This industry had to be so directed as to be capable of technically reorganizing not only industry, but also agriculture and our railway transport. A first-class industry had to be built up. There were only a few of the necessary prerequisites for the creation of such a base. There was not that elementary technical base without which the reorganization of a country on industrial lines is inconceivable. There were not enough machines for industry. The question that confronted us was: Either we solve this problem in the shortest possible time and consolidate socialism in our country, or we do not solve it, in which case our country - weak technically and unenlightened in the cultural sense - will lose its independence and become a stake in the game of the imperialist powers.Īt that time our country was passing through a period of an appalling dearth of technique. A serious and difficult task, as you see. The task was to transfer this country from mediaeval darkness to modern industry and mechanized agriculture. Ruined by four years of imperialist war, and ruined again by three years of civil war, a country with a semi-illiterate population, with a low technical level, with isolated industrial oases lost in a sea of dwarf peasant farms - such was the country we inherited from the past. You know that we inherited from the past a technically backward, impoverished and ruined country. I should like to say a few words about cadres, about our cadres in general and about the cadres of our Red Army in particular. But it is not of this I wanted to speak today. That, of course, is wrong, it is incorrect. They are credited with all, or nearly all, of our achievements. In this connection there is too much talk about the services rendered by chiefs, by leaders. Comrades, it cannot be denied that in the last few years we have achieved great successes both in the sphere of construction and in the sphere of administration.
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