Russian and Soviet Schooling : Educational Legacies, Institutional Reforms and National Identities.

Abstract

the expansion of schooling in the Russian countryside after 1864 brought basic education within the reach of the majority of peasants in the European heartland by the time of World War I, but that this expansion was initiated by the purposeful self activity of the anonymous peasant million. The elite contribution – whether by the local zemstvos of offi-cialdom – began on a large scale only after the great famine of 1891-1892 […]; before that date it was peasants who supplied the energy, money and effort to launch and maintain the school expansion campaign 22 . the elementary and secondary school teachers who filled the rapidly expanding system of Soviet education in the 1930s. The study begins with the difficult position of teachers on the so-called “school front”, and ends with the severe impact of mass repression at decade’s end 54