The object of special attention of the Soviet government from its first days was education, directly aimed at the task of educating the “Soviet man”. “The fate of the Russian revolution directly depends on how quickly the mass of teachers will side with the Soviet government,” stated the documents of the VIII Congress of the RCP (b) in 1919. Even earlier, in January 1918, the positions of directors and inspectors of public schools were abolished (by the way, Father V.I. Lenin was such an inspector in his time), and the management of schools was transferred to the Councils of Workers', Peasants' and Soldiers' Deputies. In February of the same year, personnel purges in education began. In July 1918, the All-Russian Teachers' Congress was convened, the participants of which ... condemned his work in “building a socialist school.” The “Declaration on a Unified Labor School” directly highlighted the politicization of the school as the most important principle Soviet pedagogy.
The task of education was to subordinate the interests of the individual to society, or more precisely, to the party. It was argued that only in this way can one guarantee the development of personality in the right direction - collectivism, devotion to the party. Class priorities were proclaimed even in relation to children: people from the worker-peasant environment were openly opposed to the “rotten intelligentsia.” These steps immediately caused rejection among specialists in the field of philosophy of education - S. Gessen, V. Zenkovsky, I. Ilyin, N. Lossky, I. Grevs. V. Zenkovsky noted that “Communist education cannot initially be humane, replacing the universal with class, the spiritual with material,” that the tasks of educating will, character, and internationalism are quite compatible with the interests and needs of the child, his natural inclinations. These teachers immediately stated that the declarations of the Soviet government were a utopia, if not a deliberate lie. It is not surprising that they, along with the philosophers N. Berdyaev, S. Frank, P. Sorokin, were among the passengers on the first “philosophical ship”. True, N. Berdyaev served the cause of education right up to his expulsion; he headed the Free Academy of Spiritual Culture, which he organized in 1919, and was a professor at Moscow University. Many outstanding teachers, who became famous at the beginning of the century, S. Shatsky (1878-1934), M. Pistrak, P. P. Blonsky(1884-1941) continued their activities under Soviet rule and did not refuse to cooperate with it.
One of the grandiose projects of the Soviet government (and not only in the field of education) was cultural revolution. Its first task was set as elimination of illiteracy (educational program). The lack of education of the masses was to the advantage of the Bolsheviks during the revolution and civil war (see the famous episode from the film “Chapaev”, when the people’s commander, without hesitation, answers: “I am for the same International” as Lenin). However, it was impossible to bring a country out of ruin in which 80% of the population could not even read and write. If we evaluate the “cultural revolution” from this point of view, then world history does not know such a success (and probably will never know again). An Extraordinary Commission was also created to combat illiteracy (headed by N. N. Krupskaya). In the 1920-21 academic year, the number of secondary schools doubled compared to pre-war 1914, and the number of literate people already amounted to 61% of the total population. Literacy centers and schools for the illiterate, evening schools for working youth and workers' schools at universities were created throughout the country. A lighter spelling was even adopted. Kindergartens and nurseries for children of workers were widely organized. By the beginning of 1921, there were more than 5 thousand orphanages, in which 200,000 children were brought up, whom the revolution and civil war had made homeless.
In general, by 1922 a flexible and well-thought-out school system had developed: primary (4 years), a basic seven-year comprehensive school, followed by a senior level. Already in the second half of the 20s. school education began to emerge from a state of devastation. The number of educational institutions and students continued to grow. There were experimental demonstration stations (EDS) headed by teachers such as S. T. Shatsky (First Experimental Station), M. Pistrak (Commune School), and P. Blonsky’s monograph “Labor School” became a reference point for Soviet education for a long time. In those same years, the luminary of Soviet pedagogy began his activities. A. S. Makarenko(1888-1939).
However, “excesses” also turned out to be inevitable - thus, the romantic-radicalist sentiments of the first post-revolutionary years were clearly reflected in the theory of the “withering away of the school” ( V. N. Shulgin and etc.). In 1925, at a meeting with the intelligentsia N. Bukharin promised: “We will churn out intellectuals, we will produce them like in a factory.” Similar ideas were expressed by a scientist, poet, publicist A. K. Gastev(1882-1941), who developed “industrial pedagogy” to prepare a “machine generation” capable of working with technology, “infected with the demon of invention.”
In raising a new one, Soviet intelligentsia(instead of expelled, destroyed and continuing to be destroyed) clearly expressed the other side of the cultural revolution. The new intelligentsia was supposed to be, first of all, technically educated, sufficiently professionally prepared for the range of tasks that were outlined (and allowed) by the party, but not beyond its limits. In connection with this, during all the years of Soviet power, the teaching of the humanities found itself in a difficult situation, relating to personality, spirituality and running counter to Bolshevik ideology. Ideological restructuring immediately became one of the most important and difficult tasks of the Soviet government, a front of an irreconcilable struggle. A government decree of 1921 eliminated the autonomy of universities and introduced compulsory study of Marxist-Leninist philosophy as the only acceptable and only correct one. “Marxist teaching is omnipotent, because it is true,” Lenin asserted. “Marxist teaching is true, because it is omnipotent,” people who were more educated than was allowed by the Soviet regime bitterly joked.
Lenin put forward the slogan: “Communism = Soviet power + electrification of the entire country.” In this case, special emphasis was placed on technical education - one that not only “trains you to perform production tasks,” but is also connected with the main task of organizing “communist labor.” The implementation of the “new approach to labor” was expressed in the works of V. I. Lenin “From the destruction of the age-old way of life to the creation of a new one” (1920) and “Tasks of youth unions” (1922), in particular, in this way: “Communist labor in a more strict and in the narrow sense of the word, there is free labor for the benefit of society... not to serve labor service, not to obtain the right to certain products, not according to pre-established standards, but voluntary work, work outside the norm, without expectation of remuneration, work out of habit... to work for the common benefit,... work as a need for a healthy body" (V.I. Lenin, Complete collection of works. vol. 40, p. 315). Many films, literary and artistic works subsequently described how Lenin himself participated in the “communist subbotnik,” and thousands of people claimed that they were the ones who dragged the notorious log with him. (In the same way, dozens of people pretended to be the children of Lieutenant Schmidt, a hero of the civil war - which is wonderfully depicted in “The Golden Calf” by I. Ilf and E. Petrov).
Agreeing with Lenin in many respects, Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya(1869-1939), his faithful comrade-in-arms and wife, immediately warned: “Less drumming and more in-depth work.” In a letter to the organization of pioneers she created, “Mine and Ours” (1932), especially focusing on the cultivation of a communist attitude towards public property, she reminded that “Public does not mean anyone’s,” and any work must be paid.
