I live in a post socialist country. My mom had a subject called "Marxism" when she attended highschool. I had a subject called "Democracy" when I attended highschool. We were taught by the same teacher.
@@KiraC-q8g you mean, those who worked in Yeltsin's government. Cz Gorbachev's advisors - you can't even call them Marxist economists. All they knew is to sign up stupid orders, that speeded up the collapse of the country.
On a positive note: Annual International Olympiads in Math, Physics, Chemistry, Astronomy, etc. for high school students were originally competitions for socialist countries. And now they are trully global events.
The only way to escape for some. It was said from the beginning that "the students" belonged to the communist establishment, but they needed the very best to survive their own incompetence. So the best ones still had a chance. For keeping the communists in power?
As an 80s Soviet kid I can say that the primary education I received was enough to get 1100 on my SATs when my family came to the US in 1990, while speaking very little English. I loved my school, my teachers, my friends. I was one of the first in my class to be inducted into the “pioneers”, and I was very proud of that fact not because my head was filled with Soviet propaganda but because I had to get good grades and work hard for them. I wouldn’t trade my Soviet childhood for any transformer toy in the world.
Dude, Soviet Education was so good it survives to this this day. On my exchanges with Russians and Ukrainians on chat rooms I notice how good the education system still is - and improvements kept coming even in the 1980s when the Mathematical Circle was developed and is the recommended method for children by the American Mathematics Association. I would like to ask you something: I found this video because I was looking for some scientific kits that were distributed for kids and teens. I'm from Brazil - a country that never had good educational system as can be read on a text by Richard Feynman who taught here for 2 year by request of the State Dept. Somethin, however, was created here during the 1970s, and I have never seen similar product elsewhere until an Ukrainian told me about some scientific kits for kids in the USSR. The thing in Brazil was a series of kits sold in styrofoam boxes with a manual for experiments and a leaflet about the scientist the box was about. The series of kits was called The Scientists and when you had all of the boxes you could have the leaflets bound on hardcovers and you would have a small microscope with "Japanese optics". The kits started being made in a almost amateur manner by a professor of the University of São Paulo School of Medicine but soon a large magazine publisher, Abril Cultural, professionalized production and the kits were sold in news stands. When I reached school age these kits were not being sold but I had the complete set my older (9 years) brother. Was there something similar in the USSR? I know that important professors on several fields did study in the Soviet Union particularly prior to the 1964 military coup in Brazil and they may have had contact with these brilliant kits. The kits here treated teenagers with respect and as young adults. There was no attempt to use tricks to attract them - everything was very formal - and that seems to coincide with the description of Sovietic education Lex Friedman's father gives on the 100th podcast Lex released. On a side note: I don't think the video describes the USSR's Educational System in a completely correct way - understandably for brevity - and could have been done with so many Cold War era quirks. The first episode of the 1992 BBC/Adam Curtis documentary series 'Pandora's Box' talks bout the importance of technical abilities in the formation of the USSR - the episode is called 'The Engineer's Plot'. Krushchev, btw, was an Electric Engineer graduated with the first class of the many engineering schools created at the time (I believe early 30s or late 20s) and new how bad they were - hence his preoccupation with the quality of the system. Also, it's actually easier to endoctrinate ileterate people specially in a country that had Russian as the "official" language since when one learns Russian, one will end up reading Tosltoy and Dostoievski. The use of the term "Marxist endoctrination" is a Cold War quirk. Engels wrote on his diary - so what I'll say is a historic fact - that when some people told Marx about a group in Russia calling themselves Marxists and told about their ideas, Marx told them to "tell them, then, that I'm not Marxist". Karl Marx is a hugely important philosopher and one of Sociology's fathers (with Max Weber and Émile Durkheim) and the Marxist Method has no relation to what the term "Marxist" or "Marxism" came to be understood during the Cold War. As the great US Marxist intellectual, the linguist Noam Chomsky, put "the October revolution was a right wing military coup" Here's Chomsky saying that: th-cam.com/video/jxhT9EVj9Kk/w-d-xo.html And here's a short lesson by a group of British philosophers that explains very well why Marx's works are so well known and so little read: th-cam.com/video/iDJeTnLKLEI/w-d-xo.html Long live Prof. Mel Smith!!!
@@pyatig nice to hear that you didn't replace anyone with these collectivist ant values of have - nots. DW were asking themselves from where are these authoritarian tendencies coming from. One source is for sure those "pioneers".
After the fall of the Berlin Wall I met a Russian former translator who had served in Afghanistan. He spoke multiple languages and struck me as a highly educated and civilised individual. He was personable with a well developed self deprecating sense of humour. Happy to discuss Monty Python or Tolstoy. Most impressively for me he could not only speak multiple languages but could do so in a variety of dialects. He could pass as Geordie, Scouse or Estuary English! So, while I admit my sample group is only one man, it would be difficult for me to fault an education system that could produce such a person.
I think there were two big holes in this episode. Firstly, about the fact that such a huge number of Soviet citizens received a University education. To the extent that the average level of education of USSR citizens was higher than almost any other country. And this was reflected by the fact that at one time the Soviet Union was producing around half of the world's scientists. But this was not just in science and technology. There was also a massive number of arts students and in lusic conservatories. This tradition still carries on. For example, in Turkey where I lived for two decades, there was a serous problem of Russian musicians taking over many Turkish jobs in the music industry. The Russian musicians all had a high level of musical training. The second key question not covered was on the quality of the education. As a result the piece was unnecessarily negative. Education was regarded generally as one of the successes of the Soviet Union.
that because everyone is biased and few can be impartial. Noaways especially people either treat the ussr as a failure with no upsides or a paradise with no problems. It had massive problems like every other state and generally did way to much killing in its stalin era, but it had successes that were undeniable. Many post communist nations especially in places like africa can say that it wasn't as bad as some other eras like the colonial era. In some places like somalia it was considered the modern golden age to this day.
Correct. People without high education were considered low class citizens. As a result people were getting JUST a high education. For a diploma. And never worked as a specialist later. For instance an engineer ( any engineer) was getting a very low salary, so nobody wanted to work as one, as a result it was great demand in engineers, so there were always more places than applicants. So if a person wanted high education for a status they just became engineer, never worked later. But getting into medical field or foreign language field was very difficult, there were usually 20 applicants for 1 place.
@A K before socialism only smart or rich people could go to college but the Soviet Union taught that education is everyone's right no matter how stupid he is. as a result 60% of the Soviet population successfully graduated from college. higher than the United States now which is only 40%
yeah this episode is really biased and strange. This guy tries to portray compulsory primary school as a bad thing (the alternative is child labour lol…???) and portrays women in the workforce as a bad thing. I’ve noticed a lot of other biased things in these videos - which could easily be fixed by him comparing western nations to the USSR, and realising that both have many of the same issues, that he could then critique.
Yes, an episode about Soviet boarding schools would be a great thing to include in your series. I recently read Stalin's Niños to review for JMH and providing something accessible about the Soviet boarding schools of the Cold War era would be useful to bring to the public. Thanks!
There were boarding schools for exceptionally gifted children, attached to the leading universities but in reality the boarding schools were a rarity. However, boarding schools were a disaster in the North because the children were taken out of families forcefully, and taught in Russian only. As the results, native languages and cultures were forgotten, children became unable to lead traditional nomadic lifestyle, etc. Also note all textbooks were in Russian but >50% of USSR polulation were not native Russian speakers.
yes, also aimed at breaking down local non-Russian cultures... ( had a college quarter class on ethnic minorities in USSR, taught by visiting Anthropology Prof from Leningrad )
Fyodor Dostoevsky once wrote: "People talk to you a great deal about your education, but some good, sacred memory, preserved from childhood, is perhaps the best education. If a man carries many such memories with him into life, he is safe to the end of his days, and if one has only one good memory left in one's heart, even that may sometime be the means of saving us"
I love Dostoevsky, read all of his masterpieces, the only russian writer which is readable. The rest of them SUCK. Anywho WHERE exactly did u take that quote from?
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Fully expecting a video about the results of theinternats. Also, really good work with this video! I'm absolutely fascinated by the history of education. I'm studying to be a history teacher at university and I think my thesis may be related to education in general. Please keep on doing this high quality documentaries for as long as possible, we all love them!
Only in theory - i was sent to learn something about electicians profesion but we were used as unpaid workforce - planted trees , cleaned ruble and other unrelated work .
The only field that WAS taught very well were exact sciences. It was a strategic field for the country that was at war with, basically, the rest of the globe.
The episode on the USA educational system in the '50s and '60s would be great. And do not hesitate to discuss the racial and financial aspects involved! And to throw there a little bit of info about Japan's, Germany's etc... educational systems for comparison would be great... Otherwise great work with the channel. I am always looking forward to the next episode.
that would be cool. I also hope we get episodes on the education of other communist states like somalia, I heard from my parents somalia's education was actually really good and they ended up doing well in the usa when they left during the civil war.
@@carkawalakhatulistiwa Somalia was communist during the cold war until the 90's. This channel only talks about the cold war so during the time the channel talks about somalia was communist. Siad barre led a communist party.
Yeah, pretty sure it was East Germany who disallowed the beating of children first? Might have been the other way around though. My country only banned that in 2017.
In Hungary being part of the pioneer organization wasn’t mandatory, however it was advisable. For example, my father wasn’t part of it. The structure of the organization was the same, but youngest members were called “Little Drummers” instead of “Little Octoberists”
@@Keefan1978 I don’t know for sure, but I suspect that the name comes from their obsession with revolution. During the time of revolutions in the 18th - 19th century, the drummers of the armies were often young kids.
Not sure why you keep calling them "YOUNG Pioneers"; we were just called "Pioneers". Also, the story of Pavlik Morozov (equally fictional to the version you present here), was pitched to us slightly differently: Pavlik Morozov reported on both of his parents for being "Kulaki", members of the production/farmer class who refused to distribute their stockpiles of food (bread, meat, milk, etc.) to the people. The parents were sent away to the gulags, and there was no mention of Pavlik Morozov being killed. Btw, the Internat system, full of children raised without parents' love, but often with verbal, emotional, physical and sexual abuse, produced not just mostly criminals, but some real monsters without a sense of empathy or regard for human life. Even the biggest bullies in my old neighborhood in the industrial outskirts of Leningrad, were terrified of the Internat kids.
We got the Pavlik Morozov story with gruesome details. In our version, not only was he killed, but also tortured by his father. And Young Pioneers was the official translation we learned in our English classes in the late 80s. So, historically accurate.
@@thomasaagren not quite, but with a significant portion of the population in the gulags and compulsory initial military training in the last two years of school... I can see some similarities, lol.
