State leadership of the Cultural Revolution is one of the key problems in the history of socialist construction. The least studied aspect of it is the formation and development of the Soviet apparatus for leading the cultural revolution in general and the popular enlightenment in particular. Reference to the history of the organization of state leadership in the construction of socialist culture is now conditioned by the need to further improve the management of public education in order to successfully implement the "Main Directions of the reform of general education and vocational Schools", approved by the April (1984) Plenum of the Central Committee of the CPSU and the first session of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR of the XI convocation. The literature on the history of the Soviet state apparatus of public education is limited to a number of articles and a monograph, which are mainly devoted to the first period of its construction (October 1917-June 1918) .1 The subsequent period of its consolidation and development (June 1918-early 1921) was not actually investigated .2 This state of affairs does not allow us to reconstruct a complete picture of the organization of the state leadership of the cultural revolution in the first years of Soviet power. All this determined the choice of topic and the chronological framework of the proposed article, which attempts to show how, under the conditions of imperialist intervention and the civil war, the state apparatus of public education developed and improved on the basis of Leninist organizational principles, the structure of the People's Commissariat of Education and its local bodies was developed, and their cadres were formed .31 Zakolodkin I. Development of the structure of the People's Commissariat of Education and its local authorities. - Narodnoe prosveshchenie, 1927, N 11-12; Kernatsenskaya T. M. K istorii obrazovaniya Narodnogo komissariata prosveshcheniya RSFSR i upravleniya vysshoy shkoloy (oktyabr 1917 - Aug 1 ... Читать далее