Eye Witness Account of Soviet Union from U.S. Auto Worker

This is the  part of an extensive series about the Bolshevik Revolution and the triumphs, as well as the defeats, of the world communist movement of the 20th century. We welcome your comments and criticisms, and encourage all readers to discuss this period of history with their friends, classmates, co-workers, family, and comrades.

One of the reasons workers around the world need to join and build the international communist Progressive Labor Party on their jobs, campuses and in their military barracks is because there is no capitalist country on earth protected by capitalism’s periodic crises. As we close out 2017, ten years since the last major political-economic crisis, capitalist economies are in a dark forest of uncertainty and peril for the international working class.
Capitalism Means Crisis
As CHALLENGE goes to press, the world’s top-dog imperialist power, the U.S., is passing a complex tax reform bill that on the one hand, will rob the working class and give the U.S. economy a short-term jolt, and on the other, will have unpredictable long-term consequences. The tax bill’s changes to will impact local and regional economies in ways far outside of what the federal government’s economist fortune-tellers could ever predict.  
As desperate as times have been for the working class since the last crisis, deeper crises loom ahead. Indicators like housing sales, construction activity, and freight movement contradict the falsely optimistic headlines in the capitalist press. The economy is troubled because of capitalism’s fundamental contradiction: the private capitalist ownership of the few over how things are produced, and the majority dispossessed working class who are compelled by starvation to produce for them.
For the bosses, crisis means the surviving big capitalists gobble up their competitors and life goes on. As 18th century British banker Baron Rothschild once said of the necessary relationship between crisis and capitalism: “It’s time to buy when there’s blood in the streets.”
History Is A Science
No amount of legislative sorcery from either the liberal Democrats or the Republicans can change capitalism’s periodic plunges into crisis. And the bosses’ solutions to the crises are as equally inevitable. In our era of imperialism, they solve them with sharpening racism and fascism to exploit and divide workers harder, and bigger imperialist wars to conquer more resources, workers, and markets.
As communists we learn from the past and study history as a science. One of the biggest crises of the last century was the “Great Depression” that began in 1929. This crisis sent the world capitalist economy headlong into staggering unemployment and social dislocation.
This time though, the bosses and their liberal politicians were scared. There was one place in the world that completely escaped the Great Depression—the Soviet Union. There was such a shortage of labor that the Soviet Union invited workers from all over the world to help build socialism.
We reproduce below a description of workers’ daily lives in the Soviet Union as told by a U.S. auto worker. It is the text of a letter dated January 20, 1934, when the Reuther brothers were working in a new Soviet automobile plant in Gorky. Walter Reuther had been laid off in 1932 as the Great Depression in the United States worsened. The letter is signed “Vic and Wal” for Victor and Walter Reuther.
Walter Reuther later became a vicious anti-communist. After he became president of the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) in 1949, he promptly expelled all communists from their elected positions in the United Automobile Workers union. He also expelled 11 communist-led unions from the CIO.
In return, U.S. bosses “forgot” about the letter below:

Dear Mel and Glad: It seemed ages since we had heard from you, so you might well imagine with what joy we welcomed news from Detroit.
What you have written concerning the strikes and the general labor unrest in Detroit makes us long for the moment to be back with you in the front lines of the struggle: however, the daily inspiration that is ours as we work side by side with our Russian comrades in our factory, comes with the thought that we are actually helping to build a society that will forever end the exploitation of man by man. This thought is that what we are building will be for the benefit and enjoyment of the working class, not only of Russia but the entire world. This thought is the compensation we receive for our temporary absence from the struggle in the United States.
Mel, you know Wal and I were always strong for the Soviet Union. You know we were always ready to defend it against the lies of reactionaries. But let me tell you, now that we are here we are more than just sympathetic toward our country, we are ready to fight for it and its ideals. And why not? Here the workers, through their militant leadership, the proletarian dictatorship, have not sold out. Here they have against all odds--against famine, internal strife and civil war, against sabotage, capitalist invasion and isolation--our comrades here have maintained power. They have transformed the “dark masses” of Russia into energetic, enlightened workers. They have transformed the Soviet Union into one of the greatest industrial nations in the world….
Here are no bosses to drive fear into the workers. No one to drive them in mad speed-ups. Here the workers are in control. …This is what the outside world calls the “ruthless dictatorship in Russia.” I tell you, Mel, in all the countries we have thus far been in, we have never found such genuine proletarian democracy.
In our factory…Women and men work side by side. At noon we all eat in a large factory restaurant where wholesome food is served. A workers’ band furnishes music to us from an adjoining room. For the remainder of our 1-hour lunch period we adjourn to the Red Corner recreation, where workers play games, read papers and magazines or technical books, or merely sit, smoke, and chat. Such a fine spirit of comradeship you have never before witnessed in your life. If you saw our superintendent as he walks through the shop greeting workers with “Hello, Comrade,” you could not distinguish him from any other worker.
The interesting thing, Mel, is that 3 years ago this place here was a vast prairie, a waste land, and the thousands of workers here who are building complicated dies and other tools were at that time peasants who had never before even seen an industry, let alone worked in one. Through the bitter Russian winters of 45° below zero they have toiled with bare hands, digging foundations, and erecting structures.
About a 20-minute walk from the factory an entirely new Socialist city has grown up in these 3 years. Here over 50,000 of the factory workers live in fine new modern apartment buildings. Large hospitals, schools, libraries, theaters, and clubs have sprung up, and all for the use of those who work. Three nights ago we were invited to the clubhouse in “Sosgor” (Socialist City) to attend an evening of enjoyment given by the workers of the die shop. Imagine, all the workers with whom we daily work coming together that evening for a fine banquet, a stage performance, a concert, speeches, and a big dance…
In all my life, Mel, I have never seen anything so inspiring. Once a fellow has seen what is possible where workers gain power, he no longer fights just for an ideal, he fights for something which is real, something tangible. Mel, we are witnessing and experiencing great things in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. We are seeing the most backward nation in the world being rapidly transformed into the most modern and scientific, with new concepts amidst new social ideals coming into force. Who would not be inspired by such events?
Carry on the fight for a Soviet America.
Vic. and Wal J