– Alexander Fadeyev –
The Patriotic War against the German fascist invaders sparked a powerful rise of patriotism among the peoples of the USSR. We can observe manifestations of this patriotism — the likes of which are unprecedented in the history of states and nations — not only at the front, among millions of soldiers and officers of the Red Army, partisans and resistance fighters, but also deep in the Soviet rear, in cities and villages, among workers and collective farmers, engineers and teachers, scientists and artists, children and the elderly.
What are the causes behind this unprecedented surge of patriotism among our people?
The first and most important cause lies in the Soviet nature of our patriotism — in the fact that our people are defending their Soviet motherland, their socialist homeland.
“Never will that people be defeated,” said the great Lenin, “in which workers and peasants have, for the most part, come to understand, feel and see that they are defending their own Soviet power — the power of the working people, that they are defending a cause whose victory will give them and their children the opportunity to enjoy all the benefits of culture and all the creations of human labour.”1
Over the years of socialist development, the foundations of Soviet patriotism have grown steadily stronger. Thanks to the building of socialism, there is no exploitation of man by man in our country and moral-political unity has been established in Soviet society. National strife has been forever eliminated in our country, and the Soviet state has been built on the basis of friendship and brotherhood among peoples. We created the collective farm system, brought technology, culture and socialism to the countryside, introduced universal education, and our Stakhanovites are mastering advanced machinery. Men and women are equal in rights. On this foundation, a person of a new moral character has emerged. This is the first and most important reason for the unprecedented rise of Soviet patriotism.
The second reason is that the war for our socialist homeland merged with the struggle of our peoples for national independence, state sovereignty and freedom against the Hitlerite oppressors. The main force of the fascist invaders’ assault is directed against our state — against the peoples of the USSR — with the aim of eliminating their national sovereignty, of destroying and enslaving the Soviet peoples.
The third reason is that in this war, we are also carrying out a great liberating mission for all the peoples enslaved by German fascism. The Red Army and the entire Soviet people are driven by lofty and noble goals in this war, inspiring them to acts of heroism.
The most important source of strength and power in Soviet patriotism lies in the fact that the great Communist Party leads the Soviet people. The Bolshevik Party has done tremendous, colossal work in fostering patriotism among the masses. From its earliest years, our party spent decades preparing working people for the great task of freeing our country from the oppressors who hindered the flourishing of our homeland. During the October Revolution and the Civil War, under the party’s leadership, the working people of our country overthrew the rule of the imperialists and exploiters and, with weapons in hand, defended the Soviet motherland against the onslaught of foreign interventionists and White Guard forces. During the years of peaceful construction, the party never for a moment lost sight of the defence of the Soviet homeland. It educated Soviet citizens in the spirit of fearlessness and unwavering devotion to the Soviet motherland. During the years of the Patriotic War, our party united the Soviet people in a shared patriotic spirit, instilled in them confidence in their strength and belief in victory. The Communist Party is the powerful inspiration and organizer of the nationwide struggle against the fascist invaders.
These are the reasons behind the unprecedented rise of patriotism in our country.
German fascism seeks to enslave all the peoples of the world, but nowhere does it do so with such brutal cruelty, such vile and merciless savagery, as it does against the peoples of the USSR. It is well known that our citizens, forcibly taken to perform hard labour in Germany, wear an armband with the letter “O” — which stands for Ostarbeiter, meaning a worker from the “eastern territories.” Hitler’s program, carried out by his attack dogs, is to exterminate half the population of the so-called “eastern territories” — that is, the vast expanse of our multiethnic homeland — and turn the rest into Ostarbeiters — into slaves stripped of nationality, stripped of a homeland.
It is with this aim that German fascism is exterminating hundreds of thousands of Soviet citizens, destroying cities, monuments of the past, carrying out the organized looting of cultural and historical treasures of the peoples of the USSR, desecrating the sacred memory of Lev Tolstoy, Tchaikovsky, Pushkin, Turgenev, Shevchenko, and physically annihilating the national intelligentsia. These vile acts of German fascism deepen the national feelings of our peoples. The valiant resistance that the peoples of the USSR are putting up against the enemy strengthens their sense of national pride — pride in all the best that our peoples have created in the past and in the present, pride in what makes up the greatness and glory of our peoples and of the Soviet state as a whole, and in what propels mankind forward.
