Education in the Soviet Union

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The education in the Soviet Union was under the influence of Bolshevik ideology and the various rulers of the Soviet system and had the challenges of an education system for the industrialization of the great empire suffice. The beginning of the Russian October Revolution in 1917, although the USSR was formally founded in 1922. Their educational system was preceded by the poorly educated tsarist Russia . With the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, the educational systems of the individual republics went their own way, for example education in Russia , education in Lithuania , education in Latvia .

School and university forms

In its history, the Soviet education system had the following types of school with many special features :

  • Preschools (already led to reading and writing, therefore school usually starts at 7 years of age)
  • Primary schools (начальное школа) were four-class, later three-class. The fourth grade was considered skipped in the continuation, so that it continued with the 5th grade.
  • Incomplete secondary schools (неполное среднее образование) were in seven and later eight grades (counted from the 1st school year, compulsory school since 1963, finally not until 1981).
  • Full secondary or middle schools (сре́днее образова́ние) were in ten classes (eleven in the Baltic States). The last two years before the university entrance qualification were sometimes referred to as the upper level. The degree could also be obtained in vocational training.
  • PTU (professional-technical vocational school, профессиона́льно-техни́ческое учи́лище), technical center and some military schools formed a system of so-called special secondary schools (среднее спеднее специальное), whose qualifications were necessary for skilled workers and administrative workers. There were also military schools such as the Suvorov Military School .
  • Colleges (высшее учи́лище / школа) were universities, institutes (mostly technical colleges) and military schools. The universities were at the top, such as the Lomonosov University in Moscow or the University of Leningrad . The largest institutes trained medical staff, teachers or engineers. For them there was the abbreviation VUS ( ВУЗ - Вы́сшее уче́бное заведе́ние ). A middle school diploma or that of a special secondary school was required for access. Numerous military or militia schools also had the university level, plus there were special schools of the CPSU and the KGB .

It took decades until the 1980s to effectively enforce ten years of compulsory education. The universities conducted entrance exams .

From 1920 to 1953

Early Soviet educational policy

The People's Commissariat for Education of the RSFSR had existed since the beginning of the Bolshevik government in 1917. On June 26, 1918 (June 13), with Lenin's signature, the Council of People's Commissars issued "The Decree on the Organization of People's Education in the Russian Republic", which specified the tasks the State Commission for Education has specified in more detail. The task of the commission was to direct the affairs of popular education and to lay down the general principles of popular education, to issue state educational plans and to clarify other questions of principle. At the beginning there was the smashing of the educational institutions of the old tsarist empire (abolition of religious education, grades and elite high schools, compulsory co-education), which was supposed to replace a new school: the unified work school . A three-tier unit system was intended. Lenin's wife Nadezhda Krupskaja was responsible for school education and, with his support, favored polytechnical education .

The most important demands of the communist party program of the KPR (B) of 1919 were:

  1. General and polytechnical education as well as the combination of teaching and production work for all children and young people up to the age of 17;
  2. Creation of a wide network of pre-school institutions for the purpose of improving social education and the emancipation of women;
  3. Expansion of vocational training and the establishment of numerous extracurricular educational institutions for adults,
  4. Opening wide access to universities, especially for workers.

The idea behind the Arbeitsschule and Polytechnic was the school reformer Pawel P. Blonski with his book “ Die Arbeitsschule ” (1919). In practice, the working school principle simply boiled down to manual labor and “socially useful” work. The gap between aspiration and reality was followed by the New Economic Policy (NEP) in spring 1921 with a consolidation of school policy until 1927. In 1923, new school types and curricula were introduced. There were now the four-year, seven-year, and nine-year schools. Those who completed the seven-year school could attend a technical college, only with the nine-year school a college without detours. Instead of subjects, there were now “complex topics” that should be taught across disciplines and in a realistic way. That was abolished as a failure a year later.

The main problem was widespread illiteracy among the population. In 1927, general compulsory primary schooling was almost as far away as it was before the October Revolution: only around 50% of the 8-11 year old children were schooled, just under a third of these primary schools corresponded to the four-grade normal type, and especially in rural areas, girls went to school less often shorter to school than boys. A law to introduce compulsory schooling was not enacted until 1930. The other big problem was the huge neglect of young people after the World War and the civil war, which the later authoritative teacher Anton Makarenko addressed.

