Доклад секретарю ЦК ВКП о состоянии воспитательной работы в КазССР Report to the CC Secretary on the state of education work in the Kazakh SSR

Translation

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<<Stamp: Technical Secretariat of the CC VKP(b) Orgburo 23893 12 June 1941 Must be returned to the secret archive>>

14 June '41

To the Secretary of the VKP(b) CC

To Cde. A.S. Shcherbakov

Copy to the head of the VKP(b) CC Press and Publishing Department

To Cde. A.A. Puzin

Report.

The state of education in the schools of the Kazakh SSR, one of the Union's border republics, merits serious and focused attention. Naturally, we cannot make categorical generalizations based solely on the newspapers' information. Nevertheless, the number and nature of complaints received by the editors signals rather serious shortcomings in this area.

At one point, the editors informed Kazakhstan's Central Committee of the state of education in the schools of the Kazakh SSR.  A "Teachers' Newspaper" correspondent for Kazakhstan, party member Cde. Avrutin, also kept Kazakhstan's CC informed of phenomena that had come to the newspaper's attention. Nevertheless, Kazakhstan's leading organizations are taking no decisive measures to improve work in the area of the communist education of schoolchildren.

We receive many letters from the Kazakh SSR about the lack of discipline in schools, about every conceivable unhealthy phenomenon in the learning environment, about the low level, or even total absence of moral education in schools.  As examples, I will focus on just a few signs of the catastrophic state of education in some of Kazakhstan's schools. The most striking

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and alarming signals that the editors have received are from Karaganda, South Kazakhstan, and Alma Ata oblasts, among others.

In Kazakhstan's very capital, the republic's criminal investigators recently arrested 16 students at High School No. 15. According to the "Teachers' Newspaper" correspondent, hooliganism and sexual licentiousness was rampant at this school, one of Alma-Ata's largest. A recent case that took place at this school outraged the entire city. Fifteen schoolboys raped a sixth- or seventh-grade girl.  The hooligans' threats forced the girl to keep silent about what happened, although they themselves began to tease her for being a "fifteener." The girl complained to her teacher, but the teacher made nothing of this odd nickname. Sometime later another girl was raped. This time six schoolboys took part in the crime. In the morning, a revolting caricature of the girl surfaced.

It should be said that all this took place inside the school, which children gained access to in the evenings by bribing the school guard, or during the last classes of the day in empty, unlit classrooms. All these crimes were uncovered by the police.

One case in Karaganda Oblast took a very serious turn. The NKVD recently exposed an entire organization of high school students pursuing clearly counterrevolutionary goals. A group of its members, approximately 15-16 people, were arrested. The investigation is ongoing. The organization was entirely made up of top students who appeared to be disciplined, cultured, and well-read. It was headed by a seasoned spy who worked as a pioneer leader in Karaganda and was furthermore considered to be one of the best pioneer leaders. One girl, a member of the organization and a

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Komsomol member, quit school and got a job doing clerical work at the party's oblast committee offices.

This organization, which was centered at School No. 4, tried to conduct anti-Soviet agitation and was even plotting terrorist acts against local officials. That's what the correspondent was told by the Komsomol oblast committee (the first secretary) and the city committee (head of the propaganda and agitation department).

This counterrevolutionary gang's activities have been evident for some time. Back at the beginning of the school year, schools in Karaganda were flooded with letters of a pornographic and religious nature, especially in the old city and the so-called Kompaneisky community, which is mostly populated by people who have been administratively resettled. Anti-Soviet jokes and notes circulated. As we now know, members of this organization were active in the schools.

Almatov, a teacher from the Jezkazgan District of Karaganda Oblast, reported alarming developments. Students are drinking and committing hooliganism. Many adolescents already have sex lives. Several girls were forced to quit school after becoming pregnant (at the high schools of Jeskazgan and Karsakpai).

Stepchenko, a teacher from Aktiubinsk, speaks of moral decay. In School No. 11, he writes, one of the seventh graders was drunk even in class. A fifth-grade girl, Litvintseva, became a mother and quit school.

D.N. Kolesnikov, a teacher from Naloblino High School in Sokolovskoe District of North Kazakhstan Oblast, writes about the pernicious fruit born by a total lack of efforts toward children's moral education.

