Ascent into Darkness: Escalating Negativity in the Administration of Schools in the Kirov Region, 1931–1941

Abstract

Reporting within the administration responsible for primary and secondary schools in the Kirov region from the early 1930s to 1941 followed a script of escalating negativity in which the higher the chain of command, the more negative the assessment. School directors wrote positive quarterly and annual evaluations. District and municipal departments of education, however, composed a negative account. Their bosses at the regional level produced even harsher evaluations. This ascent into darkness had another, still bleaker, dimension. The party's district committees demanded and received from school directors and local departments of education harsh assessments. These committees then drew a still more negative picture in their reports to the party's Regional Committee, further embellished by that committee's Schools Department when composing its official accounts. All reports, therefore, had little to do with the real situation—good or bad—prevailing in schools but everything to do with the bureaucracy's scripted version of reality.

Acknowledgements

Research for this article was supported by the University of South Alabama (Mobile, Alabama), the Department of Education's Fulbright‐Hays Faculty Research Abroad program, and the International Research and Exchanges Board (with funds from the United States Department of State through the Title VIII Program and the National Endowment of the Humanities). I greatly appreciate the help of the archivists at the Gosudarstvennyi Arkhiv Sotsial’ no‐politicheskoi Istorii Kirovskoi Oblasti (GASPI KO) and Gosudarstvennyi Arkhiv Kirovskoi Oblasti (GAKO).

Notes

¹ Getty, J. Arch. Origins of the Great Purges: The Soviet Communist Party Reconsidered, 1933–1938. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985: 199, 206.

² Khlevniuk, Oleg. Stalin i Ordzhonikidze: Konflikty v Politbiuro v 30‐e gody. Moscow: Izdatel'stvo Tsentr “Rossiia Molodaia,” 1993. Khlevniuk, Oleg. Politbiuro: Mekhanizmy politicheskoi vlasti v 1930‐e gody. Moscow: Rosspen, 1996.

³ Shinkarchuk, S. A. Obshchestvennoe mnenie v Sovetskoi Rossii v 30‐e gody. Po materialam severo‐zapada. Sankt‐Peterburg: Izdatel'stvo Sankt‐Peterburgskogo Universiteta ekonomiki i finansov, 1995. Makarenko, V. P. Biurokratiia i Stalinizm. Rostov‐on‐Don: Izdatel'stvo Rostovskogo Universiteta, 1989. For a similar argument, see Davies, Sarah. Popular Opinion in Stalin's Russia: Terror, Propaganda and Dissent, 1934–1941. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997.

⁴ Manning, Roberta. Government in the Soviet Countryside in the Stalinist Thirties: The Case of Belyi Raion in 1937. Carl Beck Papers, no. 301. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh, 1984. Manning, Roberta. “Peasants and Party: Rural Administration in the Soviet Countryside on the Eve of World War II.” In Essays on Revolutionary Culture and Stalinism, edited by John W. Strong. Columbus, OH: Slavica Publishers, 1990: 224–44. Getty, Origins of the Great Purges. Solomon, Peter H., Jr. Soviet Criminal Justice under Stalin. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996. Harris, James R. The Great Urals: Regionalism and the Evolution of the Soviet System. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1999.

⁵ The relationship between Narkompros and the central party and state apparatus is an aspect of escalating negativity that is beyond the limits of this article. For an indication of the Central Committee's emphasis on the negative and Narkompros's effort to present itself and the schools in a more favorable light in 1931 see my Stalin's School: Moscow's Model School No. 25, 1931–1937. Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1999: 10–11. For the same situation in 1936 and 1937, see my “Magic into Hocus‐Pocus: The Decline of Labor Education in Soviet Russia's Schools, 1931–1937.” Russian Review 51, no. 4 (October 1992): 545–65 (see pages 560–64).

⁶ GAKO (State Archive of the Kirov Region), f. R‐1864, op. 1, d. 91, l. 146.

⁷ See the correspondence between Narkompros and Kirov's Regional Department of Education in GAKO, f. R‐2333, op. 1, d. 49, ll. 35, 46.

⁸ See the report in 1938 from the head of the department of education in Viatskie Poliany district, 350 km south of Kirov, in GASPI KO (State of Archive of the Social and Political History of the Kirov Region), f. 1290, op. 2, d. 255, l. 9.

