EDUCATION IN RUSSIA.

Evening Star, Issue 18504, 11 December 1923, Page 8

EDUCATION IN RUSSIA.

TO THE EDITOR.

Sir, —In your issue, of Thursday last a correspondent, L.T.K., writes concerning ‘ Education in Russia.’ In an endeavor to show that education (and, by implication, social affairs generally) is going from bad to worse in Russia under Soviet rule, your correspondent selects for his purpose statistics of education covering the period 1910 to 1922. He contrasts the position at tire end of 1922 with that in 1920—that is, he contrasts tho worst period for education under Soviet rule with its best period under tho same rule, and judges Soviet education results on this contrast. What a fine method of historical analysis! Is it necessary to ha.vo to point to your correspondent and like bourgeois-minded people that the revolution and tho Soviet Republic did not begin.in 1920_and end in 1922? It began in 1917 and is still continuing, and in order to arrive at any correct estimate of the results of working class rule it is essential to take, the whole period of this rule into account, and: contrast it with conditions'' existing prior to the revolution and tiro war. Of course, it is hardly to he expected that tho antiSoviet critics of Russia should do this, since capitalist Russia could not stand any such contrast with its Soviet successor. Again, it is now a year since the statistics quoted by L.T.K. were given to tho tenth Soviet Congress. Since your correspondent, according to himself, keeps acquainted with Russian developments, he must know that the measures taken by that congress have resulted in an improvement in the educational field during the- present year. It was inevitable in (lie nature of things that tho change from the policy of so-called War Communism to the new economic policy should lie productive of temporary disorganisation in some spheres of social activity, and in this respect education suffered most. .However, tho improvement in industry effected by tho new economic policy, which is anything but the alleged “return to capitalism,” has had its reflex in tho unproved conditions observed in tho educational field this year. As to your correspondent’s quotation from Lenin, anyone with the least acquaintance with Lenin’s style knows that this quotation is either doctored a. little or torn from its context. The fairy tale about the huge sums of money which were unaccounted for by responsible Communists who had charge of them is now rather stale. After Laving served up to the world almost daily the news that “the Soviets have been overthrown,” the reactionary Press next started a campaign of lies to tho effect- that- the Russian Communist Party was breaking up from internal corruption and faction quarrels. The, talc of the huge sums which disappeared was a part of this campaign. But tho Russian Communist Party, like tho SovietRepublic that was,so often 11 overthrown,” still exists; and the prominent Communists mentioned as having failed to account for the “huge sums” still retain their positions and the confidence of three-quarters of a million wideawake members of tho party. It is just this continued existence of the Soviet Republic and the Russian Communist (Bolshevik) Parly which laris all bourgeois-minded correspondents so much.—l am, etc., E. Brooks. December 8.