HUMAN ELEMENT

Hokitika Guardian, 8 July 1935, Page 3

HUMAN ELEMENT

STALIN’S NEWEST WATCHWORD. LONDON, July 1. Round M. Stalin’s newest watchword, which may be freely treated as "Everything depends on the human element,” the Soviet press has developed a sort of campaign urging that greater care be taken of Soviet specialists and the rank and file of the workers, writes the Riga correspondent of the Times.' ' The visually reticent Dictator has made several noteworthy pronouncements since the beginning of May, the latest being addressed to the new graduates of the Red Army s Militaiy Academy. M. Stalin in this speech briefly reviewed the progress of Bolshevism since the Revolution, announcing that the time had now come for changing the treatment of human geins employed in the Soviet machine. Hitherto they had rightly laid almost the whole stress on the machine itself. Sufferings and privations were inevitable at this stage, as without adequate machinery permanent victory, was impossible. The difficulties created grumblers and opposition even among Bolshevik leaders, some of whom had attempted actively to compel a change of policy, “even threatening to shoot some of us.”

But the Leninists had remained unafraid. Having now achieved adequacy in machinery and equipment, they must turn their attention to the people, not only to the leaders and directors, but also to the rank and file man who worked the machinery. He was still neglected, often the victim of a “soulless bureaucracy.” He must receive proper esteem, as machinery without him was a dead thing, and until he was raised to his proper place in industry, agriculture, transport, and the. Army “we shall be lame on both legs.” The Moscow newspaper Pravda describes the speech as “one of the most noteworthy in the history of the world.”