Lenin’s Theory of Cultural Construction

Lenin’s theory of socialist construction of culture.

After the October Revolution, with the development of socialist economic construction in Soviet Russia, Lenin discussed the thought of strengthening socialist cultural construction from many aspects. (1) Create the cultural conditions for becoming a completely socialist country. The construction of socialist modernization needs to improve the scientific and cultural level of the whole nation. Economic construction without cultural construction is not far away. He listed illiterate as one of the three enemies, saying that it is impossible to realize electrification when there is illiterate, “without a cultural revolution, it is impossible to fully cooperate.” Only by greatly improving the level of cultural science, having a considerable foundation in pure culture or material aspects, and realizing the cultural revolution, can we become a completely socialist country. (2) We should protect and develop the cultural rights of workers. The proletariat established the highest type of democracy in history, and all the working people generally participated in all affairs of the state. Soviet democracy focused on the practical guarantee that the working people who had been oppressed and exploited by capitalism could actually participate in the management of the state, and actually used the best assembly place, the best printing place and the largest paper bank (reserve) to educate those who had been fooled by capitalism, The actual guarantee that these masses have a real (practical) possibility to get rid of the shackles of religious prejudice, etc. One of the important tasks of the Soviet regime was to enable the exploited laborers to enjoy the benefits of culture, civilization and democracy, and to continue this work unswervingly. (3) Against cultural nihilism. In view of the erroneous nihilism view of the proletarian cultural school which advocates abandoning all the previous culture and creating the unique culture of the proletariat, Lenin pointed out that to develop socialist culture, we must creatively make use of all the excellent cultural heritage of the past era, and immediately use the materials left by capitalism yesterday for us to use today to build socialism. We must acquire all the culture left over from capitalism and use it to build socialism. We must acquire all science, technology, knowledge and art. Otherwise, we will not be able to build a communist society. In order to make creative use of all excellent cultural heritage, we must unite and use the professional “science and technology experts” trained from the old society. It is necessary to combine bringing up a group of economic construction talents with communist consciousness and mastering advanced science and technology and other specialized talents with the bold use of intellectuals from the old society and giving full play to their role. (4) We should strengthen the ideological education of communism. Lenin argued that the generation of workers trained from capitalist society can only accomplish the foundation of eliminating the old capitalist lifestyle based on exploitation, while the task of establishing a communist society should be undertaken by the youth. Therefore, while reforming the old capitalist society, we must train, train and educate a new generation of people who want to build a communist society in the future, so that young people can cultivate themselves and those who take them as leaders into Communists in the process of study, organization, unity and struggle. The whole cause of training, educating and practicing modern youth should be made into the cause of cultivating youth’s communist morality.