Soviet school. Reasons for Reform Failure

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

What happened in the education system in the 1920s? What caused harsh criticism not only from the foreign intelligentsia, including emigrants, but also from the Bolshevik-Leninist "guard"?

Why was the concept of a single labor school rejected and the school returned to the old "pre-revolutionary bourgeois" subject-lesson system?

The reason was that the new school did not fulfill the tasks set by the party: the level of teaching was low, the level of knowledge of the graduates did not meet the requirements, and most importantly, the new education system was inconvenient for the implementation of strict party control, without which it is impossible to foster devotion to communist ideals.

Why did the level of teaching and the level of knowledge of schoolchildren turn out to be catastrophically low?

In addition to endless transformations that brought confusion and confusion to the teaching system, this was facilitated by the lack of financial and material resources.

Pitirim Sorokin in his work "The Current State of Russia" in 1922 made a deep analysis of the state of education in the first years of Soviet power.

“In every house there is a“club”, in every hut there is a“reading room”, in every city there is a university, in every village there is a gymnasium, in any village there is a people's university and throughout Russia there are hundreds of thousands of“extracurricular”,“preschool”and“preschool “educational institutions, shelters, hearths, orphanages, kindergartens, etc., etc. - such is the picture that was drawn to foreigners. It would seem that this is the case."

He further cites data from the Statistical Yearbook for 1919/20.

In Russia, according to the reports of the People's Commissariat for Education, it was:

177 higher schools with 161,716 students, 3,934 secondary level schools with 450,195 students, level 1 schools with 5,973,988 students; in addition, 1,391 vocational schools with 93,186 students, 80 workers' and people's universities and faculties with 20,483 students, plus 2070 preschool institutions with 104 588 pupils, 46 319 libraries, reading rooms and clubs, 28,291 schools for the elimination of illiteracy.

What wealth! Almost the whole country has been turned into one school and university. Apparently, she only did what she studied, provided with everything, including the teaching power!

In his opinion, everything was far from being the case: "Do I need to say that all this is fiction, one paper invention, which is deductively impossible for a hungry country and does not actually correspond to the essence of the matter."

Courses "Likbez" 20-30 years of the XX century

He cites evidence that all these institutions existed mainly only on paper, or “In fact, it boiled down to a series of rallies under the name of 'universities' with party speakers talking about the 'current moment', diluted by 2-3 gymnasium teachers who taught the rudiments of arithmetic and certificates. Other educational institutions were of a similar nature."

The real picture can be seen in the official data on Moscow higher schools, provided with teaching forces. In 1917, there were 34,963 students at the university, technical, agricultural and commercial higher educational institutions, and 2,379 of them graduated, in 1919 there were 66,975 students there, twice as many, and 315 graduated, i.e. in 8 times less …

What does it mean? This means that 66,975 students are fiction. Both in Moscow and in Petrograd in 1918-1920. the high school auditoriums were empty. The usual norm of listeners for an ordinary professor was 5-10 people instead of 100-200 pre-revolutionary times, most of the courses did not take place "for lack of listeners."

The “exalting deception,” as Sorokin called the lies of the Bolsheviks, is over. The reality was this.

The funds allocated by the state for education amounted to 1/75 of the annual budget, and this proportion remained the same during the first decade of Soviet power. Not surprisingly, in February 1922, the government decided to close all higher educational institutions in Russia, except for five throughout the country. Only the energetic intervention of the professors prevented this radical "liquidation of the higher school" from taking place. Lunacharsky in October 1922 admitted that the number of people who graduated from higher education decreased by 70%, the average - by 60%, the lowest - by 70%.

And in the remaining educational institutions, scientific and educational life did not boil, but simply "agonized".

Almost all higher institutions were not heated during these years. Sorokin recalls: “We all lectured in unheated rooms. To make it warmer, small audiences were selected. For example, the entire building of Petrograd University was empty. All academic and academic life shrank and huddled in the students' dormitory, where there were a number of small classrooms. It’s warmer, and for most lectures, it’s not cramped.”

