Speech Delivered At The Third All-Russia Congress of The Russian Young Communist League [1] (The Congress greets Lenin with a tremendous ovation.)

Comrades, today I would like to talk on the fundamental tasks of the Young Communist
League and, in this connection, on what the youth organisations
in a socialist republic should be like in general.

It is all the more necessary to dwell on this question because
in a certain sense it may be said that it is the youth that will
be faced with the actual task of creating a communist society. For it is clear that the generation of working people
brought up in capitalist society can, at best, accomplish the
task of destroying the foundations of the old, the capitalist
way of life, which was built on exploitation. At best it will be
able to accomplish the tasks of creating a social system that
will help the proletariat and the working classes retain power
and lay a firm foundation, which can be built on only by a
generation that is starting to work under the new conditions, in
a situation in which relations based on the exploitation of man
by man no longer exist.

And so, in dealing from this angle with the tasks confronting
the youth, I must say that the tasks of the youth in general,
and of the Young Communist Leagues and all other organisations
in particular, might be summed up in a single word: learn.

Of course, this is only a "single word". It does not reply to
the principal and most essential questions: what to learn, and
how to learn? And the whole point here is that, with the
transformation of the old, capitalist society, the upbringing,
training and education of the new generations that will create
the communist society cannot be conducted on the old lines. The
teaching, training and education of the youth must proceed from
the material that has been left to us by the old society. We
can build communism only on the basis of the totality of
knowledge, organisations and institutions, only by using the
stock of human forces and means that have been left to us by the
old society. Only by radically remoulding the teaching,
organisation and training of the youth shall we be able to
ensure that the efforts of the younger generation will result in
the creation of a society that will be unlike the old society,
i.e., in the creation of a communist society. That is why we
must deal in detail with the question of what we should teach
the youth and how the youth should learn if it really wants to
justify the name of communist youth, and how it should be
trained so as to be able to complete and consummate what we have
started.

I must say that the first and most natural reply would seem to be that the Youth League, and the youth in general, who want to
advance to communism, should learn communism.

But this reply -- "learn communism" -- is too general. What do
we need in order to learn communism? What must be singled out
from the sum of general knowledge so as to acquire a knowledge
of communism? Here a number of dangers arise, which very often
manifest themselves whenever the task of learning communism is
presented incorrectly, or when it is interpreted in too
one-sided a manner.

Naturally, the first thought that enters one's mind is that
learning communism means assimilating the sum of knowledge that
is contained in communist manuals, pamphlets and books. But such
a definition of the study of communism would be too crude and
inadequate. If the study of communism consisted solely in
assimilating what is contained in communist books and pamphlets,
we might all too easily obtain communist text-jugglers or
braggarts, and this would very often do us harm, because such
people, after learning by rote what is set forth in communist
books and pamphlets, would prove incapable of combining the
various branches of knowledge, and would be unable to act in the
way communism really demands.

One of the greatest evils and misfortunes left to us by the
old, capitalist society is the complete rift between books and
practical life; we have had books explaining everything in the
best possible manner, yet in most cases these books contained
the most pernicious and hypocritical lies, a false description
of capitalist society.

That is why it would be most mistaken merely to assimilate book
knowledge about communism. No longer do our speeches and
articles merely reiterate what used to be said about communism,
because our speeches and articles are connected with our daily
work in all fields. Without work and without struggle, book
knowledge of communism obtained from communist pamphlets and
works is absolutely worthless, for it would continue the old
separation of theory and practice, the old rift which was the
most pernicious feature of the old, bourgeois society.

It would be still more dangerous to set about assimilating only
communist slogans. Had we not realised this danger in time, and
had we not directed all our efforts to averting this danger, the
half million or million young men and women who would have
called themselves Communists after studying communism in this
way would only greatly prejudice the cause of communism.

The question arises: how is all this to be blended for the
study of communism? What must we take from the old schools, from
the old kind of science? It was the declared aim of the old type
of school to produce men with an all-round education, to teach
the sciences in general. We know that this was utterly false,
since the whole of society was based and maintained on the
division of people into classes, into exploiters and oppressed. Since they were thoroughly imbued with the class
spirit, the old schools naturally gave knowledge only to the
children of the bourgeoisie. Every word was falsified in the
interests of the bourgeoisie. In these schools the younger
generation of workers and peasants were not so much educated as
drilled in the interests of that bourgeoisie. They were trained
in such a way as to be useful servants of the bourgeoisie, able
to create profits for it without disturbing its peace and
leisure. That is why, while rejecting the old type of schools,
we have made it our task to take from it only what we require
for genuine communist education.

