V. I. Lenin

Draft Plan of
Scientific and Technical Work [1]

The Supreme Economic Council should immediately give its instructions to the
Academy of Sciences, which has launched a systematic study and investigation of the natural
productive forces [2] of
Russia, to set up a number of expert commissions for the speediest possible compilation of a
plan for the reorganisation of industry and the economic progress of Russia. The plan should
include: the rational distribution of industry in Russia from the standpoint of proximity to
raw materials and the lowest consumption of labour-power in the transition from the
processing of the raw materials to all subsequent stages in the processing of
semi-manufactured goods, up to and including the output of the finished product; the rational
merging and concentration of industry in a few big enterprises from the standpoint of the
most up-todate large-scale industry, especially trusts; enabling the present Russian Soviet
Republic (excluding the Ukraine and the regions occupied by the Germans) as far as possible
to provide itself independently with all the chief items of raw materials and organise main
branches of industry; special attention to the electrification of industry and transport and
the application of electricity to farming, and the use of lower grades of fuel (peat,
low-grade coal) for the production of electricity, with the lowest possible expenditure on
extraction and transport; water power and wind motors in general and in their application to
farming.

Endnotes

[1] The Draft Plan of Scientific
and Technical Work marked an important stage in the process of mobilising Russia's scientific
personnel to deal with the problems of the national economy.

Negotiations with the Academy of Sciences were initiated by Lenin and the
Soviet Government in January 1918. Lenin directed the work of the People's Commissariat for
Education, which was conducting the negotiations. At the end of March the Academy of Sciences
in a declaration to the Soviet Government consented to the government's proposal that the
Academy should work in the field of exploring the country's natural resources. On April 12,
at a meeting of the Council of People's Commissars with Lenin in the chair a resolution was
passed that set the Academy of Sciences "the urgent task of systematically solving the
problems of the correct distribution of the country's industry and the most rational
utilisation of economic resources". A decision was also taken recognising the need to finance
the work of the Academy in this field. With considerable financial backing from the
government the Academy's Commission for the Study of Russia's Natural Productive Forces
enlarged the scope of its activities.

In the Draft Plan of Scientific and Technical Work Lenin outlined a broad
programme for the work of the Academy of Sciences and all the country's scientific and
technical personnel. Lenin's pointers were later amplified in a number of documents drawn up
by the Supreme Economic Council (SEC). One of these was the model programme of work of the
expert commissions of the Academy of Sciences compiled on April 25 by the Supreme Economic
Council Department for the Organisation of Production. Guided by Lenin's instructions, the
Soviet economic departments in the capital and the provinces, the Academy of Sciences and
various research institutes and societies studied the country's natural wealth, power
resources and various problems connected with the electrification of the national economy.
Committees and bureaus for the electrification of the basic industrial areas were set u in
Petrograd and Moscow in the first months of Soviet rule. In Me autumn of 1918, the Central
Electrotechnical Council was formed on a mandate from Lenin, which set out its main task as
"producing the best and most rapid solution of the technical and estimating problems in the
field of the new power developments". Electrification on a large scale for those days was
launched in 1918.

[2] Publication of this material
must be accelerated to the utmost; a note about this must be sent to the Commissariat for
Education, the Printing Workers’ Trade Union and the Commissariat for Labour. [3]

[3] Lenin is referring to the
materials provied by the Commission for the Stud of Russia’s Natural Prdouctive Forces, set
up by the Academy of Sciences in 1915. On Lenin’s instuctin the commission was given much
wider scope for publishing its findings. A series of books called “Russa’s Riches” and the
multi-volume The Natural roductive forces of Russia began to appear. In the frist
three years of Soviet power (1918-1920) the commission published four times as man books as
in the previous three years preceeding the revolution.