Tasks of Youth Unions

“ Tasks of the Youth Unions ” is the name of the text ^{[1] of the} speech of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin at the Third Congress of the Komsomol on October 2, 1920, where he answered questions ^[2] on what young people need to do in order to build a new society in the ravaged first world and civil wars of Russia, and also warned: “If you leave it like this, then everything will slide back to the power of the capitalists , to the power of the bourgeoisie , as happened more than once in previous revolutions ” ^[3] .

The text was first published in the newspaper Pravda No. 221, 222, and 223 (October 5, 6, and 7, 1920). In the same year, under the title "Tasks of Youth Unions (Speech at the 3rd All-Russian Congress of the Russian Communist Youth Union)" the text edited by V. I. Lenin was published as a separate brochure. The circulation of 200 thousand was sold immediately. To meet the needs of distribution, the brochure was reprinted on typewriters or rewritten by hand " ^[4] .

The civil war was ending and it was time for the youth to think about the arrangement of the country and their future. To various aspects of solving problems that will inevitably arise for youth and youth organizations in the process of the formation of a new society, Lenin paid attention in his speech.

Firstly, each young generation must decide for itself the question of what to learn and how to study, since together with the transformation of the old society, the teaching, upbringing and education of new generations that will create a new society cannot be old. But it must come from the material that is left by the old society. And the new generation can build a new society only from the sum of knowledge, organizations and institutions, with that reserve of human forces and means that remained from the old society.

From 1920 to 1971, the text of the speech was published 499 times, in 75 languages, in total over 25 million copies.