It was actually possible, throughout most of the Soviet times, to not enroll into the Pioneers (and actually to be thrown out for some things as well) but the family would've take such an abuse that it wasn't worth it for most... Mostly the hard-core religious families chose it and were paying dearly.
@@MarkWTK The admission was next to impossible to gain if you were not on the next step -- the Komsomol, the Union of the Communist Youth. It was more of a "voluntary" union in a sense that you could not join and live a life of menial labor without any problem from the State. If you were kicked out you could almost never join Komsomol (joining Komsomol was streamlined for Pioneers and "was kicked out and was never reinstated" is a very bad thing to have in the Soviet CV) so it's basically that. You automatically ceased to be a Pioneer at the age of, IIRC, 15, so it was all the same. You could sometimes actually rejoin if you're kicked out, and as I know it happened to almost all those who were kicked out and not sent to the penal colonies (there were no pioneer organizations there). As well you were not entitled to get the time in the State-sponsored prison^Wpioneer camps (ok, the discipline there was supposed to be prison-like but actually it was a good fun for most since it was lax and you can imagine what a lot of young people without parents cramped together tend to do), you wasn't participating in the pioneer organization affairs etc. Most of the people that were kicked out desperately tried to get back and even the threat of being kicked out was a very effective one. With the kids that didn't join at all it was way worse in a sense that your family would've been constantly harassed by school officials, parents would be called to school and pressured, sometimes yelled at by the school officials. The kids would be harassed in the school by the teachers, and the teachers would encourage other kids to harass the "anti-communist element" as well. The grades could be lowered etc, it all depended on the officials at this point. Officials were relentlessly grilled if there were kids that didn't join Pioneers. Sometimes even the local police was involved in trying to make them join. Like going in to your house and speaking to the parents, promising the problems with the police.
@@Раковийсупець interesting , but sad. thanks for the reply. never expected it to be this detail !!! i presumed you were fully raised in that era. really opened my eyes into a world long gone, but not forgotten. I guess if I were born back then, I would most probably have accepted communism (maybe on the surface level), due to me being a coward and I would prefer getting a tertiary education or securing a stable job. thanks again. :D
@@MarkWTK I was born in the USSR but I was mostly raised in the post-Soviet era. My parents and grandparents and a lot of friends are another story, however. Most of the things I described is based on what they told me in person, multiple people, multiple times, the same things. No worries, I think that it's a good thing to raise people's awareness about those troubled times. Jeez, almost everyone accepted communism on the surface level. It wasn't a point of cowardice, rather it was fundamentally futile not to accept it. You either looked for ways abroad which some people did but it was very hard to get outside, or you did what you were expected to do. Mostly open anti-communist were only the criminal circles and some hard-core religious people. Even the church top brass was pro-communist in the surface. Although if you scratch the surface, especially after the 60s, there was a lot of hand-written illegal literature in circulation. I remember some anti-soviet books, both religious and not, copied by hand, in my grandma's library.
I grew up near one such boarding school, my great-grandma's sister used to be a teacher there. Oddly enough, I never knew what was happening there. I was passing by this school quite often - although the territory was fenced, the gates were always often, and people walked through as a shortcut. There was a large hall there, and typical soviet murals could have been seen through the windows. As a little kid, I liked those murals, and once I told my granny as we waked by "I'd loved to be there". "God forbid!" replied the granny. And indeed, with the stories from soviet and post-soviet orphanages sounding like memoirs of concentration camp survivors, I can understand why she'd rather see me going to a usual school.
I went through the post-Soviet education system and it was super interesting to learn how it all came to be, thank you! I went to the kindergarten in the early 90s where half the books in the small library were about the glorious Red Army. Grandma worked at an internat for children with hearing difficulties (which means she was always LOUD even at home). In school we had a labor class where we operated industrial machinery to make chess pieces and stools (I never finished mine) and we also had to work in the school garden a set amount of hours during the holidays. I got a gold medal, which meant an automatic 100 points (you had to take two exams to enroll in university, worth 100 points each, and I only took one). I studied tuition free and even got a small sum of money monthly provided that I passed all my semester exams. Some students enrolled tuition free not due to exam results but because they had allocated slots from rural areas or companies who expected them to work there after they graduated. Enrolling tuition free also meant I had to do some unpaid labor again - in fact, when I was told to come to the university in a week in my work clothes, only then did I truly believe that I actually succeeded to get enrolled. We had to help migrant workers who renovated our university (they were super nice and even let us smoke in classrooms they were working on). We also had vocational practice which in my case meant teaching freshman students. Of course, we had none of the ideological drivel which our parents chafed under. Back then, if you did not quote Lenin enough in your graduation thesis, it would automatically get rejected by the committee of professors, even if your subject had nothing to do with Marxism! Again, great episode, and I definitely want to hear more about the internats - and the stilyagi too!
We used to have a (woodworking) "labor class" of sorts here in America, Shopwork. Some schools still offer it as like an elective, but sadly it's been neglected in recent decades. It's unfortunate because many skills come with that stuff (and some worry they may become rare if not taught more).
I’m not surprised that the books were about the Red Army to be honest. The contribution to humanity they made by defeating the Third Reich is incredible.
Looking forward to this video. My limited interaction and understanding of former Soviet citizens gave me the impression that they emphasized education. And emphasized it more than Americans. Sergei talks about his education experience growing up in the USSR (Ukraine) if you want to hear a personal account
The education was practically the only way to climb the social ladder. In the US, Italy, Germany, you could become successful by starting your own business etc. In the USSR, the diploma was the only ticket to climb. Therefore it was much more important for anybody with any aspirations to 'climb the social ladder'
@@letecmig --- Correct, because, as you can see in the contemporary U.S., uneducated businesspeople are the least qualified to be the government; recall that the ex-president openly admitted to his ignorance when he said: "Who would have thought that healthcare [and governing] was so difficult?" Yes, for the Westerner school is. . . .
@@marianotorrespico2975 well, I grew up under the communist system(in Czechoslovakia) and believe me, some government ministers were basically people with no education, no qualification and apparently with IQ bordering disability (although they had diploma from the university...there was a 'University of Marxism-Leninism' for potential party cadres ....think about study of theology, although you can graduate in two years, you 'study' booklets instead of books and you really do not have to understand the 'dogma', just memorize right 100 'canonic' slogans in correct order:)).... .... the difference from the "U.S., uneducated businesspeople are the least qualified to be the government" was basically they did not achieve anything even in the business;) You really need to understand difference between the 'regular people' and the 'politically involved people' who chose political carreer under the communist system. Not sure how it was in the Soviet Union, but in Czechoslovakia, even the membership of the communist party(and therefore being classed as being 'politically active') was something that was 'not OK' for the normal, intelligent people. I could tell funny stories how several members of my family were 'pushed' and 'blackmailed' to apply for the membership of the communist party and about the funny ways and games they played to avoid this (you just could not say straight 'No' as it would be recorded with consequences on your carreer and educational prospects of your children)
@@marianotorrespico2975 Lmao come on man are you being serious right now? The key ideologues of Marxist-Leninism or Maoism are basically peasants who just read Marxist literature and then took power. Stalin was a fucking bandit before he was a leader. Mao was entirely uneducated in math/science, and this was celebrated. Anti-intellectualism reigned in Maoist China. Not nearly as bad for the USSR, but still... and business people aren't in the government unless they run for office.
The Cold War, can you please make a video on South Africa during the Cold War. That way, you can talk about how South Africa's apartheid system worked, as well as the role that South Africa played during the Cold War. Thank you very much.
Please do a separate episode about the Soviet orphanage/single-parent/poor parents school system @11 mins in! Specifically the breaking down of cultural & ethnic lines that resulted "by accident".
USSR had one system: for "wealthy" miners or scientists, for average factory workers and for "poor" I don't know... loader-men(people who load/unload heavy objects for example in shops)? Not sure about orphanages.
This whole series on civilian topics (tourism, education, etc) in the Soviet union is great! As someone from one of the countries in the sidelines, really looking forward to civilian topics in the US or in the west as well!
Great episode! Curious that many of the questions faced by soviet reform seem very familiar to education systems in capitalist countries. And... YES, we definitely want that episode about soviet boarding schools...
James Loewen, who just passed away, in Lies My Teacher Told Me pointed out that more education usually means more indoctrination and more conformity - and he wasn't talking about the Soviet Union. After the anti-war protests of the 1960s and 70s a lot of which was on college campuses there was a general bias about 'radical students.' So Loewen would ask his students: Which group do you think first opposed America's involvement in the Vietnam War: people with very little education, high school graduates or college graduates? (Before I turned the page to find his answer, I paused and thought, "Who first told me the Vietnam War was a boondoogle?" My grandmother, third grade education. When I was in college most other students thought our anti-war protesting was just making trouble.) Yep. That's what Loewen said too. Loewen also pointed out that the commitment to education in the U.S. increased as more immigrants arrived in the U.S. in the 1880s bringing with them anarchist and socialist ideas.
Weren't most of the larger protests at the universities, and consisted largely of students? I don't doubt the participation of lesser-educated people in eh anti-war movement of the time, but I find it hard to believe that university students did not play one of the largest roles in it.
@@deannilvalli6579 Good points. I should probably quit dragging out this story. You're right, working class people didn't protest, the students did, by the 70s not a majority of them. At the University of Michigan the graduate student TAs went on strike to unionize. One of the leaders told me, 'Most grad students do not support us, we're a minority. When we win, and the first vote for union officers is held - none of us will be elected.' He was basically right. However the rally they had looked huge, a few thousand people. But Michigan had 35,000 students. Also, the basic story of the anti-Vietnam War protests in the U.S. was they were becoming bigger and bigger and then Nixon ended the draft. No risk of being sent over there to be shot at.... no reason to protest. I do think the Loewen story supports his point, that education as designed by countries is primarily to indoctrinate people.
Soviet education is great. It made men and women jacks of all trades. It's VERY bad that we're losing it more and more in the post-ussr space, especially the loss of labour classes in schools
I'm glad he opens with the fact that every education indoctrinates. Of you're at the level of thinking where you're at anything close to education, you have a doctrine of some sort. The debate should be over doctrines, not whether or not a doctrine exists.
I believe the soviet education system was pretty good, judging from (1) the top scientists they produced, (2) the high percentage (>40%) of students going to colleges. I also think the political education was counter-productive.
politics is a part of life, i'd rather have a soviet political education where i'm given the theory, it's explained to me & i can ask questions about it compared to the US model where they just punish you or ridicule you if you dare go against the official ideology
@@afgor1088 Do you genuinely think you're punished severely for voicing dissenting opinions in the US, and would not be punished in the USSR? Are you just that removed from reality?