A special place in Soviet pedagogical thought of the 20-30s. belongs to S. Shatsky, P. Blonsky, A. Makarenko. S. Shatsky’s main work is “Don’t scare the children.” He called for encouraging children to be independent in their studies, using school self-government, and instilling a sense of common cause in school. P. Blonsky is the author of more than 200 works in the field of pedagogy, pedology, philosophy, psychology, organically associated with him, he is also the organizer of the Academy of Social Education. “Love not the school, but the children who come to it... love life,” he taught. The persecution of Blonsky, the silence and oblivion of his name occurred after 1936, when a particularly formidable wave against the intelligentsia began, and then it was crushed pedology, the field of pedagogy related to children.
Having spent most of his teaching activities in children's colonies and the Dzerzhinsky commune, A. S. Makarenko in the second half of the 30s. was essentially removed from teaching practice. He summarized his wealth of experience - in a vivid, figurative form - in the works “ Pedagogical poem», « Flags on the towers», « Book for parents" Makarenko attached great importance labor education. He advised giving children not one-time assignments, but long-term, ongoing tasks (for example, watering flowers, cultivating a certain area of the garden) so that teach children to be responsible. The leading principle of the “Pedagogical Poem,” which was Makarenko’s entire life, is educational impact of the team. Believing in his enormous strength, he was not afraid to give serious assignments, including those related to financial responsibility, even to recent street children and delinquents.
The pedagogical principles of A. S. Makarenko were developed by the largest Soviet teachers of later years, in particular V. A. Sukhomlinsky(1918-1970), who began his teaching career as a 17-year-old youth, and then became famous for the work of the school he organized in the village of Pavlysh in Ukraine. Sukhomlinsky considered the most important task of a teacher to be the revelation of the “life” of each student, the flourishing of his creative individuality. The ways to this are discussed in works published only during the “Khrushchev Thaw” - “The Formation of the Communist Convictions of a Young Man” (1962), “Education of Personality in the Soviet School”, “Education of a Citizen”, “I Give My Heart to Children” (1969).
The famous film “Republic of SHKID”, based on the book of the same name, describes an incident that actually happened to a pupil of A. Makarenko, who entered into an unequal battle with bandits and died in it in order to preserve his hard-earned good name. It is believed that the notorious story of Pavlik Morozov, who betrayed his robber father and was killed by relatives, is also the result of Makarenko’s pedagogy. Coverage of this case, like many others from Soviet history, often rushes from one extreme to another, from praise to angry condemnation. The same film convincingly shows the disgusting nature of people with whom the heroes of the film “Mommy” and the real Pavlik Morozov, who became a collective image, fought. Some will call him a hero, others a traitor, but it is most appropriate to talk about tragedy Pavlik Morozov, the tragic results of Soviet education. Equally controversial Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya, a girl shot by the Nazis, but handed over to them by the residents of the village in which, following orders from the command, she burned huts - “the earth was burning” not only under the feet of the invaders, but also the children of these villages, doomed to death in the bitter cold by an order that was not in that he did not value the lives of his compatriots - which has always been characteristic of Soviet ideology.
Education of the “Soviet man” reflected and conquest Soviet system, and its inhumanity. To the greatest extent, this can be seen firsthand in people of the older generation, who remember both the shock five-year plans and the “great construction projects of communism”, who saw and themselves performed heroic deeds in war and labor, shouted “Long live Comrade Stalin!”, rejoiced on the day of Gagarin’s flight, who sang and danced at the May Day and November demonstrations. Most of them firmly believed that they were building a “bright future” and were ready to endure for this purpose all the hardships that befell them in abundance. But they believed, unlike those who mock them today. And the anger with which the old people with red flags treat the new generation is also brought up by Soviet ideology, the endless search for the enemy.
The feelings with which these people remember the past times are not just longing for an unfulfilled thing that seemed so close, it is also the longing of morally and materially humiliated people for their bygone youth, for their pioneer and Komsomol youth, “labor landings” and songs around the fire . A few years ago, I was struck by an article in the people’s favorite newspaper about how stupid the journalist was when she sang in her youth: “Raise like fires, blue nights, we are pioneers, children of workers.” But I wanted to sing, and no one saw an ideological orientation in the content of this song, and children raised on wonderful books - “Military Secret”, “Timur and His Team” by Arkady Gaidar, “Vasek Trubachev and His Comrades” by N. Oseev, good , funny tales about Moidodyr (K. Chukovsky) and Old Man Hottabych (L. Lagin), they saw in Malchish-Kibalchish, first of all, not a fighter against the rather conventional “bourgeois”, but an example of perseverance, courage, loyalty, friendship, optimism.
Soviet schoolchildren dreamed of aviation, and later of space flights; they wanted to be scientists, doctors, and teachers. If today's children are left to the streets, then in all the years of Soviet power, starting from the 30s, there were pioneer palaces with many clubs, stations for young technicians and naturalists, and children's railways. All this was available to children from families of any income, not to mention cinemas, zoos, free libraries and textbooks. During the holidays, children received big discounts or even free trips to cultural capitals and vacationed in pioneer camps. True, such a vacation suffered from a typically Soviet over-organization, a rigid ideological and disciplinary approach, sometimes reaching the point of absurdity (remember the wonderful film “Welcome, or No Entry to Outsiders”).
It was very difficult for schoolchildren who dared to have their own opinion, to achieve something on their own; for the slightest suspicion of ideological unreliability they could be expelled from the university, the Komsomol, the party, or fired from their jobs. Students even at the Faculty of Philosophy of Moscow State University were obliged to answer the question: “What is our party’s position?” answer “Like a rock” - in the words of Stalin from the newspaper Pravda. For some time, they practiced questioning one randomly selected student during the exam, whose grade was given to the whole group. Pursuing the goal of increasing responsibility and forcing everyone to study (cram!), this experiment was fully consistent with the spirit of Soviet education, where there was no place for discussion, dialogue, or exchange of opinions.
The severe test of Soviet education was The Great Patriotic War, in which a heroic victory was won. The entire people rose up to fight the invaders. Red Army soldiers, tied with grenades, threw themselves under fascist tanks, rammed enemy planes, even old people and children fought. The inflexibility of the Soviet people and their confidence in victory is also evidenced by the fact that even during the Second World War, schooling did not stop, boarding schools, Nakhimov and Suvorov schools were opened, and in 1943 the Academy of Pedagogical Sciences of the RSFSR was created.
After the war, in the 1945-50s, it was possible to consistently move to universal 7-8-10 year education. By the end of the Second World War, the five-point grading scale was restored (previously abolished as “violating equality”), final exams were introduced, as well as the awarding of gold and silver medals to distinguished students. At the same time, “socialist competition” in school, which was carried over from production and forced inflated grades, was abolished, and in 1954, the unjustified separate education of boys and girls was abolished.