German fascism seeks first and foremost to destroy the great Russian nation and wipe out its culture — not only because the Russian people are the strongest, but primarily because they are the force that unites the peoples of the USSR and serves as the vanguard of liberation for all nations oppressed by German conquerors. The Russian people can rightly be proud of this leading role in the liberation movement.
Let us recall what Comrade Lenin wrote about the national pride of the Great Russians:
“Are we, class-conscious Great Russian proletarians, devoid of a sense of national pride? Of course not! We love our language and our homeland. We are working more than anyone else to raise its labouring masses (i.e. nine-tenths of its population) to a conscious life as democrats and socialists. We feel most acutely the pain of seeing the violence, indignities and abuses inflicted upon our beautiful homeland by the Tsarist executioners, by nobles and capitalists. We are proud that from among our people — from among the Great Russians — came those who stood up to this violence: Radishchev, the Decembrists, the revolutionary intellectuals of the 1870s. We are proud that the Great Russian working class, in 1905, created a powerful revolutionary mass party, and that the Great Russian peasant was at that time beginning to become a democrat…”2
Lenin wrote this in 1914. And in 1917, the Russian working class carried out the Great October Socialist Revolution.
In the October Revolution, the Russian people not only liberated themselves, but also freed Ukrainians, Byelorussians, Armenians, Kazakhs, Tatars, Georgians, Azerbaijanis, Uzbeks, Jews and other peoples of former Tsarist Russia from double oppression. Then, under the leadership of the Russian people, the peoples of the USSR carried out three socialist five-year plans and built a powerful multinational Soviet state.
The reason why it was the Russian people who took on this leading role in our state can be found in certain features of their historical development. The strength of the Russian people was already evident when, under the harshest conditions of the Tatar-Mongol yoke, they managed to overcome feudal fragmentation. The Russian people cast off the Tatar-Mongol yoke and formed their own state earlier than many nations in Western Europe. Throughout their history, the Russian people have defeated every foreign invader. The peoples living along the western, southern and eastern borders of our country were able to avoid total destruction by foreign conquerors only under the protection of Russia. The history of the Ukraine, Georgia and other peoples of former Tsarist Russia serve as examples of this.
Historically, the choice made by the peoples of former Tsarist Russia has fully justified itself.
The Russian people played a decisive role in liberating the peoples of our country from landlord-capitalist oppression and in creating the most progressive social system — the Soviet system. Thanks to the mighty assistance of the Russian people, all the peoples of our multinational country have overcome centuries of backwardness inherited from Tsarist Russia.
Russia was a more developed country than many in Western Europe. But Tsarist Russia was still backward in its technical and economic development, as well as in its political system, compared — let us say — to England, France or America.
None of the old classes — neither the feudal aristocracy nor the bourgeoisie — was capable of solving the problem of overcoming our country’s backwardness. This historical task was accomplished by the free Soviet peoples, with the help of the great Russian people, who built a powerful and free socialist state founded on advanced industrial technology and a developed agricultural system — the most progressive in terms of its political structure and in the fields of culture and education.
The strength of the Russian people was already evident under the old Tsarist regime, when they created a powerful national culture that had a progressive influence on the development of all the peoples of Russia and immeasurably enriched and advanced the culture of all mankind. In global science and the arts of the 19th and 20th centuries, the contribution of Russian science and Russian art is truly colossal. Giants of scientific thought such as Lobachevsky, Mendeleev, Pirogov, Sechenov, Mechnikov and Pavlov are among mankind’s finest minds. In the social sciences, Russia gave the world such outstanding figures as Chernyshevsky and Plekhanov, while the genius works of Lenin made Russia a beacon of revolutionary scientific thought. In terms of their impact on men’s minds and the development of literature — both in their own country and beyond — few writers in the past century and a half could rival Pushkin, Gogol, Lev Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, Chekhov or Gorky. The global significance of Russian music is universally recognized — thanks to its masters: Glinka, Tchaikovsky, Mussorgsky, Borodin, Rimsky-Korsakov and, from a later generation, Rachmaninoff and Scriabin.
Russian theatre, through such figures as Shchepkin and Mochalov, Yermolova and Komissarzhevskaya, Stanislavsky and Nemirovich-Danchenko, has deservedly enjoyed worldwide fame for over a century.
The global significance of great Russian culture is a source of national pride for the Russian people.
