The new giants of socialist construction

Media

Part of Socialism today

Title
The new giants of socialist construction
Language
English
Year
1936
Subject
Socialism today August 1936
Rights
In Copyright - Educational Use Permitted
Fulltext
Page 6 SOCIALISM TODAY August, _1936 The New Giants of Socialist. Censtruction In USSR Volga's Electrification. and Irrigation Projects to Dwarf .Dnie~prostroy The proposed Kuibyshev hydroelectric and irrigation scheme, to be situated on the Volga River at the Samara bend, is described in a recent issue of "Za lndustrializatsiu," organ of the Peoples Commissariat of Heavy Industry, by Professor A. Chapligin. He points out that the Samara bend is the only section of the Volga where a large scale hydroelectric power system can be built in sections as the power is required. The construction of the basic parts of the system can be finished in five years, and the power station will be able to start work after the spring thaws of the fifth year. If the preparatory work is begun in 1937, and the main work after the thaws of 1938, then the station will be able to deliver its first current in 1942-43, and the output will be gradually raised from 800,000 kw. to 2.3 million kw. in 1948-50. The location of a hydroelectric .iower system in this district offers numerous advantages. The dam can be built to co'fer the waters both of the Volga and the Kama rivers, and the power station will be able to utilize the flow from these two :rivers almost completely. As a result of this its work during the second half of the summer and the winter will be much more effective than that of stations higher up the rivers. In addition a great source of power will be established near the center of the Volga District, well to the east of the European part of the USSR, at a place where the greatest waterways join the basic railway main lines, and close to the districts of the Volga for which irrigation is proposed. According to plans the power system will supply the electric pumping and rain-spraying sets "of the Trans-Volga District, and power will also be transmitted by high-voltage lines to the central industrial, Volga and Ural districts. · The main territory to be irrigated by the Kuibyshev hydroelectric system lies between the Samara bend and Kamyshin, and the most valuable districts of the Volga will thus be protected fr~ drought.. Water sprinkling by electric power can be combined' with electric plowing and general electrification of agriculture in the irrigated districts, and the work against drought will be helped by the development· of reforestation belts. Compositi.on of System This system will be situated 60 km. below -the town of Kuibyshev, and will be composed of a hydroelectric station, the capacity of which will be gradually increased from 700,000 kw. to 1.5 million kw., two sets of double locks and an oil pipeline. The latter. will annually transmit 18 million tons of oil from Perevolok to the oil harbor at Stavropol on the northern end of the bend. The locks will be designed for a carrying capacity of 80 to 100 million tons annually, and the output of electric power from 1.5 million kw. of plant will be 10,300 million kwh. annually, and from 2.3 million kw. 12,000 million kwh. The dam system will be constructed on the northeastern part of the. bend, 35 to 40 km. above Kuibyshev. It will consist of a watergate about one kilometer long, an earthern dam, a hydroelectric station 1 of 800,000-kw. capacity, and two sets of locks. The powe:;: station, locks and watergate will be constructed on rock foundations. In the opinion of Professor Chapligin the construction of the Kuibyshev scheme should receive immediate attention, and shoulti be the most important link in hydrotechnical construction of the period · 1937-42. Together with the Rybinsk, Perm, and Volgll-Don systems it will solve the electric supply, trlll'hsport and irrigation problems of the period 194550. By that time it will be necessary to construct a five-meter deep channel on the Volga-Baltic water transport line. Simultaneously, a high-voltage system will be built, which, with the aid of the Kuibyshev system, will unite the electric systems of the central industrial, Volga, Ural and Stalingrad districts. The deepening of the Volga to five meters will necessitate the construction of further hydroelectric schemes between the Kuibyshev and Rybinsk system,s in the Creboksary and Balakhnll. districts. The total power of the five hydroelectric systems thus formed will be 5.3 million kw. with an annual output of 31,700 million kwh. The cost of power from the other stations will, however, be higher than that from the Kuibyshev system. WORK TO START ON USSR'S BIGGEST BLAST FURNACES. Construction will soon begin on two of the" largest blast furnaces in the Soviet Union, according to D. Ra.izer, assistant head of the Central Administration of the Metallurgical Industry. The giant furnaces, which will be used in the Zaporozhye Steel Plant and the Krivoi Rog Metallurgical Plant (both in the Ukraine) will each be 1;300 cu. m. in