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“Tremendous triumphs...

Still greater victories
to come...

By JOHN WEIR

Thad just reached my eleventh.

birthday when news of the social-
Ist revolution in Russia came to
Our home in the Fraser Valley of
British Columbia. Like most of
the lumberjack families we wel-
Comed it and wished it well.

re were arguments about it
£verywhere, including the
Schools,

The anti-Soviet campaign came
On full blast. I remember big post-
€s in the public buildings depict-
ing the Bolsheviks (Communists)
a ferocious wolves intent on
8obbling up Canada and all of us.

__ We watched the glorious spec-
le of the peoples of Russia,
€eding from a thousand
Wounds, hungry and ragged, with

the economy virtually at a stand-
still, defeat and drive out 14
foreign armies of intervention, in-
cluding Canadians at Murmansk,
and the domestic counter-revolu-
tionaries. We didn’t simply
watch. Canadians were battling
too, encouraged by the valour of
our Soviet brothers and sisters.
We paraded with ‘‘Hands off
Russia!’’ signs, adopted resolu-
tions, collected funds for the
Volga famine victims. We thrilled
as we learned that the sentiment
of the people as a whole and of the
soldiers concerned in particular
compelled the government to re-

voke the plan to send 5,000 Cana-'

dian servicemen to augment the
interventionist forces in
Vladivostok.

h

“Lenin’s plan for the electrification of the whole economy was
€xemplified by the building of the dam and power station on the Dnieper

iver,” Photo: opening of Dnieprostroi dam 1932. :

Dmitri Loviev, an assemblyman from the Compact Car Plant in Lenin-

oe oa

‘Stad, Says “I believe that the most important achievement we have in
© USSR is the right to work. We know unemployment only from news-
Papers and from textbooks on history.”

I first visited the Soviet Union
early in 1929. The ravages of war,
civil war and foreign intervention
had been healed, the economy
was built up to its pre-war level,
the first Five-Year Plan had been
adopted and work was under way
to carry out its targets: Lenin’s
grandiose plan of industrial con-
struction that has today placed
the USSR second to (and in some
branches ahead of) the foremost
industrial country of the capitalist
world, the United States of
America; Lenin’s plan for electri-
fication of the whole country (at
the time particularly exemplified
by the building of the dam and
power station on the Dnieper
River); Lenin’s goal of the social-
ist transformation’ of agriculture
by organizing the peasants into
collective farms (producer co-
operatives).

But in 1929 there were still
some unemployed, homeless
waifs who still lit bonfires on city
streets; blockades by capitalist
states remained in various forms.

If they were to accomplish the —
miracle of building the new and

most advanced society they could
only rely on themselves.

Those who had recently de-
clared that the Soviet government
could not long endure, now just as
definitely proclaimed that the
planned socialist economy would
not work, that the plans would
fail.

And again they were wrong.

The first Five-Year Plan was
successfully carried out, others
followed. It was not easily come
by, to put it mildly. But it was
done. By 1936 socialism was
triumphant, not only were the
capitalist and landlord classes
eliminated, but the masses. of
peasantry were working on col-
lective or state farms, both of
which are forms of socialist farm-
ing. This new stage was affirmed
in the new Constitution of the

Soviet Union.

The next time I saw. the USSR
was at the close of December 1946
and first months of 1947. The war
had been cruel and devastating
beyond comprehension of those
who had not seen it or its after-
math. More than 20. million lives
had been lost, cities as big as To-
ronto or Montreal lay in ruins,
ashes of burnt villages told of
where once had been flourishing
farms.

It was a cold and hungry time.

_ And rulers of countries that had:

been saved from fascist conquest
by this superhuman Soviet hero-
ism and sacrifice, brandished nuc-
lear weapons and brought on the
‘‘cold war’’.

Again enemies and faint-hearts
were certain that the Soviet
Union would knuckle under. In
1941 they had also predicted that
Hitler would topple ‘‘the colossus
with feet of clay’’. Again they
were wrong. The Soviet Union
soon equalled the USA in nuclear
science, and when the first sput-
niks went up, those in the West
who had looked down on the
Soviets were forced to look up.
The first man and the first woman

we :

Vividly showing the tremendous advances in Soviet agriculture:
top photo is farming in the 1920’s . .. below, modern machinery in
Kazakstan harvesting grain. The USSR today is one ‘of the world’s
leading agricultural nations.

in space were citizens of the
USSR.

-Cities and farms were restored
and moving forward to new hori-
zons. There was now a family of
socialist countries in Europe col-
laborating for peace and progress,
and joining with them was the
Mongolian People’s Republic in
the heart of Asia and Cuba in the
Western Hemisphere.

In 1961 I covered the 22nd
Congress of the Communist Party
of the Soviet Union for the
Tribune, heard the debate and
saw the new Program of the
CPSU adopted, which set the feet
of Soviet society to lay the found-
ations for the higher, communist
stage of development, doing away

‘with the differences between
mental and manual labor, be-
tween urban and country stan-
dards of life. ;

I then stayed in the Sovie
Union for eight years as corres-
pondent and also as translator,
mostly in Moscow but some time
in Kiev and visiting other areas
from time to time. I was there at
the time of changes in the leading
committee, the election of Leonid
Brezhnev as general secretary of
the CPSU and the launching of
the full-scale campaign for de-
tente, which has now been
crowned by the Helsinki Agree-
ment of all European states, the
USA and Canada for peaceful
coexistence and cooperation.

The past several years I have
again been the Tribune corres-

pondent in the USSR, visited
Norilsk above the Arctic Circle
and the Uzbek and Kirghiz Soviet
Republics in Central Asia, Vor-
onezh and Leningrad, Togliatti
and Talinn, Crimea and the west-
ern districts of Soviet Ukraine.

I witnessed the unprecedented
spectacle of the population of the
whole country discussing the
draft for a new Constitution, and
the adoption of the amended Con-

‘stitution by the Supreme Soviet

on October 7. What we have in
the USSR today is developed
(mature) socialism on the way to
communism.

Villages have a sufficiency of
very sophisticated farm machin-
ery, electricity, gas, the amenities
and cultural advantages of city
life. There is close cooperation,

joint planning and drawing to-
~ gether of collective and state

farms, the formation of agrarian-

industrial complexes. In foreign’

affairs the relentless campaign to
eradicate hotbeds of war and to
bring about general and total dis-
armament is meeting universal
support.

The 60th anniversary of the

Great October Socialist Revolu-
tion is being celebrated in the
USSR as a day of glory in their
tremendous triumphs and _ the
promise of still greater victories to
come. Their aims are the same as
the dream of the peoples the
whole world over, and progres-
sive Canadians will celebrate with
them.

PACIFIC TRIBUNE—NOVEMBER 11, 1977—Page 9