Russian Education Thirty Years Later: Back to the USSR?

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Notes

1 In this paper, presentation of the original model, its theoretical approach and comparative-historical methodology are abbreviated. Limited to the space of a journal article we had to omit most of empirical evidence and references on historical data. For the full presentation of the model, see (Karpov & Lisovskaya, 2005).

2 Under the “deep state” we mean the entrenched bureaucracy especially in the security services.

3 By using the term “official Orthodoxy” we acknowledge that Russian Orthodoxy is not fully represented by the officialdom of the Moscow Patriarchate of the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC MP). It is a much broader phenomenon that includes multiple currents within and outside of the ROC MP and different in their theological and political orientations.

4 Strictly speaking, this was not an a priori, deductive model that was tested in an empirical study. Rather, our study took off as an empirical field study of what was happening with Russian schools in the 1990s, after the Soviet framework of their funding and control had collapsed, and before a new framework took a hold. This led us to thinking about the institutional indeterminacy that is intrinsic to revolutionary transformations. It also led us to understand how schools mutate when they try to survive in such an environment, However, at the break of the new millennium, it became increasingly clear that Russian elites and society sought to restore stability, and that the revolution that overthrew communist rule entered a reactionary stage. This led us to thinking about school reforms in the historical context of revolutionary cycles, which had been theorized in comparative sociology and political science. We also sought to establish if and to what extent what we were observing in the Russian case was like other revolutionary cases. As a result, we turned to looking at schools in the context of the French and Russian revolutions. This helped us detect similar patterns of change in the three cases. Looking at the revolutions of the past through the lens of contemporary change in Russia, and at the latter from the historical vantage point of the former proved fruitful and reminded us of Walter Benjamin’s notion of “past” and “the now” (Benjamin, 1999, p. 462) entering into a constellation where both shed light on each other.

5 N. Krupskaia, Lenin’s wife, was responsible for organization of literacy campaigns since 1917. At the Commissariat of Enlightenment (Narkompros), she was head of the Extramural Department (vneshkol'nyi otdel), and since 1920, head of the Department of Political Education in charge for all educational and propagandistic work among adults. In her talk at the commemoration of the tenth anniversary of the 1919 Government Decree on Illiteracy, Krupskaia admitted that “at the time of the civil war not a single paragraph of the decree was realized” (Kenez, 1982, p. 180). See also Eklof (1987).

6 The most recent interpretation of Molotov-Ribbentrop pact given by the Minister of Culture Vladimir Medinskii already shifted from ‘sad necessity’ to ‘diplomatic triumph of the USSR’ (Medinskii, 2019).

7 Kyiv[an] Rus’ was the first East Slavic state founded in the 9th c. long before the Grand Principality of Moscow (Muscovy) - the place of origin for the state of Russia - was established. Kyiv remains the capital of contemporary Ukraine.

8 At a ceremony of awarding the laureates of Russian Historical Society in 2016, Putin said that “the borders of Russia end nowhere and never” (Putin, 2016).