@@afgor1088 Americans criticizing democracy, liberalism and capitalism all the time without legal consequence, if someone ridicule you of your belief thats just free speech in action, you dont expect everyone to agree with you all the time.
@@afgor1088 Malcolm X was killed by a member of the Nation of Islam, and while Eugene Debs was wrongfully silenced, that would not be able to happen in modern day America. It was more than a hundred years ago.
I do agree that greater access to options for technical and agricultural classes might be nice in US schools. We could use better training for trade skills, contract labor abilities, etc. Thank you for the fascinating video! Stay well out there everybody, and God be with you, friends. ✝️ :)
In soviet education system there was labour(труд) class that teched basic trade skills. How to do wiring, how to decorate wood, how to make chair, how to process wood and metal. In last grade maybe even how to use lathe.
My dad is a college math professor and he have a english translation of a Linear Algebra book written, edited and published in the ussr. The exercises of this book are one of the hardest math questions I ever layed my eyes upon 😂
@@konstantincvetanovic5357it’s about the same as Australia, France, Canada, and the USA. (for Russia). Russia’s peaked in 1991 after the fall of the USSR, where millions of people died from famine and suicide and addiction with the introduction of capitalist system. It has been steadily decreasing ever since which is very good to see of course. Still hasn’t reached the lows of the USSR time.
Very good video, as always David! I like the fact that you always tries to remain neutral and do not give an passionate interpretation, of course it's impossible to remain complete neutral, because complete neutrality do not exists keep doing the good work! Please a video about western education would be very nice!
Well, story of Pavel Morozov was indeed 'falsified' but I kinda disappointed by the host lack of willingness to elaborate about how and why it was falsified. Falsified part was that Morozov's father was probably not helping some anti-Soviet elements in any way. The reality was that he was just an abusive parent and husband who was regularly beating both his son and his wife. So Pavel reported him to the authorities in desperation. And was indeed killed by the relatives of his father in retaliation. But the story in its original form was a poor propaganda material as Soviet authorities weren't that keen on combating intra-family violence at the time, so it was repurposed with more ideologically "pure" messaging.
Why? They were horrible and commonly perceived as social wounds. It wasn't uncommon to scare kids saying "if you don't behave we'll give you away to internat".
On the other side of the pond, this video would reek of controversy. On one hand, it wasn't really good at being a good system, on the other we didn't really ever have anything better in our history and despite everything it was great at actually educating people
The part were said that the more students pursue university, which causes a shortage of labour, remains me of something here in Germany. To go to university, a german student needs the "Abitur", Abitur refers to the 11th to 13th grade, and not everyone does these. Before I started my Abitur, I also looked for apprentice ships, because I wasn't sure if my grades were good enough for Abitur. Over this time, I heard some older people say that they think it's bad that more young people do the Abitur (and go to uni), which causes a shortage of apprentices. The thing is, while looking for Apprenticeships, I found many apprenticeships that require the Abitur, and some even university degrees. Some people (especially germans) aren't thinking.
I don't think it's bad, I belive over time labour demand will shift to high-qualified workforce. And having working high-capacity high education system is good.
Learning about the Soviet boarding school system would be great. Also, I suggest a program on the mandatory classes in "scientific atheism" in the schools and universities, as well as one on the mandatory use of Marxist-Leninist theory in all theses and dissertations.
@@kraanz Institute of Scientific Atheism (Russian: Институт Научного Атеизма) was a research organization founded in 1964 in Moscow for the coordination of research in atheism conducted research institutes of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, universities and institutions of the Ministry of Culture
No he does mean what he said. Khrushchev also introduced heavier pressure on religion in public field, education etc. There is a Russian anthropologist on TH-cam, who's dad taught scientific atheism in school. He is, of course as you may guess, an atheist, who criticize all religious authorities in his video's. In Russian of course, and I don't know is there are any translation. There was an aspiration to make a translation from Scientists Against Myths forum, where he is one of organizators, but I wasn't following them much. They were working with one quite famous translator, he helps them with sound and supports by money.. But I don't know what were the results. So yeah, there is a pretty massive atheist movement in Russia, especially popular around young people.
The Kukuruznik :-) a.k.a. "The Cornlord". The official Bulgarian word for "corn" is "tsarevitsa" (which by the way almost literally means "a queen" - a queen among the crops, apparently), but in the Northwest, where I come from, we also use "kukuruz" as a dialect word.
I can't be the only one that almost feels as if the Soviet Union was like some sort of parallel plane of existence or timeline that has some similarities to our own but has big differences.
It kinda was. When it was founded, (well when the Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic was founded), it was immediately invaded by over 15 other nations who seeked to immediately destroy it, including the White Army, Britain, France, USA, Japan, Germany, Austria-Hungary, Hungary, Poland, Romania, Czechoslovakia, Greece, Ottoman Empire, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, China, and Mongolia (and more I think). After it defeated all of these nations, it then went on to make reforms that were completely unheard of - like legalising homosexuality, giving women completely equal rights in all fields, legalising abortion, enacting racial and cultural equality, creating electricity for the entire country, and also becoming the largest industrial power in the world. It faced embargo and isolation at this time, and tried everything to prevent the Facists from expanding. It was one of the only countries to help Ethiopia against Italy, it supported the Spanish Republicans during the Spanish Civil War, and it pledged to send 1 million troops to defend Czechoslovakia, which was thwarted by Poland confirming they would attack those troops on sight. Then, after defeating the Nazis in the largest war in history, they were isolated by the rest of the world and weren’t allowed resources from them, so they created their own ‘bloc’ where they could provide others with resources and vice versa. All in all, pretty isolated from the rest of the world in all ways.
As you are curious to know more about this topic.... Why don't you check out this video - th-cam.com/video/HBGAmfkDsVQ/w-d-xo.html , and just comment down what you think.. As a freshener I would like to know if anything would have been better... Thank you(HWW)
@@billhanna2148 woke teachings are the state’s teachings. And religious indoctrination at least does not make you value matter over everything else. Dialectical materialism and woke/crt are the same shit.
I went to Soviet school from September, 1969 till June, 1979 and graduated it at an average level. As I remember, the principal problem consisted in the abscence of juvenile psycologists. A youngster didn't have anybody to discuss his or her problems. A teacher of the same sex was considered as a chief and superviser, punishing for failures, while the father, though being a kind man as usual, had no ideas of bringing up.
My mother was very good at studying. She was going to get the gold medal. However, there were quotas on gold medals at the city level. Those quotas were mostly for sale, so the teachers decided to prevent a girl whose parents didn't pay from getting the medal. She wrote a compulsory essay on a very popular book _How the Steel was Tempered_. Following the style she was taught at the literature classes, she finalized her essay with (what was then perceived as) a beautiful phrase: "The world of capital should be made aware that we have more people like Pavel Korchagin [the protagonist of the novel] among our young generation!". This phrase was exactly what caused problems. The evaluators gave her a B mark (preventing her from getting a medal) with a justification: "We shouldn't warn the world of capital, because in this case it can prepare and counter our plans!" Still, my mother got her medal due to her mother, who also had some connections in the Ministry of Education... TL;DR: Something never change
As an American university student in 1970, I went on a study tour of the USSR (with two years of Russian language as a prerequisite). Our group of 15 spent two weeks at the Institute of Foreign Languages in Pytagorsk (in the North Caucasus region). We read Lermintov's A Hero of Our Time (in Russian) to prepare for this course, but it was rather disappointing. The first day of the Literature course were spent on Tolstoy, Lermantov, and Checkov. The other nine days were devoted to Socialist Realism authors. It was exceptionally boring.
@@tpxchallenger The food was terrible, everywhere except Ukraine. We were required to take all meals at restaurants booked by Intourist but even on the occasions when we snuck away to get some food on the street it wasn't very appetizing. Heavily fried meat or fish cutlets, little boiled potatoes, and whatever vegetable they had in stock (the same one every meal). The trains and buses were good and easy to use. Since we were booked through Intourist, we got to go to the Bolshoi Ballet in Moscow and the Kukelniy Theater (Puppet show). Those were great. The only movie we saw in a theater was an East German made (US) western where the cowboys were the bad guys and the indians were oppressed. We mingled quite often with Russian students our age. The older generation, not so much. It was the 25th anniversary of VE Day and the WWII veterans had all been told that Roosevelt and Churchill deliberately withheld attacks on Germany until the USSR had completely defeated them and took most of the casualties. We invited the students to visit us in the US, but of course, they said it was not allowed.
Could you make a video about the military component of the Soviet Education? NVP (Beginner's Military Prep classes with actual rifle shooting and practical familiarity with AKs from grade 4), "Zarnitsa" in middle school, "Sbory" in high school, "Kafedra" in the Universities?
Great video on a fascinating subject us westerners rarely consider! Also, I'm definitely interested in learning about the Soviet boarding/orphanage apparatus.
Because how soviet systems worked, adult life of orphaned people was almost same as non-orphaned, except they got priority in first housing. And didn't have a grandma.
So, after watching the segment about the pioneers and reading the comments about people's experiences or that of their relatives I see that this system is pretty similar to the one active in China. Heck, I think their name is also "pioneers". If anyone has stories please share them below, I'm really interested in learning what's it like. Would it be possible for you to cover them in an episode about education in China?
Thanks! A very good video. And yes, it would be interesting to see a video about the internat-system. Couple of remarks: for reasons unknown to me the 11-year school system persisted in the Baltic republics even after the rollback to the 10-year system in other parts of the Soviet Union. As said - I don't know why, but I have heard hilarious stories how it perplexed the Soviet Russian authorities who could not understand that there are different educational models in the same empire. One story goes like that: an Estonian wants to enroll into a university in Moscow or Leningrad, shows the necessary documents and the official, looking at them, asks - what do these two number ones mean, did You go to the school for only two years? A second remark: Komsomol was not compulsory, but in some schools someone unwilling to fill out the application could feel considerable pressure either from the teachers and the school leadership or from fellow pupils already members of Komsomol. So it was - like many things in Soviet Union - compulsivly voluntary. Which reminds me of a joke a friend of mine heard as a child during the Soviet time standing in a shop queue, where two quite hang over or still slightly tipsy men were discussing the nature of the Soviet system and one of them defined it very accurately: in Soviet Union everyone can do exactly as they please to do - and if they don't please to do, they will be forced to do... Keep up the good work!
The first 90 percent is good, but it slips into nonsense propaganda at the end. Expecting students to read and appreciate Marx seems to me no worse than having all US students read the Declaration of Independance and constitution, and recite the Pledge of Allegiance.
"Young Pioneers" also existed in Bulgaria. I was one until my 5th grade when the institution was abolished. But instead of "Octobrists", the younger children at school were automatically enrolled as "Chavdarcheta" (a long story)...
