V. I. Lenin

Original Version of the Article “The Immediate Tasks of the Soviet Government” {3}

Chapter IV

... {1}

Todaythis task—which is, of course, not yet sufficiently completed
and can never be fully accomplished-no longer stands first among the tasks
facing the Soviet government. The recent congresses of the Soviets, notably
the All-Russia Congress held in Moscow, have shown that the overwhelming
majority of the labouring classes have firmly and consciously sided with
the Soviet power in general and with the Bolshevik Party in particular. It
goes without saying that for any government that is at all democratic the
task of convincing the masses can never be wholly overshadowed—on the
contrary, it will always be among the important tasks of government. As a
key issue, however, it will only have significance for parties of the
opposition or for parties that are fighting for ideals of the future. After the Bolsheviks, first under
tsarism and then under Kerensky, had succeeded in winning over to their
side the majority of the class-conscious active elements of the working
masses, our Party was faced with the task of conquering power and
suppressing the resistance of the exploiters. The task that came to the
fore was that of winning, instead of convincing, Russia. From the end of
October 1917 approximately up to February 1918 the militant or military
task held first place, as it naturally should for any political party
making a bid for power in conditions of sharp and extremely bitter
struggle. Obviously, for the Party of the proletariat, the task of
suppressing the resistance of the exploiters becomes a crucial issue,
because the working masses who side with the proletariat are opposed here
by the united members of the propertied classes armed both with the power
of capital, the power of knowledge and the long-standing, if not age-old,
habit and practice of government. Owing to the special conditions that were
created in Russia under the influence of the unforgotten lessons of the
revolution of 1905 and the influence of the far more painful and harsher
lessons of the present war-owing to these conditions the Bolsheviks
succeeded with comparative ease in solving the problem of winning power
both in the capital and in the chief industrial centres of Russia. But in
the provinces, in places far removed from the centre, and especially in
districts known to have the greatest concentration of a comparatively
backward population rooted in the traditions of the monarchy and
medievalism—the Cossack regions, for instance—Soviet power had to contend
with a resistance that took on military forms and is only now, more than
four months after the October Revolution, coming to an end. At the present
time the task of overcoming and suppressing the resistance of the
exploiters in Russia is, in the main, completed. Russia has been won by the
Bolsheviks chiefly because—as that prominent leader of the
counter-revolutionary Don Cossacks, Bogayevsky himself, recently
admitted—the overwhelming majority of the people even among the Cossacks
have consciously, firmly and definitely sided with the Bolsheviks. But the
special conditions in which the propertied classes are placed economically
enable them naturally to organise not only passive resistance (sabotage), but to repeat the attempt at military
resistance to Soviet power. For that reason the task of suppressing the
resistance of the exploiters cannot be regarded as having been finally
completed. At any rate, it has now obviously been dealt with in its main
aspects and is retreating into the background. The Soviet government will
never for a moment allow itself to forget about this task and will under no
circumstances let itself be diverted from it by any political or so-called
socialist names or declamations. We have to speak about this because both
the Mensheviks and the Right S.R.s act as the most mobile, some-times even
as the most brazen-faced counter-revolutionaries, who wage a sharper
struggle against the Soviet government than the one they had allowed
themselves to wage against the reactionary and landowner governments, and
rely on. their party’s label and designation to protect them. Naturally,
the Soviet government will never falter in its task of suppressing the
resistance of the exploiters, no matter what party banners or what popular
and specious names this resistance may be covered up with. However, at the
present time the task of suppressing resistance has, in the main, been
completed, and the task now confronting us is that of administering the
state.

Thistransition from what was once the priority task of convincing the
masses, a transition from the task of winning power and crushing the
resistance of the exploiters by military force to what is now the primary
task of administering the state—this transition is the main feature of
the present moment. The difficulty which the Soviet government is
experiencing is that of bringing home the essentials of this transition to
all the class-conscious elements of the working masses as well as the
people’s political leaders. For it is self-understood that the transition
to the peaceful tasks of governing the whole population irrespective of
classes, a transition that is taking place in conditions when the civil war
is still going on in some places, when grave military dangers are
threatening the Soviet Republic from both the West and the East, and when
the war has caused untold havoc throughout the country—it is
self-understood that such a transition is beset with tremendous
difficulties.

