ABSTRACT
The peoples of Russia are as miserably endowed with culture as they are with worldly goods. The great majority of the inhabitants are still entirely illiterate, and vast numbers are in hardly better case. In certain districts of the Union sometimes 90 percent are illiterate, according to the Izvestia. The entire Soviet Press, in fact, keeps repeating, as a kind of password, Lenin's pronouncement to the effect that Socialism cannot be established without the organised instruction of the masses. Everyone in Russia knows the worth of literature, but no newspaper can voice the general opinion, for the Press is strictly controlled by the Secretariat of the Bolshevist Party, which has at its command the most rigorous censorship and the most active police system of any country in the world. In the political programme drawn up after the October Revolution it was proposed to establish a system of general education.
