In the end, it's all about people, not strategies.
Larry Bossidy
Personnel decide everything” is a well-known saying that is always relevant, especially now in our country.
Management is always about actions with people - personnel. If you are a manager, then, contrary to newfangled statements, you do not manage processes, resources, technologies, etc., you manage personnel and only personnel. Your executive subordinates can manage processes if they do not have their own subordinates. And you have to manage the staff. Either you are a manager, then you manage your subordinates, or you are a specialist, then you manage processes. Make up your mind - there is no third option!
So what do personnel “solve”? Good employees do what their boss asks them to do. It is the leader who determines the tasks that subordinates must solve and controls their implementation. It is the manager who selects these very personnel based on the intended goals, and, if their qualifications are not enough, he trains his employees himself, or organizes their training on the side. Therefore, it is the leader who bears full and sole responsibility for everything that happens in the team he leads. And there is no point in complaining about bad subordinates - they are what they were recruited and what they were made to be.
So, the well-being of the enterprise depends entirely on the manager, and he can improve this condition only through his employees. And in this sense, indeed, “personnel decide everything.”
Now the issue of personnel, or rather the lack thereof, is constantly being discussed by everyone, from the president to modest businessmen. It is very convenient to blame the entire failure of the Russian economy on the collapse of education and the lack of qualified personnel. There are no insoluble personnel problems in Russia!
Of course, it is foolish to deny that secondary specialized (vocational) education has been almost completely eliminated, and higher education, for the most part, churns out poorly educated “specialists” in numbers several times greater than the needs of the economy. But why should you and I think for the whole country, even though we are patriots? The problems of Russian education are the concern of the president, the government, the Duma, and education officials. But if the country’s leadership cannot or does not want to decide anything, there is no need to give up. It is enough for every businessman to solve this small problem for himself in his own place. Moreover, it is not as difficult as it seems at first glance.
For a small or medium-sized business, only a few dozen or hundreds of people are needed. In any town, even a small one, you can always find a dozen sane people with a good specialized, not necessarily higher, education. To create a management team for a small or medium-sized enterprise, they must be intelligent, ambitious, responsible and capable of learning. With workers who drink in moderation, things are not so catastrophically bad either. This, of course, is not easy, but it is always possible. You just need to organize the selection wisely. Practice shows that 4-6 months is enough to form the main personnel backbone of an enterprise.
If there are no highly specialized workers in your area, this also happens, then you will have to either send several of your employees for training or assign specialists to you. In any case, in order to minimize personnel risks and not depend on labor market conditions, it is necessary to organize in the company a process of training employees, improving their skills, and exchanging experience.
“Growing” its own specialists gives the company a number of additional advantages. Firstly, you get employees who are loyal to the company. Secondly, in the process of studying, employees acquire the skills and specialization that they really need to most effectively solve the tasks assigned to them. Thirdly, the opportunity to advance up the career ladder, thanks to continuous improvement, greatly increases the motivation of employees, “forcing” them to work with full dedication.
But it is not enough to recruit qualified personnel; it is necessary to create comfortable working conditions for them. And this is an ergonomic workplace, equipped with everything necessary at arm’s length. And a favorable socio-psychological climate in the team. And a flexible system of fair motivation.
Comfortable conditions are not a luxury, nor a whim of an overbearing employee. The less an employee is distracted by issues not related to his immediate work, the higher the level of his potential effectiveness. Of course, the ideal conditions for organizing the workplace and a good socio-psychological climate in the team in themselves do not guarantee high intensity of employee work. But the lack of normal conditions, quite obviously, can significantly affect both the efficiency and quality of work.
The importance of motivation cannot be overestimated. This is one of the most important conditions for the development of an enterprise. Motivation should not only stimulate the employee to satisfy his material physiological needs, but also create conditions for the formation and implementation of his social, status and personal needs and motivations. It is especially important that the motivation is fair, that is, there should be equal remuneration for equal work. Failure to comply with this principle leads to unnecessary tension in the team, generates distrust of employees towards each other, strengthens the tendency for employees to have a formal attitude towards their duties, and deprives them of initiative and the desire for healthy career growth.
