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Doloi negramotnost! is the current Russian slogan, “Down with illiteracy!" Czarist Russia was a country of illiterates, and the Revolution could not abolish that in a day, or a year. But in a decade, there will be no illiteracy in Russia. Lenin himself laid that charge upon the Government and the Party. Part of the duty of every Communist member is volunteer work outside of working hours, and I met an eager young woman recently who told me she was giving an hour or two a day to preparation for teaching illiterates. An hour or two even a week is no small sacrifice when one considers the crowded time of teachers, for instance. Organization of work progresses slowly,—of children, of Homes, of schools. Czarist Russia had no broad educational system, and thousands of teachers must be prepared, and often re-educated for the vastly extended work, with distressingly inadequate equipment, and all are unavoidably overworked. Yet there is no shirking, no easing of burdens, no lack of eagerness for anything new that offers. A group of teachers, men and women, had set nine P. M. as the earliest hour they could meet with me, and then hung for three hours, with unflagging attention upon a demonstration of music method. At midnight, someone suggested that we should stop and—go home to

78 bed? Oh, no, that we stop and drink tea, and then have "discussion,” next to tea the most cherished vice of all Russians. Every day I am reminded of that quaint and charming and heart-rending book of Nekrassovs, "Who can be happy and free in Russia?" They can discuss a subject through the night or through a thick volume, or through the length and breadth of the countryside, like Nekrassov’s seven peasants. And these midnight workers still find time, if Communists, to give service to the Party and the people.

p In just a decade from Red October, the Government expects to "liquidate illiteracy,” and organization has been progressing and results showing with marvelous rapidity. The young girl who cares for my room announced the other day that she was going to night school,’—such a primitive and ignorant young girl, with no knowledge and no interest except for the concrete things in her life, primarily food and clothing, and the struggle to get them. No initiative of her own led Katya to the school-room,—-organization, everywhere organization by this alert Government. A girl of the intelligentzia for whom there is no room in the University is taking advantage of the classes in political economy. Such instruction supplements that for illiterates, to ground all the people in the knowledge that means strength for the Republic. It is simple with the young ones—they learn easily—but what of the older ones, with rusty minds and no habit of mental activity? They, too, must be organized and this learning poured into them, and with the primary reading and writing, the broader learning that the letters spell. And so for these there must be teaching methods that are used for children.

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p In a class recently visited, we found a dozen or more volunteer pupils, mostly women and girls, a class of the temporarily unemployed, who were gathered in from the labor bureau. They had asked for the opportunity they saw displayed there before them. The quickest and most eager pupil in the class was a woman of fifty-two, older by wear and tear than her years, younger in spirit than most of us. I thought of the mother in the revolutionary play I had just seen, the mother of the fallen martyr, who was symbolically represented as a young woman, because even in her grief, her spirit was the youngest and most revolutionary of all the women who were about him,—his young sisters, his wife. This woman with the platok on her head, concentrating for the first time, at fifty-two, on mental work, was of the same breed, perhaps also the mother of fallen heroes. And for me, such women symbolize further the spirit of their young-old country,—the revolutionary spirit, the spirit of youth, which is the new Russia.

p On the table lay cards with large-lettered syllables, which they were combining into words, and an instructor was writing these same syllables on the blackboard for them to read aloud. The words followed the text in their books, and at the top of the page was a large picture illustrating the text. For each group of the people a different text-book is prepared, relating to the life he leads. This class was using the book of the peasants. The picture showed a reaping field, and before the lesson a short lecture was given by the instructor on the value of the farm to the country. Below, the text read in large letters, "In our fields is our strength. The strength of the people 80 is in the fields,” and an elaboration of this theme ran down the page. They showed no embarrassment at our presence —rather pride in their work and interest in us as strangers, and a friendly eagerness to talk with us. Among them was a girl of twenty but most of them were in the neighborhood of forty. The young-spirited woman referred to allowed herself, rather proudly, to be exhibited as an "old woman of fifty-two.” I was old enough and young enough to feel the unmeant humor of the characterization.

p For the industrial worker, the text follows the plan of the peasants’ book, but is more directly propaganda. "We are not slaves. We are not masters. We are glad of the Sovyets. The masters are not glad,” etc., etc. These sentences are much simpler than in English, as the verb in Russian may be eliminated, and the words chosen resemble each other. The soldiers’ book combines political and professional interest from the beginning. "Our army is the strength of our people. The army of the people is our strength,” thus emphasizing the identity of the army with the people. And so on through the books for minority races, and for those who before had no written language, and now for the first time have been given a literate tongue.

