are manifested precisely in such trifles, from which, in fact, our daily existence is formed. I regularly read the Moscow Bolshevik, but I have seen little when the question of callousness to specific people on specific cases has been raised so strongly.

By the way, in all Moscow institutions, employees often use their working hours to buy food and purchase orders, as well as for other personal needs. Many stores operate at the same hours as the institutions, and the best products are also brought in and sold during the employees ‘ working hours. Why does the newspaper not raise these questions?

The question of relations to the needs of the working people will not be exhausted if we do not mention paper. Textbooks are sorely lacking. Children at school have nothing to write on – there are not enough notebooks. Very, very few notebooks. I myself have seen a lot of facts when children (especially in the village and in remote district centres) wrote their works on dirty scraps. These are skills for culture, something that is laid down in childhood, and remains for life. Even in Moscow, there are very few notebooks issued. For the 3rd grade, you need 15, and only 6 notebooks are given. High school students do not have the opportunity to write notebooks in all subjects and keep notes somehow. This is also the rudiments of an attitude to future government work. Not everyone can buy notebooks at the market and in the store at an expensive price.

There is an acute shortage of various reference books for agricultural and industrial workers, without which it is simply impossible to work. Accounting is launched partly due to the extreme lack of necessary forms of primary accounting. In the grassroots offices, there is not even wrapping paper for writing extremely necessary references. The store clerks even forgot that such thing as wrapping paper exists. For the low level offices, paper is purchased on the market at a speculative price, but for public money. Smoking paper has long since disappeared from sale. This is not such a petty question. No wonder tobacco was listed under the Ministry of Food Industry. At the front, a good shag tobacco contributed to the successful conduct of operations, the lack of smoking reduces labour productivity, this is also known. A lot of good books in the country are spent on cigarette paper, wasted on writing and wrapping. The cost of an average size of a book suitable for smoking in Siberia reached 500 roubles, and newspapers of the Pravda format – up to 10 roubles per copy.

Meanwhile, we produce many times more paper than ever before. If you seriously think about it, then the urgent needs of a person will be provided. There is enough paper for everything.

Under your leadership, the country has created an industry that can solve any problem. V. I. Lenin only dreamed of 100 thousand tractors, but now they are in agriculture – up to one million, that is, we have everything we need to immediately improve the working and living conditions of the Soviet people, which will ensure the early implementation of the five-year plan, since there are great reserves and opportunities for this.

A lot of things need to change. The apparatus is incredibly swollen, almost all of it is engaged in the extraction and use of material funds, on a large and small scale. The functions of the organizations are mixed up. Industrialization without the division of labour would be impossible. In our country, as a result of the difficulties caused by the Patriotic War, each organization became unique, and hence its personnel became so too. A director of the plant is an industrialist, a farmer, an individual gardener, a merchant, a procurement worker and a builder. The same can be said about the head of any grassroots organization. Often, for each function, the director bears strict personal responsibility, for the failure of any of the listed works, he can be removed from work and put on trial. This reduces discipline and responsibility. As a result of incorrect methods of distribution of goods, a huge amount of them is alienated from the state and enters the market, money from the state pocket is pumped into private ones. Monetary wages for the vast majority of workers have ceased to serve as a material incentive for good work. Another negative moral factor has emerged – people learn how to ask, replacing their right to demand, and they stopped considering it humiliating when they are offered to receive something from the outside for services arising from their duties. Out of this grows a bribe and an extreme laxity of the apparatus. When not the state, but the clients care about the maintenance of employees, since they understand that an employee cannot exist on his salary, then the possibility of strict enforcement of laws is excluded, but life is still developing uncontrollably in this direction.

7. And finally, the last question is about the law of July 8 on the promotion of childbearing in the country. There are no words, this is necessary, because in the end, the preponderance of forces in the last clash with the old, fading world will also be decided by the size of the population. But not only that. The development of a vast territory and the growth of social wealth, and on this basis the improvement of the material well-being of the working people, requires rapid population growth. But why did the law exclude the father from raising children? Why does this law take away the possibility of children having a father and allows the right to marry persons of close kinship – incest (the right of the mother not to indicate the true father of the child)? This is not a sentiment, but a question of deep social significance. By law, the relations of the sexes are so simplified that all the lyrics of Pushkin, Lermontov and Tchaikovsky, as well as the moral of Tolstoy’s “Resurrection”, were thrown of high moral qualities out of the education of the youth.

This law is also the law on the family and children. The family goes back to the dawn of human society, and it is unlikely that the prerequisites for its destruction will arise so soon, and whether this will still be necessary in the future. Before this happens, it is not the state, but the family that should be the primary basis for raising children. Who does not know that in a family where the father and mother are on good terms with each other, they correctly treat their civil duties, then their children will grow up to be good citizens?

