Soviet projects and experiments, which were eventually implemented in capitalist countries

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

From the moment the USSR officially declared its existence in general, the whole world considered it, among other things, as a place where giant experiments take place. On the one hand, they seemed extremely insane … On the other, much of what was originally introduced in the USSR, we eventually see in the news, like grimaces of Western tolerance or hipster fashion.

Schools without disciplines

In the twenties, the Soviet Union tried to introduce the so-called Dalton education system. It assumed the complete abolition of the old class-lesson system. Children had to learn about the world and sciences by working on thematic projects and presenting them at school, and they could work in "laboratories" converted from classrooms, in a library, on the street, at home, in a pioneer circle - anywhere. In addition, it was assumed that there would be a lot of manual labor in the project work, which would make knowledge more “tangible” and accustom the child to working life.

In many ways, the project did not succeed due to insufficient material and book base and schools and families, and too many more pressing problems than study, so under Stalin they decided that it would be easier to return to the pre-revolutionary system, and the new style of education was covered up. it seemed forever.

But for the last couple of years in Russia, they have only been discussing a special Finnish curriculum, in which children learn not disciplines, but topics, including making their own projects and studying the issues and knowledge accumulated by science that are associated with these projects. A considerable share of projects is the creation of something by hand, both individually and in a team of friends. Part of the project can be done outside the school, although in general it is assumed that learning will take place there, although not necessarily in the classroom - there are many interesting rooms in the school and with it. The introduction of Dalton's long-standing methodology is now considered not a bunch of Soviet dreamers, but an organization of study, for which the future belongs.

Political correctness and quotas

Anyone who has read more recent translations of foreign classics and made in Soviet times, will pay attention to one feature: the Soviet censorship erased far not only the moments associated with religion. Gypsy passages were cut from Merime, for example, from Chaucer - a story in the spirit of blood libel on Jews, and so on. And if the ancient, under the king of Gogol, the word "w … d" was allowed in the text, then Arkady Gaidar put it only in the mouth of a bad character and, moreover, replaced it with three dots, like a dirty trick. In translations of foreign classics, offensive jokes towards blacks were also retained only among negative characters. It was impossible to find the word "psh … k" among Kaliningrad and Belarusian authors - a dismissive, popular designation for a Pole.

When the same thing happens in our time in the United States, Russian-speaking commentators consider it an American invention - political correctness. But in Soviet times, the ban on insults by nationality and race in literature and journalism appeared much earlier.

Another type of censorship is now attributed to the intrigues of feminists - we are talking about criticism of the objectification of women as nothing more than a walking erotic fetish, and demands to prohibit the broadcast of such an attitude. However, much earlier this was practiced in the Soviet Union, only it was called differently: "the dignity of a woman cannot be humiliated, a woman is not a toy!" It is in connection with this approach that the fact is connected that attempts to repeat the pin-up culture in the USSR were hacked to death by officials.

Finally, it was in the USSR that gender and national quotas were ubiquitous, introduced in order to break inertia, initial barriers to career issues and a general understanding of the possibilities of different groups. This is not only about the obligatory representative of national minorities in one or another branch of the party. Many films, especially for children, were considered from the point of view of the representation of girls and women, adding national diversity. And these films are still watched as hits of the Soviet film industry.

Female awareness groups

Another thing that confuses the Russian layman in the modern world is just such groups. However, their full analogue operated in the early USSR. In such groups, lecturers and Komsomol leaders told not only that the Bolsheviks emancipated a woman, but also about what their now legal rights are - reproductive, to choose a partner, to divorce, to be protected from violence, to education, they gave specific sanitary - hygienic recommendations, explained that insults should not be tolerated, motivated to study and get a new, fashionable, demanded profession. At that time, the idea was revolutionary.

Eco-agenda

Subbotniks with the cleaning of forest parks or river banks, pioneering collection of waste paper or scrap metal in our time would be called eco-projects and eco-flash mobs, as well as education of civic consciousness (this is the description of such actions found in articles about the Scandinavian countries). In the Soviet Union, they were part of government policy. The authorities encouraged the return of recyclable materials, as well as glass containers for reuse: milk or kefir cost much less if you gave a whole bottle of one or the other to the store when buying. And for waste paper, citizens were given publications for encouragement, which sometimes (due to the general deficit) could not be obtained in any other way - that is, they motivated them very strongly. Recycling and reus, in short, which have now become so popular in advanced states.

The whole story is sometimes like a big series of experiments. Tolerance or prohibitions: How language policy was pursued in the 4 great empires of the 19th century.