Do Classes Exist the USSR?

By S. M. Zhurovkov, M.S.

ONE of the conditions for the fulfilment of the tasks of

building up a communist society, which the Soviet people are
now solving, is the elimination of classes and class differences,
for a communist society is first of all a classless society. The
struggle for the elimination of classes in the land of Soviets
began in the very early stage of the Great October Socialist
Revolution. In the process of this struggle the landlord and big
capitalist classes were eliminated. The outstanding
achievements of socialist construction made it possible to build
up the economic base of socialism, to rout the agents of the
hostile classes—the Trotskyites and Buharinites—to strengthen
the union of the working class and the peasantry, and on the
basis of nation-wide collectivisation to eliminate the last, the
most numerous class of exploiters in the land of Soviets—the
kulaks.
In an appraisal of the significance of the liquidation of the
kulaks as a class Stalin wrote: “This was a profound revolution,
a leap from the old qualitative state, equivalent in its
consequences to the Revolution of October, 1917.”
The liquidation of the exploiting classes in the USSR was
immensely significant for the Soviet people, for the reason,
first of all, that with the disappearance of the exploiting classes
there vanished all the barriers standing in the way of the
development of the country, barriers which in the past
prevented it from surmounting its age-old economic and
cultural backwardness and doomed it enslaving dependence on
the more developed West European capitalist states. The
liquidation of the parasite classes led, in the second place, to
elimination of exploitation of man by man as well as of the
division of society into working people, who did not enjoy the
fruits of their labor; and exploiters, who enjoyed all the
benefits of life. In the USSR there came a radical redistribution
of the national income. In Tsarist Russia the exploiting classes
who comprised 15.9 per cent of the population, consumed
almost 75 per cent of the national income, whereas the working
people, comprising 84.1 pet cent of the country’s population,
received but 25 per cent of the national income. The picture is
the same in all the capitalist countries, where a handful of
monopolists have seized the major part of the national wealth
and income. After the liquidation of the exploiting classes, all
the national income was directed to providing for the social and
private needs of the working people.
The liquidation of the exploiting classes resulted, in the
third place, in the removal of class antagonism inside the
Soviet country. In a capitalist society there is perpetual hostility
between the oppressor and the oppressed, who wage a
ceaseless concealed or open struggle with one another. In the
Soviet socialist society there is no such antagonism, there is
community of interest, desires and strivings of all strata of the
population.
The elimination of parasite classes in the USSR resulted, in
the fourth place in the removal of conflicts and clashes between
the nations, national groups and nationalities inhabiting the
Soviet Union, for national conflicts have always issued from
class contradictions, primarily from contradictions between the
exploiting classes of the oppressing nation on the one hand and
the exploited classes of the oppressed nation, on the other.
The liquidation of the exploiting classes, Stalin has pointed
out, “has brought about a radical change in the aspect of the
peoples of the USSR; their feeling of mutual distrust has
disappeared, a feeling of mutual friendship has developed
among them, and thus real fraternal co-operation among the
peoples has been established within the system of a single
federated state.”
After the liquidation of the exploiting classes in the USSR,
there remained the working class, the peasant class and the
intelligentsia. Close friendship and cooperation developed
among them. They have rallied for the common struggle of
building communism. The aspect of these social groups under
socialism has changed beyond recognition.
“... In the new, socialist society,” said Stalin, “crises,
poverty, unemployment and destitution had [by 1936—Ed.)
disappeared forever. The conditions had been created for a
prosperous and cultured life for all members of Soviet society.
“The class composition of the population of the Soviet
Union had changed correspondingly. The landlord class and
the old big imperialist bourgeoisie had already been eliminated
in the period of the Civil War. During the years of socialist
construction all the exploiting elements—capitalists,
merchants, kulaks and profiteers—had been eliminated. Only
insignificant remnants of the eliminated exploiting classes
persisted, and their complete elimination was a matter of the
very near future.
The working people of the USSR—workers, peasants and
intellectuals—had undergone profound change in the period of
socialist construction.
“The working class had ceased to be an exploited class
bereft of means of production, as it is under capitalism. It had
abolished capitalism, taken away the means of production from
the capitalists and turned them into public property. It had
ceased to be a proletariat in the proper, the old meaning of the
term. The proletariat of the USSR, possessing the state power
had been transformed into an entirely new class. It had become
a working class emancipated from exploitation, a working class
which had abolished the capitalist economic system, and had
established socialist ownership of the means of production.
Hence, it was a working class the like of which the history of
mankind had never known before.
“No less profound were the changes that had taken place in
the condition of the peasantry of the USSR. In the old days,
more than 20,000,000 scattered individual peasant households,
small and middle, had delved away in isolation on their small
plots, using backward technical equipment. They were
exploited by landlords, kulaks, merchants, profiteers, usurers,
etc. Now an entirely new peasantry had grown up in the USSR.
There were no longer any landlords, merchants, and usurers to
exploit the peasants. The overwhelming majority of the peasant
households had joined the collective farms, which were based
not on private ownership, but on collective ownership of the
means of production, collective ownership which had grown
from collective labor. This was a new type of peasantry, a
peasantry emancipated from all exploitation. It was a peasantry
the like of which the history of mankind had never known
before.
“The intelligentsia in the USSR had also undergone a
change. It had for the most part become an entirely new
intelligentsia. The majority of its members came from the ranks
of the workers and peasants. It no longer served capitalism, as
the old intelligentsia did; it served socialism. It had become an
equal member of the socialist society. Together with the
workers and peasants was building a new socialist society. This
was new type of intelligentsia which served the people and was
emancipated from all exploitation. It was an intelligentsia the
like of which the history of mankind had never known before.
”Thus the old class dividing lines between the working
people of the USSR were being obliterated, the old class
exclusiveness was disappearing. The economic and political
contradictions between the workers, the peasants and the
intellectuals were declining and becoming obliterated. The
foundation for the moral and political unity of society had been
created.”
 In the Soviet Union 80 to 90 per cent of the intelligentsia
are people who have come from the working class and the
peasantry. They serve the people, for there are no longer any
exploiting classes. That is precisely why the Soviet
intelligentsia, said Stalin “is now an equal member of Soviet
society, in which, side by side with the workers and
peasants… it is engaged in building the new, classless, socialist
society.”
These changes in the class structure of the USSR are very
important for the successful upbuilding of a communist
society. As a result of these changes the dividing lines between
the working class and the peasantry, and between these classes
and the intelligentsia, are being obliterated. The gap between
these social groups is steadily diminishing.
Thus, because of the victory of socialism in the USSR, the
union of the working class and the peasantry developed, under
the guiding influence of the Communist Party of the Soviet
Union (Bolsheviks), into moral and political unity of the whole
Soviet people.
The task of building up a communist classless society
requires the complete obliteration of the remaining minor and
non-antagonistic differences between the classes. The
surmounting of the contradictions between town and village
creates the economic prerequisite for the complete elimination
of class differences between the workers and peasants, and the
elimination of the contradictions between mental and manual
labor will remove the differences between these classes and the
intelligentsia.
The Soviet people have already achieved no little success
in this respect. A further increase in labor productivity, all-
round economic and cultural upsurge in the village, further
mechanisation of agriculture and rise of the cultural and
technical level of the working class to the level of the engineers
and technicians will play a decisive part in the creation of one
of the most important conditions for the final achievement of a
communist society—the elimination of class and social
differences among the people.

