Dorena Caroli

Russian and Soviet Schooling : Educational Legacies, Institutional Reforms and National Identities.

for specialists in Russian and Soviet history. Western scholars have gradually shifted their interest from pedagogical theories to the analysis of school systems understood as complex systems of educational norms, institutional aspects and national identity1. This was exactly what had happened after the collapse of the Soviet Union, when the Russian experts in education revealed a marked inclination to renew their research topics and methodologies2. This critical review has no pretensions to be exhaustive; nonetheless, it is an attempt to present the main studies of the Russian and Soviet school systems in a longue durée perspective. It will therefore aim at analysing all the different features of the Tsarist and Soviet schooling. On the one hand, in the Tsarist Autocracy, schooling had to carry out the political and national project of educating the nobility, building a new class of liberal Intelligentsia and “russifying”

Political Leaders in Russian History Textbooks Between the Rise and Fall of the Cult of Personality (1938–1962)

This chapter analyzes the portrayal of Lenin and Stalin in Soviet history textbooks used in Grades 3 and 4 by Shestakov (1938), and in Grade 10, edited by Pankratova (1940), tracing the development of these leaders’ political influence on the chief historical events taking place in the period between 1917 and the early 1950s and uncovering the ideological messages sent to student readers. Using a comparative hermeneutic discourse analysis, the chapter shows how text and images of Lenin and Stalin promoted the cult of the personality, and how they held up the heroic actions of the two leaders as the infallible source of all historical truth. While the different editions of the book for Grades 3 and 4 recount the political struggles of Lenin and Stalin in a quasi- mythological style, glossing over the roles of the others who are essentially marginalized, the textbook for Grade 10 describes the political actions of these leaders as if they were the authors of peace, of major social change and as defenders of the country from enemies, both internal and external. The chapter concludes that through the textual and visual representations of major political actors the textbooks were constructed with the goal of indoctrinating younger generations with a patriotic and communist spirit and of conveying a particular Soviet interpretation of history.

The Development of Crèches in Germany from the Prussian Empire to the Nazi Period

This chapter traces the history and spread of creches in Germany. Although Kindergarten were successful, the Kinderkrippen met with numerous obstacles in the last decades of the nineteenth century, a situation culminating with Nazism and a welfare policy inimical to such institutions. This chapter describes their origins and spread, thanks to initiatives by interested industrialists and associations (the Krippenverein and Krippenverband). We examine in particular the major role played by Fritz Rott (1878–1959). This famous paediatrician was the driving force behind the Kaiserin Auguste Viktoria Haus in Berlin, a multi-purpose centre for the care and welfare on very young infants, and was important also for the introduction of specific training for staff dealing with these children. Although becoming widespread during the First World War, the Kinderkrippen were not supported either by welfare policies in the post-war period or by those of the Nazi regime.

Development of the Presepi from the Crispi Law to Fascism

This chapter traces the fortunes of the French creche in the framework of the welfare reforms instituted by the Fascist regime through the establishment, in 1925, of a state-controlled (but not state-funded) welfare body, the National Organisation for the Protection of Motherhood and Childhood (Opera nazionale per la protezione della maternita e dell’infanzia, ONMI), that, until the end of the 1930s, dealt with various types of child welfare designed to support the regime’s demographic policies. ONMI was in overall charge of a wide variety of services for mothers and children, including the various types of asili nido intended to support working women. The structure and functioning of the asili nido are described, together with the development of staff training. In considering the reforms of the Fascist period, we examine the degree to which the ideas of nipiologia developed by Ernesto Cacace provided the theoretical basis for the infant care services set up by the regime. This subject is considered in some depth – being little known outside Italy – particularly in relation to its attempts to discredit the ideas of medical and psychological specialists like Maria Montessori and Enzo Bonaventura. While the regime concentrated on the health and welfare aspects of the asilo nido, the theories on infant development of these two educationalists could, as early as the 1930s, have introduced conditions where the physical and psychological growth of newly-born infants would have been better understood and nurtured. It was only after the Second World War, and particularly in the 1970s, that the asilo nido became an educative institution.

The Spread of Day Nurseries in England

This chapter looks at the spread of day nurseries in England, the country showing the least interest in organising a coherent system. The discussion of the history of English day nurseries starts with an analysis of the treatise An essay upon nursing and the management of children from their Birth to Three Years of age by William Cadogan (1711–1797), the English physician best known for his connection with the London Foundling Hospital. Published in 1748, this work anticipates Rousseau in its recommendation of maternal breastfeeding. This is followed by an account of the poor relief system as represented, on the one hand, in the Poor Laws and, on the other, in relation to the series of laws passed in the late nineteenth century designed to protect very young infants, whether or not abandoned. The small number of institutions offering care for infants confirms the hypothesis – formulated by many historians – of a “maternalist” social policy. It was widely held that it should be the mother herself or, failing that, a nursemaid or nanny, who cared for her infant at home – an attitude that did not favour the creation of day nurseries. The chapter continues with an account of the spread of day nurseries in various English cities, set up by associations that were also active in promoting school nurseries, their evolution in the context of the First World War and eventual unification – although with little financial advantage – under the wing of the Ministry of Health.