A decree of September 2, 1921 set up a collective administration of three to five people in the universities, a rector and representatives each for the teaching staff and the students. This was primarily intended to disempower the non-communist professors. In 1921 and 1922, numerous Russian scholars left the Soviet Union. Under Stalin in 1932 the student's right of co-determination was completely abolished and the "one-man management" systematically implemented. In the 1920s, the higher education system was decentralized in line with the federalist state structure of the Soviet Union . Small, highly specialized university units emerged that were linked to individual economic sectors or large companies. In this way it was ensured that the companies always had enough workers available. The authority for the education system lay with the people's education commissariats of the republics .

The Komsomol youth organization and the pioneer organization existed in the early stages, and they also took on educational tasks and contributed to the ideological orientation.

Anatoly Lunacharsky worked as People's Commissar from 1917 to 1929, and after his dismissal Andrei Bubnow followed a strict administrative course. A second radical reform followed under Stalin's leadership, which culminated in 1930/31. The renewed "stabilization" of the school and university system in the early 1930s ended the early Soviet period.

Stalinist education policy

“Within three months, develop a five-year plan for the training of specialists with higher and middle qualifications and for the construction of new technical universities and technical colleges, in accordance with the specific requirements of the branches of the economy,” was Stalin's directive. The plan approaches for cadre formation were drastically increased; from 41,500 engineers and 60,000 technicians to 75,000 and 110,000 respectively at the end of the five-year plan. The five-year plan was supposed to bring the "big leap forward" for the Soviet Union. In the elementary school, the problems lay in the teacher question and in the classroom. Between 1930 and 1932, around 114,000 primary school teachers had to be trained in the RSFSR alone. The graduates of the regular teacher training institutes (pedagogical technical schools and pedagogical universities) were far from sufficient for this. In the school year 1930/1931 all schools were to be connected to an industrial enterprise, state estate or collective farm ; The focus of the curriculum and schoolwork should be the study of production and the participation of the children in productive work. For the 12-13 year old schoolchildren, this sometimes meant working directly in the company.

After the Central Committee decision of the CPSU on September 5, 1931, “On elementary and middle school”, the early Soviet period of educational experiments ended and the authoritarian learning and advanced school of the Stalin era prevailed. Without fundamentally questioning polytechnology , “the entire socially productive work of the students should be subordinated to the teaching and educational goals of the school. Any attempt to separate the polytechnic school from the solid and systematic acquisition of the sciences, especially physics, chemistry and mathematics, represents a gross deviation from the idea of ​​the polytechnic school. ”On August 25, 1932, the Central Committee decided for the curricula and the internal school regulations. In the social subjects, a historical introduction was required, and the mother tongue classes should focus on written work and grammatical analyzes, and more mathematics should be taught. With all changes this remained constant until 1956. The Central Committee decision further decreed: "The basic form of organization of teaching work must be the lesson". This should take place in class according to a precisely defined plan. whereby educational reform attempts at a freer teaching design were prohibited. Instead, the "leading role of the teacher" was applied again; In 1933 the old censorship scale was restored. Since a ZK decision of February 12, 1933, the “stable textbook” has also returned. For each individual subject there was in future only one compulsory textbook from the state textbook publisher of the republic in question - a step towards a uniform orientation and control of teachers and students. After all, the length of schooling had to be regulated in the single school. It was not until 1934 that the following types were specified in general education:

  1. Primary school (grades 1-4)
  2. incomplete middle school (grades 1-7)
  3. Middle School (Grades 1-10)

Anyone who had attended school for less than seven years became a kolkhoz farmer or an unskilled industrial worker; after completing a seven-year school, a technical center could be visited that trained “middle specialists”. Only ten years of middle school qualified for university studies. Those who had successfully completed their studies also belonged to the Soviet intelligentsia according to the official classification . Foreign languages ​​outside the USSR did not become a concern until 1940.

As part of the reorganization in the 1930s, a state body specifically responsible for higher education was established. While the competencies for the specialized universities lay with the branch administrations, the universities fell under the responsibility of the university department. In university teaching there was group study (“laboratory and brigade method”) instead of lectures and courses around 1930; now this form of study has been abolished as too ineffective. The ordinance of June 23, 1936 regulated teaching and study forms, grades and exams, the number of courses and their duration. In May 1936, binding university textbooks for all subjects followed, and the newly formed author collectives always had to take account of ideological changes. In the academic year 1938/1939 the compulsory social sciences course was reorganized. The new chairs for Marxism-Leninism were responsible for the course “Basics of Marxism-Leninism” and the subsequent instruction in political economy and in dialectical and historical materialism.

