1. From WHAT IS TO BE DONE?
Burning Questions of Our Movement
"We should dream!" I wrote these words and became alarmed. I imagined myself sitting
at a "unity conference" and opposite me were the Rabocheye Dyelo` editors and
contributors. Comrade Martynov rises and, turning to me, says sternly: "Permit me to
ask you, has an autonomous editorial board the right to dream without first
soliciting the opinion of the Party committees?" He is followed by Comrade
Krichevsky, who (philosophically deepening Comrade Martynov, who long ago
rendered Comrade Ple-khanov more profound) continues even more sternly: "I go
further. I ask, has a Marxist any right at all to dream, knowing that according to
Marx mankind always sets itself the tasks it can solve and that tactics is a process
of the growth of Party tasks which grow together with the Party?"
The very thought of these stern questions sends a cold shiver down my spine and
makes me wish for nothing but a place to hide in. I shall try to hide behind the
back of Pisarev.
"There are rifts and rifts," wrote Pisarev of the rift between dreams and reality.
'My dream may run ahead of the natural march of events or may fly off at a tangent
in a direction in which no natural march of events will ever proceed. In the first
case my dream will not cause any harm; it may even support and augment the energy of
the working men. . . . There is nothing in such dreams that would distort or
paralyse labour-power. On the contrary, if man were completely deprived of the
ability to dream in this way, if he could not from time to time run ahead and
mentally conceive, in an entire and completed picture, the product to which his
hands are only just beginning to lend shape, then I cannot at all imagine what
stimulus there would be to induce men to undertake and complete extensive and
strenuous work in the sphere of art science and practical endeavour. The rift
between dreams and reality causes no harm if only the person dreaming believes
seriously in his dream, if he attentively observes life, compares his observations
with his castles in the air and if generally speaking he works conscientiously for
the achievement of his fantasies. If there is some connection between dreams and
life then all is well.
Of this kind of dreaming there is unfortunately too little in our movement. And the
people most responsible for this are those who boast of their sober views, their
closeness to the concrete, the representatives of legal criticism and of
illegal tailism
Written between the autumn of 1901 and February 1902
Collected Works, Vol. 5, pp. 509-10
2. PARTY ORGANISATION AND PARTY LITERATURE
The new conditions for Social-Democratic work in Russia which have arisen since the
October revolution have brought the question of party literature to the fore. The
distinction between the illegal and the legal press, that melancholy heritage of the
epoch of feudal, autocratic Russia, is beginning to disappear. It is not yet dead,
by a long way. The hypocritical government of our Prime Minister is still running
amuck, so much so that Izvestia Soveta Rabochikh Deputatov is printed "illegally";
but apart from bringing disgrace on he government, apart from striking further moral
blows at it, nothing comes of the stupid attempts to "prohibit" that which the
government is powerless to thwart.
So long as there was a distinction between the illegal and the legal press, the
question of the party and non-party press was decided extremely simply and in an
extremely false and abnormal way. The entire illegal press was a party press, being
published by organisations and run by groups which in one way or another were linked
with groups of practical party workers. The entire legal press was non-party-since
parties were banned-but it "gravi-tated" towards one party or another. Unnatural
alliances, strange "bed-fellows" and false cover-devices were inevi-table. The
forced reserve of those who wished to express party views merged with the immature
thinking or mental cowardice of those who had not risen to these views and who were
not, in effect, party people.
An accursed period of Aesopian language, literary bond-age, slavish speech, and
ideological serfdom! The prole-tariat has put an end to this foul atmosphere which
stifled everything living and fresh in Russia. But so far the proletariat has won
only half freedom for Russia.
The revolution is not yet completed. While tsarism is no longer strong enough to
defeat the revolution the revolution is not yet strong enough to defeat tsarism. And
we are living in times when everywhere and in everything there operates this
unnatural combination of open forthright, direct and consistent party spirit with an
underground, covert, ''diplomatic" and dodgy legality. This unnatural combination
makes itself felt even in our newspaper: for all Mr Guchkovs witticisms about
Social-Democratic tyranny forbidding the publication of moderate liberal-bourgeois
newspapers, the fact remains that Proletary, the Central Organ of the Russian
Social-Democratic Labour Party still remains outside the locked doors of autocratic
police-ridden Russia.
