Lined school notebook on the Russian language for a student of 4th “A” class Valentin Moskalev, started in February 1935. The artifact was made by the Red Bookbinding Factory in Rostov-on-Don from paper from the Sokol factory. The gray cover with a portrait and quote of Joseph Stalin, rules of behavior for students, a multiplication table, a system of weights and measures, was made at the Balakhna plant and printed in the printing house named after. Comintern. Price 10 kopecks. Original. The content of Valentin Moskalev's classroom and homework, done in blue ink and written in smooth, beautiful handwriting, clearly reflects the degree of influence of ideology on Soviet school education in the 30s.

Describing the preparation of workers for the celebration of May Day or using the phrases “proletarian revolution” and “pioneer song” for Soviet schoolchildren of the 30s was commonplace. Perhaps, in those years, schoolchildren were the only ones who could persuade the “Communist Party” in any manner and with complete impunity. True, only by cases. It was this exercise that Valentin Moskalev, a student of class 4 “A”, did in February 1935, whose notebook on the Russian language has miraculously survived to this day and is carefully stored in the collection of “Little Stories”. This artifact is evidence of how strongly Soviet education was politicized and ideologized, starting from the very first stage.

Cover of a notebook from the collection “Little Stories”

The history of the national school during the Soviet period developed quite dramatically and contradictorily. From the very first days of its existence, the Soviet government proclaimed the right of all citizens to education - regardless of nationality, property and gender. This, without exaggeration, was an important achievement of the revolution - until 1917, as is known, obtaining an education was considered mainly the privilege of well-born and wealthy men. However, among other things, the Bolsheviks assigned an educational function to educational institutions, which did not consist in instilling good manners, as one might think, but in instilling socialist consciousness. Back in 1918, during the first Congress of Education Workers, Lenin clearly outlined the educational task: “Only the school can consolidate the victory of the revolution. Everything that was won by the revolution is consolidated by the education of future generations.” So the most important matter of the “correct” education of future obedient generations was taken up by prominent party members: N.K. Krupskaya, A.V. Lunacharsky, M.N. Pokrovsky.

But before we began to cultivate a new revolutionary shift, it was necessary not to leave any stone unturned from the old education system. The Soviet government knew how to break things best: in the country in 1918-19, the previous structures of zemstvo school administration were everywhere destroyed, private lyceums and theological seminaries were closed, and the teaching of ancient languages, history and religion was prohibited. To weed out unreliable teachers, the State Education Commission held their re-election in the summer of 1918 - in accordance with the “recommendations of political parties” and “personal pedagogical and social views.” So, without really having time to get back on its feet, the Soviet school had already experienced the first “purge.”

By the way, at the dawn of Soviet power, teachers were not at all as resigned and obedient as at the time when Valentin Moskalev was studying. In many regions they refused to submit to the new leadership of the country, accusing the Bolsheviks of terror and an attack on democracy. In 1918, there was even a massive strike of teachers, but the authorities immediately declared it illegal, and the All-Russian Teachers' Union was banned. Instead, the Communist-controlled Union of Internationalist Teachers was created (two years later it would be replaced by the Trade Union of Educators and socialist culture). At the same time, the government promised to raise the status of the people's teacher "to a height where he had never stood before." The teachers believed the promises. To be fair, we note that the increase in the authority of teachers in the USSR did occur, but too slowly and painfully. Even if we simply compare a teacher’s salary with the average income level in the country, we will see that throughout almost the entire Soviet period it was lower by an average of 15%. If we compare the incomes of a Soviet school teacher and a university associate professor, the result will be completely indecent (the difference is nine times).

In the same year, 1918, a mass of various decrees and resolutions relating to the sphere of education were adopted. First of all, the People's Commissariat of Education was created, headed by Anatoly Lunacharsky. At the same time, departments of public education were organized locally under the Soviets of Workers' and Peasants' Deputies. A special decree declared the school a secular institution - the church was separated not only from the state, but also from education. A year after the October Revolution, on October 16, 1918, the “Regulations on a single labor school RSFSR". This document proclaimed free two-stage schooling: stage I 5 years of study, stage II another 4 years of study. Let us immediately note that Soviet education, contrary to the prevailing stereotype, was not always free: few people remember that from 1940 to 1956, education in high school (from eighth to tenth grade) cost from 150 to 200 rubles per year. So Valentin Moskalev completed the second stage of school for a fee. The “Regulations on the Unified Labor School of the RSFSR” also provided for teaching in the native language, respect for the child’s personality, joint education of children of both sexes, and a close connection between education and productive work. A separate point was about comprehensive state assistance to the cause of education. And this is where things got worst of all.

