THE DEATH OF LENIN. EDUCATION OF THE LENIN CALL

Lazar Moiseevich Kaganovich

On January 21, 1924, the Great Man of the World died. A severe calamity struck the Party, the working class and all the working people of our country and the whole world.

It is impossible to convey experiences, bitterness, suffering that have engulfed all party and non-party people. Everyone was shocked - both young and old.

I saw the oldest Bolsheviks-the Leninist leading nucleus of the Party, the members and candidates of the Central Committee and the Central Control Commission of the RCP, when we gathered at two o'clock in the morning for a meeting of the Plenum of the Central Committee and the Central Control Commission in connection with the death of Ilyich-what suffering faces, eyes that are red with tears. They sat concentrated until dawn - they worked out and accepted an appeal from the Central Committee "To the Party. To all working people. "

On Tuesday, January 22, all the members of the Central Committee and the Central Control Commission went to Gorki. In the remaining hours before their departure, they visited factories in Moscow. Working Moscow was in deep mourning, a sense of grief, heavy experiences engulfed millions of working people not only in Moscow, but throughout the country.

Early in the morning of the 22nd, I went to my cell at the tanning factory Krasnyi Supplits in the Zamoskvoretsky district. There he saw a heartbreaking picture: the workers, especially the women workers, were literally weeping, only the words could be heard aloud: "What will happen?" How will we live without Lenin? "

At the open meeting of the cell the workers spoke, called upon the parties to respond to the great loss by joining its ranks, by the best work, by rallying around the Central Committee and the government, so that the enemies felt and saw that the Soviet power was strong and the union of the workers and peasants indestructible.

The meeting sent its condolences to the Central Committee of the RCP (B.), Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya and Maria Ilyinichna Ulyanova. In the resolution adopted, the workers, Communists and non-Party people, swore to rally even more closely around the RCP (B.). "Lenin will live forever among us," the workers wrote, "his teaching will forever remain a light in the struggle for communism!"

After this, a general meeting of workers was convened in the number of two thousand people. Immediately at the meeting, the leading non-party workers began to declare their admission to the party. The workers of the "Red Supplier" decided to deduct money from the earnings for a wreath and a library named after Lenin.

On the same day, on the 22nd, the members and candidates of the Central Committee and the Central Control Commission left for Gorki. There were four kilometers from the station to the Gorok, there was not enough sled for everyone, and we, on a more youthful scale, went on foot, a big frost helped us to move faster, and we, on foot, arrived in Gorki almost at the same time with the sleighs.

Lenin lay on a table in a large room with an open balcony, flowers and pine branches all around. At first we all stood around Lenin, then an honor guard from the members of the Central Committee and the Central Control Commission was organized.

On January 23, early in the morning, we prepared for the removal of Lenin's body from Gorok to go to Moscow. The members of the Politburo, Nadezhda Konstantinovna, Maria Ilinichna, were taken out of Lenin's house, then the members and candidates of the Central Committee and the Central Control Commission, the old Bolsheviks-delegates of the Second Congress of Soviets and the arriving delegations of workers and peasants, took turns to the railway station.

Along the sledge road to the station, as on the station itself, there are many peasants, peasants, railway workers, workers and teenagers. At the Paveletsky railway station, when Lenin's body was brought in, it was full of workers and workers of Moscow, along the way to the House of Unions, especially on Pyatnitskaya Street, many workers and citizens and their children were standing, despite the great frost, many of them weeping sobbing.

For several days there was an uninterrupted flow of people, not only Muscovites, but also from many other cities and regions of the country, the national republics.

On the day of the funeral, on January 27, there was a 26-degree frost, but all of us and hundreds of thousands of workers did not feel this frost, everyone was eager to get to the square or at least into its circle in order to later get the opportunity to pass the Mausoleum. In an exceptionally short time the Mausoleum was designed and built.

Before the introduction of the coffin of Lenin into the Mausoleum, many thousands of people bared their heads and sang "You fell a victim," and then - a dead silence that shook the soul of all of us - from the workers, peasants and Red Army men to the leaders of the party and government.

