The process of formation and development of culture cannot be understood without understanding the role and place of the masses in social production, in social progress, in the change of civilizations. By the very essence of its content, the concept of culture is deeply social, because it expresses the result and process of human social activity. This is the essence of the term "culture", with all the variety and breadth of its use.

The basis of social progress is an increasingly active involvement of the masses in historical creativity. In 1905, defining the tasks of the first Russian revolution and the conditions for its successful development, V. I. Lenin wrote: "In order to become great, in order to recall the years 1789-1793, not 1848-1850, and surpass them, it must raise the gigantic masses to active life, to heroic efforts, to "thorough historical creativity", to raise them out of the terrible darkness, out of the unprecedented downtroddenness... " 1. Here the relationship is clearly indicated between the scale of social revolutions and the development of the political activity of the masses, on the basis of which, in turn, there are significant shifts in the public consciousness, in the cultural level of these masses.

V. I. Lenin called one of the deepest and most important propositions of Marxist historical and philosophical theory the thesis that along with the thoroughness of historical action, the volume of the masses whose work it is will also grow. After quoting this idea from Karl Marx's "Holy Family" in the original language, he once again returned to it, formulating it as follows: "As the historical creativity of people expands and deepens, the size of the mass of the population that is a conscious historical figure should also increase." 2 Later, V. I. Lenin developed this position and enriched it with an important theoretical conclusion about the acceleration of historical development in connection with the increasing involvement of the masses in the creative revolutionary process. 3 These propositions fully apply to the theory of culture, since cultural development is an integral part of the general historical process, an integral part of broad revolutionary transformations.

Summing up the above, we can distinguish the following general provisions for the theory of culture: the masses of the people form the social basis on which any culture is based; the introduction of the masses to historical creativity determines the progressive development of culture, social progress; from the breadth of coverage of those involved in historical research.

1 V. I. Lenin. PSS. Vol. 10, p. 19.

2 V. I. Lenin. PSS. Vol. 2, pp. 539-540.

3 See V. I. Lenin, PSS. vol. 45, pp. 173-177.

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the scale and depth of cultural transformations in general depend on the creativity of the masses; the same circumstances also determine the pace of cultural development, which progressively increases along with the acceleration of general social processes, in which the working masses begin to play an increasingly active role.

Thus, in the course of historical development, the sphere of creative activity of working people is constantly expanding and deepening. It is based on production activities, which over time becomes more complex and more diverse. On this basis, other forms of human activity are also developing - first of all, social and political activities are beginning to take up more and more space, and at the same time class consciousness is growing. Gradually, conditions are being created for broader intellectual creativity (scientific, aesthetic, etc.). However, in a class-antagonistic society, it is a monopoly of a narrow circle of people, and only the abolition of private property destroys this barrier. 4
The great Russian poet N. A. Nekrasov dreamed of the time when the destitute Russian people would embark on this path of assimilation to the riches of spiritual culture:

"...Will the time come
(Come, come, welcome!),
When the people are not Blucher
And not my Lord the stupid,
Belinsky and Gogol
Will you get carried away from the bazaar?"
V. I. Lenin cited these well-known lines in his article " Another campaign for democracy "as an example of genuine humanism in contrast to the anti-national, treacherous position of the "liberal" Milestones. 5 Vladimir Ilyich recalled the poet's prophetic words in connection with the revolutionary events of 1905 - 1907, which helped to awaken the people's desire for light and knowledge. "Millions of cheap publications on political subjects," he noted, "were read by the people, the masses, the crowd, and the lower classes as greedily as they had never read before in Russia." 6
But in an exploitative society, there are insoluble contradictions in the way of access to the treasures of spiritual culture. As Karl Marx noted, "the characteristic feature of the capitalist mode of production is precisely that it separates different types of labor from each other, and therefore also separates mental and physical labor." 7 This created a chasm between physical and mental labor, and alienated spiritual culture from the masses of the people.

The level of cultural development is determined not only by the content of spiritual values, but also by the nature of relations that develop in the process of their production, the way these values are distributed and consumed, and this means the attitude of workers to spiritual values, the degree of cultural penetration into the masses. As one Soviet researcher correctly pointed out, the culture of one socio-economic formation differs from the culture of another formation not only in the orientation of the dominant ideology, but also in what could be called the type of spiritual production; each socio-economic formation is characterized by a certain type of spiritual production, that is, a certain concrete historical system of creation, distribution and distribution of consumption of spiritual values, determined by the way of material production inherent in this formation 8 .