This brings me to the reproaches and accusations which we
constantly hear levelled at the old schools, and which often
lead to wholly wrong conclusions. It is said that the old school
was a school of purely book knowledge, of ceaseless drilling and
grinding. That is true, but we must distinguish between what was
bad in the old schools and what is useful to us, and we must be
able to select from it what is necessary for communism.

The old schools provided purely book knowledge; they compelled
their pupils to assimilate a mass of useless, superfluous and
barren knowledge, which cluttered up the brain and turned the
younger generation into bureaucrats regimented according to a
single pattern. But it would mean falling into a grave error for
you to try to draw the conclusion that one can become a
Communist without assimilating the wealth of knowledge amassed
by mankind. It would be mistaken to think it sufficient to
learn communist slogans and the conclusions of communist
science, without acquiring that sum of knowledge of which
communism itself is a result. Marxism is an example which shows
how communism arose out of the sum of human knowledge.

You have read and heard that communist theory -- the science of
communism created in the main by Marx, this doctrine of Marxism
-- has ceased to be the work of a single socialist of the
nineteenth century, even though he was a genius, and that it has
become the doctrine of millions and tens of millions of
proletarians all over the world, who are applying it in their
struggle against capitalism. If you were to ask why the
teachings of Marx have been able to win the hearts and minds of
millions and tens of millions of the most revolutionary class,
you would receive only one answer: it was because Marx based his
work on the firm foundation of the human knowledge acquired
under capitalism. After making a study of the laws governing the
development of human society, Marx realised the inevitability of
capitalism developing towards communism. What is most important
is that he proved this on the sole basis of a most precise,
detailed and profound study of this capitalist society, by fully
assimilating all that earlier science had produced. He critically reshaped everything that had been created by human
society, without ignoring a single detail. He reconsidered,
subjected to criticism, and verified on the working-class
movement everything that human thinking had created, and
therefrom formulated conclusions which people hemmed in by
bourgeois limitations or bound by bourgeois prejudices could not
draw.

We must bear this in mind when, for example, we talk about proletarian culture. [2] We shall be unable to solve this problem
unless we clearly realise that only a precise knowledge and
transformation of the culture created by the entire development of
mankind will enable us to create a proletarian culture. The latter
is not clutched out of thin air; it is not an invention of those
who call themselves experts in proletarian culture. That is all
nonsense. Proletarian culture must be the logical development of
the store of knowledge mankind has accumulated under the yoke of
capitalist, landowner and bureaucratic society. All these roads
have been leading, and will continue to lead up to proletarian
culture, in the same way as political economy, as reshaped by
Marx, has shown us what human society must arrive at, shown us the
passage to the class struggle, to the beginning of the proletarian
revolution.

When we so often hear representatives of the youth, as well as
certain advocates of a new system of education, attacking the
old schools, claiming that they used the system of cramming, we
say to them that we must take what was good in the old schools. We must not borrow the system of encumbering young
people's minds with an immense acount of knowledge, nine-tenths
of which was useless and one-tenth distorted. This, however,
does not mean that we can restrict ourselves to communist
conclusions and learn only communist slogans. You will not
create communism that way. You can become a Communist only when
you enrich your mind with a knowledge of all the treasures
created by mankind.

We have no need of cramming, but we do need to develop and
perfect the mind of every student with a knowledge of fundamental facts. Communism will become an empty word, a mere
signboard, and a Communist a mere boaster, if all the knowledge
he has acquired is not digested in his mind. You should not
merely assimilate this knowledge, but assimilate it critically,
so as not to cram your mind with useless lumber, but enrich it
with all those facts that are indispensable to the well-educated
man of today. If a Communist took it into his head to boast
about his communism because of the cut-and-dried conclusions he
had acquired, without putting in a great deal of serious and
hard work and without understanding facts he should examine
critically, he would be a deplorable Communist indeed. Such
superficiality would be decidedly fatal. If I know that I know
little, I shall strive to learn more; but if a man says that he
is a Communist and that he need not know anything thoroughly, he
will never become anything like a Communist.

