One less talked about aspect of Russia achieving enormous gains in literacy and education between two world wars was its policy of "korenizatsiya", trans as indigenization, or literally "putting down roots".
Mental Calculations in the school by Nikolay Bogdanov-Belsky. 1895.
Mental Calculations in the school by Nikolay Bogdanov-Belsky. 1895.
Under this policy, which lasted from the mid-1920s to the late 1930s, the communist government promoted the development and use of various mother tongues (other than Russian) in the government, the media, and education.
An education in native-language education not only increased the overall literacy rate in Russia but also revolutionized its science and mathematics output tremendously (including in social sciences). Many great names were the products of this policy of Korenizatsiya.
The Soviet solutions included a dramatic expansion of public funding to education at all levels, the abolishment of fees for higher education, and a radical increase in the number of specialized technical schools in native languages to broaden the demographic base of science.
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