The Tasks of the Youth Leagues

Lenin’s work expounding on the study tasks of the Youth Leagues. It was written on October 2, 1920, originally published in the Pravda on October 5, 6 and 7, of 1920, in the issues No. 221, 222 and 223. In the same year, a single Vol. booklet was published with the title as “The Tasks of the Youth League (Speech at the Third Congress of the Communist Youth League of Russia)”, The Chinese translation is included in Vol. 39 of the second edition of the Complete Works of Lenin.

After the victory of the October Revolution in Russia, proletarian culture and organizations rose rapidly and gained the leading power in the field of culture. Among them, the proletarian culture group, which is based on the Proletarian Culture Association, had an important position and influence. They advocated “the proletariat is the creator of the future, not the successor of the past”, to “completely break away from the old culture”, to eradicate all the old social culture, and to create a special “pure proletarian class culture” under “laboratory” conditions. This series of fallacies and extreme left thoughts have seriously damaged the cause of proletarian culture and education. In order to overcome the erroneous influence of extreme left approach of the proletarian culture group on the youth as soon as possible, and better mobilize the enthusiasm and initiative of the youth to participate in the socialist construction, and make them play their important and active role, Lenin delivered this speech at the Third Congress of the Communist Youth League in order to demonstrate what and how the Youth League should learn. This then became a programmatic document guiding the work of the Communist Youth League.

Lenin first pointed out the task of the Youth League from the perspective of building communism. He said that the task of the older generation was to overthrow the bourgeoisie, which has been completed in many aspects. The new generation, in addition to uniting all forces to support the workers’ and peasants’ political power in fighting against the capitalist aggression, is building a communist society on the already cleared foundation. After joining the Communist Youth League, every young man has taken on the responsibility of helping the party to build communism and the whole young generation to build a communist society. Therefore, the task of young people in general, especially the Communist Youth League and all other organizations, is to learn, first and foremost, communism. Lenin clarified the methods and ways of learning, and demanded that learning communism should not be limited to comprehending and reciting all the knowledge, slogans and conclusions of books, but should integrate the knowledge of communism, combine theory with practice, combine book knowledge with daily work practice, combine education with boiling real life, and follow the truth of communism which is asking for action. Otherwise, the book knowledge about communism obtained from the communist pamphlets and works will be worthless, or it will easily create some communist nerds and boasters and cause great damage to the cause of communism.

Lenin incisively discussed the relationship between proletarian culture and the culture of the past times, taught the youth to correctly treat the historical and cultural heritage, learn and master all the knowledge wealth created by the past human society, and build a new proletarian culture. In particular, he pointed out that proletarian culture did not fall from the sky, nor was it invented by those who called themselves experts of proletarian culture. Proletarian culture should be the development of all knowledge created by human beings under the oppression of capitalist society, feudal society and bureaucratic society in accordance with the theory. Only when we know exactly the culture created in the whole process of human development and critically absorb and transform it can we build the culture of the proletariat, and without such understanding, we cannot accomplish this task. Taking Russia’s electrification as an example, Lenin also asked the Youth League to study communism and master modern science and technology, so as to become a modern knowledgeable person. He pointed out that the construction of Communist society must be based on the latest scientific achievements of modern industry and agriculture, which is based on electrification. Therefore, the task facing the Youth League is to revitalize the national economy and to transform and restore agriculture and industry on the basis of modern science and technology and power technology. Every youth must understand that only when they have received modern education, have mastered all modern knowledge, and are good at turning communism from well-known ready-made formulas, opinions, plans, instructions and programs into the guidelines of practical work, can they complete the task of building a communist society.

Lenin expounded the nature and characteristics of communist morality and the importance of cultivating communist morality and abiding by discipline. He pointed out that there is no eternal morality beyond human society and class. Bourgeois morality is a kind of morality based on the oppression of all workers and peasants, and there is an essential difference between communist morality and capitalist morality, and Communist morality is derived from the interests of proletarian class struggle and serves the class interests of the proletariat, which destroys the old society of the exploiters and unites all workers to create a new communist society.

In the eyes of communists, all morality lies in the discipline of unity and the conscious mass struggle against exploiters. The Communist Youth League can only learn from communism and improve its moral level and realm by linking every step of its training and education with its participation in the general struggle of all workers against exploiters and by conscious and disciplined fighting against the bourgeoisie in the life-and-death struggle. The task of the Communist Youth League is not only to take the lead in training the Youth League members to become communists in the process of study, organization, unity and struggle, but also to develop all the undertakings of training and educating modern youth into the cause of cultivating the communist morality.

According to the basic tasks of the Communist Youth League in the period of socialist construction, Lenin expounded the nature and characteristics of the times of the Communist Youth League. He pointed out that the Communist Youth League members should be a new generation with Marxist theory, modern scientific and cultural knowledge, spirit of collectivism and communist morality, and the leaders of millions of builders of communist society, It is an example of unity and discipline, a fighter that can support all kinds of work and show initiative and creative initiative everywhere.

He summarized the work experience of some youth organizations, such as their campaigns which fought for the eradication of illiteracy among people and their participation in Saturday’s voluntary labor, and demanded that the Communist Youth League organize and unite all the youth and work for the interests of the whole society enthusiastically.

In essence, this speech clearly defined the tasks and policies of socialist education and ideological and cultural construction, which was of great theoretical and practical significance in correcting the “Left” tendency prevalent in ideological and cultural undertakings of Soviet Russia in the early days of building the country, and in educating, training and mobilizing the whole young generation to become true communists.