Resources for Russian Education: Soviet Strategies in Historical Context

Abstract

This study examines Soviet strategies for education during its first four decades as they may be deduced from the resources put at its disposal. Despite the political importance for education and for proletarian empowerment at the workplace (vydvizhenie), the total enrolment ratio was only one‐third higher than in the Tsarist period, although ratios of secondary and tertiary students to primary students had risen substantially, implying a policy to restrict quantity in favour of quality. Enrolment rose relatively little, but expenditure was higher per student (in units of per capita GNP in real terms) than such expenditure in market economies at a similar development. The enrolment ratio became comparable to those of market economies only when rural schooling was universalized in the USSR after the Second World War, but that of tertiary students remained higher and resources became steadily more thinly spread per student. This study confirms the findings of other papers in this issue that, in new policies and their implementation, the mid‐1940s were more ‘revolutionary’ in educational provision than after the politico‐economic benchmark years 1917 or 1928.