"As Lilina Zinoviev, one of the pioneers of Soviet schooling, declared at a Congress of Public Education in 1918: 'We must make the young generation into a generation of Communists. Children, like soft wax, are very malleable and they should be moulded into good Communists . . . We must rescue children from the harmful influence of family life . . . We must nationalise them. From the earliest days of their little lives, they must find themselves under the beneficent influence of Communist schools. They will learn the ABC of Communism. . . To oblige the mother to give her child to the Soviet State — that is our task.'"
"Lenin's emphasis . . . was reflected in the change in education policies during 1920-1. The Bolsheviks viewed education as one of the main channels of human transformation: through the schools and the Communist leagues for children and youth (the Pioneers and the Komsomol) they would indoctrinate the next generation in the new collective way of life."
Passage quoted from -- Orlando Figes, "A People's Tragedy - The Russian Revolution, 1891 - 1924" (London, Jonathan Cape, 1996), at p. 743
[Orlando Figes studied History at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge. He completed his PhD at Trinity College, Cambridge.]
4/21/17 11:49 AM
