Lenin

V. I.
Lenin
The Question of Ministry of Education Policy
[2]
(SUPPLEMENT TO THE DISCUSSION ON PUBLIC EDUCATION)
Written:
Written April 27 (May 10), 1913
Published:
First published in 1930 in the second and third editions of V. I. Lenin’s
Collected Works
, Vol. XVI.

Published according to the manuscript.
Source:
Lenin
Collected Works
,

Progress Publishers, 1977
,

Moscow, Volume 19
,

pages
137-146
.
Translated:
The Late George Hanna
Transcription\Markup:
R. Cymbala
Public Domain:
Lenin Internet Archive (2004).
You may freely copy, distribute, display and perform this work; as well as make derivative and
commercial works. Please credit “Marxists Internet
Archive” as your source.
•
README
Our
Ministry of Public (forgive the expression)
“Education” boasts inordinately of the particularly rapid growth of its
expenditure. In the explanatory note to the 1913 budget by the Prime
Minister and the Minister of Finance we find a summary of the estimates of
the Ministry of Public (so-called) Education for the post-revolutionary
years. These estimates have increased from 46,000,000 rubles in 1907 to
137,000,000 in 1913. A tremendous growth—almost trebled in something like
six years!
But our official praise-mongers who laud the police “law and order”
or
disorder in Russia ought not to have forgotten that ridiculously small figures always do grow with “
tremendous
”
rapidity when increases in them are given as percentages. If you give five
kopeks to a beggar who owns only three his “property” will immediately
show a “tremendous” growth—it will be 167 per cent greater!
Would it not have been more fitting for the Ministry, if it did not aim
at
befogging the minds of the people and concealing the beggarly position of public education in Russia, to cite
other data
? Would it not have been more fitting to cite figures that do not
compare today’s five kopeks with yesterday’s three, but compare what we
have with what is essential to a civilised state? He who does not
wish to deceive either himself or the people should admit that the Ministry
was in duty bound to produce these figures, and that by not
producing such figures the Ministry was not doing its duty. Instead of
making clear to the people, and the people’s representatives, what the needs of the state are, the
Ministry conceals these needs and engages in a foolish governmental game of figures, a governmental rehash of old figures that
explain nothing.
I
do not have at my disposal, of course, even a hundredth part of the
means and sources for studying public education that are available to the
Ministry. But I have made an attempt to obtain at least a little
source material. And I assert boldly that I can cite indisputable
official figures that really do make clear the situation in our
official public “miseducation”.
I
take the official government
Russian Yearbook for 1910, published by the Ministry of the Interior (St. Petersburg, 1911).
On
page 211, I read that the total number attending schools in
the Russian Empire, lumping together primary, secondary and higher schools
and educational establishments of all kinds, was 6,200,172 in 1904 and
7,095,351 in 1908. An obvious increase. The year 1905
, the year of the great awakening of the masses of the people in Russia, the year of the
great struggle of the people for freedom under the leadership of the
proletariat, was a year that forced even our hidebound Ministry to
make a move.
But just look at the poverty we are doomed to, thanks to the
retention of officialdom, thanks to the almighty power of the feudal
landowners, even under conditions of the most rapid “departmental” progress.
The same
Russian Yearbook relates in the same place that there were 46.7 people attending school to every 1,000 in habitants in 1908 (in
1904 the figure was 44.3 to every 1,000 inhabitants).
What do we learn from these figures from a Ministry of the Interior
publication that the Ministry of Public Education did not feel inclined to
report to the Duma? What does that proportion mean—less
than 50 people out of a 1,000 attending school
?
It
tells us, you gentlemen who uphold our hidebound public
miseducation, of the unbelievable backwardness and barbarity of
Russia thanks to the omnipotence of the feudal landowners in our state. The
number of children and adolescents of school age in Russia amounts to over
20 per cent of the population, that is, to more than one-fifth
.
Even
Messrs. Kasso and Kokovtsov could without difficulty have learned these
figures from their departmental clerks.
And so, we have
22
per cent of the population of school age and 4.7 per cent attending school, which is only a
little more than one-fifth
! This means that about four-fifths of the children and adolescents of Russia are
deprived of public education!
There is no other country so barbarous and in which the masses of the
people are robbed to such an extent of education, light and
knowledge—no other such country has remained in Europe; Russia is the
exception. This reversion of the masses of the people, especially the
peasantry, to savagery, is not fortuitous, it is inevitable
under the yoke of the landowners, who have seized tens and more tens of millions