I remember the workshop in my school we learned how to use tools ... it was fun for a 12 year old. We had to use saws and files and craft wooden and metallic pieces. (this was communist Romania)
I love this channel! Thanks to historians like u, I DONT HAVE TO MAJOR IN HISTORY TO LEARN THIS 😂. Or read books 💀. You guys are the reason TH-cam is a good thing. I can finally focus on my engr degree and learn history in every now and then 🙌
While I am glad you like the content we are producing, you should absolutely still read history books! There is a wealth of information and sources out there that should be explored. We feel we are providing a good introduction and overview to a topic but every topic we cover can be explored to incredible depth. Focus on your degree but do not stop reading and learning independently!
15:16 western education systems also always contain ideological teachings, the only main differences are that it is less streamlined, more subtle and considered normal because people are used to it. But still in capitalist countries it's unlikely that you learn anything about the alternatives to capitalism or why capitalism is a gfenerally flawed and unjust system, so everything you learn in school on society, economy, etc. is still largely one-sided.
@@konstantincvetanovic5357 from what I remember they said something like capitalism has flaws, is unjust to the third world, leads to wars, but also has the advantage of freedom and peace between first world countries and it's an inevitable consequence of human nature, so there is no better system, especiall communism doesn't work. Also the flaws were only explained as a part of the corrupt capitalism that we have now, not as a general feature of capitalism. This is basically a standard narrative since at least 1970s because since then the flaws of capitalism are too obvious to be denied and too big to be played down too much.
Teaching something as good or bad objectively over just exposing how it works and letting others decide what they think of it us ibdoctrination, it does sometimes happen in western education when talking values, but is far less common than in the M-L regimes of the 20th century. I'll accept we're only taught about our systems, wouldn't be bad to see how central planning or corporatism works, though.
The Forgotten Weapons Q/A covered the question of how the Soviet Union's high tech weapons industries kept up with the west despite a bevy of Marxist-Lenninist curriculum stifling their education system. It's a question I had always wondered about, so I found it quite interesting.
I would love to hear the same analysis over the US education, healthcare, extremely christian, pro guns, and capitalist ideology. How well it all works...well, we see it a lot in mass shootings, psychological and physical health, but still something to talk about. Comparing both I'd love to have been indoctrinated on Marxisism.
Really love the endings of this show and sometimes very well hidden references... in this episode it was pioneers swear, which was almost the same in Czechoslovakia as well.
I love Cold War history, my BA was in history my favorite era is Pre WWII to modern day, so many interesting things happened in this short period of time.
It's always oddly surreal to hear Americans talk about indoctrination in other countries. You guys should know that putting flags everywhere, constantly sing your national anthem, and getting kids to put their hands over their hearts while the recite the nation indoctrination mantra every morning is not a normal thing anywhere other than the USA and North Korea
Ah yes the old "yes it's empowering to get as many people through university at possible, but that leaves us with a shortage of production workers and labourers" problem familiar to anyone who lived through the Tony Blair years in the UK.
There are now 50% of Russian people of working age with university grades. As you may guess, least part of them are work in their profession or science. Also university totally splited into two absolutely different classes. Top-universities, which are super-hard to enter without money, but your education will be acknowledged everywhere. And Sharaga's, or all other. They do very little, and you mostly just buying a diploma. People after them have grade, but only in name. Well I literally know cases, even a bunch of such, when people with engineer diploma work as a... Taxi driver for example. Also that guy delivers milk production to the store markets. There were attempts to fight that, and know, after a fail to do so, government allowed one university to, um, buy one another. They monetize sharaga's, to allow some better universities get more money from them. What a strange thing..
I really don't like using "marxist-leninist" ideology as a catch-all term for any of the shortcomings of the Soviet Union. It's never actually explained what is meant by this term in context and that matters a lot when accusing an entire culture of indoctrination/misleading propaganda. It's clear that how this channel understands the meaning of the term, how the the Soviets understood it and how I understand it are very different. To the Soviet state, marxism-leninism was a political ideology by which they could control the populace, that's clear to anyone. To myself, it's an authoritarian version of socialism that even with the best of intentions, as it was for many of the Russian revolutionaries, leads to a state apparatus that is prone to cronyism and corruption. For this channel (in my view), as is the case with all capitalist media, it means whatever it needs to mean to push the idea that all socialism is at best flawed and at worst, evil. While I broadly agree that the Soviet Union was an authoritarian state, full of corruption and oppression, it does not help the educational content of this series to assume that the worst qualities of the Soviet Union to be a result of the ideology that it proclaimed to represent. If I made a similar video on US education that was as hostile as this video so often is, it would be incredibly obvious what my political biases are but because the normative position in most of the world is to be anti-socialist, most people don't see the same in this video. All in all I still enjoyed what actually informative content I could parse from this video but that content was really hampered by the politically charged messaging
3:26 "...where women wanted remain in workforce". -"Do you want remain in workforce?" -"What???" -"He tried to ask, if you want stay working, keep in your current job. Excuse him, he is academic and therefore do not remember any more how people talk and what words ordinary people use in everyday life."
@@antonbatura8385 it's just the worst seeing so many from academia, the elites, politicians, etc and you can tell in their eyes that they've never struggled, never been hungry, and never done hard labor. I think these things are fundamental to the human experience
@@christopherashby8256 I believe they are not. I don't believe in a cult of suffering or struggle as something that improves a human being. It is merely an experience, and the way it transforms a person is quite random. An extreme example would be old Adolf Hitler, who struggled and suffered, to be sure, during WW1, even his magnum opus was titled to honor his struggle. On a less serious note, I had "Labor" lessons in school. I did not learn anything useful there whatsoever. In summer, in between school years, we kids were forced to work in minor construction in school. I remember hauling heavy buckets of sand from 9 am till 1 pm. I cannot for the life of me understand how that would make me a better person.
под каким другим углом ? все что он вещает на плохом английском это брутальная антисоветская пропаганда что льется с экранов постсоветских телевизоров уже 35 где то лет )
@@Олег_Евсеев при чем здесь это !? вы написали "под другим углом" я вам ответил что под тем же углом что и антисоветская пропаганда с российских экранов
Hey guys, can you do an installment on DEAD HAND? I've seen some materials that show it was much more resilient than initial intelligence reported, and that in active state it actually requires regular manual code entry to prevent a full scale global thermonuclear strike package from initiating. More interestingly, it's still active to this day, and a detachment of the Russian executive branch military liaison has to keep entering the codes something like every six hours to prevent the end of the world. If nobody is there to enter the code, the assumption is made that Russia has been hit by a first strike and this guarantees global destruction regardless of any potential survivors.
oh, the favourite book of my childhood on your table..? the mighty СЭС, that would be answering my countless "what's a ... ?", and whose enigmatic front cover hieroglyph would haunt me for a couple years until i recognized the three letters 😁 the ultimate guide to becoming somewhat less stupid.. so nice to see it again. like an old friend 😅
I live in a post socialist country.
My mom had a subject called "Marxism" when she attended highschool.
I had a subject called "Democracy" when I attended highschool.
We were taught by the same teacher.
Bruh
The ideologues of Perestroika were all Marxist economists before they became hard-core market liberals
lol
@@KiraC-q8g you mean, those who worked in Yeltsin's government. Cz Gorbachev's advisors - you can't even call them Marxist economists. All they knew is to sign up stupid orders, that speeded up the collapse of the country.
What is the name of music 14:18 used in the background ?
On a positive note: Annual International Olympiads in Math, Physics, Chemistry, Astronomy, etc. for high school students were originally competitions for socialist countries. And now they are trully global events.
The winners were usually known well before hand.
Sorry to say, It only means to me we are all turning communist under another name...
The only way to escape for some. It was said from the beginning that "the students" belonged to the communist establishment, but they needed the very best to survive their own incompetence. So the best ones still had a chance. For keeping the communists in power?
@@ngamashaka4894 nothing wrong about it :)
@@trovicmi93 that's where you're *DEAD wrong.
As an 80s Soviet kid I can say that the primary education I received was enough to get 1100 on my SATs when my family came to the US in 1990, while speaking very little English. I loved my school, my teachers, my friends. I was one of the first in my class to be inducted into the “pioneers”, and I was very proud of that fact not because my head was filled with Soviet propaganda but because I had to get good grades and work hard for them. I wouldn’t trade my Soviet childhood for any transformer toy in the world.
Yep, and we saw the political Right professors naturally replaced by the communists. Continuously.
Very nice!
Dude, Soviet Education was so good it survives to this this day. On my exchanges with Russians and Ukrainians on chat rooms I notice how good the education system still is - and improvements kept coming even in the 1980s when the Mathematical Circle was developed and is the recommended method for children by the American Mathematics Association.
I would like to ask you something: I found this video because I was looking for some scientific kits that were distributed for kids and teens. I'm from Brazil - a country that never had good educational system as can be read on a text by Richard Feynman who taught here for 2 year by request of the State Dept. Somethin, however, was created here during the 1970s, and I have never seen similar product elsewhere until an Ukrainian told me about some scientific kits for kids in the USSR.
The thing in Brazil was a series of kits sold in styrofoam boxes with a manual for experiments and a leaflet about the scientist the box was about. The series of kits was called The Scientists and when you had all of the boxes you could have the leaflets bound on hardcovers and you would have a small microscope with "Japanese optics". The kits started being made in a almost amateur manner by a professor of the University of São Paulo School of Medicine but soon a large magazine publisher, Abril Cultural, professionalized production and the kits were sold in news stands. When I reached school age these kits were not being sold but I had the complete set my older (9 years) brother.
Was there something similar in the USSR? I know that important professors on several fields did study in the Soviet Union particularly prior to the 1964 military coup in Brazil and they may have had contact with these brilliant kits. The kits here treated teenagers with respect and as young adults. There was no attempt to use tricks to attract them - everything was very formal - and that seems to coincide with the description of Sovietic education Lex Friedman's father gives on the 100th podcast Lex released.
On a side note: I don't think the video describes the USSR's Educational System in a completely correct way - understandably for brevity - and could have been done with so many Cold War era quirks. The first episode of the 1992 BBC/Adam Curtis documentary series 'Pandora's Box' talks bout the importance of technical abilities in the formation of the USSR - the episode is called 'The Engineer's Plot'. Krushchev, btw, was an Electric Engineer graduated with the first class of the many engineering schools created at the time (I believe early 30s or late 20s) and new how bad they were - hence his preoccupation with the quality of the system. Also, it's actually easier to endoctrinate ileterate people specially in a country that had Russian as the "official" language since when one learns Russian, one will end up reading Tosltoy and Dostoievski.