Be that as it may, the half way revolution compels all of us to set to work at once
organising the whole thing on new lines. Today literature, even that published
legally, can be nine-tenths party literature. It must become party literature. In
contradistinction to bourgeois customs, to the profit-making commercialised
bourgeois press, to bourgeois literary careerism and individualism, aristocratic
anarchism" and drive for profit the socialist proletariat must put forward the
principle of party literature, must develop this principle and put it into practice
as fully and completely as possible.
What is this principle of party literature? It is not simply that, for the socialist
proletariat, literature cannot be a means of enriching individuals or groups it
cannot in fact, be an individual undertaking, independent of the common cause of the
proletariat. Down with non partisan writers! Down with literary supermen! Literature
must become part of the common cause of the proletariat, a cog and a screw of
one single great Social-Democratic mechanism set in motion by the entire politically
conscious vanguard of the entire working class. Literature must become a component
of organised planned and integrated Social-Democratic Party work.
"All comparisons are lame says a German proverb. So is my comparison of literature
with a cog, of a living movement with a mechanism. And I daresay there will ever be
hysterical intellectuals to raise a howl about such a comparison, which degrades,
deadens, "bureaucratises" the free battle of ideas, freedom of criticism, freedom of
literary creation, etc., etc. Such outcries, in point of fact, would be nothing more
than an expression of bourgeois-intellectual individualism. There is no question
that litera-ture is least of all subject to mechanical adjustment or levelling, to
the rule of the majority over the minority. There is no question, either, that in
this field greater scope must undoubtedly be allowed for personal initiative,
individual inclination, thought and fantasy, form and content. All this is
undeniable; but all this simply shows that the literary side of the proletarian
party cause can-not be mechanically identified with its other sides. This, however,
does not in the least refute the proposition, alien and strange to the bourgeoisie
and bourgeois democracy, that literature must by all means and necessarily become an
element of Social-Democratic Party work, inseparably bound up with the other
elements. Newspapers must be-come the organs of the various party organisations, and
their writers must by all means become members of these organisations. Publishing
and distributing centres, book-shops and reading-rooms, libraries and similar
establish-ments-must all be under party control. The organised socialist proletariat
must keep an eye on all this work, supervise it in its entirety, and, from beginning
to end, without any exception, infuse into it the life-stream of the living
proletarian cause, thereby cutting the ground from under the old, semi-Oblomov,
semi-shopkeeper Russian principle: the writer does the writing, the reader does the
reading.
We are not suggesting, of course, that this transforma-tion of literary work, which
has been defiled by the Asiatic censorship and the European bourgeoisie, can be
accomplished all at once. Far be it from us to advocate any kind of standardised
system, or a solution by means of a few decrees. Cut-and-dried schemes are least of
all applicable here. What is needed is that the whole of our Party, and the entire
politically-conscious Social-Democratic proletariat throughout Russia, should become
aware of this new problem, specify it clearly and everywhere set about solving it.
Emerging from the captivity of the feudal censorship, we have ho desire to become,
and shall not become, pris-oners of' bourgeois-shopkeeper literary relations. We
want to establish, and we shall establish, a free press, free not simply from the
police, but also from capital, from career-ism, and what is more, free from
bourgeois anarchist individualism.
These last words may sound paradoxical, or an affront to the reader. What! some
intellectual, an ardent champion of liberty, may shout. What, you want to impose
collective control on such a delicate, individual matter as literary work! You want
workmen to decide questions of science, philosophy, or aesthetics by a majority of
votes! You deny the absolute freedom of absolutely individual ideological work!
Calm yourselves, gentlemen! First of all, we are discussing party literature and its
subordination to party control. Everyone is free to write and say whatever he likes,
without any restrictions. But every voluntary association (including the party) is
also free to expel members who use the name of the party to advocate anti-party
views. Freedom of speech and the press must be complete. But then freedom of
association must be complete too. I am bound to accord you in the name of free
speech, the full right to shout, lie and write to your heart's content. But you are
bound to grant me, in the name of freedom of association, the right to enter into,
or withdraw from, association with people advocating this or that view. The party is
a voluntary as-sociation, which would inevitably break up, first ideolo-gically and
then physically, if it did not cleanse itself of people advocating anti-party views.