⁹ Martin, Terry. “Interpreting the New Archival Signals: Nationalities Policy and the Nature of the Soviet Bureaucracy.” Cahiers du monde russe 40, nos 1–2 (January–June 1999): 113–24. I will leave it to other scholars to probe other regional archives in order to determine the extent to which escalating negativity prevailed elsewhere.

¹⁰ The region had 17 additional districts located in the Udmurt Autonomous Republic. Two years later that republic became an independent territorial unit.

¹¹ 200 let Viatskoi gubernii, 60 let Kirovskoi oblasti: Statisticheskii ocherk. Kirov: GIPP “Viatka”, 1996: 34–35. Figures for the province are based on the territory of the Kirov region in the 1990s.

¹² On the importance of a ritual of self‐criticism, see Getty, J. Arch. “Samokritika Rituals in the Stalinist Central Committee, 1933–1938.” Russian Review 58, no. 1 (January 1999): 49–70.

¹³ Speech delivered on 22 May 1923 in Tomsk, published in Anatolii Lunacharskii on Education: Selected Articles and Speeches. Moscow: Progress, 1981: 160, 167–69.

¹⁴ For an extended discussion of educational policy and practice from 1917 to 1931, see Holmes, Larry E. The Kremlin and the Schoolhouse: Reforming Education in Soviet Russia, 1917–1931. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991.

¹⁵ See studies of modern bureaucracy: Crozier, Michel. The Bureaucratic Phenomenon. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1964. Beissinger, Mark. Scientific Management, Socialist Discipline, and Soviet Power. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1988. See also James C. Scott's critical evaluation of ‘high modernist ideology’ and his corresponding emphasis on the importance of informal processes and local improvisation in his Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1998.

¹⁶ Lewin, Moshe. “Russia/USSR in Historical Motion: An Essay in Interpretation.” Russian Review 50, no. 3 (July 1991): 249–66 (see pages 261, 263) and Lewin, Moshe. “Bureaucracy and the Stalinist State.” In Stalinism and Nazism: Dictatorships in Comparison, edited by Ian Kershaw and Moshe Lewin. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997: 71–72.

¹⁷ For a full discussion of this striving to create the perfect world, corresponding negativity, and the inevitability of failure, see Holmes, Larry E. “School and Schooling under Stalin, 1931–1953.” In Educational Reform in Post‐Soviet Russia: Legacies and Prospects, edited by Ben Eklof, Larry E. Holmes and Vera Kaplan. London: Frank Cass, 2005: 79–85.

¹⁸ Teachers’ assessments have not survived because as a rule they were not forwarded to departments of education and individual schools neglected to keep this part of the script. See surviving reports in 1933 from teachers at Viatka's Korolenko Seven‐Year School No. 4 in GAKO, f. R‐1171, op. 4, dd. 4, 5, 7.

¹⁹ GAKO, f. R‐1969, op. 1, d. 47, l. 5.

²⁰ See the school's reports in GAKO, f. R‐1969, op. 1, d. 42, ll. 1–10, 14–34, 43, and d. 165, ll. 30–44.

²¹ For 1931/32 in GAKO, f. R‐1864, op. 2, d. 53, l. 6 and for 1932/33 in GAKO, f. R‐1864, op. 2. d. 79, ll. 27–27 ob.

²² For School No. 10, see GAKO, f. R‐1864, op. 2, d. 325, ll. 22–23 and for School No. 15, GAKO, f. R‐1864, op. 2, d. 344, l. 1.

²³ For reports from School No. 9 from 1933 to 1937, see GAKO, f. R‐1864, op. 2, dd. 127, 194, 263, 264, 302, 326 and op. 11, dd. 8, 11, 12.

²⁴ See Kornev's reports from 1938 to 1941 in GAKO, f. R‐1864, op. 11, d. 24, ll. 3 ob.–4 and d. 27, ll. 1a–8, 48 and d. 41, ll. 1–3, 67–68.

²⁵ The minutes of cells’ sessions rarely included a summary of a director's report. I infer its content from remarks that followed including the director's response to questions and criticism. See information on directors’ reports in Kiknur, Makar'e, Kil'mez’, Urzhum, Khalturin, Nema and Kumeny districts in GASPI KO, f. 700, op. 1, d. 2, ll. 22–22 ob and d. 4, ll. 1 ob.–2 and d. 6, ll. 43 ob.–49, 51 ob., 53; f. f. 2393, op. 1, d. 4, ll. 27–29 ob. and d. 6, ll. 3 ob., 8; f. 4464, op. 1, d. 4, ll. 1 ob.–4; f. 4603, op. 1, d. 1, ll. 26–28 ob. and d. 2, ll. 63, 69, 73 and d. 4, ll. 28–32; f. 1889, op. 1, d. 5, ll. 30 ob.–31; f. 1673, op. 1, d. 6, l. 42; f. 4000, op. 1, d. 1, ll. 17, 19–21.