The old schools produced servants needed by the capitalists;
the old schools turned men of science into men who had to write
and say whatever pleased the capitalists. We must therefore
abolish them. But does the fact that we must abolish them,
destroy them, mean that we should not take from them everything
mankind has accumulated that is essential to man? Does it mean
that we do not have to distinguish between what was necessary to
capitalism and what is necessary to communism?

We are replacing the old drill-sergeant methods practised in
bourgeois society, against the will of the majority, with the
class-conscious discipline of the workers and peasants, who
combine hatred of the old society with a determination, ability
and readiness to unite and organise their forces for this
struggle so as to forge the wills of millions and hundreds of
millions of people -- disunited, and scattered over the
territory of a huge country -- into a single will, without which
defeat is inevitable. Without this solidarity, without this
conscious discipline of the workers and peasants, our cause is
hopeless. Without this, we shall be unable to vanquish the
capitalists and landowners of the whole world. We shall not even
consolidate the foundation, let alone build a new, communist
society on that foundation. Likewise, while condemning the old
schools, while harbouring an absolutely justified and necessary
hatred for the old schools, and appreciating the readiness to
destroy them, we must realise that we must replace the old
system of instruction, the old cramming and the old drill, with
an ability to acquire the sum total of human knowledge, and to
acquire it in such a way that communism shall not be something
to be learned by rote, but something that you yourselves have
thought over, something that will embody conclusions inevitable
from the standpoint of present-day education.

That is the way the main tasks should be presented when
we speak of the aim: learn communism.

I shall take a practical example to make this clear to you, and
to demonstrate the approach to the problem of how you must
learn. You all know that, following the military problems,
those of defending the republic, we are now confronted with
economic tasks. Communist society, as we know, cannot be built
unless we restore industry and agriculture, and that, not in the
old way. They must be re-established on a modern basis, in
accordance with the last word in science. You know that
electricity is that basis, and that only after electrification
of the entire country, of all branches of industry and agriculture, only when you have achieved that aim, will you be
able to build for yourselves the communist society which the
older generation will not be able to build. Confronting you is
the task of economically reviving the whole country, of
reorganising and restoring both agriculture and industry on
modern technical lines, based on modern science and technology,
on electricity. You realise perfectly well that illiterate
people cannot tackle electrification, and that elementary
literacy is not enough either. It is insufficient to understand
what electricity is; what is needed is the knowledge of how to
apply it technically in industry and agriculture, and in the
individual branches of industry and agriculture. This has to be
learnt for oneself, and it must be taught to the entire rising
generation of working people. That is the task confronting every
class-conscious Communist, every young person who regards
himself a Communist and who clearly understands that, by joining
the Young Communist League, he has pledged himself to help the
Party build communism and to help the whole younger generation
create a communist society. He must realise that he can create
it only on the basis of modern education, and if he does not
acquire this education communism will remain merely a pious
wish.

It was the task of the older generation to overthrow the
bourgeoisie. The main task then was to criticise the bourgeoisie, arouse hatred of the bourgeoisie among the masses,
and foster class-consciousness and the ability to unite their
forces. The new generation is confronted with a far more complex
task. Your duty does not lie only in assembling your forces so
as to uphold the workers' and peasants' government against an
invasion instigated by the capitalists. Of course, you must do
that; that is something you clearly realise, and is distinctly
seen by the Communist. However, that is not enough. You have to
build up a communist society. In many respects half of the work
has been done. The old order has been destroyed, just as it
deserved, it has been turned into a heap of ruins, just as it
deserved. The ground has been cleared, and on this ground the
younger communist generation must build a communist society. You
are faced with the task of construction, and you can accomplish
that task only by assimilating all modern knowledge, only if you
are able to transform communism from cut-and-dried and memorised
formulas, counsels, recipes, prescriptions and programmes into
that living reality which gives unity to your immediate work,
and only if you are able to make communism a guide in all your
practical work.

