V. I. Lenin

Source: ru:PSS/v42; en:CW/CW32;es:MT
Translated: machine translation (DeepSeek) from the Russian; AI-translated.

In No. 25 of *Pravda*, dated February 5, the “Directives of the C.C., R.C.P., to Communists Working in the People’s Commissariat for Education (in Connection with the Reorganisation of the Commissariat)” were published.

Unfortunately, in the first point a misprint that distorts the meaning occurs three times: instead of “polytechnical” education it says “political” education!!

I should like to draw the attention of comrades to these directives and to provoke an exchange of opinions on some particularly important points.

In December 1920 a Party conference on education was held. It was attended by 134 delegates with a deciding vote and 29 with a consultative vote. The conference lasted five days. A report on this conference is given in the “Supplement to the Bulletin of the Eighth Congress of Soviets, devoted to the Party conference on education” (published by the All-Russia Central Executive Committee, January 10, 1921). The resolutions of the conference, the report on it, and all the articles in the said “Supplement to the Bulletin”—with the exception of the introductory article by Comrade Lunacharsky and the article by Comrade Grinko—reveal an incorrect approach to the question of polytechnical education, and reveal the defect against which the C.C. directives direct the “main attention” of the People’s Commissar and the Board, namely, “infatuation” with general discussions and abstract slogans.

The question of polytechnical education has been settled, in the main, by our Party Programme, Sections 1 and 8 of the section of the Programme devoted to education. The C.C. directive refers to these sections of the Programme. Section 1 speaks of polytechnical education up to the age of 17; Section 8 speaks of “extensive development of vocational education for persons from the age of 17, in connection with general polytechnical knowledge”.

Thus the question is put quite clearly by the Party Programme. Arguments about “polytechnical or monotechnical education” (these words, which I have placed in quotation marks and italicised, in all their monstrous absurdity, are to be found on page 4 of the said “Supplement to the Bulletin”)—these arguments are fundamentally wrong, are absolutely impermissible for a Communist, and betray both ignorance of the Programme and the most empty “infatuation” with abstract slogans. If we are compelled temporarily to lower the age (for transition from general polytechnical to vocational-polytechnical education) from 17 to 15, the “Party must regard” this lowering of the age limit “exclusively” (Point 1 of the C.C. directives) as a practical necessity, a temporary measure due to “the poverty and ruin of the country”.

General arguments with attempts to “substantiate” such a lowering are sheer nonsense. Enough of playing with general arguments and would-be theorising! The whole centre of gravity of the work must be shifted to “taking into account and verifying practical experience”, to “systematically utilising the indications of this experience”.

However few intelligent, knowledgeable, and experienced people we have in pedagogical practice, they undoubtedly exist. Our trouble is that we do not know how to find them, how to put them in the proper leading posts, how to study together with them the practical experience of Soviet construction. This is precisely what was not in evidence at the Party conference of December 1920; and if it was not in evidence at a conference of 163—one hundred and sixty-three!—educational workers, it becomes absolutely certain that there is a certain general, fundamental defect in the organisation of the work, a defect which made a special directive of the Party C.C. necessary.

In the Commissariat for Education there are two—and only two—comrades with tasks of an exceptional nature. They are the People’s Commissar, Comrade Lunarsky, who exercises general guidance, and the Deputy Commissar, Comrade Pokrovsky, who exercises guidance, firstly, as Deputy Commissar, and, secondly, as obligatory adviser (and leader) on scientific questions, on questions of Marxism in general. The whole Party, which knows both Comrade Lunarsky and Comrade Pokrovsky well, has no doubt, of course, that in the respects indicated they are both “specialists” of a sort in the Commissariat for Education. For all the other workers there can be no such “speciality”. The “speciality” of all the other workers should be the ability to organise the work of enlisting the services of specialist teachers, to put their work on a proper basis, to utilise the indications of practical experience systematically. The C.C. directives speak of this in Section 2, Section 3, and Section 5.

At the conference of Party workers, specialists and teachers who had had about ten years of practical experience should have been heard, people who could tell us all what has been done and is being done in a given field, say, in the field of vocational education, and how Soviet construction is coping with it, what good results have been achieved, what examples of these good results are (such examples undoubtedly exist, even if in very small numbers), what are the concrete indications of the main defects and the ways of eliminating them.

