Soviet Collective Farms: Schools

Figure 1.--This photo shows two schoolboys on a collective farm (kolkhoz) near Kiev in the Ukraine during 1938. The fact that the boys are barefoot suggests that they attendend a school on the kolkhoz. Soviet law required children like these boys on the kolkhoz remain and work on the kolkhoz as adults. In effect they were state serfs, tied to the land like Tsarist serfs. Notice the headwear. They are tubeteikas. Until the 1930s they were mostly worn in the Central Asian republics. They became more popular in the Ukraine and Russia after World War II. Many children that had been evacuated during the War to the Central Asian republics wore there tubeteikas and brought them back when they returned home. They were quite common during the 1950s, but went out of fashion during the 60s.

We have been able to find very little information at this time as to schools the kolkhoz children attended. We are not even sure about rural schools in rural areas before the kolkhozy were established. There were village schools. Depending on location, these are the schools the children first attended. There were few school busses at the gime, so the children at the more isolated kolkhozy would have trouble getting to village schools. Apparently some kolkhozy began setting up their own schools. Many kolkhozy were at first reltively small. Some would have had trouble maintainung small primary school. And we are nure who paid for the teacher and costs of the schools. Nor are we sure about what happened after the children finished primary school. We do not know how many of the children went on to secondary schools. Even larger kolkhozy could not have supported a secondary school. This meant that the children presumably would have had to attend some kind of boarding school, but we have no information at this time as to how common this was. There were apparently major changes after World War II. An amalgamation prigram created larger kolkhozy which were better able to support schools (1949). We think many of the schools were built after the War. We have no information as to the standards in the kolkhoz schools. More changes came after Stalin died (1953). The Government gave the kolkhozy permission to establish non-farm cooperative industries. Large numbers of the kolkhozy did so, choosing activities they were already involved with on a small scale to support the kolkhoz's needs. They began operating brickyards, carpentry shops, electric stations as part of a wider kolkhozy association. This substantially raised income levels at the kolkhozy. The Government required that the kolkhozy build their own schools, infirmery, bathouses, recreational, club houses, and other facilities. (We arec not sure if this was new legislation or was enforced from the brginning.) One sourcee reports that the kolkhozy in the the Ukrainian SSR built, on their own, 720 village schools, during 1953-58.

Created: 12:07 AM 11/15/2011
Last updated: 5:57 AM 11/16/2011