4 See K. Marx and F. Engels. From early works, Moscow, 1956, p. 592.

5 See V. I. Lenin. PSS. Vol. 22, p. 83.

6 Ibid.

7 K. Marx and F. Engels, Op. 26, part I, p. 422.

8 See A. I. Arnoldov. Socialism and the Cultural Revolution, Moscow, 1967, p. 5.

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The founders of the theory of scientific communism revealed the irreconcilable contradictions of spiritual production in the capitalist world, the gap between scientific and technological progress and the development of spiritual values by the working masses.: "The victories of technology seem to be bought at the price of moral degradation. It seems that as humanity subdues nature, man becomes either a slave to other people or a slave to his own meanness. Even the pure light of science cannot seem to shine except against the dark background of ignorance. All our discoveries and all our progress seem to lead to the fact that material forces are endowed with intellectual life, and human life, deprived of its intellectual side, is reduced to the level of a simple material force. " 9 Only the abolition of private property, he pointed out, would mean the complete emancipation of all human feelings and qualities .10 The same idea was repeatedly emphasized and developed by V. I. Lenin. Even in drawing up the first program of the RSDLP, he considered it important to note that under socialism, the products produced by common labor will serve to satisfy the needs of the workers themselves, "for the full development of all their abilities and the equal use of all the acquisitions of science and art."11
The Marxist-Leninist doctrine of the decisive role of the masses of the people in the cultural and historical process is opposed by various elitist concepts of the culture of conscious or unconscious defenders of the ideology of exploitative classes. V. I. Lenin considered it unacceptable for conscious Marxists to tolerate these harmful theories. He sharply opposed all those who denied the democratic basis of culture, and regarded the people as a destructive or, at best, inert mass. He consistently exposed such views, which were presented in different versions and different connections by P. B. Struve, N. A. Berdyaev and other liberals of the anti-people leaven. All of them were distinguished by an undisguised sense of fear of the people's element, the struggle of the masses, the revolution, which, in their opinion, sweeps away all the fruits of culture. For example, in the cadet weekly Polyarnaya Zvezda, edited by Struve, a certain P. Muratov expressed doubts about whether the "tender and young plant of free artistic creativity" would be able to survive the revolutionary hurricane .12 In the same publication, Berdyaev called for saving individual glowing lights of culture "from the raging ocean, dark and uncreative." 13
But perhaps the most militant enemy of the people was D. S. Merezhkovsky, who in December 1905 - during the period of the highest rise of the revolution - published a cynical article "The Coming Cad". Who did the author have in mind when he named the article that way? The answer is straightforward: it is the rabble, it is "hooliganism coming from below, barefoot", capable of destroying civilization. Addressing the "noble" and "sweet" Russian youths, he called out: "Don't be afraid of the stupid, old devil of political reaction that you are still seeing... Be afraid of one thing... rudeness, for the reigning slave is a boor, and the reigning boor is the devil-no longer the old, fantastic, but the new, real devil, really terrible, more terrible than it is painted - the coming prince of this world is the Coming boor " 14 . These lines seem to be copied from the pages of philosophical trucks-

9 K. Marx and F. Engels, Soch. Vol. 12, p. 4.

10 See K. Marx and F. Engels. From early works, p. 592.

11 V. I. Lenin. PSS. Vol. 2, p. 97.

12 "Polyarnaya zvezda", 1906, N 7, p. 509.

13 "Polyarnaya zvezda", 1905, N 2, p. 148.

14 "Polyarnaya zvezda", 1905, N 3, p. 190.

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tatov F. Nietzsche, who even in the last century acted as the "evil genius" of the human race, declaring (and shouting in the headlines of his works) that he was above human morality, he was "beyond good and evil", that "human is too human". But such openly narodophobic views are only an extreme expression of the idea of the spiritual inferiority of the commoner, which is quite common among the "intelligent public". This premise is the starting point in the various anti-national concepts of cultural development that fill bourgeois aesthetics.

Of course, no one can dispute the obvious fact that the people are the creators of material culture. That is why the preachers of anti-democratic theories try first of all to bring together all cultural development (and the very concept of "culture"). to the sphere of spiritual production only, and then to prove that the ordinary worker simply has nothing to do here, he lacks a general culture, special knowledge, a" fine sense", that all this is the lot and privilege of selected intellectuals. Here, for example, is how the French philosopher A. Bergson expressed this idea allegorically: "Between nature and us, moreover, between us and our own consciousness, a curtain is stretched, dense for ordinary people, light, almost transparent for the artist and poet." 15 And the Spanish art theorist X. Ortega y Gasset, in his program article "The Dehumanization of Art", spoke about the necessary historical trend "towards the progressive exclusion of the human" from artistic creation. "It will be," he argued, " art for artists, not for the masses of people. It will be an art of caste, not a democratic art. " 16 Such statements are often found on the pages of bourgeois publications, and in support of the developed propositions, facts are often cited that indicate the degeneration of modern bourgeois art.

At first glance, deceptively, it seems that the arguments of the proponents of dehumanization of culture have a certain reason: after all, the alienation of spiritual culture from the direct producer of spiritual values is an indisputable fact of capitalist society. However, as Marxist theory has shown, the assessment of this phenomenon requires a deeper and more complete analysis. First, in order to judge the role of the masses in spiritual production, we cannot approach this question in isolation, without a temporal connection, but we need a broader view of the process as a whole, where the trends of development can be traced to the end, in short, we must proceed from the principle of historicism. Secondly, the way in which spiritual values are distributed under capitalism (and this is primarily the manifestation of cultural alienation) This alone does not explain the origin of these values. Here you need to start from the basis on which they are created. And this basis is the productive activity of the masses, their collective wisdom, their worldview, worldview, combined with historical experience, national traditions, etc.

Of course, not all of this is projected on the canvas of artistic and scientific creativity in a straightforward, adequate way, without professional refraction and generalization. And the placers of folk talents themselves are hidden from the eyes of superficial or biased observers. But the whole point is to be able, as V. I. Lenin taught, "to discover talents that are abundant among the people and that capitalism has crushed, crushed, and strangled by the thousands and millions." 17
15 " Modern book on aesthetics. Anthology", Moscow, 1957, p. 177.

