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© Literacy and Education in the Early Soviet Union

Дата публикации: 20 сентября 2007
Публикатор: Научная библиотека Порталус
Рубрика: RUSSIA (TOPICS) - Education and health →
Номер публикации: №1190296667


The Bolsheviks came to power promoting the idea of mass literacy to lead the Soviet Union into a period of prosperity and world leadership. Vladimir Lenin's famous formula "electrification and literacy equals communism" was expressed in a vast national effort to educate peasants, workers, and other illiterates to the point where they could read. By 1930, the Soviets claimed, this goal had been achieved. Many scholars of the Soviet Union laud this accomplishment as a major and impressive achievement. With 45 percent literacy in 1917, Russia became a fully literate society under firm communist leadership. This fact, they argue, speaks strongly to the Soviet state's ability to modernize, and represents a positive contribution to society. Critics of this view, however, eagerly point out that the tsarist state had a workable plan to bring about universal literacy and primary education by 1922, that is, had revolution not intervened. Since the number of literate people doubled in the period 1900 to 1914 alone, and since education spending increased by greater amounts in every year after 1907, it does not seem improbable that the existing prerevolutionary society would have achieved at least as much as the Bolsheviks. Other modernizing societies in Western Europe, moreover, also achieved near-universal literacy around the same time without communism.

 

Viewpoint: Yes. Soviet mass literacy and education programs were swift and impressive agents of modernization.

Many scholars point to the tsarist legacy of educational expansion and proclaim that Soviet achievements in literacy and education were unexceptional. Their reasoning stems from their belief that the Soviets merely benefited from the building momentum toward a comprehensive public-school system set in motion during the tsarist era. They contend that had tsarist rule continued, near- universal literacy and schooling would have occurred anyway, and maybe even sooner. In declaring Soviet achievements in literacy and primary education unexceptional, however, these scholars fail to consider that education was neither widespread nor comprehensive before 1917. They also ignore big differences between the governments of the tsarist and the Soviet eras--the role of education in each, and whose interests the government was protecting.

It is important to remember that while many children in the Russian Empire's cities were receiving an education, children in rural areas, especially peasants, were far less likely to attend school during the tsarist era. Only a small percentage of peasant children, most of them from the more prosperous families, even completed primary school. A 1911 study of zemstvo schools in thirty-four provinces of Russia found that only one-third of the students graduated, with the rest dropping out of school after only two or three years. Given that in many cases only the prosperous peasants or nobility received more than a few years of education in the Russian Empire, the Soviet achievement of universal education for all citizens regardless of their class is even more remarkable.

For those children who were lucky enough to receive an education in tsarist times, the subjects covered were in no way comprehensive. Schools were good at teaching the ability to read, but not how to learn through reading. Most educated peasants still spoke in local dialects instead of proper Russian. That can hardly be considered literacy, for the students lacked the basic ability to write what they heard or could only read by sounding out letters. Math classes consisted of the four basic functions, simple and compound numbers, and fractions. When we compare these achievements with Soviet near-universal literacy, which enabled students to reach far beyond just the ability to read a text aloud, and to reach high achievements in advanced math and the sciences, Soviet accomplishments are certainly exceptional.

Soviet leaders always considered education to be an extremely important indicator of progress. They believed that literacy, in particular, proved the new regime a modern state and protector of the proletariat, or workers. A literate and educated general populace was needed in order to modernize and industrialize the country, important goals for the Soviet state. It should come as no surprise, therefore, that educational advances were an important part of state planning and spurred Soviet economic and technological progress.

At the time of the Bolshevik Revolution, 37.9 percent of the male population above seven years old was literate and only 12.5 percent of the female population was literate. These low literacy rates dropped further in the turbulence caused by the Russian Civil War and in the famines, epidemics, and disorganization that followed from it. These same factors also caused a decrease in the general educational level in the country.

Beginning in 1922 Soviet authorities started implementing a far-reaching, large-scale educational program with the goals of universal education and eliminating illiteracy among adults. By 1938 the government had established a network of four-year elementary schools covering the Soviet Union, and seven-year schools for children in urban areas. In addition, whereas before 1914 there were almost no kindergartens in Russia, the Soviets rapidly developed preschool education, including kindergarten, as part of their national program. Education at these schools was traditional, and strict discipline was enforced. Soviet schools were especially strong in mathematics and the hard sciences but also stressed language, literature, and history, a big change from the tsarist schools, which taught only the fundamentals of reading and arithmetic.

