Popular Resistance Research Articles

“Who Will Hang the Bell?”: The Palestinian Habba of 2021

This essay reflects on the Palestinian habba of 2021, contextualizing it within the broader trajectory of Palestine’s century-old anti-colonial continuum. Noting the substantial scale and intensity of the latest mobilizations, this essay argues that colonial structural realities induce a cyclical regeneration of popular resistance in historic Palestine and in exile. Nevertheless, the emancipatory prospects of this resistance depend on the transformation of moments that carry revolutionary potential into a long-term struggle, one that is sustained by rejuvenated national institutions pursuing unified anti-colonial principles and political programs.

Visual Creativity of Protests in Romania (2016-2019)

After the pictorial turn, it is not surprising that political messages are more and more often presented in a visual form. Today, the battle between great ideas is not only fought via texts, but also through real and virtual images, or, through imagetexts. This paper tackles the image politics of the Romanian post-2016 anti-government popular resistance through some typical cases of imagetext: hashtags, symbols, video mapping, posters and some cases of visible space-occupation. These examples can present the anonymous (in some cases professional) artistic creativity, which helps the formation of social solidarity and crystallizes the message of the resistance.

Censorship and the Impact of Repression on Dissent

AbstractWhat is the impact of repression on opposition to authoritarian rule? Studies of repression and dissent have yielded contradictory results. Some research suggests that repression reduces popular resistance while others show that it creates backlash and more dissent. In this article, we present an informational theory of repression to account for such divergent findings. We argue that the impact of repression hinges on the degree of censorship. Where alternative media is present, violence is more likely to increase support for opposition. By contrast, where alternative sources of information are limited, repression may reduce support for opposition and actually increase support for incumbents. We test and confirm these expectations with an original dataset that combines the results of a panel survey that spanned the authoritarian repression of electoral protests in Moldova in 2009 and geocoded data on the subnational variation in repression and alternative information availability. The hypothesized interaction between repression and censorship is corroborated in cross‐national analysis of repression, censorship, and government support (2005–16).

A discourse analysis of yellow-vest resistance against carbon taxes

Carbon taxation is a core instrument for climate mitigation. Its implementation, however, faces popular resistance. In this paper we study one of the most emblematic mobilizations triggered by the carbon tax issue, the Yellow Vest movement in France. We use Q-methodology, a mixed-method approach to identify discourses (or viewpoints) held by protesters. We find four statistically-distinctive viewpoints, emphasizing respectively: a systemic critique of capitalism; environmental action that is fair; priority over incomes and purchasing power of common people; and inequality and the responsibilities of corporations. Our research points to the importance of ideology in shaping viewpoints and filtering attitudes towards carbon taxes. Yet beyond ideological differences, we find consensus among all discourses, in that there should be more consultation in energy transition policy; the rich and not the poor should pay the cost of transition; and the government should use tax revenue for the transition only. We conclude that, for bold carbon tax schemes to be implemented with less conflict, a much more participatory, transparent and equitable design would be necessary than the one experienced in France.

Evading Secret Police: Counterintelligence Vulnerabilities in Authoritarian States

The authoritarian impulse has characterized human governance through most of recorded history, and popular resistance to the same has waxed and waned with the intellectual currents and conditions of the day. There is little in the open literature, however, that considers the common counterintelligence vulnerabilities of contemporary authoritarian states. Growing out of the traditional authoritarianisms, our century is seeing the emergence of a modern authoritarianism characterized by technology-infused surveillance states whose new vulnerabilities are now emerging.

PALESTINE: POPULAR NON-VIOLENT RESISTANCE. DEBATING TERMINOLOGY AND CONSTRUCTING PARADIGMS

The main goal of this research paper is to examine the core role of popular nonviolent resistance in transforming the Israeli Palestinian conflict through all available peaceful means. We have deeply gone through different definitions of nonviolence as an international concept and we explored the various historical stages and prominent stations of this type of nonviolence. To elaborate more on this goal, we can say that the strategic aim is to bridge the gap between theories and approaches of conflict transformations and the current study of peaceful resistance. Nonviolence is one strategic options for the Palestinians if we realize that the political alternatives and narrow and limited. Methodology adopted in this research is primarily qualitative with analytical and empirical connotations and implications, we relied on both primary and secondary data to reach the final results and conclusions. As far the final findings are concerned, this paper concluded that there is a gap between nonviolence peaceful resistance in the field in one hand and the decision makers on the other hand. There is a gap those who practiced or who embraced nonviolence as strategic resistance and those who put political goals and practiced political leadership. There is a lack of a proper understanding of peaceful nonviolent resistance and its role in liberating and emancipating Palestine from the occupation. Keywords: nonviolence, occupation, popular resistance, Gandhian model.