of dessiatines of land, who have, seized state power both in the Duma and
in the Council of State, and not only in these institutions, which are
relatively low-ranking institutions....
Four-fifths of the rising generation are doomed to illiteracy by the
feudal state system of Russia. This stultifying of the people by the feudal
authorities has its correlative in the country’s illiteracy. The same
government
Russian Year book estimates (on page 88) that only 21 per cent of the population of Russia are literate, and even if children of
pre
-school age (i.e., children under nine) are deducted from the
total population, the number will still be only 27 per cent.
In
civilised countries there are no illiterates at all (as in Sweden or
Denmark), or a mere one or two per cent (as in Switzerland or
Germany). Even backward Austria-Hungary has provided her Slav population
with conditions incomparably more civilised than feudal Russia
has; in Austria there are 39 per cent of illiterates and in Hungary 50
per cent. It would be as well for our chauvinists, Rights, nationalists and
Octobrists to think about these figures, if they have not set
themselves the “statesmanlike” aim of forgetting how to think, and of
teaching the same to the people. But even if they have forgotten, the
people of Russia are learning more and more to think, and to
think, furthermore about which class it is that by its dominance in the
state condemns the Russian peasants to material and spiritual poverty.
America is not among the advanced countries as far as the
number of literates is concerned. There are about 11 per cent
illiterates and among the Negroes the figure is as high as 44 per cent. But
the American Negroes are more than twice as well off in respect of
public education as the Russian peasantry. The American Negroes, no matter
how much they may be, to the shame of the American Republic, oppressed, are
better off than the Russian peasants—and they are better off because
exactly half a century ago the people routed the American slave-owners,
crushed that serpent and completely swept away slavery and the slave-owning
state system, and the political privileges of the slave-owners in America.
The
Kassos, Kokovtsovs and Maklakovs will teach the Russian people to
copy the American example.
In
1908 there were
17,000,000 attending school in America, that is, 192 per 1,000 inhabitants
—
more than four times the number in Russia. Forty-three years ago, in 1870, when America had only
just begun to build her free way of life after purging the country of the diehards of slavery—forty-three years ago there were
in America 6,871,522 people at tending school, i.e., more than in Russia in
1904 and almost as many as in 1908. But even as far back as 1870
there were 178 ( one hundred and seventy-eight
) people enrolled in schools to every 1,000 inhabitants, little short of four times the number
enrolled in Russia today
.
And there, gentlemen, you have further proof that Russia
still has to win for herself in persistent revolutionary struggle by the people
that freedom the Americans won for them selves half a century ago.
The estimate for the Russian Ministry of Public Miseducation is fixed
at 136,700,000 rubles for 1913. This amounts to only 80 kopeks per head of
the population (170,000,000 in 1913). Even if we accept the “sum-total of
state expenditure on education” that the Minister of Finance gives us on
page 109 of his explanatory text to the budget, that is, 204,900,000
rubles, we still have only 1 ruble 20 kopeks per head. In Belgium, Britain
and Germany the amount expended on education is two to three rubles and
even three rubles fifty kopeks per head of the population. In 1910, America
expended 426,000,000 dollars, i.e., 852,000,000 rubles or 9 rubles
24 kopeks per head of the population, on public education. Forty-three
years ago, in 1870, the American Republic was spending 126,000,000 rubles a year on
education, i.e., 3 rubles 30 kopeks per head.
The official pens of government officials and the officials themselves
will object and tell us that Russia is poor, that she has no money. That is
true, Russia is not only poor, she is a beggar when it comes to public
education. To make up for it, Russia is very “rich” when it comes to
expenditure on the feudal state, ruled by landowners, or expenditure on the
police, the army, on rents and on salaries of ten thousand rubles for
landowners who have reached “high” government posts, expenditure on risky
adventures and plunder, yesterday in Korea or on the River Yalu, today in
Mongolia or in Turkish Armenia. Russia will always remain poor and
beggarly in respect of expenditure on public education until
the public educates itself sufficiently to cast off the yoke of feudal
landowners.
Russia is poor when it comes to the salaries of school teachers. They
are paid a miserable pittance. School-teachers starve and freeze in
unheated huts that are scarcely fit for human habitation. School-teachers
live together with the cattle that the peasants take into their huts in
winter. School-teachers are persecuted by every police sergeant, by every
