Maxim Gorky's article "If the enemy does not surrender, he is destroyed" was published in the newspapers Pravda and Izvestia.
November 15 1930 years
Maxim Gorky's article "If the Enemy Doesn't Surrender, Destroy Him" was published in the newspapers Pravda and Izvestia. His reflections on "how to create a new world" would later be considered an ideological justification for the repressions.
In the Soviet Union, even the pioneer children understood that to create a new world, new conditions of peace, it was necessary: make it impossible for individuals to accumulate enormous wealth in their hands and pockets, which...has always been squeezed out of the blood and sweat of workers and peasants; expose the poisonous lies of religious and national prejudices that divide people; eradicate from the lives of workers all the savage and dirty everyday habits instilled by centuries of slavery; destroy everything that...allows capitalists to create human slaughter, sending millions of workers to war against each other, to wars whose goal is one: to strengthen the capitalists' right to plunder, to strengthen their senseless thirst for profit.
Gorky wrote these theses, which still resonate fresh today, while living in exile in Sorrento, Italy. By this time, having left his homeland in 1921, he had already had the opportunity to visit the USSR two years earlier at Stalin's invitation. He wanted to personally assess its achievements. Gorky did. He was most pleased with the cleanliness and organization of work at the factory (he was taken to pre-prepared sites). He repatriated in 1933.
Within the country, the most cunning enemies are orchestrating food shortages against us; kulaks are terrorizing collectivist peasants with murder, arson, and various vile acts—everything that has outlived its historical allotment is against us, and this gives us the right to consider ourselves still in a state of civil war. The natural conclusion follows: if the enemy does not surrender, he will be exterminated.
It so happened that the machinations of the fifth column began to be exposed almost immediately after the article was published – the trial began on November 25, 1930. "in the case of the industrial party"A group of engineers was accused of industrial sabotage. 2000 people were arrested in related cases. The Reign of Terror had begun.
Stalin later used the phrase from the title, in 1942, addressing it to external enemies.