The Second All-Union Congress of Soviets of Workers ', Peasants' and Red Army Deputies who was in Moscow at that time devoted a special meeting to the memory of Ilyich, the organizer of the Soviet state, at which the leaders of the Party and government, representatives of the Comintern and Nadezhda Krupskaya made speeches.

What a mighty Leninist force was shown by Nadezhda Konstantinovna's comrade-in-arms and friend during the utterance of her speech! She showed everyone a worthy example of how the Bolshevik must endure grief. "These days," she said, "when I was standing at the grave of Vladimir Ilyich, I changed my whole life, and that's what I want to tell you. His heart was beating with fervent love for all the working people, for all the oppressed. He never said that himself, and I probably would not have said another, less solemn moment. I say this because this feeling he inherited from the Russian heroic revolutionary movement. This feeling made him passionately, hotly seeking an answer to the question: what should be the ways of liberating the working people? The answer to his questions he received from Marx. He did not come to Marx as a scribe. He approached Marx as a man, looking for answers to painful urgent questions. And he found these answers there. With them, he went to the workers ... We are now talking a lot about the link between workers and peasants ... Only as the leader of all working people the working class can win. Vladimir Ilyich understood this when he worked among the St. Petersburg workers. And this thought, this idea illuminated all his further activities, every step he took. He wanted power for the working class. He understood that the working class needed this power not to build itself a sweet life at the expense of other workers; he understood that the historical task of the working class was to liberate the oppressed, to free all working people. This basic idea left an imprint on all the activities of Vladimir Ilyich. " Nadezhda Konstantinovna completes her speech with a remarkable call:

The speeches of all the other speakers were imbued with the deepest respect for Lenin, everyone was urged to follow his path. Of all the speeches, Stalin's speech was singled out. It was shorter than other, also sincere and meaningful speeches, but it differed in that Stalin answered not only the question of who was the Great Lenin, how he is dear to the masses of the working people and the party. As the General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Party, he concentrated attention in this difficult hour on the tasks of the Party, the Soviets and the people, to worthily continue the work of Lenin and achieve the complete victory of Leninism. Stalin not only urged, but on behalf of the Central Committee of the party, swore an oath of loyalty to Lenin and Leninism, and together with him the delegates of the Second Congress of Soviets, all Communists and non-Party working masses of the Soviet people swore an oath.

In the days of mourning the Leninist call to the party was announced. Already in that period there was an enthusiasm for the quantitative party growth party not only in local organizations, but also in some in the center. Zinoviev, for example, put forward the slogan: to achieve an accelerated increase in the number of party members to one million, of which there should be 900,000 workers from the machine. First of all, it must be said that this was clearly unrealistic: we had about 300,000 workers in the party from the machine. This means that we had to accept another 600 thousand workers from the machine - this was not a task for months. In addition, if you have 900,000 from one million party members, that is 90 percent of the workers from the machine, this meant having only 100,000 other categories in the party: peasants, Red Army soldiers, employees, students, and so on, and in the summer of 1924 we already had more than 300,000 of these categories in the party, which meant that if we accepted the proposal of Zinoviev and others, we would automatically exclude from the party about 300,000 Communists. Meanwhile, the Thirteenth Party Congress, along with the task of further recruiting workers from the machine, instructed the Party not only to hire workers, but also peasants, soldiers, employees, students, and strictly observing all the conditions established by the Party Charter. This means that it was not about the exclusion of about 300 thousand, as it would have happened at the suggestion of Zinoviev, but about the admission of advanced peasants and other non-working elements to the party. Meanwhile, the Thirteenth Party Congress, along with the task of further recruiting workers from the machine, instructed the Party not only to hire workers, but also peasants, soldiers, employees, students, and strictly observing all the conditions established by the Party Charter. This means that it was not about the exclusion of about 300 thousand, as it would have happened at the suggestion of Zinoviev, but about the admission of advanced peasants and other non-working elements to the party. Meanwhile, the Thirteenth Party Congress, along with the task of further recruiting workers from the machine, instructed the Party not only to hire workers, but also peasants, soldiers, employees, students, and strictly observing all the conditions established by the Party Charter. This means that it was not about the exclusion of about 300 thousand, as it would have happened at the suggestion of Zinoviev, but about the admission of advanced peasants and other non-working elements to the party.