village adherent of the Black Hundreds, by volunteer spies or detectives,
to say nothing of the hole-picking and persecution by higher
officials. Russia is too poor to pay a decent salary to honest workers in
the field of public education, but Russia is rich enough to waste millions
and tens of millions on aristocratic parasites, on military ad ventures and
on hand-outs to owners of sugar refineries, oil kings and so on.
There is one other figure, the last one taken from American life,
gentlemen, that will show the peoples oppressed by the Russian landowners
and their government, how the people live who have been
able to achieve freedom through a revolutionary struggle. In 1870, in
America there were 200,515 school-teachers with a total salary of
37,800,000 dollars, i.e., an average of 189 dollars or
377 rubles per teacher per annum. And that was forty years
ago! In America today there are
523,210 school-teachers and their total salaries come to 253,900,000 dollars, i.e., 483 dollars or
966 rubles per teacher per annum. And in Russia, even at the present
level of the productive forces, it would be quite possible at this very
moment to guarantee a no less satisfactory salary to an army of
school-teachers who are helping to lift the people out of their ignorance,
darkness and oppression, if ... if the whole state system of Russia, from
top to bottom, were reorganised on lines as democratic as the American
system.
Either poverty and barbarism arising out of the full power of the
feudal landowners, arising out of the law and order or disorder of the June
Third law, or freedom and civilisation arising out of the ability and
determination to win freedom—such is the object-lesson
Russian citizens are taught by the estimates put forward by the Ministry of
Public Education.
So
far I have touched upon the purely material, or even financial,
aspect of the matter. Incomparably more melancholy or, rather, more
disgusting, is the picture of spiritual bondage, humiliation, suppression
and lack of rights of the teachers and those they teach in Russia. The
whole activity of the Ministry of Public Education in this field is pure
mockery of the rights of citizens, mockery of the people. Police
surveillance, police violence, police interference with the
education of the people in general and of workers in particular, police
destruction of whatever the people them selves do for their own
enlightenment—this is what the entire activity of the Ministry
amounts to, the Ministry whose estimate will be approved by the landowning
gentry, from Rights to Octobrists inclusive.
And in order to prove the correctness of my words, gentlemen
of the Fourth Duma, I will call a witness that even you, the
landowners, cannot object to. My witness is the Octobrist
Mr.
Klyuzhev
, member of the Third and Fourth Dumas, member of the supervisory council of the Second and Third Women’s Gymnasia in Samara,
member of the school committee of the Samara City Council, member of the
auditing board of the Samara Gubernia Zemstvo, former inspector of public
schools. I have given you a list of the offices and titles (using the
official reference book of the Third Duma) of this Octobrist
to
prove to you that the government itself
, the landowners themselves in our landowners’ Zemstvo, have given Mr. Klyuzhev
most important posts in the “work” (the work of spies and butchers) of our Ministry of Public
Stultification.
Mr.
Klyuzhev, if anybody, has, of course, made his entire career as a
law-abiding, God-fearing civil servant. And, of course, Mr. Klyuzhev, if
anybody, has by his faithful service in the district earned the confidence
of the nobility and the landowners.
And now here are some passages from a speech by this most thoroughly
reliable (from the feudal point of view) witness; the speech was made in
the
Third
Duma in respect of the estimate submitted by the
Ministry of Public Education.
The
Samara Zemstvo, Mr. Klyuzhev told the Third Duma, unanimously
adopted the proposal of Mr. Klyuzhev to make application for the conversion of some village two-year schools into
four-year schools. The regional supervisor, so the law-abiding and
God-fearing Mr. Klyuzhev reports, refused this. Why? The official
explanation was: “ in view of the insignificant number of children of
school age
.
And so Mr. Klyuzhev made the following comparison:
we
(he says of landowner-oppressed Russia) have not a single
four-year school for the 6,000 inhabitants of the Samara
villages. In the town of Serdobol (Finland) with
2,800 in habitants there are four secondary (and higher than secondary)
schools.
This comparison was made by the Octobrist, the most worthy
Peredonov
[1]
... excuse the slip, the most worthy Mr. Klyuzhev in the Third Duma. Ponder
over that comparison, Messrs. Duma representatives, if not of the people,
then at least of the landowners. Who made application to open schools?
Could it be the Lefts? The muzhiks? The workers? God forbid! It was the
Samara Zemstvo that made the application unanimously
, that is, it was the Samara landowners
, the most ardent Black-Hundred adherents among them. And the government, through its supervisor, refused the request
