The Soviet Education System: A Historical Overview

The Soviet education system, established after the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution, was a radical departure from the education system of Czarist Russia. The system was internationally renowned for its successes in eradicating illiteracy and cultivating a highly educated population. It guaranteed total access for all citizens and post-education employment. This article examines the history and structure of the Soviet education system, from its early post-revolutionary ideals to its later bureaucratization and eventual transformation.

Pre-Revolutionary Russia: A Dark Educational Past

In the early 20th century, Russia lagged behind other European nations in education. Illiteracy was widespread, especially among army recruits, and was perpetuated by government policy. The Imperial Government hampered educational activities, placing obstacles in the way of peasant and working-class children who desired higher education.

According to A.N. Kulomzin's estimation in 1904, only 3.3% of the Russian population was in school, compared to 23% in the United States, 19% in the German Empire, 16% in England, and 15% in France. The Central State officials wielded immense power over the meagerly attended schools, allocating three hours a week to church singing. The curriculum for the majority of Russian children lacked history, civics, natural science, and hand training. Teachers were poorly paid and subjected to constant government surveillance.

Only a small number of Russian school children entered higher schools and colleges. Social discipline was rigid due to the student disorders common in Russia during the late 19th century. Students were forbidden from participating in secret societies or joining legally recognized societies without express permission from the university authorities. These coercive measures sparked repeated student revolts. Czarist Russia's educational system aimed to confine education to those intended to rule, with a tiny proportion of children attending school, teachers underpaid and restricted, and students subject to continual surveillance.

The Dawn of Soviet Education: Revolution and Transformation

The Russian Revolution of 1917 brought about a radical shift in education. Educational enthusiasm swept across Russia as higher institutions were thrown open to the masses. The Soviet authorities aimed to prepare the people for their emancipation by making education accessible to all, establishing "a single absolutely secular school" open to everyone.

One of the first acts of the Provisional Government in 1917 was the secularization of church schools. The Soviet of the People's Commissaries officially proclaimed the separation of church and school in January 1918, eliminating religious teaching and discrimination in public schools.

In the first year after the 1917 Bolshevik revolution, the schools were left very much to their own devices due to the ongoing civil war of 1917-1923. The People's Commissariat for Education directed its attention solely towards introducing political propaganda into the schools and forbidding religious teaching. From October 1, 1918, all types of schools came under Commissariat for Education and were designated by the name "Uniform Labour School". They were divided into two levels: the first for children from 8 to 13, and the second for children from 14 to 17.

However, the early years of the revolution were marked by financial bankruptcy, civil war, famine, and economic disorganization, which took a toll on education. It was not until 1921 that the Soviet Union turned the corner economically.

Early Soviet Education (1918-1930s): Ideals and Implementation

Following the Revolution, the USSR was plunged into a Civil War from 1918 to 1921, during which the Red Army beat back a counter-revolutionary force supported by the primary imperialist powers of the world. Coming on the back of World War I, the Civil War decimated Russia, causing mass starvation and generalized poverty. Lenin died in 1924 and Stalin took over, articulating the idea of socialism in just one country and increasingly bureaucratizing the USSR. However, many of the victories of the working-class revolution lasted throughout the 1920s, including an inquiry-centered vision of education.

Prior to the Revolution, schools had been primarily reserved for Russia’s elites, and they were often dominated by the influence of the Russian Orthodox Church. After the revolution, school was for everyone: men and women, boys and girls, peasants and industrial workers. The Soviet principle of self-determination of nations was expressed in education. In fact, for women, schools had a double function: of education young leaders of both sexes, as well as allowing adult women to take up more societal tasks.

Early Russian schools also attempted to include the dozens of national minorities that also made up the USSR. Schools conducted classes in the native language of their regions, and there was no attempt to impose Russian on ethnic and linguistic minorities. In fact, some languages first acquired written form in these first years after the revolution in an attempt to write textbooks for schools in residents’ native languages. As Wilson observed in 1926, “a whole nation is at school”. She referred to the USSR in the early twenties as a “riot of educational activities”.

The new Workers Government instituted massive literacy and general education programs all over the country, seeking to elevate the political awareness of all sectors of Russian society. These programs included the widespread establishment of public education beginning in pre-school, massive literacy campaigns within the Red Army, an expansion of universities, playgrounds, and factory schools, as well as the expansion of museums, traveling libraries, and more.

Participating in the government was central to this perspective. “With the objective of laying a better foundation for a democratic state,” schools taught students the basics of democratic participation. In addition to reading and writing, they were taught how to participate in assemblies, to listen to and exchange ideas, and to lead meetings and take minutes. Student government existed in all schools, and several “auto organization[s],” such as clubs and children’s cooperatives, emerged. In each classroom, students were taught to democratically work together in small groups, make their own rules, elect leaders, subdivide work among themselves, and synthesize the results: tasks that were central to the proposed soviet-style participatory government.

