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The International Lenin School (ILS), established after Lenin's death, was financed by the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. The principal was Bukharin and the director was Kirsanova, the wife of Yaroslavsky, editor of 'Pravda' and a member of the Politbureau. The ILS was probably the most privileged of the training schools in Moscow and every possible facility was provided. Duplicated study notes were distributed to the students and these notes, brought back to England by Wicks in 1930, form the basis of this part of the collection. The notes are of great interest as, although many of the works translated for students have been published at other times, the collected notes are indicative of the training which was regarded as necessary for a leading Communist militant at that period. Minimum and maximum reading lists were constructed, based mostly on extracts from larger works. Each subject was sub-divided and a student would be responsible for preparing the work on one or more subdivisions. Major subjects taught included Marxian economics, the history of the Russian Communist Party, the history of the European labour movement and party structure and philosophy. Work was intensive and each term ended with a character assessment of the student. Many of the students, known to Wicks only by their pseudonyms, became significant leaders of the Communist Party in their own countries. In retrospect Wicks described the training at the ILS as the development of cadres to replace the leaders of the time, whose involvement in the movement pre-dated Stalinist developments. Included in the papers are notes on publications by L D Trotsky, and the selection of material indicates something of official Soviet thinking on Trotsky's position at this time.

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