Chapter V

Thetask of administering the state, which now confronts
the Soviet government, has this special feature, that, probably for the
first time in the modern history of civilised nations, it deals
pre-eminently with economics rather than with politics. Usually the word
“administration” is associated chiefly, if not solely, with political
activity. However, the very basis and essence of Soviet power, like that of
the transition itself from capitalist to socialist society, lie in the fact
that political tasks occupy a subordinate position to economic tasks. And
now, especially after the practical experience of over four months of
Soviet government in Russia, it should be quite clear to us that the task
of administering the state is primarily a purely economic task-that of
healing the country’s wounds inflicted by the war, restoring its productive
forces, organising accountancy in and control over production and
distribution, raising the productivity of labour-in short, it boils down to
the task of economic reorganisation.

Thistask can be said to fall under two main headings: I) accounting
and control over production and distribution in the broadest, most
widespread and universal forms of such accounting and control, and 2)
raising the productivity of labour. These tasks can be handled by any form
of collective effort or any form of state passing over to socialism only on
condition that the basic economic, social, cultural and political
preconditions for this have been created in a sufficient degree by
capitalism. Without large-scale machine production, without a more or less
developed network of railways, postal and telegraph communications, without
a more or less developed network of public educational institutions,
neither of these tasks can be carried out in a systematic way on a national
scale. Russia is in a position when quite a number of these initial
preconditions for such a transition actually exist. On the other hand,
quite a number of these preconditions are absent in our country, but can be
borrowed by it fairly easily from the experience of the neighbouring, far
more advanced countries, whom history and international intercourse have
long since placed in close contact with Russia.

Chapter VI

Thebasic aim of every society going over to a socialist
system consists in the victory of the ruling class-or rather the class that
is growing up to be the ruling class-namely, the proletariat, over the
bourgeoisie as described above. And this task is set before us in a
substantially new way, quite unlike the way it stood in the course of many
decades of the proletariat’s world-wide experience of struggle against the
bourgeoisie. Now, after the gains of the October Revolution, after our
successes in the civil war, victory over the bourgeoisie should stand for
something much bigger, albeit more peaceful in form: namely, victory over
the bourgeoisie, now that it has been secured politically and made good
militarily, should now be achieved in the sphere of organisation of the
national economy, in the sphere of organisation of production, in the
sphere of country-wide accounting and control. The problem of accounting
and control over production was dealt with by the bourgeoisie all the more
effectively in proportion as production expanded and the network of
national economic institutions embracing tens and hundreds of millions of
the population of a large modern state became more ramified. We must handle
this task now in a new way, backed by the predominating position of the
proletariat, supported by the bulk of the working and exploited masses,
making use of those elements of organising talent and technical knowledge
which have been accumulated by the preceding society, and nine-tenths,
perhaps even ninety-nine hundredths of which belong to a class hostile and
opposed to the socialist revolution.

Chapter VII

Germanimperialism, which has made the greatest advance not
only in military power and military techniques, but in big industrial
organisations within the framework of capitalism, has incidentally given
proof of its economic progressiveness by being the first country to
introduce labour conscription. Naturally, in the conditions of capitalist society in general and particularly when the monarchist states are waging
an imperialist war, labour conscription is nothing more than a military
convict prison for the workers, a new means of enslaving the working and
exploited masses, a new system of measures for suppressing all protest on
the part of these masses. Nevertheless, there is no question that it is
only because of the economic preconditions created by big capitalism that
such a reform could be put forward and effected. And now we, amid
conditions of appalling post-war economic disorganisation, are obliged to
consider the urgency of a similar reform. Naturally, Soviet power, which is
passing from a capitalist to a socialist organisation of society, must
tackle this problem of labour conscription from the other end, opposite to
that of German imperialism. For the capitalists and imperialists of Germany
labour conscription meant enslavement of the workers. For the workers and
peasant poor in Russia labour conscription should mean, first and foremost,
recruitment of the rich and propertied classes for the discharge of their
social duties. We should start labour conscription with the rich.