The use of the term "Marxist endoctrination" is a Cold War quirk. Engels wrote on his diary - so what I'll say is a historic fact - that when some people told Marx about a group in Russia calling themselves Marxists and told about their ideas, Marx told them to "tell them, then, that I'm not Marxist". Karl Marx is a hugely important philosopher and one of Sociology's fathers (with Max Weber and Émile Durkheim) and the Marxist Method has no relation to what the term "Marxist" or "Marxism" came to be understood during the Cold War. As the great US Marxist intellectual, the linguist Noam Chomsky, put "the October revolution was a right wing military coup"
Here's Chomsky saying that: th-cam.com/video/jxhT9EVj9Kk/w-d-xo.html
And here's a short lesson by a group of British philosophers that explains very well why Marx's works are so well known and so little read:
th-cam.com/video/iDJeTnLKLEI/w-d-xo.html
Long live Prof. Mel Smith!!!
@@eedragonr6293 WTF are you talking about
@@pyatig nice to hear that you didn't replace anyone with these collectivist ant values of have - nots.
DW were asking themselves from where are these authoritarian tendencies coming from. One source is for sure those "pioneers".
After the fall of the Berlin Wall I met a Russian former translator who had served in Afghanistan. He spoke multiple languages and struck me as a highly educated and civilised individual. He was personable with a well developed self deprecating sense of humour. Happy to discuss Monty Python or Tolstoy. Most impressively for me he could not only speak multiple languages but could do so in a variety of dialects. He could pass as Geordie, Scouse or Estuary English!
So, while I admit my sample group is only one man, it would be difficult for me to fault an education system that could produce such a person.
Highly educated and civilised
Found the crypto
@@sebastiantigani2720 Crypto is a mugs game. Invest in people.
I think there were two big holes in this episode. Firstly, about the fact that such a huge number of Soviet citizens received a University education. To the extent that the average level of education of USSR citizens was higher than almost any other country. And this was reflected by the fact that at one time the Soviet Union was producing around half of the world's scientists. But this was not just in science and technology. There was also a massive number of arts students and in lusic conservatories. This tradition still carries on. For example, in Turkey where I lived for two decades, there was a serous problem of Russian musicians taking over many Turkish jobs in the music industry. The Russian musicians all had a high level of musical training.
The second key question not covered was on the quality of the education.
As a result the piece was unnecessarily negative. Education was regarded generally as one of the successes of the Soviet Union.
This comment should be pinned to the top.
that because everyone is biased and few can be impartial. Noaways especially people either treat the ussr as a failure with no upsides or a paradise with no problems.
It had massive problems like every other state and generally did way to much killing in its stalin era, but it had successes that were undeniable.
Many post communist nations especially in places like africa can say that it wasn't as bad as some other eras like the colonial era. In some places like somalia it was considered the modern golden age to this day.
Correct. People without high education were considered low class citizens. As a result people were getting JUST a high education. For a diploma. And never worked as a specialist later. For instance an engineer ( any engineer) was getting a very low salary, so nobody wanted to work as one, as a result it was great demand in engineers, so there were always more places than applicants. So if a person wanted high education for a status they just became engineer, never worked later. But getting into medical field or foreign language field was very difficult, there were usually 20 applicants for 1 place.
@A K before socialism only smart or rich people could go to college but the Soviet Union taught that education is everyone's right no matter how stupid he is. as a result 60% of the Soviet population successfully graduated from college. higher than the United States now which is only 40%
yeah this episode is really biased and strange. This guy tries to portray compulsory primary school as a bad thing (the alternative is child labour lol…???) and portrays women in the workforce as a bad thing. I’ve noticed a lot of other biased things in these videos - which could easily be fixed by him comparing western nations to the USSR, and realising that both have many of the same issues, that he could then critique.
Yes, an episode about Soviet boarding schools would be a great thing to include in your series. I recently read Stalin's Niños to review for JMH and providing something accessible about the Soviet boarding schools of the Cold War era would be useful to bring to the public. Thanks!
There were boarding schools for exceptionally gifted children, attached to the leading universities but in reality the boarding schools were a rarity. However, boarding schools were a disaster in the North because the children were taken out of families forcefully, and taught in Russian only. As the results, native languages and cultures were forgotten, children became unable to lead traditional nomadic lifestyle, etc. Also note all textbooks were in Russian but >50% of USSR polulation were not native Russian speakers.
They sound eerily similar to the Native boarding schools in the US and Canada
yes, also aimed at breaking down local non-Russian cultures...
( had a college quarter class on ethnic minorities in USSR, taught by visiting Anthropology Prof from
Leningrad )
What is the name of music 14:18 used in the background ?
@@mikets42 What is the name of music 14:18 used in the background ?
Fyodor Dostoevsky once wrote:
"People talk to you a great deal about your education, but some good, sacred memory, preserved from childhood, is perhaps the best education. If a man carries many such memories with him into life, he is safe to the end of his days, and if one has only one good memory left in one's heart, even that may sometime be the means of saving us"
Amazing quote!
Well then, according to Dostoevsky, I'm pretty much fucked.
I love Dostoevsky, read all of his masterpieces, the only russian writer which is readable. The rest of them SUCK. Anywho WHERE exactly did u take that quote from?
“Always snitch, even though snitching will probably get you murdered” is certainly a tough sell imo
If you are telling them what they "already know" and better make sure that they already knew it, it isn't snitching, they just fucked up.
Sleep is the unsung hero of human creativity and productivity. A few recent studies have emphasized the need for at least 8 hours/night, specifically as an inhibitor of Dementia later in life. In simpler terms: you can prevent senility later by getting enough sleep now.
You folks who think Sleep is a priority you can set low need to understand how important your tomorrow self is to your today self-and vice versa. Sleep, nutrition, exercise; the triumvirate of senior health and well being. Start now and avoid assisted living later.
Fully expecting a video about the results of theinternats. Also, really good work with this video! I'm absolutely fascinated by the history of education. I'm studying to be a history teacher at university and I think my thesis may be related to education in general. Please keep on doing this high quality documentaries for as long as possible, we all love them!
My cousin spent several years in an internat for visually impaired children. In short, it was hell. You want details, let me know.
What is the name of music 14:18 used in the background ?
The soviet education system, beside the ideological b.s, was very practical! Teaching kids agriculture and mechanics.
Only in theory - i was sent to learn something about electicians profesion but we were used as unpaid workforce - planted trees , cleaned ruble and other unrelated work .
This whole thing seem like hit and misses
Probably more hits but idk if it was mostly successful, I appreciate that he tried to modify it at least
Every kid truly hated agricultural labor classes and “summer practice”.
The only field that WAS taught very well were exact sciences. It was a strategic field for the country that was at war with, basically, the rest of the globe.
@@ediccartman7252 makes sense.
The episode on the USA educational system in the '50s and '60s would be great. And do not hesitate to discuss the racial and financial aspects involved! And to throw there a little bit of info about Japan's, Germany's etc... educational systems for comparison would be great... Otherwise great work with the channel. I am always looking forward to the next episode.
that would be cool. I also hope we get episodes on the education of other communist states like somalia, I heard from my parents somalia's education was actually really good and they ended up doing well in the usa when they left during the civil war.
@@resentfuldragon Somalia is not Communists
@@resentfuldragon Mozambik is Communists
@@carkawalakhatulistiwa Somalia was communist during the cold war until the 90's.
This channel only talks about the cold war so during the time the channel talks about somalia was communist.
Siad barre led a communist party.
Yeah, pretty sure it was East Germany who disallowed the beating of children first? Might have been the other way around though. My country only banned that in 2017.
In Hungary being part of the pioneer organization wasn’t mandatory, however it was advisable. For example, my father wasn’t part of it.
The structure of the organization was the same, but youngest members were called “Little Drummers” instead of “Little Octoberists”
"Little Drummers"! How ironic, makes me think of Günter Grass! :D
What is the name of music 14:18 used in the background ?
@@Keefan1978 I don’t know for sure, but I suspect that the name comes from their obsession with revolution. During the time of revolutions in the 18th - 19th century, the drummers of the armies were often young kids.
Not sure why you keep calling them "YOUNG Pioneers"; we were just called "Pioneers". Also, the story of Pavlik Morozov (equally fictional to the version you present here), was pitched to us slightly differently: Pavlik Morozov reported on both of his parents for being "Kulaki", members of the production/farmer class who refused to distribute their stockpiles of food (bread, meat, milk, etc.) to the people. The parents were sent away to the gulags, and there was no mention of Pavlik Morozov being killed.
Btw, the Internat system, full of children raised without parents' love, but often with verbal, emotional, physical and sexual abuse, produced not just mostly criminals, but some real monsters without a sense of empathy or regard for human life. Even the biggest bullies in my old neighborhood in the industrial outskirts of Leningrad, were terrified of the Internat kids.
We got the Pavlik Morozov story with gruesome details. In our version, not only was he killed, but also tortured by his father. And Young Pioneers was the official translation we learned in our English classes in the late 80s. So, historically accurate.
@@antonbatura8385 Could've been a regional thing, I suppose. We never got the "young" thing. Where are you from?
@@aaizner847 Ukraine. Our English teacher would always say "young pioneers" for some reason which eludes me.
So, real life Salusa Secundus...
@@thomasaagren not quite, but with a significant portion of the population in the gulags and compulsory initial military training in the last two years of school... I can see some similarities, lol.
It was actually possible, throughout most of the Soviet times, to not enroll into the Pioneers (and actually to be thrown out for some things as well) but the family would've take such an abuse that it wasn't worth it for most...
Mostly the hard-core religious families chose it and were paying dearly.
what happened to those who were kicked out? harder to gain admission to universities?
@@MarkWTK The admission was next to impossible to gain if you were not on the next step -- the Komsomol, the Union of the Communist Youth. It was more of a "voluntary" union in a sense that you could not join and live a life of menial labor without any problem from the State.
If you were kicked out you could almost never join Komsomol (joining Komsomol was streamlined for Pioneers and "was kicked out and was never reinstated" is a very bad thing to have in the Soviet CV) so it's basically that. You automatically ceased to be a Pioneer at the age of, IIRC, 15, so it was all the same. You could sometimes actually rejoin if you're kicked out, and as I know it happened to almost all those who were kicked out and not sent to the penal colonies (there were no pioneer organizations there).
As well you were not entitled to get the time in the State-sponsored prison^Wpioneer camps (ok, the discipline there was supposed to be prison-like but actually it was a good fun for most since it was lax and you can imagine what a lot of young people without parents cramped together tend to do), you wasn't participating in the pioneer organization affairs etc.
Most of the people that were kicked out desperately tried to get back and even the threat of being kicked out was a very effective one.
