60 years ago, on June 6, 1956, by a decree of the Council of Ministers of the USSR of June 6, 1956, tuition fees in the senior classes of secondary schools, in secondary specialized and higher educational institutions of the USSR were abolished.
Contrary to the prevailing opinion that education in the USSR was free, this was not always the case. On October 26, 1940, decree No. 638 was introduced "On the establishment of tuition fees in the senior grades of secondary schools and in higher educational institutions of the USSR and on changing the procedure for granting scholarships." In the senior grades of schools and universities, paid education was introduced with a fixed amount of annual payment. Education in the capital's schools cost 200 rubles a year; in provincial - 150, and for studying at the institute already had to give 400 rubles in Moscow, Leningrad and the capitals of the union republics, and 300 - in other cities.
The amount of payment for school and university education was not high, the annual wages were approximately equal to or less than the average monthly nominal wages of Soviet workers. The average wage of a worker in 1940 was about 350 rubles. At the same time, the level of compulsory monthly expenses (rent, medicine, etc.) was lower than, for example, at present. By the decree of the Council of Ministers of the USSR of June 6, 1956, tuition fees in the upper grades of secondary schools, in secondary specialized and higher educational institutions of the USSR were abolished.
Formation of the Soviet education system
The Soviet government gave the education of the population an enormous, in fact, leading role. Vladimir Lenin saw in the socialist revolution the possibility of overcoming the country's economic and cultural backwardness as quickly as possible. The cultural revolution included a wide range of tasks of socialist construction in the field of culture. The school was assigned a special role as an educational institution and an instrument of communist education. It was not for nothing that Lenin declared at the congress of educators: “The victory of the revolution can only be consolidated by school. The upbringing of future generations consolidates everything that has been conquered by the revolution. " "The fate of the Russian revolution directly depends on how soon the teaching masses will take the side of the Soviet regime." Thus, the Bolsheviks quite correctly and accurately defined the role of the school in the Soviet project. Only masses of educated and technically competent people could build a socialist state.
Prominent figures of the RCP (b) were put at the head of the school affairs: N. K. Krupskaya, A. V. Lunacharsky, M. N. Pokrovsky. AV Lunacharsky headed the People's Commissariat of Education (People's Commissariat for Education) until 1929. It should be noted that the first stage of the existence of the Soviet education system was associated with the destruction of the old education system and the elimination of illiteracy of the population. The former structures of school administration were destroyed, private educational institutions, religious educational institutions were closed, the teaching of ancient languages and religions was prohibited, general and national history was removed from the program. A "purge" was carried out to screen out unreliable teachers.
It should be noted that at this time the so-called. Trotskyists-internationalists quite "frolic", destroying Russian culture, education and history. It was believed that everything that was under tsarism was outdated and reactionary. Therefore, along with such positive phenomena as the elimination of illiteracy, private education and the influence of the church on schools, there were many negative ones. In particular, they refused to teach history, all the tsars, generals, etc., fell into negative figures, removed from the programs of Russian classics and many others. other. It is not for nothing that in the 1930s (during the Stalinist period) much that was positive in the field of education in the Russian Empire was restored, including the separate education of boys and girls.
It is also worth remembering that great damage to the public education system and the spread of literacy was caused by the First World War and the Civil War. The national economy was in ruins. Due to a shortage of funds, many schools have been closed, and the number of students has decreased. The remaining schools were in desolation, there was not enough paper, textbooks, ink for the students. Teachers who had not received their salaries for years left schools. Full funding for the education system was restored only by 1924, after which the cost of education grew steadily. So, in 1925-1930. spending on public education was 12-13% of the budget.
The ways of forming a new school were determined in the documents adopted in October 1918: "Regulations on a unified labor school" and "Basic principles of a unified labor school (Declaration). The Soviet school was created as a single system of joint and free general education with two stages: the first - 5 years of study, the second - 4 years of study. The right of all citizens to education, regardless of nationality, equality in the education of men and women, and the unconditional nature of secular education was proclaimed (the school was separated from the church). In addition, educational and production functions were assigned to educational institutions (in the modern Russian Federation, these functions are practically destroyed).
