One area where the Soviets did a good job was bringing education and literacy beyond just the Russian elite as under the Czar. This stamp from midway in that process lets me check in on what they were doing to bring that about. So slip on your smoking jacket, fill your pipe, take your first sip of your adult beverage, and sit back in your most comfortable chair. Welcome to todays offering from The Philatelist.
This stamp is failed both by the low quality of the printing and the well worn condition of my copy. What the stamp is showing is children putting together poster style newspapers as part of an educational exhibition that year in Leningrad. I can’t be too mad at myself for the condition of the stamp. How miraculous is it that any of these tiny gummed and perforated little slips of paper can survive 90 years, trips around the world and multiple owners?
Todays stamp is issue A120, a 10 Kopeck stamp issued by the Soviet Union on August 15th, 1930. It was a single stamp issue. According to the Scott catalog, the stamp is worth $8.00 unused though that number might assume a better condition.
The educational system under the Czar regime was limited. According to the 1897 census, the literacy rate for the country was only 28%. For females that number was only 13 percent. Near the end in 1914 the regime had managed to get 91% of school age children enrolled in a school. It was slow going as almost all the schools taught in Russian rather than the native tongue of the region.
The new communist regime had high goals for education and decreed very early that school was compulsory, free, and children had a right to up to 9 years of schooling. Everyone would go for four years, some would go for seven years that would qualify them for further vocational training at the new Teknikums. Those who went the full nine years were qualified for University. With the Red and White Civil war raging the first few years saw school attendance drop from 91% down to 25% in the low year of 1920.
The regime also made a big effort to bring literacy to adults. Young adults of Komsonal deployed to villages to offer literacy classes to adults free of charge. This program lasted between 1920-1939 and succeeded in bring literacy to older folks who had missed out on school under the old system. These classes met less resistance because they were taught in the areas native tongue. Though the Soviets generally were in agreement in the long term goal of Russification of the regions, it was simply more expedient to do it this way.
I mentioned above the problem of illiteracy was specially severe among females. A club. the Ali Bayramov Club opened up in many locations. Jeyran Bayramov was an illiterate young widow from Baku who married her former brother in law Ali as per Azeri tradition. Ali was a communist activist who encouraged Jeyran to pursue education and Jeyran was transformed. She founded the first club in Baku named for her husband. The club was marketed as a sewing club in order that women would be allowed out of the house by husbands and fathers. The clubs did indeed offer sewing classes but also midwifery classes, telephone operator classes and literacy classes. The Soviets got behind the clubs and even let the original one in Baku occupy to old fancy Palace of Happiness that had been the home of an Azeri oil baron. The oil baron didn’t need it anymore, he killed himself upon the Soviets entering Baku. The club members also began pushing for the unveiling of females. The clubs were shut down in 1937 by which time women were literate and unveiled.
Well my drink is empty and I will pour another to toast literacy. Without it my dear readers would just be left looking at pictures. Come again on Monday for another story that can be learned from stamp collecting. Have also a nice Fourth of July, to whatever extent we are still allowed to celebrate it.