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"Children's free time is not organized at all. In our school, girls get drunk on wine and go to their parties--here these parties are called "sneaky huts." Twice in six months girls got married and quit school."

What is the cause of such unhealthy phenomena in the school environment? Without attempting to fully answer this question we will point to one circumstance that undoubtedly explains the terrible state of education in Kazakhstan's schools: their teaching cadres.

The Contamination of Pedagogic Cadres in the Kazakh SSR.

The newspaper does not have an overall picture of the state of pedagogic cadres in Kazakhstan. But individual documents, letters, etc., in the newspaper's possession describe severe problems in this area.

It is extremely alarming that pedagogic cadres in the Kazakh SSR are greatly contaminated with alien and dubious elements. This is attested to by materials received by the newspaper, especially from South Kazakhstan and Karaganda Oblasts.

Quite recently in South Kazakhstan, several senior officials of the oblast education department were arrested. The department's head, Musataev, was fired, expelled from the party, and put on trial. This entire gang, together with a whole group of directors and other orphanage personnel, had misappropriated state money allocated for the orphanages and stolen institutional property, including food and manufactured items. The orphans went hungry and lacked footwear and clothing. There were several instances where children were beaten and under-aged girls was forced to live with men.

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According to the head of the oblast education department, there are 102 teachers in the oblast with extremely dubious political reputations. Among them are a Trotskyite who was expelled from the party and exiled to Kazakhstan for five years, sons and daughters of rabbis and mullas, priests, and even hajis and tsarist officers. All this garbage has been working in the schools of South Kazakhstan not just for a month or a year but for many years and is having a corrupting effect  the learning environment.

The newspaper has even more dismal information concerning Karaganda Oblast.

According to a report by our correspondent for the Kazakh SSR, 60-70 percent of orphanage personnel are people who were administratively resettled or exiled. Similar elements have contaminated the teaching cadres as well. The teaching collective in some rural schools is almost entirely made up of exiles or people repressed by the NKVD who have served their sentences but have not been granted the right to leave Karaganda Oblast.

Teacher training institutions are also contaminated. At Karaganda's teacher institute, according to the correspondent Avrutin, a significant segment is made up of children of kulaks exiled to remote areas. Time and again we see strange moods expressed among the students. Recently, when slavery was being discussed during a history lecture, one female student declared that there is no difference between slavery and the current situation. She was expelled from the Komsomol and the institute. The institute's party and Komsomol organizations are inept at conducting political education and the students often come under alien and unhealthy influences.

Even more contaminated are the students of Karaganda's 10-month

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teacher training courses.

So the most critical sector of the ideological front--the communist education of children--is often in the hands of people hostile toward Soviet rule. In light of these findings, the unhealthy phenomena in the learning environment discussed above are understandable.

Such a significant presence of alien elements inevitably has a corrupting effect on the learning and teaching environment. The danger of this influence is all the more keenly felt because the average cultural and political level of teachers in Kazakhstan is not very high--we refer here to teachers in rural schools.

Many oblast education departments experiencing teacher shortages send untrained people to teach and sometimes people who are clearly unsuitable. Take, for example, the cadres of Eastern Kazakhstan Oblast. According to the deputy head of Eastern Kazakhstan education department ,Cde. Bogashev, out of 4,000 teachers in the oblast, 50 percent lack a high school education. There are only 90 teachers with a higher education.

Given a lack of proper political work among the teachers we can understand their backward inclinations, the lack of self-criticism in school collectives, the squabbles, the gossip, the aspersions.

From teachers' letters to the newspaper from various districts and oblasts of the Kazakh SSR we see a whole gallery of "pedagogues" who have no place in schools and whose activities are fundamentally anti-pedagogic.

A teacher from the village of Burli in Kustanai Oblast's Karabalyk District, G.A. Bitenkov, tells of the director of his school, a certain

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Salmen Tiuteinov. Tiuteinov came to the school by chance. He has no interest in and knows nothing about pedagogy. The director's behavior shows him to be a morally corrupt man. He gets drunk in front of the students, who have even seen him passed out on the street.

Tiuteinov's activities at the school are naked administering. More than half of the teaching collective (the school has 25 teachers) have been reprimanded. The pass rate is 45 percent (results of the first quarter) and discipline is disgusting.