In the first post-revolutionary years, the Soviet school experienced enormous financial difficulties: they did not have time to write new textbooks, there was a catastrophic shortage of manuals, and paper and ink were no less in short supply. But what is there: there were not enough school buildings themselves. Qualified teachers (most of whom were “old regime”) were forced to leave their profession due to non-payment of salaries. Budget expenditures for education were inexorably reduced: in 1920 they amounted to 10%, 2 years later only 2% of the country's budget. It is not surprising that since 1921, 90% of schools have been transferred from the state budget to the local one.

Total savings on schools occurred against the background of an all-encompassing fight against illiteracy of the population. This struggle, announced in December 1919 by Nadezhda Krupskaya, was to end triumphantly by the 10th anniversary of the revolution. However, the plan of the leader’s widow failed miserably; the deadline for its implementation was postponed first to 1931, then to 1934. In 1937, it was decided that the problem had been solved - the population of the USSR was officially recognized as literate. But, as you know, even in 1957, about 7% of the country's citizens still did not know how to read and write.

Since the second half of the 20s, when it became clear that it was necessary to seat at least all children at their desks, school education gradually began to emerge from a deep crisis. In the 1927-1928 academic year the number educational institutions compared to 1913, the number of students increased by 10%, and the number of students increased by 43%. In five years - from 1923 to 1928 - the number of schools in the USSR increased from 61,600 to 85,300. And it was in the 20s that the time of numerous educational experiments came: the Soviet government was in active search optimal learning model. By the way, many of these pedagogical experiments were successful: it is enough to mention the experimental station of public education of Stanislav Shatsky, the Gaginskaya station of Alexander Tolstov, the children's colony for juvenile delinquents of Anton Makarenko and others. However, their experience was never adopted. How will textbooks on pedagogy from the 80s and 90s be written? “The authoritarian tendencies characteristic of Soviet society in the 30s practically nullified the results of the didactic searches of teachers and practical teachers in the 20s.” Be that as it may, this experience never went beyond the threshold of experimental colonies and stations.

In Soviet literature, and later on television, the theme of educational experiments of the 20s was perfectly explored in the work “The Republic of ShKID” by Grigory Belykh and Alexei Panteleev, published in 1927. It tells the story of the difficult process of re-education that the students of the Dostoevsky School of Social and Labor Education had to go through. Please note: the founder and director of SHKID Viktor Nikolaevich Sorokin (Vikniksor, whose real prototype was the teacher Viktor Nikolaevich Soroka-Rosinsky), as well as his wife Ella Andreevna Lumberg, are highly educated and noble people, restrained and well-mannered, very far from the image of a Soviet teacher. Very soon in the USSR, such royal-trained teachers will be branded “intellectuals” and will begin to be “reforged.” Fortunately, this did not affect the fate of Viktor Nikolaevich Soroka-Rosinsky in any way - until the end of his life, the founder of ShKID worked with difficult teenagers and died in 1960.

The Soviet government not only allowed, but also encouraged attempts to introduce new educational approaches and programs. During the 20s, several educational systems were tested on Soviet schoolchildren and teachers: a nine-year general education school, a nine-year school with a vocational bias, a seven-year factory school, and a three-year school for peasant youth. For each of them, the State Academic Council developed its own textbooks, manuals, regulations, and standards. However, all this diversity did not lead to an increase in the effectiveness of school education: the amount of knowledge that students acquired was extremely meager. The result of socialist education was a person who was little interested in literature, art, life relationships, and more interested in political events and other types of social activities.

