Soviet Schools


Figure 1.--The children at this unidentified Belfast school are smartly uniformed. The photograph is undated, but was probably taken in the 1960s. Until after World War II, uniforms were mostly worn at private schools and state scondary schools which adopted the styles of the private schools. This began to change after the War, beginning n the 1950s. We see quite a few state primaries in Britain adopting basic uniforms like this school. The boys wear white shirts, ties, and short pants. The girls wore white shirts and ties, but with gym slips, sometimes clled pinafore dresses. There were school knee socks, but they were not required. Footwear was not specified, but were either leather sandals or shoes. This looks to be the girl's First Day portrait. She is wearing ethnic dress rather than a school uniform in 1967. The writing on the back may explain where she is from.

The Soviet Union was more of an empire than a country. Thus we have generally archived Soviet school images under the constinuent republic that became independent countries when the Soviet Union imploded (1992). We have acquired Soviet images that are not identified. So we don't know where to archive them other than the Soviet Union. Of course Russians were a major part of the Soviet population. This is a difficult problem because as the Soviet Union begam to mandate uniforms for school uniforms, they did not have different uniforms for the various republics. Children all over the Soviet Union wore the same basic style although styles changed over time. There were styles for both boys and girls. There are a few clues as to where the uniforms were from. We see brown suits and dresses in Ukraine rather than the standard navy blue. Of course that does not show up in the photographic record until the 1980s when we begin to see color photography. We see some Soviet school children wearing folk outfits to school. We are not sure how common this was. Based on prevalence in the photographic record, they do not seem very common. We suspect that they were worn on special occaasions or school events of some kind. An when we see an enyire class dressed up in folk outfits, we wonder if the school did not provide the outfits. Folk costuming and dance was a rare instabce in which the Soviets permitted ethnic expression. Our most detailed information on Sovier\t schools comes grom the Soviet era in our Russian school section.







Careful, clicking on these will exit you from the Boys' Historical Clothing web site, but several are highly recommended

  • Boys' Preparatory Schools: Apertures Press has published a 125-page hard cover book depicting every-day life at British preparatory schools. The book includes about 250 never before published black and white and color photographs illustrating school life during the 1980s. There are also many older photographs to illustrate a brief historical essay providing background information on these splendid little schools. Accompanying the photographs are poems, essays, and quips by the children Preparatory schools in Britain prepare elementary-age children for the country's elite public (private) secondary schools. themselves describing their school experiences. Most of the photographs were taken in England and Scotland, but British preparatory schools in Italy, New Zealand, South Africa, and Ulster are also shown.
  • Apertures Press New Zealand E-book: Aperures Press has publish its New Zealand school E-books. T this will permit readers to follow our process by viewing draft pages and pages in progress as we create them. Besides giving readers the opportunity to follow progress on the book as it develops, it gives our Quiwi friends the opportunity to review and comment on the various pages--allowing HBC to incorporate a much wider range of ideas and experiences than would otherwise have been possible.
  • British Preparatory Schools: These photographic books depict life at British preparatory schools during the 1980s. The schools are English and Scottish. The pictures depict the chool life and uniforms worn at many different schools.






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    Created: 7:53 PM 4/8/2019
    Last updated: 7:53 PM 4/8/2019