Thisis necessitated, generally speaking, not only by the fact that the
Soviet Republic is a socialist republic. The necessity arises also from the
fact that it was precisely the wealthy and propertied classes who, by their
resistance, both. military and passive (sabotage), mostly prevented Russia
from healing the wounds inflicted upon her by the war, hampered the
country’s economic rehabilitation and progress. That is why accounting and
control, which should be now considered a problem of paramount importance
in the whole business of state administration, must be applied first of all
to the wealthy and propertied classes. It was the members of these classes
who enjoyed the tribute they collected from the working people, especially
during the war; it was they who used this tribute to evade a task which is
the duty of every citizen, namely, that of lending a hand in healing the
country’s wounds and putting it on its feet again; it was they who used the
plundered tribute to retire and entrench themselves behind impregnable
walls and offer every possible resistance to the victory of the socialist
principle over the capitalist principle of society’s organisation. One of
the chief weapons of such struggle against the Soviets and against
socialism on the part of the wealthy and propertied classes was their possession of
considerable hoards of currency notes. The propertied classes in capitalist
society derived most of their wealth from the land and other means of
production, such as factories, mills, etc., which they owned. The Soviet
government had no difficulty, thanks to the support of the workers and the
great majority of the peasants, in abolishing the right of the landowners
and the bourgeoisie to these basic items of the country’s wealth. It was
not difficult to decree the abolition of private property in land. It was
not difficult to nationalise most of the factories and mills. There is no
doubt that the nationalisation of other big industrial enterprises and
transport facilities is a problem that will easily be dealt with in the
very near future.

Capitalistsociety, however, has created another form of wealth, which
is by no means so easy for the Soviet government to deal with. This is
wealth in the form of money, or rather, currency notes. Currency notes
during the war were issued in very great numbers. Russia was cut off by a
wall of military operations from commerce with a number of countries who
had been her largest importers and exporters. The amassment of currency
notes in the hands of the wealthy and propertied classes, practically all
of whom, directly or indirectly, had speculated on the high prices for
military contracts and supplies, is one of the chief means by which the
propertied classes amassed wealth and accumulated power over the working
people. Today the economic position of Russia, as probably of every
capitalist country that has gone through three years of war, is
characterised by the fact that enormous amounts of paper money are
concentrated in the hands of and hoarded by a comparatively small minority,
the bourgeoisie and propertied classes, and this paper money, though
greatly depreciated through massive emission, still represents a claim to
levy tribute on the working population.

Duringthe transition from capitalist to socialist society it is
absolutely impossible to do without currency notes or to replace them with
new ones in a short space of time. The Soviet government is now confronted
with a difficult task, which nevertheless has to be dealt with at all
costs—the task of combating the resistance of the wealthy, a resistance that takes the form of hoarding and concealing the proofs of their claim to
levy tribute on the working people. These proofs are currency
notes. Naturally, while these currency notes previously gave the right to
acquire and purchase the means of production, such as land, factories,
mills, etc., their significance today has diminished and even been reduced
to naught. The purchase of land has become impossible in Russia after
promulgation of the law on the socialisation of the land, while the
purchase of factories and mills and similar large-scale means of production
and transport has become practically impossible owing to the rapid process
of nationalisation and confiscation of all such large enterprises. And so,
it becomes more and more difficult and almost impossible for members of the
bourgeoisie and propertied classes (including the peasant bourgeoisie) to
acquire money for the purchase of the means of production. But in defending
their old privileges and trying to retard and obstruct as much as they can
the business of socialist reforms within the country, the bourgeoisie are
hoarding and concealing the proofs of their claim to a share in the social
wealth, their claim to levy tribute on the working people, hoarding and
concealing currency notes in order to have a chance, however slender, of
maintaining their position and recovering their old privileges in the event
of difficulties or crises of a military or commercial nature that might yet
beset Russia.

Asregards consumer goods, the possibility of buying them with the sums
of paper money they have accumulated through speculations during the war
remains almost fully with the bourgeoisie and propertied classes, since the
problem of proper rationing and distribution of these goods in a country
like Russia, with her huge population of small peasants, petty artisans or
handicraftsmen, presents tremendous difficulties, and in the prevailing
state of economic chaos caused by the war this problem still remains
practically unsolved. Thus, the Soviet government is obliged to start the
business of accounting and control over production and distribution by an
organised struggle against the wealthy and propertied classes who are
hoarding vast sums in currency notes and evading state control.