To effectively manage and create a self-governing system, it is necessary to shift decision-making centers as close as possible to the places where failures and errors occur. One important component of this process is delegation of leadership. But there are always questions that the leader must resolve himself. In order for these issues to be resolved as quickly and efficiently as possible, the manager must teach his subordinates to correctly prepare and submit decisions. Option from the series: “Chief, everything is gone! The plaster is removed, the client leaves...” does not work.
When a problem arises, the solution of which is beyond the competence of the employee, he must prepare several possible solutions and analyze the consequences of each of them. It is the employee who must find a solution to the problem, since he is the best versed in his area and knows everything that is happening there. All decisions are reported to the manager, all consequences are described in detail, and the optimal solution option, from the employee’s point of view, is proposed.
This approach contributes to the development in subordinates of qualities important for the organization of a self-governing system, such as analysis, independence, and responsibility. This “pushes” employees to independently find and, over time, make decisions, and expands their level of competence.
And, finally, most importantly, for the boss-subordinate tandem to work effectively, their complete mutual understanding is necessary. The employee must understand exactly what is required of him and have the appropriate authority to complete the assigned tasks. The manager must be sure that the subordinate understood everything correctly, and he has enough qualifications to do what the manager needs.
In any case, responsibility for failure lies with the manager. Either the manager explained it poorly or was not convinced that he was understood correctly, or gave the assignment to the wrong employee.
In the relationship between a manager and subordinates, it is important not only to understand, but also, as in any human relationship, to adapt to each other. When giving a task, the manager must take into account the individual characteristics of the employee, perceive and rethink the information received. Therefore, it is important not only “what” to say, but also “how”. The manager must be able to correctly determine for each employee the form and structure of information, its quantity, and have feedback to check that he was understood correctly. The subordinate, in turn, must provide reports, reports, other documents and proposals in a form convenient for the manager. This is a general rule: to be understood, you need to speak the language of the interlocutor.
And one more note.
A paradoxical situation has developed in our country: on the one hand, managers complain about the lack of qualified personnel, on the other, an entire generation that received a real education in Soviet times and, having managed to work at Soviet enterprises with, unlike today, strict production discipline, is almost completely thrown out from the economic life of the country. Experienced, highly qualified specialists, for the most part, are forced to engage in low-paid, unskilled work due to their age. From a psychological point of view, the most socially active and productive period of human life is maturity, which occurs at the age of 40-50 years. In the US, the highest paid professionals are between 50 and 60 years old. And only in our country there are strict age restrictions.
Many managers are looking for job candidates who are no older than 25 years old, but at the same time they want them to have a good education, or preferably two, and 10 years of work experience in large companies in high positions, and the successful launch of several projects from scratch, and great life experience. Maybe stop believing in fairy tales and engaging in self-deception? You can't combine incompatible things. It's time to turn our attention to a completely unclaimed segment of the labor market. Moreover, “mature” specialists, as a rule, have higher qualifications, are able to make decisions independently and share responsibility, are more flexible, more experienced, and wiser than their “young” colleagues. With the right motivation from management, they are willing and able to learn. You can rely on them. Plus, they are often much cheaper.
In conclusion.
A tree growing in a forest, coal, oil, gas located deep in the bowels of the Earth, a fish swimming in the depths of the ocean - all this has no material value, namely material (issues of beauty and spirituality are not considered in this context). It doesn't cost anything from an economic point of view. All items we pay for are made by human hands. When we buy a shelf made from that same tree, or pour gasoline into a car tank obtained from that same oil, we are not paying for the product itself - wood and oil, as we have already found out, are worth nothing in themselves. We pay for the work of a colossal number of people of completely different professions who extracted all these natural resources, processed them into the form we are familiar with and delivered them to us. Only human labor has value. Because only the labor of those very “cadres”, “staff”, “workers” creates all the values. And in this sense, personnel not only “decide everything,” but also create everything. Personnel are the main and only value in the economy.
