Some excerpts from the speech where he famously says that phrase:
"Bring more engineers and agronomists to the fore, learn from them, keep an eye on their work, and turn our congresses and conferences, not into propaganda meetings but into bodies that will verify our economic achievements, bodies in which we can really learn the business of economic development. […]
Our Party program must not remain solely a program of the Party. It must become a program of our economic development […]. It must be supplemented with a second Party program, a plan of work aimed at restoring our entire economy and raising it to the level of up-to-date technical development. […]
Communism is Soviet power plus the electrification of the whole country. […] 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. […]
It should, however, be realized and remembered that we cannot carry out electrification with the illiterates we have. Our commission will endeavor to stamp out illiteracy- but that is not enough. […] Besides literacy, we need cultured, enlightened and educated working people; […] We must see to it that every factory and every electric power station becomes a center of enlightenment;"
VLADIMIR LENIN, REPORT ON THE WORK OF THE COUNCIL OF PEOPLE’S COMMISSARS. DECEMBER 22, 1920
Some excerpts from the speech where he famously says that phrase:
"Bring more engineers and agronomists to the fore, learn from them, keep an eye on their work, and turn our congresses and conferences, not into propaganda meetings but into bodies that will verify our economic achievements, bodies in which we can really learn the business of economic development. […]
Our Party program must not remain solely a program of the Party. It must become a program of our economic development […]. It must be supplemented with a second Party program, a plan of work aimed at restoring our entire economy and raising it to the level of up-to-date technical development. […]
Communism is Soviet power plus the electrification of the whole country. […] 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. […]
It should, however, be realized and remembered that we cannot carry out electrification with the illiterates we have. Our commission will endeavor to stamp out illiteracy- but that is not enough. […] Besides literacy, we need cultured, enlightened and educated working people; […] We must see to it that every factory and every electric power station becomes a center of enlightenment;"
VLADIMIR LENIN, REPORT ON THE WORK OF THE COUNCIL OF PEOPLE’S COMMISSARS. DECEMBER 22, 1920
it really is amazing how much they accomplished in such a short time