Decree of the Council of People's Commissars of the RSFSR of August 2, 1918 "On the rules for admission to higher educational institutions of the RSFSR" proclaimed that every person who has reached the age of 16, regardless of citizenship and nationality, gender and religion, was admitted to universities without examinations; secondary education. The preference in enrollment was given to the workers and peasants, that is, the main social groups of the country.
The fight against illiteracy was proclaimed as a priority task. On December 26, 1919, the Council of People's Commissars adopted a decree "On the elimination of illiteracy among the population of the RSFSR", according to which the entire population from 8 to 50 years old was obliged to learn to read and write in their native language or Russian. The decree provided for the reduction of the working day by 2 hours for students with the preservation of wages, the mobilization of the literate population in the order of labor service, the organization of registration of the illiterate, the provision of premises for classes in educational programs. However, during the Civil War, this work was not fully developed. In 1920, the All-Russian Extraordinary Commission for the Elimination of Illiteracy (existed until 1930) was established under the RSFSR People's Commissariat for Education. In 1923, a mass society "Down with illiteracy" was created under the chairmanship of MI Kalinin, a plan was adopted to eliminate illiteracy of persons from 18 to 35 years old in the RSFSR by the 10th anniversary of Soviet power. The Komsomol and trade unions have joined in the fight against illiteracy. However, this plan was also not fully implemented. There was a shortage of personnel, material resources, etc. It was necessary, first of all, to strengthen the main link of education - the school in order to cover all children. Thus, the problem of illiteracy was solved in a natural way.
In the second half of the 1920s, education is emerging from the crisis. The country is recovering after two wars and economic ruin, and regular funding for education begins. So, in the 1927-1928 academic year, the number of educational institutions in comparison with 1913 increased by 10%, and the number of students - by 43%. In the 1922-1923 academic year on the territory of the country there were about 61, 6 thousand schools, in the 1928-1929 academic year their number reached 85, 3 thousand. During the same period, the number of seven-year schools increased by 5, 3 times, and the number of students in them - doubled.
In higher education, the new authorities tried to attract to their side the cadres of the old, pre-revolutionary intelligentsia, and not without success, and to create new cadres from representatives of the working class and the peasantry. However, the majority of those who were accepted could not study at universities, since they did not even have a secondary education. To solve this problem, workers' faculties were established, created since 1919 throughout Soviet Russia. At the end of the recovery period, workers' faculty graduates accounted for half of the students admitted to universities. To create a layer of the new Soviet intelligentsia, to spread the ideas of Marxism and to restructure the teaching of the social sciences, an extensive network of scientific and educational institutions was created: the Socialist Academy (since 1924 - the Communist), the Communist University. Ya. M., the K. Marx and F. Engels Institute, the Commission on the History of the October Revolution and the RCP (b) (Istpart), the Institute of the Red Professors, the Communist Universities of the working people of the East and the national minorities of the West.
As a result, the system of higher education took shape in its main features by 1927. The task of universities was to professionally prepare specialists-organizers. The number of early-maturing universities, which opened immediately after the revolution, was reduced, the admission of students was significantly reduced, and entrance exams were restored. Lack of funds and qualified teachers held back the expansion of the system of higher and secondary specialized education. By 1927, the network of higher educational institutions and technical schools of the RSFSR consisted of 90 universities with 114,200 students and 672 technical schools with 123,200 students.