It must be said that the great historical mission of the Russian people was foreseen and deeply felt by the classics of Russian literature. Their patriotism was never narrow, nationalist or chauvinistic — they loved Russia.
“In Russia, every writer was truly and sharply individual, but they were all united by one persistent aspiration — to understand, to feel, to intuit the future of their country, the fate of its people and its role on Earth.”3 These beautiful words belong to Gorky, who dedicated the full power and passion of his talent to the good of his native land.
“I love Russia to the point of heartache…” — wrote the brilliant Russian satirist Saltykov-Shchedrin. He said, exile me to Switzerland, India or Brazil, and even there, amid luxurious nature, I will look for the colours of my homeland.
We have learned to better understand and feel our native nature thanks to Russian literature:
But I love — though I do not know for what —
The cold silence of her steppes,
The boundless swaying of her forests,
The overflowing of her rivers, like seas…
(Lermontov, “Motherland”)
Russian writers elevated the Russian language to unprecedented heights and revealed its richness. As far back as Lomonosov, it was said: “Charles V, the Roman Emperor, used to say that Spanish is best for speaking with God, French with friends, German with enemies and Italian with women. But if he had mastered the Russian language, he would surely have added that it is suitable for speaking with all of them. For he would have found in it the grandeur of Spanish, the liveliness of French, the strength of German, the tenderness of Italian and beyond that, the richness and the powerful expressiveness of Greek and Latin.”
And no one like the Russian writers felt so deeply the beauty, truth, purity and sincerity of man’s soul — as expressed in the Russian song, under which, as Gogol put it, “log houses are built from pine across all of Russia,” “cities sprout like mushrooms” and “the Russian man is swaddled, wed and buried.” Russian poets celebrated the glorious, heroic past of their homeland — its ancient capital, Moscow, with its white-stone Kremlin, and Petersburg, which rose grandly and proudly “from the swampy marsh.”
And this patriotism of the progressive Russian people has always been inseparable from the fate of the people itself — from respect for the national honour and dignity of other peoples — and from the desire for Russia and Russian culture to play a leading role in the advancement of all mankind. “Russia, in the persons of the educated people of its society, bears within its soul the invincible sense of the greatness of its destiny, the greatness of its future,” wrote one of the brightest minds of Russia — Vissarion Belinsky. Let us remember Nekrasov:
Don’t fear for our dear motherland…
The Russian people have endured enough…
……………………………………………………………….
They will endure everything — and with broad, clear
chests, they will carve a path for themselves.
It’s just a pity — to live in that beautiful time
will not be granted — neither to me, nor to you.
This feeling of love for the motherland, inseparable from love for the people, from the ideals of education and progress, from concern for the fate of all mankind — has always been characteristic of the progressive Russian people.
The Russian people today still hold deep respect for all that is progressive and advanced in the sphere of both material and spiritual culture created by the leading minds of Western Europe and America. They apply and will continue to apply the achievements of science and technology within their own country — to the extent and in the ways that benefit our state and our people. But the Russian people have also created their own great values. They have enriched and continue to enrich the cultural treasury of mankind. They are deeply opposed to uncritical and servile reverence for anything “foreign” simply because it is foreign.
In A Hunter’s Sketches, Turgenev has a remarkable story titled Khor and Kalinich. In it, Turgenev shares his impressions of foreign lands during a conversation with two peasants — Khor and Kalinich. Listening to Turgenev, Khor responded with reason and a critical mind. “That wouldn’t work here,” he said of one thing. “But this — this is good, that’s order,” he said of another.
In the face of its finest sons, the Russian people have revealed themselves in history as a people of action, a people of transformation.
The brilliant genius of Lenin truly embodied the finest, strongest, most advanced and noble qualities of Russia’s reformers and revolutionaries, enriched by the most progressive achievements of the international workers’ movement and the best mankind had produced throughout the course of its cultural development. That is why Lenin became the founder of the Soviet state, the father of all the peoples of the USSR, and why the light of his teachings spread across the globe. That is also why the style of Leninism became the style of workers of all Soviet peoples — a driving force and a defining feature of our socialist culture.
The great traditions of Russian culture, enriched by the experience of our Soviet life, live on in the work of today’s Soviet scientists, artists and writers.
