Stalin Industrialization Speech 1931

The Tasks of Business Executives .style1 { font-size: x-large; } J. V. Stalin The Tasks of Business Executives Speech Delivered at the First All-Union Conference of Leading Personnel of Socialist Industry 1 February 4, 1931 Source : Works, Vol. 13, 1930 - January 1934 Publisher : Foreign Languages Publishing House, Moscow, 1954 Transcription/HTML Markup : Salil Sen for MIA, 2008 Public Domain : Marxists Internet Archive (2008). You may freely copy, distribute, display and perform this work; as well as make derivative and commercial works. Please credit "Marxists Internet Archive" as your source. Comrades, the deliberations of your conference are drawing to a close. You are now about to adopt resolutions. I have no doubt that they will be adopted unanimously. In these resolutions — I am somewhat familiar with them — you approve the control figures of industry for 1931 and pledge yourselves to fulfil them. A Bolshevik's word is his bond. Bolsheviks are in the habit of fulfilling promises made by them. But what does the pledge to fulfil the control figures for 1931 mean? It means ensuring a total increase of industrial output by 45 per cent. And that is a very big task. More than that. Such a pledge means that you not only pledge yourselves to fulfil our five-year plan in four years — that matter has already been settled, and no more resolutions on it are needed — it means that you promise to fulfil it in three years in all the basic, decisive branches of industry. It is good that the conference gives a promise to fulfil the plan for 1931, to fulfil the five-year plan in three years. But we have been taught by "bitter experience." We know that promises are not always kept. In the beginning of 1930, too, a promise was given to fulfil the plan for the year. At that time it was necessary to increase the output of our industries by 31 to 32 per cent. But that promise was not kept to the full. Actu