Second Program of the CPSU

The Program was later amended during the 8th Congress of the Russian Communist Party (b) in 1919, after the Bolsheviks had been swept to power during the October Revolution, to include numerous changes, including a description of Imperialism as the Highest Stage of Capitalism, Industrial Capitalism and elaborations on the economic structure of Russia, including descriptions of Small Commodity Production and the role of the Middle Peasantry.

In the national question the Communist Party of the Soviet Union is guided by the following postulates: (1) The cornerstone of our policy is the policy of drawing together the proletarians and the semi-proletarians of the various nationalities for the purpose of waging a joint revolutionary struggle for the overthrow of the landowners and the bourgeoisie.

(3) With the same aim in view the Party proposes, as a transitional form towards complete unity, a federation of states organised according to the Soviet type.

[3]Bukharin and Pyatakov argued against the inclusion of this clause, believing that such a declaration affirming the rights of nations to self determination could work against and hinder the cause of "drawing together of proletarians and semi-proletarians of various nationalities," however, in this they were overruled by Lenin and the clause was accepted into the program.

[4] The program also argued for a strong, proletarian Red Army, the transformation of the Education System in order that it should become "vehicle of communist principles in general... a vehicle of the ideological, organisational and educational influence of the proletariat over the proletarian and non-proletarian strata of the toiling masses, for the purpose of educating a generation capable of finally establishing communism," - that is the education system should become a beacon of socialist ideology - the establishment of a planned economy, the eradication of child labour, the introduction of a bonus system "in order to encourage the productivity of labour," and for the adoption of "far-reaching health and sanitary measures, for the purpose of preventing the spread of disease," among numerous other declarations.