Conflict in the mentalities of women in the school environment in the Ural province from the 1920s to the mid 1930s

Abstract

This article discusses the mentalities of different categories of women associated with the school environment in the Ural province. It has been established that during the freest first fif teen years of Soviet power (in 1917–1932) at its first peacetime stage after the end of the Civil War (1921–1927), along with the new schools being created, the previous types of schools con tinued to function (Old Believer, Cossack, Tolstoyan, Muslim, Mennonite, etc.), in which the old educational process continued. Several groups were identified among teachers, parents, and schoolchildren, whose representatives defended their interests in the face of the tendency towards the universalization of education, the inclusion of social work in teachers’ work and school life, which they considered either as a means of carrying out fundamentally unacceptable ideas, or as an unnecessary encumbrance. At the second stage (1928–1932), statist tendencies in education in tensified and teachers were increasingly required to actively participate in agitation, propaganda, and other public work. Protest sentiments and actions against the intervention of the proletarian state were not frequent, however they did occur, representing a non-Soviet discourse of socially significant behavior.