V. I. Lenin

Draft Decision Of The Council Of People’s Commissars [1]

The Council of people’s Commissars, fully approving and welcoming the idea underlying the draft for the foundation of the Socialist Academy, instructs the Commissariat for Education to remake this draft on the following bases:

1)—a publishing society of a Marxist trend to be made the cornerstone; 2)—Marxist forces abroad to be enlisted in especially large numbers; 3)—a series of social investigations to be made one of the primary tasks; 4)—immediate measures to be taken to ascertain, assemble and utilise Russian personnel available for lecturing.

Endnotes

[1] The question of
founding a Socialist Academy of Social Sciences was discussed by
the Council of People’s Commissars on May 25, 1918. The
draft statute for the Academy submitted by the People’s
Commissariat for Education did not satisfy Lenin and he drew up
the proposals published here; apparently they were written
during the meeting. They were su sequently approved by the
C.P.C.

On June 7, the Government considered the Statute of the
Social-ist Academy which had been revised on the basis of
Lenin’s proposals. The Decree (Statute) of the All-Russia
C.E.C. on the Socialist Academy of Social Sciences was published
on July 12, 1918, in the newspaper Izvestia VTsNC No. 145 (see
Decrees of the Soviet Gouernment, Russ. ed., Vol. 2, 1959,
pp. 468-79). The Academy was officially opened on October 1,
1918.