Letter to Anatoly Lunacharsky, November 29, 1920

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Copies to Comrades Litkens, Solovyov, Krestinsky[edit source]

29/XI.

Comrade Lunacharsky:

Comrade Litkens and I had a detailed talk yesterday. I find his and Comrade Solovyov’s drafts artificial.[1] Naturally, the CC will decide. My own preliminary considerations are as follows:

1) Set up the office of Assistant People’s Commissar to handle all the administrative side.

2) Turn the “organisational sector” into an “organisational centre” (with a member of the collegium in charge). This centre is to handle the administrative, organisational, supply and other sides of all the sectors.

3) Eliminate Glavprofobr[2] , merging it with the secondary schools, provided: (α) general knowledge and political subjects are extended in the secondary schools and (β) the switch from trade and technical to polytechnical education is, as far as possible, ensured.

4) Revive the “G.U.S.” (State Academic Council) and regulate it as an organ for discussion of all scientific and pedagogical matters.

[[ BOX: ]]

Composition=all members of the collegium + the best specialists, even if bourgeois.

5) Set up the following sectors; (1) pre-school; (2) primary school; (3) secondary school (=Glavprofobr); (4) extramural (==Chief Committee for Political Education); (5) higher school; (6) art.

6) Leave the art sector as a single one, appointing “political commissarsfrom among the Communists to all central and governing bodies in the sector.

29.XI. Lenin

  1. A reference to the draft statute of the People’s Commissariat or Education written by V. I. Solovyov and the draft, theses m reorganising it prepared by Y. A. Litkens. Both drafts were sent by the authors to Lenin. On the reorganisation of the People’s Commissariat for Education see also present edition, Vol. 32, pp. 120–22, 123–32; Vol. 42, pp. 237–38; and Collected Works, Fifth (Russian) Edition, Vol. 42, p. 376.
  2. The Central Administration for Vocational Training under the People’s Commissariat for Education.—Ed.