'Study, study and study!' Theories and Practices of Education in Imperial and Soviet Russia, 1861-1991
CONFERENCE ON RUSSIAN AND SOVIET EDUCATION
Wolfson College, University of Oxford 14 May, 2004 (with possibility of extension through 15 May)
ORGANISERS: Polly Jones (Worcester College, Oxford) and Andy Byford (Wolfson College, Oxford)

Call for Papers
Education and ‘enlightenment’were consistently near the top of the political agenda from emancipation to the end of the Soviet period. As such, they also constitute a vital part of the scholarly agenda for Russian and Soviet historians. This interdisciplinary conference, which may be extended over two days depending on interest, will bring together the increasing numbers of scholars whose work concerns the theory and practices of education in Russia from 1861 to 1991.

The rapid pace of modernisation from 1861 onwards generated unprecedented increases in literacy and the provision of basic schooling, whilst higher education expanded exponentially, changing the composition and self-definition of the intelligentsia. These educational developments played an important role in the growth of Russian civil society (obshchestvennost’, as teachers and students each sought to define their role and place in Tsarist society.

The advent of Soviet power, itself largely a product of these processes of modernisation, caused further changes in an already unstable environment. Soviet pedagogical theories and educational policies were conceived largely in opposition to Tsarist practices, claiming greater equality of access to literacy training, basic schooling and higher education, and a more humane approach to individual development. Soviet policies on education and enlightenment (prosveshchenie) thus aspired to complete the work of modernising Russian society, through universal literacy and education, whilst also ‘Sovietising’ the curriculum and, ultimately, those people who studied and taught it. However, the often utopian projects of the Soviet leadership played out in complex, ‘unorthodox’ ways in the schoolrooms and lecture halls of Soviet Russia. Therefore, a thorough comparative examination of Russian and Soviet education will permit us to identify important continuities between the two periods, as well as the more obvious changes in ideological content. We seek papers which address any of the following themes:

• The school in late Imperial Russia: Pedagogical theories; The culture of the classroom; rural vs. urban schooling; Social stratification in the provision of education.
• The growth of higher education after emancipation: Curriculum debates; The place of the university in Russian culture; The emergence of an academic intelligentsia; Student life and student protest in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
• The transition to Soviet education: The evolution of Soviet pedagogical theories; The early work of the Ministry of Enlightenment; Intra-party debates about education; Economic, social problems of the early years; Debating, implementing the ‘Sovietisation’ of the Academy, teaching personnel; The ‘Sovietisation’of the student: education as a way to construct ‘the new Soviet person’
• From Stalinism to post-Stalinism: Images and realities of the Stalinist school-room; The ‘Stalinisation’ of education: textbooks, the curriculum and Stalinist ideology (including nationalism and the cult); Sites of resistance, sites of indoctrination? Popular response to the regime(s) amongst schoolchildren, students; De-Stalinising the Soviet school: education and curriculum reform after Stalin.

Paper proposals, of no more than 150 words, should be sent to the contact below by December 31st, 2003, via email. Depending on the outcome of funding proposals, we would expect to make some contribution to travel expenses, especially for scholars from outside of the European Union.