This volume consists of a collection of essays devoted to study of the most recent educational reform in Russia. In his first decree Boris Yeltsin proclaimed education a top priority of state policy. Yet the economic decline which accompanied the collapse of the Soviet Union dealt a crippling blow to reformist aspirations, and to the existing school system itself. The public lost faith in school reform and by the mid-1990s a reaction had set in. Nevertheless, large-scale changes have been effected in finance, structure, governance and curricula. At the same time, there has been a renewed and widespread appreciation for the positive aspects of the Soviet legacy in schooling. The essays presented here compare current educational reform to reforms of the past, analyze it in a broader cultural, political and social context, and study the shifts that have occurred at the different levels of schooling 'from political decision-making and changes in school administration to the rewriting textbooks and teachers' everyday problems. The authors are both Russian educators, who have played a leading role in implementation of the reform, and Western scholars, who have been studying it from its very early stages. Together, they formulate an intricate but cohesive picture, which is in keeping with the complex nature of the reform itself. Contributors: Kara Brown, (Indiana University) * Ben Eklof (Indiana University) * Isak D. Froumin, (World Bank, Moscow) * Larry E. Holmes (University of South Alabama) * Igor Ionov, (Russian History Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences) * Viacheslav Karpov & Elena Lisovskaya, (Western Michigan University) * Vera Kaplan, (Tel Aviv University) * Stephen T. Kerr, (University of Washington) * James Muckle, (University of Nottingham) * Nadya Peterson, (Hunter College) * Scott Seregny, (Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis) * Alexander Shevyrev, (Moscow State University) * Janet G. Vaillant, (Harvard University)

This volume consists of a collection of essays devoted to study of the most recent educational reform in Russia. In his first decree Boris Yeltsin proclaimed education a top priority of state policy. Yet the economic decline which accompanied the collapse of the Soviet Union dealt a crippling blow to reformist aspirations, and to the existing school system itself. The public lost faith in school reform and by the mid-1990s a reaction had set in. Nevertheless, large-scale changes have been effected in finance, structure, governance and curricula. At the same time, there has been a renewed and widespread appreciation for the positive aspects of the Soviet legacy in schooling. The essays presented here compare current educational reform to reforms of the past, analyze it in a broader cultural, political and social context, and study the shifts that have occurred at the different levels of schooling 'from political decision-making and changes in school administration to the rewriting textbooks and teachers' everyday problems. The authors are both Russian educators, who have played a leading role in implementation of the reform, and Western scholars, who have been studying it from its very early stages. Together, they formulate an intricate but cohesive picture, which is in keeping with the complex nature of the reform itself. Contributors: Kara Brown, (Indiana University) * Ben Eklof (Indiana University) * Isak D. Froumin, (World Bank, Moscow) * Larry E. Holmes (University of South Alabama) * Igor Ionov, (Russian History Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences) * Viacheslav Karpov & Elena Lisovskaya, (Western Michigan University) * Vera Kaplan, (Tel Aviv University) * Stephen T. Kerr, (University of Washington) * James Muckle, (University of Nottingham) * Nadya Peterson, (Hunter College) * Scott Seregny, (Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis) * Alexander Shevyrev, (Moscow State University) * Janet G. Vaillant, (Harvard University)

The clash between scholarship and politics—between truth and propaganda—was ruthless for historians in Istpart, the Russian Communist Central Committee's official historical department. Istpart was tasked with preserving the documentary record, compiling memoirs, and upholding ideological conformism within the national narrative of the 1917 revolution. In Revising the Revolution, Larry E. Holmes examines the role of Istpart's historians, in both the Moscow office and a regional branch in Viatka, who initially believed they could adhere to the traditional standards of research and simultaneously provide a history useful to the party. However, they quickly realized that the party rejected any version of history that suggested nonideological or nonpolitical sources of truth. By 1928, Istpart had largely abandoned its mission to promote scholarly work on the 1917 revolution and instead advanced the party's master narrative. Revising the Revolution explores the battle for the Russian national narrative and the ways in which history can be used to centralize power.

The clash between scholarship and politics—between truth and propaganda—was ruthless for historians in Istpart, the Russian Communist Central Committee's official historical department. Istpart was tasked with preserving the documentary record, compiling memoirs, and upholding ideological conformism within the national narrative of the 1917 revolution. In Revising the Revolution, Larry E. Holmes examines the role of Istpart's historians, in both the Moscow office and a regional branch in Viatka, who initially believed they could adhere to the traditional standards of research and simultaneously provide a history useful to the party. However, they quickly realized that the party rejected any version of history that suggested nonideological or nonpolitical sources of truth. By 1928, Istpart had largely abandoned its mission to promote scholarly work on the 1917 revolution and instead advanced the party's master narrative. Revising the Revolution explores the battle for the Russian national narrative and the ways in which history can be used to centralize power.