Because of the shortage of labor, the system of the "state labor reserves" was introduced in 1940, creating a centrally controlled vocational training system. The competences for the education system were central to the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR , which took over the planning of the training contingents, the organization and recruitment of pupils and the distribution of the graduates among the companies. Especially after the end of the war there was a forced recruitment of students in order to achieve the planned goals of reconstruction.

From 1953 to 1980

After Stalin's death in 1953, the education system was placed under the Ministry of Culture, but this was reversed after a year. While higher education was placed under a Union Ministry, the main administration of the Schools of Labor Reserves fell back into the jurisdiction of the Council of Ministers of the USSR . New goals had already been set in 1952:

  1. By 1955, ten years of compulsory schooling should be enforced in the larger cities and industrial centers, and by 1960 general secondary education (ten-year school) should also be implemented in the remaining cities and in rural areas.
  2. Realization of polytechnic instruction in middle school, later transition to general polytechnic instruction.
  3. Development of general education schools with evening classes as well as evening and distance learning at universities and medium-sized technical schools.

Polytechnic instruction was again seen as a realistic connection between learning and the world of work and should become the main axis of general education. In 1958 Khrushchev initiated new reforms and a. with more catching up school forms that led to the secondary school leaving certificate. Pre-school education was further expanded, and all-day and boarding schools expanded. The system of labor reserves (forced recruitment) was abolished and replaced by vocational and technical schools. As part of regional decentralization , economic management competencies were transferred from the central ministries to the Councils of Ministers of the Union Republics. This severely restricted the competencies of the State Committee for Vocational and Technical Education. Under Khrushchev, the revolutionary goals were to be reactivated in general education. The new party program of the CPSU from XXII. The party congress in October 1961 contained a twenty-year plan, at the end of which the classless communist society was to stand. Seven points:

  1. Formation of a scientific worldview,
  2. Education for work,
  3. Development and victory of communist morality,
  4. Development of proletarian internationalism and socialist patriotism,
  5. all-round and harmonious development of the human personality,
  6. Overcoming the remnants of capitalism in human consciousness and behavior,
  7. Exposing the bourgeois ideology.

After Khrushchev's overthrow, the lofty goals were taken back or voiced more softly. The polytechnic lessons were now again considered a waste of time and were cut, the school time was limited to 10 years before the transition to the two-year high school. A reorganization of the economic apparatus brought about changes in the education system. In 1965 the regional economics councils disappeared and the state committee for vocational and technical education was again placed under the centralized position of the USSR Council of Ministers, albeit with reduced powers. In 1966 a central ministry took over the education system of the USSR for the first time, the first state ministry for general education and teacher training since 1917. At the same time, the Academy of Pedagogical Sciences of the RSFSR was converted into a Union academy.

In the 1970s, attempts were made again to concentrate the competencies in vocational training at the state committee and thereby to introduce a uniform state occupational policy. This attempt failed, however, because the leading economic functionaries and scientists supported the decentralized, company-based training. Overall, in the Brezhnev era there was a high degree of stability in the educational system in its external form, with space for small attempts and new ideas. In the 1960s and 1970s there was a rapid expansion of the higher education system and thus the demand for university graduates was already satisfied by the end of the 1970s.

When the Soviet Union hosted the 1980 Summer Olympics, it refused to host the Paralympics on the grounds: "There are no disabled people in the USSR." The situation of disabled students was accordingly.

1980s

Major changes in education took place in 1984 when a new reform plan was drawn up for general education schools and vocational schools . A meeting in autumn 1986 brought together many pedagogical experts who published important principles for a democratic and humane school on October 18, 1986 under the title “Pedagogy of Cooperation” in the “teacher's newspaper”. They rely more on the “creativity and strength of the teacher and student personality”. This paved the way for a departure from conformism.

In the next step, a draft for the reorganization of higher education and technical schools was presented in 1986. The reform was necessary for three reasons. The demand for university graduates was subject to regional and sectoral imbalances. While in some sectors oversupply of skilled labor existed, lacked industries such as electronics and robotics to engineers . In order to "freeze" the number of graduates at the level of 1980, braking measures were introduced in university admissions policy. While the increase in the number of university graduates stagnated, the sectoral imbalances could not be addressed. One reason for this was the wage policy, which sometimes rated the work of an engineer lower than that of a skilled worker .