At the conference of Party workers there is no such taking into account of practical experience, no opinions of teachers who have applied this experience in this or that way, but there are unsuccessful attempts at “general arguments” and appraisals of “abstract slogans”. The whole Party, all workers in the Commissariat for Education, must realise this defect, and we must set about eliminating it by our joint efforts. Local workers must exchange their experience in this respect and help the Party to bring forward model gubernias, or model uyezds, or model areas, or model educational institutions, or model teachers who have achieved good results on a comparatively narrow, local, or special scale. Relying on these achievements, already tested by practice, we must advance the work, extending—after due verification—local experience to the scale of the whole of Russia, promoting talented or simply capable teachers to more responsible posts, with a wider range of activity, etc.

The success of the work of a Communist working in the field (and in the institutions) of education must be measured primarily by how this work of enlisting specialists is organised, by his ability to find them, to utilise them, to achieve the co-operation of the specialist teacher and the Communist leader, to verify in practice what and how much is being done, and to advance—even if at an extremely slow pace, on an extremely modest scale, but only on a businesslike basis, on the basis of practical experience. If in the Commissariat for Education we continue to have an abundance of pretenders to “Communist leadership” and a void in the practical field, a shortage or absence of practical specialists, inability to bring them forward, to hear them, to take their experience into account, then the work will not go ahead. A Communist leader can prove his right to leadership only by finding for himself many, ever more numerous, assistants among practical teachers, by being able to help them to work, to promote them, to demonstrate and take into account their experience.

In this sense our absolute slogan must be: less “leadership”, more practical work, i.e., fewer general arguments, more facts, and verified facts, showing in what, under what conditions, and to what extent we are advancing, or standing still, or retreating. A Communist leader who has corrected the teaching programmes of practical teachers, who has compiled a successful textbook, who has achieved even a slight, but actual, improvement in the content of the work, in the working conditions of ten, a hundred, a thousand specialist teachers—that is a real leader. But a Communist who talks about “leadership” and is unable to adapt specialists to practical work, unable to achieve their practical success, unable to utilise the practical experience of hundreds and hundreds of teachers—such a Communist is worthless.

It is enough to glance through the very well compiled booklet: *The People’s Commissariat for Education. 1917—October—1920. A Brief Report*, to see that the whole work of the Commissariat for Education suffers most of all from the defect indicated. Comrade Lunarsky realises this when he speaks in the preface (p. 5) of “undoubted impracticality”. But much persistent work will still be required to make all Communists in the Commissariat for Education realise this and to make them achieve the actual translation of realised truths into life. The booklet mentioned shows that we know very few facts, far too few; we do not know how to collect them; we do not know the measure of the number of questions that must be put and to which we can (given our level of culture, our habits, our means of communication) expect an answer; we do not know how to collect the indications of practical experience and to generalise them; we indulge in empty “general arguments and abstract slogans”, but we do not know how to utilise efficient teachers in general, efficient engineers and agronomists for technical education in particular, and factories, state farms, tolerably well-run farms and electric power stations for polytechnical education.

Despite these defects, the Soviet Republic is advancing in the field of education, that is beyond doubt. From “below”, i.e., from the mass of working people whom capitalism kept away—both openly, by force, and by means of hypocrisy and deception—from education, a mighty urge towards light and knowledge is rising. We have a right to be proud that we are helping and serving this urge. But to close our eyes to the defects of our work, to the fact that we have not yet learned to organise the state educational apparatus properly, would be a downright crime.

Let us take another question, the distribution of newspapers and books, the question to which the last, the 7th, point of the C.C. directives is devoted.

On November 3, 1920, a decree of the Council of People’s Commissars “On the Centralisation of Library Work” (Article 439 of the *Collection of Laws*, 1920, No. 87) was issued, providing for the creation of a single library network of the R.S.F.S.R.