Sam C. Nolutshungu: Race, Reform, Resistance and the Black Consciousness Movement

Abstract This paper excavates and historically contextualizes the political theory of a largely neglected thinker within South African black intellectual history, Sam C. Nolutshungu. It seeks to rectify the current imbalance in South African intellectual history which largely neglects or effaces the contribution of black thinkers in the colonial or Apartheid period notwithstanding significant black contributions in theorizing racial submission, domination, reform and popular resistance in the context of state oppression. In this paper I argue that two such areas of inquiry are present in Nolutshungu’s overall position on political reform. The first is with regards to his intervention in the race- class debates which dominated political and intellectual discussions during the late Apartheid period. Here, Nolutshungu, argues that political domination could not be reformed with simple concessions as a result of its racially exclusionary nature. Thus Nolutshungu argued that race rather than class was the fundamental source of domination. The second is the theoretical evaluation of the social and political significance of the Black Consciousness Movement as an important symbol of resistance and racial solidarity. The link between these two aspects of his thought, I argue are not insignificant and should be carefully considered. Nolutshungu’s valuable analysis on the route to political reform is strengthened by his evaluation of the role of the Black Consciousness Movement, which for Nolutshungu was an instance of how resistance was mobilized along racial rather than class lines. Moreover, the Black Consciousness Movement not only prioritized the question of race as a primary factor in its mode of resistance but served to illustrate how and why meaningful change in South Africa was contingent on the abolition of racial oppression and the overturning of the institutions of Apartheid. Finally, I argue that there is a contextual urgency in undertaking projects that seek to establish the importance of black intellectual ideas and reclaiming these ideas in order to give content and meaning to contested contemporary debates on justice, legitimacy, liberty, equality and land rights in South Africa. While the discourse of the negotiated settlement and reconciliation sparks intense debate often resulting in greater forms of racial polarisation, historical rumination and reflection offers a powerful and enduring opportunity for collective inquiry.

Laboring for the State: Women, Family, and Work in Revolutionary Cuba, 1959–1971

Laboring for the State: Women, Family, and Work in Revolutionary Cuba, 1959–1971

Brief Synopses of New Arabic Language Publications

Brief Synopses of New Arabic Language Publications

Organising Everyday Resistance: An Ethnographic Study of Rickshaw Drivers in Bogotá

Workers in the informal transport sector are often exposed to multiple forms of workplace violence, for instance by the police and their colleagues. Through a collection of rich ethnographic stories and using the concept of popular resistance, this article investigates how and under what conditions rickshaw drivers in Bogotá resist violence in their workplace. The results reveal that rickshaw associations have been essential in articulating acts of everyday resistance to the legal ban on this activity, such regulating routes, fees and stops. However, associations have created new forms of oppression, being labelled as mafia‐like organisations, showing that resistance can also translate into new forms of domination. Contrary to the argument that everyday resistance is uncoordinated, this article shows that acts of everyday resistance can be organised by actors that switch between different individual and collective strategies. Thus, organisations can provide a framework to resist the law on an everyday basis.

Suburbs and Urban Peripheries in a Global Perspective

Herbert Gans’ classic book, The Levittowners, has inspired generations of urban sociologists studying American suburbs, but it has also confined the field’s focus to studies of the local community. At the same time, however, outside the discipline of American urban sociology, an interdisciplinary field of global suburban studies has flourished. Global suburban studies address a wider range of topics that extends to infrastructural provision, governance, and popular resistance. By introducing the key debates in global suburban studies, this essay argues that it is time for American urban sociologists to broaden their analytical focus beyond community institutions and power relations, and that much can be gained by adopting an international and comparative perspective to learn about urban peripheries elsewhere in the world. A comparative vantage point can help U.S. sociologists better situate socio–spatial transformations in American suburbs among a world of cities (and suburbs), and mine new insights on topics involving poverty, segregation, and community life that have been at the center of suburban research in American sociology.