And to define the border-line between party and anti-party there is the party
programme, the party's resolutions on tactics and its rules and, lastly, the
entire experience of international Social-Democracy, the voluntary international
associations of the proletariat, which has constantly brought into its parties
individual elements and trends not fully consistent, not completely Marxist and not
altogether correct and which, on the other hand. has constantly conducted
peri-odical "cleansings" of its ranks. So it will be with us too, supporters of
bourgeois "freedom of criticism", within the Party. We are now becoming a mass party
all at once, changing abruptly to an open organisation, and it is inevitable that we
shall be joined by many who are incon-sistent (from the Marxist standpoint), perhaps
we shall be joined even by some Christian elements, and even by some mystics. We
have sound stomachs and we are rock-like Marxists. We shall digest those
inconsistent elements. Free-dom of thought and freedom of criticism within the Party
will never make us forget about the freedom of organising people into those
voluntary associations known as parties.
Secondly, we must say to you bourgeois individualists that your talk about absolute
freedom is sheer hypocrisy. There can be no real and effective "freedom" in a
society based on the power of money, in a society in which the masses of working
people live in poverty and the handful of rich live like parasites. Are you free in
relation to your bourgeois publisher, Mr. Writer, in relation to your bour-geois
public, which demands that you provide it with por-nography in novels and paintings,
and prostitution as a "supplement" to "sacred" scenic art? This absolute freedom is
a bourgeois or an anarchist phrase (since, as a world outlook, anarchism is
bourgeois philosophy turned inside out). One cannot live in society and be free from
society. The freedom of the bourgeois writer, artist or actress is simply masked (or
hypocritically masked) dependence on the money-bag, on corruption, on prostitution.
And we socialists expose this hypocrisy and rip off the false labels, not in order
to arrive at a non-class literature and art (that will be possible only in a
socialist extra-class society), but to contrast this hypocritically free literature,
which is in reality linked to the bourgeoisie, with a really free one that will be
openly linked to the proletariat.
It will be a free literature, because the idea of socialism and sympathy with the
working people, and not greed or careerism, will bring ever new forces to its ranks.
It will be a free literature, because it will serve, not some satiated heroine, not
the bored "upper ten thousand" suffering from fatty degeneration, but the millions
and tens of millions of working people-the flower of the country, its strength and
its future. It will be a free literature, enriching the last word in the
revolutionary thought of mankind with the experience and living work of the
socialist proletariat bringing about permanent interaction between the experience of
the past (scientific socialism the completion of the development of socialism from
its primitive utopian forms) and the experience of the present (the present struggle
of the worker comrades)
To work, then comrades! We are faced with a new and difficult task. But it is a
noble and grateful one - to organise a broad multiform and varied literature
inseparably linked with the Social Democratic working class movement. All Social
Democratic literature must become Party literature. Every newspaper, journal,
publishing house, etc., must immediately set about reorganising its work, leading up
to a situation in which it will in one form or another, be integrated into one Party
organisation or another. Only then will Social Democratic literature really become
worthy of that name, only then will it be able to fulfil its duty and even within
the framework of bourgeois society break out of bourgeois slavery and merge with the
movement of the really advanced and thoroughly revolutionary class.
Novaya Zhizn No. 12, November 13, 1905
Signed: N. Lenin
Collected Works, Vol.10, pp.44-49
[from Lenin on Literature and Art p22, Moscow, 1967]
3. TO A. V. LUNACHARSKY
Aren't you ashamed of yourself voting for the publica-tion of Mayakovsky's
"150,000,000" in 5,000 copies?
Nonsensical, stupid, sheer stupidity and affectation 170 I think that only one out
of ten such things should be printed and in no more than 1,500 copies for libraries
and cranks.
And Lunacharsky ought to be flogged for his futurism.
Written on May 6,1921 First published in 1957
Collected Works, Fifth Russian Edition, Vol.52, p.179
[ibid., p. 216]
4. TO G. MYASNIKOV
August 5, 1921
Comrade Myasnikov,
I have only just managed to read both your articles. I am unaware of the nature of
the speeches you made in the Perm (I think it was Perm) organisation and of your
conflict with it. I can say nothing about that; it will be dealt with by the
Organisation Bureau, which, I hear, has appointed a special commission.
My object is a different one: it is to appraise your articles as literary and
political documents.
They are interesting documents.
Your main mistake is, I think, most clearly revealed in the article "Vexed
Questions". And I consider it my duty to do all I can to try to convince you.
At the beginning of the article you make a correct application of dialectics. Indeed
whoever fails to under-stand the substitution of the slogan of civil peace for the
slogan of ' civil war lays himself open to ridicule if nothing worse. In this you
are right.
