The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1933-11-04
The Cultural Revolution in the Land
OF the Dictatorship of the Workers

ers trained to be teachers, engineers,
scientists, artists, leaders in the field
Of culture; an immense research work
expanding in every realm of science;
q tremendous upsurge of creative &C
tivity not only among the highly
educated but among the rank and
file workers and peasants; a genuine
interest in cultural problems, a burn
ing thirst for knowledge, a mass alb
sorptton of cultural values hitherto
unknown the world over-this is the
cultural picture Of the formerly
backward and impoverished country
Of Russia, now fiourishing and MAX
ing rapid strides forward under the
workers rule.
Hardly 100000 pupils in primary
and secondary schools in 1914-15;
nearly 26,000,000 pupils in the pri-
mary and secondary schools in 1888
"a. Hardly 100000 students in all the
higher institutions of learning in
l914-15; about 100000 in the higher
institutions of learning in 1888; be-
sides $4,000 students in the Com
munist Party schools and Communist
Universities; 435 900 in workers fac
ulties (where students prepare them
selves for the university. Prior to
the revolution there were only about
10000 students in the technical high
schools (technicums) today the num-
Der of students in the technicums is
over 100000. Prior to the revolution,
the factory apprentice school did not
exist at all; today such schools are
to be found in connection with every
factory and mine; the pupils of these
schools are trained both in general
subjects and in a special trade. In
, 1929 the number of students in
such apprentice schools was 243, 900;
this year their number is 100000.
GALL land, all factories and plants
n have now been given over to
the workers and peasants" said Lenin
in 1913, at the first all-Russian Con-
gresS of Popular Education. THE
workers have been called not only to
stand at the bench, or to follow the
plow, but also to manage the estates
and the instruments of production,
the factories and plants. This striv-
ing for knowledge, which has now
awakened among the workers is
therefore most natural. The workers
are reaching out for science, for the
school, and it is our task to give
them this science and school,"
1t was difficult, however, to satisfy
the knowledge-hunger of the Soviet
masses in the first years when the
means of production were little de-
veloped. Only the Fiye-Year Plan,
with it's tremendous increase in in
dustrial and agricultural production
made possible that upswing of edu-
cational and cultural activities which
put the U.S.S.R. far ahead of all the
other countries. The increased out
put of iron and steel, cement and
bricks made the construction of
schoolhouses on a vast scale possible.
The development Of metallurgy made
it possible to equip the schools with
apparatus, instruments and models.
The expansion of the paper industry
made possible the publication of mil
Hons OF textbooks. For the fall of
1888, in the Russian Socialist Fed
Grated Soviet Republic alone (the
RSF. SIR. is the greatest of all the
federated Soviet Republics, 45,000,0 600
textbooks were placed this fall in
the hands of the pupils. There are
nearly $4,000 reading rooms in the
villages of the Soviet Union; there are
about 100000 Red" Corners (reading
and study rooms) in factories, mines
and offices. There are 94.5 million
books in the libraries of the U.S.SR.
There are over 1000 scientific re-
search institutes with 10000 scientific
workers. The change brought about
in the cultural field is even greater
than. the change in all the other
fields.
d o
NUMBERS alone do not tell the
N whole story, however. 1t is the
character Of the study, the compost