V.A. Miliakov, a teacher from Karaganda Oblast's Voroshilov District, reports the following: the former director, Adilov, and the head of teachers, Bulaeva, deceived the state, maimed children, and graduated know-nothings. For several years they whitewashed the situation. Educational work is in extreme disarray. The school director, Adilov, systematically drank and interacted with the students while drunk. Adilov tried to rape a fifth-grade girl, Karkimbaeva. The girl was forced to quit school and leave the village.

Several teachers emulated the director. One teacher, Laktionov, was seeing a school girl, L. The girl gave birth to his child. A sixth-grade girl, Kholobudko, and even a third-grade girl, got married without finishing school.

Or here's what the secretary of the Zhanybek District committee, Cde. Jabasov  (whom the newspaper approached for help in investigating articles about the school), reports about Bobrovich, director of the Zhanybek school in Western Kazakhstan Oblast. Director Bobrovich drinks, smokes in class, and uses obscene language even in front of the schoolchildren. Can we even talk about improving

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and fixing discipline in a school with such an administrator!

Illiterate teachers are no rarity in the rural schools of Kazakhstan. V.N. Kaburneeva teaches at Voznesensky’s junior high school. The author A.G. Bedrin informs us that Kaburneeva, who graduated seventh grade and one year courses in Russian language, teaches sixth and seventh grade. The degree of her literacy and her cultural level overall can be judged by the writing of her pupils. On the first page of their notebooks the words are traced: "An active life, assiduous labor, and great fervor do not merit imitation." Apparently, when giving a dictation, the teacher mechanically discarded the end of the sentence ("…do not merit imitation if they are aimed only at one’s own advantage or the disadvantage of a few near ones") and failed to notice how anti-pedagogic this message, carefully transcribed by the schoolchildren, sounds. Kaburneeva is also a politically unstable person. At a Komsomol meeting where her behavior was being discussed, she stated outright: "Take my membership card if you need it."

In a letter to the newspaper, Gubaida,  a teacher from Western Kazakhstan Oblast (Kamenka District, Kalinin High School), offered evidence of the abominable atmosphere in the school and rot and decay within the teaching collective.

The school's director and some of the teachers broke glass jars in the physics lab that held the skeletons of small animals preserved in alcohol. The skeletons were discarded and the alcohol was consumed.

A teacher from the Kamenka Junior High School in the Lugansky District of Jambyl Oblast, K.V. Riasin, tells of the shameful behavior of some of the school's teachers. The teachers V.T. Taranova and P.V. Sokovykh, he claims

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"get drunk in the company of fifth through seventh graders and walk around the settlement with them. The teachers Berezhkov and Pomazov are real 'ladies men' with the girls from the upper grades, hanging around with them until two in the morning. Berezhkov and Teilebaev took schoolchildren by the nape of the neck to the office to be punished by the school director," and so forth.

Verkunov, a teacher of Omsk Railroad's School No. 63 (Borovoe, Akmol Olbast), according to the teacher Syvorodskaia and others, is a drunk. Somehow he was assigned to take part in a field trip to the Borovoe station. During the trip, the teacher got drunk to the point that Komsomol members had to drag him to the vehicle and dump his body into it.

Can such "pedagogues," mired in the bog of philistinism and morally corrupt, ensure that children are being educated in the spirit of communism?

Another problem is that no one is monitoring children's moral education. The district education departments, when they do inspect teaching, leave moral education completely outside their purview. In this regard, a remark by K.G. Nebus, a teacher in the village of Kachilovka, Aiyrtau District, North Kazakhstan Oblast, is typical.

"Sometimes an inspector would come to certain schools," he writes, "but his job was just to observe lessons, check the quality of teaching, and leave. It was just the instruction that was being monitored, and teacher's moral education efforts were left beyond the inspector's purview."

There are some cases in which the lack of oversight of moral education can be particularly strongly felt. The newspaper has received many letters about teachers' crude, tactless, and, at times, criminal behavior toward schoolchildren. Cde. Nebus from Aiyrtau District in North Kazakhstan Oblast, cited above, writes that at a number of the district's schools, corporal punishment is being used on children.

