# Speech at the Third All-Russia Conference of Heads of Out-of-School Sub-Departments of Gubernia Departments of Public Education  
February 25, 1920  

Allow me, on behalf of the Council of People’s Commissars, to greet your conference and to express a few thoughts to you on this occasion.

As regards our international situation, I can tell you about a radio message received today from England, which best characterizes this international situation. The radio reports that yesterday, the 24th, the Supreme Council of the Allied Powers concluded that if the states bordering Russia ask for advice on policy, it will say that it cannot advise them to go to war, which might harm their interests, and even less can it advise them to undertake an offensive war against Russia; but that if the Russian Soviet Republic attacks their legitimate borders, the Allied Council will render them support. Furthermore, the gentlemen of the Entente wish to send a commission to Russia, belonging to the labor commission in Washington. The organizers of the conference, the social-traitors with Albert Thomas, have agreed on certain social reforms and wish to send this public, which represents part of the League of Nations{74}, to Russia to investigate to what extent conditions in Russia correspond to the usual requirements of “civilized” states.

This report on yesterday’s decision of the Allies clearly shows how these gentlemen have become entangled and what benefit we can derive from their confusion. They have thrown away hundreds of millions to support the war (on the part of the British state) and have declared that they can no longer support the war. With this, their offensive fervor is over, although the supply of military equipment to Poland continues: they continue to deliver weapons, and we have precise information that Poland is carrying out troop regroupings aimed at an offensive, so we cannot rely with certainty on their declaration. Although the threat of external danger from the Allies has now been nine-tenths eliminated, a certain threat nonetheless remains; after the end of the war against Denikin, military readiness will have to be maintained. We cannot count on full demobilization.

Thus, the danger of an invasion of Russia by international capitalism has nine-tenths vanished; they have failed so fittingly that they are once again putting forward a proposal to send a commission to Russia. If this commission includes gentlemen like Albert Thomas, who visited Russia during the war, nothing will come of it but scandal for them and an excellent pretext for agitation for us. We shall receive them in such a way that they will clear out of Russia as quickly as possible, and nothing will come of it for them but agitation for the workers of other countries. They wish to frighten us, but when we say that we shall welcome our dear guests, they will hide their attempt. This shows the extent of their confusion. Now we have a window to Europe thanks to the peace with Estonia and are able to obtain basic products from there. Our international situation indeed represents enormous progress and improvement: nine-tenths of all external danger to the Soviet Republic has been eliminated.

The more it is eliminated, the more we can engage in the work of peaceful construction, and we count on your activity, on you, who are engaged in the out-of-school field. To establish school education on a more solid footing, a whole series of material changes is needed: the construction of schools, the selection of teachers, internal reforms in the organization and selection of teaching personnel. These are all things that require lengthy preparation. In regard to out-of-school education, you are not greatly constrained by this lengthy preparation. The population’s need to receive education outside the established school system and the demand for workers in this field are growing extraordinarily strongly. We are confident that with common assistance and common efforts, more will be accomplished than has been done so far.

In conclusion, I shall speak about the character of out-of-school education, which is linked to propaganda and agitation. One of the fundamental shortcomings of the organization of education and enlightenment in capitalist society was that it was divorced from the basic task of organizing labor, insofar as the capitalist needed to train and drill obedient and disciplined workers. There was no connection between the actual tasks of organizing the people’s labor and teaching in capitalist society. The result was a lifeless, scholastic, bureaucratic character of teaching, contaminated by clerical influences, which everywhere, even in the most democratic republics, ensured that everything fresh and healthy had to be excluded. Direct, living work was hindered, because without the apparatus of state power, without material and financial assistance, education cannot be broadly established. Insofar as we can and must prepare for the transition of our entire Soviet life from the rails of military preparation and military resistance to the rails of peaceful construction, it is necessary and essential for you, workers of out-of-school education, to take this change into account and to align your propaganda activity, its tasks and program, with this change.