“The buildings were not repaired and were badly damaged. In addition, in 1918-1920. there was no light. Lectures were delivered in the dark; the lecturer and the audience did not see each other. It was happiness if sometimes I managed to get a stub of a candle. In 1921-1922. the light was. Hence it is easy to understand that the same shortcoming was in everything else: in instruments, in paper, in reagents and laboratory supplies; they forgot to think about gas. But there was no shortage of human corpses. The Cheka even offered one scientist “for the benefit of science” the delivery of the corpses of those who had just been killed. The first, of course, refused. Not only an ordinary scientist, but even such world scientists as Acad. IP Pavlov, the dogs were dying of hunger, experiments had to be done by the light of a torch, etc. In a word, the materially higher schools were destroyed and could not function normally without receiving a minimum minimum of funds. It is clear that all this made the classes very difficult and unproductive."

Primary school condition (I stage)

First graders of a rural school, 20s of the twentieth century

The lower school did not exist by 70%. School buildings, which had not been repaired over the years, collapsed. There was no lighting, no fuel. There was not even paper, pencils, chalk, textbooks and books.

“Now, as you know, almost all lower schools are deprived of subsidies from the state and transferred to“local funds,”that is, the government, without shame, deprived the entire lower school of all funds and left the population to work. She has funds for military affairs, she has funds for rich salaries of specialists, for bribing individuals, newspapers, for the magnificent maintenance of her diplomatic agents and for financing the International. 3 “, but for public education - no! Furthermore. A number of school premises are now being renovated for… open wine shops!”Sorokin wrote.

II stage of education

For the same reasons: lack of money, repairs, fuel, teaching aids, teachers doomed to starvation, some of them dead, some of them run away, secondary school did not exist for the same 60–70%. As in the high school, there were, moreover, an insignificant number of students.

In conditions of hunger and poverty, children 10–15 years old could not afford the luxury of studying: they had to get a piece of bread by selling cigarettes, standing in lines, getting fuel, traveling for food, speculation, etc., because parents could not support their children; the latter had to help the family.

Much contributed to the fall of secondary education and its practical uselessness in Russia over the years. “Why study,” one of the students who dropped out of school replied to Sorokin, “when you, professor, receive rations and salaries less than I get” (he entered Stroisvir and received really the best rations and contents there).

Naturally, under such conditions, the few who graduated from the second stage school were illiterate. In algebra, matters did not go further than quadratic equations; in history, knowledge was reduced to the history of the October Revolution and the Communist Party; general and Russian history were excluded from the subjects taught. When such graduates entered a higher school, a significant part of them ended up in the "zero faculty" (for those who were completely unprepared and soon dropped out), for the rest it was necessary to form preparatory courses. Because of this, the general level of students could not help but go down.

In 1921-1922. most of the secondary schools were closed. The rest - with a few exceptions - were transferred to "local funds", that is, they were deprived of state subsidies.

Deficit of teaching staff

In addition to the lack of material resources, the Soviet school faced an acute shortage of teaching staff. This is another reason for the low level of knowledge of schoolchildren.

Having criticized and completely destroyed the system of pedagogical education that existed before the revolution, the new government, sensing a shortage of teachers and teachers, began hastily to create new pedagogical educational institutions.

In the fall of 1918, a circular was received by which the teacher training department of the People's Commissariat for Education instructed “all uyezd and provincial departments of public education to start organizing pedagogical courses wherever possible, using intensively for this purpose all available pedagogical forces of higher educational institutions, pedagogical and teachers' institutes, teacher's seminaries. Credits for courses will be opened without delay."

At the same time, the "Regulation on temporary one-year courses for the training of teachers for the Unified Labor School" was developed.

The goals and priorities of the new teacher education were determined. General guidelines were given by the teacher training department of the People's Commissariat for Education, which in 1918 paid special attention to the fact that the training of a new teacher was not limited only to the scientific and pedagogical side and school practice. “It is necessary to prepare a harmoniously developed personality for a labor school. There is no place for white-handed teachers in a labor school. We need people with a certain class training or a fully developed socialist worldview. These requirements have become the backbone of the local teacher training work.

Thus, in 1918-1919, the basic principles of teacher training were laid, such as the class selection of future teachers, the revolutionary ideologization of their education and upbringing.