In the 1930s, the second stage began in the creation of the Soviet education system. In 1930, the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks adopted a resolution "On universal compulsory primary education." Universal compulsory primary education was introduced from the 1930-1931 school year for children 8-10 years old in the volume of 4 classes; for adolescents who have not completed primary education - in the amount of accelerated 1-2-year courses. For children who received primary education (graduated from the 1st stage school), in industrial cities, factory districts and workers' settlements, compulsory education was established at a seven-year school. School expenses in 1929-1930 increased more than 10 times compared with the 1925-1926 academic year and continued to rise in subsequent years. This made it possible in the years of the first and second five-year plans to expand the construction of new schools: during this period, about 40 thousand schools were opened. The training of teaching staff was expanded. Wages for teachers and other school workers were increased, which became dependent on education and work experience. As a result, by the end of 1932, almost 98% of children aged 8 to 11 were enrolled in studies, which solved the problem of illiteracy. Work continued to eradicate illiteracy, which was already yielding better results.
In the early 1930s, the content and methods of teaching at school changed. School curricula were revised, new stable textbooks were created, teaching of general and national history was introduced. The main form of organization of the educational process was the lesson, a strict schedule of classes, internal rules were introduced. A stable school system has developed with successive steps. A new generation of teachers has come to schools, talented and conscientious, loving children and their profession. It was these teachers who created the famous Soviet school, the best in the world and which is still a source of innovation for the most effective school systems in the West and East.
At the same time, a system of engineering, technical, agricultural and pedagogical educational institutions was created, which allowed the Union to become a "superpower", which for several decades successfully resisted the entire Western civilization.
In 1932-1933. traditional, time-tested teaching methods were restored, specialization in universities was expanded. In 1934, the academic degrees of candidate and doctor of sciences and the academic titles of assistant, associate professor and professor were established. That is, under Stalin, in fact, they restored classical education. Correspondence and evening education has been created in universities and technical schools. At large enterprises, educational complexes have become widespread, including technical colleges, technical schools, schools, and advanced training courses. The total number of higher educational institutions in the RSFSR was 481 in 1940.
In the 1930s, the composition of the student body radically changed, which was facilitated by various courses for the preparation of workers' and peasants' youth in universities, workers' schools, and recruiting party thousands during the first five-year plans. The number of the intelligentsia grew very rapidly; by the end of the 1930s, the new replenishment of this stratum amounted to 80-90% of the total number of the intelligentsia. This was already the socialist intelligentsia. Thus, the Soviet government created a third social support for itself - the socialist intelligentsia, in many respects technical. It was the basis and powerful support of the socialist, industrial state, the Red Empire. And the years of the terrible Great Patriotic War confirmed the progressive importance of the Soviet school, its effectiveness, when Soviet soldiers, commanders, workers, scientists and engineers, brought up and educated in the new system, defeated the effective capitalist system itself - the Third Reich.
It must be said that our enemies perfectly understood the full danger of the Soviet school. For example, the war years only on the territory of the RSFSR, the Nazis destroyed about 20 thousand school buildings, in total in the country - 82 thousand. In the Moscow region, by the summer of 1943, 91.8% of school buildings were actually destroyed or dilapidated, in the Leningrad region - 83, 2%.
However, even during the years of the most difficult war, the Soviet government tried to develop the education system. During the war years, government decisions were made on school education: on teaching children from the age of seven (1943), on the establishment of general education schools for working youth (1943), on the opening of evening schools in rural areas (1944), on the introduction of a five-point system for assessing academic performance and behavior. students (1944), on the establishment of final examinations at the end of primary, seven-year and high school (1944), on the awarding of gold and silver medals to distinguished high school students (1944), etc. In 1943, the Academy of Pedagogical Sciences of the RSFSR was created.
Since 1943, the restoration of the higher education system began. Thus, in the war conditions since 1941, admission to universities was reduced by 41%, compared with peacetime; the number of universities decreased from 817 to 460; the number of students decreased by 3.5 times, the number of teachers decreased by more than 2 times; girls were recruited to preserve the student body; the terms of study were reduced to 3-3.5 years due to the compaction, while many students worked. As a result, by the end of the war, the number of higher educational institutions and the number of students approached the pre-war level. Thus, the crisis of higher education was overcome in the shortest possible time.
