For Life and Happiness - Tales of Soviet Women Workers for Peace, 1951 #5

From the Soviet Press, 1951

Maria Smirnova

A new tractor with a shining coat of fresh paint comes off the conveyor. And as I watch it my thoughts carry me where its engine will soon be throbbing.

In conformity with the great Stalin plan, the very nature of our country is being transformed. Deserts will give way to green groves as canals with an abundance of water cut through their thirsty sands. And as I stand on Peace Watch machining tractor parts, or when, together with my shopmates, I joyfully watch new tractors being shipped to the construction sites of the Kuibyshev, Stalingrad and Kakhovka hydroelectric stations, or to the Volga-Don Canal which will soon link two great rivers, I feel with all my being how my labour too is blending with the common labour of all our people.

Four young women, Vera Meshcheryakova, Antonina Artemyeva, Klavdia Maximova and Vera Ostashkina, work in my brigade. We are all fond of our trade. We are proud to be working in one of the country’s oldest and most famous factories— the Kirov Plant in Leningrad which is marking its 150th anniversary and has been decorated by the government on three different occasions for outstanding accomplishment.

Everything that we are now building, everything we plan to build in the future, all our dreams and aspirations, are dedicated to life and the happiness of people. As builders and creators, we detest war and are fighting for peace. Together with other Soviet people, I am working to strengthen peace by employing high-speed methods in tooling tractor parts and thereby accelerating the output of fine machines.

In the recent elections to the Supreme Soviet of the R.S.F.S.R., we, together with all the working people of the Kirov Election Area, went to the polls to cast our votes for the great organizer of the struggle for world peace, Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin, under whose leadership the men and women of the free Soviet land are working with such inspiration.

MARIA SMIRNOVA, Leader of a brigade of milling-machine operators in Machine Shop No. 10, Kirov Plant, Leningrad