I am a Tatar [a Turko/Mongol ethnic group]. . . . [I]n old tsarist Russia, we weren’t even considered people. We couldn’t even dream about education, or getting a job in a state enterprise. And now I’m a citizen of the USSR. Like all citizens, I have the right to a job, to education, to leisure. I can elect and be elected to the soviet [legislative council]. Is this not an indication of the supreme achievements of our country? . . .

Two years ago I worked as the chairman of a village soviet in the Tatar republic. I was the first person there to enter the kolhoz and then I led the collectivization campaign. Collective farming is flourishing with each year in the Tatar republic.

In 1931 I came to Magnitogorsk [a major industrial site]. From a common laborer I have turned into a skilled worker. I was elected a member of the city soviet. As a deputy, every day I receive workers who have questions or need help. I listen to each one like to my own brother, and try to do what is necessary to make each one satisfied.

I live in a country where one feels like living and learning. And if the enemy should attack this country, I will sacrifice my life in order to destroy the enemy and save my country.

Soon it will be seven years that I’m working in Magnitogorsk. With my own eyes I’ve seen the pulsating, creative life of the builders of the Magnitogorsk giant. I myself have taken an active part in this construction with great enthusiasm. Our joy was great when we obtained the first Magnitogorsk steel from the wonderful open-hearth ovens. At the time there was no greater happiness for me than working in the open-hearth shop. . . . Here I enriched my theoretical knowledge and picked up practical habits . . . of work. Here as well I grew politically, acquired good experience in public-political work. I came to Magnitogorsk nonparty. The party organization . . . accepted me into a group of sympathizers. Not long ago I entered the ranks of the Leninist-Stalinist [communist] party. . . . I love my hometown Magnitka with all my heart. I consider my work at the Magnitogorsk factory to be a special honor and high trust shown to me, a Soviet engineer, by the country.

In fact, there’s been twenty years of our [Soviet] power. Fifteen to sixteen of these have been peaceful construction. . . . The people struggled with zeal, overcame difficulties. Socialism has been built in the main. As we embark on the third five-year plan we shout at meetings, congresses, and in newspapers “Hurray, we have reached a happy, joyful life!” However, incidentally, if one is to be honest, those shouts are mechanical, made from habit, pumped by social organizations. The ordinary person makes such speeches like a street newspaper-seller. In fact, in his heart, when he comes home, this bawler, eulogist, will agree with his family, his wife who reproaches him that today she has been torturing herself in queues and did not get anything — there are no suits, no coats, no meat, no butter.

I worked at a factory for five years. Now I’ll have to leave my studies at the institute. Who will study? Very talented Lomonosovs [brilliant students] and the sons of Soviet rulers, since they have the highest posts and are the best paid. In this way education will be available only to the highest strata (a sort of nobility), while for the lowest strata, the laboring people, the doors will be closed.

What is there to say about the successes of Soviet power? It’s lies. The newspapers cover up the real state of things. I am a worker, wear torn clothes, my four children go to school half-starving, in rags. I, an honest worker, am a visible example of what Soviet power has given the workers in the last twenty years.

How can we liquidate classes, if new classes have developed here, with the only difference being that they are not called classes? Now there are the same parasites who live at the expense of others. The worker produces and at the same time works for many people who live off him. From the example of our factory it is clear that there is a huge apparat of factory administrators, where idlers sit. There are many administrative workers who travel about in cars and get three to four times more than the worker. These people live in the best conditions and live at the expense of the labor of the working class.

[T]he portraits of party leaders are now displayed the same way icons used to be: a round portrait framed and attached to a pole. Very convenient, hoist it onto your shoulder and you’re on your way. And all these preparations are just like what people used to do before church holidays. . . . They had their own activists then, we have ours now. Different paths, the same old folderol.

Do you not think that comrade Stalin’s name has begun to be very much abused? . . . Everything is Stalin, Stalin, Stalin. You only have to listen to a radio program about our achievements, and every fifth or tenth word will be the name of comrade Stalin. In the end this sacred and beloved name — Stalin — may make so much noise in people’s heads that it is very possible that it will have the opposite effect.

Sources: First and second selections: Stephen Kotkin, Magnetic Mountain: Stalinism as a Civilization (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995), 221–22, 349–50. Reproduced with permission of UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS in the format Republish in a book via Copyright Clearance Center; third through seventh selections: Sarah Davies, Popular Opinion in Stalin’s Russia (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 39, 72, 134–35, 139, 173–74. © 1997 Cambridge University Press. Reprinted with the permission of Cambridge University Press.