Delivered: 23 June, 1919
First Published: 1923
Source: Lenin’s Collected Works, 4th English Edition, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1972 Volume 29, page 324
Translated: George Hanna
Transcription/HTML Markup: David Walters & Robert Cymbala
Copyleft: V. I. Lenin Internet Archive (www.marx.org) 2002. Permission is granted to copy and/or distribute this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License
It gives me great pleasure to greet you. I do not know how many gubernias are represented here, or where you have come from. The important thing is that the youth, the communist youth, are organising. The important thing is that the youth are gathering together to learn to build the new type of school. Now you have a new type of school. The old, bureaucratic school, which you hated and detested, and with which you had no ties, no longer exists. We have planned our work for a very long period. The future society we are striving for, the society in which all must work, the society in which there will be no class distinctions, will take a long time to build. At present we are only laying the foundations of this future society, but you will have to build it when you grow up. At present, work as your strength permits; do not undertake tasks that are too much for you; be guided by your seniors. Once again I greet this Congress and wish your labours every success.
[1] This Congress took place in Moscow between April 15 an April 21, 1919, and was attended by about 200 delegates representing 8,000 members of the Union of Communist Students. The Congress passed a resolution to merge the Union. of Communist Students with the Young Communist League. An instruction confirmed by the Central Committee of the R.C.P.(B.) on May 11, 1919 made the Russian Young Communist League responsible for work among the working-class and peasant youth and among the student youth.