The fruits of Soviet education turned out to be especially abundant during the years of the “Khrushchev Thaw,” even despite numerous ill-conceived reforms. We had the best technical and musical education in the world, we were “ahead of the rest” not only in space flights, but also in ballet and sports. The “Soviet character” was reflected in how the figure skater returned to the Olympic podium after the most difficult trials Irina Rodnina(her tears during the performance of the USSR Anthem shocked the whole world), in the victories of Soviet athletes, weightlifters, boxers, and hockey players.
Once (already during the years of “stagnation”), Soviet hockey players, who had already secured gold medals, were given instructions (from the CPSU Central Committee) to play a draw with our “friends-rivals” from Czechoslovakia, so that they would get ahead of the “bourgeois” teams of Sweden and Canada. The legendary coach A. Tarasov, having assembled the team, said simply: “Play as you please.” It turned out 7:1 in favor of the USSR, and the famous coach was fired. Years earlier (1952), participating in the Olympics for the first time, the inexperienced USSR national football team, having reached the final and losing 1:5 to the strongest team of Yugoslavia 15 minutes before the end, managed to equalize the score using only the “Soviet character”. Having lost the next day in a replay (1:3), the national team and the CDKA team that formed its basis were disbanded for defeat by our ideological enemy - the views of the President of the SFRY J. Tito on socialism differed from Stalin’s. And already at the next (1956) Olympics, USSR football players made a lap of honor, as in Paris in 1960, after the European Championship.
After the famous (1973) series of hockey matches between the USSR and Canada, the Canadian star W. Gretzky came to us and came to our training session. A. Tarasov invited him to take part in it: lift a barbell while standing on skates. When the guest begged for mercy, the coach said: “Yes, Wayne, you wouldn’t be able to play for the USSR national team” - “But why?” - “Because you are not a Komsomol member.”
In the years stagnation, associated with the name of L. Brezhnev (70s - early 80s), the Soviet spirit began to disappear, stagnation also captured education. Everywhere in universities the “works” of Brezhnev were studied, who was declared the main hero in all the achievements of the Soviet people. People began to think about a lot of things - about the senseless war of the USSR in Afghanistan, about rising prices and the disappearance of essential goods, and collapsed ideology. The command-administrative system has exhausted itself. However, the perestroika announced by Gorbachev turned out to be a “catastrophe” for education as well. The level and prestige of education itself has dropped sharply. The huge number of students in countless universities today can hardly please us - education needs both financial support from the state and conceptual changes that are adequate to the dynamics of the modern world and the difficult state of affairs in Russia.
soviet family raising children
Since under socialism, family problems are primarily problems solved by the mother, and not by the father, most studies in Soviet psychology devoted to the family reflect the characteristics of the relationship between mother and child. The reasons for the child’s socialization difficulties are seen in the distortion of the family structure (incomplete family), in the abnormal parenting styles that the mother uses. The main cause of childhood neuroses is the perverted role structure of the family: the mother in such a family is too “courageous”, not sufficiently responsive and empathic, but demanding and categorical. If the father is soft, vulnerable and unable to control the situation, the child becomes a scapegoat for the mother.
In relation to duty and family, the husband is “head and hands”, and the wife is only “chest and heart”. In a word, the wife is inferior to her husband in every way.
The wife is completely equal to her husband in terms of universal human rights, or by nature, just as the Father and the Son in the Divine nature are persons of equal strength and equal share. The wife is equal to her husband in more spiritual and Christian rights.
Moral weakness struck the Soviet man. The greater the differences in the educational level of the wife and husband (especially if the wife has an advantage), the greater the chance that the marriage will end in divorce.
In Russia at the end of the 19th century. There are three family models:
- 1) traditional wealthy family, rural and urban (“big family”);
- 2) nuclear families of the intelligentsia;
- 3) a free egalitarian version of the family.
After the revolution of 1917, the legal model of marriage in the RSFSR was close to the model of free love. But family is not marriage; it presupposes children. The sharp increase in the number of divorces has led to the fact that women find themselves without a livelihood. Due to the ease of the divorce procedure, all responsibilities for maintaining and raising children were transferred to the woman. The so-called social motherhood was promoted, which led to the exaltation of the role of women, and the man was given a secondary role. A man is the main subject of the socialization of children in a normal family, and a woman is assigned a natural function - protection, love, care.
The Soviet state transferred family responsibility to the woman and gave birth to an anomalous pagan family, relying on the natural function of women in the family and elevating this function to a legal norm. Then an educational function was added to it. After collectivization, the Orthodox family was destroyed and the number of street children increased. The state responded to this with a campaign to encourage parental responsibilities. The joys of motherhood for a woman were extolled. By resolution of the Central Executive Committee and the Council of People's Commissars of June 27, 1936, abortions were prohibited. This resolution emphasized the role of the mother not only in reproduction, but also in raising children. The father was mentioned only in connection with the payment of alimony. The role of women both in the economy and in the family has become the main one. In the USSR Constitution of 1936, family problems were kept silent, but the role of motherhood was emphasized.
During the war years, after the mass death of men, the role of women increased even more. The Family Law of 1944 stated that society allowed a woman to raise children alone with the help of the state. And in the legislation of 1968, the family is already considered as a subject of the socialization of children. But the central role of women in the family is firmly established.
It is to the Brezhnev era that the final overcoming of revolutionary lawlessness and the formation of the Soviet type of family should be attributed. The Brezhnev constitution assigned women the roles of worker, mother, educator of their children and housewife. But at this time, a conflict arises in the public consciousness between the Soviet family model and the egalitarian model. In my opinion, the egalitarian model, where family functions are distributed between a woman, a man and a child (children), is transitional. Its emergence is due to the growing economic independence of the family from the totalitarian state, the increasing economic, social and political role of men, as well as the increasing number of two-parent families.
In the 1993 Constitution, this transitional model of the family was enshrined as normative: gender equality and equal responsibility of women and men were proclaimed. A man and a woman (but not yet mother and father - let's think about the author's terminology!) have equal rights and responsibilities in the family: “In the Russian Federation... state support for the family, motherhood, fatherhood and childhood is provided.”
Until 1993, all official texts spoke only about equality of rights of parents, but did not speak about equality of responsibilities. In particular, in Article 35 of the 1977 USSR Constitution one can only read about “creating conditions allowing a woman to combine work with motherhood.”