Schools were scientifically planned, testing out pedagogical techniques and carefully observing the results in order to draw general conclusions. There were experimental schools, established specifically for the purpose of testing out new pedagogical techniques. The education that the USSR attempted to implement was heavily inquiry-based, taking up many of John Dewey’s ideas about progressive education. Inquiry projects in schools were directly connected to the problems of the local community, with teachers working with community members to incorporate their knowledge in the classroom. These inquiry-based approaches helped students work across disciplines rather than to categorize their learning into discrete subjects.

Teacher training was an important task throughout the country and there were few resources to carry it out. Some teachers had opposed the Bolshevik revolution, and even more held antiquated ideas about education. They rejected the new progressive teaching methods introduced by the Revolution.

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Likbez: Eradicating Illiteracy

In accordance with the Sovnarkom decree of 26 December 1919, signed by its chairman Vladimir Lenin, the new policy of likbez (liquidation of illiteracy) was introduced. A new system of universal compulsory education was established for children. Millions of illiterate adults were enrolled in special literacy schools. Komsomol members and Young Pioneer detachments played an important role in the education of illiterate people in villages.

In the Azerbaijan Soviet Socialist Republic, the women's literacy campaign was largely carried out by members of the Ali Bayramov Club, a women's organization founded by Azeri Bolshevik women in Baku in 1920. The most active phase of likbez lasted until 1939. In 1926, the literacy rate was 56.6 percent of the population.

Korenizatsiya: Promoting Native Languages

An important aspect of the early campaign for literacy and education was the policy of "indigenisation" (korenizatsiya). This policy, which lasted essentially from the mid-1920s to the late 1930s, promoted the development and use of non-Russian local and regional languages in the government, the media, and education. Intended to counter the historical practices of Russification, it had as another practical goal assuring native-language education as the quickest way to increase educational levels of future generations. A huge network of so-called "national schools" was established by the 1930s, and enrollments continued to grow throughout the Soviet era.

Restructuring the School System

In 1923, a new school statute and curricula, based on the Dalton plan, were adopted. Schools were divided into three separate types, designated by the number of years of instruction: "four-year", "seven-year" and "nine-year" schools. Seven- and nine-year (secondary) schools were scarce, compared to the "four-year" (primary) schools, making it difficult for the pupils to complete their secondary education. Those who finished seven-year schools had the right to enter Technicums.

The curriculum was changed radically. Independent subjects, such as reading, writing, arithmetic, the mother tongue, foreign languages, history, geography, literature or science were abolished. Instead school programmes were subdivided into "complex themes", such as "the life and labour of the family in village and town" for the first year or "scientific organisation of labour" for the 7th year of education. All students were required to take the same standardised classes.

The Stalinist Era: Centralization and Control (1930s-1950s)

As the Stalinist bureaucracy strengthened itself and began to push for rapid industrialization, the post-Revolutionary focus on holistic and democratic education deteriorated. An education based on the love of learning, on democracy, on developing people holistically was incompatible with the need to compete with the capitalist world.

The Soviet education system underwent significant changes during the Stalinist era, characterized by increased centralization, ideological control, and emphasis on discipline.

Uniformity and Ideology

Following the complete integration of the VUZ into a Soviet state-wide system, the three-pronged management ideology of the higher education system was placed into effect: uniformity, top-down administration, and one-man management.

From 1918, all Soviet schools were co-educational. Research and education, in all subjects but especially in the social sciences, was dominated by Marxist-Leninist ideology and supervised by the CPSU. Such domination led to abolition of whole academic disciplines such as genetics. Some scholars were purged as they were proclaimed bourgeois during that period. Most of the abolished branches of learning were rehabilitated later in Soviet history, in the 1960s-1990s (e.g., genetics in October 1964), although many purged scholars were rehabilitated only in post-Soviet times.

The VUZ System

Alexey Kuraev explains the evolution of Soviet higher education from 1918 until the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the ideology and management systems behind the education programs, and compares the VUZ (высшее учебное заведение or “higher educational institution”) to western-style universities. VUZ was the acronym for the universities, military academies and other technical/vocational institutes in the Soviet Union under the Ministry of Education.

In the VUZ system, students did not choose their specialization or academic pursuits. The purpose of higher education was not personal but communal advancement. This led to a rather baffling approach of students being enrolled not in a specific university, but rather in a specialization. This meant that it was not uncommon for a student to be moved across the country to fill a quota. Order and discipline were of the utmost importance. Students were treated as if they were soldiers, they had to follow all orders given to them and there was no room for insubordination. Party officials along with the secret police would keep a close watch on students, this was to breed compliance and also acceptance of the Soviet way of life. Pupils who graduated were forcibly placed in specific jobs in a specific location and had three weeks to report for work. Those who did not were at risk of having their “qualification diploma” revoked and the near-certainty of being prosecuted.