BIGGEST USSR COPPER PLANT OF TO 'BE BUILT IN KAZAKKSTAN Intensive preliminary work is now in. progress· for the construction of a huge copper smelting plant with a scheduled annual capacity of 200,000 tons to be completed at Jezazgan, in the heart of Kazakhstan, during the Third Five-Year Plan period. The site for the construction of this plant has already been chosen by a commission of the Central· Administration of Non-Ferrous Metallurgy,· headed by E. Gadaryants, director of the state institute for planning the construction of non-ferrous metal enterprises. The commission returned recently to Moscow from Kazakhstan. The J ezkazgan copper deposits had been explored ·before the Revolution by an English company of concessionaires who worked only the richest and most convenient layers of ore containing from 10 to 12 per cent eopper. According to · the calculations of the concessionaires, the copper deposits of J ezkazgan amounted. to 61,000 tons, but its copper deposits s~1 far prospected by Soviet organizations· run as high as 3.5 million tons of 'copper with an average content of 1.65 per cent of copper in the ore. Jezkazgan may be considered the richest copper deposits in the world, inasmuch as a tremendous quantity of copper ore is concentrated in one locality, the 1 ore· veins are not deep and the hard rocks surroundmg them create very favorable conditions for the exploitation of the copper resources, declared E. Gadaryants in an interview. .The copper plant is to be built on the bank of the Kara-Kenghir River. An 84-ft. dam on the river will form a lake 18.5 miles long and up. to 1.5 miles wide which will provide water for a concentration plant and a workers' settlement. The sufficient supply of water will make it possible to turn the .steppes surround ing the plant with their sharply continental climate similar to that of the state of Arizona, irito a prosperous district. When· completed, the new Jezkazgan plant, together with the Balkhash Copper-Smelting Plant with its annual c•pacity of 100,000 tons of copper, will supply the bulk of copper in the USSR, and Kazakhstan will be promoted to the first place in Soviet copper industry, the Urals being pushed back to second place. volume-. The largest blast furnaces now in use in the .USSR are tpose in Magnitogorsk with a volume of 1,200 cu. m. The huge blast furnaces should operate (Continued on page 8) Page 8 The· Communist Manifesto._. (Continued from page 7) into open revolution, and where the violent overthrow of the bourgeoisie, lays the foundation for the sway of the proletariat. Hitherto every form of society has been based, as we have already seen, on the antagonism of oppressing and oppressed classes. But in order to oppress a class, certain conditions must be assured to it under which it can, at least, contin.ue its slavish existence. 'The serf, in the period of serfdom, raised himself to membership in the commune, just as the petty bourgeois, under the yoke of feudal absolutism, managed to develop into a bourgeois. The modern laborer, on the contrary, instead of rising with the progress of industry, sinks deeper and deeper below the conditions of existence of his own class. He bec.9mes a pauper, and pauperism develops more rapidly than population and wealth. And here it becomes evident that the bourgeoisie is unfit any longer to be the ruling class in society, and to impose . its conditions of existence upon society as an over-riding law. It is unfit to rule, because it is incompetent to assure an existence to its slave within his slavery, because it cannot help letting him sink into such a state that it has to feed him, instead of being fed by him. Society can no longer live under this bourgeoisie; in other words, its existence is no longer compatible with society. The essential condition for the existence, and for the sway of the bourgeois class, is the formation and augmentation of capital; the condition for capital is wage labor. Wage labor rests exclusive-. ly on competition between the laborers. The advance of industry, whose involuntary promoter is the bourgeoisie, replaces the isolation of the labarers, due to competition, by their involuntary combination, due to association. The development of Modern Industry, therefore, cuts from under its feet the very .foundation on which the bourgeoisie prdduces and appropriates products. What the bourgeoisie therefore produces, above all, are its own grave diggers. Its fall and the victory of the proletariat are equally inevitable. II. Proletarians and Communists -In what relation do the Communists stand to the proletarians as a whole? The Communists do not form a separate party opposed to other workingclass parties. They have no interests separate and apart from those of the proletariat as -a whole. They do not set up any sectarian· prin-. ciples· of their own, by which to shape and mould the proletarian inovement. The Communists are distinguished from the other working-class parties by SOCIALISM TODAY The Soviet Style .. (Continued- from pai;e &) has been. done· and on the le~gt~- of