In an attempt to help illiterate adults, the Bolsheviks launched an ambitious campaign between 1923 and 1927 called "Down with Illiteracy of Society," which depended on volunteers. Members of the Bolshevik youth organization, the Komsomol, were especially enthusiastic participants. One of its campaign posters said, "Literacy is the path to communism," and used the classical symbol of Pegasus, the winged horse, as a distributor of knowledge. The general census of December 1926 underscored the success of this campaign. For the first time in Russian history the majority of the population could read and write: 65.4 percent of males and 36.7 percent of females (above the age of seven years). By the 1939 census, 81.1 percent of Soviet citizens (age ten and above) were literate, and by the 1960s literacy was common to almost all of the Soviet Union's citizens. The most rapid increase occurred in the first ten years after the revolution, a remarkable feat for the Soviet Union.

Without the shift brought on by the Bolshevik Revolution, which made education of the masses essential to the government's goals and ushered in a government protecting the interests of the workers and not just the elites, it would have been impossible to achieve near-universal education and literacy, as the Soviets did. Even die-hard opponents of the former Soviet Union acknowledge that the Soviet state's universal, primary education for all children was exceptional. From the villages to the outposts to the largest cities, all Soviet children learned to read and write. A large portion of them even went on to higher education. It is one thing to provide a limited education to select areas and classes of a country, as the tsarist regime did, but a far different and more exceptional thing to educate the masses in depth in multiple disciplines as the Soviets did. The numbers speak for themselves.

-- Kerry Foley, Georgetown University

Viewpoint: No. Soviet accomplishments in education and literacy were neither more impressive than similar developments in Western Europe nor dramatic improvements over what the tsarist government had achieved.

Many scholars look at Soviet statistics about primary education and literacy--the large number of schools established and the near-total elimination of illiteracy during Soviet rule--and declare that Soviet achievements in education were exceptional. They get so caught up in the statistics that they do not look beyond the numbers, however. This mistake is crucial because much important information lurks beyond the official numbers.

Soviet education profited from the tsarist educational legacy. The tsars presided over an educational system that was characterized by high standards, serious academic character, and strict discipline. The period 1870-1914 was a time of remarkable expansion of basic schooling, with the ultimate goal of establishing public schools throughout the Empire by 1922. In 1872 the Russian government started investigating compulsory primary education and dramatically increased funding for it. In 1908 the government passed legislation on compulsory attendance for primary education. By 1914, three-quarters of all school-age children were receiving basic education in a 150- to 160-day school year. School curricula went beyond reading, writing, and arithmetic to cover history, geography, natural science, and sometimes work in a trade.

Tsarist-era students were in school in the last decades before 1917, but how developed were their skills and were they retained? A survey between 1895 and 1900 showed that many former students not only retained their ability to read but also improved the speed and comprehension of their reading after they completed school. They retained their basic math skills as well, for out of all of the skills they learned in school, math skills were the most used in their everyday life. It is reasonable to think that given more time to implement its educational plans, tsarist Russia would have succeeded in its plan to bring about universal primary education and literacy by the 1920s. The high esteem and rigorous approach to education held over into Soviet times. Many of the best prerevolutionary pedagogical theorists, educators, and scholars remained in Russia after the revolution and imparted their seriousness and discipline to generations of Soviet students. The Soviet government merely brought to fruition educational plans that had been conceived and partially implemented in the tsarist period.

Another problem with conceiving of Soviet educational achievements as exceptional is that the statistics used to prove their success simply cannot be trusted at face value. The Soviets were so intent on proving that theirs was a modern, progressive state that they had every incentive to inflate the statistics on education, just as they did with statistics on public health and industrial output. Even if one were to believe the statistics, the Soviet educational system was not as impressive as they suggest. Russia's Civil War, its revolution, famine, and disorganization after the Soviets came to power, resulted in a decline of the literacy rate and lowered the educational level. Only in the middle of the 1920s did the country start to make advances again in these areas. Several authorities agree that had the public-education system inaugurated by Alexander II in the 1860s been able to progress naturally, Russia would have had universal education by the 1930s, even without the Soviet literacy campaign. The educational system also developed slowly as the result of the ill effects of World War II, with prewar educational levels restored only in 1950. Even those figures were not too impressive. In 1939 about one-third of urban children and only 10 percent of rural children were in eight- to ten-year schools. This fact highlights an important point about Soviet education--the inequality between urban and rural areas that diminished the impressiveness of the Soviets' achievements in relation to the tsarist-era figures.

