Document 1

Speech by A. N. Voronin to First Congress of Shock Brigades, December 1929

Pervyi Vsesoiuznyi s"ezd udarnykh brigad (k tridts. s"ezda) [First All-Union Congress of Shock Brigades (For Its Thirtieth Anniversary)], Moscow, 1959, pp. 127-128.

The worker-peasant government has decided to build on the remote steppes of Kazakhstan a railroad in order to connect Turkestan and Siberia. For this the government has allocated approximately two hundred million rubles and has given us the task of trying our best to build a railroad in five years which will be called the Turkestan-Siberian Line.

We, the workers and the engineering and technical staff, taking into account the warlike and urgent need for this line, have decided that we will build it not in five years but 3.5. Accordingly we will shorten construction by eighteen months. We have said that we will build it at little cost, and build it well and solidly. Some hysterical persons have told you that we will not be able to build it quickly and solidly.

I will give you an example, Comrades. The example is a very important one. In the eighth construction section, at one time the fifth construction section, at the Alma-Ata station is Poganka Brook. Here was built a reinforced concrete bridge. Now when they finished constructing it and got it completely ready, a locomotive was brought up and stood six hours on this bridge, and in the final analysis it turned out that the bridge settled one thousandth of a meter. So, the words of the hysterical ones were not justified.