16 Ibid., p. 450.

17 V. I. Lenin. PSS. Vol. 35, p. 195.

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A good example is art, where connections with folk art are traced clearly and concretely, revealing the origins of artistic skill. The outstanding Soviet film director and artist E. B. Vakhtangov said well about this:"Mankind does not have a single truly great work of art that is not the personified completion of the creative forces of the people themselves, because the truly great is always overheard by the artist in the soul of the people..." 18 .

The Great October Socialist Revolution marked a new stage in the development of the Marxist doctrine of culture and, in particular, of the transition of society to a new type of spiritual production, in which the former alienation of the people from the fruits of civilization is eliminated. Much of what previously could only be considered theoretically has become everyday life. The revolution filled theory with concrete content, made it possible to make new fundamental generalizations and conclusions, put specific vital problems of cultural construction on the agenda and link them with all other tasks of the Soviet government. The concepts were confirmed, tested and adjusted by practice. Thus, revolutionary practice led to the creation of Lenin's theory of the cultural revolution, which was the pinnacle in the development of the Marxist doctrine of culture.

"Live creativity of the masses is the main factor of the new public" 19 . These words of V. I. Lenin, uttered in the first days of the birth of the Soviet state, perfectly reveal the main feature of the cultural revolution, the main feature of the formation of socialist culture. The broad social base of the cultural revolution is a crucial condition for its successful development, reflecting the general historical pattern of increasingly active and mass involvement of working people in the revolutionary process of transforming society.

The greatest strength and vitality of the October Revolution lay in the awakening of the creative energy of the masses, in their striving for a new life and culture. The introduction of the masses to historical creativity is an objective process. But its pace and timing are significantly affected by subjective factors. This fact has always been taken into account by the Communist Party when defining its strategy, tactics, and practical plans. Hence the main task of building a new society, clearly and concisely formulated by V. I. Lenin: "To raise the lowest ranks to historical creativity"20 .

V. I. Lenin showed the peculiarity of the "mass human material" from which socialism and socialist culture are created. He wrote: "We want to build socialism out of those people who have been brought up by capitalism, corrupted and corrupted by it, but who are also hardened to struggle by it." 21 The working class and its vanguard, the Communist Party, play a special role in "processing" this material, so to speak, in "purifying" it of harmful impurities, in "cementing" it, and in "molding" it. of the exploited masses around the proletariat, under its influence and guidance, and ridding them of the egoism, fragmentation, vices, and weakness engendered by private property."22 The main task of the class-conscious proletariat in relation to the rest of the working masses

18 Evg. Vakhtangov. Materials and articles, Moscow, 1959, pp. 166-167.

19 V. I. Lenin. PSS. Vol. 35, p. 57.

20 Ibid., p. 189.

21 V. I. Lenin. PSS. Vol. 38, p. 54.

22 V. I. Lenin. PSS. Vol. 41, p. 186.

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It is succinctly expressed in the following Leninist formula: "enlightenment, education, organization." 23
But the implementation of this principle is far from simple; on the way to its implementation, there are incredible difficulties associated with the readiness of the masses to solve the most complex creative problems. It is not without reason that the task of involving the masses in socialist construction and the task of raising their cultural level were considered by V. I. Lenin in a close relationship and in a single series of priority measures of the Soviet government. In this regard, interesting data are contained in one of the speeches of N. K. Krupskaya. "Faith in the creative power of our generation," she said, " runs like a red thread through all of Vladimir Ilyich's speeches and articles. It is this appeal, so often repeated that every cook should be able to manage the state, and in this phrase lies the indication that the masses, the broad masses, should take part in the construction of a new life. To move forward with united masses is one of the main ideas of Vladimir Ilyich. Another of his thoughts is the question of culture. The further the purely military struggle receded, the more the tasks of construction came to the fore, the more Vladimir Ilyich emphasized with increasing energy the need to raise the level of culture to a higher level. " 24
In order to fulfill these historical tasks, the Soviet state had to organize political, educational, cultural and educational work among the masses on an unprecedented scale, and to develop the broadest educational activities at all levels, using all channels. "First of all, we put forward the broadest public education and upbringing. It creates the ground for culture..."25 ," said Vladimir Ilyich. He singled out as one of the main functions of the dictatorship of the proletariat "its educational task, which is particularly important in Russia, where a minority of the population belongs to the proletariat", and pointed out that "this task must come to the fore, since we need to prepare the masses for socialist construction"26 . The cultural and educational function of the proletarian state is the core of Lenin's program of the cultural revolution, the main tool for forming the culture of socialism.

What are the concrete ways to involve the masses in the cultural revolution, in socialist construction? First of all, it is the political education of the masses, the development of a new consciousness. V. I. Lenin formulated the educational task as follows: "The goal of political culture and political education is to bring up true communists who can overcome lies and prejudices and help the working masses to overcome the old order and carry on the work of building a state without capitalists, without exploiters, without landlords"27 .