The professors and researchers had no academic freedom to teach or pursue what they wanted to research. Due to top-down administration along with uniformity nationwide, the classes were taught directly from pre-approved textbooks, with no variation or delineation allowed. Every academic institution had a collection of administrative offices that were known as units. These units were numbered one through three, Unit №1 would hold security supervision, Unit №2 was used for army recruitment, and Unit №3 was for achieving institutional and personal documentation. Whenever there was an important test, invaluable research or any other noteworthy occasion on campus, the NKVD/KGB from Unit №1 would be present. This is just one example of how the state had the ultimate control in the education and research processes of the Soviet Union.

Emphasis on Discipline

Soviet progressive education was almost entirely scrapped through a series of sweeping decrees starting in 1932 and continuing through 1948 and 1949. A 1932 decree abolished the Dalton Plan and the project method, and introduced the three IPs. In 1934 a decree on the teaching of history ordered “the observance of historical and chronological sequence in the exposition of historical events,” and stated that facts, names, and dates should receive due emphasis. In 1937 “polytechnism” - that is, the organization of the curriculum around labor - was under heavy fire. Research in problems of polytechnics was abandoned, and subjects of the conventional type came to prevail in the curricula. In 1999 polytechnism was out, though the name crops up from time to time.

In 1943, separate schools for boys and for girls were introduced in eighty large cities, and later elsewhere. “Coeducation,” said the then People’s Commissar for Education, “makes no allowance for differences in the physical development of boys and girls, for variations required by the sexes in preparing each for their future life work.” However, coeducation was not completely abolished, and there has been a frank and vigorous debate in the Soviet press on the relative merits of the two systems.

The proponents of separate education have stressed the practical desirability of military training for schoolboys and of special training for girls in homemaking and motherhood; more fundamentally, however, the argument has been that separate education promotes better discipline. A few weeks after the decree on separate education, the education authorities promulgated twenty “Rules for School Children,” imposing obligations of conscientious study, good behavior in school and after school, neatness, respect for teachers, and so forth. Rule 9 states that pupils must rise when the teacher enters or leaves the room. Rule 12 requires that upon meeting a teacher in the streets students must give a polite bow, and the boys must remove their hats. A “pupil’s card,” on the back of which the rules are printed, must be carried at all times.

Punishments may now be administered, including admonition, ordering the delinquent to rise from his seat or to leave the room, and expulsion from sehool “The absence of punishment demoralizes the will of the school child,” Pravda stated in 1944. However, corporal punishment is forbidden- though it is apparently sometimes practiced.

The Schooling of Patriots

The political implications of this philosophy are not concealed. The schools are required “to educate the youth in the spirit of unrestrained love for the Motherland and devotion to Soviet authority.” The Young Communist League (Komsomol) with 16 million members between the ages of fourteen and twenty-six is supposed to “show the way” in combating “ideological neutrality.” “The most important task of the Komsomol organization,” states a handbook of 1947, “is to instill into all the youth Soviet patriotism, Soviet national pride, the aspiration to make our Soviet State even stronger.”

The patriotic, military, and moral emphasis of Komsomol and school activity is implemented by indoctrination in Marxist theory, as redefined by Lenin and Stalin. Political propaganda permeates the curriculum. School children are taught the superiority of the “Soviet” biology of Michurin and Lysenko over “bourgeois” biology. In studying Shakespeare, students are taught Marx’s views of the development of English capitalism; Hamlet is seen in part as an exposure of a decadent court aristocracy.

“Marxism-Leninism" is a required course in all Soviet institutions of higher education. Doctors’ dissertations in all fields must be ideologically correct, and there is even some indication that degrees may be revoked years later if “mistakes” in them are discovered.

Structure of the Education System in the Stalinist Era

The Soviet educational system was organized into three levels. The names of these levels were and are still used to rate the education standards of persons or particular schools, despite differences in the exact terminology used by each profession or school.

