The first excerpt is from a report on the work of the Council of People's Commissars and the All-Russian Central Executive Committee of the Congress of Soviets of Workers', Soldiers', and Peasants' Deputies. The speech was delivered at the first session of the executive committee's meeting on Feb. 2, 1920. The second excerpt is from a Dec. 22, 1920, report on the work of the Council of People's Commissars given to the Eighth All-Russian Congress of Soviets.

The soviets--the Russian word for councils--were class organizations formed by workers, farmers, and soldiers during the Russian Revolution. The October 1917 insurrection overthrew the capitalist regime and put political power in the hands of the soviets, establishing a government of workers and peasants. At the time of these 1920 reports, the revolutionary government had recently emerged victorious from a war against counterrevolutionary forces backed by invading imperialist armies, and was turning its efforts to the pressing needs of economic development. The documents can be found in Lenin's Collected Works, Vols. 30 and 31.
 

I hope the Central Executive Committee will adopt this resolution which, in the name of the Central Executive Committee, instructs the Supreme Economic Council and the People's Commissariat of Agriculture to work out in the course of the next few months--our practical tasks during this period will be different--with the aid of scientists and engineers a broad and complete plan for the electrification of Russia. The author of this pamphlet is absolutely correct in choosing as its motto the saying: "The age of steam is the age of the bourgeoisie, the age of electricity is the age of socialism."

We must have a new technical foundation for the new economic development. This new technical foundation is electricity, and everything will have to be built on this foundation, but it will take many long years. We shall not be afraid of working ten or twenty years, but we must prove to the peasants that in place of the old separation of industry from agriculture, this very deep contradiction on which capitalism thrived and which sowed dissension between the industrial and agricultural workers, we set ourselves the task of returning to the peasant the loan we received from him in the form of grain, for we know that paper money, of course, is not the equivalent of bread.

We must repay this loan by organizing industry and supplying the peasants with its products. We must show the peasants that the organization of industry on the basis of modern, advanced technology, on electrification which will provide a link between town and country, will put an end to the division between town and country, will make it possible to raise the level of culture in the countryside and to overcome, even in the most remote corners of the land, backwardness, ignorance, poverty, disease, and barbarism.

We shall tackle the problem as soon as we have dealt with our current, basic task, and we shall not allow ourselves to be deflected for a single moment from the fundamental practical task.
 

Anyone who has carefully observed life in the countryside, as compared with life in the cities, knows that we have not torn up the roots of capitalism and have not undermined the foundation, the basis, of the internal enemy. The latter depends on small-scale production, and there is only one way of undermining it, namely, to place the economy of the country, including agriculture, on a new technical basis, that of modern large-scale production. Only electricity provides that basis.

Communism is Soviet power plus the electrification of the whole country. Otherwise the country will remain a small-peasant country, and we must clearly realize that. We are weaker than capitalism, not only on the world scale, but also within the country. That is common knowledge. We have realized it, and we shall see to it that the economic basis is transformed from a small-peasant basis into a large-scale industrial basis. Only when the country has been electrified, and industry, agriculture, and transport have been placed on the technical basis of modern large-scale industry, only then shall we be fully victorious.

We have already drawn up a preliminary plan for the electrification of the country; two hundred of our best scientific and technical men have worked on it. We have a plan which gives us estimates of materials and finances covering a long period of years, not less than a decade. This plan indicates how many million barrels of cement and how many million bricks we shall require for the purpose of electrification.

To accomplish the task of electrification from the financial point of view, the estimates are between 1,000 and 1,200 million gold rubles. You know that we are far from being able to meet this sum from our gold reserves. Our stock of foodstuffs is not very large either. We must therefore meet the expenditure indicated in these estimates by means of concessions, in accordance with the plan I have mentioned. You will see the calculation showing how the restoration of our industry and our transport is being planned on this basis.

I recently had occasion to attend a peasant festival held in Volokolamsk Uyezd, a remote part of Moscow Gubernia, where the peasants have electric lighting. A meeting was arranged in the street, and one of the peasants came forward and began to make a speech welcoming this new event in the lives of the peasants. "We peasants were unenlightened," he said, "and now light has appeared among us, an 'unnatural light, which will light up our peasant darkness.'" For my part, these words did not surprise me. Of course, to the non-Party peasant masses electric light is an "unnatural" light; but what we consider unnatural is that the peasants and workers should have lived for hundreds and thousands of years in such backwardness, poverty, and oppression under the yoke of the landowners and the capitalists.

You cannot emerge form this darkness very rapidly. What we must now try is to convert every electric power station we build into a stronghold of enlightenment to be used to make the masses electricity-conscious, so to speak. All should be made aware of the reason why these small electric power stations, whose numbers run into the dozens, are linked up with the restoration of industry. We have an established plan of electrification, but the fulfillment of this plan is designed to cover a number of years. We must fulfill this plan at all costs, and the period of its fulfillment must be reduced....

To carry out the electrification plan we may need a period of ten or twenty years to effect the changes that will preclude any return to capitalism. This will be an example of rapid social development without precedent anywhere in the world. The plan must be carried out at all costs, and its deadline brought nearer.  
 
 
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