The basis of political education was the direct involvement of the working masses in active state, economic and cultural life. It is characteristic that the first major works of V. I. Lenin of the Soviet period are devoted to this topic-the article " How to organize a competition?", the brochure"The next tasks of Soviet Power". Vladimir Ilyich warmly welcomed the desire of the working people for creative, lively work, and their desire to undertake the construction of a socialist society themselves. "One of the most important tasks now, if not the most important," he wrote, " is to develop this project as widely as possible.-

23 Ibid.

24 TsGALI, f. 279, op. I, units hr. 42, ll. 6-7.

25 See Memoirs of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin. Vol. 5, Moscow, 1969, p. 17.

26 V. I. Lenin. PSS. Vol. 41, p. 399.

27 Ibid., p. 404.

page 22

the worthy initiative of the workers and all workers and exploited people in general in creative organizational work " 28 . This Leninist position determined the main thing in the work of Soviet organizations, institutions, and enterprises, and indicated the main direction of their educational activities. This idea he never tired of explaining and emphasizing, it is the leitmotif of many, many of his works of the Soviet period.

V. I. Lenin also pointed out the great difficulties that stood in the way of the socialist organization of labor. First, the workers were not yet accustomed to their new role as masters of production, had not yet settled in here, and at first they were "timid" and doubted whether they would be able to cope with a difficult task on their own. Secondly, in the psychology of the masses, there were still many remnants associated with the former forced labor, when everyone thought only of their own benefit - to do less, to get more. And these remnants, these difficulties, were overcome by the whole practice of our socialist construction on the basis of the full development of the creative initiative of the masses. New relationships in the collective, a new attitude to work, the gradual establishment of new moral and ethical norms of human behavior - all these necessary aspects of the formation of socialist culture were formed in the course of social and industrial activities of Soviet people.

V. I. Lenin taught the working people the difficult art of seeing the perspective of development behind a pile of events and facts, determining the trend of movement, and on this basis highlighting the most essential and important things that need to be paid special attention to at the moment. Among such defining historical phenomena, he attributed the sprouts of a new, communist consciousness, which gave the first shoots in the field of Soviet reality, on the basis of socialist social relations. These questions were not only raised by him, but also considered in a broad sociological plan, and received a deep philosophical justification. "The real interest of the epoch of great leaps," he wrote, "lies in the fact that the abundance of fragments of the old, which sometimes accumulate faster than the number of germs (not always immediately visible) of the new, requires the ability to identify the most essential in the line or chain of development." 29 Later Lenin repeatedly returned to this idea. "We must," he pointed out,"carefully study the sprouts of the new, treat them carefully, help them grow in every possible way, and 'take care' of these weak sprouts. " 30
V. I. Lenin attached particular importance to the Communist subbotniks, which were born in the famine spring of 1919. He dedicated the pamphlet " The Great Initiative (On the heroism of the workers in the rear. About the "communist subbotniks")". "Communist subbotniks are of great historical significance precisely because they show us the conscious and voluntary initiative of the workers in developing the productivity of labor, in the transition to a new labor discipline, and in creating socialist conditions of economy and life." "This is the beginning of a revolution that is more difficult, more essential, more fundamental, more decisive than the overthrow of the bourgeoisie," wrote V. I. Lenin, "for it is a victory over one's own inertia, licentiousness, and petty - bourgeois egoism, over these habits that cursed capitalism has left as a legacy to the worker and peasant." 31 This turn in people's minds is one of the most profound and significant manifestations of the cultural revolution.

28 V. I. Lenin PSS. Vol. 35, p. 198.

29 V. I. Lenin. PSS. Vol. 36, p. 205.

30 V. I. Lenin. PSS. Vol. 39, p. 20.

31 Ibid., p. 5.

page 23

Revealing the main line of activity of the workers of political enlightenment, V. I. Lenin said that in solving particular problems one should not lose sight of the main task of the entire socialist revolution - to help educate and educate the working masses, in order to overcome old habits, old skills that we have inherited from the past, possessive skills and habits that permeate the masses through and through.

The most important aspect of the cultural and educational activity of the proletarian state is its extensive educational work among the masses. "In our party work, we have developed our own skills of broad influence on the masses," Lenin noted, "but they must be combined with cultural and educational methods, in particular, school and especially extracurricular, which has not always been possible." 32 That was the crux of the problem.

"In order to participate intelligently, meaningfully, and successfully in the revolution, one must learn." 33 This slogan of the leader, put forward with the victory of October, determined the main direction of cultural construction in Soviet Russia. The Cultural Revolution is a multi-faceted social process. But first of all, it manifests itself in the fact that culture and knowledge are mastered by the broadest masses of working people. The Soviet government, by opening the way to education, science, and art for the people, created all the conditions for the democratization of culture, for the use of its centuries-old gains by the working people themselves. A wide network of educational institutions, clubs, libraries, reading rooms and other cultural and educational institutions has emerged. Everywhere, in cities and villages, folk schools, craft and agricultural schools, various kinds of mass amateur organizations were created with unprecedented speed - self-education groups, orchestra, choral, drama amateur circles, fine arts studios, sports sections and dozens of other forms of cultural and educational institutions of various sizes and purposes. It was a broad impulse of the masses to culture. "The awakening of new forces, their work to create a new art and culture in Soviet Russia," Vladimir Ilyich said in an interview with K. Kolesnikov. Zetkin, " that's good, very good. The rapid pace of their development is understandable and useful. We need to catch up with what has been missed for centuries, and we want to. " 34 To catch up with what has been lost for centuries is what the cultural revolution in Russia was designed to do in the first place.