²⁶ See the cell's sessions of 11 December 1937 and 24 April 1938: GASPI KO, f. 1673, op. 1, d. 1, ll. 19 ob.–20; d. 4, ll. 9–9 ob. At the latter session, Shishkin claimed he had not had a drink for two months.

²⁷ See information on Kollerov's reports of 16 November 1939 and 17 May, 23 June and 7 April 1940 in GASPI KO, f. 4603, op. 1, d. 1, ll. 26–28 ob. and d. 2, ll. 63, 69, 73 and d. 4, ll. 28–32.

²⁸ For Lezhnina's report: GASPI KO, f. 100, op. 5, d. 219, ll. 78–83.

²⁹ This Commission usually consisted of three individuals: Liamin, Kulikov, Sennikov. They probably came from outside the region. I have been unable to find biographical information on them.

³⁰ For the Purge Commission's findings: GASPI KO, f. 100, op. 5, d. 219, ll. 92–94.

³¹ See sessions of the Buro of 9 August 1936 and 3 March, 7 May and 17 August 1937 in GASPI KO, f. 1450, op. 1, d. 110, l. 151; d. 154, l. 65 and l. 117; and d. 155, ll. 70–70 ob. For sessions of the department's party cell of 9 September 1937 and 17 March 1938, see GASPI KO, f. 3236, op. 1, d. 9, ll. 55–55 ob. and d. 12, l. 7.

³² GASPI KO, f. 730, op. 13, d. 3, ll. 155–56.

³³ See reports in 1940 and 1941 by the head of Pizhanka's department of education, Grigorii Romanovich Kolyshnitsyn, in GASPI KO, f. 706, op. 1, d. 264, ll. 39–40; d. 267, ll. 8–9, 83–84, 148 and op. 2, d. 5, ll. 13–14, 39, 61.

³⁴ See biographical information in GASPI KO, f. 1281, op. 1, d. 90, ll. 3–4 ob.

³⁵ See Derzhurin's reports in March 1934 and in March and August 1935 in GASPI KO, f. 1281, op. 1, d. 113, ll. 40 ob.–41 and f. 2171, op. 1, d. 3, ll. 8, 13.

³⁶ GASPI KO, f. 1281, op. 1, d. 90, l. 1 ob.

³⁷ GASPI KO, f. 1281, op. 1, d. 90, l. 1 ob.

³⁸ GASPI KO, f. 4639, op. 1, d. 1, ll. 75–75 ob.

³⁹ GASPI KO, f. 4639, op. 1, d. 1, ll. 78–78 ob.

⁴⁰ See meetings of the department's party cell on 3 May, 8 August, 16 November 1938 and 20 January 1939 in GASPI KO, f. 4639, op. 1, d. 2, ll. 43–44, 70 ob.–76, 87 and f. 4639 op. 1, d. 3, ll. 7–8 ob.

⁴¹ GASPI KO, f. 1922, op. 1, d. 1, d. 398, ll. 66–66 ob., 104 ob.–105 ob.

⁴² See, for example, reports to the Schools Department in 1936 by party committees in Kil'mez’, Falenki, Zuevka, and Kumeny districts: GASPI KO, f. 1255, op. 2, d. 383, l. 31; d. 382, l. 28; d. 383, l. 39; d. 383, l. 170. See also resolutions in 1936 of the Buro of party committees, resolutions routinely submitted to the regional party committee, of Verkhovinsk, Biserovo, and Sarapul districts in GASPI KO, f. 1255, op. 2, d. 383, l. 165; d. 382, l. 121; d. 382, l. 36.

⁴³ See reports from 1939 to 1941 from the party committee in Omutninsk district in GASPI KO, f. 3236, op. 1, d. 17, ll. 1–1 ob. and f. 1450, op. 1, d. 221, l. 2 and in Kumeny district in GASPI KO, f. 2202, op. 1, d. 113, ll. 46–47 and op. 2, d. 19, ll. 9–12. These committees might occasionally exculpate themselves and their local departments of education by blaming the regional department of education for shortages of human and material resources. Yet such a ploy nevertheless reinforced the negative. See such efforts in 1937 by the party committees in Slobodskoi, Shurma and Uni districts: GASPI KO, f. 988, op. 1, d. 239, l. 174; f. 1290, op. 1, d. 205, l. 89; and f. 1290, op. 1, d. 223, l. 256.