The transition to a normal family model in Russia will occur only when, along with equality of rights, responsibility for the upbringing and maintenance of children falls on the father while preserving other family responsibilities for the mother and children. A democratic family presupposes equality of rights, a normal family presupposes differences in responsibility, which should fall primarily on the father. However, in the modern Russian family, a woman wants (and is forced by force of circumstances) to rule undividedly and completely. A man is not able to provide for his family, bear responsibility for it and, accordingly, be a role model.
Meanwhile, today Russian children expect their father to fulfill his traditional function. According to empirical studies, most boys and half of girls pay attention to their father’s professional success, earnings, and family support. Meanwhile, none of the mother’s children singles out these areas of activity: the father must provide for the family. Because mothers demand fathers help with housework (even to the point of causing scandals in front of their children), children claim that fathers pay little attention to housework. Doing housework is the mother's main job, according to the children. And at the same time, boys show great affection for their mother, they are very afraid of her coldness, inattention, and alienation from their mother. Boys make more demands on their mother (they do not tolerate her negative habits), and girls make more demands on their father; they develop an ideal image of their father. It is typical that children have a stronger emotional connection with their mother; they know her personal characteristics better; There are more statements and characteristics about the mother than about the father; she is perceived as a more significant member of the family.
Thus, the real model of the modern Russian family is, as it were, the opposite of the Protestant model: the mother is responsible for the family, she dominates the family, and she is more emotionally close to the children. A man is “thrown out” of family relationships and does not live up to the expectations of his wife and children. The only way left for him to realize himself as a husband and father is to fight for men’s rights and “emancipation,” just as feminists fought and are fighting for equal rights with men. Only the field of struggle is not the business world, but the family. Hence the emergence of societies of single men (raising children without a wife), etc.
Meanwhile, the real solution to the issue is different: it is necessary to create social conditions for the manifestation of male activity outside the family, so that he can bear the main legal responsibility for the family, represent and protect its interests externally, and can ensure its economic well-being and social advancement of family members.
Only the father is able to shape the child’s ability to take initiative and resist group pressure. The more a child is attached to his mother (compared to his father), the less actively he can resist the aggression of others. The less a child is attached to his father, the lower the child’s self-esteem, the less importance he attaches to spiritual and social values, compared to material and individualistic ones.
Soviet childhood... Cursed and glorified, Soviet childhood - each generation has its own. So we, representatives of the 70s and early 80s, had our own childhood, leaving as memories of ourselves the remnants of a common upbringing.
All of us, Soviet guys, regardless of nationality, were raised on the same values. This happened not only thanks to our parents - the entire surrounding reality instilled in us the “necessary” concepts of what is good and what is bad.
My toys don't make noise...
In our infancy we were influenced by the educational theories of the American Doctor Spock, assimilated by our mothers mixed with excerpts from articles in the Encyclopedia of Household Economics. It is to these sources of information that we owe the fact that we were dipped in a bath in diapers, given water while breastfeeding, and by the age of one year we were potty trained. From early childhood, rattles, tumblers and other toys taught us to see beauty in simple forms and dim colors.
The dolls with which we played at being daughters and mothers—simple Soviet and GDR beauties with closing eyes—taught us unconditional love for “children,” regardless of their external and other qualities. The plastic crocodile Gena, who was impossible to play with because his yellow eyes were constantly falling out, instilled in us tolerance for other people's shortcomings. A pedal Moskvich for 25 rubles, which smelled like a real car and reached speeds of up to 8 km/h, and, as a rule, did not belong to us, instilled in us the ability to cope with the destructive feeling of envy.
Man is a collective being
In kindergarten we went through the preliminary stage of the formation of a Soviet person. Here the teachers, who shoveled semolina porridge with large spoons into small children's mouths, taught us to respect brute force - but almost all Soviet children learned to eat through “I can’t”!
Exemplary punishments for children who had misbehaved (for example, not having time to go to the potty) inspired us that discipline is more valuable than human dignity.
Of course, this was not the case everywhere! Among the teachers there were truly kind women; with them, a warm atmosphere reigned in the groups, and their charges learned from an early age to love social life. It was easier for good teachers to teach children to love the immortal leader of the world proletariat, whom most met here in the garden. We were read stories about Lenin, we learned poems about him, for example, these:
We always remember Lenin
And we think about him.
We are his birthday
We consider it the best day!
Then we went to school. The first person we met there was again V.I. Lenin, or rather, his statue in the form of a bust. “School is serious!” – as if he reminded us with his stern gaze. We opened the primer - and on the first page we saw the preface: “You will learn to read and write, for the first time you will write the words that are dearest and closest to all of us: mother, Motherland, Lenin...”. The name of the leader organically entered our consciousness, we wanted to be Octoberists, we liked to wear stars with a portrait of Vladimir Ilyich, in which he was “small, with a curly head.” And then we were accepted into the pioneers.
It's scary to think, but we took an oath. In front of our comrades, we solemnly promised to “ardently love our Motherland, live, study and fight, as the great Lenin bequeathed, as the Communist Party teaches.” We shouted, “Always ready!” without even thinking about what exactly we were being called to be prepared for. We wore red ties, the excellent students were carefully ironed, and the poor students and hooligans were disrespectfully wrinkled. We had pioneer meetings where someone was always reprimanded for something, bringing them to tears. Our duty was to help struggling students, take care of veterans, and collect waste paper and scrap metal. We took part in subbotniks, cleaned the classroom and cafeteria according to a schedule, learned how to run a household and “hold a hammer in our hands” during labor lessons, or even worked on collective farms, because it was labor that was supposed to forge us into communists.
Work must be alternated with rest: the Communist Party took care of this too. Most of us spent the summer months in pioneer camps, vouchers to which were given to our parents at their place of work. Most often these were camps in the nearest suburbs. Only children of employees of large enterprises had the good fortune to relax on the Black Sea or Azov coasts. The most famous pioneer camp, of course, was “Artek”, where everything was “the very best”. Sometimes tickets to it went to excellent students and winners of Olympiads. In the Pioneer camps, we woke up to the sound of a bugle, did morning exercises, walked in formation, sang the Pioneer anthem “Raise with fires, blue nights...”, and fell in love, of course.
And then there was the Komsomol, whose ranks many representatives of our generation never had time to join. True, the Komsomol organization was open only to the most worthy young personalities. The Komsomol badge on the chest meant the final parting with childhood.
Everything in a person should be perfect
The Soviet weaving and clothing industry has done a lot for our education. From an early age we were dressed in coats and fur coats, in which it was difficult to move our arms. Leggings tucked into felt boots always hurt, but they taught us to put up with the inconvenience. My tights always slipped and wrinkled at my knees. Particularly neat girls pulled them up at every break, while the rest walked as they were. School uniforms for girls were made of pure wool. Many did not like it for the composition of the fabric and for the combination of colors, inherited from the pre-revolutionary gymnasium uniform, but still it had a peculiar charm.