But precisely because you are right on this point I am surprised that in drawing
your conclusions you should have forgotten the dialectics which you yourself had
properly applied.
'Freedom of the press, from the monarchists to the anarchists, inclusively".. Very
good! But just a minute:
every Marxist and every worker who ponders over the four years' experience of our
revolution will say, "Let's look into this--what sort of freedom of the press? What
for? For which class?"
We do not believe in "absolutes". We laugh at "pure democracy.
The "freedom of the press" slogan became a great world slogan at the close of the
Middle Ages and remained so up to the nineteenth century. Why? Because it expressed
the ideas of the progressive bourgeoisie, i.e., its struggle against kings and
priests, feudal lords and landowners.
No country in the world has done as much to liberate the masses from the influence
of priests and landowners as the R.S.F.S.R. has done, and is doing. We have been
performing this function of "freedom of the press" better than anyone else in the
world.
All over the world, wherever there are capitalists, freedom of the press means
freedom to buy up newspapers, to buy writers, to bribe, buy and fake "public
opinion" for the benefit of the bourgeoisie.
This is a fact.
No one will ever be able to refute it.
And what about us? Can anyone deny that the bour-geoisie in this country has been
defeated, but not destroyed? That it has gone into hiding? Nobody can deny it.
Freedom of the press in the R.S.F.S.R., which is surrounded by the bourgeois enemies
of the whole world, means freedom of political organisation for the bourgeoisie and
its most loyal servants, the Mensheviks and Socialist--Revolutionaries.
This is an irrefutable fact.
The bourgeoisie (all over the world) is still very much stronger than we are. To
place in its hands yet another weapon like freedom of political organisation
(=freedom of the press, for the press is the core and foundation of political
organisation) means facilitating the enemy's task, means helping the class enemy.
We have no wish to commit suicide, and therefore, we will not do this.
We clearly see this fact: "freedom of the press" means in practice that the
international bourgeoisie will immedi-ately buy up hundreds and thousands of Cadet,
Socialist-Revolutionary and Menshevik writers, and will organise their propaganda
and fight against us.
That is a fact. "They" are richer than we are and will buy a "force'' ten times
larger than we have, to fight us.
No, we will not do it; we will not help the international bourgeoisie.
How could you descend from a class appraisal - from the appraisal of the relations
between all classes - to the sentimental philistine appraisal? This is a mystery
to me.
On the question of civil peace or civil war, on the question of how we have won
over and will continue to ''win over'', the peasantry (to the side of the
proletariat) on these two key world questions (= questions that affect the very
substance of world politics), on these questions (which are dealt with in both your
articles) you were able to take the Marxist standpoint instead of the philistine
sentimental standpoint. You did take account of the relationships of all classes in
a practical, sober way.
And suddenly you slide down into the abyss of sentimentalism!
"Outrage and abuses are rife in this country freedom of the press will expose
them.
That, as far as I can judge from your two articles, is where you slipped up. You
have allowed yourself to be depressed by certain sad and deplorable facts and lost
the ability soberly to appraise the forces.
Freedom of the press will help the force of the world bourgeoisie. That is a fact
"Freedom of the press" will not help to purge the Communist Party in Russia of a
number of its weaknesses, mistakes misfortunes and maladies (it cannot be denied
that there is a spate of these maladies) because this is not what the world
bourgeoisie wants. But freedom of the press will be a weapon in the hands of this
world bourgeoisie. It is not dead; it is alive. It is lurking nearby and watching it
has already hired Milyukov, to whom Chernov and Martov (partly because of their
stupidity, and partly because of factional spleen against us, but mainly because of
the objective logic of their petty bourgeois-democratic position) are giving
faithful and loyal service.
You took the wrong fork in the road.
You wanted to cure the Communist Party of its maladies and have snatched at a drug
that will cause certain death -- not at your hands, of course, but at the hands of
the world bourgeoisie (+Milyukov+Chernov+Martov).
You forgot a minor point, a very tiny point, namely: the world bourgeoisie and its
"freedom" to buy up for itself newspapers, and centres of political organisation.
No, we will not take this course. Nine hundred out of every thousand
politically-conscious workers will refuse to take this course.