The politics of anti-austerity protest: South Korea in 1997–1998 and Greece in 2009–2010

Why does austerity confront varying degrees of popular resistance? While prior research primarily addresses the economic threat of austerity as the stimulus for anti-austerity protest, a growing volume of studies highlights the roles of external environments in moderating the mobilizing effect of austerity. This study challenges the recent literature on the moderating role of external environments, pointing out that it tends to overlook the distinction between structural and contingent aspects of external environments. I undertake a paired comparison of carefully chosen cases, South Korea in 1997–1998 and Greece in 2009–2010, to examine the moderating roles of the two aspects of external environments—each aspect is characterized through the notion of political opportunity drawing on Rootes’ work. Results reveal that structural and contingent opportunities played distinct roles in promoting (Greece) and hampering (South Korea) the growth of anti-austerity movements, initially triggered by the economic threat of austerity in both countries.

Sick Returnees among China’s Sent-Down Youth and Contemporary Chinese Practices of Identity Performance

China’s first cohort of the sent-down youth during the Cultural Revolution has since its early years attracted considerable research interest and been analysed from a few different viewpoints. However, the gradual retreat from executing the sent-down policy, especially bingtui (return to urban centres of origin because of medical reasons) as the then widely used tactic, and its long-term impact on people’s socio-political attitudes and behaviours have not been examined and evaluated adequately. This has resulted in a large discrepancy between the non-academic discourse of returning sent-down youth, including bingtui, and the academic literature on these aspects in both Chinese and English. As revealed by many non-academic publications, bingtui not only represented the emergence of a widespread popular resistance to the Maoist Cultural Revolution that involved mobilising those who were then sent to the countryside, but was also believed to be responsible for a surge in what has since become known as songli feng (a wave of gift-giving practice). Based on the information recorded in published personal memories of many sent-down youth and other published accounts, online and print, as well as the information collected from my own past observations and recent interviews, this article will go beyond both glowing and condemnatory documentations of the sent-down movement of the late 1960s and 1970s and seek to analyse how bingtui was started, how it was utilised by sent-down youth and their families and, importantly, how it had led more Chinese people to realise that certain aspects of their identity could be performed.

Operation Warp Speed as a “Moonshot”: Some Public Policy Lessons

This article presents Operation Warp Speed (OWS), a federal government project launched by the Trump administration in May 2020 to develop a vaccine against COVID-19. In contrast with the often incoherent and sometimes reckless behaviour of President Trump during the pandemic, OWS was a focussed and largely successful initiative to support vaccine research, manufacture, and delivery. It contributed to the discovery and early deployment of several vaccines within a year and paved the way for a comparatively effective vaccination campaign in the United States in 2021, which later met popular resistance along partisan lines. The article examines OWS as a public-private partnership to achieve a “moonshot”, drawing on Mariana Mazzucato’s work on Mission Economics which calls for more pro-active government action to tackle major economic, environmental, and social challenges. The article then qualifies the success of OWS as a moonshot, pointing to the competitive market elements built into the project which also helped ensure its success. Finally, this research strives to examine OWS and the US vaccination rollout using complexity analysis, to give some perspective to the emergence of vaccine resistance behaviour as of spring 2021.

An Appraisal of SekouToure’s Ideological and Integral Nationalism

The paper examines the political philosophy of SekouToure on ideological and integral Nationalism in Guinea. The study started with discussing structures of biographical and social experience of Toure and the concept of ideological and integral Nationalism. The study threads his philosophical reflections by illustrating and examining Party and State, National Democracy and African socialism. Toure refined, re-emphasized, enriched updated and strengthened these fundamental elements. The paper submit that his ideological positions is central to nation-building, and ideological education as essential for welding together Guinea from disparate ethnic groups and instilling patriotism those ideas. The paper is analytical and adopted the use of secondary method of data collection. Despite some of the positive advancements in the social infrastructure-education, health, the evolution of confidence in the Guinea women, the development of national languages, the popular resistance of the Guinean laboring masses and progressive sections of the petty bourgeoisie against revolution from above, underscore the fact that the emancipation of the working peoples must be the task of the working classes themselves. The findings on the philosophy of Toure show that, the post-independence Guinea was caught up in a political and economic crisis originating from Guinea's continued integration into the world-wide capitalist system; its further exposes that the crisis is compounded by an ideological confusion, and revolutionary rhetoric, based on the revolutionary myth of Ahmed Toure as an institution synonymous with the Democratic Party of Guinea.

