Document 29
A. Stetsky to Politburo on tear-off calendars, 28 December 1932
RGASPI, f. 17, op. 114, d. 333, ll 56-57. Typed original.
To: Comrade Stalin,
Comrade Kaganovich, and
Comrade Postyshev
Tear-off calendars for collective farm members and for the shock worker for 1933 have come out in "Sotsekgiz"(Sotsial'no-ekonomicheskoe gosudarstvennoe izdatel'stvo [State Social and Economic Publishing Firm]) editions. In four calendars that Kul'tprop MK [The Department of Culture and Propaganda of the Moscow Party Committee] looked through , three for kolkhoz members and one for workers, a series of faulty, confused formulations and the grossest political and technical errors were discovered. For example, in one of the calendars for kolkhoz members we find:
16 October, the slogan "The Collective Farm Should Be Highly Productive and at the Same Time Require of its Members the Least Expenditure of Physical Labor. . . ."[instead of "Highly Productive Labor."]
1 November, in a note, progressive piecework [ i.e., payment for work on a graduated scale above the norm, which ran counter to the way work was then organized] is recommended as the best form of piecework.
21 September, a slogan printed "Improve Supplies to the Toilers--Don't Forget Undernourished Livestock."
21 December, the biography of Comrade Stalin is given. In the text nothing is said about Comrade Stalin's role in the party and in the Proletarian Revolution.
In a calendar for collective farm workers who are learning to read:
18 January, it is recommended that seed-stock be readied no later than 15 February instead of 15 January.
30 January, the slogan "Agricultural Pests Are Eating Up More of the Harvest Than Working People" [An allusion that might cause people to think about how badly organized extermination of pests was or how poorly collective farm members were fed.]
15 July, a note, "Fatten up Livestock for Slaughter," opens with the words "Don't sell undernourished livestock to the government or kill it to feed collective farm workers."
In the calendar for shock workers:
6 January, a despicable citation taken from a pronouncement of enemies: "See, even among Bolsheviks there are people who reject the Stalinists' dizzying fantasies."
27 January, "In their degree of literacy . . . the Bashkir, Chuvash, Komi, Karelia, and other such republics have already outstripped those capitalistic countries most advanced in education (Germany, NAUS [North American United States], and others)."[Possibly displeasure with references to the USA and Germany as countries foremost in terms of education, and, perhaps, with the boldness of a lie too obvious for people to overlook.]
9 February, in the word Stalinabad the "b" was left out.[Hinting that it could be read as "Stalin's Hell (Stalina ad)."]
9 March and 20 September, the left wing is identified with counter-revolutionary Trotskyism.
We have listed only part of the more glaring political blunders.
In accordance with instructions from Kul'tprop, in all stocks of kolkhoz calendars the sheets with the grossest political mistakes will be removed and replaced with other sheets (one side of these will be filled by the date, the second side, where the text was, will be left blank).
In calendars already distributed in part, pages to be removed will be torn out and not replaced.
The shock-worker calendar is still in production, and Kul'tprop has proposed appropriate textual corrections.
With the aim of improving publication of tear-off calendars for 1934, Kul'tprop takes it upon itself to:
Director of the Department of Culture and Propaganda of Leninism,TsK VKP(b) A. Stetsky