MOSCOW AFTER TWENTY YEARS : II. EDUCATION
By SIR BERNARD PARES
BEFORE starting for Moscow I knew of the consider- able educational changes which have recently taken place there, and I was told by one of the higher educa- tional authorities there that they were due to Stalin him- . self. I visited a large secondary school housed in spacious and well-equipped classrooms in a new workers' settlement in the west Of Moscow, serving in the main the families attached to a large adjacent factory. Eighty per cent. of the 800 pupils were workers' children. At the door I gratified an old curiosity by asking a tiny child, who was standing there, what was his favourite subject, and he said at once : " Natural history," the answer which I have come to expect always from Russian children. The duties of the headmaster were divided between a youngish Party man in uniform, who was evidently responsible for the ideological direction of the teaching, and a typical old educationist responsible for the teaching itself. Both agreed to my request not only to see over the building, but to attend classes in it. There was a " methodological cabinet " which I took to be the nerve centre of the ideological side of the work, and certainly a distinct method ran in detail through the conduct of the classes. One of the most striking features of the school was the completeness of the equipment for practical illustration of the lessons ; this was, of course, specially developed in the workshops, where the pupil is trained by a graduated system to handle increasingly complicated pieces of machinery.
After hearing a class, I asked to come next day and hear four more, and I was allowed to choose my subjects, which were literature, history, Russian language and natural science. The school ages ran from 7 to 18, and the classes which I attended averaged from 13 to 15.
r-The history lesson was especially interesting to mc, for it illustrated the new tendency to return from ab- stractions and theories to facts and the concrete, with an interest in events and personalities. Here were workers' children of 14 or 15 listening to an excellent account of the Roman Empire, beginning with Augustus. With a complete absence of the formal, the organisation, the roads, the social history were followed clean through. At one point the teacher read out a passage from Juvenal, and Seneca and Martial were also men- tioned as illustrating the decline of the Empire. The teacher very rightly dealt more fully with the main social causes of the decline and fall of the empire, the huge estates, the increase of slavery. Time was now nearly up. and she added : " So that was the end of the Roman Empire, and after that came the feudal system, and after that came the capitalist system, and after that came the socialist system in which everyone has a fair chance. And who was it (she went on, raising her voice) that broke the yoke of religion ? Charles Darwin, an Englishman." So that was the end of the lesson beginning with Augustus. I went up and thanked my colleague for her interesting and really at times very eloquent lesson, and she half apologised that it was the end of term and that there was the anti-religious idea to be brought in. Nothing could have been more objective than the rest of the lesson.
I must describe the atmosphere of the school as brimming with health. We know that at one stage after the October Revolution children received every encour- agement to indiscipline. Now the authority of parents and elders has been restored, and the discipline is, in my opinion, exactly right. There was the greatest. keenness in the class, but perfect order, and I can say that with the more assurance through seeing the handling of a new class ; but the moment the lesson was over, there was the same buzz of voices and burst of chatter which noticed in the Children's Theatre, and the corridors were full of it. In one of the intervals 1 had a meal in tl.e iefectory, where posters of all kinds inculcated the elements of good behaviour. The children sat together in little groups by themselves. and seemed to be admitted one age at a time. The food was good and sufficient.
Extra-mural education, largely by illustration, is par- ticularly well developed in Moscow, and the use which is made of the many well-arranged museums could with great advantage be imitated here. They are constantly used for excursions, under fixed regulations which enable any visiting party that has announced its desire to obtain a special conductor. These conductors are really very competent lecturers with a perfectly simple and natural style, fill not only of knowledge, but often of verve and humour. I watched, for instance. the various groups visiting the famous Tretyakov gallery, which is more or less just as it was, with a nunther of very interesting exten- sions. One lecturer I saw with a somewhat puzzled expression, which was repeated on the faces of his listeners, standing in front of a famous picture of Our Lord meeting- John the Baptist in the wilderness. Evidently he had difficulty in explaining away the obvious fact that Jesus Christ was one of the greatest of proletarians.
A more direct accessory of education is the vast publish- ing work of Goslitizdat, which was explained to me by its director, the Professor of Literature, 1. K. Lupol. and for which vast quantities of paper arc allotted by the Plan. Goslitizdat publishes in very large quantities classics both Russian and foreign. A special sec- tion on the drama deals in separate volumes with the dramatic art., rhythm, movement. &c. Another section is especially designed for adult st lents. Another, not so well done, is for railway reading. " It is little enough," said Professor Lupol, when enuincrat ing the vast quanti- ties published ; more will be done v I ten sonic four years hence the great projected Institute of 1Vorld Literature is completed on the banks of the Moscow river. which means the clearing out of a whole quarter and finding accommodation elsewhere for those who have to move.
Before leaving the subject of (shication it. is proper to say something about the Komsomol. or Communist League of • Youth, which is at bottom a profoundly educational institution with a special purpose. A talk was arranged for me with a member of the central com- mittee, a young man of 31, who at. 14 found himself at the front in the Civil War, and by 16 had reached the rank of major. I naturally discussed with h him the recent restoration of the old pre-War ranks in the army ; with the exception of that of general, the others are now as they were before—lieutenant, captain, major, colonel ; then comes C.O. of brigade, C.O. of division, army C.O. of different grades, and at the top marshal. The army, he told me, now consists 60 per cent. of peasants, and 40 per cent. of workers. About 33 per cent. are mentberst of the Communist Party or the Komsomol, with a pre- dominance among the officers.
He described the work of the Komsomol as throughout one of education—education by example. First there was the Civil War to he won, later came the work of the First Five Year Plan, which, as we already know, called for all sorts of privations, self-sacrifices, adventure and enterprise, and the rJore served as a great stimulus fur the revival of enthusiasm. In the Donets Basin, for instance, where the original housing and food supply was entirely inadequate, all sorts of things had to be improvised in haste. He reckoned as the periods of the greatest stress the Civil War, 1918-21, and, though, of course, " incom- parably less," that of 1932-33 (namely, the period when collectivisation was being enforced on the peasants).
The hierarchy, as is known, begins with the Octobrist children, passes on to the Pioneers (8 to 16), for which all children arc accepted, then to the Komsomol (14 to 28), where selection is much more careful, and later to the Communist Party, where guarantors of reliability are required, with a much longer period of probation for those who are not of proletarian origin. As the ages overlap at each stage the heads of the Pioneers are already members of the Komsomol, and the heads of the Komsomol are already full members of the Party, with a limitation of salary to 450 roubles a month.
The young Communists, I was told, had accumulated a very great experience from the leading part which they had to take in administration ; especially, for instance, in the work of native republics. The Uzbeks, for example, had at first no party workers of their own, but now possessed quite a nucleus. The young Communists find themselves in highly responsible positions at .very early ages. He gave instances of such at various ages between 31 and 35, also of the comparative youthfulness of some of the leaders of the Communist Party. He especially emphasised the principle which I had so often heard expressed elsewhere that initiative should start front the bottom, and that only later should direction and eo-ordi- (nation come, down from above. The task, as he summed a 'up, was to educate the whole population " from our point of view." I asked him how inany,he regarded as still outside the pale, and he gave the figure of two per cent., which, of course, in a population of 170 millions means more than three millions, something like the figure which has been given for the inmates of the concentration camps. He believed that in some two years all would have been brought in.
[Sir Bernard Pares' next article is on " Social Services."J
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