V. I.

Lenin

NOTES FOR A REPORT AT THE SECOND ALL-RUSSIA CONGRESS OF POLITICAL EDUCATION WORKERS [1]

THE NEW ECONOMIC POLICY AND THE TASKS OF POLITICAL EDUCATION WORKERS

1. Not in the straightforward communist fashion, but
“by outflanking and with a special approach”.

2. Defeat and retreat—for a new advance.

3. Who will be able to take advantage sooner, the
capitalists or ourselves?

4. “ Personal incentives”.... Peasants, workers, experts,
a mass of stupidities in our attitude to the latter.

5. To learn from capitalists and lessees.
A serious and harsh schooling.

6. Increase in production at all costs.

[ BOX:

You are outside the institutions? It is oven better that
you are outside.

]

7. Literacy. Liquidation of illiteracy, and not in the
clouds+and liquidating the Commission for Liquidation.
July 19,
1920. [2]

A disgraceful list of gubernias and uyezds lagging in respect of literacy.

8. Raising of cultural level
(after every great political upheaval, a long time goes into “digestion”, “assimilation”, training to make
use, finishing the rough-hewn work of initial construction).

9. Improvement of legality ... teach people to struggle
in a civilised way for legality, without at all forgetting the limits of legality in a revolution. That’s not the evil
now , it’s the multitude of illegalities.

10. In particular, graft . Who has done what to fight
graft.

10  bis. Bureaucracy and red tape.

11. Production propaganda, bringing to the fore economic
successes possible here and now for the peasant, ability
to single out, use for propaganda, follow up success.

12. Practical successes in the building of the economy—
that is the point. The touchstone of everything.

Three enemies :

13. σσ Four commandments:

Communist conceit —this is the enemy

{{

(1) Don’t split hairs, don’t be pompous in your communism, don’t use great words
to cover up your slackness, idleness, apathy, backwardness; Illiteracy
Graft

{

(2) Wipe out illiteracy; { (3) Fight graft; σσ

{{

σσ

(4) Check all your work, so that words should not remain
words, by practical successes in economic construction.

---
Notes:
[1]
Second All-Russia Congress of Political Education Workers
was held in Moscow from October 17 to 22, 1921. It was attended
by 310 delegates. Lenin’s report was given at the end of the
afternoon sitting on October 17, 1921 (see present edition, Vol. 33,
pp. 60–80).

[2]
The date of the decree on the establishment of the All-Russia
Extraordinary Commission for Abolition of Illiteracy. It was set
up under the People’s Commissariat for Education and its five
members were approved by the Council of People’s Commissars.
It had a standing conference of representatives from the
department for work in the countryside under the Central Committee of
the R.C.P.(B.), the department for work among women under
the Central Committee of the R.C.P.(B.), the Central Committee

45—39

of the Russian Young Communist League, the All-Russia Central
Council of Trade Unions, the Political Administration of the
Revolutionary Military Council of the Republic and the Universal
Education Board (see Izvestia No. 162, July 24, 1920).