The immediate negative result of the war is that many children have fallen victim to the streets, and these are mainly children who have no parents or only one mother, who is busy all day at work. A lot of juvenile delinquents are serving sentences. Do we need such citizens?

By allowing even a mother to abandon her children in favour of the state, the law encourages the irresponsibility of parents in raising children and the complete irresponsibility of men for this. A human being, including a man, also differs from an animal in that he or she is responsible for their offspring. The law also removed this responsibility from men. If a man will not be responsible for the children who owe birth to him personally, that is, for his children, then where is the guarantee that he will be better responsible for the children of the public, while in public office? In life, it often happens that the number of children depends more on the father than on the mother. The question is in the family economy. In addition, the state cannot take over the education of all children, and never, under any circumstances, can replace good parents for them. This law can cause serious consequences for the country. Of course, we are not talking about conferring titles [“Mother-heroine” – translator’s note] and receiving state benefits, but this is not the main thing in the law. There are a lot of facts that show that children have lost all data about their origin, due to the fault of children’s institutions. Often, their officials, in order to get rid of unwanted children, attribute extra years to them, exchange documents. At the same time, the paperwork itself is such that the bill in the grocery store is made out more culturally and reliably than the identity of a child who enters into life. Documents for horses in collective farms and military enlistment offices are better and more reliable than documents for many pupils in children’s institutions. Whether it is all the same to the state that Vanya Petrov, whose father was killed at the front, and mother was tortured by the Germans, became Kolya Sidorov, whose mother fornicated with a German, or not, but the child does care. Any falsehood turns the soul into ashes and causes a deep trauma in the child’s mind, leading to serious, often irreparable consequences in his life.

Isn’t it a lot for the state to take on the upbringing of all the children who will be born to women without specifying the father’s name? And has the state asked the people how legitimate this socially responsible step is?

Children are not toys. And the law actually turns them into an easy toy – the mother can give the child to the state if she wants to get married, then, if she pleases, to take him back, etc. What are the moods of children who can be treated so easily, and who for some reason needed to be initiated into all the secrets of the relations of the sexes, the family and the state?

You are not only proud of your mother, but you have the right to be proud of your father, but our people are also proud of them, both of your parents. Why should Soviet children be deprived of the right to have a father? If he is a scoundrel, then this is also a lesson for the child, he will grow up, he will understand that it is not right to behave like this. The misfortune caused by the war cannot be taken as a starting point, since everything will return to normal, and the large preponderance of the female population over the male will also disappear.

Every day I happen to meet children begging, or who are in an extremely difficult situation. Most recently, a boy of about 15 years old was standing in a bakery, he came to Moscow from Vologda, where he was in prison for hooliganism. He left the orphanage unfit for life, without any profession. He doesn’t know what to do, how to make a living. If there were at least one parent, the situation would be easier. No, it is impossible to remove from parents the responsibility for raising children, on the contrary, it is necessary to strengthen it.

Many very important decisions and events are carried out in the country not only without prior discussion in the party organizations, but even the party members are not informed about them, that is, they are not explained the vital importance of these events, so that the Communists have the opportunity to conduct an appropriate explanation in the masses. It is possible that some special circumstances do not allow you to do this (especially external ones), but in this case it would be better to say at least a hint. Sometimes the wild idea comes to mind that the Communists have stopped being asked for their opinion, they have lost respect in the eyes of the party leadership. It is not a matter of disagreement, but of the traditions in which we were brought up by V. I. Lenin and you for decades. These traditions have already become a habit, and many members of the party may no longer be able to become different. In addition, you have repeatedly expressed the idea that certain events can be carried out more successfully when the entire party undertakes to carry them out. If an old member of the party cannot abandon the established traditions, then he should not be thrown away. An old man, in particular, differs from a squeezed lemon in that the latter can be thrown out without a twinge of conscience, and the former is a human being, and it is not good to do so. Did the Motherland need him before? Yes, she did. Therefore, in accordance with the benefits brought by him, it is necessary to take care of him when he’s resigning.

I see a forest of successes in socialist construction. They are not obscured by the young growth of those negative details mentioned in the letter, which are drawing to the restoration of private-capitalist relations in the country. In nature, it happens that the young growth overcomes the old mighty forest, itself becomes a forest in its place. If the same cannot happen to our Soviet society, then at any rate this growth weakens the mighty forest of the socialist economy. I cannot be indifferent to this, and the only thing I am not able to do is to contribute to the growth of this bad fit. That’s what this letter is about.

What prompted me to write this letter?

During my 25 years in the party, I was a propagandist and a guide of its decisions among the masses. Therefore, everything that is wrong, that does not correspond to the teachings of Lenin and yours, to the decisions of the party, from which the vital interests of the people suffer, is perceived by me as if it is I who am doing the wrong thing, that it is I and only I who have had a gap between word and deed.

