J. V. Stalin
Source: Works, Vol. 11, January, 1928 to March, 1929
Publisher: Foreign Languages Publishing House, Moscow, 1954
Transcription/Markup: Salil Sen for MIA, 2008
Public Domain: Marxists Internet Archive (2008). You may freely copy, distribute,
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I hail your initiative in organising emulation for the exemplary carrying out of the election campaign to the Soviets.
Elections to the Soviets—the organs of the dictatorship of the working class—should be the vital concern of the workers themselves.
Your participation in the election campaign should not be confined to carrying out in proper, Bolshevik fashion the elections in your own town, the elections to the town Soviets.
A more difficult, but no less necessary, task is to take a direct part in the election campaign in the countryside. The outcome of the Soviet elections will largely depend on the extent to which the working class in the towns and the agricultural labourers and poor peasants in the countryside take part in the campaign, exert their influence on its progress, take the lead of the middle peasants, force the kulaks into the background, and thus assure the leadership of the working class in the countryside. Therefore, the interchange of challenges to emulation that you have initiated in the press will be of great significance in rousing the workers for a wide participation in the election campaign. I wish you success.
J. Stalin
Pravda, No. 274, November 25, 1928
1.On November 21, 1928, a meeting was held at the "Katushka" garment factory, Smolensk, to discuss the organisation of emulation for the exemplary carrying out of the elections to the Soviets in the Smolensk Gubernia. At the meeting the workers resolved to ensure 100 per cent participation of the workers and members of their families in the elections to the Soviets, to arrange a pre-election interchange of challenges to emulation in the press, and to send a challenge to the workers of the Yartsevo textile factory and other factories in the Smolensk, Bryansk and Kaluga gubernias. The workers sent a letter to J. V. Stalin and M. I. Kalinin informing them of their election as honorary chairmen of the interchange in the press and requesting advice on the organisation of emulation for the exemplary carrying out of the elections to the Soviets.