The Development of Crèches in Tsarist and Soviet Russia

This chapter looks at the spread of Marbeau-influenced creches in Russia where, even before the translation into Russian of Marbeau’s work in 1890, they became popular not only in the larger industrial cities such as the capital St Petersburg but particularly in rural areas. Their greatest expansion took place after the October Revolution when the placing of infants in state-run nurseries was regarded as a way both to emancipate women, freeing them from domestic work, and to mould “little comrades”, children educated in the spirit of communism from their earliest years.Compared to other European countries, tsarist and soviet Russia was unusual in that the French creche was welcomed by benefactors, particularly in the rural areas, despite the country people’s initial suspicion of the idea of leaving their babies to be cared for by others for the whole day. After the 1917 Revolution when these nurseries became the responsibility of the People’s Commissariat for Health, they soon became educational institutions for which a specialised pedagogy was designed. This laid great stress on the subdivision of infants by age and on the organisation of appropriate play activities, including those designed to help language development. The suppression of paedology in 1936 put an end to Russian research – at the time among the most advanced of its kind – into the development of the very young child. That notwithstanding, the educational model of the creche continued to be influential in those cultural environments most sympathetic to communist ideologies.

The Development of Crèches ( Presepi ) in Italy Between Restoration and Unification

This chapter examines the circumstances surrounding the creation of the first creche, the Pio ricovero per lattanti in Milan, and the role of the benefactor Giuseppe Sacchi (1804–1891) in 1850 in the spread of asili di carita, the changes to the wet-nursing system and the reform of foundling hospitals. The opening of nurseries for very young babies, known as presepi, in other cities in Italy thanks to the efforts of those doctors most concerned about infant mortality, accompanied by the beginnings of psychopedagogical theories about infants, was for many years strongly influenced by their charitable status that, like other similar bodies, was the object of a number of legislative interventions both before and after Unification (1861).This chapter also looks at the spread of presepi in various cities in the central-northern parts of Italy set up by doctors who were keen to stress the moralising function of these institutions. Reformers like Ernesto Soncini in Mantua, Giuseppe Tropeano and Ernesto Cacace in Neaples – although holding widely diverging political views – are of the greatest importance in understanding the characteristics of the transnational circulation of the French model in an Italian context in the first decade of the twentieth century and the development of a theory of the infant in its earliest months. Amounting to a fully-fledged science of the newly-born, Soncini called it puericultura, while Cacace used the term nipiologia. They reflected institutional innovations brought about by the differing needs of the differing Italian contexts.

The Birth and Spread of Crèches in France Between the Second Republic and the Second World War

This chapter deals with the opening of the very first creche in Paris in 1844 in a cultural and social context that was particularly propitious for institutions of this kind and for their spread during the nineteenth century and into the 1930s. The first creche came about as a result of the work of the French jurist Firmin Marbeau (1798–1875). Very active in charitable initiatives in Paris, he saw the creche as an institution having a dual function: to reduce the numbers of abandoned infants and to prevent infant mortality by encouraging maternal breastfeeding and giving care and assistance to the newly-born babies of the poorer classes in the name of the wellbeing of France and the happiness of humanity as a whole.This chapter describes the spread of Marbeau’s model within Paris and to other French cities, the organisation of care for babies and employment of staff, the reforms introduced during the Third and Fourth Republics and the debates prompted by these institutions among reforming French doctors. The reforms are analysed in relation to the changes introduced to the wet-nursing system, the birth of puericulture and the important Roussel Law of 1874 which marked the first steps towards social and legal protection for infants and the adjustments required to the original model of the creche in response to the increasing numbers of women employed in industry. Solutions for the infants of these women workers included workplace nourriceries and pouponnieres. France was, and probably still is today, “the home of the creche”.

L’insegnamento della storia antica e medioevale nelle scuole fasciste e sovietiche fra le due guerre mondiali: manuali di scuola elementare a confronto = La enseñanza de la historia antigua y medieval en la escuela fascista y soviética

The article analyses the evolution of the contents of Italian and Soviet textbooks of ancient and medieval history. Comparisons are made not only of the different views of the past and their use for ideological objectives —a subject which has been studied in depth by historians— but also the images of the ancient world and civilizations, which were translated and popularized by the Fascist and Soviet regimes in primary schools.

Public and Private Life in Soviet Society Through Lewis H. Siegelbaum's Research

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