In order to understand the specifics of the forms and main focus of cultural and educational work in the Soviet State, we must proceed from the specific conditions of the current reality, from the real level of development of the masses of the people. What was the starting point from which the construction of a new life had to begin? This is well said by K. Paustovsky, recalling that difficult, distant time in the history of our state: "How weak the film of culture is still and what deep and bottomless waters of savagery and darkness lie beneath it. But the light of human thought will enlighten these waters to the bottom. This was the great task of our future, of our work, of our as yet unsettled life. " 35
V. I. Lenin, developing the theory of the cultural revolution, constantly turned to this concrete reality and, on its basis, determined the priority tasks of cultural construction in our country. As the number one task, he singled out the fight against illiteracy of the majority

32 V. I. Lenin. PSS. Vol. 37, pp. 463-464.

33 V. I. Lenin. PSS. Vol. 35, p. 132.

34 "Memories of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin". Vol. 5, p. 13.

35K. Paustovsky. A tale of life. Book 2. Moscow, 1962, p. 152.

page 24

population of Russia. This task, he emphasized, was "more important than others." 36 Lenin called for the "urgent task of mobilizing the literate and combating illiteracy." 37 On December 10, 1918, a decree was passed on "Mobilizing the literate and organizing propaganda for the Soviet system."38 . The Government suggested that the Soviet authorities register literate citizens in order to attract them to read Soviet government decrees and newspapers to the population and to teach illiterates. Every literate person had to teach several illiterate people to read. All work was carried out under the supervision of local party organizations. A year later, on December 26, 1919, Lenin signed the historic decree of the Council of People's Commissars "On the elimination of illiteracy among the population of the RSFSR" .39 The elimination of illiteracy was subordinated to the task of providing the entire population with the opportunity to consciously participate in the political life of the country. The decree stated that the entire population aged 8 to 50 years, who cannot read or write, must be taught to read and write in Russian or their native language at will. The Government provided for the need to provide students with classroom facilities, their working day was reduced by two hours while maintaining wages.

The main burden of the fight against illiteracy of the population initially fell on the shoulders of the Extracurricular Department of the People's Commissariat of Education (the department was headed by N. K. Krupskaya). By the middle of 1920, there were about 350,000 educators in the country, most of whom were working to eliminate illiteracy. By the end of the year, their number increased to 400 thousand. The field of extracurricular education was rapidly expanding. By the end of the 1920/21 academic year, there were 40967 schools and educational centers for adults in the country, where 1157 thousand people were trained (this is four times more than there were students and educational centers for adults at the time of the creation of Glavpolitprosvet in the fall of 1920).

Considering the elimination of illiteracy as a necessary condition for the victory of the new social system, V. I. Lenin considered it an extraordinary general political task. On July 19, 1920, he signed a decree of the Council of People's Commissars "On the establishment of the All-Russian Emergency Commission for the Elimination of Illiteracy" (Cheka Educational Program Committee), which was created under the People's Commissariat of Education 41 . The Communist Party and public organizations sent their best cadres to the "bloodless front" of the fight against illiteracy. Based on the 1920 census, researchers estimate that during the first three years of Soviet rule, approximately 7 million people were taught to read and write, including more than 4 million women. 42 These figures, of course, are very impressive, they characterize the unprecedented scale of our cultural construction. Yet the rate of literacy growth compared to the enormity of the challenges facing the country has not been sufficient, and progress in this area has been too slow. Pointing out these difficulties of cultural construction, Vladimir Ilyich wrote:: "This shows how much urgent rough work we still have to do to reach the level of an ordinary civilized state in Western Europe." 43 Interestingly, shortly after there were

36 V. I. Lenin. PSS. Vol. 41, p. 655.

37 V. I. Lenin. PSS. Vol. 38, p. 332.

38 "Decrees of the Soviet Government", vol. 4, Moscow, 1968, pp. 194-196.

39 "Collection of Laws and Regulations of the Workers 'and Peasants 'Government", 1919, No. 67, pp. 593-594.

40 See "Cultural Construction of the USSR". Collection of charts. Sost. A. Ya. Poddansky, Moscow-l. 1929, p. 85, 124.

41 See "Collection of Laws and Regulations of the Workers 'and Peasants 'Government", 1920, No. 69, p. 335.

42 E. N. Gorodetsky. The struggle of the masses for the creation of Soviet culture (1917-1920). Voprosy Istorii, 1954, No. 4, p. 26.