Here are some factual data which I managed to obtain on this question from Comrade Malkin, of the Central Press Agency, and Comrade Modestov, of the Library Section of the Moscow Department of Education. For 38 gubernias, 305 uyezds, the number of libraries in Central Soviet Russia (excluding Siberia and the North Caucasus) was as follows:

Comrade Modestov believes, on the basis of his experience, that about three-quarters of these libraries actually exist, the rest only on paper. For Moscow Gubernia the data of the Central Press Agency give 1,223 libraries; according to Comrade Modestov’s data, 1,018; of these, 204 in the city and 814 in the gubernia, not counting trade union libraries (probably about 16) and military libraries (about 125).

As far as can be judged from a comparison of the data for the various gubernias, the reliability of these figures is not very great—it may well be that in practice it is less than 75 per cent! In Vyatka Gubernia, for example, there are 1,703 reading-rooms, in Vladimir Gubernia 37, in Petrograd Gubernia 98, in Ivanovo-Voznesensk Gubernia 75, etc. “Other” libraries in Petrograd Gubernia number 36, in Voronezh Gubernia 378, in Ufa Gubernia 525, in Pskov Gubernia 31, etc.

Apparently, these data indicate precisely that the urge of the masses of workers and peasants towards knowledge is enormous, that the striving for education and for the creation of libraries is mighty, “popular” in the true sense of the word. But we are still very, very far from being able to organise, to regulate, to give proper form to this striving of the people, to give it proper satisfaction. We shall still have to do a very great deal of persistent work to create a really single library network.

How do we distribute newspapers and books? According to the data of the Central Press Agency, in 1920, 401 million copies of newspapers and 14 million copies of books (in 11 months) were distributed. Here are data on the distribution of three newspapers (January 12, 1921); this distribution was fixed by the Periodical Press Section of the Central Board of the Press Agency (the figures are in thousands of copies):

The amount for posting up is strikingly small, i.e., for the broadest masses. The amount for the capital “institutions”, etc., is strikingly large—evidently for pilfering and bureaucratic use by “Soviet office workers”—both military and civilian.

Here are a few more figures from the reports of local sub-departments of the Central Press Agency. The Voronezh Gubernia Agency of the Central Press Agency received newspapers 12 times in September 1920 (i.e., on 18 days out of the 30 days of September no newspapers were received). The newspapers received were distributed as follows: *Izvestia* to agencies of the Central Press Agency: uyezd—4,986 copies (4,020; 4,310);[27] district—7,216 (5,860; 10,064); volost—3,370 (3,200; 4,285); Party organisations—447 (569; 3,880); Soviet institutions—1,765 (1,641; 509)—note that *Pravda* got almost three times as many copies for Soviet institutions as for Party organisations! Then: Political Education Department of the Military Commissariat—5,532 (5,793; 12,332); agitation centres—352 (400; 593); reading-rooms—none. Subscribers—7,167 (3,080; 764). “Subscribers”, consequently, got a very fat share, i.e., in practice, of course, “Soviet office workers”. For posting up—460 (508; 500). Total—32,517 (25,104; 37,237).

For Ufa Gubernia, in November 1920, there were 25 deliveries, i.e., only five days without newspapers. Distribution: Party organisations—113 (1,572; 153); Soviet institutions—2,763 (1,296; 1,267); Political Education Department of the Military Commissariat—687 (470; 6,500); volost executive committees—903 (308; 3,511); reading-rooms—36 (8—*Pravda* 8 copies!—2,538); subscribers—none; “various uyezd organisations”—1,044 (219; 991). Total—5,841 (4,069; 15,429).

Finally, the report of the Pustosh Volost Agency of the Sudogda Uyezd, Vladimir Gubernia, for December 1920. Party organisations—1 (1; 2); Soviet institutions—2 (1; 3); Political Education Department of the Military Commissariat—2 (1; 2); volost executive committees—2 (1; 3); post and telegraph institutions—1 (1; 1); Urshyel Factory Committee—1 (1; 2); District Social Security Department—1 (0; 3). Total—10 (6; 16).