The scale of the Patriotic War is so grand, it has revealed to us such power of character — heroic and extraordinary — that we are inclined to see the shortcomings in our art and rightly criticize it, striving to elevate it to the level of our people’s historical mission of liberation. Yet Soviet art has, over the past twenty-five years, created works whose ideological and artistic value marks a new chapter in the cultural development of mankind.
A collection of poetry was recently published — it includes some, though not all, of the best works created by Russian poets over twenty-five years of Soviet life. It opens with names like Vladimir Mayakovsky, Alexander Blok and Valery Bryusov. Generation after generation follow — Demyan Bedny, Sergei Yesenin, Nikolai Aseev, Nikolai Tikhonov, Samuil Marshak, Eduard Bagritsky, Mikhail Svetlov, Vera Inber, Iosif Utkin, Vladimir Lugovskoy, Vasily Lebedev-Kumach, Pavel Antokolsky, Alexander Prokofiev, Mikhail Isakovsky, Alexander Tvardovsky, Konstantin Simonov, Sergei Mikhalkov, Alexei Surkov, Stepan Shchipachev, Margarita Aliger and many other great Russian poets of the Soviet era appear before the reader’s mind’s eye. It becomes clear that, in its ideological content and its richness and diversity of artistic form, this is an outstanding and new phenomenon in world poetry. It is doubtful that any other country could present the world with a poetic collection of such concentrated artistic and ideological force, produced in just twenty-five years.
This time, is a hard one for the pen, —
wrote Vladimir Mayakovsky in his famous poem on Yesenin’s death, —
But tell me, you, cripples and weaklings,
where, when, did any great man ever choose
a road, because it was already trampled, and easier?
The strength of our art lies in the fact that it is the art of the world’s first socialist country.
Russian Soviet art has given to the peoples of the USSR — and to all mankind — such works as Battleship Potemkin, Chapaev, Lenin in October, Lenin in 1918 and other films of global significance; the poetry of Mayakovsky; the novels And Quiet Flows the Don, Virgin Soil Upturned, Peter the First, The Road to Calvary, How the Steel Was Tempered; the symphonies of Shostakovich; and the finest productions of our theatres — the Bolshoi, the Maly and the Moscow Art Theatre — performances unequalled anywhere else in the world, and as yet unmatched.
We are the only country in the world where, amid the roar of cannons, the muses not only did not fall silent — they rose up alongside the soldiers against the enemy. True artists — those who, in a time of severe trial, think and feel with the people — could not help but express the noblest sides of their soul in everything they created. In the fire of war, they were touched by the inspired, solemn and beautiful muse of the people.
Thus, in besieged Leningrad, Dmitri Shostakovich composed his Seventh Symphony. Thus, during the war, some of the finest works of Soviet music were created — the compositions of Myaskovsky, Prokofiev, Shaporin, Shebalin, the songs of Alexandrov, Zakharov, Solovyov-Sedoy — as well as outstanding portraits of war heroes by Soviet sculptors Vera Mukhina and Sarra Lebedeva, and many wonderful achievements in Soviet literature, painting, theatre and cinema — widely known both in the country and abroad.
German fascism threatens not only the Russian people, but all the peoples of the USSR. In the Patriotic War, Russians, Ukrainians, Byelorussians, Georgians, Uzbeks, Latvians, Lithuanians, Estonians, Moldavians, Karelo-Finns, Kazakhs and other peoples of the USSR fight the enemy in fraternal unity. No matter where they confront the enemy, they stand together with the Russian people in defence of their national freedom and the independence of our Soviet homeland.
All the peoples of the USSR — led by their elder brother, the great Russian people — are fighting for the complete liberation of the Ukraine. The heart of every Ukrainian, and of every Soviet citizen regardless of nationality, fills with great joy and pride at the thought that today the valiant regiments of the Red Army, having broken the enemy’s resistance, have raised their victorious banners over the sacred heights of Kiev.
The great Ukrainian people forged and defended their freedom and independence through centuries of struggle against foreign oppressors and conquerors. Their capital, Kiev, is rightly known as the mother of Russian, Ukrainian and Byelorussian cities. The Ukraine gave the world the enduring name of Bogdan Khmelnitsky — a wise national leader who forever cemented the friendship between the Ukrainian and Russian peoples.