That is the task you should pursue in educating, training and
rousing the entire younger generation. You must be foremost
among the millions of builders of a communist society in whose
ranks every young man and young woman should be. You will not
build a communist society unless you enlist the mass of young
workers and peasants in the work of building communism.

This naturally brings me to the question of how we should
teach communism and what the specific features of our methods should be.

I first of all shall deal here with the question of communist
ethics.

You must train yourselves to be Communists. It is the task of
the Youth League to organize its practical activities in such a
way that, by learning, organising, uniting and fighting, its
members shall train both themselves and all those who look to it
for leadership; it should train Communists. The entire purpose
of training, educating and teaching the youth of today should be
to imbue them with communist ethics.

But is there such a thing as communist ethics? Is there such a
thing as communist morality? Of course, there is. It is often
suggested that we have no ethics of our own; very often the
bourgeoisie accuse us Communists of rejecting all morality. This
is a method of confusing the issue, of throwing dust in the eyes
of the workers and peasants.

In what sense do we reject ethics, reject morality?

In the sense given to it by the bourgeoisie, who based ethics
on God's commandments. On this point we, of course, say that we
do not believe in God, and that we know perfectly well that the
clergy, the landowners and the bourgeoisie invoked the name of
God so as to further their own interests as exploiters. Or,
instead of basing ethics on the commandments of morality, on the
commandments of God, they based it on idealist or semi-idealist
phrases, which always amounted to something very similar to
God's commandments.

We reject any morality based on extra-human and extra-class
concepts. We say that this is deception, dupery, stultification of the
workers and peasants in the interests of the landowners and capitalists.

We say that our morality is entirely subordinated to the
interests of the proletariat's class struggle. Our morality stems from
the interests of the class struggle of the proletariat.

The old society was based on the oppression of all the workers
and peasants by the landowners and capitalists. We had to
destroy all that, and overthrow them but to do that we had to
create unity. That is something that God cannot create.

This unity could be provided only by the factories, only by a
proletariat trained and roused from its long slumber. Only when
that class was formed did a mass movement arise which has led to
what we have now -- the victory of the proletarian revolution in
one of the weakest of countries, which for three years has been
repelling the onslaught of the bourgeoisie of the whole
world. We can see how the proletarian revolution is developing
all over the world. On the basis of experience, we now say that
only the proletariat could have created the solid force which
the disunited and scattered peasantry are following and which
has withstood all onslaughts by the exploiters. Only this class
can help the working masses unite, rally their ranks and
conclusively defend, conclusively consolidate and conclusively
build up a communist society.

That is why we say that to us there is no such thing as
a morality that stands outside human society; that is a fraud. To us morality
is subordinated to the interests of the proletariat's class struggle.

What does that class struggle consist in? It consists in overthrowing the tsar, overthrowing the capitalists, and abolishing
the capitalist class.

What are classes in general? Classes are that which permits one
section of society to appropriate the labour of another
section. If one section of society appropriates all the land, we
have a landowner class and a peasant class. If one section of
society owns the factories, shares and capital, while another
section works in these factories, we have a capitalist class and
a proletarian class.

It was not difficult to drive out the tsar -- that required
only a few days. It was not very difficult to drive out the
landowners -- that was done in a few months. Nor was it very
difficult to drive out the capitalists. But it is incomparably
more difficult to abolish classes; we still have the division
into workers and peasants. If the peasant is installed on his
plot of land and appropriates his surplus grain, that is, grain
that he does not need for himself or for his cattle, while the
rest of the people have to go without bread, then the peasant
becomes an exploiter. The more grain he clings to, the more
profitable he finds it; as for the rest, let them starve: "The
more they starve, the dearer I can sell this grain." All should
work according to a single common plan, on common land, in
common factories and in accordance with a common system. Is
that easy to attain? You see that it is not as easy as driving
out the tsar, the landowners and the capitalists. What is
required is that the proletariat re-educate a section of the
peasantry; it must win over the working peasants in order to
crush the resistance of those peasants who are rich and are
profiting from the poverty and want of the rest. Hence the task
of the proletarian struggle is not quite completed after we have
overthrown the tsar and driven out the landowners and capitalists; to accomplish that is the task of the system we
call the dictatorship of the proletariat.