on the excuse that there was an “ insignificant
” number of children of school age! Was I not in every way right when I said that the
government hinders public education in Russia, that the government
is the biggest enemy of public education in Russia?
The culture, civilisation, freedom, literacy, educated women and so on
that we see in Finland derive exclusively from there being
no
such “social evil” as the Russian Government in Finland, Now you
want to foist this evil on Fin land and make her, too, an enslaved
country. You will not, succeed in that, gentlemen! By your attempts to
impose political slavery on Finland you will only accelerate the awakening
of the peoples of Russia from political slavery!
I
will quote another passage from the Octobrist witness, Mr. Klyuzhev. “How are teachers recruited?” Mr. Klyuzhev asked in his
speech and himself provided the following answer:
“
One prominent Samara man, by the name of Popov, bequeathed the necessary sum to endow a Teachers’ Seminary for Women.” And
who do you think was appointed head of the Seminary? This is what the
executor of the late Popov writes: “
The widow of a General of the
Guard
, was appointed head of the Seminary and she herself admitted
that this was the first time in her life she had heard of the existence of
an educational establishment called a Teachers’ Seminary for Women”!
Don’t imagine that I took this from a collection of Demyan Bedny’s
fables, from the sort of fable for which the magazine
Prosveshcheniye was fined and its editor imprisoned. Nothing of
the sort. This fact was taken from the speech of the Octobrist Klyuzhev,
who fears (as a God-fearing and police-fearing man) even
to ponder the significance of this fact. For this fact, once again, shows beyond all
doubt that there is no more vicious, no more implacable enemy of the
education of the people in Russia than the Russian Government. And
gentlemen who bequeath money for public education should realise that they
are throwing it away, worse than throwing it away. They desire to bequeath
their money to provide education for the people, but actually
it
turns out that they are giving it to
Generals of the Guards and their widows
. If such philanthropists do not wish to throw their money away they must understand that they should bequeath it to the
Social-Democrats, who alone are able to use that money to provide
the people with real education that is really independent of
“Generals of the Guards”—and of timorous and law-abiding Klyuzhevs.
Still another passage from the speech of the same Mr. Klyuzhev.
“
It
was in vain that we of the Third Duma desired free access to higher educational establishments for seminar pupils. The
Ministry did not deem it possible to accede to our wishes.” “Incidentally
the government bars the way to higher education, not to seminar pupils
alone, but to the children of the peasant and urban petty-bourgeois social
estates in general. This is no elegant phrase but the truth,” exclaimed
the Octobrist official of the Ministry of Public Education. “Out of the
119,000 Gymnasium students only 18,000 are peasants. Peasants constitute
only 15 per cent of those studying in all the establishments of the
Ministry of Public Education. In the Theological Seminaries only 1,300 of
the 20,500 pupils are peasants. Peasants are not admitted at all to the
Cadet Corps and similar institutions.” (These passages from Klyuzhev’s
speech were, incidentally, cited in an article by K. Dobroserdov in
Nevskaya Zvezda
No. 6, for 1912, dated May 22, 1912.)
That is how Mr. Klyuzhev spoke in the Third Duma. The depositions of
that witness will not be refuted by those who rule the roost in the Fourth
Duma. The witness, against his own will and despite his
wishes, fully corroborates the revolutionary appraisal of the
present situation in Russia in general, and of public education in
particular. And what, indeed, does a government deserve that, in the words
of a prominent government official and member of the ruling party of
Octobrists, bars the way to education for the peasants and urban
petty bourgeois?
Imagine, gentlemen, what such a government deserves from the point of
view of the urban petty bourgeoisie and the peasants!
And do not forget that in Russia the peasants and the urban petty
bourgeoisie constitute 88 per cent of the population, that is, a little
less than nine-tenths of the people. The nobility constitute only
one and a half per cent
. And so the government is taking money from nine-tenths of the people for schools and educational establishments
of all kinds and using that money to teach the nobility,
barring the way to the peasant and urban petty bourgeois! Is it
not clear what this government of the nobility deserves? This government
that oppresses nine-tenths of the population in order to preserve the
privileges of one-hundredth of the population—what does it
deserve?
And now, finally, for the last quotation from my witness, the Octobrist
official of the Ministry of Public Education, and member of the Third (and
Fourth) Dumas, Mr. Klyuzhev:
“
In
the five years from 1906 to 1910,” said
Mr. Klyuzhev, “in the Kazan area, the following have been removed from
their posts:

21 head masters of secondary and primary schools, 32 inspectors of
public schools and
1,054 urban school-teachers; 870 people of these categories have been transferred. Imagine it,”
exclaimed Mr. Klyuzhev, “how can our school-teacher sleep peacefully?
He may go to bed in Astrakhan and not be sure that he will not be in
Vyatka the next day. Try to understand the psychology of the pedagogue
who is driven about like a hunted rabbit!”
This is not the exclamation of some “Left” school-teacher, but of an
Octobrist. These figures were cited by a diligent civil servant. He is
your witness, gentlemen of the Right, nationalists and Octobrists!
This witness of “yours” is compelled to admit the most scandalous, most
shameless and most disgusting arbitrariness on the part of the government
in its attitude to teachers! This witness of yours
, gentlemen who rule the roost in the Fourth Duma and the Council of State, has been forced
to admit the fact that teachers in Russia are “ driven
” like rabbits by the Russian Government!
On
the basis provided by this fact, one of thousands and thousands of
similar facts in Russian life, we ask the Russian people and all the
peoples of Russia: do we need a government to protect the privileges of the
nobility and to “ drive
” the people’s teachers “like rabbits”?
Does not this government deserve to be driven out by the people?
Yes, the Russian people’s teachers are driven like rabbits. Yes, the
government bars the way to education to nine-tenths of the population of
Russia. Yes, our Ministry of Public Education is a ministry of police
espionage, a minis try that derides youth, and jeers at the people’s thirst
for knowledge. But far from all the Russian peasants, not to mention the
Russian workers, resemble rabbits
, honourable members of the
Fourth Duma. The working class were able to prove this in 1905, and they
will be able to prove again, and to prove more impressively, and much more
seriously, that they are capable of a revolutionary struggle for real
freedom and for real public education and not that of Kasso or of
the nobility.
Notes
[1]
Peredonov—a type of teacher-spy and dull lout from Sologub’s novel
The Petty Imp
.  — Lenin
[2]
Lenin prepared this draft speech for a Bolshevik deputy to the Duma;
the speech was delivered on June 4 (17), 1913 by A. E. Badayev during the
debate on the Budget Committee’s report on estimates of the Ministry of
Education for 1913. The greater part of Lenin’s draft was read almost word
for word by Badayev, but he did not finish the speech. When he read the
sentence “Does not this government deserve to be driven out by the
people?” he was deprived of the right to speak.
Index
|
Volume 19
|
Collected Works
|