Khmelnitsky’s wise choice has proven itself through history. Despite the unbearable suffering endured under Tsarist oppression, it led to a great friendship and connection between the leading cultural figures of the Ukrainian people and revolutionary democratic Russia. In the Great October Socialist Revolution — with the support of the Russian people — the Ukrainian people were finally freed from Tsarist rule, from native exploiters, and built a free Soviet state in union with the other peoples of the USSR. Now every honest person can see that without this union — and above all, without the great Russian people — the Ukraine could not have been liberated from the German invaders and would have been enslaved by them forever.
The Ukrainian people have every right to be proud that, in the course of their historical development, they not only preserved their national identity, but — through friendship with the Russian people — created a great Soviet Ukraine. In 1939, this Ukraine was reunited with its ancestral lands, which had earlier been torn apart by foreign conquerors.
The Soviet Ukraine, by its territory, the strength of its people, its industrial development, its importance in agriculture and the scale of its national Soviet culture, stands as one of the largest and most advanced countries in Europe. Its classical heritage:
…like thunder, ringing through the ages,
The fiery lines of Shevchenko,
And the hammer of the wise Franko,
And the living strings of Lysenko,
And the laurel of the immortal crown
Above Zankovetskaya — above Mariya, —
This heritage — to which should also be added Lesya Ukrainka and Mikhail Kotsiubinsky — is filled with the spirit of the people and love of freedom. It is not only a source of immense pride for the Ukrainian people, but also a treasure of the cultures of the USSR and the world. Fertilized by its historical connection to great Russian culture, this heritage serves as the foundation for the unprecedented flourishing of culture, art and literature in the Soviet Ukraine.
In the development of human culture and civilization, the Soviet Ukraine now plays a leading role — one far more advanced than that of many countries in Western Europe.
This cultural and civilizing role of the Soviet Ukraine can be illustrated by a small example from the daily life of its western regions, which were reunited with their motherland in 1939. Before reunification, under Polish rule, there were only 139 primary schools across all of Western Ukraine. After reunification, in the same regions of the Soviet Ukraine, the number grew to 6,000. Entire districts — Krasnyansky, Lopatin and others — had not a single medical facility under the rule of Polish landlords. In a major city like Lvov, there were only 14 hospitals and not a single public outpatient clinic — not to mention maternity wards or nurseries. By 1940, under Soviet Ukraine, Lvov had 43 hospitals, 30 polyclinics, 67 outpatient clinics and 5 maternity wards. Across all the western regions, in just one year, 106 hospitals, 20 maternity wards, 330 polyclinics and outpatient clinics, and 108 nurseries were opened. The question arises: which was truly the more advanced and cultured European state — the Soviet Ukraine or pre-war Poland?
The role of Ukrainian art and literature in the development of Soviet culture as a whole is enormous. The Soviet Ukraine has produced such outstanding masters of literature as Pavlo Tychina, Maksim Rylsky, Aleksandr Korneychuk, Nikolai Bazhan, Yuriy Yanovsky and Leonid Pervomaisky. The gifted work of the distinguished Ukrainian film director Aleksandr Dovzhenko enriched Soviet cinema and contributed much that was fresh and new to the world’s progressive film industry. The names of brilliant actors of the Ukrainian stage — Gnat Yura, Krushelnitskiy, Buchma, Shumsky and Uzhviy — are well known to the entire Soviet people. Ukraine’s finest singers — Patorzhinsky, Litvinenko-Volgemut, Zoya Gaidai — whose creative work is rooted in Ukraine’s rich song tradition and the outstanding compositions of Lysenko and talented contemporary Ukrainian Soviet composers, continue to develop and advance the vocal culture of the entire Soviet people.
In this progressive and forward-looking role of the Soviet Ukraine and its culture lies a source of national pride for the Ukrainian people.
The historical past of all the peoples of the USSR includes many pages of heroic struggle for independence and honour. Under Soviet power, and thanks to their union with the great Russian people, these nations have come to play a globally progressive role. Under Soviet rule, long-suppressed voices became the heritage of the vast masses of the USSR and of global culture — including such giants of mankind as Nizami and Navoi, Rustaveli and Vagif, and such noble figures as Ilia Chavchavadze and Hovhannes Tumanyan, Rainis and Akaki Tsereteli, Abai and Toktogul, and other classics of the peoples of the USSR.
The entire vast and rich epic heritage of the peoples of the USSR — Manas, David of Sasun, Lāčplēsis, Kalevala, Kalevipoeg — this source of folk poetry, folk character and the very language of the peoples, has become the possession of millions of people speaking a great diversity of languages.
