To this day I still do not know whether this is really a quotation of V.I. Lenin or whether it was already invented in Soviet times by the trader-party people, but that I saw this slogan in the assembly hall of the Ministry of Trade, in the city of Kiev, in the 1980s of the last century — that is a fact.
Personally I had “no relation” to trade in those times, but my friend was very proud that she had managed to get a job in this Ministry of Trade, in a new 24-storey building on Lvivska Square. And one day I visited her. She met me at the entrance and took me to the library, where she worked. We walked through the assembly hall and she pointed me to the poster, adding: “You see, Ilyich did not forget to set the trade workers on the right path either.” Then she smiled and quietly said: “I tried to find this quotation in his original sources (I remind you, Lenin wrote 55 volumes), but in vain.”
So I remembered the slogan “Learn to trade,” but I never thought that in the future trade would touch me, as it did many of my compatriots who survived the 1990s. To be continued….