Collars and cuffs had to be altered almost every day, and this taught our mothers, and then ourselves, to quickly cope with a needle and thread. The dark blue uniform for boys was made of some immortal semi-synthetic fabric. What tests did the Soviet boys subject her to! They did not look very elegant in it, but there was an element of education in it: in a man, appearance is not the main thing.
Time for business, time for fun
It was not customary for self-respecting Soviet schoolchildren to idle around. Many of us studied at music and art schools, and were seriously involved in sports. Nevertheless, there was always enough time for games and children's entertainment. The happiest hours of our childhood passed in the yard. Here we played “Cossacks-robbers”, “war games”, where some were “ours” and others were “fascists”, ball games - “Square”, “Dodgeball”, “Edible-Inedible” and others.
Overall, we were quite athletic and resilient. Soviet girls could spend hours jumping in a rubber band, and boys could do bungee jumping, or practice on horizontal bars and uneven bars. Boys of a hooligan type also had less harmless entertainment - they shot with slingshots, made homemade “bombs” and threw plastic bags of water from windows. But, probably, the most popular “yard” activity for boys was playing “knives”.
About our daily bread
We were very independent compared to our own children. At the age of 7-8, going on mother’s errand for bread, milk or kvass was something we took for granted. Among other things, sometimes we were assigned to hand over glass containers, after which many of us had some pocket change. What could it be spent on? Of course, for soda from a completely unhygienic machine or for ice cream. The choice of the latter was small: ice cream for 48 kopecks, milk in a waffle cup and fruit in a paper cup, popsicle, “Gourmand” and a briquette on waffles. Soviet ice cream was incredibly tasty!
Of particular value to us was chewing gum, which, like many other things, was a scarce product. Before the fall of the Iron Curtain, this was our Soviet gum - strawberry, mint or coffee. Imported chewing gum with inserts appeared a little later.
About spiritual food
It is customary to call Soviet times unspiritual, but we, Soviet children, did not feel this. On the contrary, we grew up on literature, cinema, music, inspired by the talent of authors and their concern for our moral education. Of course, we are not talking about opportunistic works, of which there were also many, but about those that were created with genuine love for children. These are cartoons about Winnie the Pooh, Carlson and Mowgli, the cult “Hedgehog in the Fog”, the wonderful “Mitten” and the unforgettable “Kuzya the Brownie”, the films “The Adventures of Buratino”, “The Adventures of Electronics”, “Guest from the Future”, “Scarecrow” and many other. We were also raised by deep, thought-provoking films for adults, because Soviet children were not subject to age restrictions.
The magazines “Murzilka”, “Funny Pictures”, “Pioneer”, “Young Naturalist” and “Young Technician” were published for us. We loved to read! Our minds were dominated by the heroes of the stories of V. Krapivin, V. Kataev, V. Oseva, and strange characters from the poems of D. Kharms and Y. Moritz. We listened to amazingly interesting musical performances about Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves, about Alice in Wonderland, about Pippi Longstocking, in which we recognized the voices of the most popular actors and musicians. Perhaps, the efforts of all these people filled our Soviet childhood with happiness. It was thanks to them that we believed in goodness and justice, and this is worth a lot.
When we talk about the fact that along with old Russia, the cultural and historical environment that had been created over centuries was destroyed, then for the majority these are empty words. But let’s take such an important area of human life as education. What was it like in Russian Soviet families? Yes, there was essentially no upbringing. Parents wanted their children to receive something that they themselves did not receive. Toys, candy, less work and responsibility, etc. By the way, the current generation of parents is exactly the same. There is no ideal in the Russian family, but what traits would they actually like to see in their children?
Although upbringing in a family is the basis for the formation of a person. Let's say, the same yogis, as soon as their child turns two years old, they ask him to talk about himself: “I am brave.” Courage for such a child is his identity, and he grows up to be a daredevil.
Let's take pre-revolutionary Russia. In the USSR there was such a film “White Poodle”, according to Kuprin. It shows a terribly capricious little barchuk, who keeps shouting: “I want a dog, I want a dog.” And parents, nannies and others run around, fulfilling his requests. Parents running around a child and pleasing him, this is just from my childhood, and from today. But Russian nobles or merchants had a completely different upbringing.
The children of nobles were brought up very “hard”. They knew their place, and then it was not the parents who were for the children, but the children who were for the parents. But that’s not even the main thing. The main thing that was instilled was a sense of self-esteem and self-respect. No one was prepared for a career, no one was prepared for fawning and other such things, they were prepared for the main thing: you should not lose “your face” under any circumstances. You must live and die as a decent person. This was the dominant requirement.
Both boys and girls were given extensive daily physical activity, and the food was simple. Children were taught respect for other people, they called all their servants “Va” (this, however, is already the 19th century, but it’s closer to us). They taught us to endure pain, taught us to overcome despondency, and under no circumstances lose heart. Girls were tempered in the same way as boys. They were prepared for independence.
The children of the noble class understood perfectly well that “the main luxury in human life is the luxury of communication.” Hence all these balls, social receptions, visits to each other. Children were taught to give up the best place at the table to another person, children were taught to listen to their interlocutor, not to interrupt, etc.
A nobleman had to be courageous, unpretentious, ready for anything; he had to be courteous to his superiors, friendly to his equals, and generous to his inferiors. That is why, for example, not a single one of the Decembrists became a drunkard or succumbed to alcohol in exile; these people respected themselves. That is why Russian emigrants, after the Civil War, again fell into disrepair, but managed to feed themselves and their children, and their children, almost without exception, went “into the public eye.”
Education was no worse in merchant families, Domostroy reigned there, children learned to obey, but they were early taught to do business and the ability to manage other people. And no squealing: “I want a dog.”
In a peasant environment, no special education was required. There, life itself brought me up in such a way that it couldn’t be better. Physical labor was intense, but feasible. After all, the peasants knew very well how to burden children, and a person over 21 years of age was considered an adult. The peasant son became the master very early; almost everyone sought to separate from their father. And the owner on earth, he is the leader for his family, and protection, and court, and teacher.
The situation with education was much worse among the bourgeois and proletarians. But these categories did not constitute the majority before the revolution. But after the revolution, it was they who began to “call the tune.” Back in the 20s, Bolshevik ideologists were faced with the fact that in cities “liberated” from the nobles and bourgeoisie, petty-bourgeois morals and tastes began to flourish. The Bolsheviks began a stubborn struggle against the petty bourgeoisie and fought against it until... they themselves became petty bourgeois.