Playing for Keeps: Improvisation in the Aftermath ed. by Daniel Fischlin and Eric Porter

Reviewed by: Playing for Keeps: Improvisation in the Aftermath ed. by Daniel Fischlin and Eric Porter Thomas H. Greenland Playing for Keeps: Improvisation in the Aftermath. Edited by Daniel Fischlin and Eric Porter. (Improvisation, Community, and Social Practice.) Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2020. [x, 336 p. ISBN 9781478006800 (hardback), $104.95; ISBN 9781478008149 (paperback), $28.95; ISBN 9781478009122 (e-book), price varies.] Illustrations, bibliographies, index. Playing for Keeps is a recent installment in a book series working with a mandate of exploring the role of music improvisation as a motor for sociopolitical discourse and action. Its underlying ethical agenda is to mobilize popular resistance to the "postindustrial, hyper-technological, corporate self-interest and diminished rights environments" (p. 10) as well as "systemic structures of colonial inequity, racism, economic exploitation, and the radical disregard for equality across gender, ethnicity, and class" (p. 11). This volume tightens focus on improvised responses to arenas of "crisis." There are inherent difficulties in defining improvisation and crisis. Here the first term encompasses anything from specific musical actions to spontaneous human activities of all sorts. Crisis, likewise, can be as vague as the looming specter of "destroyer culture" (p. 3, adopting Leslie Marmon Silko's term from Ceremony [New York: Viking, 1977]) or "various [unspecified] crises brought on by the [Donald] Trump presidency" (p. 5). Or it might be as specific as the theft and vandalism of a Johannesburg cultural center by metal thieves or the posttraumatic stress disorder suffered by a US Air Force drone pilot who had bombed Iraqi civilians (chaps. 2 and 4, respectively). In addition to the editors' introductory essay, a poem, an interview, and a collection of illustrations, the volume contains nine case studies based on specific cultural milieus: South Africa, the Canary Islands, Canada, Lebanon, Egypt, Palestine, Israel, the Hawaiian Islands, and Northern Ireland. Despite its title and cover—the latter showing a profile of Nina Simone singing, and both suggesting musical improvisation—most of the book's authors discuss improvisation in its broader cultural contexts. As such, the volume should be of interest to scholars of ethnomusicology and postcolonial studies. In their introduction, Fischlin and Porter posit the central trope of "playing for keeps" as an expression (musical and otherwise) of a people's struggle for survival, the will to protect one's society, culture, and power in the face of "systems that rely on disproportionate wealth, modulated forms of enslavement, and technologies of alienation and disempowerment" (p. 2). "Aftermath" in the subtitle refers to the lingering ill effects of war, revolution, colonization, inequality, famine, and the like. Improvisation is proposed as a medium for heterogeneous communities to bond and respond collectively, in spite of internal differences and in the face of drastic power [End Page 424] imbalances, to hegemonic structures. Interestingly, both the editors and author Vijay Iyer (in a later interview) point out that the powers-that-be may also employ these very same improvisatory practices toward separate ends. The introduction's polemical tone clearly telegraphs Fischlin's and Porter's ideological sympathies, which some readers may take issue with, but this doesn't preclude a close reading of the ideas underlying the rhetoric or a close analysis of each article on its own merits. More troubling is their suggestion that victims struggling to free themselves from violence must learn to use the tools of creative play "without damaging something, or at least without damaging the wrong thing" (p. 12). What exactly "the wrong thing" might be isn't specified, but this ends-justify-the-means language stands at odds with their concurrent denunciation of violence and injustice. Most troubling of all, it implies there is a "correct" way to understand and deal with these complicated issues. As if to offer a resounding affirmation to the editors' opening remarks, saxophonist/composer/performance-artist Matana Robert's poem "manifesto" sounds the people's cry of resistance, riffing on the preamble to the US Constitution. For the author, "WE the PEOPLE / Are the growing collective mongrel race /…/ Are most powerful when we come together to battle that shame that ails us," enlisting both improvisation and synchronization to face the destroyer culture and, ironically, "destroy its song" (p. 25...

Concluding reflections

In October 2020, Chilean voters resoundingly elected to abandon the constitution left behind by the Pinochet dictatorship. A new charter will be written by a fully elected, gender-balanced, constitutional convention. Given that Chilean political leaders have floated the idea of jettisoning the 1980 constitution for the last 35 years, what accounts for their decisive step at this point? Summarising and reflecting on the contributions to this special issue, I argue that the October 2020 vote was, in a sense, the result of decades of popular resistance, nurtured and informed by rich and tragic historical memories and experiences. The October result demonstrated an understanding of how to mobilise and energise a huge and diverse base of popular support as well a keen awareness of how to prepare for the violence that inevitably was launched against it.