The quality of the training and the professional competence of the graduates were problematic. In the 1970s, a number of new universities were founded for local prestige reasons or simply by upgrading existing institutions. Some of these universities did not have a single professor . That is why the modernization of training became a key point of the reform plan.

With perestroika at the end of the 1980s, new accents were set in the education system. A key point was the integration of higher education, industry and science. As part of this cooperation, the universities should “supply” the companies with the required number of graduates with certain qualification profiles, while the companies should provide the universities with financial and material equipment. The increase in quality also became important again. For this reason, the universities were given more freedom to design lessons and an external evaluation (“attestation”) was introduced. Further training and qualification gained in importance, even alternative forms of education, such as B. the "Open University" emerged.

literature

  • Oskar Anweiler / Klaus Meyer (ed.): The Soviet educational policy. Documents and texts. 1917-1960 , 1961 (Harrassowitz 1979)
  • Urie Bronfenbrenner : Education Systems . Children in the United States and the Soviet Union. dtv, Munich 1973, ISBN 3-423-00941-1 .
  • Friedrich Kuebart / Marianne Krüger-Potratz : School reform “from below” in the Soviet Union. The Manifesto of Educational Innovators . In: PÄD extra, 12 (1987), pp. 4-14
  • Friedrich Kuebart: From Perestroika to Transformation - Vocational Training and Higher Education in Russia and East Central Europe. Leipziger Universitätsverlag, Leipzig 2002, ISBN 3-936522-09-X .
  • Irina Grapengeter: Pedagogical Concepts in Times of Social Change in Russia (1989-2010) , Diss. Augsburg 2014.

Web links

Single receipts

  1. ^ Gerlind Schmidt: School and education in the Russian Federation - educational policy and control between new concepts and old patterns . In: Trends in education internationally . 2010, urn : nbn: de: 0111-opus-50605 .
  2. ↑ Michael Lausberg: Educational Policy in the Soviet Union until 1966. Retrieved on August 1, 2020 .
  3. ↑ Pavel Petrovich Blonskij: The work school. 1973, accessed August 1, 2020 .
  4. ↑ See Kuebart 2002, p. 94.
  5. ^ Sheila Fitzpatrick: The Commissariat of Enlightenment: Soviet Organization of Education and the Arts under Lunacharsky, October 1917-1921. In: Political Science Quarterly . tape 88 , no. 1 , March 1973, ISSN  0032-3195 , doi : 10.2307 / 2148675 .
  6. ↑ Michael Lausberg: Educational Policy in the Soviet Union until 1966. Retrieved on August 1, 2020 .
  7. ↑ Michael Lausberg: Educational Policy in the Soviet Union until 1966. Retrieved on August 1, 2020 .
  8. ^ Friedrich Kuebart: School reform, technical-economic modernization and vocational training in the Soviet Union . In: Education and Upbringing . tape 40 , no. 1 , 1987, ISSN  0006-2456 , pp. 9-12 , doi : 10.7788 / bue.1987.40.1.35 .
  9. ↑ Michael Lausberg: Educational Policy in the Soviet Union until 1966. Retrieved on August 1, 2020 .
  10. ↑ See Kuebart (2002), pp. 13-20.
  11. ↑ Russia: Remove barriers for people with disabilities. September 11, 2013, accessed August 1, 2020 .
  12. ↑ Irina Grapengeter: Pedagogical Concepts in Times of Social Change in Russia (1989-2010), Dissertation_Grapengeter, Augsburg 2014 https://opus.bibliothek.uni-augsburg.de/opus4/frontdoor/deliver/index/docId/3000/file/Dissertation_Grapengeter .pdf pp. 122-125
  13. ↑ See Kuebart 2002, p. 25
  14. ↑ See Kuebart 2002, p. 26ff.
  15. ↑ See Kuebart 2002, pp. 25–34.
  16. ↑ Michael Lausberg: Educational Policy in the Soviet Union until 1966. Retrieved on August 1, 2020 .
  17. ↑ Klaus Meyer: The Soviet educational policy 1917-1960: Documents a. Texts . Harrassowitz [in Komm.], 1979, ISBN 978-3-447-02072-5 ( google.de [accessed on August 2, 2020]).

See also