time the person has worked. Preference is. given to those who -have been ihcapacitated as a result of occupational accident or di.sease. Such persons if they are completely incapacitated receive 100 per cent of their former wage, no matter how short' or how long a,, time they have been working. Should the degree of a person's dtsability change, he Is transferred to a different invalid group and the pension is adjusted accordingly. , Old age pensions as such· 011ly began to be paid in 1928. Before ~hat time,_ people who were incapacitated by old age were taken care of under the laws for general invalidism. In 1928, however, the payment of pension upon reaching a definite age was. established for certain groups of wage-earners, and since then it has b'een extended until it covers all the main groups of workers. Those who work underground or i~ other hazardous kinds of work are eligible for pension at the age of fifty if they have worked for ' a period of twenty years. In other branches of labor, men are eligible at sixty after . having worked tw~ty-five years, and women at fifty-five after twenty years of work. The size of pension varies from 50 to 65 per cent of the average wage for the last twelve months of employment, depending on the type of work that has been performed. Dependents of. insured persons who h-ave died or whose 'whereabouts ·is unknown also receive a pension. It must be noted that in the Soviet Union rent varies with the wages_ received, so that a person receiving a pension smaller than his previous wage would pay less rent .. Als!J when the ~ost._ of b~ead went up in 1935 at the time of discarding ration cards, ·pensions; were likewise raised. Moreciver p~rsons· receiving pensions are encoura~ed ta work in addition' ·to their pension, llnless the sum of the two exceed the -former wage. In that case the pension is qecreased. All these pensions and aids are vitally important, for it is by them that So- . viet social insurance protects the worker. Nagging fear of the future is removed. this only: 1. In the national struggles . of the proletarians of the different coun., tries, they point out and bring to the · front the common interests of the entire, proletari~t, independently of. all na~ tionality. 2. In the various stages-- ot deyelopment which . the struggle of the working class against the 1?<>u1·gepisie 'has to fass thri;iugh, they always and everywhere represent the interests· of . , the movem~t as a .. \Vhole. . (Tn, be continued) Augl.lSt, ; 1~36 :Jbe-~ New- Giants ., . . ···(co!'-tmued from. .wo~· :6) - • very ·efficiently; according to Raizer, · wP.o explained that while the largest furnaces of -the Makeyevka Pll'nt, each ·with . a 'volume .of .930 cu. m., are smelting one :ton of pig. iron· per 0.80 cu. m. of usec .ful volume of furnace (on the best. da~s achieving a coefficient cif 0.77), the new blast furnaces should proP.uce a ton of metal per 0.75 ~nd even 0.70 cu .. m. Though the_best technical achievements of other Sov,iet and fo~eign blast fur-· naces will be employed in the new ones, and though thjlir. control will I?e ·entirely automatic, nevertheless, they wll! not cost more to build than th~ Magnitogorsk furnaces. According to plan, each of the new blast furnaces ·should produce 1,300 tons of pig iron a day. With the application - o.f Stakhanov methods, howevE!r, prod,uction from 20 to 30 per cent above plan - is anticipated. The workers are ab'ie to fae,e life without dread as to what will happen to themselves or to their faimly if they fall iii or are injured. ·They do n~t have the constant spectre of doi;tor's bills .nor of funeral costs. A woman does not need to be anxiOUf!, Jest -having a baby· Will cause 'het to loi;;e her job. A. man cr+n work without constant worry as to what 'Will happen to his family if he dies.1AU: this m~ans security. It is an essential part of human happiness, of that joy in life which is becoming so evident in the Soviet Union. Soviet social insurance does not :confine itself, however, me.rely .to taking care of eventualities. It tries to pre-vent them. It contributes large sums to 'Promoting good health among the workers. Money i11 set asil:ie for the buildil)g and support .0£ rest homes and sanitar.i~ms .. Large sums are spent on children's camps,· nurseries and kindergartens, · ·cin ptbviding ~tra food for. school children or milk for babies. There is a special fund for· improving .housing cohditions. All these· contributions, as is the money spent by social insurance on medical care, are !of· couiise additional to w}\at comes froll) the· government budget for such purposes. It· is most. noteworthy. tha,t the proportion of the social :in~ur­ ance budge_t that goe§ to this indjrect aid is il'icrea!!iri.g. . The obj~ct of the Soviet State is t~at the workers therein .. sh1>uld Qe healtpy and happy, free of ahxiety ·about ihe future and so' free -to develop their manifold creative abilities both in their work and. in outside c.ultural and soc~al ai:tivitie$. Sovfe,t ·sor,,i~l · insµrance js one of the paths' toward thio1~oa1,