“Personnel decides everything,” a famous statesman once said, who attached great importance to personnel policy. Often those who repeat this catchphrase give it a broader meaning...
“Personnel decides everything,” a famous statesman once said, who attached great importance to personnel policy. Often those who repeat this catchphrase give it a broad meaning: it is very important not only to correctly assign personnel to positions, but also to stimulate them in the right way - optimally in terms of the ratio of personnel efficiency and the costs of maintaining this efficiency at a sufficiently high level. In other words, increasing employee productivity while spending a minimum amount of money, time and other resources should be highlighted as one of the tasks of any manager, including an IT manager.
Monetary incentives play an important but not decisive role in this process. Firstly, the work of not all employees will be directly proportional to the money they are paid. Ross Perot, founder and chairman of the board of directors of the American company Perot Systems, does not advise paying employees very much, arguing that “big money kills brains.” At first glance, his advice is paradoxical, to say the least. However, it was developed as a result of long-term observations: sooner or later, highly paid employees begin to take their salaries for granted and, moreover, turn on the “meter” for almost any effort they make for the benefit of their company. Overly mercantile employees are unlikely to bring much benefit to the company.
Secondly, in addition to monetary income, IT specialists are interested in a whole range of factors: the possibility of professional and career growth, carrying out educational and research activities, participating in interesting projects, communicating with highly qualified colleagues, professional self-realization, as well as the prospects of working in their chosen field of IT and company business, etc.
Talented technicians highly value the atmosphere of creativity and really do not like working on boring “assembly lines.” On the other hand, a creative atmosphere should not become an end in itself: the IT department has clear goals, the achievement of which determines the success of the IT manager, the authority of the information service and the business of the enterprise that uses the information system in its work.
One of the important tasks of the CIO is to try to direct the creative potential of his employees in a “peaceful”, productive direction. In a developed IT service, there is a high need for employees with a very different set of qualities. The IT manager should determine what personal and professional qualities his employees have and distribute positions in the IT service between them.
Most likely, it will not be possible to offer a single recipe for stimulating the work of creative intellectuals-technocrats. More precisely, it will consist of the opposite: do not cut everyone with the same brush. Depending on personal qualities and preferences, you should choose different methods of stimulation. Some people will be more motivated by the opportunity to attend training courses, conferences, seminars and present their own report at them. Someone will be interested in combining travel and business. Some people really like to solve complex technological problems and then share their experience of solving them with colleagues.
Understanding that giving advice on motivating the work of IT specialists (as well as on raising children, selecting football coaches and driving a car) is a thankless task, we do not strive or even try to take on the role of “guru” in this area. We decided to make our contribution in a different way: we tried to establish cooperation with representatives of science - employees of the Department of Sociology and Psychology at MIEM and began implementing our joint project to study the characteristics of the motivational sphere of Russian IT personnel, as well as to identify the prevailing motivational aspirations of IT specialists. In this issue of the journal we publish the first results of the project. We will be glad if the IT services of the enterprises where our readers work join the research. This is easy to do - just contact our editors. The results of the research will be published in future issues of the journal.
In May 1935, the leader of the Soviet Union, Joseph Stalin, gave a remarkable speech to military graduates. He dwelled on the successes that Soviet society has achieved in recent years, pointing to the merits of the leaders of the country and individual enterprises. And yet, Stalin noted, there is no need to attribute all achievements to the wisdom of the leaders or the introduction of technical innovations.
Having overcome devastation and gone through the stage of restoration of the national economy, the country entered a new period. Now, as Stalin emphasized, society needs personnel, that is, workers who can master technology and move established production forward. By the mid-30s, the Country of Soviets had a significant number of factories and factories, state farms and collective farms, but there was an extreme shortage of people with experience in managing teams and modern technology.
Previously, managers at all levels relied on the slogan “Technology is everything.” This formulation of the question helped to eliminate the country's backwardness in the field of technology and create a powerful material basis for socialism. But in the changed conditions, technical equipment alone was no longer enough for a decisive breakthrough forward. It is for this reason that I.V. Stalin launched a new slogan among the masses, declaring: “Cadres decide everything!”
