Figure 1.--Here we see a traveling school in the Soviet Union for peasant children in the mid-1920s, perhaps 1927. Notice the children all seem to have shaved heads and many are wearing sailor-styled outfits. We are not sure, but presumably the children here are both boys and girls.

We have limited information on the types of schools during the early Soviet era. There were certainly primary and secondary schools in the cities. We are less sure about what was going on in the countryside. Of course he Civil War (1918-22) must have disrupted the ecucation system. In the process the great landed estates were broken up. Some of the landlords sponsored schools for their peasants workers. Others were probably more interested in keeping them uneducated. We believe that there was a substantial expansion of the school population with with working-class children having greatly increased access to education, especially secondary education. We are not entirely sure how this was accomplished. We note something called a traveling school for peasant children. We have little information about these schools. We also are unsure what happened to the schools in the cities. Where did the teachers come from. Were theu the same teaches as before the Revolution or were they replsced whole sale and by who? Schools were formed on the collective farms set up in the 1930s, but we know little about them at this time. Most of the collectives of course were set up in the early 1930s as Stalin extended his control over the country.

Created: 5:24 PM 2/24/2005
Last updated: 5:25 PM 8/15/2006