НАРОДНОЕ ПРОСВЕЩЕНИЕ В ГОДЫ ГРАЖДАНСКОЙ ВОЙНЫ В РОССИИ (ПО МАТЕРИАЛАМ ГОРОДА КОЛПИНО)
Public education during the Civil War in Russia (according to the materials of Kolpino)

Summary/Abstract: The article analyzes the functioning of the system of public education in the city of Kolpino during the Civil War. Research into this problem in the context of frontline city existence allows insight into one of the layers of Kolpino life. This kind of study gives an opportunity to present the educational process and its essential problems. The paper is based on archival materials. The following areas were within the competence of the Kolpino Department of Education (“Otnarob”): pre-school and school education, after-school activities, courses, lectures, clubs, cinema, the museum, and the library. By the end of the 1919-1920 academic year there were seven stage one schools, one stage two school, six educational colonies and two kindergartens in the district. Investigation into the proceedings of Kolpino Executive Committee sessions and reports of the chairmen of “Otnarob” showed that these documents were always discussed and accepted taking into consideration “economic collapse and the lack of workers”. Most of the teachers who worked at stage two schools were called by the press “the most violent members of the ‘Black Hundred’ and chauvinists”. Since 1918 the authorities blamed teachers for all the failures of the school reform. The creation of the Soviet school during the Civil War can be seen as a unique experience of the organization of a new educational institution under extreme conditions. Students and teachers became hostages (the victims?) of this experience. However, in pointing out the shortcomings of education during the first years of the Soviet power it would be incorrect to idealize and extol the pre-revolutionary system of education.

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