It is worth noting that in the post-war period large sums were invested in education. In addition, collective farms, trade unions, and industrial cooperatives allocated money for school construction. Only by the forces of the population, 1736 new schools were built in the RSFSR by the method of people's construction. By the early 1950s. Russian school not only restored the number of educational institutions, but also switched to universal seven-year education.
About paid education under Stalin
After the destruction of the Soviet, socialist state in 1991 - the bourgeois-oligarchic revolution, where a significant part of the Soviet nomenklatura, especially the upper one, acted as a bourgeois class, the Russian Federation, in fact, became a semi-colony of the West (and partly of the East). It is clear that in a semi-colony or in a country of peripheral capitalism, you do not need to have an education system that provides hundreds of thousands of fairly well-educated people (and compared to the average level of the West and the East, not to mention Africa or Latin America, it is simply excellent). After all, sooner or later they will start asking questions, expressing doubts about the success of the "reforms". Therefore, a phased demolition of the Soviet school began with the transformation of ordinary schools into an American analogue for commoners: "prison romanticism" (guards, cameras, fences, etc.)etc.); rejection of educational, productive functions; reduction of hours of fundamental disciplines with the introduction of unnecessary lessons such as world culture, local languages, "the law of God", etc.; translation into a second language - English (the language of the Anglo-American world order), which ultimately leads to the creation of the ideal consumer-performer. At the same time, kindergartens and schools are gradually "capitalized", that is, they are transferred to a paid basis. Children of the rich and “successful” get the opportunity to study in private elite schools in the Russian Federation or send their children to similar institutions abroad. That is, the people were again divided into two unequal parts, and the gains of socialism are destroyed.
However, for this it was necessary to provide a certain ideological basis. It was necessary to prove that Soviet education created only "sovoks" with a totalitarian, militarized mindset. And how can one fail to remember that Stalin introduced "paid education"! Like, already under Stalin, a significant percentage of the population was cut off from the opportunity to continue their education.
In fact, this is not the case. First, we must remember that the Bolsheviks created a secondary school in general, and it remained free for everyone. It was a huge work: investments, personnel, a huge territory, dozens of nationalities and many others. other. It was with great difficulty that universal primary education was established by the end of the 1920s. The general average was by the mid-1930s. In the 1930s, they created the foundation of the world's best education. And preparatory education for higher educational institutions (three senior classes), for which they introduced a fee, in 1940 was only still in its infancy. The introduction of tuition fees in high school, in fact, was the reason that the newly introduced social benefit did not have time to master. The Second World War was already in full swing, the terrible Patriotic War was approaching. The Soviet Union was busy preparing for it, so plans for the early introduction of free higher education had to be postponed.
Quite a rational decision. At this moment, the Union needed more workers than representatives of the intelligentsia, taking into account the already created personnel base. In addition, military schools were still free and seven-year schools stimulated the creation of a Soviet military elite. Young men could go to flight, tank, infantry and other schools. In the conditions of war, it was wise according to the state.
It is also worth noting that a healthy hierarchy was built under Stalin. At the top of the social ladder was the military, scientific and technical, educational (professors, teaching staff) elite. Compulsory education was seven years, then dropping out through exams and the decision of the school teachers' council. The rest is either by the most severe competition, or by referral from competent organizations. At the same time, everyone had the opportunity to rise higher, they needed talent and perseverance. The armed forces and the party were powerful social lifts. Another important element of this system was the separate education of girls and boys. Given the psychological and physiological differences in the development of boys and girls, this was a very important step.
After Stalin, this healthy hierarchy, which they began to build, was destroyed by “leveling”. And since 1991, a new class has been built (within the framework of the general archaization of the planet and the onset of neo-feudalism) with a division into rich and “successful” and poor, “losers”. But here is a hierarchy with a minus sign: at the top of the social ladder is the non-producing class, the capitalists are the “new feudal lords”, the usurers-bankers, the corrupt bureaucracy, mafia structures serving their strata.