43 V. I. Lenin. PSS. Vol. 45, p. 364.

page 25

When these lines were written, V. I. Lenin, when reading N. K. Krupskaya's article "The Basis of Culture", advised her to supplement the article with an appeal to the masses, to the workers and peasants, calling on them to take up the task of eliminating illiteracy themselves. 44
The educational tasks of the proletarian state, of course, were not limited to the fight against illiteracy. "It is not enough to eliminate illiteracy, but it is also necessary to build a Soviet economy," V. I. Lenin noted , " and at the same time you will not get far on literacy alone."45 And he emphasized the need for a huge increase in culture. The school had a crucial role to play in implementing this program. The "Regulations on the Unified Labor School of the RSFSR", adopted by the All-Russian Central Executive Committee in October 1918, defined the foundations of school construction in the present and the ways of further development of public education .46 Despite some left-wing mistakes in a number of points of the "Regulations", it played a large positive role in cultural construction, in the democratization of public education and in the transformation of schools into an instrument of the dictatorship of the proletariat, an instrument for preparing the masses to solve the complex creative tasks of socialist construction. A unified system of public education was introduced, free and compulsory education for all school-age children, class principles and all the reactionary layers of the old school were destroyed. The most important provisions of this document are reflected in the party's program.

V. I. Lenin formulated the main goal of public education in the Soviet state as follows:: "So that those whom capitalism has relegated to the ranks of the most oppressed, downtrodden, and obscure - so that they themselves manage all industry, all production..." 47 . Vladimir Ilyich emphasized that one should not be stingy when it comes to the needs of public education, that it is necessary first of all to meet its needs, reduce spending on secondary departments in order to increase allocations for schools and eliminate illiteracy .48 "We must rob others, and give them what they ask for," is the emphatic resolution of the head of the Soviet Government on one of the documents on the supply of Glavprofobra schools .49
The enormous work of the Soviet government in developing public education and the broad participation of the masses in it did not slow down to affect the growth of the network of schools. By September 1, 1918, 1,640 new first-level schools and 345 second-level schools had been opened in Soviet Russia .50 During the 1918/19 academic year, 5,700 new schools were put into operation .51 The number of primary schools and their students increased particularly rapidly. According to the data for the 1918/19 academic year, there were 79280 primary schools in 46 provinces of the RSFSR, 6081446 students in them, and 186071 52 school employees .

When speaking of the role of the working masses in the formation of socialist culture, we must not lose sight of the key task of the cultural revolution, which is the creation of a new workers 'and peasants' intelligentsia. As Karl Marx pointed out, the advanced part of the proletarians is fully aware "that the future of their class, and consequently of humanity, is entirely determined by the future of the proletariat."

44 Ibid., p. 714.

45 V. I. Lenin. PSS. Vol. 44, p. 170.

46 See Collected Laws and Regulations of the Workers 'and Peasants' Government, 1918, No. 74, pp. 915-920.

47 V. I. Lenin. PSS. Vol. 37, p. 528.

48 See V. I. Lenin. PSS. Vol. 45, p. 365; vol. 54, p. 302.

49 V. I. Lenin. PSS. Vol. 52, p. 185.

50 "Narodnoe prosveshchenie", 1919, N 42-44, p. 5.

51 "Izvestiya VTSIK", 19. XII. 1919.

52 " People's Commissariat for Education. 1917-October 1920". (Short report), Moscow, 1920, p. 32.

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it depends on the upbringing of the younger working generation. " 53 This task has always been the focus of our party's attention. As early as the end of the nineteenth century, when fighting to consolidate the revolutionary proletarian movement in Russia, Lenin warmly welcomed those workers who "find in themselves so much character and willpower to study, study, and learn, and to develop themselves into class-conscious social-democrats, the 'working intelligentsia'. "54
For Soviet Russia, the problem of the intelligentsia became particularly difficult due to historically developed conditions. The revolution won in a country that lagged behind most Western states, a country that was mostly agrarian, with routine agriculture and a relatively low level of industrial development, in a country where the vast majority of the population remained illiterate, and the intelligentsia stratum was negligible. The proletarian State had to solve many economic, technical and cultural problems that had already been solved in the leading capitalist countries. No wonder V. I. Lenin bitterly remarked that the elements of knowledge, training, and enlightenment "are ridiculously small in comparison with all other states." 55 It was necessary to quickly master advanced foreign experience, and this cannot be done without a certain skill, without a certain amount of scientific knowledge. Organizational tasks also required special qualifications.

Speaking at the Eighth Congress of the RCP(b) in March 1919, V. I. Lenin said:: "If ever a future historian collects data about which groups in Russia ruled these 17 months, which hundreds, thousands of people bore all this work, bore all the incredible burden of governing the country, no one will believe that it was possible to achieve this with such an insignificant amount of forces. This number is negligible because there were only a small number of intelligent, educated, and capable political leaders in Russia. " 56 He set the task of quickly creating a leadership cadre from among the most trained and developed workers and peasants. But on the way to this, there was such a serious obstacle as the age-old alienation of workers from the sphere of intellectual labor. Even before the revolution, V. I. Lenin noted: "It is not difficult for workers to develop their own intelligentsia. Slow and hard " 57 . This is one of the differences between the maturing of proletarian revolutions and bourgeois revolutions. It is well known that the bourgeois revolution is preceded by a whole historical period of the gradual formation of new social relations in the depths of the old, feudal society, and at the same time, on the basis of the emerging capitalist economy, intelligentsia cadres closely associated with the bourgeoisie are growing up. In this respect, the proletarian State has to start almost from scratch.

The Soviet Government created new and qualified personnel in the state apparatus, in production, and in cultural construction, firstly by putting the most capable people in leadership positions, so that they could quickly acquire the necessary experience directly in practice, and secondly by organizing a system of special education and training. both on-the-job and off-the-job training.