With the kids that didn't join at all it was way worse in a sense that your family would've been constantly harassed by school officials, parents would be called to school and pressured, sometimes yelled at by the school officials. The kids would be harassed in the school by the teachers, and the teachers would encourage other kids to harass the "anti-communist element" as well. The grades could be lowered etc, it all depended on the officials at this point.
Officials were relentlessly grilled if there were kids that didn't join Pioneers. Sometimes even the local police was involved in trying to make them join. Like going in to your house and speaking to the parents, promising the problems with the police.
@@Раковийсупець interesting , but sad. thanks for the reply. never expected it to be this detail !!! i presumed you were fully raised in that era.
really opened my eyes into a world long gone, but not forgotten. I guess if I were born back then, I would most probably have accepted communism (maybe on the surface level), due to me being a coward and I would prefer getting a tertiary education or securing a stable job.
thanks again. :D
@@MarkWTK I was born in the USSR but I was mostly raised in the post-Soviet era. My parents and grandparents and a lot of friends are another story, however. Most of the things I described is based on what they told me in person, multiple people, multiple times, the same things.
No worries, I think that it's a good thing to raise people's awareness about those troubled times.
Jeez, almost everyone accepted communism on the surface level. It wasn't a point of cowardice, rather it was fundamentally futile not to accept it. You either looked for ways abroad which some people did but it was very hard to get outside, or you did what you were expected to do.
Mostly open anti-communist were only the criminal circles and some hard-core religious people. Even the church top brass was pro-communist in the surface.
Although if you scratch the surface, especially after the 60s, there was a lot of hand-written illegal literature in circulation. I remember some anti-soviet books, both religious and not, copied by hand, in my grandma's library.
What is the name of music 14:18 used in the background ?
Yes please for an episode on the boarding schools!
What is the name of music 14:18 used in the background ?
I grew up near one such boarding school, my great-grandma's sister used to be a teacher there. Oddly enough, I never knew what was happening there. I was passing by this school quite often - although the territory was fenced, the gates were always often, and people walked through as a shortcut. There was a large hall there, and typical soviet murals could have been seen through the windows. As a little kid, I liked those murals, and once I told my granny as we waked by "I'd loved to be there". "God forbid!" replied the granny. And indeed, with the stories from soviet and post-soviet orphanages sounding like memoirs of concentration camp survivors, I can understand why she'd rather see me going to a usual school.
I went through the post-Soviet education system and it was super interesting to learn how it all came to be, thank you!
I went to the kindergarten in the early 90s where half the books in the small library were about the glorious Red Army. Grandma worked at an internat for children with hearing difficulties (which means she was always LOUD even at home).
In school we had a labor class where we operated industrial machinery to make chess pieces and stools (I never finished mine) and we also had to work in the school garden a set amount of hours during the holidays. I got a gold medal, which meant an automatic 100 points (you had to take two exams to enroll in university, worth 100 points each, and I only took one). I studied tuition free and even got a small sum of money monthly provided that I passed all my semester exams. Some students enrolled tuition free not due to exam results but because they had allocated slots from rural areas or companies who expected them to work there after they graduated.
Enrolling tuition free also meant I had to do some unpaid labor again - in fact, when I was told to come to the university in a week in my work clothes, only then did I truly believe that I actually succeeded to get enrolled. We had to help migrant workers who renovated our university (they were super nice and even let us smoke in classrooms they were working on). We also had vocational practice which in my case meant teaching freshman students.
Of course, we had none of the ideological drivel which our parents chafed under. Back then, if you did not quote Lenin enough in your graduation thesis, it would automatically get rejected by the committee of professors, even if your subject had nothing to do with Marxism!
Again, great episode, and I definitely want to hear more about the internats - and the stilyagi too!
I can imagine all the fun ways to cheat the 'spell enough random soviet leader' system
We used to have a (woodworking) "labor class" of sorts here in America, Shopwork. Some schools still offer it as like an elective, but sadly it's been neglected in recent decades. It's unfortunate because many skills come with that stuff (and some worry they may become rare if not taught more).
В 90ых в детском саду большая часть книг о красной армии?))) Ахахахаза
@@sassymenses Ну типа а откуда деньги у детсада в 90-х на обновление библиотеки, что с совка лежало, то и осталось
I’m not surprised that the books were about the Red Army to be honest. The contribution to humanity they made by defeating the Third Reich is incredible.
Looking forward to this video. My limited interaction and understanding of former Soviet citizens gave me the impression that they emphasized education. And emphasized it more than Americans. Sergei talks about his education experience growing up in the USSR (Ukraine) if you want to hear a personal account
I was a bit supprised this wasn't a joint production with Sergi.
The education was practically the only way to climb the social ladder. In the US, Italy, Germany, you could become successful by starting your own business etc. In the USSR, the diploma was the only ticket to climb. Therefore it was much more important for anybody with any aspirations to 'climb the social ladder'
@@letecmig --- Correct, because, as you can see in the contemporary U.S., uneducated businesspeople are the least qualified to be the government; recall that the ex-president openly admitted to his ignorance when he said: "Who would have thought that healthcare [and governing] was so difficult?" Yes, for the Westerner school is. . . .
@@marianotorrespico2975 well, I grew up under the communist system(in Czechoslovakia) and believe me, some government ministers were basically people with no education, no qualification and apparently with IQ bordering disability
(although they had diploma from the university...there was a 'University of Marxism-Leninism' for potential party cadres ....think about study of theology, although you can graduate in two years, you 'study' booklets instead of books and you really do not have to understand the 'dogma', just memorize right 100 'canonic' slogans in correct order:))....
.... the difference from the "U.S., uneducated businesspeople are the least qualified to be the government" was basically they did not achieve anything even in the business;)
You really need to understand difference between the 'regular people' and the 'politically involved people' who chose political carreer under the communist system. Not sure how it was in the Soviet Union, but in Czechoslovakia, even the membership of the communist party(and therefore being classed as being 'politically active') was something that was 'not OK' for the normal, intelligent people.
I could tell funny stories how several members of my family were 'pushed' and 'blackmailed' to apply for the membership of the communist party and about the funny ways and games they played to avoid this (you just could not say straight 'No' as it would be recorded with consequences on your carreer and educational prospects of your children)
@@marianotorrespico2975 Lmao come on man are you being serious right now? The key ideologues of Marxist-Leninism or Maoism are basically peasants who just read Marxist literature and then took power. Stalin was a fucking bandit before he was a leader. Mao was entirely uneducated in math/science, and this was celebrated. Anti-intellectualism reigned in Maoist China. Not nearly as bad for the USSR, but still... and business people aren't in the government unless they run for office.
The Cold War, can you please make a video on South Africa during the Cold War. That way, you can talk about how South Africa's apartheid system worked, as well as the role that South Africa played during the Cold War. Thank you very much.
Great suggestion
They can talk about the nuclear program they had too.
Anything African !!! Love the channel keep up the good work as I always thumb's up and share 😘
What is the name of music 14:18 used in the background ?
@@lakshyakashyap1490 Try Shazaming it.
Please do a separate episode about the Soviet orphanage/single-parent/poor parents school system @11 mins in! Specifically the breaking down of cultural & ethnic lines that resulted "by accident".
The internat system, as it was called, in reality, produced hardcore criminals. Very few of those kids grew up to be normal, functional people.
USSR had one system: for "wealthy" miners or scientists, for average factory workers and for "poor" I don't know... loader-men(people who load/unload heavy objects for example in shops)? Not sure about orphanages.
I'm a teacher so, this was very interesting to me. Grateful to you for it.
What is the name of music 14:18 used in the background ?
This whole series on civilian topics (tourism, education, etc) in the Soviet union is great! As someone from one of the countries in the sidelines, really looking forward to civilian topics in the US or in the west as well!
Great episode! Curious that many of the questions faced by soviet reform seem very familiar to education systems in capitalist countries. And... YES, we definitely want that episode about soviet boarding schools...
James Loewen, who just passed away, in Lies My Teacher Told Me pointed out that more education usually means more indoctrination and more conformity - and he wasn't talking about the Soviet Union. After the anti-war protests of the 1960s and 70s a lot of which was on college campuses there was a general bias about 'radical students.' So Loewen would ask his students: Which group do you think first opposed America's involvement in the Vietnam War: people with very little education, high school graduates or college graduates? (Before I turned the page to find his answer, I paused and thought, "Who first told me the Vietnam War was a boondoogle?" My grandmother, third grade education. When I was in college most other students thought our anti-war protesting was just making trouble.) Yep. That's what Loewen said too.
Loewen also pointed out that the commitment to education in the U.S. increased as more immigrants arrived in the U.S. in the 1880s bringing with them anarchist and socialist ideas.
Weren't most of the larger protests at the universities, and consisted largely of students? I don't doubt the participation of lesser-educated people in eh anti-war movement of the time, but I find it hard to believe that university students did not play one of the largest roles in it.
@@deannilvalli6579 Good points. I should probably quit dragging out this story. You're right, working class people didn't protest, the students did, by the 70s not a majority of them. At the University of Michigan the graduate student TAs went on strike to unionize. One of the leaders told me, 'Most grad students do not support us, we're a minority. When we win, and the first vote for union officers is held - none of us will be elected.' He was basically right. However the rally they had looked huge, a few thousand people. But Michigan had 35,000 students. Also, the basic story of the anti-Vietnam War protests in the U.S. was they were becoming bigger and bigger and then Nixon ended the draft. No risk of being sent over there to be shot at.... no reason to protest.
I do think the Loewen story supports his point, that education as designed by countries is primarily to indoctrinate people.
Soviet education is great. It made men and women jacks of all trades. It's VERY bad that we're losing it more and more in the post-ussr space, especially the loss of labour classes in schools
on the contrary, it is very good
It really was!!
I don't entirely disagree . the loss of practical skill education in general is a flaw in a number of education systems in the world.
"The Lord of Corn an his reforms." I like that. It gave me a good chuckle. My compliments to all those who made this video a reality.
I'm glad he opens with the fact that every education indoctrinates. Of you're at the level of thinking where you're at anything close to education, you have a doctrine of some sort. The debate should be over doctrines, not whether or not a doctrine exists.
I believe the soviet education system was pretty good, judging from (1) the top scientists they produced, (2) the high percentage (>40%) of students going to colleges. I also think the political education was counter-productive.
politics is a part of life, i'd rather have a soviet political education where i'm given the theory, it's explained to me & i can ask questions about it compared to the US model where they just punish you or ridicule you if you dare go against the official ideology
@@afgor1088 Do you genuinely think you're punished severely for voicing dissenting opinions in the US, and would not be punished in the USSR? Are you just that removed from reality?
