Glory to the Russian People! A Nation of Epic Heroism… A Nation of Inventive Creativity!
Viktor Ivanov
1946
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Comrades! I’d like to give you my greetings on the holiday of the Great October. Today, there’s much talk about the unity of the country, the unity of society. However, unity is born over centuries, built on victories; it leads to respect for our history, culture, language, and traditions. When the unified Russian state arose, its main unifying factor was the Orthodox faith. Since we were united, we won great victories. In this case, it’s worth recalling that Russia gathered 180 peoples and nationalities under its banner; we didn’t destroy any language, any faith, or any culture. Under the Soviet state, even the smallest peoples had a written language.
Seven victories are behind us… from the Battle on the Ice to the three great victories that broke the back of the fascist beast… Moscow, Stalingrad, and Oryol-Kursk. Our united people moved forward under the October and Victory banners. Surely, we’ll solve our pressing problems, whether it’s the restoration of the national economy, the creation of nuclear arms parity, or a breakthrough in space exploration. We’re proud of our achievements and victories… we remember them. However, we also remember that after the collapse of the Russian Empire, only the leadership of the Bolshevik Party of Lenin and Stalin managed to knit together the country in a new guise as the Soviet state. “
Today, even President Putin spoke about the unity of history. His speech at Valdai was momentous. For almost twenty years, I’ve waited for such a statement, and I heard his appeal for all of us to be united… leftists, rightwingers, and centrists. However, unity requires new socio-economic policies. We can’t realise such unity when 110 families nick 35 percent of the national wealth and create unprecedented social schisms (раскол). We can achieve unity, if we’re able to ensure that we follow a new economic course, to empower a new industrialisation, and if the modernisation of the country takes into account the interests of everyone, in every nationality. We can do it if everyone remembers that the basis of our unity is the mighty Russian culture, the Russian language, and Russian traditions.
On the eve of the October Revolution, Lenin wrote The Impending Catastrophe and How to Combat It. He warned society and demanded that the authorities listen to the Bolsheviks. However, unfortunately, they refused to heed him. Then, he turned to his main slogans:
Peace for the peoples
Bread to the hungry
Land to the peasants
Factories to the workers
Power to the Soviets
The whole country rallied under these banners, to split the Entente, which planned to divide the Russian state into twenty disunited pieces. I want to remind you that we went through four policy options in the five years under Lenin’s leadership:
War Communism
Tax in kind of the surplus
the NEP
However, Lenin’s electrification plan, his plan for the modernisation of the country was unique in its scope and grandeur. We have to thank the first generation of Soviet citizens, who managed to build thousands of factories in ten years. This allowed our victory over the combined forces of Europe, which bowed before Hitler. We proved the soundness of Soviet government, Soviet ideals, Soviet values:
respect for labour
human dignity
friendship of the peoples… above all.
Today, I think that talking about unity, we must, firstly, fashion it on the firm foundation of a millennium of Russian history. Recently, I went to an exhibition at the Manezh dedicated to the 400th anniversary of the Romanov Dynasty, which was under Orthodox auspices. I appreciated and understood much of what I saw there. I know that a number of Russian sovereigns drew together and expanded the Russian state. There was a time when no one stood with Moscow, when encircling adversaries buried their teeth into our land. However, we endured, we survived, and we created a state stretching from the shores of the Baltic Sea to the edge of the Pacific Ocean.
I hope that the ideas expressed by Putin in Valdai will help us to anchor our era in history, to help us pull Russia out of its present crisis. However, if we allow the participation of oligarchs and criminals in this enterprise, without mining the experience of the Soviet era, without putting Labour at the vanguard of it all, without respect for our unique and great history, we won’t get out of this impasse. We must remember that we’re strong, intelligent, and successful, in this world, we need no one but ourselves. Our land has 2 percent of the world population, but one-third of its natural resources are concentrated here. If we had saved the USSR, our population would be 310 million, as in contemporary America. We are left with 143 million people. In order to compete in this world, it is necessary to have at least 300 million people. Therefore, our idea of reviving a Union between Russia, Belarus, and the Ukraine (the participation of Kazakhstan would be desirable) is the path of historical survival. We shouldn’t quarrel or argue, but we should unite, and decide to move forward.
We don’t have much time. Today, 70 percent of communal apartments are in disrepair, and the other 30 percent aren’t in much better shape. We need about 9 trillion roubles to set this problem right. However, the budget that Medvedev brought to the Gosduma doesn’t provide funding for housing renovation, or for industrial or rural rehabilitation. Hence, we need to step back and reconsider things. It’s necessary to recall Lenin’s NEP, when the state allowed different forms of ownership, allowing it to accumulate vast resources, which laid the basis for the modernisation and cultural revolution that saved us in 1941-45. It gave us the opportunity to break into space and become a leading world power. We must also remember the lessons of October, base them in our millennium-long history, and move forward. To do this, we have a lot to do, but we have only a little time. We need the political will to tap into experience of the Great October and of the mighty Soviet state.
7 November 2013
Gennady Zyuganov
General Secretary of the KPRF
Leader of the KPRF bloc in the RF Gosduma
http://kprf.ru/party-live/cknews/124936.html
Editor’s Note:
What Gennady Andreyevich says about Russia goes twice for us here in the diaspora:
We can’t realise such unity when 110 families nick 35 percent of the national wealth and create unprecedented social schisms (раскол).
In Russian Orthodoxy in America, we won’t have unity until we break the power of the 100 First Families. It’s that simple. Potapov… Kishkovsky… Lyonyo… Gan… Drobot… Berzansky… they’re all the same in the end. They wish to perpetuate disunity to further their own idiosyncratic aims and evil little fancies. That’s what we face (much as Russia faces the same in the criminal oligarchs).
Do you want united Russian Orthodox Churches in the USA, in Canada, and in Alaska? Then, we must fight the “oligarchs”… there’s no other way…
BMD
Filed under: Dmitri Medvedev, inspirational, moral issues, patriotic, politics, Revolution/Civil War, Russian, Soviet period Tagged: 1917 October Revolution, Christianity, Communist Party of the RF, communist victory, Communists, Eastern Orthodox Church, Gennady Zyuganov, Great Patriotic War, KPRF, KPSS, Lenin, Moscow Patriarchate, October Revolution, Orthodox, Orthodoxy, political commentary, politics, poster, Red October, Russia, Russian, Russian culture, Russian history, Russian Orthodox Church, Soviet, Soviet Union, USSR, Vladimir Lenin, Vladimir Putin, VOV