Elementary schools were called the "beginning" level, 4 and later 3 classes.
Secondary schools were 7 and later 8 classes (required completing elementary school) and called "incomplete secondary education". This level was compulsory for all children (since 1958-1963) and optional for under-educated adults (who could study in so-called "evening schools").
PTUs, tekhnikums, and some military facilities formed a system of so-called “secondary specialized education”. PTU's were vocational schools and trained students in a wide variety of skills ranging from mechanic to hairdresser. Completion of a PTU after primary school did not provide a full secondary diploma or a route to such a diploma. However, entry to a tekhnikum or other specialized secondary school could be started after either 8 or 10 classes of combined education in elementary and secondary school.
“Higher” educational institutions included degree-level facilities: universities, “institutes” and military academies. "Institute" in the sense of a school refers to a specialized "microuniversity" (mostly technical), usually subordinate to the ministry associated with their field of study. The largest network "institutes" were medical, pedagogic (for the training of schoolteachers), construction and various transport (automotive and road, railroad, civil aviation) institutes. Some of those institutes were present in every oblast capital while others were unique and situated in big cities (like the Literature Institute and the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology ).

There was also a category of secondary schools specialized in advanced teaching of mathematics, physics, chemistry, and foreign languages. Students who wanted admission to a VUZ had to have graduated from either a general secondary school (10 or 11 years) or a specialized secondary school or a tekhnikum.

Military and militsiya (police) schools were on the same higher level. Note that Soviet military and militsiya facilities named "Academy" were not a degree-level school (like Western military academies such as West Point), but a post-graduate school for experienced officers. Such schools were compulsory for officers applying for the rank of colonel.

The Khrushchev Thaw: Reforming Education (1950s-1960s)

Following Stalin’s death in 1953, Nikita Khrushchev became the leader of the Soviet state. When he took over leadership, many of the strict rules in place under Stalin slowly melted away. Khruschev himself called the reformist plan, a “rethinking of the educational process.”

This reform was primarily motivated by the lack of specialists graduating from the Higher Education system. In 1959, over 2.3 million students were enrolled in undergraduate programs in the USSR, despite these numbers, the leadership wanted to be able to provide education to even more people. The needs of the economy and the advancements of technology were two of the most important factors behind the educational overhaul.

While still centrally planned and organized, the reforms brought in new ideas and new plans to enable a fair and clearly defined admission process.

Previously, entrance exams were administered by only one proctor, because of this bribery, parental influence and favoritism ran rampant in the examination proceedings. The change would be implemented by ensuring that two independent proctors would evaluate all of the entrance exams to ensure fairness. Additionally, admissions interviews would also change under the reform act. Previously, only a high ranking member of the academic staff would partake in the interview process with potential new students. With the reforms in place, the local party, and trade union leaders also sat in on the interviews to ensure a fair and inclusive interview process. These two specific changes were largely tied to the privilege associated with attending a university, specifically in math and science.

There would be one other major change in the admissions and entrance requirements, especially for the highly sought after academic subjects; law, mathematics, science and technology, and teaching. Students were now required to have two years of work experience in the field in which they were planning on attending university, especially if it was in one of the previously noted fields of study. However, there was an exception to the rule in which students who had been enrolled in an honors program or were at the top of their class, would be allowed direct entry into these programs.

The changes in the education system allowed for a boom in the Soviet advancement of technology and science in the mid-1960s to the early 1980s. These reforms were vital to their improvement and advancement as a society overall, and which in turn led them to be an even more dominating world power.

Perestroika and Post-Soviet Era: Transformation and Transition (1980s-Present)

From the mid-1980s until the fall of the Soviet Union, the education system went through reforms that would continue today. To some extent, the process was very much recycling processes and duties that were consistent with Soviet culture and upsetting them completely. While the nation was going through severe economic and political strife, the nation’s educators and academics were hot on the trail of establishing a new, improved, academically acceptable system of learning, research, and advancement.

In Ben Brodinsky’s article, “The Impact of Perestroika on Soviet Education” he tells the reader about how his Soviet interviewees responded about the biggest changes in their local schools and educational facilities. He said that “…first among the more profound influences of perestroika is new freedom sweeping all across education and reaching into every classroom and administrative office. It is real freedom. I was told - Nothing artificial or phony. And it is all-pervasive.”

Freedom and openness in the classrooms were a major stepping stone for the society as a whole. Gone were the days of government-mandated curriculum and policies regarding in-class behavior. In were the days of academic freedom and more relaxed rules. Teachers had the freedom to eliminate Marxist-Leninist philosophy and were not required to include the Communist Party line in their lectures.

The fall of the Soviet Union would change life and education for everyone in the nation. Some universities would privatize and would be accepted into the international community as major research facilities. Nationalization at the primary and secondary levels would be reduced and would follow a more Western-style as far as the administration is concerned.

Overall, perestroika led the Soviet Union to collapse due to the expansion of freedom and openness of opportunity. The effect that Gorbachov and his policies had, were felt for years into the future and could still be seen in some facets of Russian life and culture. Along with the massive deficits and popular uprising, the USSR would fall, and with it the Communist Party, and some Soviet traditions.

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