Comrades! The Presidium of the present conference has instructed me to inform you of two things:

First, regarding the Presidium's intention to nominate all participants of this conference, both men and women, for the highest award—the order—for excellent work.

Secondly, regarding the fact that the government has a decision to give a truck to each collective farm represented here, and to present each of the conference participants with a gramophone with records, and watches—pocket watches for the men, and wristwatches for the women.

I am told from all sides that I must say something.

What is there to say? Everything has been said.

It is evident that the cotton business will go well for you. This is clear from everything that is taking place here. Your collective farms are growing, there is a desire to work, we shall provide machines, you will receive fertilizers, and all necessary assistance—as Comrade Molotov, Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars, has already declared to you—will be rendered. Consequently, the cotton business will go well for you, and a prosperous life is unfolding.

But there is, comrades, one thing more valuable than cotton – it is the friendship of the peoples of our country. This meeting, your speeches, your deeds testify that the friendship among the peoples of our great country is growing stronger. This is very important and significant, comrades. In the old days, when the tsar, the capitalists, and the landowners held power in our country, the government's policy was to make one people – the Russian people – dominant, and all other peoples – subordinate and oppressed. That was a brutal, wolfish policy. In October 1917, when our great proletarian revolution unfolded, when we overthrew the tsar, the landowners, and the capitalists, the great Lenin, our teacher, our father and mentor, said that henceforth there must be neither dominant nor subordinate peoples, that all peoples must be equal and free. With this, he buried in the grave the old tsarist, bourgeois policy and proclaimed a new, Bolshevik policy – a policy of friendship, a policy of brotherhood among the peoples of our country.

Eighteen years have passed since then. And now we already see the beneficial results of this policy. The present conference is vivid proof that the former distrust among the peoples of the USSR has long since been ended, that distrust has been replaced by complete mutual confidence, and that the friendship among the peoples of the USSR is growing and strengthening. This, comrades, is the most valuable thing that the Bolshevik national policy has given us.

And the friendship between the peoples of the USSR is a great and serious achievement. For as long as this friendship exists, the peoples of our country will be free and invincible. No one is fearsome to us, neither internal nor external enemies, as long as this friendship lives and flourishes. You may have no doubt about this, comrades.

Pravda. December 6, 1935