However, this was difficult to achieve in reality. Courses were organized, pedagogical universities were created, but there was no one to teach in them, that is, there was no one to teach future teachers. The pre-revolutionary teaching staff was found to be ideologically unfit and, for the most part, deprived of the right to teach. Later, however, having come to their senses, some were given back the right to teach students, but the strictest control and regular checks for "ideological fidelity" - "purges" were introduced.

In 1919, the epic of "reform" and "renewal" of higher education began. As in the middle one, here every six months brought a new reform and intensified the collapse. The main task in changing teaching was reduced to "communization". In a special decree in 1920, it was announced that "freedom of scientific thought" is a prejudice, that all teaching should be conducted in the spirit of Marxism and communism as the last and only truth. The professors and students responded with a protest. Then the authorities approached the matter differently. Spies were brought in, obliged to follow the lectures, and after that it was decided to expel especially rebellious professors and students.

In 1922, a number of professors were removed from teaching and transferred to "researchers", instead of them "red professors" were appointed - illiterate people who had neither work nor experience, but loyal communists. The elected rectors and deans were dismissed, and instead of them the same communists were appointed as rectors and members of the presidium, who had nothing - with a few exceptions - to do with science and academic life. A special Institute of Red Professors was set up to fabricate “red professors” in six to eight months. But this was not enough. Then the power passed to the wholesale expulsion from Russia and into Russia of scientists disagreeable to it. More than 100 professors were sent, including Sorokin.

The authorities took up the "cleaning of the school" very seriously. The idea of a class struggle demanded a fight with someone. Since there is no real war, we had to fight the school, and this struggle “on the ideological front” reached its climax. The main and only goal of higher education was the training of "faithful communists and followers of the religion of Marx - Lenin - Zinoviev - Trotsky."

Sorokin writes with bitterness: “In a word, a complete defeat has been carried out, especially in the humanities faculties. One should think that it will bring "brilliant" fruits to Russian education and science!"

The history of Russian science and thought has never known such a defeat. Anything that almost disagreed with the dogma of communism was persecuted. Newspapers, magazines, books were admitted only to communist or on issues unrelated to social problems.

Something similar happened in secondary school (grade II) throughout the country.

By 1921, there was a significant replenishment of the teaching corps of the Upper Volga provinces with new personnel. In the 1920-1921 academic year, 6650 teachers of the 1st stage schools (49.2%) and 879 teachers of the 2nd stage schools (49.5%) had work experience from 1 to 4 years (Public Education 1920: 20-25).

Mostly they were graduates of various pedagogical courses; they also took school graduates who did not have a pedagogical education as teachers, and others who had never taught in schools before.

The level of education and training of new teachers was unsatisfactory. The specialists did not meet the requirements of the local departments of public education. Thus, despite the ideological experiments of the first years, the revolutionary government did not succeed in completely changing the teaching staff.

According to the researcher A. Yu. Rozhkov, more than 40% of teachers who worked in Soviet schools in the mid-1920s began their careers even before the 1917 revolution.

As noted in a memo, prepared in 1925 by the OGPU for Stalin, "with regard to teachers … the OGPU organs undoubtedly still have a lot and hard work to do."

"Purges" in schools

A secret circular for a number of regions of the country dated August 7, 1925 actually announced a purge and ordered to immediately begin replacing school teachers who were disloyal to the Soviet regime with nominees who graduated from pedagogical universities and technical schools, as well as unemployed teachers. It was ordered to "replace" teachers through special "troikas" in secret. A description was compiled for each teacher in confidence. Several minutes of the meetings of the commission for the "verification" of teachers in the Shakhty district from September to December 1925 have been preserved. As a result, out of 61 teachers tested, 46 (75%) were fired, 8 (13%) were transferred to another locality. The rest were recommended to be replaced or not used in this work.

It is significant that some teachers, recognized as politically unreliable and unfit for teaching, were recommended for transfer from school to mine.

