The 4th of February 1931 marks the anniversary of one of the most famous speeches given by Joseph Stalin. Often, and with malicious intent, Stalin is assumed to have used a rhetorical style similar to that of his arch-nemesis Adolf Hitler. However. The leader of the Soviet Union was vastly more calm and reserved in his delivery with hints of sarcasm. Stalin had a bold but quite different form of public expression.
And in this manner during the height of the cold winter of 1931 Joseph Stalin delivered a now historic speech at the first All-Union Conference of Workers of Socialist Industry. In it he said the following words:
“To delay the pace of development of the country and the army is to lag behind. And those who have fallen behind are beaten. And we do not want to be beaten. The history of old Russia was that it was continuously being beaten for its consistent backwardness.
The Mongol khans, Turkish sultans, Swedish feudal lords, Polish-Lithuanian lords, Anglo-French capitalists and Japanese barons beat us thoroughly for our military, cultural, and governmental backwardness.
They beat us because it was profitable and this deed went unpunished. Remember the words of the pre-revolutionary poet: “You are poor, you are plentiful…”. These words were well memorized by these gentlemen.
They beat us and sentenced us (with the words): “you’re plentiful” meaning you can be profited off of; “you’re poor” meaninng you can be beaten with impunity. This is the law of exploiters — to beat the weak. You’re weak, thus you’re wrong; you’re powerful, thus you’re right.
This is exactly why we cannot fall behind.”
It is important to not that the word “beat” in Russian only implies the act of hitting hitting someone and NOT being victorious over them in the sense that one sports team just “beat” the other by 3 points. Thus Stalin was portraying Russia as a victim of an endless and eternal flogging from all sides despite massive military victories over those he listed.
Whether the Communist Revolution of 1917 was the cause of or the solution to the state of this “backwardness” is an open ended question, but the fact is, that by the 1930s it became clear that rapid and titanic industrial progress had to be made at any cost.
Moving forward into the 21st century, it is clear that Stalin was right about Russia’s place in history. Now that the military, and in some areas the economy and structure of society, are ahead of those who wish to do Russia harm, the nation can no longer be beaten with impunity. Nearly a century after these words were uttered the dream of Stalin has finally been achieved, just without the Marxism.