The idea comes from Lenin’s 1917 pamphlet Can the Bolsheviks Retain State Power?, but the wording does not. What he actually wrote is that “an unskilled labourer or a cook cannot immediately get on with the job of state administration,” and he went on to demand that working people start being trained for it at once. “Every cook can govern the state” drops the “cannot immediately” and turns his caveat into a slogan.
“Every cook can govern the state” is not Lenin's wording. In his 1917 pamphlet "Can the Bolsheviks Retain State Power?" he wrote: "We know that an unskilled labourer or a cook cannot immediately get on with the job of state administration." — via Quotle.info
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Provenance
What Lenin actually wrote
Work
Can the Bolsheviks Retain State Power?
Written / published
Written October 1, 1917; first published October 14, 1917 in the magazine Prosveshcheniye No. 1–2
Translation
Yuri Sdobnikov and George Hanna, ed. George Hanna — Collected Works, Vol. 26, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1972, pp. 87–136
Popular wording
Not found in the text
We are not utopians. We know that an unskilled labourer or a cook cannot immediately get on with the job of state administration. In this we agree with the Cadets, with Breshkovskaya, and with Tsereteli. We differ, however, from these citizens in that we demand an immediate break with the prejudiced view that only the rich, or officials chosen from rich families, are capable of administering the state, of performing the ordinary, everyday work of administration. We demand that training in the work of state administration be conducted by class-conscious workers and soldiers and that this training be begun at once, i.e., that a beginning be made at once in training all the working people, all the poor, for this work.
English translation from the 1972 Progress Publishers Collected Works, as transcribed on marxists.org. Lenin’s point is that cooks cannot yet govern, so they must be trained. The popular line says they can.
October 1917. Lenin’s pamphlet says that “an unskilled labourer or a cook cannot immediately get on with the job of state administration” and calls for training to begin at once (marxists.org ↗).
August 1935. Florence Becker’s review “Woman’s Place” in New International opens with the epigraph “Every cook must learn to rule the State.” – Lenin (ETOL transcription ↗).
June 1956. C. L. R. James publishes “Every Cook Can Govern: A Study of Democracy in Ancient Greece” in Correspondence, Vol. 2, No. 12 (marxists.org ↗).
Today. Wikiquote’s sourced entry gives the genuine sentence and notes that it “is often misquoted as ‘every cook must learn to govern the state’ or even ‘every cook can govern the state’” (Wikiquote ↗).
The popular wording “Every cook can govern the state” is a paraphrase with no single identifiable source, so no copyright status is claimed for it. The genuine sentence shown above is quoted from a 1972 English translation (Progress Publishers, Collected Works Vol. 26), so that English rendering should not be treated as public domain. Lenin’s 1917 Russian original is a separate matter.
Rights status is our research, not legal advice — and copyright varies by country and edition. For commercial or published use, confirm with the rightsholder. See terms.
Fact-check
How the line got changed
Lenin did write about a cook and the state, but in the opposite sense. In later retellings his “cannot immediately” dropped out.
✕
The popular wording“Every cook can govern the state” Misquote
This is not in the pamphlet. In the English text, “cook” appears in only two passages. One says a cook “cannot immediately” administer the state. The other imagines “every cook” seeing the new state help the poor. Wikiquote flags this exact version as a misquote (Wikiquote ↗).
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A 1935 version“Every cook must learn to rule the State” Paraphrase
Florence Becker printed this as an epigraph credited to Lenin in New International (August 1935). It is closer to his meaning, because it stresses learning, but it is still not his sentence (ETOL ↗). Wikiquote lists it under “Attributions”.
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The Russian sloganVladimir Mayakovsky Popularizer
Vokrug Sveta says the Russian slogan “any cook can run the state” owes its popularity to Mayakovsky’s line «Мы и кухарку каждую выучим управлять государством!» (“We will teach every cook to run the state!”). It does not say he invented the phrase (Vokrug Sveta ↗).
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The English titleC. L. R. James Title
James’s 1956 essay on Athenian democracy is titled “Every Cook Can Govern” (marxists.org ↗). A PM Press review says the work “takes its inspiration and title from Lenin” (PM Press ↗).
✓Lenin’s actual sentence is “We know that an unskilled labourer or a cook cannot immediately get on with the job of state administration.” It is followed by a demand that working people begin training for that work at once (Can the Bolsheviks Retain State Power?, 1917 ↗).
Context
Why the difference matters
Lenin wrote the passage weeks before the Bolsheviks took power, to answer critics who said workers could never run a state. He accepted their premise, writing “We are not utopians,” but rejected the “prejudiced view that only the rich, or officials chosen from rich families, are capable of administering the state.” His solution was training, “begun at once,” for “all the working people, all the poor.”
The popular version cuts out the caveat and keeps the cook. As a result, admirers quote it as a promise of radical democracy and critics quote it to mock Soviet rule. Neither use matches what the pamphlet says.
“A cook cannot immediately get on with the job of state administration.”
The Russian original
In Russian the passage reads «Мы знаем, что любой чернорабочий и любая кухарка не способны сейчас же вступить в управление государством», as quoted by Vokrug Sveta ↗. The phrase «не способны сейчас же» means “are not able right away.” That negative is exactly what the popular slogan leaves out.
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Filed under
More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.
Vladimir Ilyich Lenin led the Bolshevik party and headed the Soviet government that took power in Russia in October 1917. He finished Can the Bolsheviks Retain State Power? on October 1, 1917, weeks before that seizure of power. In it he answers critics who said workers could never run a state. His reply is that ordinary working people cannot do it straight away, but can be trained to do it, and that the training should begin at once.
For writers & researchers
Cite this
Primary source (genuine passage)
V. I. Lenin, “Can the Bolsheviks Retain State Power?” (written October 1, 1917; first published in Prosveshcheniye, no. 1–2, October 14, 1917), in Collected Works, vol. 26, trans. Yuri Sdobnikov and George Hanna, ed. George Hanna (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1972), 87–136. The popular wording “Every cook can govern the state” does not appear in it.
This verification page
Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘Every cook can govern the state’?” Last verified 2 Nov 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/every-cook-can-govern-the-state/