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In current day Australia, our education system allows students to choose the subjects that they want to study, ultimately deciding their future. Now, imagine not being given the choice as to what to study and being forced into learning certain subjects. Whilst we can simply stop imagining to escape this situation, this wasn’t just an imagination for the Soviet youth; it was a harsh reality. Under Stalin, even the education that they received was dictated by the government, and they were only allowed to learn certain subjects in order to be of greatest use to the Stalinist regime. Education, along with propaganda, was used as a propeller that aimed to brainwash the minds of the youth in schools, promoting the communist values of the totalitarian regime. This said propaganda can be seen to depict Stalin in a god-like light, building up his cult of personality, whilst emphasizing his powerful rule over the Soviet Union, and highlighting how he was the greatest leader Russia had ever had. Whilst industrialization was a short-term goal for Stalin, one of his long-term goals was to ensure that the Stalinist ideals prevalent in the current society would prevail for years onwards, and the means to achieving this was to educate/ brainwash the future generations from a young age through filtering what they learnt at school and through propaganda.
After Stalin took the position of the leader of the Soviet Union, speedy reforms of the Soviet schools and educational system began. During the 1930s, the Soviet Union saw great changes posed to the country, such as the process of industrialization and the introduction of the many 5-year plans, which required jobs such as engineers and scientists in order to succeed. Stalin achieved this through tailoring the syllabus that was taught in schools to focus on subjects such as chemistry, mathematics and physics in order to ultimately make the students more useful to the regime and develop Stalinist ideals in the process.
In addition to the change in subjects that were studied, Stalin also altered certain parts of the USSR’s history, and emphasized other parts in order to glorify his image as well as to build a positive view on the nation. Students were left in the dark about certain parts of history because the government chose to censor aspects of the Soviet Union’s history. This notion is conveyed through the emphasis of the rule of Peter the Great, as well as on Stalin’s role and his ‘close’ relationship with Lenin, with the removal of Trotsky, highlighting the authoritarian focus and the reshaping of history under Stalin.
Stalin ensured that children were always faced with propaganda that geared his communist agenda, so as learn the virtues of the Soviet Union from a young age. Stalin sought to increase production by schooling children in new scientific and engineering developments, so as to increase their value to the industry. The goal from which Stalin’s educational policy was developed was simply to increase economic and industrial production, while also taking care to indoctrinate children with the communist ideology and facilitate this indoctrination with education.
Education was compulsory, making it an effective tool of indoctrination. Under Stalin, the rates of literacy skyrocketed. This is illustrated through how the census for 1897 showed that only 14% of the population over nine years of age could read and write, and in 1941, this number rose to 85%. By 1955, over 1.5 million students were in higher education, compared to only 40,000 in 1910. The number of children and students in full-time education increased from 8 million in 1914 to 47 million in 1938-9, and more schools were built in the USSR in 20 years than the tsarist autocracy built in 200 years.
Whilst this regime was extremely effective in aiding the process of industrialization and raising the literacy levels in the Soviet Union, it was also extremely harsh. Any form of opposition to the Communist Party was not tolerated and came with grave consequences, even in the aspect of education. College professors and students who questioned the Communist Party’s interpretations of history or science risked losing their jobs or faced imprisonment.
Education was critical to the survival of communism in the Soviet Union. As Lenin said, “Without teaching there is no knowledge and without knowledge there is no communism”, thus emphasizing the importance of education in the USSR. During the period of the first two 5-year plans, when the Soviets were reaching to catch up with the industrial productivity of other western countries, a large amount of resources were poured into education for both youth and adults. Furthermore, education was not only geared towards youth; there was an immense expansion of schools and courses for adult members of the Soviet society, which aimed to increase literacy skills and teach basic trade skills. However, despite all Stalin's achievements, education was still under his oppressive pressure, which was extremely harsh for the youth.
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