p The illiteracy of the army is easily dealt with, because the soldiers are already organized. Every new group that enters is at once put at study, and in a few months can read and write. There is no general education given to soldiers as such, as there is to factory workers, for at the end of their two years’ service, they return to their old environment, and fall into the routine of education related to their work, whether in field or factory. But they do have music which as the Russians say, is so "closely related to life.” 81 The singing of soldiers on the march is quite remarkable. We visited a music-class at the great barracks, where they were having a first ensemble lesson on the dombera and balalaika, in five sizes—and timbres—of each. They also were unembarrassed at our presence during their struggles, the young soldier-teacher as well, who was described as knowing a little more than the others, and so was leading the class in the absence of a regular instructor. A good deal of such informal instruction goes on, in various fields, of the less by the more enlightened. Afterwards we had an interview with some young officers, who with no show of superiority, or exchange of formalities, called the soldiers over, and standing in friendly fashion side by side with them, explained the difference in uniforms, between the different divisions and between officers and men. They were eager to give us all possible information, but were obliged to reply smilingly now and then to an indiscreet question, "That would be giving secret information.”

p There is a small theater in the barracks, where the staging is as rude and as openly manipulated as in the sophisticated theater of Meyerhold. The soldiers produce their own dramatics, sometimes original, sometimes classic or recognized modern work, and they give the plays in a direct, simple way, without much effort at dramatic interpretation, but with an emphasis on clearness and correctness of diction. This is looked upon as an essential element in the people’s education, and “proletcult” theaters are found everywhere throughout the country, in factories, in remote industrial regions, in peasant communes, and villages. The soldiers are in large proportion primitive peasants, and this dramatic work carries on the training 82 of the literacy classes. A film theater, too, they have, where the plays given combine entertainment, education and propaganda, and perhaps they get as much education in this way as they would in formal classes.

“Do you like your own people best?" my Russian companion asked, and I answered guardedly, "I am always interested in foreigners, but I do feel on meeting a familiar home-type, that I understand it best.” "Yes,” was the response, "I too am always admiring foreigners, but when I talked with all these simple young soldiers, I told myself that after all our Russians are the finest.” I felt that was a little more enthusiastic than my own position, but then we’ve had no Revolution to inspire and sentimentalize us, and can still stand on our international theories. And that makes it easy to admire and wonder at what Russia is accomplishing with her ignorant masses.

p Yesterday I met a Liberal lamenting for Democracy. Frequently you meet them in Moscow, foreign sympathizers here for purpose of fair investigation or social help, whose very liberalism often limits their understanding of Sovyet policy, whose direct pacifism and “democracy” lead them into denunciation of the necessary severity, the seeming opportunism, the strategic backward steps, which apparently hamper the progress of reconstruction, and appear to these sincere but superficial observers to deny the idealism of the Communst aim. From these as from their 83 press at home, one hears criticism and condemnation of current policies, especially when they conflict with the Liberal’s idea of democracy.

p This particular new-comer came to me in excitement and indignation over the decree dropping large blocks of intellectuals from the Universities, young people whose professional preparation was already several years advanced, and whose careers were now ruined. The word career alone seemed to me to put its stamp upon this bourgeois criticism, for in Sovyet Russia, career is not a word one hears or thinks in Communist circles. There is no question as to the personal injustice, the individual tragedy even, in such cases, and these unimaginative people cannot see beyond the individual injury. They appear to ignore the fact that in their own country, to which they unconsciously refer as a standard of democracy, the discrimination is far more serious and cruel, that the higher educational facilities are wasted on thousands of hopelessly inferior mentalities because of economic status, while masses of true intellectuals have never an opportunty of trying out their fitness for educational advantages.

p The situation is briefly this: The budget has fallen because of the partial failure of crops in this dry year. The income from the export of grain is seriously lessened, the apportionment of funds in every department must be readjusted,—the educational division must share the sacrifice. But the oncoming generation must be provided for, it cannot be neglected for the upper-classmen, and so the cutting-out must be proportionate along the line. And here comes in the problem of the cutting out. Of course there must be some slight adjustment along individual 84 lines,—the most promising students, judged in regard to their future usefulness to the state must be retained, but the cleavage practically must be along class lines.