The names of the most prominent figures in art and literature from the peoples of the USSR — Akaki Khorava and Georgy Leonidze, Andrejs Upīts and Elfrīda Pakule, Yanka Kupala and Larisa Alexandrovskaya, Avetik Isahakyan and the painter Martiros Saryan, Samed Vurgun and Bulbul, Johannes Barbarus and Liudas Gira, Halima Nasyrova and Hamid Alimdjan, Jambyl and Kulyash Baiseitova, and many other glorious cultural figures — are known to millions of Soviet citizens who speak more than fifty languages.
The peoples of the USSR have created and continue to develop their own industries, advanced agriculture, national culture and arts — contributing to the progress of human culture and civilization no less than the peoples of Western Europe. The importance and strength of each national culture of the peoples of the USSR is immeasurably enhanced by their mutual connection and unity in the fraternal Soviet community — they are branches of the single socialist culture of the USSR. There is not a single Soviet nation that, in defending the USSR, has not produced from its midst outstanding heroes of war and labour — men and women whose deeds surpass those of past history’s heroes, even those of popular legends and folklore. These Soviet people represent the face of our Soviet people, the face of the USSR. And in this lies the greatest source of Soviet patriotism and national pride for all the peoples of the USSR.
It is our sacred duty to foster and strengthen a sense of national pride in the Russian people and in all the peoples of the USSR. This is necessary so that the Russian people and all peoples of the USSR fully realize their superiority as free peoples over the fascist enslavers — a superiority that is moral-political, military, organizational and cultural — and defeat their occupation army and Hitlerite bandit state. This can and must be done, as the Red Army has proven and continues to prove in action.
Our country is fighting the enemy as part of the Anglo-Soviet-American coalition, and this naturally contributes to the mutual exchange of cultural values among these countries. We have never refused — and do not refuse — to adopt and use the best elements of culture from the capitalist countries. In fact, throughout our Soviet development, we have done this more broadly and fearlessly than any other country in the world has done in relation to our Soviet culture. The joint struggle against the German fascist invaders has sparked enormous interest in Soviet culture abroad — among the general public and the intelligentsia alike. There is no doubt that increasingly widespread familiarity with our culture will have great progressive significance for the cultural development of these countries.
However, we must keep in mind that not everyone in friendly countries relates to us in the same way. There are many examples of genuine understanding and even enthusiastic recognition of the achievements of our Soviet culture by leading scholars, writers and public figures in Britain and America.
It is well known that many of our Soviet films have been shown abroad with tremendous success and received enthusiastic acclaim. Works by Soviet composers have been and continue to be performed under the direction of leading conductors and with the participation of the finest performers in both Britain and the United States — and they have received high praise in the press across the spectrum. Soviet theatre, to the extent that cultural figures from the Allied countries are able to experience it, enjoys great recognition. Russian ballet remains unmatched worldwide — a fact acknowledged by both friends and foes alike. Many works by Soviet writers are being translated into all the world’s languages — the works of Mayakovsky, Alexei Tolstoy, Sholokhov, Ehrenburg, Ilf and Petrov, Valentin Kataev, Leonov, Korneychuk, Konstantin Simonov, Nikolai Ostrovsky, Wanda Wasilewska, Yuri Tynyanov and many others.
In both Britain and America, there are many people who genuinely recognize the global importance of the USSR’s struggle and the high moral value of its culture. Let me quote the well-known filmmaker and actor Charlie Chaplin — a passage from a speech he gave on October 16, 1942 at Carnegie Hall in New York:
“Ladies and gentlemen — and I suppose there are some people up in the gallery whom I should address as comrades. And if I say that, I truly mean it. When people fight as the Russian people fight — dying for our democracy — it is a great joy and honour to call them our comrades…
“I am not a strategist. I came here, first of all, as an ordinary person — one of the public — and secondly, as an artist. I was drawn here by instinct. When I see these people fighting and dying to defend our way of life, I say: I want a second front. This is not my idea — Stalin knows what he’s talking about. He wouldn’t demand a second front if he didn’t believe it possible — because failure on that second front would be just as disastrous for him as it would be for us. That’s why I say: open a second front — because we promised to, and we promised to do so soon — so open it now…
“Communism used to be a terrible scarecrow. We were afraid of it. But who are these communists? I think we are starting to understand who they are and what they’re about. They’re just people — like us. They love beauty. They love life. They are mothers who take pride in their sons’ education. They are mothers who send their sons off to war — perhaps for the last time.
