A Preliminary Study of the Characteristics of the Cultural Growth of the Soviet Peasantry Before Collectivization (On Data of Budget Studies of Peasant Farms in the 1920s)

Abstract

Soviet Russia inherited from the past cultural backwardness, ignorance, and a downtrodden condition among the broad masses of the peasantry. In preparing for his speech at the Eleventh Congress of the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks), V. I. Lenin observed: "What the proletarian state has done, minus what has already been yielded to the New Economic Policy, is sufficient for us (to assure socialism). Success is assured, if there is enough of? what? civilization!!! (1) And further "The ‘key to the moment’ (the link in the chain) = the gap between the magnitude of the goals set and poverty, not only in terms of material goods but culturally as well." (2) This circumstance made the tasks of cultural uplift in the countryside particularly acute. If capitalism triumphed over the Revolution, Lenin observed, it would triumph by taking advantage of rises. However, examination of the changes in the average educational level of various social strata shows that while educational levels show a general rise, there is also a tendency for different social strata to converge in terms of that indicator. Whereas in 1965 the difference in average educational level between unskilled and highly skilled workers was 2.2 years, in 1976-77 it was 1.4. According to the 1976-77 data, 75 to 80% of workers aged 30 and under have completed secondary, specialized secondary, or higher education. There is a tendency for educational levels of different strata of the working class to even out. The tendency for the working class to become a class possessing complete high-school education is quite obvious. Consequently, general secondary education is gradually losing its role as a socially differentiating factor, as social strata converge in this regard. At the same time, the role of systematic occupational training in the shaping of the skilled worker is rising. It is specifically occupational training that today largely determines the socio-occupational affiliation of the worker and the character of his labor. Naturally, this tendency is thus far characteristic only of the youthful new recruits to the working class, who are characterized by a high level of general education. For workers in older age groups, among whom fluctuations in educational level are considerable, a more rigorous connection between education and nature of work is obvious. Therefore, on the whole, differences in educational level of workers of different social strata continue to exist up to this point.