While the Soviets established many preschools throughout the country, their expansion was held back by the fact that the campaign against illiteracy absorbed much of the resources of the educational authorities. Even with widespread primary schools in the Soviet Union, the quality of education students received at the schools was lacking. Soviet schools emphasized memorization and recitation at the expense of critical thinking and problem solving. The reason for this is better understood when one understands that Soviet authorities saw literacy and education as means of propaganda, through which its citizens could be molded to meet Bolshevik ideals and become obedient citizens and laborers with the technical skills to help modernize the country. Education had to teach students to follow communist ideology and the directives of the regime, not question or interpret the content of what the regime was saying to them. Although the Soviets finally achieved near-universal education by the 1960s, its students did not learn much. Many Soviet students were barely literate, had not mastered basic math skills, and did not have many of the skills they could use in labor. Factory managers and universities complained about the younger generation's lack of preparation for higher education and the workforce.

Even in the case of basic literacy, after several years of expensive and expansive campaigns, the census of 1926 showed that only 51 percent of Soviet citizens over age ten years were literate. Compared to the 45 percent literacy rate in 1917, the expensive and resource-laden literacy campaign and the increasing numbers of children in school only marginally increased the literacy rate. Why then, did the campaign fail even though it had so many resources? First, in order to increase the overall literacy rate, it was necessary to lower the illiteracy rate in the countryside. That was to be far harder than increasing urban literacy, which was already at 64 percent for males and 42 percent for females by 1897. The poor control that Bolsheviks had over the countryside before Josef Stalin's agricultural collectivization programs began in the late 1920s complicated this task. Their lack of authority in rural areas left many schools outside the control of central educational authorities. The literacy campaign's supporters in the countryside, mainly rural teachers, had many other burdens, low wages, and little time. The People's Commissariat of Enlightenment, the national organ in charge of education, had inadequate funds. The increase in basic literacy before World War II was noteworthy, but it took too long to be considered exceptional.

While official statistics show that the Soviet educational system was exceptional, one needs to look beyond the numbers. The Soviets merely built on the increasing momentum of tsarist-era plans for a public-school system and the infrastructure needed to implement them. The tsars did a lot of the hard work, including raising the literacy rate to 45 percent by 1917 and establishing a network of schools that gave at least a basic education to three-quarters of school-age children by 1914. These initial steps were far more difficult than simply continuing the momentum, as the Soviets did. Illiteracy would likely have disappeared without the revolution and the Soviet regime.

-- Kerry Foley, Georgetown University

URGENT SPADEWORK

In the following document, Vladimir Lenin addresses the need to shore up literacy among the masses:

The recent publication of the report on literacy among the population of Russia, based on the census of 1920 ("Literacy in Russia," issued by the Central Statistical Board, Public Education Section, Moscow, 1922) is a very important event.

At a time when we hold forth on proletarian culture and the relation in which it stands to bourgeois culture, facts and figures reveal that we are in a very bad way even as far as bourgeois culture is concerned. As might have been expected, it appears that we are still a very long way from attaining universal literacy and that even compared with tsarist times (1897) our progress has been far too slow. This should serve as a stern warning and reproach to those who have been soaring in the empyreal heights of "proletarian culture." It shows what a vast amount of urgent spadework we still have to do to reach the standard of an ordinary western European civilized country.

It also shows what a vast amount of work we have to do today to achieve, on the basis of our proletarian gains, anything like a real cultural standard.

We must not confine ourselves to this incontrovertible but too theoretical proposition. The very next time we revise our quarterly budget we must take this matter up in a practical way as well. . . .

Nowhere are the problems of this culture tackled so thoroughly and consistently as they are in our country. In no other country is state power in the hands of the working class which, in its mass, is fully aware of the deficiencies, I shall not say of its culture, but of its literacy. Nowhere is the working class so ready to make, and nowhere is it actually making, such sacrifices to improve its position in this respect as in our country.

Too little, far too little, is still being done by us to adjust our state budget to satisfy, as a first measure, the requirements of elementary public education. Even in our People's Commissariat of Education we all too often find disgracefully inflated staffs in some state publishing establishment, which is contrary to the concept that the state's first concern should not be publishing houses but that there should be people to read, that the number of people able to read is greater, so that book publishing should have a wider political field in future Russia. Owing to the old (and bad) habit, we are still devoting much more time and effort to technical questions, such as the question of book publishing, than to the general political question of literacy among the people. . . .