The class struggle is continuing; it has merely changed its
forms. It is the class struggle of the proletariat to prevent
the return of the old exploiters, to unite in a single union the
scattered masses of unenlightened peasants. The class struggle
is continuing and it is our task to subordinate all interests to
that struggle. Our communist morality is also subordinated to
that task. We say: morality is what serves to destroy the old
exploiting society and to unite all the working people around
the proletariat, which is building up a new, communist society.

Communist morality is that which serves this struggle and
unites the working people against all exploitation, against all
petty private property; for petty property puts into the hands
of one person that which has been created by the labour of the
whole of society. In our country the land is common property.

But suppose I take a piece of this common property and grow on
it twice as much grain as I need, and profiteer on the surplus?
Suppose I argue that the more starving people there are, the
more they will pay? Would I then be behaving like a Communist?
No, I would be behaving like an exploiter, like a proprietor. That must be combated. If that is allowed to go on,
things will revert to the rule of the capitalists, to the rule
of the bourgeoisie, as has more than once happened in previous
revolutions. To prevent the restoration of the rule of the
capitalists and the bourgeoisie, we must not allow profiteering;
we must not allow individuals to enrich themselves at the
expense of the rest; the working people must unite with the
proletariat and form a communist society. This is the principal
feature of the fundamental task of the League and the organisation of the communist youth.

The old society was based on the principle: rob or be robbed;
work for others or make others work for you; be a slave-owner or
a slave. Naturally, people brought up in such a society
assimilate with their mother's milk, one might say, the
psychology, the habit, the concept which says: you are either a
slave-owner or a slave, or else, a small owner, a petty
employee, a petty official, or an intellectual -- in short, a
man who is concerned only with himself, and does not care a rap
for anybody else.

If I work this plot of land, I do not care a rap for anybody
else; if others starve, all the better, I shall get the more for
my grain. If I have a job as a doctor, engineer, teacher, or
clerk, I do not care a rap for anybody else. If I toady to and
please the powers that be, I may be able to keep my job, and
even get on in life and become a bourgeois. A Communist cannot
harbour such a psychology and such sentiments. When the workers
and peasants proved that they were able, by their own efforts,
to defend themselves and create a new society -- that was the
beginning of the new and communist education, education in the
struggle against the exploiters, education in alliance with the
proletariat against the self-seekers and petty proprietors,
against the psychology and habits which say: I seek my own
profit and don't care a rap for anything else.

That is the reply to the question of how the young and rising generation should learn communism.

It can learn communism only by linking up every step in its
studies, training and education with the continuous struggle the
proletarians and the working people are waging against the old
society of exploiters. When people tell us about morality, we
say: to a Communist all morality lies in this united discipline
and conscious mass struggle against the exploiters. We do not
believe in an eternal morality, and we expose the falseness of
all the fables about morality. Morality serves the purpose of
helping human society rise to a higher level and rid itself of
the exploitation of labour.

To achieve this we need that generation of young people who
began to reach political maturity in the midst of a disciplined
and desperate struggle against the bourgeoisie. In this struggle
that generation is training genuine Communists; it must
subordinate to this struggle, and link up with it, each step in
its studies, education and training. The education of the
communist youth must consist, not in giving them suave talks and
moral precepts. This is not what education consists in. When
people have seen the way in which their fathers and mothers
lived under the yoke of the landowners and capitalists; when
they have themselves experienced the sufferings of those who
began the struggle against the exploiters; when they have seen
the sacrifices made to keep what has been won, and seen what
deadly enemies the landowners and capitalists are -- they are
taught by these conditions to become Communists. Communist
morality is based on the struggle for the consolidation and
completion of communism. That is also the basis of communist
training, education, and teaching. That is the reply to the
question of how communism should be learnt.

We could not believe in teaching, training and education if
they were restricted only to the schoolroom and divorced from
the ferment of life. As long as the workers and peasants are
oppressed by the landowners and capitalists, and as long as the
schools are controlled by the landowners and capitalists, the
young generation will remain blind and ignorant. Our schools
must provide the youth with the fundamentals of knowledge, the
ability to evolve communist views independently; they must make
educated people of the youth. While they are attending school,
they must learn to become participants in the struggle for
emancipation from the exploiters. The Young Communist League
will justify its name as the League of the young communist
generation only when every step in its teaching, training and
education is linked up with participation in the common struggle
of all working people against the exploiters. You are well aware
that, as long as Russia remains the only workers' republic and
the old, bourgeois system exists in the rest of the world, we
shall be weaker than they are, and be constantly threatened with
a new attack; and that only if we learn to be solidly united
shall we win in the further struggle and -- having gained
strength -- become really invincible. Thus, to be a Communist
means that you must organise and unite the entire young
generation and set an example of training and discipline in this
struggle. Then you will be able to start building the edifice of
communist society and bring it to completion.