The role of personnel policy in the modern world
Stalin's words also have meaning for modern Russia. The economic transformations in the country that took place two decades ago are placing increased demands on the personnel of enterprises and organizations. The country still urgently needs qualified specialists who can form the core of industry, science, army and government agencies.
The basis of working with personnel in modern conditions is the creation of a human resources management system. Only those managers who carefully select personnel, take measures to educate and train them, and do not forget to stimulate the work of subordinates can increase the profits of enterprises and achieve a useful social effect. At the same time, the strongest motivation is often not material reward, but moral stimulation.
Modern personnel are people with broad knowledge, valuable skills and work experience. This potential is gradually turning into the main factor of production, pushing aside technological innovations and fashionable methods of organizing production. When planning activities for the long term, a competent manager pays primary attention to working with personnel, creating the so-called long-term personnel potential.
It turns out that Isaac Deutscher is the author of the famous phrase (attributed to Churchill) from the article on Stalin in the Encyclopedia Britannica:
“The bizarre cult was based on undoubted Stalinist achievements. He was the creator of a planned economy; he got a Russia plowed with wooden plows and left it equipped with nuclear reactors; and he was the "father of victory."
Isaac Deutscher - German Laughter)). Just kidding, just kidding... Re-star the star, re-star the stars.
However, this did not make Sir Winston Churchill any more stupid: a person capable of appreciating someone else’s phrase must have the same intelligence as the one who uttered it.
On April 3, 1907, a famous historian and publicist, author of many books on history and sociology, famous biographer of Leon Trotsky and Joseph Stalin, Isaac Deutscher was born into a religious middle-class Jewish family in the city of Chrzanów near Krakow in Western Galicia. As a child, he studied with a Hasidic rabbi, but then became an atheist. Initially gained fame as a promising young poet; from the age of 16 he published his poems in Polish literary publications.
It may seem strange, but people who write poetry feel the essence of what is happening better than others. Someday people will pay attention to this and even write about it. By the way, Joseph Vissarionovich was also fond of writing poetry in his youth.
In 1926 he joined the ranks of the Polish Communist Party. Thanks to his penchant for studying history, philosophy, and sociology, Deutscher quickly rose to the ranks of party ideologists and became an expert on the problems of the Soviet Union and the CPSU(b). In 1932, he resolutely opposed Stalin’s policies in the leadership of the Comintern and especially against the theory and practice of “social fascism,” the adherence to which he rightly saw as one of the most important reasons that led to the defeat of the German Communist Party in the fight against Hitler. Deutscher joined the ranks of the Trotskyists, for which he was immediately expelled from the Communist Party of Poland. In April 1939, shortly before the German occupation of Poland, Deutscher emigrated to London.
A smart person always sees danger in advance, which undoubtedly saved his life.
Apparently he perfectly understood the pros and cons of the “socialism” project, but did not care at all about how his ideas were treated in the USSR. In general, he was focused on himself, stubborn, and did not accept other people’s opinions. This always irritates others.
As a member of the Polish Socialist Party, in exile he was for some time a member of the Trotskyist Revolutionary Workers League. In 1940, in Scotland, he volunteered to join the Polish army, but was soon interned as a dangerous subversive element. Released in 1942, he returned to the Economist as an expert on the Soviet Union and European politics, and began writing for The Observer. After the war, he broke with political Trotskyism (while remaining a supporter of Trotsky) and began scientific work.
I think that this is hardly surprising: despite some interesting ideas of Trotsky, Trotskyism as a doctrine turned out to be a dead end. Isaac did not “fly in the clouds” at all.
In the ideological struggle against Stalin, the Trotskyists simply had no chance. When Stalin proposed to Trotsky in 1927 to hold an all-party discussion, the results of the final all-party referendum were stunning for the Trotskyists. Of the 854 thousand party members, 730 thousand voted, of which 724 thousand voted for Stalin’s position and 6 thousand for Trotsky.
