Did Stalin argue that “we don’t have irreplaceable”?

For many years, the Soviet leader is attributed to the phrase that any person, if necessary, can be replaced by others. We checked whether there is evidence that Stalin said this.

Vladimir Gryzun in the text for the scientific and educational portal "Skepsis" He called it This phrase "Stalin's favorite saying." In 2017, Deputy Minister of Communications and Mass Communications of the Russian Federation Alexei Volin, commenting on the blocking of the Telegram messenger, declared: "As Comrade Stalin said, we do not have irreplaceable." Two years later, the President of Kazakhstan Kasym-Zhomart Tokaev He mentioned This phrase during a working trip to one of the regions, and the NewReporter portal in its material He called it The “Stalin” (although Tokaev himself did not mention the “Stalin” one). In the same 2019, a text appeared on the website of the Moscow branch of the Communist Party, the author of which claims: "Once Stalin said:" We do not have indispensable people, there are only not replaced. "

We were not able to find the phrase “we don’t have irreplaceable people” either in Stalin’s texts, nor in the transcripts of his performances, or in the leadership of newspaper publications or memoirs of contemporaries. The quote most similar to this statement is in a reporting report to the XVII Congress on the work of the CPSU (b), which Stalin Read January 26, 1934. Then the leader, criticizing “people with famous merits in the past, people who have become nobles, people who believe that party and Soviet laws are not written for them, but for fools”, declared: “These arrogant nobles think that they are indispensable and that they can violate the decisions of the governing bodies with impunity. What to do with such employees? They must be without hesitation from leading posts, despite their merits in the past. ”

The author of the article on the website Russia Beyond claimsthat the verified phrase was attributed to Stalin the Soviet playwright Alexander Korneychuk. In his play "Front" really There is The words: “Do not scare, the Bolsheviks are not shy. We have no indispensable people. Many scared us, but they have been resting for a long time in the garbage dump of history. And the party is strong, like steel ”, but not Stalin pronounces them. Perhaps authorship was connected with the leader because of the existing Opinionsthat he either “ordered” this play, or its text ruled.

The statement of indispensable people even before Stalin’s speech and the play of Korneychuk was known abroad. In 1912, Woodro Wilson was elected a candidate from a democratic party in the upcoming elections of the US president. Speaking to like -minded people, the future head of state declared: “The presidential campaign can easily degenerate into a regular personal competition and thus lose its real dignity and significance. There are no irreplaceable people ("There is no indispensable man" - English). <...> People are tools. " This phrase was generally quite popular among American politicians of the first half of the 20th century: so, in 1932 it Said In one of his speeches, Franklin Delaino Roosevelt, who then more than once Quoted Congressmen.

Despite this, it is impossible to call such a wording “invention” of Wilson or Roosevelt. During the Great French Revolution, Joseph Lebon on a letter to one of the prisoners who asked for pardon answered The phrase that "there are no indispensable people for the republic." Back in 1759, similar expressed The writer Louis Antoine Karachioli, arguing that the guarantee of success on politics is habits and skills.

There is a phrase close to the alleged Stalin's “cemetery is full of irreplaceable people”, but she does not apply to the Soviet leader either. In the middle of the last century, it was often attributed to French politicians - then Georges Clemanso, That Charles de Hell. The authors of the Quote Investigator portal in the course of their study found that, apparently, this statement appeared Thanks to the American writer at the beginning of the 20th century, Albert Hubbard.

With all the above, we note that the phrase analyzed is quite simple, and its main idea is trivial. Most likely, we are not talking about its borrowing by some historical personalities in others. Probably, there is an independent appearance of the phrase in one or another place under fairly dissimilar circumstances.

Incorrect attribution of quote

What do our verdicts mean?

Read on the topic:

1. The Graveyars are Full of Indispensable Men
2. Did Stalin say: “There is no person - there is no problem”?
3. Did Stalin say: “The son is not responsible for his father”?
4. Is it true that Stalin is the author of the phrase “It doesn’t matter how they voted, important, as calculated”?