To make this clearer to you, I shall quote an example. We call
ourselves Communists. What is a Communist? Communist is a Latin
word. Communis is the Latin for "common". Communist society is a society in which all things -- the land, the
factories -- are owned in common and the people work in
common. That is communism.

Is it possible to work in common if each one works separately
on his own plot of land? Work in common cannot be brought about
all at once. That is impossible. It does not drop from the
skies. It comes through toil and suffering; it is created in the
course of struggle. The old books are of no use here; no one
will believe them. One's own experience of life is neeeded. When
Kolchak and Denikin were advancing from Siberia and the South,
the peasants were on their side. They did not like Bolshevism
because the Bolsheviks took their grain at a fixed price. But
when the peasants in Siberia and the Ukraine experienced the
rule of Kolchak and Denikin, they realised that they had only
one alternative: either to go to the capitalists, who would at
once hand them over into slavery under the landowners; or to
follow the workers, who, it is true, did not promise a land
flowing with milk and honey, and demanded iron discipline and
firmness in an arduous struggle, but would lead them out of
enslavement by the capitalists and landowners. When even the
ignorant peasant saw and realised this from their own experience, they became conscious adherents of communism, who
had gone through a severe school. It is such experience that
must form the basis of all the activities of the Young Communist
League.

I have replied to the questions of what we must learn, what we
must take from the old schools and from the old science. I shall
now try to answer the question of how this must be learnt. The
answer is: only by inseparably linking each step in the
activities of the schools, each step in training, education and
teaching, with the struggle of all the working people against
the exploiters.

I shall quote a few examples from the experience of the work of
some of the youth organisations so as to illustrate how this
training in communism should proceed. Everybody is talking about
abolishing illiteracy. You know that a communist society cannot
be built in an illiterate country. It is not enough for the
Soviet government to issue an order, or for the Party to issue a
particular slogan, or to assign a certain number of the best
workers to this task. The young generation itself must take up
this work. Communism means that the youth, the young men and
women who belong to the Youth League, should say: this is our
job; we shall unite and go into the rural districts to abolish
illiteracy, so that there shall be no illiterates among our
young people. We are trying to get the rising generation to
devote their activities to this work. You know that we cannot
rapidly transform an ignorant and illiterate Russia into a
literate country. But if the Youth League sets to work on the
job, and if all young people work for the benefit of all, the
League, with a membership of 400,000 young men and women, will
be entitled to call itself a Young Communist League. It is also
a task of the League, not only to acquire knowledge itself, but
to help those young people who are unable to extricate themselves by their own efforts from the toils of
illiteracy. Being a member of the Youth League means devoting
one's labour and efforts to the common cause. That is what a
communist education means. Only in the course of such work do
young men and women become real Communists. Only if they achieve
practical results in this work will they become Communists.

Take, for example, work in the suburban vegetable gardens. Is
that not a real job of work? It is one of the tasks of the Young
Communist League. People are starving; there is hunger in the
factories. To save ourselves from starvation, vegetable gardens
must be developed. But farming is being carried on in the old
way. Therefore, more class-conscious elements should engage in
this work, and then you will find that the number of vegetable
gardens will increase, their acreage will grow, and the results
will improve. The Young Communist League must take an active
part in this work. Every League and League branch should regard
this as its duty.

The Young Communist League must be a shock force, helping in
every job and displaying initiative and enterprise. The League
should be an organisation enabling any worker to see that it
consists of people whose teachings he perhaps does not understand, and whose teachings he may not immediately believe,
but from whose practical work and activity he can see that they
are really people who are showing him the right road.

If the Young Communist League fails to organise its work in
this way in all fields, it will mean that it is reverting to the
old bourgeois path. We must combine our education with the
struggle of the working people against the exploiters, so as to
help the former accomplish the tasks set by the teachings of
communism.

