RUSSIA: Stalin's Love Song

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    Still refusing to speak, the Dictator returned to his back seat, affably shook hands with President Kalinin who had rushed to pay respects. Meanwhile a troop of "Revolutionary Entertainers" had skipped cavorting onto the stage. Only one number seemed to please Stalin. He is an Asiatic from the Soviet Republic of Georgia, adjoining Armenia. When a singer named Zagorskaya sang a Georgian love song, The Man of Steel applauded vigorously, unbent, began to chat animatedly with Peasant-President Kalinin.

    Next day all Soviet news organs signalized Dictator Stalin's re-emergence by printing over his signature a slashing three-column article entitled The Year of Mighty Change! Exultant over what he considers the successful launching of his famed Five-Year Economic Program (TIME, June 18, 1928 et seq.), Comrade Stalin wrote:

    "With giant strides we move toward [Lenin's] aims — industrialization, electrification and mechanization.

    "We are attacking capitalism all along the line and defeating it. Without foreign capital we are accomplishing the unprecedented feat of building up heavy industry in a backward country. This year our capital investment in industry will amount to 3,500,000,000 rubles (about $1,750,000,000).

    "When we have industrialized the Soviet Union and set the mujiks [peasants] to driving tractors, let the honorable capitalists with their 'civilization' try to outstrip us. Then we shall see which country can be called backward and which the vanguard of human progress."

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