People's Commissariat for Education

The People's Commissariat for Education (or Narkompros; Russian: Народный комиссариат просвещения, Наркомпрос) was the Soviet agency charged with the administration of public education and most other issues related to culture. In 1946, it was transformed into the Ministry of Education. Its first head was Anatoly Lunacharsky. However he described Krupskaya as the "soul of Narkompros".[1] Mikhail Pokrovsky and Evgraf Litkens also played important roles.

Lunacharsky protected most of the avant-garde artists such as Vladimir Mayakovsky, Kazimir Malevich, Vladimir Tatlin and Vsevolod Meyerhold. Despite his efforts, the official policy after Joseph Stalin put him in disgrace.

Narkompros had seventeen sections,[2] in addition to the main ones related to general education, e.g.,

  • Likbez, a section for liquidation of illiteracy,
  • "Profobr", a section for professional education,
  • Glavlit, a section for literature and publishing (also in charge of censorship in publishing),
  • "Glavrepertkom" (Главрепертком), a commission for approval of performers' repertoires.
  • Department of the Mobilisation of Scientific Forces, to which the Russian Academy of Sciences reported to after 1918.
  • A Theatre Department which published Vestnik Teatra
  • Vneshkol'nyi Otdel, the adult Education Department run by Krupskaya

Some of these evolved into separate entities, others discontinued.

Relationship with Proletkult

Pavel Lebedev-Polianskii, as chair of the organizing bureau for the national Proletkult argued that Narkompros, as a state organ, had responsibilities for the whole of society, whereas Proletkult asserted its autonomy as an organisation set up specifically for workers. However, there was concern with "parallelism" - the situation which arose when similar work was carried out in parallel by different organisations. In early 1918 Narkompros gave Proletkult a budget of over 9,200,000 rubles, whereas the entire Adult Education Division received 32,500,000 rubles.[3]

Izo-Narkompros

The Izo-Narkompros (Изо-наркомпрос), or the section of visual arts (отдел изобразительных искусств) created on 29 January 1918.[4] It consisted of two parts: the collegium (deliberative organ) and the section proper (executive organ). The first collegium was headed by Vladimir Tatlin and included Kasimir Malevich, Ilya Mashkov, Nadezhda Udaltsova, Olga Rozanova, Alexander Rodchenko, Wassily Kandinsky. It was subdivided into a number of subsections.

Lunacharsky directed some of the great experiments in public arts after the Revolution such as the agit-trains and agit-boats, that circulated over all Russia spreading Revolution and revolutionary arts. He also gave support to Constructivism's theatrical experiments and the initiatives such as the ROSTA Windows, revolutionary posters designed and written by Mayakovsky, Rodchenko, and others.

Izo-Narkompros also published Iskusstvo kommuny (Art of the Commune) of which 19 issues appeared between 7 December 1918 and April 1919.[5]

Museum Bureau

Film industry

Lenin saw film as the most important medium for educating the masses in the ways, means and successes of communism.[6] As a consequence Lenin issued the "Directives on the Film Business" on 17 January 1922, which instructed the Narkompros to systemise the film business, registering and numbering all films shown in the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, extracting rent from all privately owned cinemas and subject them to censorship.[6]

People's Commissars
NameTook officeLeft officeDuration
Anatoly Lunacharsky26 October 191712 September 192911 years, 321 days
Andrei Bubnov12 September 192912 October 19378 years, 30 days
Pyotr Tyurkin12 October 193729 March 19402 years, 169 days
Vladimir Potyomkin29 March 194023 February 19465 years, 331 days
gollark: Again, it's not specifically about knowing what a semiprime is as much as being willing/able to actually look up stuff.
gollark: Of course they do. Everyone is obviously like me apart from having had slightly different life experiences.
gollark: As I said, though, it's not really a *maths* problem as much as a *basic problem-solving* problem.
gollark: So you are, in fact, saying they're stupid?
gollark: As opposed to immediately going "AAAAAAAAAAAAA TOO HARD MAFS MAFS MAFS".

See also

References
  1. The Commissariat of Enlightenment
  2. Mally, Lynn (1990), Culture of the Future: The Proletkult Movement in Revolutionary Russia, Berkeley: University of California Press, p. 34, retrieved 16 December 2011
  3. Mally, Lynn (1990), Culture of the Future: The Proletkult Movement in Revolutionary Russia, Berkeley: University of California Press, p. 44, retrieved 16 December 2011
  4. "IZO Narkompros". monoskop.org. Monoskop. Retrieved 23 December 2018.
  5. "Iskusstvo kommuny". monoskop.org. Monoskop. Retrieved 23 December 2018.
  6. "Lenin: Directives on the Film Business". www.marxists.org. Retrieved 15 December 2018.
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