Page:John Rickman - An Eye-witness from Russia.djvu/6

 Soviet often travelling with the buyers in order to guarantee good faith.

The profits of the Co-operative Society, which were reduced to a minimum, but which on the millions of roubles of turnover amounted to a considerable sum, were devoted to educational purposes. Evening classes were started in modern languages, geography, history, and the Russian language; in bookkeeping and business training; subsidies were granted for agricultural colleges and schools, and scholarships were founded for the gvmnasia (secondary schools).

The educational programme of the Bolsheviks was ambitious, but it was this ambitiousness which commended it to the people. The Bolsheviks aimed at starting a school in every village and increasing the number of gymnasia in the district and founding a university, but in this project they were stopped by lack of teachers. To overcome this difficulty they started training colleges for teachers, which were financed by the Soviet. Scholarships were given to promising pupils, which would carry them through the gymnasia and on to the universities already founded, such as those at Kazan, Odessa, and Samara. In this work they co-operated with the Buzuluk Co-operative Society.

The enthusiasm of teachers for their work, which had been depressed by the restrictions of the old régime, revived. They gave up their holidays to attend university extension lectures and evening classes, in order to improve their teaching capacity for the coming terms. Technical classes were started, and the agricultural schools and colleges, some of which were already in operation under the old régime, were revived, additional instructors obtained, and new institutions begun. The thoroughness with which the educational programme was dealt with is illustrated by a movement to start a George Junior Republic by the President of the Teachers' Union, a man who had come from Moscow. (A "George Junior Republic," it may be explained, is an experiment which has been successfully tried in the United States for giving self-government to wayward boys and girls who have not proved amenable to ordinary school discipline.) On this subject, as on many others dealing with education, he sought the advice of English and Americans who had had experience in educational problems and with kindred activities,