A look at Lenin's ideas being put into practice in the early USSR originally published in Socialism: Theory and Practice in 1983:
From December 22, 1922 until March 2, 1923, Lenin, who was already gravely ill, dictated several important letters and five articles – "Letter to the Congress", "Granting Legislative Functions to the State Planning Commission", "The Question of Nationalities or 'Autonomization'", "Pages from a Diary", "On Cooperation", "Our Revolution (Apropos of N. Sukhanov's Notes)", "How We Should Reorganize the Workers' and Peasants' Inspection (Recommendation to the Twelfth Party Congress)", ''Better Fewer, but Better". These works were actually Lenin's political testament for the Party, for they set forth a programme of socialist transformations in the country.
Lenin's plan for the building of socialism envisaged industrialization, cooperation of agriculture and a cultural revolution. The creation of a large-scale machine industry and the electrification of the national economy were to play a particularly major role. In the article "Better Fewer, but Better'’ he noted that' ''we shall be able, by exercising the greatest possible thrift in the economic life of our state. to use every saving we make to develop our large-scale machine industry, to develop electrification". (1) By electrification Lenin meant not only the building of a number of electric power stations but also the gradual provision of a new technical base for the use of electricity in industry, transport and agriculture.
The Soviet people had to launch socialist transformations while lacking the necessary experience and without any outside help, The funds for these projects were therefore to come from foreign and domestic trade, profits yielded by the light industry, cuts in administrative expenses, the mobilization of internal resources and the strictest economizing regime. Lenin called for saving not only in the economy, but also in the sphere of administration, for only then, as he said, "shall we be certain of being able to keep going. Moreover, we shall be able to keep going not on the level of a small-peasant country, not on the level of universal limitation, but on a level steadily advancing to large-scale machine industry''. (2) To renovate the state apparatus, Lenin called for the thorough selection of personnel, seeing to it that "learning . . . shall really become part of our very being, that it shall actually and fully become a constituent element of our social life''. (3)
The radical tasks involved in the creation of the new society could be accomplished only through planned economic growth. The plan was to become the foundation of economic development for many years to come. Lenin was convinced that it was impossible to work without a long-term plan envisaging important achievements.
A key component of Lenin's plan for the building of socialism was the programme of the socialist reorganization of agriculture, the switch over from small. scattered peasant farms to large-scale collective production. In the article "On Cooperation" he showed cooperation was the only possible and true way of bringing about the socialist reorganization of agriculture that would help to draw the peasants into socialist construction.
In the socialist reorganization of agriculture Lenin attached primary importance to consolidating the alliance of the working class and the peasantry, with the former playing the leading role.
In his last works Lenin. the founder of the Soviet state, devoted much attention to a cultural revolution. The task of socialism, he said, was to put all cultural achievements at the service of the working people, to create conditions that would give the masses access to politics, knowledge and aesthetic values. The cultural revolution was to promote public education, spread scientific socialist ideology, help organize the people's entire cultural life on its principles, and overcome petty-bourgeois views and ethics. Lenin laid special emphasis on the internationalist education of the masses, the development of culture, national in form and socialist in substance, on the interconnection and mutual enrichment of national cultures.
The eradication of illiteracy was a priority task, for under tsarism 75 per cent of the population could neither read- nor write. Lenin outlined specific measures for ending illiteracy. He stressed in this context that "our schoolteacher should be raised to a standard he has never achieved. and cannot achieve, in bourgeois society". (4)
These ideas of Lenin's underlay the entire activity of the Party in promoting education and accomplishing the cultural revolution. In his last articles and letters Lenin also underlined the need for the all-round strengthening of the Soviet state, raising the role of the Communist Party in socialist construction. Lenin saw the major function of the dictatorship of the proletariat as lying in creative activity. Its main aim was to build socialism, abolish the division of society into antagonistic classes, make all of its members working people, and rule out all exploitation of man by man.
During the 60 years that have passed since Lenin wrote his last works, socialism, as he foresaw, triumphed finally and completely in the USSR and a developed socialist society has been built in this country.
1 V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 33, p. 501
2 Ibid . , PP. 501-502
3 Ibid ., pp. 488-489
4 V. I. Lenin. Collected Works, Vol. 33, p. 46
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