Iis estimated that currency notes to the value of about thirty
thousand million rubles have been issued in Russia to date. Of this sum probably no less than twenty thousand million, or
maybe considerably more, are excess hoards unneeded for trade turnover,
which are kept hidden away by members of the bourgeoisie and propertied
classes for motives of self-interest——or class self-interest.

The Soviet government will have to combine the introduction of labour
conscription with the registration, in the first place, of people belonging
to the bourgeoisie and propertied classes; it will have to demand truthful
statements (declarations) concerning the amount of currency notes
available; it will have to take a number of measures to make sure that this
demand will not remain on paper; it will have to consider transitional
measures for concentrating all stocks of currency notes in the State Bank
or its branches. Unless these measures are taken, the business of
accounting and control over production and distribution cannot be
effectively carried through.

Chapter VIII

Theintroduction of labour conscription, however, cannot be
confined to accounting and control over the sums of currency notes
concentrated in the hands of the propertied classes. The Soviet government
will have to apply the principles of labour conscription also to the direct
activities of the bourgeoisie and propertied classes in the sphere of
factory management and the servicing of enterprises by all kinds of
subsidiary labour such as book-keeping, accountancy, clerical work,
technical, administrative and other jobs. In this respect, too, the task of
the Soviet government is now shifting from the sphere of direct struggle
against sabotage to the sphere of business organisation in the new
conditions, since after the victories won by the Soviets in the civil war,
beginning with October and ending February, a breach has virtually been
made in the passive forms of resistance, namely, in the sabotage by the
bourgeoisie and the bourgeois intellectuals. It is no accident that at the
present time we are witnessing a sweeping, one might say widespread, change
of sentiment and political behaviour in the camp of the former saboteurs,
i.e., the capitalists and bourgeois intellectuals. In all spheres of
economic and political life we now find a great number of bourgeois intellectuals and capitalist
businessmen offering their services to the Soviet power. And it is up to
the Soviet power now to make use of these services, which are definitely
necessary for the transition to socialism, especially in a peasant country
like Russia, and should be utilised on condition that the Soviet government
has complete ascendancy, direction and control over its new assistants and
co-operators (who had often acted in defiance of this same Soviet power in
the secret hope of protesting it).

Toshow how necessary it is for the Soviet government to make use of
the services of bourgeois intellectuals for the transition to socialism, we
venture to use an expression that may at. first glance seem paradoxical: we
must to a considerable extent, take a lesson in socialism from the trust
managers, we must take a lesson in socialism from capitalism’s big
organisers. That this is no paradox anyone can easily see who realises that
it is the big factories, big machine industry, which developed exploitation
of the working people to an unheard-of degree, that it is precisely the big
factories that are the centres of concentration of that class which alone
has been able to destroy the rule of capital and begin the transition to
socialism. It is not surprising, therefore, that in order to solve the
practical problems of socialism, when the organisational aspects of it are
pushed to the fore, we must enlist to the service of the Soviet power a
great number of bourgeois intellectuals, especially from among those who
were engaged in the practical work of organising large-scale capitalist
production, that is to say, first and foremost, those engaged in organising
syndicates, cartels and trusts. Tackling this problem will require of the
Soviet government an exertion of energy and initiative by the working
masses in all fields of the national economy, since the old position held
by the so-called captains of industry-the old position of the masters and
exploiters-this old position the Soviet government will never let them
have. The former captains of industry, the former masters and exploiters,
must be employed as technical experts, managers, consultants, advisers. A
new, difficult, but extremely gratifying problem must be solved, that of
combining all the experience and knowledge which these members of the exploiting classes have accumulated, with the initiative,
energy and work of the broad masses of the working people. For only by this
combination is it possible to build the bridge leading from the old
capitalist to the new socialist society.