⁴⁴ Of all district departments of education, whether in or outside the city of Kirov, this department has left the most detailed paper trail.

⁴⁵ GAKO, f. R‐1969, op.1, d. 169, l. 17.

⁴⁶ GAKO, f. R‐1969, op.1, d. 169, l. 16 ob.

⁴⁷ GAKO, f. R‐1969, op. 1, d. 279, ll. 89–99.

⁴⁸ These quarterly and annual reports submitted from early 1937 to early 1941 may be found in chronological order in GAKO, f. R‐1864, op. 2, dd. 324, 419; f. R‐1969, op. 1, dd. 155, 156, 187; and f. R‐1969, op. 2, d. 15a. For reports to the soviet from 1937 to 1941: GAKO, f. R‐1969, op. 1, d. 13, ll. 145–145 ob.; d. 67, ll. 1–1 ob.; d. 177, ll. 5, 61–61 ob., 86, 145; d. 178, l. 137; and d. 187, ll. 27–28. See also GAKO, f. R‐1969, op. 2, d. 10, ll. 2, 8, 14 and op. 3, d. 168, ll. 10–10 ob.

⁴⁹ See reports by the district's head from 1937 to 1941 in GAKO, f. R‐1969, op. 1, d. 51, ll. 1–9 ob., 11 and d. 178, l. 131. For reports to the department's party cell in 1937, see GASPI KO, f. 1447, op. 1, d. 63, ll. 62–62 ob., 68.

⁵⁰ As pointed out in the introduction, Viatka regained its former position in late 1934. This history is not lost on contemporary officials and citizens in Kirov who fear the absorption of their province by the recently created super‐region governed from Nizhnii Novgorod. Considerable subterranean grumbling to that effect erupts at soccer matches in Kirov featuring teams from the two cities.

⁵¹ See the full report in GAKO, f. R‐1864, op. 2, d. 78, ll. 37–44.

⁵² GAKO, f. R‐1864, op. 2, d. 78, ll. 42–42 ob.

⁵³ GAKO, f. R‐1864, op. 2, d. 78, l. 42 ob.

⁵⁴ GAKO, f. R‐1864, op. 2, d. 78, l. 43 ob. Fireworks also erupted over the dispatch to Gorky not of the head of the municipal department but of his deputy.

⁵⁵ See an entire folder of such reports in GAKO, f. R‐1864, op. 2, d. 195, ll. 33–104.

⁵⁶ GAKO, f. R‐1864, op. 2, d. 195, ll. 24–27.

⁵⁷ See the response of the regional department's inspector for physical education, in GAKO, f. R‐1864, op. 2, d. 195, l. 23.

⁵⁸ For Reshetov's order, GAKO, f. R‐1864, op. 2, d. 195, l. 23 and Shirokshin's report, l. 19.

⁵⁹ See reports in GAKO, f. R‐1864, op. 2, d. 80, ll. 234–235; d. 78, ll. 2–3; d. 110, ll. 28–40; d. 115, ll. 41, 60–66; d. 128, ll. 1–57; and d. 185, ll. 77–84. For blame assigned to Narkompros, see especially the department's report on the 1938–39 academic year in GAKO, f. R‐1864, op. 2, d. 324, ll. 420–21.

⁶⁰ See the copy sent to the Verkhovinsk party committee: GASPI KO, f. 2084, op. 2, d. 23, l. 37.

⁶¹ For many such orders in 1937: GAKO, f. R‐2342, op. 1, d. 2.

⁶² GAKO, f. R‐2342, op. 1, d. 81, ll. 96–128, especially l. 105.

⁶³ See directives by Dmitrii Vasil'evich Vaneev, head of the regional department, in February, March, and April 1941 in GAKO, f. R‐1864, op. l/s, d. 226, ll. 8, 19 and f. R‐1970, op. 2, d. 11, ll. 33–34.

⁶⁴ See reports to the regional party committee from February to September 1935 in GASPI KO, f. 1255, op. 1, d. 581, ll. 6–11, 66–68 and f. 1255, op. 1, d. 588, ll. 36–40 ob., 58–61.

