COMMUNISM AND EDUCATION

one to teach how the proletarian State is to be upbuilded. The transitional period between capitalism and communism has given birth to a special type of school, which is intended to be serviceable to the revolution now in progress and to assist in the construction of the soviet apparatus. Such were the aims of the party and soviet schools which have grown up under our own eyes, in order to give brief and occasional courses of instruction, and which are being transformed into permanent institutions for the training of those who work in the party and in the soviets. The transformation was inevitable. The upbuilding of a soviet State is an entirely new undertaking. There is no historical precedent for anything of the kind. The work of the soviet institutions develops and improves day by day; it is essential to success that every worker in the soviets should be able to avail himself of all the experience of his predecessors. Self-education in administrative work, such as can be effected by the participation of all the workers in the soviets, would seem to be insufficient. This experience must be collected, systematised, elaborated, and made available to all the workers who are engaged in the upbuilding of the soviet system, so that each relay of workers which comes to participate in the administration can be saved from committing the faults of its predecessors; so that the new arrivals can learn, not from their own mistakes, but from the mistakes which have been made by others, and for