V. I. Lenin

Theses On Production Propaganda [1]

Rough Draft

1. In connection with the R.S.F.S.R.’s
military victories and its international position in general,
production propaganda must now be given special prominence, and be
accentuated and organised.

2. The leading newspapers, Izvestia and
Pravda in the first place, should: a) reduce the space devoted to politics, and increase space for production propaganda;
h) influence all the work of the Party and of Soviet institutions,
in the sense of mobilising greater forces for production
propaganda; c) endeavour to work systematically to place
production propaganda on a nation-wide footing, and evolve
extensive measures for its encouragement and improvement, with a
special view to verifying the successes actually achieved in
practice.

3. In just the same way, work should be
systematised, extended and developed in selecting able administrators, organisers and inventors from the masses of
workingmen and peasants.

4. Throughout the R.S.F.S.R. production propaganda
should be placed under the direction of a single body, with the
aim of economising forces and improving guidance of this work. In
this, the greatest autonomy, both local and within each trade, is
indispensable. Any marked success should be systematically and
judiciously rewarded (bonuses in kind, etc.). Verification of
successes to be organised impartially and competently.

5. The editorial hoard of a mass newspaper with a
circulation of between 500,000 and 1,000,000 should be made the
solo body guiding production propaganda.

Bednota [2] ] is the right newspaper for the purpose.

It would be harmful to have a division into an industrial newspaper and an agricultural newspaper, since it is
the aim of socialism to bring industry and agriculture closer
together and unite them. In practice, the guiding role of the
industrial proletariat both in the cities and in the rural areas,
particularly in the urbanisation of agriculture and the
electrification of the entire country, calls precisely for a
single newspaper devoted to problems of production (and for a
single body in charge of production propaganda) both for the
workers and the peasants.

6. This guiding collegiate body should consist of
five members representing: 1) the All-Russia Central Council of
Trade Unions; 2) the Supreme Council of the National Economy; 3)
the People’s Commissariat of Agriculture; 4) the Chief
Committee for Political Education; 5) the Central Committee of the
R.C.P. (or an editor-in-chief) This collegiate body and the
newspaper should be attached to the All-Russia Central Council of
Trade Unions (perhaps there should also be a representative of the
Central Board for Vocational Training?).

7. This newspaper, devoted to matters of
production, should be a popular one, in the sense of being
understood by millions of readers, without falling into
vulgarisation. The paper should not descend to the level of the
uncultivated reader, but should work steadily-and by very gradual
degrees-to promote his development. Little space-not exceeding a
quarter of the total-should be devoted to politics. Top priority
should be given to a single economic plan, to the labour front,
production propaganda, the training of workers and peasants in the
work of administration, to seeing that Soviet laws and measures
established by Soviet institutions are given due effect, and to an
extensive and properly organised exchange of opinions with the
rank-and file reader.

8. Materials published in the newspaper or
addressed to it, as well as all other kinds of material, should be
systematically and periodically brought out in pamphlet or leaflet
form and compulsorily supplied to libraries, as well as to
factories and enterprises in the given field of production (the
pamphlets and leaflets should systematise all the material
relating to each particular branch of production). Together with
manuals and reviews of foreign technology, this material should
serve to spread vocational training and polytechnical education.

A more rational distribution of the newspaper, as well as of pamphlets and leaflets dealing with questions of
production, among all libraries in the R.S.F.S,R. should,
in particular, be the object of special attention.

9. It is indispensable that engineers, agronomists,
schoolteachers, and also Soviet functionaries possessing definite
professional qualifications, should be drawn into systematic
participation in production propaganda (this in connection with
the liquidation of illiteracy).

The organisation of lectures, talks, reports, etc.

Compulsory labour service on the part of all those who are able to acquaint the population with problems of
electrification, with the Taylor system, etc.

10. The more extensive and systematic use of films
for production propaganda. Joint work with the cinema section.

Soviet gramophone records. Displays of diagrams and cartograins at clubs, village reading-rooms, in streets,
etc. Bills and placards to he displayed near factories, workshops,
technical schools, etc.

11. The organisation, jointly with the
People’s Commissariat of Labour and other institutions, of
an inspectorate of production. The latter’s work to be co-ordinated with that of production propaganda, as well as with
the work of instructors, exhibition trains and ships, and the
like.

12. Extensive publicity for exemplary
enterprises. Organisation of factory workers with foreign
industrial experience-this to be done in special workshops,
sections or groups, etc. Such workers to be utilised for the
training of backward workingmen, for the dissemination of
vocational-technical and polytechnical instruction, etc.

N. Lenin

18.11.1920

Endnotes

[1]
This document served as a basis for the draft theses of the Chief
Committee for Political Education, which were published in
Pravda No. 267 on November 27, 1920, under the heading “Production Propaganda (Draft Theses of the Chief Committee
for Political Education)”. The question of production propaganda was first raised in connection with the discussion of
the immediate tasks of economic development, at the Ninth Party
Congress held from March 29 to April 5, 1920. But after
Poland’s attack on the Soviet Republic, the brief respite
came to an end and the questions of economic development receded
into the background. Only at the end of 1920, after the signing of
a preliminary peace with Poland and the defeat of Wrangel, did the
question of production propaganda aimed at drawing the masses into
the work of economic rehabilitation come up again with renewed
urgency. Production propaganda, first suggested by Lenin, remains
to this day one of the main tasks of the political, cultural and
educational activities of the Party and the Soviet state.

[2]
Bednota (The Poor)—a daily newspaper published by the C.C. C.P.S.U.(B.) from March 27, 1918 to January 31, 1931. On
February 1, 1931 it merged with Sotsialisticheskoye Zemledeliye (Socialist Farming).