V. I. Lenin

Preface To I. I. Stepanov’s

The Electrification Of The R.S.F.S.R.

and The Transitional Phase Of World Economy

I heartily recommend this book by Comrade Stepanov to all
Communists.

The author has succeeded in giving a very able exposition of
exceedingly difficult and important problems. He did very well
in not writing a book for intellectuals (as is the practice
among many of us who copy the worst manners of bourgeois
writers), but for the working people, for the masses, for
rank-and-file workers and peasants. To his book the author has
appended a list of references for supplementary reading for the
benefit of those who may find it difficult to understand some
parts of it without further explanation. as well as for the
benefit of those who would like to consult the principal works
on this subject published in Russia and abroad. Special
reference must be made to the beginning of Chapter VI, where the
author splendidly outlines the significance of the New Economic
Policy, and magnificently answers the “airy” scepticism that is displayed in some quarters about the
possibility of electrification This scepticism is usually a
cloak to conceal the absence of serious thought on the subject
(that is, if it is not a cloak to conceal whiteguard, Socialist-Revolutionary and Menshevik hostility to all Soviet
construction, which, in fact, is sometimes the case).

What we lack most for genuine (and not idle-bureaucratic)
popular education is precisely “school manuals” (for absolutely all schools) like this one. If all our Marxist
writers sat down to write such manuals, or textbooks, on all
social questions without exception, instead of wasting their
efforts on newspaper and magazine political fireworks, which
everybody is sick and tired of, we should not have the present
disgraceful situation where, nearly five years after the
proletariat captured political power, the young people in the
proletariat’s state schools and universities are taught (or rather, corrupted) by the old bourgeois scientists
using the old bourgeois junk.

The Eighth Congress of Soviets decreed that instruction on the
Plan for Electrification should be compulsory in all educational
establishments in the R.S.F.S.R. [1] without exception. This decree, like many others, has remained a dead
letter because of our (Bolsheviks’) lack of culture. Now
that Comrade Stepanov’s “manual for schools” has been published we must see to it—and we shall see to
it!—that every uyezd library (and later every volost library) obtains several copies of it and that every electric
power station in Russia (there are over 800 of them) not only
has copies of this book but also arranges popular lectures on
electricity, on the electrification of the R.SF.S.R. and on
engineering in general. We must see to it that every village
schoolteacher reads and assimilates this manual (to help him in
this a circle or group of engineers and teachers of physics
should be organised in every uyezd), and not only reads,
understands and assimilates it himself but is able to relate
what is in it in a plain and intelligible way to his pupils, and
to young peasants in general.

It will require no little effort to do this. We are poor and
uneducated. But that does not matter so long as our people
realise that they must learn, and so long as they are willing to
learn; so long as the workers and peasants clearly understand
that they must now learn not to “benefit” and produce profits for the landowners and capitalists, but to
improve their own conditions of life.

This knowledge and desire exist. And so we definitely shall
start learning, and shall certainly learn something.

N. Lenin

March 18, 1922

Endnotes

[1] The reference is
to the resolution on electrification adopted by the Eighth All-Russia Congress of Soviets , which sat on December
22-29, 1920.