Unified Labor School
Decree on the Unified Labor School of the Russian Socialist Federated Soviet Republic. October 16, 1918
Issued in the midst of civil war and social collapse, the *Decree on the Unified Labor School (October 16, 1918) laid out the basic architecture of the Bolsheviks’ new educational order: a free, compulsory, co-educational, and secular school system, stripped of the old disciplinary regime of homework, punishments, and examinations. The excerpt below is included because it shows, in the blunt language of decree and article, how revolutionary ideals about “new people” and “new schools” were translated into enforceable rules for everyday schooling.*
Original Source: Izvestiia, 16 October 1918.
I. General Regulations on the Unified Labor School
Art. 1. All schools of the Russian Socialist Federated Socialist Republic which come under the People's Commissariat of Enlightenment, excepting institutions of higher education. are given the name "Unified Labor School ...."
Art. 2. The Unified School is divided into two levels: the first for children ages 8-13 years (a five year course) and the second for ages 13-17 (a four year course)...
Art. 3. Instruction in schools of the first and second levels is free.
Art. 4. School attendance for levels one and two is mandatory for all children of school age-
Note: The Section for People's Education of the Commissariat must immediately develop a plan for implementation...
Art. 5. All schools of the first and second levels are co-educational.
Art. 6. The teaching of any religion whatsoever and the holding of religious ceremonies within the schools is prohibited.
Art. 7. The differentiation of teachers by category is abolished...
Art. 8. All school workers, i.e., teachers, school doctors, and instructors in physical labor, are chosen in accordance with the regulations of February 27, 1918 about the election to all pedagogical and administrative-pedagogical positions, and the instructions of the People's Commissariat of Enlightenment...
Art. 10. There may not be more than 25 students per school worker...
III. Organization and Conditions of School Work
Art. 17. Assignment of mandatory homework is not permitted.
Art. 18. No kind of punishment is permitted in school.
Art. 19. All examinations--entrance, advancement, graduation-are abolished....
Source: William G. Rosenberg, ed., Bolshevik Visions: First Phase of the Cultural Revolution in Soviet Russia (Ann Arbor: Ardis, 1984), pp. 300-314.