LENIN ON ORGANIZATION 
Does not everybody know that there is a need for 
popular literature for intellectuals too? And is not 
such literature in fact being written? Imagine the 
writer of an article on the organization of university 
or high school students speaking as though it were 
a great discovery, of the need for organizing the 
“average student.” A man who wrote such stuff 
would be laughed at, and rightly so. Give wus, he 
will be told, your ideas on organization, if you have 
any, and we ourselves will decide who is “average,” 
who higher and who lower. If you have any idea 
on organization of your own all your agonizing 
over the “masses” and the “average man’ will be 
simply tedious. Remember that the questions of 
“politics” and ‘‘organization’ are themselves so 
serious that they must only be spoken of seriously. 
We can, and we must, prepare the workers (and the 
university and high school students too) so as to 
be able to talk to them about these questions, but 
once you have started talking about them don’t 
take refuge behind the “average man” and the 
“masses” and don’t attempt to put us off with wit- 
ticisms and phrases*. 
* “Svoboda,” No. 1., article on “Organization,” p. 66: “The 
heavy tread of the working class giant will support every 
demand advanced in the name of Russian Labor.” Written 
with a capital letter of course! The same writer exclaims: 
“I am by no means hostile to the intellectuals, but . . .” 
(this is the but which Stshedrin rendered by the words 
“ears do not grow above the forehead!”) “but it always angers 
me frightfully when a man utters a lot of fine phrases and 
expects them to be accepted because of his own beauty or 
other merits.” (P. 62). Yes, “it angers me frightfully” too. 
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