Viewing page 5 of 56

This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.

The Album presented for the consideration of our readers is to clearly demonstrate the depths of the decline of capitalist production, and simultaneously the stormy development of national economy in the USSR, it is to be a means of spreading among the workers and peasant population correct information as to what takes place "at home" and "abroad."
A concrete descriptive demonstration will assist the broad masses of toilers in realising and understanding the profound changes that are taking place in the land of Socialist construction, on the one hand, and in the lands of decaying capitalism on the other hand. The Album will help convince the workers that in the fierce class struggle between the two systems, Socialism day by day draws nearer to its final victory over the capitalist system.
The first part of the Album gives the main comparative items for the economic development of the USSR and the decline in the capitalist economy. 
Production in all branches of capitalist economy declines steadily, but most of all it falls in the key industries; the iron and steel output has decreased more than the output of any other industry. The capitalists endeavour to find a way out of the crisis by sharply worsening the living standards of the working class. Table No 1 demonstrates unemployment, which in the three most important capitalist countries alone --- USA, Germany and Britain--- by the beginning of 1932 amounted to 22 1/2 millions, while through out the entire capitalist world there were over 40 millions unemployed.
The great gold stocks in France by no means indicate that there is no crisis in this country. In France, too, the crisis of production increases, and together with it the budget deficit, foreign trad sharply declines, and inflation grows greater from month to month. 
The second and third parts of the Album show the chief points of our headlong development, the successful progress along the path to solving our task of "overtaking and outstripping" the technically-economically advanced capitalist countries in a maximum period of 10 years. It shows that with the fulfilment of the Second Five Year Plan we will become the foremost country in Europe. The tables show the successful fulfilment of the Five Year Plan in four years, thereby confirming the feasibility of the Second Five Year Plan for Great Works, mapped out by the Seventeenth Conference of the CPSU (all the figures for the USSR for 1932 in the Album are taken according to plan).
Finally, in the fourth section, we find the chief data as to the growth of armaments in the capitalist countries and the preparations for intervention against the U.S.S.R. When comparing the figures in this part with the others it becomes quite plan that the only bench of industry that grows steadily in the capitalist world is the war industry. Despite the crisis, or ratherly precisely because of the crisis, war expenditures, the number of military aeroplanes, submarines, and their power grow from month to month, from year to year. All this confirms the prognosis of the Comintern that the capitalist world seeks a way out of the crisis in war. 
The Album, which consists altogether of 36 diagrams, naturally cannot give all the necessary figures four or upsurge and the profound crisis "abroad" , but it gives the main items. 
However, it has to be said that while the Album was at press ne facts have appeared on the universal collapse of world capitalist economy For instance, in Diagram No. 6 the decline in the output of pig iron is shown, which is far behind the low level which we have at the present time. The output of pig iron in June 1932 compared with 1929 declined as follows: USA by 83.9%, Germany by 73.4%, Britain  56.6%, France by 49.3%, i.e., to a far greater extend than is shown in the table.
Despite this unavoidable shortcoming the Album gives a very vivid picture of the abyss for which world capitalism is rapidly heading, and a picture of the colossal growth of national economy in the U.S.S.R.

S.L.Sverdlin