“People say they are godless. Anyone who can fight and die the way the Russian people do must have God in their hearts. They must feel eternity in their souls. And when Judgement Day comes, the Lord, in his mercy, will understand. He is not a bureaucrat… I want to pay tribute to the three million Russians who gave their lives defending the bastion of democracy, while we, their allies, are still preparing. I want to thank the millions who are fighting and dying now, while we, their allies, are still preparing. I want to thank the defenders of Stalingrad — that steel barrier of human courage — those people who are fighting and dying while we prepare.”
At the same time, there are statements so filled with hostility or provincial ignorance that it’s difficult to determine which of the two is more dominant.
An example of such ignorance in the scientific realm can be found in a review by a certain John Becker, published on January 22, 1943, in The Spectator, on the newly released book Science in Soviet Russia.
“The book,” writes Mr. John Becker, “is useful mainly as a short report on what is being done in the USSR regarding the application of scientific knowledge to material human needs. The title The Application of Science in Soviet Russia would have been more appropriate,” he continues, “since… it would be pointless to look in the USSR for a calm pursuit of perfection or deep, insightful erudition in science.”
He then quotes a certain Mr. Crouser, who, fully agreeing with John Becker, claims that Soviet scientists are “somewhat immature and insufficiently developed to possess a highly refined scientific intuition and critical judgement.”
This is what Mr. John Becker writes, openly revealing his own provincial ignorance. First, because he sees the connection between science and practical application not as an enrichment, but as a “diminishment” of science. Second, because he either does not know — or pretends not to know — about the existence in the USSR of the great Pavlovian school, which leads global progress in physiological science, or of Soviet scientists such as Kapitsa, who was recently awarded the Newton Medal by the British Academy. Nor does he acknowledge the discoveries and achievements in medicine, agricultural science, and all the remarkable contributions of Soviet scientists across various fields of science and technology — physics, chemistry, physiology, mathematics, geology, metallurgy, military technology, engine building, medicine and more — which have produced a whole generation of outstanding young scientists and inventors.
Even more absurd are the statements on Soviet culture made by certain French writers comfortably sheltered under the wing of the Vichy regime — that is, grovelling before the occupiers of their own homeland: the German petty officers and sergeants.
The Journal, published in Paris, printed in its January 21, 1943 issue a conversation between one of its staff and the writer Jean Giraudoux, held in a restaurant in Vichy. The topic turned to the universal appeal of novels.
In this conversation, Giraudoux made the absurd claim that, supposedly, in Russia, each region of the country distributes books by only one writer: in one region, people supposedly read only Joseph Conrad, and in another — only Mr. Giraudoux himself.
Mr. Giraudoux sat in a restaurant while the Hitlerites were enslaving his country. He remains there even as his homeland lies in chains, the French people have been plundered, many sons and daughters have been driven into fascist slavery, and blood is spilled daily by French patriots. And all this while it has become clear that the books of Mr. Giraudoux, due to their lack of substance and emptiness — combined with a provincially pretentious style — are of no use to the French people and have even done them harm, as they once distracted readers from the need to prepare morally and technically for the fight against the German invaders.
And yet this pretentious provincial ignoramus, sitting in a restaurant, feels entitled to make jokes about the great Soviet Union — the country that not only repelled the invaders but, through its struggle, is bringing ever closer the hour of France’s own liberation.
It is easy to see how history has pushed certain individuals — who once imagined themselves to be “creators of human culture” — into a remote and backwards corner. And how could one possibly compare this “restaurant culture” with the great culture of the peoples of the USSR, who have translated into their native languages the very best that mankind has created throughout its historical development — and who have distributed these works to the public in editions that, in many cases, exceed the print runs in their countries of origin?
Here is what honest people — for example, in Britain — have to say on the subject.
The Times Literary Supplement of January 24, 1942 wrote:
“Between 1917 and 1925, fifty English authors were translated into Russian. Among them, Kipling, Galsworthy, D.H. Lawrence, Chesterton, Shakespeare, Byron, Coleridge and Sterne are enjoyed in Russia and are constantly reprinted. Between 1928 and 1932, the works of no fewer than seventy English writers were translated into Russian. This figure is three times the average annual number of translations in the earlier period. Works by Joyce, Shaw, Walpole, Hardy, Maugham, Wodehouse were translated — as well as books by past masters such as Ben Jonson, Macaulay, Swift, Stevenson and Swinburne.”
