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p The requirement that educational work must be linked up with life, with the Party’s policies and with definite tasks of communist construction has been and remains fundamental in education. Education yields positive results and helps to form the new, active participant in the immense task of building communism only when it is intrinsically bound up with life, production and the practical experience of the people.

p Communist education is incompatible with subjectivism, vainglory and ostentation. “Less political fireworks,” Lenin said, “and more attention to the simplest but living facts of communist construction—taken from and tested by actual life—this is the slogan which all of us, our writers, agitators, propagandists, organisers, etc., should repeat unceasingly.”

p Realistic and scientific direction of the economy and of all social life, scientific organisation of social relations in all links of the social system and scientific organisation of education itself are the key condition for successful communist upbringing.

p Concreteness, a profound scientific approach, objectivity and truthfulness, accuracy and organisation are the important principles underlying communist education.

p Efficiency in the work of the Party and the uprooting of subjectivism and ostentation created extremely favourable conditions for promoting the social activity of the people and thereby for education itself. At the same time, particularly high demands are made of ideological work under these conditions. The principal demand is that there should be frankness when dealing with the people and that difficulties and shortcomings should be neither concealed nor slurred over. “I must say at this point,” Lenin wrote, “that our propaganda and agitation must be open and above-board.”  [296•* 

p People do not always accept the ready-made recipes of educators and, therefore, the task of educators is not to profer ready-made recipes for all occasions in life but to bring the people round to accepting these conclusions painstakingly and with perseverance, but never obtrusively.

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p One of the major tasks of communist education is to instil pride for one’s country and people and a readiness selflessly to defend the gains of socialism against imperialist vultures.

p In our day there is mounting interest in man’s inner world, in his inclinations, way of thinking and feelings. This is only natural, because the new society creates not an abstract but a living, concrete man in all the diversity of his vital manifestations. In this connection, the task is carefully and considerately to enrich this inner world without driving it into isolation by crude contact. Formalism, callousness, peremptory shouting and the tagging of labels are impermissible in education. The duty of the propagandist and the educator is to know the interests of the people and the problems that worry them.

p Upbringing implies the formation not only of a person’s intellect but also his feelings and emotions, for man is an extremely sensitive and emotional creature, who can love and hate, rejoice and grieve, take delight, suffer, and so forth. The sensitive, emotional side of the individual plays an important part in his perception of social ideas. Lenin wrote: “...There has never been, nor can there be, any human search for truth without ’human emotions’.” It is therefore important to teach a person to control his feelings, to cultivate positive emotions and direct them for his own and society’s benefit.

p However, people differ from each other by occupation, level of education, way of thinking, character, the content and volume of the tasks confronting them and many other indications. This means that education must be geared to different needs. The task is to educate not man in general, not an abstract man, but a concrete man with all his merits and demerits.

p Thus, attention for man and for his inner world and a selective approach to his upbringing are indispensable principles of educational work.

p Warmth and sincerity in ideological work have nothing in common with forgiveness and slurring over of an individual’s weak points and shortcomings. A principled approach and implacability are requisites of communist education. It is important not only to educate a person but to teach him to educate and improve himself, and this 298 necessarily presupposes a critical attitude to oneself, a frank admission of one’s shortcomings and errors and unfailing correction of these shortcomings and errors.

p Care for man is all the more incompatible with manifestations of alien, bourgeois ideology, and with the customs, manners and actions inherent in capitalist society. Partisanship and non-reconciliation to all forms of bourgeois ideology have been and remain a major principle of educational work.

p Enemies attack the Communist Party for having monopolised education, alleging that it fetters man’s spiritual freedom. The Party directs ideological activities, this being its right and duty. The C.P.S.U. is the ruling party and, therefore, is called upon to provide scientific direction to all spheres of the life of socialist society, including its spiritual life. It has won this right by persevering struggle and dedicated labour together with and at the head of the people. Marxism-Leninism, which is the Party’s ideology, has absorbed profound wisdom and extensive experience of struggle and work, and it has been accepted by the people voluntarily and consciously. Therefore, partisanship, the safeguarding of the Party’s ideology means safeguarding the people’s most cherished ideals, protecting their present and their future. As regards the freedom of man’s spiritual life, the Party places no restriction whatever on it. On the contrary, it teaches man to think and create freely in the interests of the people and of communism.

Lastly, system, consistency, and intrinsic unity and interaction of all forms and means of education are likewise important principles underlying communist upbringing.