⁶⁵ See a series of such reports in 1936 and 1937 in GAKO, f. R‐2342, op. 1, d. 4, ll. 21–22 ob., 42–48, 149–56, 222–24, 348–53; and d. 8, ll. 44–44 ob.; d. 12, ll. 1–22, 126–34; d. 74, ll. 7–30; and d. 77, ll. 3–9. Also: GAKO, f. R‐2342, op. 1, d. 49, ll. 160–166.

⁶⁶ See the department's comments on the 1937–38 curriculum in GAKO, f. R‐2342, op. 1, d. 12, l. 12.

⁶⁷ See reports in GAKO, f. R‐2342, op. 1, d. 12, ll. 36–83, d. 137, ll. 1–, and d. 197, ll. 1–180. It was proud to say that teachers successfully expanded their political knowledge by reading the Short Course.

⁶⁸ See the report on the 1937–38 academic year in GAKO, f. R‐2342, op. 1, d. 12, ll. 36–37, 50, 53 and for the 1939–40 academic year in GAKO, f. R‐2342, op. 1, d. 137, ll. 16 ob., 24–25, 28, 49.

⁶⁹ GAKO, f. R‐2333, op. 1, d. 46, l. 15.

⁷⁰ On the order of December 7, 1935: GAKO, f. R‐2333, op. 1, d. 8, l. 588.

⁷¹ GAKO, f. R‐2342, op. 1, d. 135, ll. 131–35. Narkompros also demanded information on instruction in singing, art, mechanical drawing and physical education, subjects it well knew were poorly taught.

⁷² GAKO, f. R‐2342, op. 1, d. 135, ll. 425–25 ob.

⁷³ For the department's response, GAKO, f. R‐2333, op. 1, d. 46, ll. 24, 30–31. Later that year the department moved rapidly again with a similar report for Narkompros: GAKO, f. R‐2333, op. 1, d. 8, ll. 588–89.

⁷⁴ Hellbeck, Jochen. “Fashioning the Stalinist Soul: The Diary of Stepan Podlubnyi, 1931–9.” In Stalinism: New Directions, edited by Sheila Fitzpatrick. New York: Routledge, 2000: 95. Hellbeck, Jochen. “Self‐Realization in the Stalinist System: Two Soviet Diaries of the 1930s.” In Russian Modernity: Politics, Knowledge, Practices, edited by David L. Hoffmann and Yanni Kotsonis. New York: St Martin's Press, 2000: 228, 234.

⁷⁵ Getty, “Samokritika Rituals”, 65.

⁷⁶ See a recognition of this state of affairs in Narkompros's directives on pedagogical councils of 9 May and 16 December 1939 in Sbornik prikazov i rasporiazhenii po Narkomprosu RSFSR no. 9 (1939): 3–5 and no. 1 (1940): 12–13 and a piggyback directive from Kirov's Regional Department of Education of 5 February 1940 in GAKO, f. R‐1969, op. 1, d. 178, l. 13.

⁷⁷ For treatment of letters from Soviet citizens generally, see Fitzpatrick, Sheila. Stalin's Peasants: Resistance and Survival in the Russian Village after Collectivization. New York: Oxford University Press, 1994: 110, 148–51, 200, 327. See also a number of articles in Fitzpatrick, Sheila and Robert Gellately, eds. Accusatory Practices: Denunciation in Modern European History, 1789–1989. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997. I have discussed briefly teachers’ letters in Stalin's School, 136.

⁷⁸ Holmes, Kremlin and the Schoolhouse, 69–83, 137–40. Holmes, “Magic into Hocus Pocus”, 545–65.

⁷⁹ For an account of Stalin's interest in education and his dictate of educational policy in the 1930s, see Holmes, Stalin's School, 71–75.

⁸⁰ On negative information as a factor see: Lewin, “Bureaucracy and the Stalinist State”, 65; and Harris, The Great Urals, 148, 167, 172. On decimation see: Colton, Timothy J. Moscow: Governing the Socialist Metropolis. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1995: 288–89; Kuromiya, Hiroaki. Freedom and Terror in the Donbas: A Ukrainian–Russian Borderland, 1870s–1990s. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998: 220–23; Harris, The Great Urals, 188–89.

⁸¹ Perhaps access to secret police records in Kirov will reveal an explanation for this amazing development.

⁸² Rowney, Don K. Transition to Technocracy: The Structural Origins of the Soviet Administrative State. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1989.