We have many maladies. Mistakes (our common mistakes, all of us have made mistakes,
the Soviet of Labour and Defence, the Soviet of People's Commissars and the Central
Committee) like those we made in distributing fuel and food in the autumn and winter
of 1920 (those were enormous mistakes!) have greatly aggravated the maladies
springing from our situation.
Want and calamity abound.
They have been terribly intensified by the famine of 1921.
It will cost us a supreme effort to extricate ourselves, but we will get out, and
have already begun to do so. We will extricate ourselves, for, in the main, our
policy is a correct one, and takes into account all the class forces on an
international scale. We will extricate ourselves because we do not try to make our
position look better than it is. We realise all the difficulties. We see all the
maladies, and are taking measures to cure them methodically, with perseverance, and
without giving way to panic.
You have allowed panic to get the better of you; panic is a slope-once you stepped
on it you slid down into a position that looks very much as if you are forming a new
party, or are about to commit suicide.
You must not give way to panic.
Is there any isolation of the Communist Party cells from the Party? There is. It is
an evil, a misfortune, a malaise.
It is there. It is a severe ailment.
We can see it.
It must be cured by proletarian and Party measures and not by means of "freedom"
(for the bourgeoisie).
Much of what you say about reviving the country's economy, about mechanical ploughs,
etc., about fighting for "influence" over the peasantry, etc., is true and useful.
Why not bring this out separately? We shall get together and work harmoniously in
one party. The benefits will be great; they will not come all at once, but very
slowly.
Revive the Soviets; secure the co-operation of non-Party people; let non-Party
people verify the work of Party members: this is absolutely right. No end of work
there, and it has hardly been started.
Why not amplify this in a practical way? In a pamphlet for the Congress?
Why not take that up?
Why be afraid of spade work (denounce abuses through the Central Control Commission,
or the Party press, Pravda)? Misgivings about slow, difficult and arduous spade work
cause people to give way to panic and to seek an "easy" way out: "freedom of the
press" (for the bour-geoisie).
Why should you persist in your mistake-an obvious mistake-in your non-Party,
anti-proletarian slogan of "freedom of the press"? Why not take up the less
"bril-liant" (scintillating with bourgeois brilliance) spade work of driving out
abuses, combating them, and helping non-Party people in a practical and
business-like way?
Have you ever brought up any particular abuse to the notice of the C.C., and
suggested a definite means of -eradicating it?
No, you have not.
Not a single time.
You saw a spate of misfortunes and maladies, gave way to despair and rushed into the
arms of the enemy, the bourgeoisie ("freedom of the press" for the bourgeoisie). My
advice is: do not give way to despair and panic.
We, and those who sympathise with us, the workers and peasants, still have an
immense reservoir of strength. We still have plenty of health and vigour.
We are not doing enough to cure our ailments.
We are not doing a good job of practising the slogan: promote non-Party people let
non Party people verity the work of Party members.
But we can, and w]ll, do a hundred times more in this field than we are doing.
I hope that after thinking this over carefully you will not, out of false pride
persist in an obvious political mistake ("freedom of the press' ), but, pulling
yourself together and overcoming the panic, will get down to practical work: help to
establish ties with non-Party people, and help non-Party people to verify the work
of Party members.
There can be no end of work in this field. Doing this work you can (and should) help
to cure the disease, slowly but surely, instead of chasing after will-o-the-wisps
like freedom of the press.
With communist greetings,
Lenin
Published in 1921
CW, Vol. 32, pp 504-09
[ibid., pp 215-220]
5. From SUMMING UP SPEECH
AT THE THIRD ALL-RUSSIA CONGRESS
OF SOVIETS OF WORKERS', SOLDIERS'
AND PEASANTS' DEPUTIES
January 18 (31), 1918
Of course, the working people had no experience in gov-ernment but that does not
scare us. The victorious pro-letariat looks out on a land that has now become a
public good, and it will be quite able to organise the new pro-duction and
consumption on socialist lines. In the old days, human genius, the brain of man,
created only to give some the benefits of technology and culture, and to deprive
others of the bare necessities, education and development. From now on all the
marvels of science and the gains of culture belong to the nation as a whole, and
never again will man's brain and human genius be used for oppression and
exploitation. Of this we are sure, so shall we not de-dicate ourselves and work with
abandon to fulfil this greatest of all historical tasks? The working people will
perform this titanic historical feat, for in them lie dormant the great forces of
revolution, renaissance and renovation.