@@afgor1088 Americans criticizing democracy, liberalism and capitalism all the time without legal consequence, if someone ridicule you of your belief thats just free speech in action, you dont expect everyone to agree with you all the time.
@@saganaki_1 what happened to Malcolm X and Eugene debs?
@@afgor1088 Malcolm X was killed by a member of the Nation of Islam, and while Eugene Debs was wrongfully silenced, that would not be able to happen in modern day America. It was more than a hundred years ago.
I do agree that greater access to options for technical and agricultural classes might be nice in US schools. We could use better training for trade skills, contract labor abilities, etc. Thank you for the fascinating video!
Stay well out there everybody, and God be with you, friends. ✝️ :)
In soviet education system there was labour(труд) class that teched basic trade skills. How to do wiring, how to decorate wood, how to make chair, how to process wood and metal. In last grade maybe even how to use lathe.
My dad is a college math professor and he have a english translation of a Linear Algebra book written, edited and published in the ussr. The exercises of this book are one of the hardest math questions I ever layed my eyes upon 😂
Russia and China using Soviet education system is winning all international math, physics, IT, chemistry olympiads to this day.
Tako a look at teenage suicide rates of these countries tho
@@konstantincvetanovic5357it’s about the same as Australia, France, Canada, and the USA. (for Russia). Russia’s peaked in 1991 after the fall of the USSR, where millions of people died from famine and suicide and addiction with the introduction of capitalist system. It has been steadily decreasing ever since which is very good to see of course. Still hasn’t reached the lows of the USSR time.
Very good video, as always David! I like the fact that you always tries to remain neutral and do not give an passionate interpretation, of course it's impossible to remain complete neutral, because complete neutrality do not exists keep doing the good work! Please a video about western education would be very nice!
Sorry for my bad english
What is the name of music 14:18 used in the background ?
A+ bell button speech. You've surpassed the required quota for the week. I expect an even better one next time.
Well, story of Pavel Morozov was indeed 'falsified' but I kinda disappointed by the host lack of willingness to elaborate about how and why it was falsified. Falsified part was that Morozov's father was probably not helping some anti-Soviet elements in any way. The reality was that he was just an abusive parent and husband who was regularly beating both his son and his wife. So Pavel reported him to the authorities in desperation. And was indeed killed by the relatives of his father in retaliation.
But the story in its original form was a poor propaganda material as Soviet authorities weren't that keen on combating intra-family violence at the time, so it was repurposed with more ideologically "pure" messaging.
I am thoroughly interested in an episode about the boarding schools. Good stuff.
Why? They were horrible and commonly perceived as social wounds.
It wasn't uncommon to scare kids saying "if you don't behave we'll give you away to internat".
According to Wikipedia, the USSR had a 99.7% literacy rate during the '70s-'80s. It was less than 30% when they had a monarchy prior to 1917.
On the other side of the pond, this video would reek of controversy. On one hand, it wasn't really good at being a good system, on the other we didn't really ever have anything better in our history and despite everything it was great at actually educating people
The part were said that the more students pursue university, which causes a shortage of labour, remains me of something here in Germany.
To go to university, a german student needs the "Abitur", Abitur refers to the 11th to 13th grade, and not everyone does these.
Before I started my Abitur, I also looked for apprentice ships, because I wasn't sure if my grades were good enough for Abitur. Over this time, I heard some older people say that they think it's bad that more young people do the Abitur (and go to uni), which causes a shortage of apprentices.
The thing is, while looking for Apprenticeships, I found many apprenticeships that require the Abitur, and some even university degrees.
Some people (especially germans) aren't thinking.
I don't think it's bad, I belive over time labour demand will shift to high-qualified workforce. And having working high-capacity high education system is good.
Learning about the Soviet boarding school system would be great. Also, I suggest a program on the mandatory classes in "scientific atheism" in the schools and universities, as well as one on the mandatory use of Marxist-Leninist theory in all theses and dissertations.
Scientific atheism? Did you mean "scientific communism?" Because the latter was a real thing, the former - never heard of it.
@@kraanz Institute of Scientific Atheism (Russian: Институт Научного Атеизма) was a research organization founded in 1964 in Moscow for the coordination of research in atheism conducted research institutes of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, universities and institutions of the Ministry of Culture
@@zsg87 What a pointless institution =D
Brainwashing and lies
No he does mean what he said. Khrushchev also introduced heavier pressure on religion in public field, education etc. There is a Russian anthropologist on TH-cam, who's dad taught scientific atheism in school. He is, of course as you may guess, an atheist, who criticize all religious authorities in his video's. In Russian of course, and I don't know is there are any translation. There was an aspiration to make a translation from Scientists Against Myths forum, where he is one of organizators, but I wasn't following them much. They were working with one quite famous translator, he helps them with sound and supports by money.. But I don't know what were the results. So yeah, there is a pretty massive atheist movement in Russia, especially popular around young people.
This channel is so interesting I was born in 96 right after the Cold War but I never knew anything about it definitely subscribing😁👍
God I love this channel
I’m very interested in a video about the boarding schools. Yes, please.
The intense background music while you’re talking about preschools made me laugh 😂
What a great channel I discovered here. 💙💙💙
The Corn Lord is all knowing and all doing!
The Kukuruznik :-) a.k.a. "The Cornlord". The official Bulgarian word for "corn" is "tsarevitsa" (which by the way almost literally means "a queen" - a queen among the crops, apparently), but in the Northwest, where I come from, we also use "kukuruz" as a dialect word.
I can't be the only one that almost feels as if the Soviet Union was like some sort of parallel plane of existence or timeline that has some similarities to our own but has big differences.
It kinda was. When it was founded, (well when the Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic was founded), it was immediately invaded by over 15 other nations who seeked to immediately destroy it, including the White Army, Britain, France, USA, Japan, Germany, Austria-Hungary, Hungary, Poland, Romania, Czechoslovakia, Greece, Ottoman Empire, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, China, and Mongolia (and more I think). After it defeated all of these nations, it then went on to make reforms that were completely unheard of - like legalising homosexuality, giving women completely equal rights in all fields, legalising abortion, enacting racial and cultural equality, creating electricity for the entire country, and also becoming the largest industrial power in the world. It faced embargo and isolation at this time, and tried everything to prevent the Facists from expanding. It was one of the only countries to help Ethiopia against Italy, it supported the Spanish Republicans during the Spanish Civil War, and it pledged to send 1 million troops to defend Czechoslovakia, which was thwarted by Poland confirming they would attack those troops on sight.
Then, after defeating the Nazis in the largest war in history, they were isolated by the rest of the world and weren’t allowed resources from them, so they created their own ‘bloc’ where they could provide others with resources and vice versa.
All in all, pretty isolated from the rest of the world in all ways.
I’ve always been curious on topic, a nice one to indulge on.
As you are curious to know more about this topic.... Why don't you check out this video - th-cam.com/video/HBGAmfkDsVQ/w-d-xo.html , and just comment down what you think.. As a freshener I would like to know if anything would have been better... Thank you(HWW)
I am interested in the evolution of the soviet boarding school system. Please do this!
Do the same for western educational indoctrination.
You mean all the woke bs they are teaching nowadays?
@@ZarathustrasHammer "teaching"really which classes WOKE101 🤔...beats state or Religious indoctrination
@@billhanna2148 woke teachings are the state’s teachings. And religious indoctrination at least does not make you value matter over everything else. Dialectical materialism and woke/crt are the same shit.
@@ZarathustrasHammer 100% agreed
Well presented! Glad I found this channel!
Ahh what a lovely channel, thank god i found it!
Yes, please cover Soviet boarding school program.
Practical lessons on agriculture, machinery and electrical skills? I'd love to have taken that class.
I went to Soviet school from September, 1969 till June, 1979 and graduated it at an average level. As I remember, the principal problem consisted in the abscence of juvenile psycologists. A youngster didn't have anybody to discuss his or her problems. A teacher of the same sex was considered as a chief and superviser, punishing for failures, while the father, though being a kind man as usual, had no ideas of bringing up.
Sad.
My mother was very good at studying. She was going to get the gold medal. However, there were quotas on gold medals at the city level. Those quotas were mostly for sale, so the teachers decided to prevent a girl whose parents didn't pay from getting the medal.
She wrote a compulsory essay on a very popular book _How the Steel was Tempered_. Following the style she was taught at the literature classes, she finalized her essay with (what was then perceived as) a beautiful phrase: "The world of capital should be made aware that we have more people like Pavel Korchagin [the protagonist of the novel] among our young generation!".
This phrase was exactly what caused problems. The evaluators gave her a B mark (preventing her from getting a medal) with a justification: "We shouldn't warn the world of capital, because in this case it can prepare and counter our plans!"
Still, my mother got her medal due to her mother, who also had some connections in the Ministry of Education...
TL;DR: Something never change
As an American university student in 1970, I went on a study tour of the USSR (with two years of Russian language as a prerequisite). Our group of 15 spent two weeks at the Institute of Foreign Languages in Pytagorsk (in the North Caucasus region). We read Lermintov's A Hero of Our Time (in Russian) to prepare for this course, but it was rather disappointing. The first day of the Literature course were spent on Tolstoy, Lermantov, and Checkov. The other nine days were devoted to Socialist Realism authors. It was exceptionally boring.
You must have great stories
Ideologically motivated art tends to be boring.
I can imagine how boring tjose classes must have been.
How was the food? The trains, busses, and cars? Any entertainment? Any mingling?
@@tpxchallenger The food was terrible, everywhere except Ukraine. We were required to take all meals at restaurants booked by Intourist but even on the occasions when we snuck away to get some food on the street it wasn't very appetizing. Heavily fried meat or fish cutlets, little boiled potatoes, and whatever vegetable they had in stock (the same one every meal). The trains and buses were good and easy to use. Since we were booked through Intourist, we got to go to the Bolshoi Ballet in Moscow and the Kukelniy Theater (Puppet show). Those were great. The only movie we saw in a theater was an East German made (US) western where the cowboys were the bad guys and the indians were oppressed. We mingled quite often with Russian students our age. The older generation, not so much. It was the 25th anniversary of VE Day and the WWII veterans had all been told that Roosevelt and Churchill deliberately withheld attacks on Germany until the USSR had completely defeated them and took most of the casualties. We invited the students to visit us in the US, but of course, they said it was not allowed.
What is the name of music 14:18 used in the background ?
Excellent video, thanks for sharing! I'd love to see your take on Soviet boarding schools.
Could you make a video about the military component of the Soviet Education? NVP (Beginner's Military Prep classes with actual rifle shooting and practical familiarity with AKs from grade 4), "Zarnitsa" in middle school, "Sbory" in high school, "Kafedra" in the Universities?