Mass promotion is the new, revolutionary method of forming the working intelligentsia, which the proletarian state began to apply from the very first days of Soviet power. "We, vydvi-

53 K. Marx and F. Engels, Soch. Vol. 16, p. 198.

54 V. I. Lenin. PSS. Vol. 4, p. 269.

55 V. I. Levin. PSS. Vol. 45, p. 391.

56 V. I. Lenin. PSS. Vol. 38, p. 145.

57 V. I. Lenin. PSS. Vol. 48, p. 172.

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By hiring more and more workers to new posts, " V. I. Lenin pointed out,"they were given the opportunity to familiarize themselves with the tasks assigned to us, with the general mechanism of state administration." 58
The Soviet Government called on the working people to help equip the State apparatus with representatives of the working class and the working peasantry. Already at the end of October 1917, the Labor Commission was created, which urgently engaged in the recruitment of employees for all People's commissariats. On behalf of the Government, the commission appealed to all workers and organizations to send the best representatives to work in commissariats59 . A similar appeal was made by the Petrograd Soviet. In November 1917, he called on the working population of Petrograd to help organize the work of the city and district Soviets, to select for this purpose "the most class-conscious and capable comrades from the factories and regiments in organizing work, and to direct the forces thus obtained to the assistance of each People's Commissar." 60
The founder of the Soviet state repeatedly said, addressing the workers and peasants, that they should boldly take up the solution of large creative tasks, widely master the various areas of application of intelligent labor. "The working class," he pointed out, " must increase the number of administrators from its own ranks, create schools, and train cadres of workers on a state scale."61 . In a letter to the Presidium of the Conference of Proletarian cultural and educational organizations, developing the same idea, V. I. Lenin stressed the importance of the creative initiative of the masses to promote workers to leadership work in the proletarian state. "But the workers," he wrote, "have not yet sufficiently understood this, and are often excessively timid in promoting workers to govern the state." 62 And Vladimir Ilyich called for fighting for the implementation of these principles.

In November 1919, on the occasion of the two years of Soviet power, he said:: "In every region, one by one, one by one, regardless of any difficulties, the proletariat wins and attracts representatives of the proletarian masses, so that in every area of government, in every small cell, from bottom to top - so that everywhere the representatives of the proletariat themselves pass the school of construction, they themselves develop tens and hundreds of thousands of people capable of everything conduct the affairs of public administration and state construction independently " 63 . At the end of 1920, a report of the Supreme Economic Council to the VIII All-Russian Congress of Soviets was published, according to which 57.2% of workers were in the Presidium of the Supreme Economic Council and gubsovnarkhozes, 51.4% in the boards of glavkov, and 63.5% in factory managements64 . After analyzing these figures, V. I. Lenin proudly stated: "So, even now, the average participation rate of workers is 61.6%, i.e., closer to 2/3 than to half!"65 . Researchers have found that during the Civil War alone, about 3,500 workers and about 2,000 peasants were promoted to leadership positions in the Soviet state (without a central apparatus) .66 So the task specified by the leader was solved.

The problem of creating a popular intelligentsia was not limited and could not be limited only to the method of promotion, however effective it might be.-

58 V. I. Lenin. PSS. Vol. 39, pp. 309-310.

59 See Izvestia of the Central Election Commission and the Petrograd Soviet, 31. X. 1917.

60 "News of the Central Election Commission and the Petrograd Soviet", 18. XI. 1917.

61 V. I. Lenin. PSS. Vol. 40, p. 270.

62 V. I. Lenin. PSS. Vol. 37, p. 87.

63 V. I. Lenin. PSS. Vol. 39, p. 297.

64 "Report to the VIII All-Russian Congress of Soviets", Moscow, 1920, p. 71.

65 V. I. Lenin. PSS. Vol. 42, p. 284.

66 A. E. Beilin. Cadres of specialists of the USSR. Their formation and growth, Moscow, 1935, p. 4. 9; see also I. A. Lyasnikov. Training of industrial specialists of the USSR, Moscow, 1954, p. 4. 22; A. I. Lutchenko. The main stages of formation of the Soviet intelligentsia. "The Cultural Revolution in the USSR, 1917-1965", Moscow, 1967, pp. 144-152.

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no matter how venous it is. Promotion had to be combined with constant study, and not only in terms of mastering practical work skills, but also in terms of improving the general level of education and mastering the necessary theoretical knowledge. Their leader constantly reminded the workers of this. To fulfill this task, it was necessary first of all to create real conditions for people from the people so that they could become qualified specialists. "It is necessary to extract the best forces from the people, to give them knowledge ..." 67 I. Lenin in 1919. The Soviet government carried out a number of concrete measures to democratize higher education in order to introduce workers to the heights of science, not only to open the doors of universities for them, but also to help them enter them. As A.V. Lunacharsky recalled, "it was necessary urgently, as soon as possible - it was impossible to wait for this - to take care that the training of workers 'and peasants' youth, well-trained, able to take the whole state business into their own strong hands, would begin. Only then, said Vladimir Ilyich, will it be possible to say with confidence that what will be decided at the congresses of Soviets, at the party congresses, will actually be implemented in life. And we have called young people, both workers and peasants, to universities and higher technical schools. " 68
On August 2, 1918, V. I. Lenin signed the well-known decree of the Council of People's Commissars "On the rules of admission to a higher educational institution", which stated that anyone who reached the age of 16 can join the number of students of a higher educational institution69 . On the same day, he writes a draft resolution of the Council of People's Commissars, which suggested that the People's Commissariat of Education should immediately prepare a number of measures to ensure that everyone can study. It was pointed out that there could be no privileges for the propertied classes. "In the first place," wrote V. I. Lenin, "persons from among the proletariat and the poorest peasantry should certainly be accepted, who will be provided with a large amount of scholarships." 70 These Leninist propositions were reflected in the Program adopted at the Eighth Congress of the RCP (b), where it was written: "Opening wide access to the higher school auditorium for all those who want to study, and first of all for workers; attracting all those who can teach there to teaching activities in higher schools; removing any and all artificial barriers between fresh scientific forces and the department; material support for students in order to give the proletarians and peasants a real opportunity to use the higher school " 71 .