For all the authorities, who came from peasants and proletarians, could not jump above their heads. Actually, the entire elite of the 70s, including Brezhnev, Suslov and most of the other “members,” are not high-flying birds, they are philistines in their tastes and views.
Well, the proletariat, no matter how much it was educated, it remained the same as it was. And his tastes - mixing vodka with port - left their mark on the entire Soviet society.
The Bolsheviks were naive in that they believed that a person who had mastered reading the articles of Vladimir Lenin, who was born in a society where there is no exploitation of man by man, who received a ten-year and higher education in the USSR, would acquire some special socialist qualities. Another thing is that people did receive some kind of education. But with raising children, it was a disaster. My parents, like the parents of my peers, were born before the war. And they sipped on the full poverty program. We lived from hand to mouth. They often dressed in cast-offs from the shoulders of their older sisters and brothers. This was their program - their children should have received what they did not receive.
I am proud of my parents, they are wonderful, but I don’t dare say that I was raised somehow. Everything was done in “working order”. I can say something else: as soon as some money appeared in the family, and this was closer to the mid-70s, my needs became almost the main ones. I remember one of my birthdays, there was so much: chocolate cake, truffles, marshmallows, a bunch of all kinds of chocolates, this banquet ended for me with my liver not being able to stand it, and at night I felt unwell.
In the 70s, however, all sorts of educational methods according to Dr. Spock became popular, there was a Nikitin family in which education for some reason was considered an ideal, that is, problems with education began to be somehow recognized in the USSR, but then 1991 struck, and we all got wild capitalism. The mug of a Soviet tradesman, the mug of a half-criminal, became decisive. The result was something much worse than it was before 1917. Already in the USSR, cronyism dominated almost everything, and it is quite natural that in the current Russian Federation, connections already decide everything. And this is the most reliable indicator of the extremely low culture of society.
Decent children grew up in decent Soviet families. But these grown children could not save their country, because they were not accustomed to independent social actions. And they failed to stand up for themselves; they gave their property into the hands of thieves and scum of all levels and nationalities. They gave it up without resistance, this is about the kind of people the Soviet state raised. And this state brought up, first of all, obedient and submissive people. Soviet citizens had to perform heroic deeds, but only when the state needed it.
As they said under Comrade Stalin: “When the homeland needs it, anyone will become a hero.”
I went to a Soviet school, and there was nothing bad there. The slogan “all the best for children” was not an empty phrase. I remember that we received milk for free. Our parents could well have provided us with milk, but this attitude remains from the recent past - to give children milk so that they get protein.
We didn’t like fresh, boiled milk with foam, of course, but we liked the fact that some lesson always ended five minutes earlier, and we walked in formation to the dining room. And there they slowly began to play pranks.
By November 7, all of us en masse, without asking anyone’s consent, were accepted into the October ranks. We proudly hung badges, “stars”, where little Lenin was depicted, curly-haired, looking like an angel. During the reception in October, we were given an eclair and a glass of cocoa. It was cool. And I remembered this and thought - what will they give us when we join the pioneers? If we now have an eclair each.
My first teacher's name was Anna Semyonovna. She was a lonely woman who loved her job and loved us. There is always rivalry among teachers; Anna Semyonovna was not a very good teacher in terms of teaching skills. Olga Petrovna and Lidia Maksimovna taught much more successfully, their children were more literate and had better math. But neither then nor now would I change Anna Semyonovna for anyone. She became like family to us. Like any experienced teacher, like any woman, she was out of sorts, made scandals, was unfair to us, but she loved us, and we felt it.
One day, somehow embarrassed and even irritated, she showed us a photo in which she was with Krupskaya. I was shocked. It turned out that this woman could see Lenin himself! This ordinary Anna Semyonovna of ours could touch Lenin himself! This was not so, of course, the photograph dates back to the mid-30s, as I now understand.
In the photo I didn’t like Krupskaya, her photographs always made me sad for some reason, nor Anna Semyonovna herself, she was a big-faced girl in a Budenovka. According to my ideas at that time, mature Anna Semyonovna was much nicer.
Anna Semyonovna's hobby was singing lessons. She somehow rested her soul at this time. In addition, she brought an accordion from home, which no teacher could boast of. And so Anna Semyonovna played the accordion, and we sang. For some reason, it seems to me that we sang the same song all the time, apparently she wanted to bring our performance to perfection.
This song was about a red partisan buried under a willow bush. “There lies a buried red partisan.” And when we got to this place, tears flowed from my eyes, I felt so sorry for the red partisan. And one day, in order not to show my tears to the teacher, I turned away and sat sideways. Anna Semyonovna was not in a good mood that day, and regarded my action as hooliganism. And here it makes no sense to ask what was so bad about my action. Because since a woman is not in the spirit, then logic has nothing to do with it. The teacher suddenly, in the midst of my suffering over the Red partisans, grabbed me by the scruff of the neck and took me out of the classroom.
I am stunned by this absolute injustice, the school is creepy and empty in the corridors, and here comes our director. This was a real “Stalinist director”, such people were almost common at that time. Not a director, but a handsome man! A historian, a front-line soldier, huge, with glasses, with a booming voice, his habits resembled the actors in Stalin’s films who played professors. And so he comes up to me, I shrink in horror, and he says some kind words, smiles, gently takes me by the hand and introduces me to the class. And he says: “Anna Semyonovna, put this young man in his place.” The teacher glared angrily in my direction, but didn’t bother me again that day.
But she was still wonderful.
I also remember how we chose leaders in the class. The headman, the leaders, and so on. There were a lot of positions. The elections were absolutely democratic by Soviet standards. Anna Semyonovna proposed a candidate, after which we unanimously voted for this comrade. And so she handed out almost all the positions and then she remembered me. And she said that she was proposing to make me a standard bearer (by the way, we didn’t have any banner, but we had a position). The teacher said that this must be a worthy boy. And I was chosen as a standard bearer. I remember how I ran home and began to tell in complete delight that now I was not just anyone, but a standard bearer. My parents were happy for me, but somehow artificially, almost indifferently. This is how I move through life with Anna Semyonovna’s light hand. Some people get positions where there is power and money, and I am the standard bearer.
When people in the Russian Federation began to remember the good experience of the USSR in patriotic education, for some reason they reduced it all to history and social studies textbooks. In fact, in the USSR the entire system worked to educate Soviet people. In the 20s and 30s, anyone who disagreed with this system was discriminated against in every possible way or simply physically destroyed. Then, when there were no competitors within the state in the field of education, a huge mechanism still worked in this direction. But most importantly, during my childhood, people lived around me who were sure that there could be no other life. That the USSR is as inevitable as day changing to night, like the sun rising.