Haiti and the American Military Occupation (1915–1934) by Raoul B. Altidor, and: American Imperialism's Undead: The Occupation of Haiti and the Rise of Caribbean Anticolonialism by Raphael Dalleo

Reviewed by: Haiti and the American Military Occupation (1915–1934) by Raoul B. Altidor, and: American Imperialism's Undead: The Occupation of Haiti and the Rise of Caribbean Anticolonialism by Raphael Dalleo Celucien L. Joseph Haiti and the American Military Occupation (1915–1934). By Raoul B. Altidor. Montreal: CIDIHCA, 2019. ISBN 1643820710. 182 pp. $45.50 paper. American Imperialism's Undead: The Occupation of Haiti and the Rise of Caribbean Anticolonialism. By Raphael Dalleo. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2016. ISBN 0813938945. 256 pp. $75 hardcover, $35 paper. On July 28, 1915, the United States invaded Haiti, beginning nineteen years of occupation through military forces and imperial actions. By the time the military presence and operations of the Occupation ended on August 1, 1934, US imperialism had radically transformed Haiti's civil and political society and reshaped contemporary Haitian-US foreign policies as well as political discourses between Haiti and other countries in the Western Hemisphere. The causes of the historic invasion are numerous and varied, including Haiti's failed governments and political instability prior to the invasion, and US economic interests and imperial expansion. While studies and investigations on the Occupation in Haiti are substantial, other pivotal aspects of US imperialism in the Caribbean as accounted for in the US State Department and Haitian archives have yet to be explored. Although the Occupation reverberated in Caribbean and African diaspora writings, especially in the mid-twentieth century, many stories remain untold. Important new texts by Raoul B. Altidor and Raphael Dalleo intend to shed light on the workings and effects of the Occupation and US imperialism, covering the first half of the twentieth century. While Altidor offers a journalistic perspective, Dalleo's analysis is academic and literary. Altidor's book, Haiti and the American Military Occupation, recounts the history and tragedy of the US military intervention on Haitian soil. The book is divided into ten short chapters (four to ten pages each) and eight [End Page 201] helpful appendices that include important archival documents. Overall, Altidor offers an engaging analysis of existing literature on the US Occupation, and the value of his book lies in its engaging journalistic point of view. For those interested in a rich bibliography of the classic and major texts and documents covering the US Occupation in Haiti, Altidor's book is recommended. Altidor carefully assesses an enormous body of work, drawing out the Occupation's historical causes and impacts on Haitian society and establishing connections among themes of class, race, and white supremacy as they shaped US policies in Haiti. As Altidor describes, the book aims to explain "the environment and consequences of the occupation of Haiti from 1915–1934" (15). In keeping with its journalistic character, the book is built on previous research about the Occupation, and as such it reports what transpired during the period. While the author painstakingly reports key figures and events, he does not cover any new material. Chapter 1 briefly examines the well-known causes of the July 1915 intervention. While the author subscribes to the idea that the reasons for the Occupation included political instability and short-lived administrations in Haiti, he also argues that the United States was interested in expanding its hegemony in this region in the Caribbean (21). Chapter 2 offers a succinct commentary on the historic treaty of 1915 between Haiti and the United States. The document itself is found in appendix E: "The Haitian American Treaty of 1915" (137–144). According to the author's reading of Articles X and XI, this important document clearly establishes the United States' "lasting economic hegemony in Haiti … as the dominant motivating factor for the occupation" (33–34). While the thesis of the chapter is not well developed, the author proposes that the economic and military dimensions of the Occupation eventually led to popular resistance against the occupying forces, including the emergence of the Cacos—guerilla warriors led by Charlemagne Masséna Péralte until he was shot by the US marines, who then circulated a photo of his body in Port-au-Prince. Chapter 3 summarizes the lasting impact of the military presence and operations in Haiti. Such intervention generated radical violence and racist paternalism within...

