The Growth of Education in the USSR: Literacy, Schools and Universities (AQA A Level History: Component 1: Breadth study): Revision Note

Summary

• The Bolsheviks inherited mass illiteracy

  • They saw education as essential for building socialism, creating loyal citizens and training skilled workers

• Lenin set up the Commissariat of Enlightenment (Narkompros)

  • Schooling was free and co-educational

• Under Stalin, early educational experiments were reversed

  • Exams, uniforms and a stricter curriculum returned

  • Education was made to serve industry

• The literacy campaign achieved major gains

• The curriculum became a tool of ideology

  • Teachers were watched and could be purged

• Historians debate whether education by 1941 was real modernisation or remained limited by control and unequal access

Why Was Education Important to Soviet Politicians?

Education and socialism

• The Bolsheviks saw education as a way to build a socialist society

  • It would shape loyal citizens

  • It would pass on socialist values, not just knowledge

• Lenin argued that socialism could not be built with people who could not read

  • Basic literacy allowed workers to follow instructions

  • It also helped them understand political ideas

Education and a modern economy

• A modern economy needed a literate, skilled workforce

  • The Five-Year Plans needed workers who could read

  • They also needed workers who could do basic maths

• Mass literacy helped the regime spread propaganda

  • More readers meant a larger audience for newspapers, posters and textbooks

Education and social mobility

• Lenin set up the Commissariat of Enlightenment (Narkompros) to run education and culture

  • Its first head, Anatoly Lunacharsky, promised free education at all levels

  • Schools were made co-educational, so boys and girls learned together

• Education gave workers and peasants a way to advance socially

  • In theory, they could rise into skilled, technical and office jobs

  • This let the regime claim it offered chances the tsars denied

Growth in Primary, Secondary and Higher Education in the USSR

Illustration: Change in education policy (new)

Schools under Lenin

• Lenin's 1918 decrees aimed to widen schooling and end tsarist elitism

  • The old elite secondary schools (gymnazii) were abolished

  • New schools mixed general lessons with vocational training

  • Pupils learned academic subjects and practical work side by side

• Progress was slow at first

  • The Civil War limited resources

  • The New Economic Policy (NEP) budgets held back expansion

Schools under Stalin

• Stalin expanded schooling quickly to support industry

  • Most growth was at the secondary and higher levels

  • Weaker pupils were pushed towards "practical" work for the Five-Year Plans

• Schools and universities were tied to the economy

  • Many schools were handed over to collective farms or town factories to run

  • Universities were linked to economic planning under Vesenkha until it was dissolved in 1932

Higher education

• Higher education grew and served the economy

  • By the late 1930s, the USSR was producing strong science graduates

  • Workers' faculties (rabfak) gave workers and peasants a route into university

  • Military training was added in middle and higher schools before the war

Who actually got access?

• At first, quotas helped working-class pupils

  • A set share of secondary places was reserved for working-class children

• Access was narrowed later in the 1930s

  • The working-class quota was scrapped in 1935

  • Selection then applied to everyone, including non-workers

  • Working-class numbers at university and higher secondary schools therefore, fell

The War Against Illiteracy and Soviet Control of the Curriculum

Illustration: Bar chart (new)

The literacy campaign

Under Lenin

• Ending illiteracy was an early political priority

  • A mass literacy drive (the likbez campaign) taught adults to read and write

    • It used reading rooms, classes and volunteer teachers

• Early results were limited

  • The Civil War slowed progress

  • Shortages also held back the campaign

Under Stalin

• Stalin pushed the campaign much harder

  • It was tied to compulsory schooling

  • It supported the drive to industrialise

• By 1941, the results were striking

  • About 94% of 9-49-year-olds in towns were literate

  • Around 86% of those in the countryside were literate

  • The town-rural gap shows the gains were real but uneven

The curriculum

Under Lenin

• Lenin's classrooms were deliberately experimental

  • Most schools dropped textbooks and exams

  • There were not many textbooks written from a communist viewpoint yet

• Learning was meant to be active

  • Academic work was combined with physical work

  • Creativity was encouraged

  • Physical punishment was banned

Under Stalin

• Stalin reversed Lenin's experiments and brought back discipline

  • Textbooks returned

  • Exams, report cards and uniforms returned

  • A fixed academic timetable was set for every school

• The curriculum carried a clear ideological message

  • Soviet-style history was promoted

  • Nationalism was promoted

  • Atheist teaching supported the wider attack on religion

• History was rewritten to glorify Stalin and the Party

  • Rivals were played down or erased

  • Pupils were taught this revised version as fact

How school time was split under Stalin

Teachers under pressure

• Teachers had to deliver both literacy and loyalty

  • The Stakhanovite drive reached teaching

  • Teachers were set high targets based on pupil outcomes

• Teachers were closely watched

  • They could be arrested

  • If their pupils did badly, teachers could be blamed or purged

How Much Did Education Change in the USSR by 1941?

• By 1941, Soviet education looked very different from the tsarist system

  • How far this was real change is open to debate

Education was transformed

• Mass literacy was a major achievement

  • This was a major change from mass illiteracy

• Schooling widened significantly

  • Free, co-educational schooling was established

  • Primary access grew

• Higher and technical education expanded

  • The USSR trained the science and engineering graduates for the growing industry

  • Some workers and peasants gained new opportunities

  • For a time, quotas helped them into secondary and higher education

Changes to education were limited or controlled

• Literacy served the state as well as the individual

  • Reading skills widened the audience for propaganda

  • Education helped create disciplined workers and loyal citizens

• The curriculum was a tool of ideology

  • Soviet history, nationalism and atheism were built into lessons

  • There was little room for independent thought

• Access narrowed again in the 1930s

  • The working-class quota was scrapped in 1935

  • A town-country gap remained

  • Rural areas still lagged behind

• The Stalinist classroom returned to old, tsarist methods

  • Exams, discipline and uniforms returned