The concept changed at the very beginning of the 30s. Wanting to introduce a single educational standard, the government demanded the unification of all schools, teaching methods and learning programs. By the end of the 30s, schools had become approximately the same educational institutions that they remained until recently. It was during this difficult time of change that Valentin Moskalev fell to study. Changes began with an increase in funding - it increased almost 10 times compared to 1925-26. This made it possible during the first and second five-year plans not only to expand the construction of new schools, but also to increase teachers’ salaries, which now began to depend on their length of service and level of education. By the way, there were big problems with the last point: the vast majority of teachers, not only in rural areas, but also in cities, had at best a secondary education, not always pedagogical. For example, in the year of interest to us, 1935, when Valentin Moskalev was in the 4th grade, almost 35% of teachers with lower education and only 1.5% with higher education worked in primary schools of the RSFSR. By that time, all the Viknixors had already been transferred.

By the end of 1932, almost 98% of Soviet children aged 8 to 11 were sitting at their desks - at least these are the official figures. At the same time, new unified textbooks were finally written, the teaching of world and national history was introduced - within 15 years, the Soviet government had already decided how to correctly talk about its conquests. The main form of organizing the educational process again became the lesson (recall that in 1918, school lessons and student lectures were branded as “bourgeois relics” and cancelled), a clear class schedule and internal rules were introduced. In 1934, a position appeared class teacher- By doing so, the authorities intended to restore the traditional hierarchy of school relations and achieve strict discipline. For the same purposes, exams were introduced, based on the results of which children were promoted to the next grade.

The school grading system has also changed. In 1932, the two-point system of the 1920s (“satisfactory” - “unsatisfactory”) was replaced by a four-point system, and in 1935 - a five-point system (“very bad”, “bad”, “mediocre”, “good”, “excellent”). "). Let us remember that the Soviet government, like many other things, abolished this differentiated system in 1918, seeing in it remnants of the capitalist system and humiliation of students by points. In less than 20 years, the lack of grades led to the fact that children simply stopped trying to study - in any case, they were given a “satisfactory” grade. The newly introduced five-point grading scale took root with difficulty, including among teachers - they were also accustomed to average grading, because it was much easier to work without singling out stronger and weaker students in the class. So the boy’s teacher Valentina Moskaleva, apparently, was in no particular hurry to switch to a five-point assessment: in the entire notebook we found only two marks "ud" and both, in our opinion, are set with great reserve. Agree, it is strange that the teacher did not correct errors in such symbolic phrases of that time as “October revolution”, “Bolshevik newspaper”, “Communist party”, etc.

By the way, along with the point system of assessment, the Soviet government in 1918 at the same time abolished the student uniform - from the point of view of class struggle, this clothing was considered a symbol of belonging to the upper classes (there was even a contemptuous nickname for a sentimental girl - “schoolgirl”). So Soviet schoolchildren went to classes wearing whatever their parents could provide them with. A rare exception in the mid-1930s was a special pioneer uniform for those who were lucky enough to get into the All-Union health resort "Artek" - everything was laid out on this "showcase of happy Soviet childhood" in the best possible way. Meanwhile, ordinary pioneers even made their own ties. However, despite general poverty, in the 30s a dress code was introduced in Soviet schools: light (white, gray, blue) shirts or blouses, dark (black, gray, blue) trousers or skirts. But it is unlikely that all Soviet schoolchildren strictly complied with this rule - many of them generally took turns going to classes with their older brothers, having the same pants or shoes between them.

The mandatory introduction of school uniforms occurred after the war, in 1948 - during the period of universal “uniforming”, when department after department dressed in their uniforms. The 1948 school uniform largely copied the style of classical gymnasiums - in color, cut, and accessories. In addition, uniforms for Soviet schoolchildren were paid and purchased by parents at their own expense - unlike, say, the uniforms of students in craft, railway and factory schools.

Since the mid-1930s, the percentage of students who pass exams successfully and advance to the next grade has become the main criterion for assessing the quality of teaching. Classes, schools, districts, and even entire regions were considered "successful" or "failing" based on these percentages. And here, as in many other areas, excesses began: it got to the point that less than 95% of students considered moving to the next grade “ bad work" However, 75 percent of those who moved to the next grade allowed the teacher to remain at work.