Ifthe socialist revolution had won simultaneously throughout the world
or, at least, in a number of advanced countries, then the task of enlisting
the services of the best technician specialists from among the leaders of
old capitalism to the process of the new organisation of production would
have been made considerably easier. Backward Russia would not have to
wrestle with this problem on her own, as the advanced workers of the
West-European countries would have come to her help and relieved her of
most of the complexities involved in that most difficult of all tasks
arising in the period of transition to socialism known as the
organizational task. In the present situation, when the socialist
revolution in the West is slow and late in coming, and Russia has to speed
up measures for her reorganisation if only in order to save the population
from starvation and afterwards the whole country from a possible foreign
military invasion-in the present situation we have to borrow from the
advanced countries, not their help in socialist organization and the
support of the workers, but the help of their bourgeoisie and capitalist
intellectuals.

Thingshave so shaped themselves that we are able to get this help by
organising the assistance of the bourgeois intellectuals in solving the new
organisational problems of the Soviet power. This assistance can be secured
by paying high salaries to the best specialists in every field of
know-ledge, both to the citizens of this country and to those invited from
abroad. Naturally, in a developed socialist society it would appear quite
unfair and incorrect for members of the bourgeois intelligentsia to receive
considerably higher pay than that received by the best sections of the
working class. Under the conditions of practical reality, however... {2} we must solve this pressing problem by means of this (unfair) remuneration
for bourgeois specialists at much higher rates.

If, for example, we found that in order to organise production in’ Russia
on new lines, in order to raise the productivity of labour and train our
people in the art of working in better conditions we had to employ for this
purpose, say two thousand big specialists in different fields of knowledge,
specialists from among Russian and still more from among foreign, let us
say, American sources-if we had to pay them fifty or a hundred million
rubles a year, such an expense, from the point of view of the interests of
the national economy, and generally from the point of view of abandoning
out-worn methods of production for newer and more up-to-date methods, would
be fully warranted. Such a sum is worth paying to have our people trained
in better methods and techniques of production, and we shall have to pay it
because, short of the victory of the socialist revolution in other
countries, there is no other possibility of getting this leadership.

Ofcourse, employment of the labour and guidance of the bourgeois
intellectuals in combination with proper control by the democratic
organisations of the working people and the Soviets, will create a number
of new problems, but these problems will be quite solvable. No difficulties
can stop us from solving these problems, as we have no other way out
towards a higher organization of production under the present
situation.

Ishall go further. Big capitalism has created systems of work
organization, which, under the prevailing conditions of exploitation of the
masses, represent the harshest form of enslavement by which the minority,
the propertied classes, wring out of the working people surplus amounts of
labour, strength, blood and nerves. At the same time they are the last word
in the scientific organization of production, and as such, have to be
adopted by the Socialist Soviet Republic and readjusted to serve the
interests of our accounting and control over production on the one hand,
and raising the productivity of labour, on the other. For instance, the
famous Taylor system, which is so widespread in America, is famous
precisely because it is the last word in reckless capitalist
exploitation. One can understand why this system met with such an intense
hatred and protest on the part of the workers. At the same time, we must
not for a moment forget that the Taylor system represents the tremendous progress of
science, which systematically analyses the process of production and points
the way towards an immense increase in the efficiency of human labour. The
scientific researches which the introduction of the Taylor system started
in America, notably that of motion study, as the Americans call it, yielded
important data allowing the working population to be trained in
incomparably higher methods of labour in general and of work organisation
in particular.

Thenegative aspect of Taylorism was that it was applied in conditions
of capitalist slavery and served as a means of squeezing double and triple
the amount of labour out of the workers at the old rates of pay regardless
of whether the hired workers were capable of giving this double and triple
amount of labour in the same number of working hours without detriment to
the human organism. The Socialist Soviet Republic is faced with a task
which can be briefly formulated thus: we must introduce the Taylor system
and scientific American efficiency of labour throughout Russia by combining
this system with a reduction in working time, with the application of new
methods of production and work organisation undetrimental to the labour
power of the working population. On the contrary, the Taylor system,
properly controlled and intelligently applied by the working people
themselves, will serve as a reliable means of further greatly reducing the
obligatory working day for the entire working population, will serve as an
effective means of dealing, in a fairly short space of time, with a task
that could roughly be expressed as follows: six hours of physical work
daily for every adult citizen and four hours of work in running the
state.

