V. I.   Lenin

Draft Decision for the Politbureau of the C.C., R.C.P.(B.) on
The Chief Committee for Political Education[1]


Written: Written October 28, 1920
Published: First published in 1959 in Lenin Miscellany XXXVI. Printed from the manuscript.
Source: Lenin Collected Works, 2nd English Printing, Progress Publishers, 1971, Moscow, Volume 42, pages 223b-224a.
Translated: Bernard Isaacs
Transcription\Markup: D. Walters
Public Domain: Lenin Internet Archive (2003). You may freely copy, distribute, display and perform this work; as well as make derivative and commercial works. Please credit “Marxists Internet Archive” as your source.README


The exact wording of the resolution of the Central Executive Committee speaks of “unification of all work of political education in the R.S.F.S.R.[2]

While definitely recognising the need for such unification, the Politbureau of the C.C.,R.C.P.(B.) establishes, first of all, that this unification can only be understood in the sense of preserving, strengthening and extending not only the independence of the Party organisation but its leading, guiding and preponderant position in regard to all fields of work without exception under the auspices of the People’s Commissariat for Education.

The implementation of the C.E.C.’s resolution should he divided into two parts: a motion should be tabled immediately in the Council of People’s Commissars for the unification of the institutions exactly enumerated in the resolution of the C.E.C.

This motion to be drafted not later than tomorrow, 29,X., by two members of the C.C.—Bukharin and Preobrazhensky.

The latter part of the task will cover: further unification of all parallel bodies of an educational nature in all the people’s commissariats and elaboration of the organisational relations between the agitation and propaganda bodies of the R.C.P. and the educational bodies of the Commissariat for Education which are subordinate to them.

A report on this latter part, giving an accurate list of all parallel bodies in all the commissariats, is to be submitted to the Politbureau by Comrades Preobrazhensky and Bukharin.


Notes

[1] Lenin’s draft was incorporated in toto in the decision on the Chief Committee for Political Education which was adopted at the meeting of the Politbureau on October 28, 1920.

The Chief Committee for Political Education was established under the People’s Commissariat for Education by a decree of the Council of People’s Commissars signed by Lenin on November 12, 1920. Administratively and organisationally part of the Commissariat for Education, it was subordinated directly to the C.C. of the R.C.P.(B,.) on matters dealing with the ideological content of its work. The C.C.P.E. was in charge of all activities in the teld of political education, agitation and propaganda, directed the mass communist education of adults (the anti- illiteracy movement, schools, clubs, libraries and village reading-rooms) and also Party education (the communist universities and Party schools). Until reorganised (in June 1930) into the Mass Work Sector of the People’s Commissariat for Education, the C.C.P.E. was headed by N. K. Krupskaya.

[2] This refers to the resolution of the All-Russia Central Executive Committee “On Measures for Stepping Up the Activities of the People’s Commissariat for Education”. It was published in Izvestia No. 226 for October 10, 1920.


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