The Man of the People: Political Dissent and the Making of the American Presidency by Nathaniel C. Green

Reviewed by: The Man of the People: Political Dissent and the Making of the American Presidency by Nathaniel C. Green Edward J. Larson (bio) Keywords Dissent, Presidency, Accountability, Presidential history The Man of the People: Political Dissent and the Making of the American Presidency. By Nathaniel C. Green. (Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 2020. Pp. 408. Cloth, $50.00.) To the extent that current events shape questions asked and answers found, a history can be as much about the present as about the past. This need not reduce these works to whiggish narratives. Current events can help historians to understand the past. This applies to The Man of the People by Nathaniel Green. For Green, Donald Trump—whose “vile nationalism” he condemns in his Prologue (xviii)—informs how he sees the presidency and what he called “Trump’s nation.” Although about the early presidency, Green’s book begins and ends with Trump. The intervening chapters relate episodes in the administrations of five of the first seven presidents, from Washington’s popular inauguration to Jackson’s populist bank veto, plus one on framing and ratifying Article II. Perhaps more than any president, Trump laid bare what the presidency could become—the realization of antifederalists’ fears for an office without enforceable limits. This Trumpian presence animates Green’s book. [End Page 483] Green depicts the presidency as the defining institution of the United States as a republic of and by the people. The president is the focus of popular attention; offers a model for popular emulation; reflects and reinforces popular values; and serves to unify the American populace. This is the standard Rooseveltian narrative applied to the early presidents, which is nothing new for Washington, Jefferson, and Jackson. At times straining at the effort, Green applies it to episodes from the administrations of John Adams and Madison as well. Fitting an era of a Trump rather than a Roosevelt, however, Green gives the other side of this coin for his five early presidents. All became focal points of popular dissent, from the moment Washington endorsed Jay’s Treaty to when Madison’s ineptitude led to the burning of the capitol. As with assent, Green argues, dissent serves to model, shape, encourage, and reflect American values. It can even unify. Think of how popular resistance to Adams’s Sedition Act helped Americans to understand their freedoms better. For good and for ill, the people hold their presidents to account. By presenting as much popular dissent to it as he could muster, Green tries to apply this approach to Jackson’s violent treatment of Native Americans and Black slaves—that the people found virtue from their president’s vices—but ultimately he leaves this sorry tale on the other side of his populist ledger. Jackson was the people’s president even in his racism, Green concludes in the chapter titled “A Violent Man for a Violent Nation.” Readers can almost hear Green grappling with Trump when he writes, “Praise for Jackson took the form of an expression of popular dissent from politics as usual” (273), as if to explain away their popularity. Although “dissent” features in his book’s subtitle, Green balances chapters and episodes with offsetting examples of presidential adulation and contempt, with both helping to forge the American republic. “The breathless appropriation of private citizens broke down local divisions to define every citizen’s Americanness according to his or her support for the president,” Green writes about the response to Washington’s election. (54) After Jay’s Treaty, however, he notes, “Arguing that the president was subject to public scrutiny at all times, not just during elections, critics made the presidency the cultural touchstone of a more democratic and even contentious political culture. . . . This perpetual public accountability, they insisted, was foundational to a healthy, lasting American nation” (79). [End Page 484] Green organizes his book chronologically and episodically by narrating various public episodes in the presidencies of Washington, John Adams, Jefferson, Madison, and Jackson in temporal order but skipping other events in their presidencies and omitting any from those of Monroe and John Quincy Adams. Some of these episodes support his theme better than others do, and some are better stories. The...

Teaching the Non-Russian Adult Population of Orenburg Province from the Late 19th to the First Third of the 20th Century

This article examines the education of the Orenburg regions non-Russian adults from the end of the 19th century until the end of the 1930s. It begins with a brief review of the relevant historiography and the sources. It goes on to analyse the data of the First General Census of 1897, which sheds light on the scope of the task of schooling that remained to be done among the provinces non-Russian nationalities. Already before the Revolution of 1917, local authorities and private individuals were active in cultural and educational work among this population by opening libraries as well as arranging readings and evening classes. At the same time, Zemstvos also strove to train the necessary teachers. During the early Soviet era, educational work was politicized. All educational activities were carried out using emergency methods, since the new government urgently needed a literate population. Due to the exigencies of the Civil War and famine, the authorities had no funds to spare and transferred the tasks entire financial burden to public organizations and private individuals, although in the early 1920s, education in the province practically stopped. However, as the national economy recovered by the mid-1920s, schools reopened. The next important step in eradicating of illiteracy among the non-Russian population came around 1937. The author concludes that in the pre-revolutionary and Soviet periods, educating Orenburgs minorities faced major obstacles, namely the lack of funds, qualified personnel, as well as popular resistance.