The Socialist Way of Life in Siberia: Transformation in Buryatia

Chapter 4. Education for Change

CHAPTER 4 Education for Change A good education was crucial for social mobility in the Soviet Union . In Buryatia, local government administrators, educators, and parents contributed to the development of an education system that encouraged professional advancement. Their efforts illustrate the manner in which Buryats engaged in a key part of the Soviet modernization process. However, educational development could also be contentious. The clearest example of this was the vacillating policy of teaching the Buryat language. In the 1930s, many Buryat national schools offered instruction in Buryat up through the fourth grade with Russian taught as a subject. In the early postwar years, Buryat language instruction was expanded beyond the fifth grade. However, when parents began increasingly to choose Russian language schools over Buryat ones, officials in the 1970s cancelled the teaching of Buryat completely, arguing that more Russian language was needed for educational and professional success. Then, in the 1980s reviving the Buryat language became a hot topic among politicians , intellectuals, and educators. Although the rhetoric of bilingualism was a constant throughout, the Buryat language had become largely marginalized and among many totally diminished. While serious efforts were made to reverse this situation in the late 1980s and after the break-up of the USSR, educators have encountered challenges in this process. During the Soviet period, educational institutions taught not only specific disciplines, but also ideology. Education was a tool for facilitating industrial, technological, and political progress in the 118 The Socialist Way of Life in Siberia country. E. Thomas Ewing, who conducted a study of teachers who worked in the 1930s, argued that Soviet education policy was meant “to promote the economic, social, and political development of the Soviet Union in part by transforming individuals into functional, compliant, and subordinate subjects.”1 Education thus served the state by creating the necessary citizens who would carry out its economic and political goals.2 Education was also a method for developing social unity and cultural homogenization. In 1981, the Soviet scholar, Leokadia M. Drobizheva, wrote that education in the Soviet Union was meant “to foster in people a feeling of internationalism ” and that “the expansion of education overall tends to promote similar perceptions, identical responses to events and phenomena , and, finally, a common way of life—in effect, it forms the basis for mutual understanding in inter-nationality communication .”3 These unifying forces of education were also cited by policymakers as helping the merging together of the various nations into one Soviet people.4 Increases in education levels were even cited as leading to a rise in intermarriage, an official indicator of the drawing together of Soviet nations.5 Authorities also believed that education provided political socialization and support for the regime. In 1983, Ts. Shonoev, a local Buryat administrator from the Eravninskii region described how education served this role. He argued that, “School—it is the foundation of ideology. It gives young men and women the fundamentals of a Marxist-Leninist world view; it instills in them correct and realistic outlooks, a love of work, a refusal to tolerate bourgeois ideology and morals, and a preparedness to defend the socialist 1 E. Thomas Ewing, The Teachers of Stalinism: Policy, Practice, and Power in Soviet Schools of the 1930s (New York: Peter Lang, 2002), 152. 2 These goals are similar (to varying degrees) to the goals of state educators in other countries as well. See for example, Walter Feinberg and Jonas F. Soltis, School and Society (New York: Teachers College Press, 2004), 24–8. 3 L. M. Drobizheva, “The Role of Education and Cultural Perspective in Interpersonal Relations among Nationalities” in Martha B. Olcott (ed.), The Soviet Multinational State: Readings and Documents (New York: M. E. Sharpe, 1990), 191. 4 Kaiser, The Geography of Nationalism, 225. 5 Drobizheva, “The Role of Education,” 192. Education for Change 119 fatherland.”6 In order to facilitate these educational goals, educators and administrators in Buryatia made careful decisions about textbooks , educational materials, curricula, and general school policy. Many of these decisions were made in Moscow, but local policymakers also played an important role. Standardized education in Buryatia brought a greater degree of social and cultural integration with the rest of the country. Both schools that provided instruction in Buryat and those that provided it in the Russian language had similar curricula. These resembled curricula throughout the country. Curricula became even more standardized when Buryat-language education was cancelled in the early 1970s...