There is still very much in the proletarian and peasant state that can and must be economized for the purpose of promoting literacy among the people. This can be done by closing institutions which are playthings of a semiaristocratic type, or institutions we can still do without and will be able to do without, and shall have to do without for a long time to come, considering the state of literacy among the people as revealed by the statistics.

Our schoolteacher should be raised to a standard he has never achieved and cannot achieve in bourgeois society. This is a truism and requires no proof. We must strive for this state of affairs by working steadily, methodically, and persistently to raise the teacher to a higher cultural level, to train him thoroughly for his really high calling and mainly to improve his position materially.

We must systematically step up our efforts to organize the schoolteachers so as to transform them from the bulwark of the bourgeois system that they still are in all capitalist countries without exception into the bulwark of the Soviet system, in order, through their agency, to divert the peasantry from alliance with the bourgeoisie and to bring them into alliance with the proletariat.

I want briefly to emphasize the special importance in this respect of regular visits to the villages; such visits, it is true, are already being practiced and should be regularly promoted. We should not stint money--which we all too often waste on the machinery of state that is almost entirely a product of the past historical epoch--on measures like these visits to the villages.

For the speech I was to have delivered at the Congress of Soviets in December 1922 I collected data on the sponsorship undertaken by urban workers of villagers. . . .

Here we have a fundamental political question--the relations between town and country--which is of decisive importance for the whole of our revolution. While the bourgeois state methodically concentrates all its efforts on doping the urban workers, adapting all the literature published at state expense and at the expense of the tsarist and bourgeois parties for this purpose, we can and must utilize our political power to make the urban worker an effective vehicle of communist ideas among the rural proletariat.

I said "communist," but I hasten to make a reservation for fear of causing a misunderstanding, or of being taken too literally. Under no circumstances must this be understood to mean that we should immediately propagate purely and strictly communist ideas in the countryside. As long as our countryside lacks the material basis for communism, it will be, I should say, harmful, in fact, I should say, fatal, for communism to do so.

That is a fact. We must start by establishing contacts between town and country without the preconceived aim of implanting communism in the rural districts. It is an aim which cannot be achieved at the present time. It is inopportune, and to set an aim like that at the present time would be harmful instead of useful to the cause.

But it is our duty to establish contacts between the urban workers and the rural working people, to establish between them a form of comradeship which can easily be created. This is one of the fundamental tasks of the working class which holds power. To achieve this we must form a number of associations (party, trade union, and private) of factory workers, which would devote themselves regularly to assisting the villages in their cultural development.

Is it possible to "attach" all the urban groups to all the village groups, so that every working-class group may take advantage regularly of every opportunity, of every occasion to serve the cultural needs of the village group it is "attached" to? Or will it be possible to find other forms of contact? I here confine myself solely to formulating the question in order to draw the comrades' attention to it, to point out the available experience of western Siberia (to which Comrade Khodorovsky drew my attention) and to present this gigantic, historic cultural task in all its magnitude.

We are doing almost nothing for the rural districts outside our official budget or outside official channels. True, in our country the nature of the cultural relations between town and village is automatically and inevitably changing. Under capitalism the town introduced political, economic, moral, physical, etc., corruption into the countryside. In our case, towns are automatically beginning to introduce the very opposite of this into the countryside. But, I repeat, all this is going on automatically, spontaneously, and can be improved (and later increased a hundredfold) by doing it consciously, methodically, and systematically.

We shall begin to advance (and shall then surely advance a hundred times more quickly) only after we have studied the question, after we have formed all sorts of workers organizations--doing everything to prevent them from becoming bureaucratic--to take up the matter, discuss it, and get things done.

Source: "Pages from a Diary," 2 January 1923, in Lenin's Final Fight: Speeches and Writings, 1922-23, edited by George Fyson (New York: Pathfinder, 1995), pp. 203-208.

FURTHER READINGS

References

Charles E. Clark, Uprooting Otherness: The Literacy Campaign in NEP-Era Russia (Selinsgrove, Pa.: Susquehanna University Press, 2000).

R. W. Davies, Soviet Economic Development from Lenin to Khrushchev (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998).

Ben Eklof, Russian Peasant Schools: Officialdom, Village Culture, and Popular Pedagogy, 1861-1914 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986).

Опубликовано на Порталусе 20 сентября 2007 года

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