Would be super interested to see a video about the orphanages! Sounds fascinating!
Enjoying this channel.
Great video on a fascinating subject us westerners rarely consider! Also, I'm definitely interested in learning about the Soviet boarding/orphanage apparatus.
Because how soviet systems worked, adult life of orphaned people was almost same as non-orphaned, except they got priority in first housing. And didn't have a grandma.
Fascinating documentary!
Excellent épisode as usual! 👏👏👏
Definitely interested in more about the Internats!
Alan Watts seems to be getting popular these days! He was always my favourite philosopher.
Can we talk about how CUTE the the uniforms of the Soviet primary schools were???
I would be best interested in an episode on the residential schools.
So, after watching the segment about the pioneers and reading the comments about people's experiences or that of their relatives I see that this system is pretty similar to the one active in China. Heck, I think their name is also "pioneers". If anyone has stories please share them below, I'm really interested in learning what's it like.
Would it be possible for you to cover them in an episode about education in China?
Thanks! A very good video. And yes, it would be interesting to see a video about the internat-system.
Couple of remarks: for reasons unknown to me the 11-year school system persisted in the Baltic republics even after the rollback to the 10-year system in other parts of the Soviet Union. As said - I don't know why, but I have heard hilarious stories how it perplexed the Soviet Russian authorities who could not understand that there are different educational models in the same empire. One story goes like that: an Estonian wants to enroll into a university in Moscow or Leningrad, shows the necessary documents and the official, looking at them, asks - what do these two number ones mean, did You go to the school for only two years?
A second remark: Komsomol was not compulsory, but in some schools someone unwilling to fill out the application could feel considerable pressure either from the teachers and the school leadership or from fellow pupils already members of Komsomol. So it was - like many things in Soviet Union - compulsivly voluntary. Which reminds me of a joke a friend of mine heard as a child during the Soviet time standing in a shop queue, where two quite hang over or still slightly tipsy men were discussing the nature of the Soviet system and one of them defined it very accurately: in Soviet Union everyone can do exactly as they please to do - and if they don't please to do, they will be forced to do...
Keep up the good work!
that was a good one!
The first 90 percent is good, but it slips into nonsense propaganda at the end. Expecting students to read and appreciate Marx seems to me no worse than having all US students read the Declaration of Independance and constitution, and recite the Pledge of Allegiance.
Based!
"Young Pioneers" also existed in Bulgaria. I was one until my 5th grade when the institution was abolished. But instead of "Octobrists", the younger children at school were automatically enrolled as "Chavdarcheta" (a long story)...
Man, you almost killed me with "Lord of the Corn"🤣
I remember the workshop in my school we learned how to use tools ... it was fun for a 12 year old.
We had to use saws and files and craft wooden and metallic pieces. (this was communist Romania)
I love this channel! Thanks to historians like u, I DONT HAVE TO MAJOR IN HISTORY TO LEARN THIS 😂. Or read books 💀. You guys are the reason TH-cam is a good thing. I can finally focus on my engr degree and learn history in every now and then 🙌
While I am glad you like the content we are producing, you should absolutely still read history books! There is a wealth of information and sources out there that should be explored. We feel we are providing a good introduction and overview to a topic but every topic we cover can be explored to incredible depth.
Focus on your degree but do not stop reading and learning independently!
@@TheColdWarTV say less 🤙. But honestly keep up the good work, I have definitely learned alot from this channel and from Kings and Generals.
15:16 western education systems also always contain ideological teachings, the only main differences are that it is less streamlined, more subtle and considered normal because people are used to it. But still in capitalist countries it's unlikely that you learn anything about the alternatives to capitalism or why capitalism is a gfenerally flawed and unjust system, so everything you learn in school on society, economy, etc. is still largely one-sided.
Yeah you don't learn much about alternatives to capitalism, but its not that capitalism gets praised in textbooks either
@@konstantincvetanovic5357 from what I remember they said something like capitalism has flaws, is unjust to the third world, leads to wars, but also has the advantage of freedom and peace between first world countries and it's an inevitable consequence of human nature, so there is no better system, especiall communism doesn't work. Also the flaws were only explained as a part of the corrupt capitalism that we have now, not as a general feature of capitalism. This is basically a standard narrative since at least 1970s because since then the flaws of capitalism are too obvious to be denied and too big to be played down too much.
Teaching something as good or bad objectively over just exposing how it works and letting others decide what they think of it us ibdoctrination, it does sometimes happen in western education when talking values, but is far less common than in the M-L regimes of the 20th century.
I'll accept we're only taught about our systems, wouldn't be bad to see how central planning or corporatism works, though.
The Forgotten Weapons Q/A covered the question of how the Soviet Union's high tech weapons industries kept up with the west despite a bevy of Marxist-Lenninist curriculum stifling their education system. It's a question I had always wondered about, so I found it quite interesting.
Link to the episode, please?
I would love to hear the same analysis over the US education, healthcare, extremely christian, pro guns, and capitalist ideology. How well it all works...well, we see it a lot in mass shootings, psychological and physical health, but still something to talk about. Comparing both I'd love to have been indoctrinated on Marxisism.
Sleep is awesome. I've been listening to them since the 90s
Really love the endings of this show and sometimes very well hidden references... in this episode it was pioneers swear, which was almost the same in Czechoslovakia as well.
First time The Cold War beat Dawid for upload speed. Dawid is usually first.
Please make an episode about Internats.
I love Cold War history, my BA was in history my favorite era is Pre WWII to modern day, so many interesting things happened in this short period of time.
Must add that Pioneer organzation was compulsory - if you joined it was imposible get out without big problems after .
It's always oddly surreal to hear Americans talk about indoctrination in other countries. You guys should know that putting flags everywhere, constantly sing your national anthem, and getting kids to put their hands over their hearts while the recite the nation indoctrination mantra every morning is not a normal thing anywhere other than the USA and North Korea
Ah yes the old "yes it's empowering to get as many people through university at possible, but that leaves us with a shortage of production workers and labourers" problem familiar to anyone who lived through the Tony Blair years in the UK.
There are now 50% of Russian people of working age with university grades. As you may guess, least part of them are work in their profession or science.
Also university totally splited into two absolutely different classes. Top-universities, which are super-hard to enter without money, but your education will be acknowledged everywhere.
And Sharaga's, or all other. They do very little, and you mostly just buying a diploma. People after them have grade, but only in name. Well I literally know cases, even a bunch of such, when people with engineer diploma work as a... Taxi driver for example. Also that guy delivers milk production to the store markets. There were attempts to fight that, and know, after a fail to do so, government allowed one university to, um, buy one another. They monetize sharaga's, to allow some better universities get more money from them. What a strange thing..
I really don't like using "marxist-leninist" ideology as a catch-all term for any of the shortcomings of the Soviet Union. It's never actually explained what is meant by this term in context and that matters a lot when accusing an entire culture of indoctrination/misleading propaganda. It's clear that how this channel understands the meaning of the term, how the the Soviets understood it and how I understand it are very different. To the Soviet state, marxism-leninism was a political ideology by which they could control the populace, that's clear to anyone. To myself, it's an authoritarian version of socialism that even with the best of intentions, as it was for many of the Russian revolutionaries, leads to a state apparatus that is prone to cronyism and corruption. For this channel (in my view), as is the case with all capitalist media, it means whatever it needs to mean to push the idea that all socialism is at best flawed and at worst, evil. While I broadly agree that the Soviet Union was an authoritarian state, full of corruption and oppression, it does not help the educational content of this series to assume that the worst qualities of the Soviet Union to be a result of the ideology that it proclaimed to represent. If I made a similar video on US education that was as hostile as this video so often is, it would be incredibly obvious what my political biases are but because the normative position in most of the world is to be anti-socialist, most people don't see the same in this video. All in all I still enjoyed what actually informative content I could parse from this video but that content was really hampered by the politically charged messaging
I would definitely like to hear about those boarding schools.
Yes do an episode on the boarding schools
Yes, talk about the Soviet Boarding Schools!
3:26 "...where women wanted remain in workforce".
-"Do you want remain in workforce?"
-"What???"
-"He tried to ask, if you want stay working, keep in your current job. Excuse him, he is academic and therefore do not remember any more how people talk and what words ordinary people use in everyday life."
I think we could learn a lot by integrating labor experience into secondary education, admissions, and the university system.
Oh no, hell no. That shit was very counterproductive to studies, believe me, and everyone hated it.
@@antonbatura8385 it's just the worst seeing so many from academia, the elites, politicians, etc and you can tell in their eyes that they've never struggled, never been hungry, and never done hard labor. I think these things are fundamental to the human experience
@@christopherashby8256 I believe they are not. I don't believe in a cult of suffering or struggle as something that improves a human being. It is merely an experience, and the way it transforms a person is quite random. An extreme example would be old Adolf Hitler, who struggled and suffered, to be sure, during WW1, even his magnum opus was titled to honor his struggle.
On a less serious note, I had "Labor" lessons in school. I did not learn anything useful there whatsoever. In summer, in between school years, we kids were forced to work in minor construction in school. I remember hauling heavy buckets of sand from 9 am till 1 pm. I cannot for the life of me understand how that would make me a better person.
@@antonbatura8385 The most stupid people were attracted to such works.
"moms and dads".... well never underestimate parents' ability to break any meritocratic system, for thinking better of their kids.
Отличная работа, приятно смотреть на историю своей страны под другим углом.
под каким другим углом ? все что он вещает на плохом английском это брутальная антисоветская пропаганда что льется с экранов постсоветских телевизоров уже 35 где то лет )
@@TinTaBraSS777 опомнитесь, этого государства уже давно не существует, весь мир поглотил капитализм.
@@Олег_Евсеев
при чем здесь это !?
вы написали "под другим углом"
я вам ответил что под тем же углом что и антисоветская пропаганда с российских экранов
this intro was fire,
Excellent
Hey guys, can you do an installment on DEAD HAND? I've seen some materials that show it was much more resilient than initial intelligence reported, and that in active state it actually requires regular manual code entry to prevent a full scale global thermonuclear strike package from initiating. More interestingly, it's still active to this day, and a detachment of the Russian executive branch military liaison has to keep entering the codes something like every six hours to prevent the end of the world. If nobody is there to enter the code, the assumption is made that Russia has been hit by a first strike and this guarantees global destruction regardless of any potential survivors.
Would also love a sneak peak at your sources, looking up Soviet Internats yields few hits in English
oh, the favourite book of my childhood on your table..? the mighty СЭС, that would be answering my countless "what's a ... ?", and whose enigmatic front cover hieroglyph would haunt me for a couple years until i recognized the three letters 😁 the ultimate guide to becoming somewhat less stupid.. so nice to see it again. like an old friend 😅