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Nebus writes that for many years Kritsky, the director of Lavrovka's junior high school, used abominable methods of moral education and corporal punishment on children. In recent times he has beaten the students Balakhontsev, Ushakov, Lapunov, and others. A former student, I. Frolov, was permanently disabled by Kritsky, who dislocated his right arm. The draft board declared Frolov unfit for military service. This director--"the gendarme"--as the students call him, received a fitting punishment for his abominable actions. On 30 March 1941 the People's Court considered this case with participation by a public prosecutor and the defense. All the alleged crimes by Kritsky were fully established during the trial. The teachers and the public in attendance eagerly awaited a just verdict. The people's court sentenced Kritsky to eight years imprisonment and a loss of voting rights for five years. This harsh and just sentence found full public support.

A teacher from Yudino Elementary School, P. Aleksashchenko, also used corporal punishment on schoolchildren. She would throw them out onto the street on days when blizzards raged and it was 30-40 below (this school has no corridors and classrooms open right out onto the street). If a child failed to obey the teacher's ridiculous command to "leave the classroom" out of fear of the winter cold, she would furiously grab the child's shirt or clothing and drag him to the exit. After opening the door, she would mercilessly push him into the storm and cold. Children would often resist going out, and the teacher Aleksashchenko would be left with shreds of the child's clothing in her hands. This is how the clothing of schoolchildren Proskuriakov, Trembach, and Grankin was torn.

Discipline in this teacher's classes was extremely poor. In trying to establish quiet and order in the classroom, Aleksashchenko resorted to a favorite method: crude language. She would insult the children and call them all sorts of obscene, unbefitting words: "bandit," "idiot," "sheep," etc. This teacher had absolutely no authority either among children or adults. The reasonable requests by individual parents that this teacher be removed from school have yet to be granted. All of the allegations presented here were confirmed during a surprise visit by a district education department inspector on 15 February 1941. The district education department was quickly informed of all these abuses by a special report.

Despite the fact that all these abuses are known to the district education department, the district committee, and district soviet executive committee, Aleksashchenko still has her job and is perpetuating the sordid business of anti-pedagogic education.

There is also evidence of students being beaten at the Volodarskoe junior high school. The teacher Koenzhigerina often uses crude language with the children and pushes them.

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The head of Kamarovskoe Elementary School, Rybitsky, also violates the principles of communist education and is not averse to insulting children, using crude language, and calling them all sorts of unbefitting names. Obscene shouting and a lack of restraint by teachers has been observed, although not by many. Nevertheless, this does currently occur among teachers in the Aiyrtau District.

Letters alleging the instilling of seminarian morals in schools are not rare. At the newspaper's request, when it was investigating one of these letters, the inspector of the Lenin District education department,  again in North Kazakhstan Oblast, described the coarseness of two teachers at Yasnovka Junior High School, Popova and Sadykova. He reports that the teachers tell children to "go to hell" and are rude and short-tempered with them. Furthermore, these extreme measures do not help the Yasnovka teachers. Sadykova has so little authority that the children sing songs during her classes.

Only a total lack of oversight could enable behavior of the sort seen at the Turkestan-Siberia Line Saryozek Railroad School (Alma-Ata Oblast). For several years the Saryozek Railroad School was considered to be good by the department of schools and the railroad political department, and the school's director, Yulaev, was thought to be exemplary. The school's results were inflated. The director was engaged in whitewashing, crimes were committed at the school, and a number of teachers sought to morally degrade young people.

The newspaper received the first signal about this school in April 1940. Soon, another letter arrived. The writers reported corruption within the collective and sexual licentiousness by the director and others. And this is what the young people were being taught to emulate. There was a club at the school, RIM. Members of the club, students of the upper grades, drank and engaged in sexually depraved behaviors.  There was a "League of Free Love" in the dormitory.

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Enclosed with the letter was some exceptionally pornographic verse, a sample of the work of one of the students who led this club. The "literary work" of this depraved young man was circulated among the students, copied, and committed to memory. One of the members of the club--one of its organizers, the letter claimed--was the head teacher, Chupyrin. Cde. Avrutin, the "Teachers' Newspaper" correspondent, went to Saryozek to investigate this letter. For the most part the allegations were confirmed and the matter was handed over to the NKVD. There was a whole group of teachers at the school whose activities amounted to sabotage. The article about Saryozek was published 25 May 1940 under the headline "Criminal Doings in a Railroad School."

All this evidence attests to a need for serious and decisive measures to heal the schools of the Kazakh SSR by restoring moral education work.

Editor-in-Chief of "Teachers' Newspaper" [signature] (V. Golenkina)

_June 1941