Here are the most typical decisions of this commission: “D. - Former White Guard officer, emigrant, deprived of the right to vote. Take off"; "3. - the daughter of a priest has not broken ties with the clergy to this day, teaches social science. To remove a social scientist from his job, allowing him to take special subjects”; “E. - … politically unreliable, as a former member of the investigating commission with whites … as a teacher, a good worker. Take off"; “B. - anti-Soviet. Mocks children of proletarian origin. With old views of the school. Take off"; "N. - is actively hostile to the Soviet regime and the Communist Party. Comes from hereditary nobles. Corrupts students, hits them. Leads the persecution of the communists. Take off"; "G. - satisfactory as a teacher, but often skimps on his duties. It is desirable to transfer to the mine."

There were similar cases in Kostroma and in other provinces. Often, as noted in the memoirs, they were fired or transferred to another area or even the city of the unreasonable. So teacher M. A.

So, according to the general data of the school census of 1927, it is clear that non-partisans made up the bulk of teachers. In 1929, among the teachers of the primary school of the RSFSR, there were 4.6% of the communists and 8.7% of the Komsomol, 28% of the teachers came from the nobility, clergy and merchants.

Research materials showed that among teachers there was a fear of the party and its policies. Accusations of anti-Soviet orientation were not always unfounded. The teachers were in an extremely difficult financial situation, and wages in the districts were still in natural products. On the one hand, the party followed the directives on social work and collectivization. On the other hand, the struggle and eradication of the "kulak elements" meant hunger for the teachers. The recollections of the teachers testify to this: "Due to the delay in wages, the teachers are forced to turn to the well-to-do part of the village to buy food on credit."

These "martyrs of the revolution", who did not receive for 6-7 months those pennies on which it was absolutely impossible to live, partly died out, part went to farm laborers, part became beggars, a significant percentage of teachers … prostitutes, and part of the lucky ones moved to other, more lucrative places … In a number of places, in addition, the peasants were reluctant to send their children to schools, since "they do not teach the Law of God there." This was the true state of affairs.

Let us turn again to the work of P. Sorokin: “The most terrible years for the professors were 1918-1920. Receiving an insignificant remuneration, and even then with a delay of three or four months, without having any ration, the professors literally died out of hunger and cold. Its mortality rate has increased 6 times compared with the pre-war time. The rooms were not heated. There was no bread, much less other goods “necessary for existence”. Some eventually died, others were unable to bear it all - and committed suicide. Well-known scientists ended this way: geologist Inostrantsev, prof. Khvostov and someone else. Still others were carried away by typhus. Some were shot."

The moral atmosphere was even heavier than the material one. There are few professors who would not have been arrested at least once, and even fewer who would not have had searches, requisitions, evictions from an apartment, etc., several times. heavy logs from barges, ice picks, watch at the gates, it is understandable that for many scientists, especially the elderly, all this was a slow death penalty. Due to such conditions, scientists and professors began to die so quickly that the meetings of the university council turned into permanent "honoring the memory." At each meeting, 5–6 names of those who have passed into eternity were announced. During this period, Russian Historical Journal almost entirely consisted of obituaries.

In the "Tagantsevsky case" - one of the first cases after the 1917 revolution, when representatives of the scientific and creative intelligentsia, mainly from Petrograd, were subjected to mass executions - more than 30 scientists were shot, including such figures as the best expert on Russian state law, Professor N. I. …Lazarevsky and one of the greatest Russian poets Lev Gumilyov. The incessant searches and arrests were joined by the massive expulsion of professors, which immediately threw out about 100 scientists and professors abroad. The authorities "took care of scientists and science."

Sorokin's words about the "liquidation of literacy" are becoming understandable.

The younger generation, especially rural Russia, should have grown up completely illiterate. If this did not happen, then not because of the merits of the authorities, but because of the awakened craving for knowledge among the people. She forced the peasants on their own to help in trouble as much as they could: in a number of places they themselves invited professors and teachers to the village, provided him with housing, food and children for training, in other places such a teacher made a priest, a sexton and just a literate fellow villager. These efforts of the population prevented the complete elimination of literacy. If it were not for them, the authorities would have accomplished this task brilliantly.

“These were the results in this area,” sums up Sorokin. - And here is complete bankruptcy. There was a lot of noise and advertising, the results were the same as in other areas. Destroyers of public education and schools - this is an objective characteristic of the authorities in this regard."