This is the real situation in the USSR.
Our people have created — and continue to create — great achievements in the realm of both spiritual and material culture. These represent a new and momentous step forward in the development of all mankind. And we must proudly carry the banner of our Soviet culture — the culture of the Russian, Ukrainian, Georgian, Kazakh, Azerbaijani and other peoples of the USSR — a culture that develops in national forms and advances the development of all humankind.
Such an understanding of Soviet patriotism and national pride not only poses no danger of chauvinism or nationalist distortion among the peoples of the USSR — it is the best safeguard against chauvinism and nationalism. The roots of these ideologies have long been cut off in our country. In the war of liberation against German fascism, the national interests of the peoples of the USSR coincide with the common human goals and interests of all mankind.
Of course, in our country there still exists a small remnant of people hostile to our system. In addition, the enemy sends in agents who may try — by fuelling nationalist prejudices and remnants of the past among backward individuals — to sow national discord in the fraternal community of the peoples of the USSR. Or they may try to undermine the national pride and sense of honour among our peoples through servile worship of anything “foreign” simply because it is foreign, or through hypocritical preaching of a rootless “cosmopolitanism” — based on the claim that “we are all just people,” and that nation and homeland are supposedly “outdated concepts.”
The experience of the war has clearly shown that in our country there is no fertile ground for these enemy attempts to achieve any serious success. But such efforts, aimed at backward individuals, can still cause us some harm. We must be able to expose these efforts in time and give them a resolute and forceful rebuff.
In the past, we had people who believed that importing all sorts of decadent, unprincipled, formalist schools of art from Western Europe to our soil was somehow “leftist.” As a result of such influences, we ended up — for example, in the field of architecture — with a number of drab, unattractive box-like buildings, where, for all their supposed “leftism” (or rather, because of it), it is absolutely impossible to live. Foreign influences at one time also affected painting, literature, theatre, music and cinema.
The Patriotic War has thoroughly exposed and rejected these uncritical imports from the West — these stale and faded remnants of artistic decadence, these various false theories such as “art for art’s sake” and “formalism” — on the basis of which, as is well known, nothing truly great has ever been created, nor could be.
The Patriotic War exposed them definitively, because these remnants and false theories are entirely devoid of any national or popular foundation. They are the product of pretentious but essentially deeply anti-artistic and impotent thinking.
Of course, there are those who believe that a national foundation in art means a rejection of all global art, of all progress — a simplistic return, for example, in architecture to the Nereditsa Church or the traditional Russian hut, and in music to peasant songs. But such views were already considered reactionary in Gogol’s time. Gogol, as we know, deeply loved the peasant song. Yet, speaking of Pushkin as a Russian national poet, he wrote: “True nationality does not lie in describing the sarafan, but in the spirit of the people itself.”
Only that which is truly national — meaning that which expresses the very spirit of the people in its historical and progressive development — becomes international and universally human.
The cultivation of Soviet patriotism and national pride is a sacred duty of all progressive forces in our Soviet society.
The great Communist Party of the Bolsheviks is the most progressive, unyielding, inspired and inspiring force behind Soviet patriotism.
The great Communist Party leads us — and will lead us — to victory over the enemy, to the liberation of our multinational Soviet homeland from the German fascist invaders, and to the fulfilment of our great liberating mission for all peoples enslaved by Hitlerism.
Let us continue to strengthen and develop the power of Soviet patriotism! Raise high the banner of Soviet culture!
1943
Notes
1 V.I. Lenin, Collected Works, vol. 29, p. 292, Russ. ed.
2 V.I. Lenin, Collected Works, vol. 21, p. 35, Russ. ed.
3 M. Gorky, Collected Works in 30 Volumes, vol. 24, Goslitizdat, p. 66, Russ. ed.
(Translated from: Fadeev, Aleksandr Aleksandrovich. “O sovetskom patriotizme i natsional’noi gordosti narodov SSSR.” In Sobranie sochinenii v semi tomakh, vol. 5: Stat’i i rechi. 1928–1947 gg., 396–415. Moscow: Khudozhestvennaia literatura, 1971.)