What are the conclusions from these fragmentary data? The conclusion, in my opinion, is that which our Party Programme expressed in the words: “at the present moment... only the first steps are being taken in the transition from capitalism to communism”.[126]

Capitalism made newspapers into capitalist enterprises, instruments of enrichment for the rich, of information and amusement for them, and instruments of deception and stupefaction for the mass of working people. We have destroyed the instruments of enrichment and deception. We have begun to make the newspaper an instrument for educating the masses and for teaching them to live and build their economy without landlords and without capitalists. But we have only just begun to do this. In three years and more we have done little. And we still have very much to do, a very long way to go. Less political noise, fewer general arguments and abstract slogans, in which inexperienced Communists who have not understood their tasks delight; more production propaganda, and, most of all, a businesslike, efficient taking into account of practical experience, adapted to the level of development of the masses.

In the distribution of newspapers (I have no data on books; probably the situation is even worse) we have abolished subscriptions. That is a step forward from capitalism to communism. But capitalism cannot be killed at one blow. It is revived in the shape of “Soviet office workers”, the Soviet bureaucracy, which, under various pretexts, grabs newspapers. It is impossible to count how many it grabs, but apparently a lot. We must work persistently and systematically to “smack the hands” of the bureaucracy, to prevent it from grabbing newspapers and books, to reduce its share, to reduce steadily the very number of “Soviet office workers”. Unfortunately, we are not in a position to reduce this number tenfold or a hundredfold at once—to promise that would be charlatanism, given our present level of culture—but we can and must reduce it constantly and steadily. A Communist who does not do this is a Communist only in words.

We must strive and strive to ensure that, as a rule, newspapers and books are distributed free only to libraries and reading-rooms, to a network of them that properly serves the whole country, the whole mass of workers, soldiers and peasants. Then the people will strive a hundred times more strongly, more quickly, and more successfully towards literacy, light and knowledge. Then the work of education will advance by leaps and bounds.

A small calculation for the sake of illustration, as an example. 350,000 copies of *Izvestia* and 250,000 copies of *Pravda* for the whole of Russia. We are paupers. There is no paper. The workers are cold and hungry, they are in rags and barefoot. The machines are worn out. The buildings are falling to pieces. Let us imagine that we have for the whole country, for over 10,000 volosts, 50,000 libraries and reading-rooms, not on paper but in reality. Not less than three for each volost and at least one for each factory or mill, for each military unit. Let us imagine that we have learned to take not only the “first step from capitalism to communism”, but also the second and third steps. Let us imagine that we have learned to distribute properly 3 copies of newspapers to each library and reading-room, of which, let us say, 2 are for “posting up” (assuming that we have taken the fourth step from capitalism to communism, I assume, I venture to assume, that instead of the barbarous “posting up”, which spoils the newspaper, we nail it to a smooth board with wooden nails—there are no iron nails, there will be a shortage of iron even at the “fourth step”!—so that it is convenient to read and the newspaper is preserved). So, 2 copies for 50,000 libraries and reading-rooms for “posting up”, 1 copy for reserve. Let us imagine further that we have learned to give newspapers to “Soviet office workers” in moderate quantities, say, not more than a few thousand copies for the pampered “dignitaries” of the whole Soviet Republic.

With such bold assumptions, 160, let us say 175, thousand copies would suffice for the whole country five times better than now. Everyone would have the opportunity to get information from the newspaper (with a proper organisation of “travelling libraries”, which, in my opinion, Comrade F. Dobler recently defended so successfully in *Pravda*[127]). 350,000 copies of two newspapers. At present—600,000, pilfered by “Soviet office workers”, wasted uselessly, “for rolling cigarettes”, etc., simply because of capitalist habits. The saving would be 250,000 copies. In other words: we would save for ourselves, despite our poverty, two daily newspapers of 125,000 copies each. And in each such newspaper we could every day give the people serious and valuable literary material, the best classical fiction, textbooks on general education, textbooks on agriculture, textbooks on industry. If the French bourgeoisie, even before the war, learned, in order to make money, to publish novels for the people not at 3½ francs in the form of a gentleman’s booklet, but at 10 centimes (i.e., 35 times cheaper, 4 kopeks at the pre-war rate) in the form of a proletarian newspaper, why should we not—at the second step from capitalism to communism—learn to act in the same way? Why should we not learn, by acting in the same way, to achieve that in one year—even with our present poverty—we give the people, 2 copies to each of the 50,000 libraries and reading-rooms, all the necessary textbooks and all the necessary classics of world literature, modern science, modern technology?

We shall learn.

February 7, 1921.