Despite the massive construction of new spacious schools, most educational institutions were located in dilapidated or not fully suitable buildings, often pre-revolutionary. Most often in the description of schools of those times the following characteristics are found: “ great school pre-revolutionary construction", "a good wooden house, with stoves and kerosene lamps", "a log house of an exiled kulak with one oil lamp." In other words, new school buildings were still a rarity in the 1930s. The most unusual educational institutions were found in the Far North, where classes were often held in yurts in which oil lamps smoked. So even in the 50s, many rural schools made a pitiful impression: from semi-literate teachers to unsanitary conditions and lack of desks.

By the way, few people know that the double school desk - in the classic form in which Soviet students of the 20-70s remember it - was invented at the end of the 19th century by the exiled student Pyotr Korotkov. He worked as a teacher in the Ural village of Brusnyatsky, where he figured out how to almost halve the cost of producing school furniture. The fact is that until that time in Russia they used single desks, invented in 1870 by ophthalmologist Fyodor Erisman - it was a combination of a chair connected to a table with an inclined tabletop and a footrest. Korotkov proposed making the desks double - so they took up less space in cramped classrooms. To make it more convenient for children to get up from the table, he made part of the tabletop folding, and at the same time screwed side hooks for briefcases to the desk, attached shelves for textbooks under the table, and on the table he carved recesses for an inkwell and two grooves for a pen and pencil. It was in this cheaper form that Erisman’s desks successfully migrated from tsarist schools to Soviet ones. Year after year, teachers insisted that children not slam the folding table tops when they stood up and sat down to greet the teacher at the beginning of the lesson.

Many other school attributes have undergone a similar evolution. For example, a school board. At first, in Europe and Russia there were no boards that would hang on the wall in front of children. But each student had his own small slate tablet, from which what was written was erased with a simple rag - this was much cheaper than writing with ink on paper. I first thought of connecting several small boards into one large one and fixing it on the wall. early XIX century James Pillans is the headmaster of a Scottish school. He also came up with the composition of colored crayons, starting to color white chalk using a mixture of coloring pigment and oatmeal. The fashion for large blackboards reached Russia by mid-19th century. They were made of wood, then painted with matte black paint - traces of chalk are clearly visible on it. By the way, if a school student called to the board walked towards it too slowly, he could be flogged for this. In Soviet times, such strictness no longer existed.

Another indispensable school accessory, the briefcase, has also been modified several times. The first student briefcases appeared quite late - at the end of the 19th century. Before this, schoolchildren placed textbooks and notebooks in a pile, tying them with a leather strap. Well, in the villages, children went to school with canvas bags on their backs. Briefcases were originally the prerogative of lawyers and officials - they were carried under their arms because there were no handles. When someone first thought of attaching a handle to them, schoolchildren immediately mastered them - so the textbooks no longer got wet in the rain. At the turn of the 20th century, models appeared with shoulder straps, or, as they called them, “helps,” which allowed them to free their hands. By analogy with the German army bags - Ranzen - they began to be called satchels.

The changes also affected the school diary. By the way, they first appeared in Soviet schools in the mid-30s - just when the pioneer Valentin Moskalev was gnawing on the granite of Soviet science. The diaries were introduced along with a five-point rating system, each of which was certified by the teacher, and parents left their signature once a week. Thus, the diary acted as a unique way of communication between the teacher and the student’s parents. The first Soviet diaries were issued with a thick cardboard cover in white or gray and cost 95 kopecks. Those who tried to sell them at a higher price (there were plenty of speculators in the USSR in all years) faced up to 10 years in prison, as the corresponding inscription warned about: “Sale at a price higher than the stated price is punishable by law.” By the way, there is a similar warning on the cover of the notebook presented in our collection, which costs 10 kopecks.

There were no colored pages or drawings in the diaries; everything was very ascetic and official. On the first pages, the student had to independently enter a complete list of school subjects and the names of teachers for each of them. The pages were numbered so that none of them could be torn out unnoticed. In the 80s, attitudes towards the diary became more liberal: it was no longer considered a crime to stick a bright sticker or a picture from a magazine on the cover, and flowers drawn on the pages were no longer considered a crime for expulsion from school. But for the absence of a diary, they were still kicked out of classes.

