V. I.   Lenin

262

To:   G. M. KRZHIZHANOVSKY


Written: Written late in December 1920
Published: First published in 1942 in Lenin Miscellany XXXIV. Printed from the original.
Source: Lenin Collected Works, Progress Publishers, [1976], Moscow, Volume 35, pages 469-470.
Translated: Andrew Rothstein
Transcription\Markup: R. Cymbala
Public Domain: Lenin Internet Archive.   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


Comrade Krzhizhanovsky

Would it not he possible to develop (not at once, but straightaway after the Congress,[2] for the Council of Labour and Defence) a practical plan for an electrification campaign:

Etwas[1] :

(1) in each uyezd urgently to set up at least one power station;

(2) make it obligatory for this centre to become a training, lecture, demonstration, etc., centre, and take the entire population through these courses (beginning with the young people, or by volosts, etc.);

(3) immediately assign tasks among the population as to what they can now make a start on (we need 2 1/2 million poods of copper—so let us at once assign tasks for bringing in 25million poods, let people voluntarily begin to collect church bells, door handles, etc.; then poles, etc.);

(4) begin preparatory navvying work at once, assigning tasks among the uyezds;

(5) mobilise all engineers, electricians, all who have done courses at physico-mathematical faculties, etc., without exception. Their obligation will be to deliver not less than two (four?) lectures a week, to teach not less than (10–50?) people about electricity. If they fulfil this—a bonus. If they don’t—gaol.

(6) Write urgently a few popular pamphlets (some to be translated from Germ an) and adapt the “book” (yours) into a number of more popular articles, for teaching in the schools and reading to the peasants.

And then a number of detailed measures on the following two groups:

aa) propaganda and training 

bb) first steps towards pulling this into practice at once, and from all angles.

Lenin


Notes

[1] Something like this.—Ed.

[2] Lenin refers to the Eighth All-Russia Congress of Soviets, held on December 22–29, 1920, at which Krzhizhanovsky delivered a report on the plan for the electrification of Russia. The resolution on the electrification report was drafted by Lenin.


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