The Socialist Academy Of Social Sciences: Draft Decision Of The Council Of People’s Commissars [1]
Draft Decision Of The Council Of People’s Commissars[1]
The Council of people’s Commissars, fully approving and welcoming the idea underlying the draft for the foundation of the Socialist Academy, instructs the Commissariat for Education to remake this draft on the following bases:
1)—a publishing society of a Marxist trend to be made the cornerstone;
2)—Marxist forces abroad to be enlisted in especially large numbers;
3)—a series of social investigations to be made one of the primary tasks;
4)—immediate measures to be taken to ascertain, assemble and utilise Russian personnel available for lecturing.
[1] The question of founding a Socialist Academy of Social Sciences was discussed by the Council of People’s Commissars on May 25, 1918. The draft statute for the Academy submitted by the People’s Commissariat for Education did not satisfy Lenin and he drew up the proposals published here; aEparently they were written during the meeting. They were su sequently approved by the C.P.C.
On June 7, the Government considered the Statute of the Social-ist Academy which had been revised on the basis of Lenin’s proposals. The Decree (Statute) of the All-Russia C.E.C. on the Socialist Academy of Social Sciences was published on July 12, 1918, in the newspaper Izvestia VTsNC No. 145 (see Decrees of the Soviet Gouernment, Russ. ed., Vol. 2, 1959, pp. 468-79). The Academy was officially opened on October 1, 1918.