EDUCATION IN THE SOVIET UNION

Northern Advocate, 8 January 1938, Page 9

EDUCATION IN THE SOVIET UNION

piFTEEN years ago four-fifths of the vast population of the Soviet Union were illiterate. These 170.000,000 have now learnt to read and write. The school has penetrated to the smallest hamlets, often far from the railway, and with it they have their library, their club, their cinema, and their wireless.

These arc achievements that must command respect. But their effect has been vast rather than profound. Too much was tried at once, and with insufficient resources. There were ten years of experimenting of every possible sort of education; not until a few years ago was an efficient school system established.

Three Main Classes,

It is divided into three main classes, primary, semi-intermediate, and intermediate, students passing on from these into technical and general colleges. It is proposed to have technical colleges for all occupations, not only for industrial ones—for medicine, for midwives, for sanitary workers, for dental mechanics, for music, the theatre, and the theory of education. Students may pass into these colleges from the semi-intermediate school.

Schooling lias also changed. All the experiments of the past have been thrown over. Strict discipline has been restored, almost to a reactionary degree. Even the Old Tsarist schoolboy’s uniform Is being reintroduced. There is equal strictness in the technical and general college. As it is a rare thing for a student to be able to study at his own expense a system of “contracting” has been introduced.

Admittance to college depends, of course, not only on recommendation from the intermediate school but also from the Young Communist party organisation. The student then concludes an agreement with a State authority or works providing for a definite length of time at college with a definite period of service to follow under the authority or at the works. The student then receives a monthly allowance. These allowances vary extraordinarily in amount; it also

makes a difference,, of course, whether the student will have to serve at the end of his studies for many years in the Siberian backwoods or in a capital city. Which is to bo. depends mainly on the influence at the back of the student. Programme Changed, The programme of the secondary schools and colleges has also been greatly changed in recent years. Actual knowledge is now sought. The many political faculties are being abolished. History and geography teaching has been thoroughly reorganised. History is still dominated by the Marxist outlook, but the events and personalities of the past are no longer regarded as altogether negligible. Russian history is approached in the spirit of Stalin’s policy of patriotism and nationalism; this requires the glorification of the Russian past, the rehabilitation of Peter the Great and of Saint Vladimir; and persons and evtnts of the past are treated once more with a measure of differentiation. Geography, too, is no longer devoted to illustrating, by means of statistics which might or might not be assuratc. the thieving imperialistic policy of the Great Powers or the "exploitation” of the workers by capitalism.

There is more serious study of actual facts, of the so-called physical geography. The enormous spread of college training might have been expected to produce an extraordinary advance in science in the Soviet Union. This is not entirely so. especially in the humanities.

The works of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin are regarded as inspired truth. Any personal expression of opinion is risky. Thus we have the remarkable result that in a country which might have yielded rich material for research in its twenty years of economic experiment not a single economic work of any real importance has appeared in the past decade, not even a pamphlet worth reading.

Political Pamphleteering

This applies, of course, more than

ever in regard to philosophy. Who wants a philosophy, if he lias his Marx. A few years ago one single philosopher appeared, Deborin. There was talk of the founding of a new school of philosophy. It came to nothing. There is more to show in theoretical writing on literature and art, but it is mainly political pamphlet erring rather than scientific work. For the- past two years and more writing has become dangerous, and ah is stagnant in this field too.

Sc also with jurisprudence. It might have been supposed that there was an immense field here. Important institutions have been founded, but only one important writer on jurisprudence has been produced by them. Pauschkanis, and ho has now been denounced.

The only study, apart from archaeology and research into the material civilisation of the past, which has made any sort of progress is that of languages, and for the simple reason that it serves thoroughly practical ends. Where there is a practical end to be served the Russian can do really tine work.

Nowhere are there such vast scientific institutions and laboratories in the fields of geology, engineering and medicine as in the Soviet Union. But much of their work is plagiarism of the work of the West.

Languish After Contact With Politics

In every field the things of the mind came into contact with politics, and languish. The fate of the theatre best shows this process at work. In the first period of Soviet rule the Russian theatre so flourished that it reached an artistic level unattainable anywhere else in the world. It had started with a fine heritage from Tsardom. After 1928 came the decline of the theatre. Political pressure grew steadily Propaganda pieces, artistically weak and often thoroughly bad, brought the theatre to universal stagnancy. Then came Stalin’s blow against modernism. One day he went to the opera to hear Shestakovitch’s “Katrina Ismailova,” which had already had a long run.