War, Evacuation, and the Exercise of Power examines the history of the Pedagogical Institute, located in the USSR's Kirov region from 1941 to 1952. Holmes reveals a tangled and complex relationship of local, regional, and national agencies. While it recognizes the immense strength of the center, it emphasizes a contentious diffusion, although not a confusion, of authority. In so doing, it departs from traditional models of Soviet power with their neatly drawn vertical and horizontal lines of command. It also demonstrates institutional and personal behavior simultaneously consistent with and at odds with a triumphalist wartime narrative. The Nazi invasion of Soviet-held territory in 1941 set off a massive evacuation eastward that included the relocation in Kirov of the Commissariat of Forest Industry and a large factory under the jurisdiction of the Commissariat of Aviation Industry. By occupying the two main buildings of Kirov s Pedagogical Institute, these commissariats forced the Institute to abandon the provincial capital for a remote rural location, Iaransk. Then and for years thereafter, the Pedagogical Institute portrayed itself as the victim of these commissariats' bad behavior that included the physical destruction of the Institute s buildings and much of its property. In its quest for justice, as it understood it, the Institute had the support of the Commissariat of Education. But that agency was far too weak in comparison with its institutional competitors, the offending commissariats, to provide much help. Of greater significance, the Institute forged a remarkable alliance with governing party and state organs in the city and region of Kirov. A united Kirov compelled the entry into the dispute of the Council of Peoples Commissars of both the Russian Republic and Soviet Union and the party s Central Committee. In addition to a focus on the exercise of power at the center and periphery, this study also assesses the Institute s wartime exile in Iaransk. The difficulties of life there led to a Soviet version of town vs. gown and provoked the Institute s further resentment of Moscow. They also exacerbated conflict among distinct groups at the Institute as each advanced its own interests and authority. Faculty and administration, ranked and unranked faculty, communists and non-communists, and evacuated instructors and the Institute s own all fought amongst themselves over the relationship of politics and scholarship and over the legitimacy of a highly stratified system of food rationing."

Grand Theater examines bureaucracy not as a readily identifiable structure but rather as a process of day-to-day operation. Thus it is concerned with how agencies of both the communist party and the state apparatus not only implemented directives from above but also responded to perceived successes and failures, chose to produce, share, and conceal information, and reacted when common citizens injected themselves into governance by making demands and complaints. It concentrates on the 1930s as a seminal period when Stalin's regime established a hypercentralized system that dominated the Soviet Union until its collapse and the Russian Federation since then. It also focuses on the administration of schools as the primary window through which to examine governance because of the importance of education to Soviet authorities, most notably Stalin himself, and the accessibility of archival documents in this field, one not classified as particularly sensitive. Grand Theater provides novel insights into the functioning of Stalinist bureaucracy, brings to the forefront a new understanding of center-periphery relations, and reveals the important role of individuals in what has heretofore been largely regarded, when beyond the Kremlin's inner circle, as a highly impersonal system. It also examines in unprecedented ways the reciprocal relationship between ideology and policy formation, on the one hand, and actual administrative practices, on the other, a relationship that more often than not had negative and dysfunctional consequences for both the governed and governing. Holmes argues that the Soviet administrative system during the 1930s was much like grand theater. The documents produced for and by that system were the script for a discursive theatrical reality that inspired neither a careful appraisal of problems nor a dispassionate search for workable solutions.

..". an exciting, first-rate contribution to our understanding of Soviethistory on several levels... and the relationship between tsarist and Sovieteducational policies and practices." -- Ben Eklof

"Larry E.Holmes' book is a fine, expert study of a difficult topic." -- TheHistorian

..". this first-rate work definitely points the waytoward a new understanding of the Soviet Union in the 1920s." -- Journal ofModern History

..". a succinct and original study of earlySoviet education and an engaging disaggregation of the convoluted relations amongideology, politics, and social reality in a revolutionary society... Thiswell-researched, innovative, and insightful study is required reading for anyserious student of early Soviet history." -- The RussianReview

..". elegantly written, a pithy fast paced, andintersting book..." -- East West Education

Larry Holmesexamines Soviet school policy from 1917 to 1931 in its ideological, political, institutional, and social dimensions.

In the face of the German onslaught in World War II, the Soviets succeeded, as Molotov later recalled, “in relocating to the rear virtually an entire industrial country.” It was an official declared “one of the greatest feats of the war.” Focusing on the Kirov region, this book offers a different and considerably more nuanced picture of the evacuations than the typical triumphal narrative found in Soviet history. In its depiction of the complexities of the displacement and relocation of populations, Stalin’s World War II Evacuations also has remarkable relevance in our time of mass migrations of refugees from war-torn nations.