Theadoption of such a system would call for very many new skills and
new organisational bodies. Without doubt, this will create for us many
difficulties, and the posing of such a task will even evoke perplexity if
not resistance among certain sections of the working people themselves. We
may be sure, however, that the progressive elements among the working class
will understand the need for such a transition, and that the appalling
extent of the economic chaos witnessed in the towns and villages by
millions of men returning from the front who had been torn away from it all and now saw the full extent of the ravages caused by the war-all this,
without doubt, has prepared the ground for shaping public opinion in this
direction, and we may be sure that the transition which we have roughly
outlined above will be accepted as a practical task by all elements among
the working classes who have now consciously sided with the Soviet
government.

Chapter IX

Aneconomic transition of the above nature calls also for a
corresponding change in the functions of Soviet leadership. It is quite
natural, in a situation under which the main task was to convince the
majority of the nation or to win power and crush the resistance of the
exploiters, that among the leaders, too, those who came to the fore should
have been agitators in regard to the masses, with whom Soviet power was
more closely connected than any other democratic form of government in the
past. Naturally, winning over the majority of the population or drawing it
into a hard and difficult armed struggle against the exploiters called
above all for agitators of ability. Conversely, the tasks outlined above,
and aimed at establishing accounting and control over production and
distribution, advance to the fore practical managers and
organisers. Accordingly, a certain reappraisal of leaders, certain shifts
among them, should be effected in cases where they are unable to adapt
themselves to the new conditions and the new task. Naturally, the
leadership of a past period accustomed chiefly to agitators’ tasks, would
find such a transition very difficult. Naturally, a number of mistakes
because of this was unavoidable. Both the leaders and the Soviet electorate
at large, that is, the working and exploited masses, must now be made to
see the necessity for this change.

Amongthe working and exploited masses there is far more talent and
ability as organisers than as agitators, for the entire work milieu of
these classes demanded of them to a much greater extent the ability to
organise joint work and a system of accounting and control over production
and distribution. Their former conditions of life, on the contrary, provided far less grounds for advancing from their midst leaders possessing
the gift of agitators or propagandists. Perhaps that is why we so often see
now agitators and propagandists by vocation or calling who are compelled to
assume the tasks of organisers, and who have it brought home to them at
every step that they are not quite fit for the job and that the workers and
peasants are disappointed and dissatisfied with them. These mistakes arid
failures of the Soviet government often provoke malicious glee among
classes that are hostile to the idea of a socialist remodelling of society,
among members of the bourgeois parties or those who call themselves
socialist parties but who actually serve the bourgeoisie with zeal-people
like the Mensheviks and the Right Socialist-Revolutionaries. Clear as the
historical inevitability of these mistakes is, it is equally clear that the
shortcomings in this respect are merely the growing pains of the new
socialist society. There can be no doubt that the representatives of Soviet
power all over Russia can and will requalify without great difficulty, that
the practical agitators will learn to occupy a befitting leading
place. This, however, will take time, and only practical experience by
trial and error is capable of bringing a clear realisation of the need for
change, capable of bringing to the fore a number of people, or even a whole
cross-section, fit to deal with the new tasks. There is probably more
organising talent among the workers and peasants than the bourgeoisie
imagine. The trouble is that these talents have no chance to develop, make
good and win a place for themselves in the conditions of capitalist
economy.

Onthe other hand, if we clearly recognise today the need for enlisting
new organising talent on a broad scale to the business of running the
state, if we-guided by the principles of Soviet power-start systematically
promoting to leading positions people who have practical experience in this
business, we shall succeed in a short time in building up a new stratum of
practical organisers of production, who, on the basis of the principles
evolved by Soviet power, principles cast among the masses and carried into
practice by the masses under the control of Soviet bodies representing the
mass membership, will win a position for themselves befitting their role of
leadership.

Chapter X

Sovietgovernment will have to pass over, or rather it will
simultaneously have to deal with, the problem of applying corresponding
principles to the bulk of the workers and peasants. Here the task of
introducing labour conscription presents its other side to us. We must
approach this problem differently and highlight different things to those
that have to be applied in the case of the wealthy classes. We see no
essential need for registering all the working people, for keeping an eye
on their stocks of currency notes or their consumption, since all the
conditions of life compel the vast majority of these sections of the
population to work for their living and give them no chance to hoard
anything but the most meagre stocks. Therefore, the task of introducing
labour conscription in this field resolves itself into the task of
establishing labour discipline and self-discipline.