Published in Izvestia No. 15, Collected Works,
January 20, 1918 VM. 26, pp.481-482
and Pravda No.15,
February 2 (January 20), 1918
6. THE CHARACTER OF OUR NEWSPAPERS
Far too much space is being allotted to political agitation on outdated themes to
political ballyhoo and far too little to the building of the new life to the facts
about it
Why, instead of turning out 200 400 lines don't we write twenty -- even ten lines
on such simple generally known, clear topics with which the people die already
fairly well acquainted like the foul treachery of the Mensheviks-the lackeys of the
bourgeoisie--the Anglo-Japanese invasion forces that have imposed the right of
capital--the American multimillionaires baring their fangs against Germany, etc etc
We must bring out the whole thing and note every new fact in this sphere but ee need
not write long articles and repeat 100 arguments; what is needed is to condemn in
just a few lines "in telegraphic style" the latest manifestation of the old known
and already evaluated politics.
The bourgeois press in the good old bourgeois times never mentioned the holy of
holies--the conditions in privately-owned factories in the private enterprises, in
the custom which fitted in with the interests of the bourgeoisie. We must radically
break with it. We have not broken with it. So far our type of newspaper has not
changed as it should in a society in transition from capitalism to socialism.
Less politics. Politics has been elucidated fully and reduced to a struggle between
the two camps--the insurrectionary proletariat and the handful of capitalist slave
owners (with the whole gang, right down to the Mensheviks and others). We may, and I
repeat, we must, speak very briefly about these politics.
More economics. But not in the sense of "general" dis-cussions, learned reviews,
intellectual plans and similar piffle, for, I regret to say, they are all too often
just piffle and nothing more. By economics we mean the gathering, careful checking
and study of the facts of the actual organisation of the new life. Have real
successes been achieved by big factories, agricultural communes, the Poor Peas-ants'
Committees, and local Economic Councils in building up the new economy? What,
precisely, are these suc-cesses? Have they been verified? Are they not fables,
boast-ing, intellectual promises ("things are moving", "the plan has been drawn up",
"we are getting under way", "we now vouch for", "there is undoubted improvement",
and other charlatan phrases of which "we" are such masters) ? How have the successes
been achieved? What must be done to extend them?
Where is the black list with the names of the lagging factories which since
nationalisation have remained models of disorder, disintegration, dirt,
hooliganism and parasitism? Nowhere to be found. But there are such factories. We
shall not be able to do our duty unless we wage war against these "guardians of
capitalist traditions". We shall be jellyfish, not Communists, as long as we
tolerate such factories. We have not learned to wage the class struggle in the
newspapers as skilfully as the bourgeoisie did. Remember the skill with which it
hounded its class enemies in the press, ridiculed them, disgraced them, and tried to
sweep them away. And we? Doesn't the class struggle in the epoch of the transition
from capitalism to socialism take the form of safeguarding the interests of the
working class against the few, the groups and sections of workers who stubbornly
cling to capitalist traditions and continue to regard the Soviet state iii the old
way:
work as little and as badly as they can and grab as much money as possible from the
state. Aren't there many such scoundrels, even among the compositors in Soviet
printing works, among the Sormovo and Putilov workers, etc.? How many of them have
we found, how many have we exposed and how many have we pilloried?
The press is silent. And if it mentions the subject at all it does so in a
stereotyped, official way, not in the manner of a revolutionary press, not as an
organ of the dictator-ship of a class demonstrating that the resistance of the
capitalists and of the parasites the custodians of capital traditions will be
crushed with an iron hand.
The same with the army. Do we harass cowardly or inefficient officers? Have we
denounced the really bad regiments to the whole of Russia? Have we caught enough
of the bad types who should be removed from the army with the greatest publicity for
unsuitability, carelessness, procrastination etc? We are not yet waging an effective
ruthless and truly revolutionary war against the specific wrongdoers. We do very
little to educate the people by living, concrete examples and models taken from all
spheres of life, although that is the chief task of the press during the transition
from capitalism to communism We give little attention to that aspect of everyday
life inside the factories, in the villages and in the regiments where, more than
anywhere else the new is being built--where attention, publicity, public criticism
condemnation of what is bad and appeals to learn from the good are needed most
Less political ballyhoo. Fewer highbrow discussions. Closer to life More attention
to the way in which the workers and peasants are actually building the new in their
everyday work, and more verification so as to ascer-tain the extent to which the new
is communistic.
September 20, 1918 N. Lenin
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