This was a powerful suggestion from the state, but it was also a real installation in the minds of ordinary people.
Let's say the same internationalist education. I don’t remember anyone personally working with me on this topic, someone explaining something to me, but it was simply diffused in the atmosphere of the then USSR. Once a lesson was taught by a pioneer leader, and she, like any girl, believed and waited for a miracle (we won’t specify which one). And so she told us that we should write down our wishes in a notebook. This was already in the fifth or sixth grade. And we, captured by her enthusiasm and belief that miracles happen, began to write. My most important wish was that they would buy me real hockey skates. But then I thought, what if my wish really comes true? I’ll be wearing skates, but there’s a war going on in Vietnam. After a short internal struggle, I wrote that my main desire was for the war in Vietnam to end. I was sad then that I wouldn’t get the skates, but it’s nice to remember it now.
I think that Russian nationalists subsequently grew up from such idealistic boys.
My grandfather Ivan Petrovich aroused my interest in Russian history. He retold to me pre-revolutionary legends about Peter I and Suvorov. I have never seen such stories anywhere else. How the boyars started a conspiracy against Peter, and he was aware of how he began to throw them out of the window one after another into the hands of his guards.
I was captivated by my grandfather’s emotions, I felt how he admired Peter and Suvorov. All human development begins with other people's emotions. Another thing is that we don't often realize that our current views began with someone else's emotions. If a person is so captivated by this, does that mean there is something in it? And we begin to think about THIS from case to case, and sometimes these other people’s emotions as a result give birth to our FAITH.
My grandfather was interested in the history of Russia. I have already written that for my grandfather there was no USSR, but only Russia. Something happened to it in 1917, but it was still Russia. And no Red partisans could be heroes for him, because he really saw them as these Reds during the Civil War.
This is a curious “mind game” when the “elephant” is not noticed, and when my grandfather “did not notice the USSR” is not something peculiar only to a specific person or a specific era. So the inhabitants of Muscovite Rus' did not see the empire of Peter I at point-blank range. And many current citizens of the Russian Federation (I am afraid that the majority, as they lived in the USSR, still live in it).
Great things cannot be invented from small things. Even as a child, I felt that when dealing with Russia, I was facing something grandiose. Peter I, for all my current negative attitude towards this man, was an amazing figure. He was, by the way, an absolute product of Moscow Rus'. With her passionarity and her quests. Despite the external lethargy of Muscovite Rus', despite all the leisurely pace of life, the people were going through enormous internal work, internal self-determination, which sometimes resulted in incomprehensible conflicts like the uprising of Stepan Razin, when the Cossack wanted to impose the Cossack form of life on the country - self-government. Why does a rich man like Razin need this? Moreover, he did not aim to become a king. An even stranger story is the schism, when the country essentially fell apart into two parts due to some corrections in church books and rules. But in Rus' the formal side has never been important.
And here is Peter. He is a man of Muscovite Rus' down to the last detail. He built palaces, but could not sleep in them because the ceilings were too high. Only the Tsar of Muscovite Rus' could be a turner and carpenter, shipbuilder and artilleryman. Only the Tsar of Muscovite Rus' could drink with ordinary sailors. And when he arrived in Paris, he drank with retired French soldiers in the Invalides.
For for the Tsar of Muscovite Rus', unlike his eastern and western “colleagues,” there was no gap between him and the common man. How there was no gap between the Moscow nobility, soldiers and peasants. And for some reason these purely Moscow habits are mistaken for European behavior. Well, imagine Louis XYI with an ax and in a tavern with commoners? Another question is that with his reforms Peter took the country away from what was dear to him. From the democracy of Moscow Rus'. Europe went from feudalism to democracy, Russia after Peter went from democratic conciliarity to ferocious feudalism.
But Peter was a person!
Or Suvorov! What a giant! From a young age, this man understood that he was head and shoulders above the rest, for he was very smart and insightful, but again, what democracy and simplicity! He was a knight. When, after the Italian campaign and Suvorov’s victories, the young Russian and Austrian generals decided that it was easy to beat the French, they began to weave intrigues against Suvorov, but he understood how it would end. He knew that the French victories were natural. Suvorov is recalled. And he writes with anguish and pain: “They will kill them without me.” For him, nothing was higher than military brotherhood.
After my grandfather’s stories, I began to read history textbooks for grades 4, 5, 6. And I liked them. Although now I understand that both in those times and in modern times, when writing textbooks, they make a very big mistake. They are simply “torn off” from university textbooks. A textbook of stories on the history of the USSR for 4th grade, for example, could easily have been read before the 1905 revolution, and then the history of the CPSU began in kind.
I remember how furious Anna Semyonovna was. We started studying the paragraph about revolutionaries, but no one understood anything except the first phrase: “The revolutionaries were sitting in a small room...”
But the system of education and upbringing in the USSR began to fail. Somehow everything was fine, and then suddenly it collapsed! Somewhere in the mid-70s, the unshakable truths began to crack. I remember how in the 8th grade we were taken to the cinema to watch a new film about the revolution and Lenin. The hall was filled with students of different ages from five-year students to tenth graders. And no one watched the film. No one was interested. No, I was just interested, by this time my love for Lenin was just flaring up, but most people were very bored. Everyone was noisy, chatting, pushing. And then it came to a stage when the damned Left Socialist Revolutionaries began their rebellion. And the movie Lenin prepares for the worst, he pulls out a desk drawer, takes out a pistol and jerks the bolt or something like that. “Oh-oh-oh, what!” - the audience roared mockingly. My heart then sank with pain for my beloved Ilyich.
In Lenin, like in many great people, there was actually a lot of caricature. This gait of his, these hands behind his vest, the squinting of his half-crazy eyes. In some newsreels he looks like Charlie Chaplin. And this burr of his, antics. I mean both the newsreel and the acting. And if for older generations Lenin was a shrine, then by the time of my youth the proletarian youth treated him with indifference or with irony. For some reason, in our village they attached the nickname “Blatnoy Volodka” to him. Poisonous jokes about Lenin appeared. Were they invented by enemies? But the masses retold them with pleasure.
More precisely, the attitude towards Lenin was ambivalent. On the one hand, few people doubted that he defended the interests of workers and was honest; at that time they still thought that he was modest in everyday life. And Lenin served as an ideal figure to denounce the then communist leaders who had become out of touch with the masses. On the other hand, among the masses, i.e. Among this mixture of proletarians and philistines, Lenin passed by almost like a fool. Kremlin dreamer.
