life the last resources of the teaching staff are used only to produce little 
parrots”, writes another lady-teacher. This seems to be very far from 
then enthusiasm of which Lunatcharsky speaks. V. Rosenberg writes very 
justly about the conditions of the Soviet school during the first 5 years 
of its existence. Ilis book is a very complete investigation of this question. 
He says: “In reality the people's education has gone back several decades 
as compared with its state in pre-revolutionary times”. Even the official 
newspaper ‘Pravda’ proclaimed (though of course foreigners were not to 
know of this) that “the measures taken to abolish illiteracy had only 
increased it’. 
Till now we have been speaking only of the destruction of the primary 
schools. The same process was going on in the second-grade schools. These 
schools were either simply closed, or they were destroyed by a barbaric 
reform. Schools were looked upon as an experimental field upon which all 
kinds of new tentative methods could be tried. Even in boarding-schools 
it became compulsory to have only mixed schools, i. e. for boys and girls 
together; every school was declared to be a “self-governing unit” in which 
the children themselves and the servants formed part of the administration; 
the children were allowed to choose the subjects “they wanted to learn’; 
independence was supposed to be encouraged by abolishing every vestige 
of a systematical program and of outward discipline; “Pupil Committees’ 
were organized, whose business it was to spy on the teachers and control 
their activity, etc. 
In 1918 it was officially proclaimed that only one type of school should 
exist, instead of all the former types: A “Labour School” subdivided into 
1st and 2nd grade schools (5 or 4 years course). This school had to bring 
conformity into the instruction of the primary and secondary schools. In 
reality this resulted only in all the higher classes of secondary schools being 
closed and named “Second grade Schools”. The “labour” principle had to 
be carried out according to a rather complicated system which generally 
was either not carried out at all, or which resulted in a senseloss loss of 
time most harmful for the studies of the children. 
The year 1923 must be looked upon as the turning point in the school 
policy of the Bolshevies. The epoch of high-flown proclamations was passed, 
nothing had remained to be destroyed; the time had come to make the 
schools serve their direct aim — Communism. Towards 1923-24 it seemed 
that circumstances were favourable for the development of the schools in 
Soviet Russia. The wars were at an end, the blockade had been raised, the 
famine, after having carried away millions of victims, did not repeat itself; 
he new economic policy had partly regenerated the economic life of the 
country: the financial administration had some ressources placed at its 
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