Katarina Bustoz
English 121
Professor Walia
Industrialization to Indoctrination: Russia’s Quest for Literacy

Russia’s very name is evocative of an empire encased in ice, of a people thrown through revolution after revolution, and a rich cultural tradition that has made the country a distinctive world power. These images are partly the doing of literary luminaries like Dostoyevsky, Chekov, and Tolstoy. However, behind the romance is the unfortunate history of illiteracy among the same people who occupy the pages of Russian literature. Literacy was reserved for the urban, elite, and male, much to the detriment of the entire nation. The State took notice too, as its Western European peers soared ahead in both culture and industry. Over the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Russia made concerted efforts to increase literacy in its citizens for the sake of economic development and mass indoctrination of communist sympathies.
The cholera and bloody trench warfare of the Crimean War left Russia depleted in 1856, and the loss made the nation’s leadership painfully aware of their appearance on the world stage. If the country wanted to grow as a military power, economic growth was essential (Davies). Russia was one of the last nations to observe a feudal system that included a peasantry class. Despite the protestations from conservatives and the nobility, the Emancipation of 1861was pushed through in hopes of establishing a market economy (Dziewanowski). Progress and industrialization were considered the keys to increasing military strength. The task at hand was first and foremost to educate the populace as quickly as possible.
In 1897, the concept of literacy was defined by the ability to read. Shortly after the Emancipation, education centers called zemstvos were established to promote literacy amongst the newly freed peasantry. Though older data, in the form of criminal records, recruitment records, and merchants’ signatures, isn’t as organized, comparison indicates that the zemstvos were effective in slowly building literacy empirewide. By 1897, the average rate of literacy was 30%. Compared to the estimated 3%-6% of pre-Emancipation Russia, this is definite progress. However, the discrepancies between rural and urban population, and the divide between the sexes points to slow growth. Urban citizens were at 58% literacy to their rural peers’ 26%. Men throughout the empire were 43% literate, while women, often kept at home to tend to children, were 22% (Mironov). This is indicative of the government’s focus on industrialization; urban development and production were emphasized over the education of the agrarian populace. Furthermore, the rudimentary education provided to the poor was often not practiced via reading periodicals or writing often. This would contribute to the divide between the classes going into the next century.
As the twentieth century began, Russians were faced with the repercussions of their Serfdoms. While free, the poor were without land of their own, and those in poverty remained there, while their urban neighbors saw a rise in their elite society, the bourgeoisie. The education they received was slipping; those who received a primary education didn’t see secondary education unless they were wealthy (Mironov). 1917 marked a boiling point. Just ten months after the assassination of his controversial advisor Rasputin, the Tsar was violently removed from his throne. The empire was in a state of decay with outer provinces already rebelling. In October of 1917, the revolutionary Bolshevik dictatorship was established by way of a coup (Davies). The following year was a series of conflicts throughout the former empire between the Bolsheviks and their opposition, referred to the Russian Civil War. The victorious Bolsheviks established the Cheka, or “Extraordinary Commission” of revolutionary police to enforce the party’s orders (Davies). At the helm was Vladimir Ulianov, better known as Lenin, who ordered the deaths of the royal family and any other perceived enemies. He and his comrades wanted to change the country from capitalist to socialist, and complete indoctrination was necessary.
Lenin made sweeping motions to change how Russians were educated and early on abolished the old form of education. Post-secondary education was all but eliminated with most professors being put under arrest. A result of the 1921 New Economic Policy, or NEP, public education was more easily available, if only for the sake of propaganda. Lack of quality education was portrayed by the government as a symbol of class struggle. In response, the old, bourgeois secondary education system was replaced by Soviet secondary school. Here, students’ reading skills would not slip away, and their education would be supplemented by physical exercise, and, of course, “Communist morality” (Dziewanowski). Russian schools would also veer away from a focus on the humanities and instead heavily instruct students in vocational skills and the natural sciences. This method, dubbed “polytechnization” would be important to industrializing a command economy.
Under Soviet rule, the Russian public saw the emergence of a new type of literature. To officially “liquidate” illiteracy, the Party journal, Pravda, began publishing a page devoted to celebrating Soviet life. The government was indeed interested in promoting literacy, but no longer for economic growth. Increased censorship made expression tricky, and it was difficult to both engage the population in literary action and keep them on the party line. In 1934, “social realism” was declared the only legal form of artistic expression. This generated works that glorified the life of the Worker, and their contribution to Soviet society. The heroes were always victorious in the end over enemies of the state and foreign spies. This thinly veiled propaganda was often the only exposure to literature citizens had (Dziewanowski).
From the Emancipation of the Serfs to the pre-WWII Soviet reign, Russian literacy climbed remarkably. The slow move toward democratizing education and economic opportunity faced obstacles in the form of war, famine, and regime change. For better or for worse for the country’s citizens, they were swept up in multiple regime’s efforts to eradicate illiteracy. Across the board, they attained higher levels of literacy. However, throughout this period of history, the literacy rate of the people was treated either as a tool for economic growth, or Communist propaganda, and not to elevate its people.

References
Davies, N. (1996). Europe: A History. Oxford: Oxford University Press
Dziewanowski, M. K. (2003). Russia in the Twentieth Century (6th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall
Mironov, B. (1991). The Development of Literacy in Russia and the USSR from the Tenth to the Twentieth Centuries. History of Educati