But in the Russian sky in the late 60s and early 70s, another star rose - Stalin! His nominees were at the highest power; the generation of front-line soldiers, whose youth fell in the late thirties and early forties, was at its very core, and those who were born before the war, like my parents, forgot about their poor and hungry childhood, but remembered the terrible era, only how great.
The fact is that Stalin had a “great style.” Those who lived with him remembered their feeling of being part of something grandiose. They wrote some very positive stories about Stalin. About his drop-dead modesty, about how unpretentious he was in everyday life. I even heard one of my neighbors talk about how Stalin himself personally stood at the “crossing” in our village with a pistol in his hands and told the soldiers that he would shoot anyone who retreated. That's why they didn't give up Moscow. Rave? But I heard it with my own ears.
Stalin became a significant figure for me in childhood, after watching the film “Liberation”. Then I started reading all sorts of books about the thirties. These books were written mainly by liberal authors, they were published under Khrushchev, but somehow a couple of books fell into my hands. After all, no one disputed the fact that under Stalin, innocent people were convicted. And I stopped liking Comrade Stalin.
I remember how in 10th grade we reached a paragraph in which we wrote about the cult of personality. Our story was narrated by Valentina Semenovna Zhmurko. She said that we could read this paragraph ourselves if we wanted. That Stalin is “her love.” It is curious that I later met women her age who, until their gray hairs, had tender feelings for the leader.
But by the age of 17, only one thing infuriated me - when the Russians said: “Without Stalin, we would have lost the war...” “If not for Stalin, then Russia would have perished...” I asked the question: “For thousands of years, Russia did not perish, but became stronger and stronger , and without this the Georgians would have died? The grown-up people didn’t argue with me, but stayed the same. They all experienced what Eduard Limonov very clearly formulated: “We had a great era.” Against the backdrop of the insignificant Brezhnev, people increasingly remembered that there was this great era. Without bothering to ask, what was the meaning of this era, and what did it bring to the Russian people?
But I liked Lenin more and more. At that time, radio plays of the best plays were broadcast on the radio, including plays about Lenin. I really loved Pogodin’s plays, in which Ilyich appeared to be such a sincere Russian person, which was a falsification, of course. On this occasion, one Jewish critic even wrote a critical article under Stalin, but he was silenced. Then such an image of Ilyich was needed.
I really liked films about Lenin. There was a man! Nothing for myself, everything for the people. Later, this love for Lenin was strengthened by poems about him by Voznesensky and Yevtushenko.
The entire grandiose system called the USSR rested on several myths. The myth of the Great Patriotic War, which would not have been won without Stalin and the communists. The myth of the brilliant Stalin, who created a superpower. And on the myth of the good Lenin, the defender of the oppressed. Moreover, it is curious that often Stalin’s admirers were indifferent to Lenin, and Lenin’s admirers did not really like Stalin.
The myth of Stalin as the savior of the Russians, who wrested power from the hands of the Jews and handed it over to the Russians, was yet to come. This myth will be quite consciously formed later by the “Russian party”.
So, a huge propaganda machine worked to turn Russian people into Soviet builders of communism. But by the 70s of the twentieth century, this machine began to malfunction. And not because someone slandered the Soviet regime from overseas. No. The whole point was that the authorities themselves had a vague idea of the prospects of society, and did not understand what kind of person this society needed.
The Soviet man continued to be molded according to old patterns. For the idea of something different and new was absent.
You know, I was always interested in listening to the stories of my parents and grandparents about how they were raised in the Soviet Union. I invite us all to remember how it was.
An amazing paradox - no matter how many horror films we are told about the Soviet Union, the Soviet education system is still considered almost an ideal. The best, most accurate films were made during the Soviet years. Children's songs, the best of which there are still no songs, were also written in the Soviet years.
And it seems that many were glad to abandon the only oppressive communist ideology imported from abroad (let me remind you that Marx and Engels were Germans). But having been sown in Russian soil, these ideas still received their originality. “Thank you to Comrade Stalin for our happy childhood!” - said the generation that restored the country after the Great Patriotic War.
Where did that turning point occur when the train of a state called the USSR set off on its way to the abyss?
In my opinion, its roots lie in 1953, and the first shoots appeared in 1956 at the notorious 20th Congress of the CPSU.
When people stopped believing in the future they were building. When Khrushchev began persecuting the name of the late Stalin and the Russian Orthodox Church.
In the 80s, when the USSR was already affected by the mold of liberalism and Westernism, the following dissident joke even appeared:
At the May Day demonstration, a column of very old people carries a banner: “Thank you to Comrade Stalin for our happy childhood.” Someone in civilian clothes runs up to them:
- Are you kidding me? When you were children, Comrade Stalin was not yet born!
- That's what I thank him for!
You know, I was always interested in listening to the stories of my parents and grandparents about how they were raised in the Soviet Union.
I invite us all to remember how it was.
One of the readers sent me material in which the following Soviet educational film was posted.
"WHAT IS GOOD AND WHAT IS BAD"
Soviet educational film for primary school students. Early 70s.
After watching this film and remembering my childhood, I was generally surprised how we were able to survive at that time. These are the lessons our younger generation needs - “Moral Lessons”, and not just the knowledge that 2x2=4, because in life sometimes 2x2=5.
- We left home at eight in the morning and returned late in the evening, and our parents could not call us and find out where we were and what was happening to us, because there were no mobile phones.
- We went to the cinema ourselves and chose the clubs and sections in which we wanted to study.
- We rode bikes all over the city, climbed construction sites and military units, garages and rooftops, swam without our parents in all sorts of bodies of water.
- We made rockets and bombs using gunpowder and a magnesium-aluminum mixture, which, imagine, flew and exploded.
- We fought with the kids in the neighboring yard, and the parents did not sue for bruises and abrasions.
- We drank water from pumps and taps, and sometimes we simply called an unfamiliar apartment and asked the unknown person who opened the door for us to give us a glass of water. And no one refused us.
- We ourselves ran to the store for ice cream and pies. If we needed to, we simply visited our friends and acquaintances without calling in advance and could stay overnight with them.
- We knew the children of the whole house, or even the block, we had dozens of friends all over the city, to whom we ourselves, without warning our parents, could go by trolleybus or bus.
- We ourselves, without our parents, went hiking in the forest!
And we survived!
Educational film library: “What is good and what is bad”
The series includes:
- 1. “About courage”
- 2. “Our good deeds”
- 3. “A true comrade”
- 4. “Honestly”
Description: The films included in this collection present staged stories (short films). Each film is a short story, easily understandable even for the youngest schoolchildren. The goal of each film is to instill in children the feelings and skills that they will need in life. published