Negative facts affecting the deep interests of the state (the people) and the lives of the Soviet people, which we have to deal with every day, dig into my soul like rusty needles into the body.

How does my mind react to such facts?

A skilled worker of a state farm lives for 15 years in a kennel, his bed is a pile of rags, the toilet is the space around the shack. Isn’t that the result of my work? This is a great reproach to my work too.

At the station, there are a lot of street children lying around, unable to get a clear answer anywhere, met with callousness and indifference. They have all their wealth in their pockets – fake papers issued by the director of the children’s institution, they are chased from everywhere, they are considered to be thieves. This is the result of my work too.

A whole carload of children-prisoners, from 11 to 13 years old. Among them are children with great inclinations, their lives are already broken, and they have not yet had time to live. The teacher teaches one of them how easy it is to live at the expense of the others, who are not given the right to leave the car without a guard. Is this what I wanted? Is this the fate I was preparing for those who would be handed over to the state by their mothers?

Many millions of Soviet people cannot live on the nominal salary they receive, the ration is designed for a half-starved existence, they have nothing to sell on the market. How can they exist? Did I agitate for this?

In order for a simple person to get the basic necessities of life, it is necessary more than once to humiliatingly ask the person in whose hands these necessities are. Is it for this that I fought?

To get every little thing for his small business, without which even large-scale production cannot work normally, the director, specialist of the state farm, MTS, enterprise must spend days and nights, waste money and materials belonging to the state (the people) and circumvent the laws. Was it such an organization of socialist agricultural production that I called for?

In order to work, to have personally a good income and the material wellbeing of the family, it is necessary, together with the People’s Commissar of Sovkhozes Lobanov, to lie to the state (the people) and encourage a negligent attitude to the people’s wealth, or it is needed together with the head of the Glavurs Zakharevsky, to deceive your own conscience, to cover for the robbers of the people’s wealth. Is it the moral I preached?

We have everything in our country to prevent the humiliation of a person’s personality and to provide conditions for normal productive work for every Soviet worker, big and small, to remove all worries from him and to leave him only one thing – to conscientiously fulfil the duty assigned to him.

To do this, it is necessary to put the care for a person in the centre of attention. To respond to the demands of the working people, as the country responded to the shortage of weapons and ammunition at the front. This will be the magic wand that will cause a new huge surge of energy in the people and all the tasks set by you, the government and the party will be completed much faster than expected.

The time has come when every Soviet worker wants to be confident in the future, not only in the political sense of the strength of the socialist state, but also in the personal economy. The latter, in particular, is associated with the rouble. The integrity of the state in relation to the people is also tested by the strength of the rouble. It is necessary to eliminate the situation when the rouble turns into a jumping little goat and to ensure that it becomes a Georgian buffalo, in the reliability, endurance and unpretentiousness of which every farmer who has dealt with it believes. There are not many nations in the world who are as patient as the Russians, as the Soviet people. There are entire nations who prefer capitalist slavery to freedom for the sake of imaginary economic well-being, and the low standard of living of the Soviet people plays an important role in this. The immediate improvement of the lives of the working people and the implementation of other measures that ensure the personal material interest of citizens in strengthening the socialist state and in concrete work, not only according to the law, but also according to personal desire, increases the chances of our country on an international scale.

To preserve our country is to clear the way for all mankind. All the main burden in the liberation from the capitalist bonds fell on the shoulders of our people, and therefore they deserved a sharp improvement in all aspects of their existence, since all the opportunities for this appeared. Perhaps I will not only be punished, but I will also be publicly ridiculed in the press for this letter, but this is less difficult than to ignore the implementation of the destructive process of those little things that are mentioned here, and many others that I could not touch on in my letter. I’m not the only one waiting for an answer to the letter. Observations show that many of these issues are also of concern to other Soviet citizens. Apparently, some did not have the patience to wait and took the path of personal enrichment, assuming that things are heading for a serious change in economic relations in the country. I cannot accept this, because I understand perfectly well that the creation and accumulation of wealth in the hands of society is the basis for the wellbeing of millions of Soviet workers, for which I have fought all my adult life, and now even more so I cannot do otherwise.

If there was no certainty that the letter would bring at least a small benefit to the Motherland, it would never have been written.

Member of the VKP (b), party card number 2781062
P. Golub

August 8th,1946
Moscow, Chkalov Street, house 23, apt. 45

Received by the Special Department of the CC of VKP(b) on August 9th 1946

Translated from the Russian by Irina Malenko
Source: Письмо П. Голубя И.В. Сталину от 30 июля 1946 г. http://sovdoc.rusarchives.ru/sections/personality/cards/49422

РГАСПИ. Ф. 558. Оп. 11. Д. 870. Л. 36-62.

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