p Revolution is not accomplished in a day. Many years of trial and danger lie before the Workers’ Republic in its contest with the Capitalist ideal, when the intensification of the class-struggle in all countries will reflect back to Russia and Russia must be 100% prepared with its proletarian experts and its proletarian army to meet the situation of the future. The lesson the past has taught is that danger lurks in bourgeois psychology—in the almost ineradicable something that comes to the surface in a political crisis when class is aligned against class. In the Revolution, how many of the old revolutionary intellectuals swung with the left? How many threw their influence toward sabotage and counter-revolution? This record is all that is necessary to justify the established Government policy of class discrimination. Their own people must be (trained to fill constructive positions. From their own people must be drawn the industrial and professional experts for maintaining the Revolution through every crisis, when the experts of the Intelligenzia abandon them.

p But the individual situation is not as bad as it at first appeared. Revision of the first sweeping decree is under consideration. It must be remembered that the expense of maintaining the University does not lie alone in the educational equipment, but also in the maintenance of the students while carrying on their studies, and though the stipend seems ridiculously small in the individual apportionment, the aggregate is an enormous drain on the budget, considering that it brings no immediate return as do industrial 85 wages, but is an investment for the future. It is now being arranged that the students dropped from the University shall ranged that the students dropped from the University shall be distributed through the various technical schools, where by working with less concentration, they can partially maintain themselves by outside jobs related to their technical studies. A young woman I know, herself a victim of her class position, dispossessed by the Revolution and denied a University education, nevertheless defends staunchly and intelligently the Government policy, because of her sympathetic understanding of the problem the Sovyets have to solve. I said to her one day, "Zinaida Ivanovna, is it because you are sentimentally patriotic that you stand with the Sovyets,—is it just because it is Russia’s experiment that you find it right?" "No!" she replied fervently, "It is because I can already see how it has raised the level of the people.”

p Supplementing the Moscow University, is the University of the Far East, for Eastern students, and Russians specializing in Eastern subjects and languages. The other day I met the whole student body demonstrating down the Tverskaya, in protest against the economic invasion of China by the Western Imperialistic Powers. Every grade of Mongol I saw, from Tatar to Chinese, there were Persians, Hindoos and other races of the Far and Near East, and blocks also of Russians, students in the Eastern courses. This seemed a more rational protest than the Liberal clamor against injustice to a trifling number of potential counterrevolutionaries in the Russian Universities where the purpose is one of broad humanity. Preparatory to the Universities are the "Rabfacs,” for workers showing desire 86 and capacity for a higher education. Such intellectuals are discovered often through their contributions to the wall-newspapers of their factories, as well as artists through the cartoons they tack up.

p Asked if it were true that there was a "Russian Dewey,” —referring to Boehm—who had worked out an educational theory on the same lines, a school principal replied, "That would not be possible, for our system is permeated with Deweyism.” Of course the whole educational system is at present opportunistic, if one may use the discredited word. The Sovyet ideal of relating education closely to economic life cannot be realized all at once. There is the frantic effort to prepare large groups for immediate work of reconstruction and intensive production, and this great need must take precedence of all else. In the merely cultural line the same compromise is necessary. In the music schools, for example, the equipment, which usually includes maintenance of the younger children, is so limited that only the more gifted ones at present can be received. The masses must get along with what can be absorbed in chorus singing and other superficial instruction in the general schools.

p But the teachers, both in general education and in music and other arts, are keenly alert for new pedagogical ideas. There are all sorts of experimental schools under Government direction where the problems are being worked out by young—and old—enthusiasts. Some adhere to academic methods, others tend even to anarchical theories. Most of them agree in basing everything in music on their National folk-songs. Extremes are inevitable, but from these far swings the pendulum already is settling to a 87 reasonable pulse. I was told of the frequent negative result, in one school, of the theory that music is an Art and must not be forced but spontaneous, a thesis not unknown in this country. The teacher arrives, generally about dusk in the late months, goes to the piano and sings or plays a little, and if the children are moved to join, they have a lesson of sorts, otherwise the teacher unobtrusively escapes and Art is saved for another day. I was present at a lesson where the children joined the chorus from any audible point they happened to occupy, one under a table, another out of sight behind an upright piano, a third perilously acting as a wedge high up between two marble columns in the fine old bourgeois mansion serving as a school-house. The music director for Kindergartens seems to have struck a sane balance. "I am not for this ’free singing’ and ’free play’ that leads to no goal" he said, but the progress he is making seems nevertheless to have an artistic trend. In the School for Aesthetic Education, they aim to relate all studies to the arts. In the music "technikums,” where the children are maintained, general schools are established side by side with the music classes. This is true also of Isadora Duncan’s school, for which the Government gives her a stately old mansion with walled garden, in which on summer evenings her school-concerts are given.

