Stalin explicitly declared the production of souls more important than that of tanks

Evidence

That year, the refashioning of the soul as the hallmark of the totalitarian impulse was immortalized by Stalin on a glittering, champagne-soaked Moscow evening. The setting was an auspicious literary gathering hosted by a compliant Maxim Gorky in the sprawling mansion that Stalin had presented to the revered author upon his return to Russia from a self-imposed Italian exile. Stalin took the floor for a toast as the room fell silent. “Our tanks are worthless if the souls who must steer them are made of clay. This is why I say: The production of souls is more important than that of tanks.… Man is reshaped by life itself, and those of you here must assist in reshaping his soul. That is what is important, the production of human souls. And that is why I raise my glass to you, writers, to the engineers of the soul.” The authors assembled around Stalin that evening raised their glasses to his toast, persuaded perhaps by memories of less adaptive colleagues already exiled or executed, including the 1929 torture and murder of artists and writers in the Solovetsky Islands’ aptly named Church of the Beheading. — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 1126

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the reader’s broader reading on totalitarianism, media, and control of consciousness — parallels with Harold Innis’s work on communication and power, and the chapter’s developing argument that surveillance capitalism co-opts the same soul-shaping ambition.
• CANDY: Stalin’s champagne toast calling writers ‘engineers of the soul’ is a vivid, self-contained anecdote that could open a conversation on propaganda and art.