Deutscher's main work was a fundamental study of Leon Trotsky, consisting of three volumes - The Armed Prophet (1954), The Disarmed Prophet (1959) and The Exiled Prophet (1963). The trilogy, published in London in 1954-1963, is based on a detailed study of Trotsky’s archive at Harvard University, as well as on materials from the secret sections of the archive given to Deutscher by Trotsky’s widow N. I. Sedova (1882-1962).
An abridged Russian translation of parts of the second and third volumes, carried out by the American historian N. N. Yakovlev, was published in Moscow in 1991 under the title “Trotsky in Exile.” A complete translation of all three volumes appeared in 2006 in the Russian publishing house Tsentrpoligraf.
After writing the biographies of Stalin and Trotsky, Deutscher expected to begin work on a study on Lenin, but did not have time to do this. He died in the Italian capital on August 19, 1967.
You can talk about Stalin in different ways, but I think that you should always draw conclusions based on the facts.
It is unlikely that Trotsky could have been an equal rival to Stalin.
Stalin's usual rate of reading literature was about 300 pages a day. He constantly educated himself. For example, while undergoing treatment in the Caucasus, in 1931, in a letter to Nadezhda Aliluyeva, having forgotten to inform about his health, he asks to send him textbooks on electrical engineering and ferrous metallurgy.
His knowledge was not mere erudition, which was repeatedly confirmed by many specialists in various fields of activity.
In the Battle of Kursk, Stalin found a way out of a hopeless situation: the Germans were going to use a “technical novelty” - the Tiger and Panther tanks, against which our artillery was powerless. Stalin remembered his support for the development of the A-IX-2 explosive and the new experimental PTAB aerial bombs, and gave the task: by May 15, i.e. by the time the roads dry out, produce 800 thousand of these bombs. 150 factories of the Soviet Union rushed to fulfill this order and fulfilled it. As a result, near Kursk, the German army was deprived of striking power by Stalin’s tactical innovation - the PTAB-2.5-1.5 bomb.
But besides this, the main thing for Stalin was the creation of a highly qualified elite of society to govern the country.
The people he trained (both technically and morally) were so outstanding that neither Khrushchev’s foolishness nor Brezhnev’s apathy could waste this resource.
Stalin said his famous phrase “personnel decide everything” in 1935 at a reception in honor of graduates of military academies: “We talk too much about the merits of leaders, about the merits of leaders. They are credited with everything, almost all of our achievements. This, of course, is wrong and it’s wrong. It’s not just about the leaders... To set the technology in motion and use it to its fullest, we need people who have mastered the technology, we need personnel capable of mastering and using this technology according to all the rules of art...”
And the enemies of Stalin - the current liberals, having taken his phrase out of context, distort it in their own way, allegedly for personal gain in the political struggle..., knowing full well that too few people will want to check for themselves the meaning of what Stalin said.
They measure by themselves.
During the first 10 years of being in the first echelons of power in the USSR, Stalin submitted his resignation three times.
With a qualified elite, there were much fewer officials under Stalin than in present-day Russia.
The director of a furniture factory could not count on the post of Minister of Defense even thanks to his father-in-law.
On September 30, 2010, one of the most notorious scandals in the modern history of Russia occurred at the training ground of the Ryazan Higher Command School of the Airborne Forces “Seltsy”. Defense Minister Anatoly Serdyukov, flying around the training ground in a helicopter, noticed the unfinished buildings of the barracks and canteen, and he also noticed the Orthodox Church of Elijah the Prophet, built nearby. Coming out of the helicopter, Serdyukov immediately swore at the head of the Ryazan Airborne School, the hero of Russia, the guard, Colonel Andrei Krasov, and the officers next to him: “The barracks is not completed, the canteen is not completed, and they destroyed the church for 180 million!”
Andrei Krasov tried to explain to the minister that not a penny of budget money was spent on the construction of the temple, and it was entirely built with funds from the Ryazan diocese, various sponsors and airborne veterans. Krasov also said that from 2011, the Church of Elijah the Prophet will begin training army chaplains, who will then be sent to military units throughout the country. He also noted that the nearest temple is located 15 km from the training ground on the other bank of the Oka River, and getting to it for officers, their family members, cadets and soldiers is, to put it mildly, problematic.