p The music director of one of the technikums visited regretted keenly the necessity of accepting only the gifted children. He felt strongly the need of bringing out the latent music in the average child. The personal history of this director, strengthening his ideal, is an interesting one, his personality altogether naive, joyous and delightful. Of 88 the poorest peasant stock, he told me, he never saw a piano until sixteen years of age (perhaps this is not to be regretted!) but at ten he had an accordion. Until then, his only musical resource was a row of large nails, which he laid along in order, and beat with the heel of his shoe, extracting great joy from the gentle clink. He advocates strongly the use of musical toys of a soft and soothing type for children, in addition to the crooning of the mother, in place of the rattles and meaningless noisy toys they generally are given. He had finally the opportunity of entering the Moscow Conservatory, where he became a member of the world-famous chorus, and has spent his life since as a teacher of music. He is in sympathy with the Government policy of developing ensemble work rather than encouraging the exploiting of individual artists, except where such naturally come forward as rarely gifted. He proved enthusiastically responsive to ideas I myself am trying to contribute to the building up of general music education, principally because it relates to the Communist ideal of leveling up the culture of the masses.

p This music school is housed on the edge of town in a palatial old restaurant which served a great racing and sport field under the old regime. The school was at first part of a general “technikum” for the development of all the arts, but later this split into different sections, each with its general school and Home for gifted children. Now there are complaints of the too luxurious housing of this particular branch, and they fear they may be moved to simpler quarters, that the ample building may be used for larger enterprises that lack room. In education as in all other fields, housing is the great lack, and Moscow 89 must just shift the best it can, until the financial and allied Labor problem can be solved in a way to provide for this dire need. The Provinces, of course, must shift even longer.

p The directing spirit of all this wide-spread educational activity is Lunacharski, Commissar of Education and of Art, a man of the lesser aristocracy, of a provincial landowning family. Before the Revolutionary echoes had died, he had sketched a broad plan for education and art encouragement, and almost without break his plan has been adhered to, with modifications here and there but with no relaxation of effort toward cultural development. He sits through long hours of the day, in an inner office of the great shabby educational building on the Boulevard Ring, besieged from without by a roomful of importunate visitors, who are admitted in an interrupted line, punctuated by committee groups. It almost seems sometimes as if there were no individuals in Russia, only committee units. Telephoning for an interview, I had received reply that Comrade Lunacharski had just returned from a rest in the Caucasus, and an accumulation of business prevented his receiving visitors. My young interpreter sighed a regret at the finality of this, but I laughed at such Russian resignation,—if one may still use this characterization of a Revolutionary vanguard. A note explaining my errand, and laying emphasis upon its relation to the Commissar’s o\vn plan for public culture, brought a prompt appointment, which was kept with the usual few hours’ delay for the overlapping time of earlier appointments. But there was no lack of animation and interest, no delay in getting a’, the point, and grasping the essentials of the idea. Seizing 90 the telephone, he appointed committees for my help, gave me assurance of every possible assistance, regretted that I had not come to him at once and so avoided much delay in routine,—all this cordiality supported later by faithfully kept promises. The interview terminated in less than fifteen minutes, leaving on me an impression of a personality vivid, fine, intuitive but sound in reason, idealistic and yet practical, and a brain and spirit unflagging. One understands how such a man finds time and nerve force, with all his multiple responsibilities, for finished literary work as well.

On the same floor, down one flight and up another in the rambling old composite building of "Narkompros,” I paid my respects to Krupskaya, that remarkable woman for thirty years Lenin’s wife, sharing with him all the sacrifices of a revolutionary career. A quaint little figure, with Kalmuk cast of face like Lenin’s own,—most sad and worn of faces, yet with her cordial smile, breaking into a rhythm of ripples that transformed it to almost youthful beauty. Though semi-invalide, she keeps her post and holds the guiding reins of a complex department of the Educational Bureau. These are two of the striking personalities of Sovyet officialdom, helping to explain the Sovyets’ survival through all destructive assaults.