To show how I understand the tasks and the entire character of education, teaching, upbringing, and training in accordance with the changed tasks of the Soviet Republic, I shall recall the resolution on electrification adopted by the last session of the All-Russia Central Executive Committee; it is probably familiar to all of you. A few days ago, a report appeared in the press stating that within a two-month period (the officially printed report said: within a two-week period—this is a mistake)—that within a two-month period, a plan for the electrification of the country will be developed, calculated for 2–3 years under a minimum program and a maximum of 10 years. The character of all our propaganda—both purely Party propaganda and school teaching and education, as well as the character of out-of-school teaching—must change, not in the sense that the very foundations and direction of teaching should change, but in the sense of adapting the character of activity to the transition to peaceful construction with a broad plan for the industrial and economic transformation of the country, because the general economic difficulty and the general task is the task of restoring the country’s economic forces in such a way that, alongside small peasant farming, the proletarian revolution can create new foundations for economic life. Until now, the peasant has had to give grain on loan to the workers’ state: colored pieces of paper—money—cannot satisfy the peasant for his grain. The peasant, not being satisfied by them, demands his lawful right: in exchange for the grain he gives—industrial products, which we cannot provide until we restore the economy. To restore it—this is the basic task, but we cannot restore it on the old economic and technical basis. This is impossible technically, and it would be absurd; we must find a new basis. Such a new basis is the plan for electrification.

We come before the peasantry, before the least developed mass, pointing out how a new transition to a higher level of culture and technical education is necessary for the success of all Soviet construction. Thus, it is necessary to restore the economy. The most ignorant peasant understands that it has been ruined by the war, that without its restoration he cannot cope with poverty—cannot obtain the necessary products in exchange for grain. It is precisely to this most immediate, pressing need of the peasantry that all the work of propaganda, education, enlightenment, and out-of-school education must be linked and attached, so that it is not divorced from the most pressing needs of daily life, but rather proceeds from their development and understanding for the peasant, emphasizing that the only way out of the situation is the restoration of industry. But the restoration of industry cannot be on the old foundation: it must be restored on the foundation of modern technology. This means the electrification of industry and the raising of culture. Electric power stations require up to 10 years of work, but work that is more cultured and conscious.

We shall unfold a broad plan of work, which must be linked in the minds of the broad masses of the peasantry with a clear, practically set goal. This cannot be done in a few months. A minimum program can be given in no less than 3 years. But, without indulging in utopias, it can be said that within 10 years we are capable of covering the whole of Russia with a network of electric power stations and transitioning to a state of electrical industry that would meet the modern requirements of technology and put an end to old peasant agriculture. This requires a higher level of culture and education.

Without concealing from ourselves that the immediate practical task now is the restoration of transport and the delivery of food supplies, and that given the current state of productivity, broad tasks cannot be undertaken, you, in the field of propaganda and enlightenment, must nonetheless keep in mind and carry out this task of complete reconstruction on a basis corresponding to cultural and technical needs. We shall rapidly cure ourselves of the old methods of propaganda, which sinned by being outdated, which until now approached the peasant with general phrases about the class struggle, on the basis of which all sorts of nonsense about proletarian culture{75} and so forth were invented—of this rubbish, which very much resembles the childhood illnesses of an infantile age. In propaganda, agitation, educational and enlightenment activity, we shall move toward posing the question in a more sober and businesslike manner, worthy of the people of Soviet power, who have learned a thing or two over two years and who go to the muzhik with a practical, businesslike, and clear plan for the reconstruction of all industry and an explanation that now the muzhik and the worker, given the current state of education, will not accomplish this task and will not crawl out of the filth, poverty, typhus, and disease. This practical task, clearly linked to the raising of culture and education, must serve as the knot around which the entire character of our Party propaganda and activity, our teaching and training, must be grouped. Then it will so deeply hook into the most vital interests of the peasant mass, so link the general raising of culture and knowledge with the most painful economic needs, that we shall increase the demand for education on the part of the working masses a hundredfold. We are absolutely confident that if we solved the most difficult military task in two years, we shall solve in 5–10 years an even more difficult task: the cultural-educational and enlightenment task. That is the wish with which I wanted to address you. (Applause.)

Brief newspaper report published on March 2, 1920, in *Evening News of the Moscow Soviet of Workers’ and Red Army Deputies* No. 481

First published in full on April 25, 1930, in the newspaper *Pravda* No. 114

Printed from the stenogram, verified against the text of the newspaper *Pravda*