The original Lenin School was located in an old Czarist palace. Students and faculty lived under strict security conditions. The curriculum included not only Marxist-Leninist tactics but the theory and practice of organization, underground and conspiratorial operations, and the tactics of revolution and civil war. The students were taught how to erect stout barricades, conduct guerrilla warfare, and handle firearms. The Soviets wanted rough-and-ready revolutionists, men who would kill, murder, blow up trains, and start revolutions. Many of the top leaders in Communist Parties around the world are graduates of the Lenin School. The National Committee of the Communist Party in the United States today includes such graduates of the Lenin School as Eugene Dennis, Claude Lightfoot, Carl Winter, Simon W. Gerson, William Weinstone, Nat Ganley, Steve Nelson, and others. Former Lenin School graduates also include such well-known communists as Betty Gannett, Gus Hall, Albert Lannon, Phil Bart, Rose Wortis, Loretta Stack, Henry Winston, and numerous others. The Lenin School became so notorious that it, like the Comintern, was discontinued. After all, it had turned out thousands of graduates, and the communists probably thought it had fulfilled its usefulness. The American Communist Party began to grow up. From an infant, mostly mouth and little body, it gradually began to take on shape and form. It was soon to increase its participation in American life. 5. _The Party Grows Up_ Prior to 1921 communists in the United States had been so concerned with their own private squabbles and organizational problems that they had little time for external activities. After the 1921 “unification,” however, the Party, although still weak, emerged with greater stability. It was now being equipped with two striking arms: (1) the underground Party apparatus and (2) the above-ground, or “false-face,” apparatus of the Workers Party. The time was ripe for communists to move in on American life and American institutions. The first objective was organized labor. Later the battlefront was to be extended to include all aspects of American life up to and including activities of the federal government in Washington. Prior to 1921, by their own admission, communists had not been particularly effective among trade unions. True, William Z. Foster had helped found the Trade Union Educational League in 1920, but this communist-dominated group had made little headway. The Party at that time had lacked the discipline and training to exploit strikes. Its aims were usually visionary and, above all, too openly revolutionary. During the 1919 steel strike, for example, the Communist Party had issued this proclamation: THE WORKERS MUST CAPTURE THE POWER OF THE STATE. THEY MUST WREST FROM THE CAPITALISTS THE MEANS THROUGH WHICH CAPITALIST RULE IS MAINTAINED. The answer to the Dictatorship of the Capitalists is the Dictatorship of the Workers.