The era of change also had an impact on the design of school notebooks. Since 1918, the place of pre-revolutionary colorful notebooks and notebooks was replaced by grayish notebooks with thin gray poorly printed sheets and covers made of pressed wrapping paper. At the time when Valya Moskalev was studying, GOST standards for student notebooks had not yet been developed (this happened in 1941, Soviet notebook GOST 170x205). But on our artifact there is an OST mark (industry standard) 575. By the way, lined margins in notebooks appeared only in the late 30s. Therefore, fourth-grader Moskalev outlined the fields independently - using a ruler with a simple pencil.

In the 19300s, the country gradually switched from old Russian measures to the modern metric system - and this was reflected in the design of school notebooks. On the inside cover of our artifact there is a detailed table with new system weights and measures and symbols. After the revolution, the format of the school notebook decreased slightly, but at the end of the 20s, variants of the 5th (European) format began to appear - this is exactly the notebook used by Valentin Moskalev. The western and southern regions of the country were among the first to produce them. In our case, this is the “Red Bookbinding” factory in Rostov-on-Don. Before the revolution, it was a private printing house "Typolitography and paper dyeing of the Gordon Partnership", which, after the nationalization of printing enterprises in 1920, became part of the 1st State Cardboard and Binding Factory named after. Clara Zetkin, and in 1924 it separated into an independent factory “Red Bookbinder”. By the way, this enterprise still operates to this day, and according to its direct profile! Since 1992, “Red Bookbinder” has been renamed into OJSC “Donpechat”.

The design of the notebook covers reflected all the riot of colors of the rich ideological palette Soviet Union. They posted calls to join the ranks of radio amateurs, athletes, friends of books, etc. There were frequent slogans like “A book gives knowledge - knowledge gives power”, “Unity is strength”, “Workers of all countries, unite!”, “Enlightenment is the path to communism”, etc. In private collections of artifacts, we also managed to find notebook covers with portraits of Karl Marx, Mikhail Kalinin, Anatoly Lunacharsky, Klim Voroshilov, and even the future “enemy of the people” Alexei Rykov (surely someone had notebooks with Trotsky lying around on the mezzanine).

Classic writers whose work did not run counter to Soviet ideology also appeared on the notebook covers of the 20s and 30s - for example, Nikolai Nekrasov, Alexander Pushkin, Nikolai Gogol.

Next to the portrait we see a quote from Stalin: “The Bolsheviks would certainly have perished in their struggle against capitalism if they had not learned to overcome difficulties.” It is unlikely that such a saying is suitable for a children's notebook. The schoolchildren probably did not understand its meaning, since this phrase was taken out of context. This concluded the article “On the Tasks of the Komsomol,” published in Komsomolskaya Pravda in October 1925. It sounds like this in full: “The Bolsheviks would certainly have died in their struggle against capitalism if they had not learned to overcome difficulties. The Komsomol would not be a Komsomol if it were afraid of difficulties. The Komsomol activists took upon themselves a great task. Therefore, he must find the strength within himself in order to overcome any and all difficulties on the way to the goal. Patient and persistent Leninist study is the path that Komsomol activists must go through if they really want to educate millions of young people in the spirit of the proletarian revolution.” Well, now it’s clear that Stalin is here calling on young people to study. But these words of the leader did not take root in Soviet education, giving way to the more laconic and understandable Leninist “Study, study and study again!”

The last page of notebooks at that time was traditionally decorated with the words of the Soviet anthem, “The Internationale,” and “March of the Pioneers.” Sometimes there were also tables with the dates of the main proletarian holidays, recommendations of books that were required reading for every Soviet schoolchild, popular sayings of Soviet leaders, Russian proverbs that had not lost their relevance in the new conditions, and spelling rules. In our case, the back cover is decorated with six rules of student behavior. This one looks especially original: “Never spit on the floor – it’s harmful and dirty.”

Of particular interest is the internal content of school notebooks of the 30s - it eloquently records changes in the social structure and reflect the entire era in which the child had the opportunity to study. In this sense, the old notebook is a real historical document worthy of serious study. Harmless auditory dictations about a brown bear, winter or a gray hare are now and then interspersed with retellings of iconic proletarian novels and poems about the revolution, strikes and strikes, the oppression of the working class by the bourgeoisie. It’s even strange that already in the fourth grade, schoolchildren were given for analysis such a far from childish poem by Evgeny Tarasov as “Audacity and Glory” or Gorky’s work “Mother” - it is these that Valya Moskalev describes in detail. In almost every class work we come across phrases like “pioneer club”, “village council”, “neighboring collective farm”, “world proletarian revolution”, “red partisan”, “white officer”.

