page_title: Likbez
section_title: 1920-1930
hierarchical_section_title: Likbez / History / 1920-1930
caption_attribution_description: English: Soviet propoganda poster that translates as, "If You Don't Read Books, You'll Soon Forget How to Read and Write." The woman reads the book Ten Days That Shook the World.
context_page_description: Likbez was a campaign of eradication of illiteracy in Soviet Russia and Soviet Union in the 1920s and 1930s. The term was also used for various schools and courses established during the campaign. Nowadays this term is sometimes used in Russian as a slang for answers on common questions.
context_section_description: In the early 1920s, the Bolshevik government emphasized local initiatives and de-emphasized centralized State control to parallel Lenin's New Economic Policy that had been instituted in 1921. It was in this atmosphere that the Soviet government's Commissariat of Enlightenment most heavily launched its methodical literacy campaign by the Spring of 1923. The height of the Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic's (RSFR) People's Commissariat of Enlightenment (Narkompros) literacy campaign lasted until the tenth anniversary of the October Revolution, 7 November 1927.
  From 1923-1927, Soviet pro-literacy propaganda became especially pushed by the Cheka's likbez agencies among Russian Trade Unions. In the pro-literacy propaganda campaigns within trade Unions, the Party-line contained in pamphlets and other pieces of propaganda focused on "true literacy" as the ideal literacy level for workers, a commitment that would require 6–8 months of additional enrollment in Union-sponsored literacy schools after a worker had initially achieved "semi literacy." In the mid-1920s, Cheka likbez commissions would routinely seek and publish reports of literacy rates from Unions as a means of spreading a competitive desire for literacy between towns and factories. In these reports, illiteracy was painted as a "weak opponent" to be overcome in a short period of time by reading State literature in libraries and "Red Rooms" or red corners. The Russian Transport Union, with its educational administration's 40-50 million ruble annual spending capacity, was largely in charge of seeing to the promulgation of literacy initiatives, transmission of pro-literacy pamphlets, and dissemination of books and reading materials to Union-sponsored schools.
  Throughout the 1920s, spreading literacy in the Soviet transportation sector through the building of Union schools held symbolic importance for the State as a means of propaganda in and of itself. By promoting literacy in transport workers, specifically, the Komsomol and Cheka likbez units hoped to achieve symbolic victories in signaling the Likbez campaign's overall success. Even in the early Likbez campaign, the transportation sector already experienced relatively low illiteracy rates in workers due to the reading necessary to operate modes of transportation. As such, achieving high literacy in this population was a relatively easy goal and would show the Likbez campaign's success in a widespread and visible industry.
  
  State-sponsored prescriptive materials in the 1920s concerning the plight of the domestic worker had a specific focus on literacy stemming from Union membership. These short stories, chastushki, poems, cartoons, and plays were spread through pamphlets, journals, and wall newspapers and were usually tales about young, single, illiterate women from the countryside. In these pieces of propaganda, it was when the downtrodden women became acquainted with local Soviet officials that the women's luck began to change. In the plot lines of most of these works, the main characters, who had usually fled their countryside homes after being taken advantage of sexually, experienced reversals of fortunes after meeting Soviet officials in their new, urban homes. These officials would rescue the women from the abuses they were suffering as ill-paid and ill-respected domestic servants by encouraging the women to join a Union. At this point in the story, the women would receive not only Union protection but also an education as a result of Union membership and access to Union schools and reading materials. Ultimately, the story's heroine, the domestic worker, would become fully literate as well as active in her local worker's committee (mestkom). Often, the women in these works of pro-literacy propaganda were portrayed as using their new literacy and subsequent heightened foothold in Union society to become Soviet delegates themselves and help second generations of downtrodden women by teaching them to read and write. In these rags to riches propaganda tales, literacy was the vehicle by which women were able 
caption: 1925 propaganda poster: "If You Don't Read Books, You'll Soon Forget How to Read and Write"
exif: {"Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "96", "Image YResolution": "96", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "ACD Systems Digital Imaging", "Image DateTime": "2004:02:20 16:30:37", "Image YCbCrPositioning": "Centered", "Image ExifOffset": "174", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "324", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "5617", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0210", "EXIF SubSecTime": "15", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "400", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "557", "Interoperability InteroperabilityIndex": "R98", "Interoperability InteroperabilityVersion": "[48, 49, 48, 48]", "EXIF InteroperabilityOffset": "252"}