However, all this only angered Serdyukov, who in a fit of rage shouted: “You live in shit here, and you’ll die in shit!” Don’t give money for this airborne forces center! This school needs to be downsized altogether. Remove this impudent colonel and join the troops!”
Information taken from the book “The Kremlin’s Dirty Laundry”, “Yauza-press”, Moscow, March 2011.
We must pay tribute to the fact that after this story, the Union of Russian Paratroopers turned to President Medvedev and Patriarch Kirill with a request not to leave this situation unattended and to intercede for Colonel Andrei Krasov.
The representative of the Synodal Department for interaction with the Armed Forces, Archpriest Alexander Ilyashenko, did not stand aside, who demanded that the Minister of Defense apologize to the commander of the Ryazan Airborne Forces School, and, regardless of whether he does this or not, said that Serdyukov should resign : this situation “from the worst side” characterizes Serdyukov himself as “a person who has nothing to do with the army” and “does not have any credibility not only with the Armed Forces, but also with civilians.”
BUT in today's Russia, ministries are headed by officials who do not even have a specialized education. The result is disastrous.
According to the head of the Federal Antimonopoly Service of Russia, Igor Artemyev, there are now more officials in Russia than in the Soviet Union, in all the republics combined. The number of officials in modern Russia is about 1.65 million. There are 1,153 officials per 100,000 Russians. Of every 1,000 working Russians, 25 are officials.
This fact may indicate that officials are placing their growing children into “feeding” jobs.
If the Stalinist planning system had been preserved and further rationally improved, and I.V. Stalin understood the need to improve the socialist economy (after all, it was not for nothing that his work “Economic Problems of Socialism in the USSR” appeared in 1952), if the task of further improving the standard of living of the people was put in first place (and in 1953 there were no obstacles to this ), by 1970 we would have been in the top three countries with the highest standard of living.
After the war, Stalin gradually reduced the role of the Politburo to a body for the leadership of the party. And at the 19th Congress of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, this abolition of the Politburo was recorded in the new charter.
Stalin said that he saw the party as an order of sword-bearers, numbering 50 thousand people.
Stalin wanted to remove the party from power altogether, leaving only two matters in the party’s care: agitation and propaganda and participation in the selection of personnel. This is the main reason why he was poisoned: party functionaries did not want to lose power. And subsequently they could not resist the revenge of the 20th Congress, where, secretly from the people, Khrushchev read out a report filled beyond measure with nonsense that there was no one to refute.
And yet it has not yet been published in Russia, although its contents are known in the USA.
In 1943, Stalin said: “I know that after my death a heap of rubbish will be placed on my grave, but the wind of history will mercilessly scatter it!”
__________But I will note that nothing happens by itself.
(Stalin’s speech to graduates of military academies in 1935)
Comrades!
It cannot be denied that we have made great strides in recent times both in the field of construction and in the field of management. In this regard, we talk too much about the merits of leaders, about the merits of leaders. They are credited with everything, almost all of our achievements. This is, of course, false and incorrect. It's not just the leaders. But that is not what I would like to talk about today. I would like to say a few words about the personnel, about our personnel in general and in particular about the personnel of our Red Army.
You know that we inherited from the old days a technically backward and semi-impoverished, ruined country. Devastated by four years of imperialist war, devastated again by three years of civil war, a country with a semi-literate population, with low technology, with isolated oases of industry drowning among a sea of tiny peasant farms - this is the kind of country we inherited from the past.
The task was to transfer this country from the tracks of the Middle Ages and darkness to the tracks of modern industry and mechanized agriculture. The task, as you can see, is serious and difficult. The question was: EITHER we solve this problem in the shortest possible time and strengthen socialism in our country, OR we do not solve it, and then our country - weak technically and dark culturally - will lose its independence and turn into an object of play by the imperialist powers.