The dominance of ideology also affected the level of knowledge of Soviet schoolchildren in the 20s and 30s. According to the Soviet authorities, education with a clear party orientation made it possible to form a correct communist worldview in children. Literally from all platforms it was stated that “every school lesson should be a lesson in communist education” - Soviet pedagogy considered politics an organic part of the learning process. While paying lip service to creative pedagogical exploration, Soviet education officials regularly issued public reprimands to teachers who minimized the political content of their lessons.

For example, at the beginning of 1935, in the Sverdlovsk Regional Educational Institution, a teacher primary school reprimanded for “in a geography lesson, when studying the topic “heat zones,” he did not in any way link it with the international policy of the Soviet government in relation to the oppressed peoples of capitalist countries.” So it’s not surprising that Valya Moskalev had to write in Russian more often about the world revolution than about brown bears. Of course, such a deliberate politicization of each lesson brought mortal melancholy to the class and in no way contributed to the children’s craving for knowledge.

From the mid-30s, after the murder of Kirov, the state began to interfere more and more actively in the affairs of the school - they began to look for saboteurs, double-dealers, Trotskyists and other saboteurs in school classrooms. “Black lists” began to appear, which included teachers whose relatives were arrested as “enemies of the people.” Such teachers were taken under control, and soon removed from work with a “wolf ticket” - this is in the best case, in the worst case, the poor fellow faced arrest with all the ensuing consequences. Moreover, arrests were often made right in the middle of the lesson, in front of stunned children.

By placing on teachers the responsibility for educating the younger generation in a socialist spirit, the state made them especially vulnerable. Any action or statement threatened trouble if it gave reason to doubt the values ​​imposed from above. A general atmosphere of suspicion enveloped everyone, making its way into every class, not leaving even the most decent ones aside. When the parents of one student were arrested at Moscow school No. 25 (this was the first case at the school), teacher Pyotr Kholmogortsev recommended that his classmates not change their attitude towards their friend, whose father was imprisoned. But when the arrests came one after another, Kholmogortsev and other teachers stopped talking about it with their students. This oppressive atmosphere of total fear is perfectly demonstrated in the film “Tomorrow There Was War” (1987) by Yuri Kara, in which a schoolgirl, persecuted by the public because of the erroneous arrest of her father, decides to give up her life. The action of the film, as the title suggests, takes place just before the war, when the witch hunt was in full swing in the USSR. Fortunately, most of the film's characters have the courage not to break down and renounce their arrested relatives.

Often, teachers themselves became cogs in the repressive machine, “showing vigilance” in the form of denunciations against their colleagues. For example, the director of one of the Moscow schools, Belyaev, sent Joseph Stalin a letter in which he accused the deputy head of the Moscow city education department, Oskina, and her subordinates of indulging the “enemies of the people” who had sneaked into the schools. As proof of this hostile activity, Belyaev presented a list of “anti-Soviet” teachers, in his opinion: Kabalkin (the son of an officer in the tsarist army and a former Trotskyist convicted of “subversive activities”), Zablotskaya (dismissed from work as a “Trotskyist”), Reinova and Shenok (“spies and saboteurs”). Belyaev also complained that loyal party members were being “driven to the last limit by hidden enemies.” The informer included himself among those unfairly offended - he was denied a teacher’s certificate, despite 16 years of experience and higher education. The letter ends with a warning that many students are “not our youth” because they are being taught by “enemies of the people.”

At the end of 1937, terror struck the People's Commissariat for Education itself: at the end of October, People's Commissar Andrei Bubnov was arrested and soon executed, then many of his subordinates, as well as representatives of the trade union, regional and district education departments. In 1937, in one region of Ukraine, “with one stroke of the pen,” 50 teachers were fired according to the “black list,” and in the Yaroslavl region, 200 teachers were immediately dismissed from their jobs for political reasons. In Crimea, a special inspector traveled through the regions, obtaining “compromising materials” on teachers. Read about how such “vigilance” affected the fate of teachers and graduates of the Crimean Medical Institute named after I.V. Stalin. At the end of 1937, throughout the USSR, teachers were fired on the basis of unverified statements and denunciations simply for “failure to provide communist education in schools.”

