On September 12, 1962, N.S. Khrushchev met with Saudi Arabian representative Ahmad Shukeiry in Gagra to discuss various global issues. They covered Soviet intervention in Egypt and the Middle East, European imperialism in Africa, the Algerian and Indonesian struggles against colonial powers, and US elections and labor unions. Khrushchev emphasized the USSR’s competition with the capitalist world, while Shukeiry expressed gratitude for Soviet support in Arab and anti-imperialist movements, including Palestine. They also discussed potential Soviet-Saudi diplomatic relations and Khrushchev’s possible visit to the UN General Assembly.

At a conference led by CPSU General Secretary Yuri Andropov, senior Soviet officials discussed the reorganization of responsibilities among Party Secretaries, improving economic performance mid-way through the five-year plan, enhancing oversight and accountability in ministries, boosting labor discipline, and increasing hard currency earnings through better exports. The discussion emphasized reducing bureaucracy, strengthening ties with local organizations, and improving the quality of domestic production to compete internationally.

After World War I, several communist movements tried to replicate the Bolsheviks’ take-over of Russia in European countries, most importantly and most often in Germany. All failed. As a result, the Soviet leadership and communists worldwide from around 1920 focused more energies on colonized countries, especially in Asia. As most of these seemed to lack the economic and sociopolitical conditions necessary for a communist revolution, the aim was to weaken if not overthrow European imperial rule, serving the interests of both the USSR and the local petit bourgeoisie, peasants, and few industrial workers. The perhaps greatest price was China. Moreover, India was seen to be (exceptionally) ripe for direct communist action.

Communists and some anti-colonial nationalists were also active in and across the Middle East, North Africa, and Europe, often sharing resources while being networked with the Communist International. Abbreviated as the Comintern (also the Third International), the latter was the key international communist organization: founded in 1919 in Moscow, headquartered there, and employing through its dissolution in 1943 thousands of professional cadres from around the world, principally from Europe and Asia, as Brigitte Studer’s Reisende der Weltrevolution: Eine Globalgeschichte der Kommunistischen Internationale (2020) shows. Also in the Soviet Union, the year 1920 saw the landmark Congress of the Peoples of the East, in Baku. And in 1921, the Communist University for Laborers of the East (Kommunistichyeskii univyersityet trudyaschikhsya Vostoka, KUTV) opened its doors in Moscow. It became the first full-fledged Soviet training center for Soviet Muslims and for foreign communist cadres, principally from Asia and the Middle East and North Africa, and it impacted Soviet views of the East, as Lana Ravandi-Fadai and Masha Kirasirova have shown in “Red Mecca” (2015) and “The ‘East’ as a Category of Bolshevik Ideology and Comintern Administration” (2017), respectively. The text here is the English translation, published in 1954 in the collection J. V. Stalin: Works: Volume 7, of a Russian text published in 1925 in the principal Soviet newspaper, Pravda, rendering a speech that the 1924-1953 Chairman of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union Joseph Stalin (1878-1953) held to KUTV’s students in 1925.

Suslov describes the "tense" situation in Poland and proposed steps to use military and police force to quell the protest movement.

List of survey questions intended to help the International Labour Organization (ILO) determine possibilities for conversion of the workforce engaged in the defense industry as well as the broader implications of decreasing military expenditures.

The CPSU Central Committee discusses the Socialist countries' lack of response to an International Labor Organization (ILO) questionnaire on conversion of the defense industry and suggests government offices to review the questions and submit possible answers to the Central Committee.

The CPSU Central Committee directs relevant departments in the Soviet government to review questions from the International Labor Organization on conversion in the defense industry.

Ambassador Tyazhel'nikov relays a message for Gorbachev from Ceauşescu in which he expresses concern about events in Poland and Tadeusz Mazowiecki's appointment as Prime Minister. Ceauşescu argued strongly that the socialist states "must decisively come forth in a united front in order to prevent the formation of a Solidarity-led government in Poland."

A Soviet report that describes successful economic management in the postwar period in North Korea. The report also explains that the KWP CC still needs to work on improving some areas, particularly those concerning production cooperatives and the rural peasantry.

Puzanov reports on a meeting with Choe Yong-geon, noting that Choe was recently "awarded the title of Hero of Labor of the DPRK."