The solution of the problem of democratization of higher education was associated with enormous difficulties not only of an organizational and material nature, but also of a cultural nature, since the country did not have a sufficient mass base, a sufficient number of workers and peasants with the general education level necessary for studying in higher educational institutions, to train highly qualified specialists from among the working people. "We knew," noted A. V. Lunacharsky, "that if we waited for new students to pass through our lower schools in a normal way, the sun would rise when the dew wiped out our eyes." 72 Time did not wait and required to solve these tasks immediately and in the shortest possible time. V. I. Lenin found a way out of the existing situation. He supported and implemented it

67 V. I. Lenin. PSS. Vol. 39, p. 250.

68 A. V. Lunacharsky. Lenin on the education of young people. "A great friend of youth". Memoirs of old Communists and Komsomol members, Moscow, 1960, p. 96.

69 See "Decrees of Soviet Power", vol. 3, Moscow, 1964, p. 141.

70 V. I. Lenin. PSS. Vol. 37, p. 34.

71 "The CPSU in resolutions and decisions of congresses, conferences and plenums of the Central Committee". Ed. 8-E. T. 2, p. 49.

72 A. V. Lunacharsky. Op. ed., p. 96.

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the idea of creating a special institute - a system of working faculties (rabfaks), which were organized at higher educational institutions. Their history is thoroughly researched 73 . Here it is necessary to emphasize once again the role of V. I. Lenin in creating this new, socialist form of training cadres in state, economic and cultural construction, a form put forward by revolutionary practice itself. On September 17, 1920, Lenin signed the decree of the Council of People's Commissars "On Workers 'Faculties", which stated that the main task of the workers 'faculties was"to involve the proletarian and peasant masses in the walls of higher education" 74 . In December 1920-January 1921, the Central Committee of the RCP(b) convened a party meeting on public education, which paid great attention to the workers ' faculties. A special decree on them was adopted, in which the People's Commissariat of Education was invited to pay the most serious attention to strengthening existing labor departments and opening new ones. After the adoption of the resolution, the network of working schools is expanding even more. By April 1, 1921, there were 59 work schools in the country with 25,436 students .76 This meant that in just three months the number of rabfakovtsy increased by more than 8 thousand people, that is, it increased by one third compared to the end of 1920.

Rabfaks were an effective tool of the Soviet government in implementing a broad program of training cadres of the national intelligentsia. In 1920, their first graduation took place, which gave universities 200 students; in 1921, about 2 thousand people were already graduated; in 1922, 3,567 more workers were admitted to higher school .77 This is how Lenin's provisions on the democratization of higher education were consistently implemented, and how the practice of cultural construction was enriched with new forms and methods of solving the tasks set.

V. I. Lenin pointed out that the construction of socialism is impossible without a whole historical stage in the cultural development of the masses. "This will be a special historical era, and without this historical era, without universal literacy, without a sufficient degree of interpretation, without a sufficient degree of teaching the population to use books, and without a material basis for this... we will not achieve our goal. " 78 The founder and leader of the Soviet State saw the movement of millions of people towards knowledge and socialism as the main feature of the cultural revolution, the main condition for the formation of socialist culture.

73 See V. I. Bessonov. Creation and development of workers 'faculties in 1919-1921" From the history of the Great October Socialist Revolution", Moscow, 1958; N. M. Katuntseva. The role of workers ' faculties in the formation of cadres of the national intelligentsia in the USSR. M. 1966; M. Gulyamova. The role of workers ' faculties in creating cadres of the Soviet intelligentsia of Uzbekistan. "Scientific works and communications" of the Department of Social Sciences of the Academy of Sciences of the Uzbek SSR. Book 3. Tashkent, 1961; "The first working schools in the Urals". Memoirs of teachers and students of the first Ural working schools. Sverdlovsk. 1963, et al.

74 "Collection of Laws and Regulations of the Workers 'and Peasants 'Government", 1920, No. 80, pp. 399-400.

75 See "Directives of the CPSU (b) on questions of education" M.-L. 1930, p. 321.

76 Pravda, 3. VI. 1921.

77 Cm. "The Soviet Intelligentsia (History of Formation and Growth 1917-1965)", Moscow, 1968, p.102.

78 V. I. Lenin. PSS. Vol. 45, p. 372.

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