It is quite clear that the Thirteenth Congress could not accept and did not accept such a proposal, the true anti-Party nature of which was revealed in 1925, when the so-called "Leningrad Opposition" acted with Zinoviev and Kamenev with its opposition platform. However, even before that, the party had uncovered the incorrectness, non-Leninist character of such proposals. This was especially profoundly done by Stalin in his report on the Moscow Asset "On the Results of the Thirteenth Congress of the RCP (B.)", Without, however, polemicizing, in the interests of unity, directly with Zinoviev and others.

The Thirteenth Party Congress did not accept the existing proposals for the extension of the campaign of the Leninist draft, but declared this campaign complete, so that the party proceeded to normal organizational and propaganda work to further involve the workers from the machine and the best elements from the revolutionary peasants into the party.

At the first meeting of the newly elected at the Thirteenth Congress of the Plenum of the Central Committee of the RCP (B.) The question of the upbringing of the Leninist conscription was the subject of serious discussion.

Plenum of the Central Committee instructed the Organizing Bureau of the Central Committee to pay special attention to the education of the Leninist draft and to create a special commission to organize this work. The Orgburo and the Politburo of the Central Committee approved the commission for the political education of the Leninist conscription, which included 15 members and candidates of the Central Committee and representatives of the largest industrial organizations: Moscow, Leningrad, Tver, Tula and others. The commission included com. Stalin, Molotov, Kaganovich, Kuibyshev, Kalinin, Uglanov, Dogadov, Bubnov, Syrtsov and others, the chairman of the commission was elected comrade-secretary elected after the 13th Congress. Kaganovich LM In the middle of June, 1924 the commission began to work.

In the debate about where to begin the education of the Leninist draft, Lenin's struggle for the unity of theory with practice found its vivid expression.

Stalin called for a rebuff to bureaucrats-opportunists, delaying the involvement of workers in practical work, and at the same time to rebuff the opposition elements in the party and not to allow deviation of those Leninist party members who underestimate the importance of theory, its study and training of workers in the party centers of the Fundamentals of Leninism.

The Central Committee, its commission, and the Central Committee's apparatus monitored the work of Party organizations to involve the young members of the Leninist conscription party in party, state, trade union and other public organizations not on a case-by-case basis, but in a systematic and systematic way.

At the end of 1924, during the re-election of the cell bureau, 20-25% were elected to the new bureau, and cell cells from the new members of the Leninist conscription party were also elected in a number of cells, and in some districts they were also elected to the leading regional bodies. An even greater percentage of elected new party members were in leading trade union organizations, especially in the lower and middle levels.

By the end of 1924, about 75% of all members of the Leninist conscription party were involved in public and state work. (In some places, even overburdened with the burden of their public duties, so the Central Committee had to intervene.)

In 1924, the party not only grew quantitatively, but also strengthened qualitatively. In inner-party life, this affected not only the organizational side of the work, but also its ideological and political content.

Suffice it to point out that Trotsky's new attempt at a fundamental revision of the foundations of Leninism at the end of 1924 in his famous speech "Lessons of October" met with a more unanimous and decisive rebuff at once than in the discussion of 1923. This affected not only the experience of the ideological struggle and the victory over the opposition in 1923, but also undoubtedly reflected the strengthening of the party at the expense of the workers of the Leninist draft, raised by the party, its Central Committee to the level of class-conscious party fighters for Marxism-Leninism!

On this basis, a new call of workers to the party unfolded. Lenin's appeal merged with the general mass of new incoming members and party candidates. By the way, therefore, our commission has ceased to be called a commission for the education of the Leninist conscription and has become known as the "Commission of the Central Committee for Work among the Workers who have joined and are joining the Party". In this quality, with such functions, we worked until April 1925.

In April, at the Plenum of the Central Committee held a report was heard by the Chairman of the Commission Comrade. Kaganovich LM on the work done. The Plenum of the Central Committee approved the work of the commission and decided to consider its work as complete. Since April I have already started to work as Secretary General of the Central Committee of the Communist Party (Bolsheviks) of Ukraine.