Inthe old capitalist society discipline over the working people was
enforced by capital through the constant threat of starvation. This threat
being combined with excessively heavy toil and the workers’ awareness that
they were working, not for themselves, but for somebody else’s benefit, the
conditions of labour became a constant struggle of the great majority of
the working people against the organisers of production. This inevitably
created a psychology in which public opinion among the working people not
only did not frown on poor work or shirkers, but, on the contrary, saw in
this an inevitable and legitimate protest against or means of resistance to
the excessive demands of the exploiters. If the bourgeois press and its
echoers are now shouting so much about anarchy among the workers, about
their lack of discipline and excessive demands, the vicious nature of this
criticism is so obvious that it is not worth dwelling on. It is only
natural that in a country like Russia, where the bulk of the population for
the last three years has endured such appalling hunger and privations,
there should have been a number of cases of utter despondency and a
break-down of organisation. To demand a quick change in this connection or
to expect such changes to be achieved by several decrees, Would be as
absurd as resorting to appeals in an attempt to restore good cheer and
energy into a man who had been beaten within an inch of his life. Only the Soviet government, created by
the working people themselves, and taking into consideration the growing
signs of recovery among them, is in a position to carry out radical changes
in this respect.

Theneed for working out systematic measures to improve self-discipline
among the working people has now been fully brought home to the
representatives of Soviet power and its supporters—the political-minded
trade union leaders, for instance. There is no doubt that in the
environment of capitalist society in general, and still more, in the
atmosphere of frenzied, unbridled speculation created by the war, there has
seeped in among the working class an element of demoralisation that will
seriously need coping with. All the more that, owing to the war, the
composition of the working-class vanguard itself has not changed for the
better either. Therefore, the maintenance of discipline among the working
people, the organisation of control over the measure of labour and the
intensity of labour, the introduction of special industrial courts for
establishing the measure of labour, for prosecuting those guilty of
flagrant violations of this measure, and for exercising systematic
influence on the majority with the object of raising this measure-all this
has now been brought to the fore as one of the most urgent tasks of the
Soviet government.

Theonly thing is to bear in mind that in bourgeois society one of the
principal instruments of social education, namely, the press, completely
failed to discharge its task in this respect. And to this day our Soviet
press, too, is still largely under the influence of the old habits and old
traditions of bourgeois society. This is evidenced, among other things, by
the fact that our press, like the old bourgeois press, continues to devote
too much space and attention to political trivia, to those personal
questions of political leadership by which the capitalists of all countries
have striven to draw the attention of the masses away from the really
important, profound and cardinal questions of their life.

---
Notes:
{1}
The beginning of the shorthand record has not been found.— Ed .

{2}
Part of the sentence illegible and has been omitted. —Ed .

{3}
This was dictated to a stenographer by Lenin on March 23-28, 1918. His
work on the article was apparently connected with the forthcoming
discussion in the Central Committee of the R.C.P.(B.) of the plan for
developing socialist construction. In his opening speech at the plenary
meeting of the C.C. held on April 7 Lenin stressed that the revolution was
living through a “new period”. The Central Committee instructed Lenin
“to draw up theses con-cerning the present situation and submit them to
the C.C.” In connection with this decision Lenin wrote his “Theses on the
Tasks of the Soviet Government in the Present Situation” (this was the
heading given in the manuscript of Lenin’s work

The Immediate Tasks of the Soviet Government; see present edition,
Vol. 27, pp. 236-77), Forchapters X (end), XI, XII and XIII see Vol. 27 of
this edition, pp. 203-18. Part of Chapter IV and chapters V, VI, VII, VIII, IX and the beginning of Ch. X of the original
version of the article “The Immediate Tasks of the Soviet Government” were first published in Vol. 36 of Lenin’s Collected
Works, Fifth Russian Edition. Chapters I, II, III and the beginning of
Ch. IV have not yet been found.