Our country was then experiencing a period of severe hunger in the field of technology. There were not enough machines for the industry. There were no machines for agriculture. There were no cars for transport. There was no elementary technical base, without which the industrial transformation of the country is unthinkable. There were only certain prerequisites for creating such a base. It was necessary to create a first-class industry. It was necessary to direct this industry so that it would be able to technically reorganize not only industry, but also agriculture, but also our railway transport. And for this it was necessary to make sacrifices and introduce the most severe savings in everything, it was necessary to save on food, and on schools, and on manufacturing in order to accumulate the necessary funds to create an industry. There was no other way to overcome the hunger in the field of technology. This is what Lenin taught us, and we followed in Lenin’s footsteps in this matter.
It is clear that in such a large and difficult matter one could not expect continuous and rapid success. In such a matter, success can only appear after a few years. It was therefore necessary to arm oneself with strong nerves, Bolshevik endurance and stubborn patience in order to overcome the first failures and steadily move forward towards the great goal, not allowing hesitation and uncertainty in one’s ranks.
You know that we conducted this matter in exactly this way. But not all of our comrades had the nerve, patience and endurance. Among our comrades there were people who, after the first difficulties, began to call for a retreat. They say that “he who remembers the old is out of sight.” This is of course true. But a person has a memory, and you involuntarily remember the past when summing up the results of our work. So, we had comrades who were afraid of difficulties and began to call on the party to retreat. They said: “What do we need your industrialization and collectivization, cars, ferrous metallurgy, tractors, combines, cars? It would be better if they gave us more manufacturing, we would better buy more raw materials for the production of consumer goods and we would give the population more of all those little things that make people’s lives beautiful. Creating an industry in our backwardness, and even a first-class industry, is a dangerous dream.”
Of course, we could use 3 billion rubles of currency, obtained through the most severe economy and spent on creating our industry, to import raw materials and strengthen the production of consumer goods. This is also a kind of “plan”. But with such a “plan” we would have no metallurgy, no mechanical engineering, no tractors and cars, no aviation and tanks. We would find ourselves unarmed in the face of external enemies. We would undermine the foundations of socialism in our country. We would be captured by the bourgeoisie, internal and external.
Obviously, it was necessary to choose between two plans: between the retreat plan, which led and could not but lead to the defeat of socialism, and the offensive plan, which led and, as you know, has already led to the victory of socialism in our country.
We chose an offensive plan and went forward along the Leninist path, brushing aside these comrades as people who saw something just under their noses, but turned a blind eye to the immediate future of our country, to the future of socialism in our country.
But these comrades did not always limit themselves to criticism and passive resistance. They threatened us with raising an uprising in the party against the Central Committee. Moreover, they threatened some of us with bullets. Apparently, they hoped to intimidate us and force us to deviate from the Leninist path. These people obviously forgot that we Bolsheviks are a special breed of people. They forgot that the Bolsheviks cannot be intimidated either by difficulties or threats. They forgot that we were forged by the great Lenin, our leader, our teacher, our father, who did not know and did not recognize fear in the struggle. They forgot that the more the enemies rage and the more the opponents within the party fall into hysterics, the more the Bolsheviks become excited for a new struggle and the more rapidly they move forward.
It is clear that we did not even think of turning away from Lenin’s path. Moreover, having strengthened ourselves on this path, we moved forward even more rapidly, sweeping away any and all obstacles from the road. True, we had to crush the sides of some of these comrades along the way. But there's nothing you can do about it. I must admit that I also had a hand in this matter.
Yes, comrades, we have confidently and rapidly followed the path of industrialization and collectivization of our country. And now this path can be considered already passed.
Now everyone recognizes that we have achieved enormous success along this path. Now everyone recognizes that we already have a powerful and first-class industry, powerful and mechanized agriculture, expanding and expanding transport, an organized and well-equipped Red Army.
This means that we have already largely overcome the period of famine in the field of technology.