However, the big problems of adults did not greatly affect the children themselves in Soviet schools - unless, of course, we were talking about repressions against their parents. In general, in the 1930s, the USSR was deservedly proud of its achievements in school education. Even in the most remote villages and unprepossessing schools, the opportunities that opened up for students could not be compared with how their parents lived two decades ago. It was during these years that the thesis about “happy Soviet childhood” was reflected in literature, painting, sculpture and cinema (see note). A striking example of this is Lazar Lagin’s fairy tale “Old Man Hottabych,” written in 1938 and brightly and sincerely glorifying the happy childhood of Soviet children. The book was filmed in 1956 - which is why in the film of the same name we see post-war school uniforms and Stalinist high-rise buildings.

I would like to believe that at least the childhood of the hero of our story, Valentin Moskalev, was as cloudless as in Lagin’s fairy tale. Because his youth cannot be called serene: in 1941 he should have just turned 16 or 17 years old... We can only add that the further fate of Valya Moskalev is not known to us. I would like to believe that he managed to survive the war. In the lists of those killed in the Great Patriotic War there is only one Valentin Moskalev, suitable in age for our hero: this is Valentin Petrovich Moskalev, born in 1925 in the village of Pervoe, Maloarkhangelsk district, Oryol region and died on June 25, 1944 in the area of ​​​​the village of Tikhinichi (Rogachevsky district, Mogilev region) during the operation that began "Bagration" for the liberation of Belarus. This Valentin Moskalev (the namesake of our hero or himself?) was buried in a cemetery near the now defunct village of Franulev, the name of which was preserved only on old maps.

Who remembers their first notebook? Maybe not the first, but general form Soviet notebooks you must remember. They were checkered and lined. Mostly green, blue, pink, dark red, yellow in different shades of colors.
They cost in Soviet times: 12 sheets - 2 kopecks, 18 sheets - 3 kopecks. But this didn’t bother us much, because... Our parents bought us notebooks.
Inside every school notebook you could find a piece of blotter. Now schoolchildren don’t even know what it is, and we, who grew up in the 80s, didn’t really use them either, except to get wet our pens, which we wrote in bold and chewed so we could throw them at our neighbors. After all, you have already used ballpoint pens, not ink pens.

I also remember that there were no margins in these notebooks. And they had to be drawn by hand with a pencil and ruler. Drawing with a ballpoint pen was prohibited. It was very tiring. IN primary school For some students, their parents did this. Now notebooks have already marked fields.

Do you remember what was on the back of the notebook? There they printed multiplication tables, measurement tables, pioneer songs, etc. Here are several options for what was on the back of the notebook: “Moscow Evenings”, “Victory Day”, “Eaglet”, “Birch Tree, Rowan Tree”, “Where the Motherland Begins” and much more. Here are some pictures of the back of a notebook from that era. (click on images to enlarge)

In Soviet schools, great attention was paid to penmanship. It was believed that correct handwriting fosters perseverance and teaches accuracy, and also helps to organize thoughts. Today, looking at these notebooks, it is difficult to imagine that elementary school children wrote this.

1. First-grader’s notebook

In the manual of the famous German teacher Adolf Disterweg, “The Beginnings of Children's School Education,” published in 1861 in Russian, the primary school teacher was recommended, at the very beginning of education, to conduct explanatory conversations about the things that children will deal with in the learning process; in particular - about ink and writing implements.

7. From the history of blots

Calligraphy is a discipline that remained unchanged until the elementary school reform of the late 1960s.

Against the background of the modern computer era, the pedagogical conventions that surrounded the acquisition of a normative education for a Soviet schoolchild are distinguished by their focus on the physical “hygienization” of writing. The ability to write by hand implies concern for the purity of writing, which extends, relatively speaking, to the cleanliness of the body.

8. Soviet copybooks for 2nd grade

Calligraphy came to the USSR from pre-revolutionary schools, where it was called calligraphy.

Success in penmanship thus turns out to be a condition for self-education, which also leads to academic success. The effectiveness of pedagogical instructions was expressed, however, not only in the diligence of the students, but also in their readiness for self-criticism.