V. I.
Lenin
Letter to M. S. Olminsky (Vitimsky)
Written:
Written June 3 (16), 1913
Published:
First published in 1930 in the second and third editions of V. I. Lenin’s
Collected Works
, Vol. XVI.

Published according to the manuscript.
Source:
Lenin
Collected Works
,

Progress Publishers, 1977
,

Moscow, Volume 19
,

pages
170-172
.
Translated:
The Late George Hanna
Transcription\Markup:
R. Cymbala
Public Domain:
Lenin Internet Archive (2004).
You may freely copy, distribute, display and perform this work; as well as make derivative and
commercial works. Please credit “Marxists Internet
Archive” as your source.
•
README
Dear
Colleague, First let me congratulate you on your two articles that, in my opinion,
were particularly well done—one about the liberals and the
conference of
Pravda and
Luch with liberal editors, and the other in No. 123, about
Pravda
.
[2]
In
respect of the question of An and Vlasov that you have raised, I
cannot agree with you. I think you have taken the superficial
,
external aspect that is immediately visible, and are prepared to forget
what is more important, what is basic. And that is dangerous in the highest
degree.
You say that An and Vlasov “attack the
Luch editors” and that “this has not been used”.
You are wrong. An and Vlasov accept what is basic in
Luch
, i.e., the slogan of “the struggle for an open party”, or
the slogan of peace (or unity) with the liquidators.
That is basic
. That is what
Luch wants. The very thing
Luch wants is to represent itself, not as an organ of the liquidators,
but as an organ of both liquidators and
Party people. This is a deception that cannot be allowed, it is more dangerous
than anything. And it is the deception Trotsky and Semkovsky are gambling
on.
To
continue—it is not quite true to say “this has not been
used”.
How should it be used? To say that An and Vlasov “attack
the
Luch editors and vindicate the
Pravda line”? That would be untrue. An and Vlasov do not vindicate the
fundamental line of
Pravda
, they either reject it (An) or do not understand it (Vlasov).
Or
should it be used in this way—the fact of Sedov’s liquidationism is admitted not
only by the enemies but also by the supporters of
Luch
? That would be true. And that is what has been done, incidentally, in my article (“Controversial Issues” No. 3,
in
Pravda
No. 11O).
[1]
“
You should divide and not unite your enemies”, you write
reproachfully to the tactless V. I., who, you say, “unites” them.
Permit me a few words in my defence.
One should divide and not unite one’s enemies—that is indisputable. Suppose, however, it is to the
advantage of one’s enemies to pretend that they are “divided”, that they have on
their side not only liquidators but “also” the Letts, “and” Trotsky,
“and” the Bund, “and” An? It is this essence of liquidationist tactics that you have not noticed—perhaps because you have
not read or have not heard everything about the August Conference. This,
indeed, is the essence and the substance of the entire tactics of “saving” the liquidators, i.e., saving the
freedom of liquidationist lies and liberalism to operate
from inside the
Party.
This is the only way a further attempt at saving the liquidators can be
made. And that adroit diplomat An (with the year-old babe Vlasov toddling
after him) is engaged in a very subtle game. You don’t know An! I
have studied his diplomacy for years and know how he hoodwinks the
whole of the Caucasus with it! An has a real talent for diplomacy
(I have known him since 1903)—it is, unfortunately, badly employed. He
wants to pretend he is against
Luch and in this way save
Luch
! This is quite obvious to anyone who has a good knowledge of the
history of the Party, especially during
January
1910 and
August
1912! An chided Dan over petty issues and gave in to him on
the main thing ( the slogan of the struggle for an open party),
because he wanted to show “his side” that he too is against the
liquidators.
No
mistake could be more disastrous than to take
An’s bait. You do not know (and that is understandable) all the
ins and outs of the relations between Trotsky, An, the Bund, Braun, etc.,
and
Luch
—but I do. There is nothing that could help the liquidators more than to recognise
An
as an anti-liquidator. This is a fact. An is their one “reliable”
support
. That is also a fact. Warmest regards. My best wishes for your health, keep in
good spirits. Write to me, I shall always be glad to chew things over with
you.
Yours,
V. I.
P.S.
I hear there are many rumours in St. Petersburg to the effect that
An (Chkheidze as well) “wanted to take”
Luch away from Dan
... but did not. I believe this “wanting to take” was for show
and it ended in an apparent compromise that was actually surrender
to Dan! Dan is an enemy battery poorly masked. An is another battery of the
same enemy, but skilfully masked. I assure you that I know this from my own
experience in the matter.
Notes
[1]
See pp. 156–59 of this volume.— Ed
.
[2]
The articles referred to were published by M. S. Olminsky (Vitimsky) in
Pravda
No. 106 and No. 123 on May 10 and May 30, 1913 under the
heading “Who Is on Whose Side?” and “The Truth”.
Index
|
Volume 19
|
Collected Works
|

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