Chapter I of the Constitution of the USSR, dealing with the

social structure, in parts reads as follow:

Article 1

The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics is a socialist state

of workers and peasants.

Article 4

The economic foundation of the USSR is the socialist

system of economy and the socialist ownership of the
instruments and means of production, firmly established as a
result of the liquidation of the capitalist system of economy,
the abolition of private ownership of the instruments and
means of production, and the elimination of the exploitation of
man by man.

Article 5

Socialist property in the USSR exists either in the form of

state property (belonging to the whole people) or in the form of
co-operative and collective farm property (property of
collective farms, property of co-operative societies.)

Article 6

The land, its mineral wealth, waters, forests, mills,

factories, mines, rail, water and air transport, banks,
communications, large state-organized agricultural enterprises
(state farms, machine-and-tractor stations and the like), as well
as municipal enterprises and the bulk of the dwelling houses in
the cities and industrial localities, are state property, that is,
belong to the whole people.

Article 7

The common enterprises of collective farms and co-

operative organizations, with their livestock and implements,
the products of the collective farms and co-operative
organizations, as well as their common buildings, constitute the
common, socialist property of the collective farms and co-
operative organizations.
Every household in a collective farm, in addition to its
basic income from the common collective farm enterprise, has
for its personal use a small plot of household land and, as its
personal property, a subsidiary husbandry on the plot, a
dwelling house, livestock, poultry and minor agricultural
implements—in accordance with the rules of the agricultural
artel.

Source: USSR Information Bulletin, January 27, 1950, Volume X,

Number 2, page 48-49, Published twice monthly by the Embassy of the
Union of Soviet Socialist Republics at 2112 Massachusetts Avenue, N.W.
Washington 8, D.C.

March 2010