The members of the League should use every spare hour to
improve the vegetable gardens, or to organise the education of
young people at some factory, and so on. We want to transform
Russia from a poverty-stricken and wretched country into one
that is wealthy. The Young Communist League must combine its
education, learning and training with the labour of the workers
and peasants, so as not to confine itself to schools or to
reading communist books and pamphlets. Only by working side by
side with the workers and peasants can one become a genuine
Communist. It has to be generally realised that all members of
the Youth League are literate poeple and at the same time are
keen at their jobs. When everyone sees that we have ousted the
old drill-ground methods from the old schools and have replaced
them with conscious discipline, that all young men and women
take part in subbotniks, and utilise every suburban farm to help
the population -- people will cease to regard labour in the old
way.

It is the taks of the Young Communist League to organise
assistance everywhere, in village or city block, in such matters
as -- and I shall take a small example -- public hygiene or the
distribution of food. How was this done in the old, capitalist
society? Everybody worked only for himself and nobody cared a
straw for the aged and the sick, or whether housework was the
concern only of the women, who, in consequence, were in a
condition of oppression and servitude. Whose business is it to
combat this? It is the business of the Youth Leagues, which must
say: we shall change all this; we shall organise detachments of
young people who will help to assure public hygiene or distribute food, who will conduct systematic house-to-house
inspections, and work in an organised way for the benefit of the
whole of society, distributing their forces properly and
demonstrating that labour must be organised.

The generation of people who are now at the age of fifty cannot
expect to see a communist society. This generation will be gone
before then. But the generation of those who are now fifteen
will see a communist society, and will itself build this
society. This generation should know that the entire purpose of
their lives is to build a communist society. In the old society,
each family worked separtely and labour was not organised by
anybody except the landowners and capitalists, who oppressed the
masses of the people. We must organise all labour, no matter how
toilsome or messy it may be, in such a way that every worker and
peasant will be able to say: I am part of the great army of free
labour, and shall be able to build up my life without the
landowners and capitalists, able to help establish a communist
system. The Young Communist League should teach all young people
to engage in conscious and disciplined labour from an early
age. In this way we can be confident that the problems now
confronting us will be solved. We must assume that no less than
ten years will be required for the electrification of the
country, so that our impoverished land may profit from the
latest achievements of technology. And so, the generation of
those who are now fifteen years old, and will be living in a
communist society in ten or twenty years' time, should tackle
all its educational tasks in such a way that every day, in every
village and city, the young people shall engage in the practical
solution of some problem of labour in common, even though the
smallest or the simplest. The success of communist construction
will be assured when this is done in every village, as communist
emulation develops, and the youth prove that they can unite
their labour. Only by regarding our every step from the
standpoint of the success of that construction, and only by
asking ourselves whether we have done all we can to be united
and politically-conscious working people will the Young
Communist League succeed in uniting its half a million members
into a single army of labour and win universal respect. (Stormy
applause.)

---
Notes:
[1] The Third
All-Russia Congress of the Russian Young Communist League took
place in Moscow between October 2 and 10, and was attended by
some 600 delegates. Lenin addressed the Congress at the first
session in the evening of October 2. For more information read
an abstract of this document.

[2] Lenin is
referring to Proletcult, a cultural and educational organisation which arose in September 1917 as an independent
workers' organisation. After the October Revolution Proletcult,
whose leadership fell into the hands of Bogdanov and his
supporters, continued to insist on independence, thus setting
itself in opposition to the proletarian state. This led to the
infiltration of bourgeois intellectuals, who began to exert a
decisive influence on Proletcult. Its members actually denied
the cultural legacy of the past, neglected cultural and
educational work among the masses, isolated themselves from life
and aimed at setting up a special "proletarian culture". Bogdanov, the chief Proletcult ideologist, paid lip
service to Marxism, but actually preached subjective idealism,
Machism. Besides bourgeois intellectuals who held leading
positions in many organisations, Proletcult also included young
workers who sincerely wished to promote cultural development in
the Soviet state. Proletcult organisations had their heyday in
1919. In the early 1920s they began to decline, ceasing to exist
in 1932.