But having overcome the period of hunger in the field of technology, we have entered a new period, a period, I would say, of hunger in the field of people, in the field of personnel, in the field of workers who know how to ride technology and move it forward. The fact is that we have factories, factories, collective farms, state farms, an army, we have the equipment for all this work, but there are not enough people with sufficient experience necessary to squeeze out of the technology the maximum that can be squeezed out of it . We used to say that “technique is everything.” This slogan has helped us in that we have eliminated the hunger in the field of technology and created the broadest technical base in all sectors of activity to equip our people with first-class technology. This is very good. But this is far and away not enough.
To set technology in motion and use it to its fullest, we need people who have mastered the technology, we need personnel capable of mastering and using this technology according to all the rules of art.
Technology without people who have mastered technology is dead. Technology, led by people who have mastered technology, can and should produce miracles. If our first-class plants and factories, our collective and state farms, and our Red Army had a sufficient number of personnel capable of mastering this technology, our country would receive three and four times more effect than it now has.
That is why the emphasis must now be placed on people, on personnel, on workers who have mastered technology.
That is why the old slogan “technology decides everything,” which is a reflection of a period that has already passed when we had a hunger in the field of technology, must now be replaced by a new slogan, the slogan that “personnel decide everything.”
This is the main thing now.
Can we say that our people have understood and fully realized the great significance of this new slogan? I wouldn't say that.
Otherwise, we would not have that ugly attitude towards people, towards personnel, towards workers, which we often observe in our practice.
The slogan “personnel decides everything” requires that our leaders show the most caring attitude towards our employees, “small” and “big”, in whatever field they work, raise them with care, help them when they need support, encourage when they showed their first successes, they were pushed forward, etc.
Meanwhile, in fact, in a number of cases we have evidence of a soulless, bureaucratic and downright ugly attitude towards employees.
This, in fact, explains that instead of studying people and only after studying placing them in positions, people are often thrown around like pawns. We have learned to value cars and report on how much equipment we have in factories. But I don’t know of a single case where they would report with the same eagerness how many people we raised over such and such a period and how we helped people to grow and harden in work. What explains this? This is explained by the fact that we have not yet learned to value people, value workers, value personnel.
I remember an incident in Siberia, where I was in exile at one time. It was in the spring, during the flood. About thirty people went to the river to catch timber, carried away by the raging huge river. By evening they returned to the village, but without one comrade. When asked where the thirtieth was, they indifferently replied that the thirtieth “stayed there.” To my question: “How come, did you stay?” - they answered with the same indifference: “What else is there to ask, he drowned, therefore.” And then one of them began to hurry somewhere, declaring that “we should go and water the mare.”
To my reproach that they feel sorry for cattle more than people, one of them replied, with the general approval of the others: “Why should we feel sorry for them, people? We can always make people, but a mare... try making a mare ". Here's a touch, perhaps insignificant, but very characteristic. It seems to me that the indifferent attitude of some of our leaders towards people, towards personnel and the inability to value people is a relic of that strange attitude of people towards people, which was reflected in the episode just told in distant Siberia.
So, comrades, if we want to successfully overcome the famine in the field of people and ensure that our country has a sufficient number of personnel capable of moving technology forward and putting it into operation, we must first of all learn to value people, value personnel, value everyone an employee who can benefit our common cause. We must finally understand that of all the valuable capital available in the world, the most valuable and most decisive capital is people, personnel.
We must understand that under our current conditions, “personnel decide everything.”
We will have good and numerous personnel in industry, agriculture, transport, and the army, our country will be invincible.
If we don’t have such personnel, we will limp on both legs.
Concluding my speech, allow me to propose a toast to the health and success of our academic graduates from the Red Army! I wish them success in organizing and leading the defense of our country!
Comrades! You graduated from high school and received your first training there. But school is only a preparatory stage. Real training of personnel comes from live work, outside of school, from struggling with difficulties, from overcoming difficulties. Remember, comrades, that only those cadres are good who are not afraid of difficulties, who do not hide from difficulties, but, on the contrary, go towards difficulties in order to overcome and eliminate them.
Only in the fight against difficulties are real cadres forged. And if our army has enough real, seasoned personnel, it will be invincible.
