Abstract:
In the last couple of decades, the concept of the New Soviet Man and Woman has been
drawing the attention of scholars, who examined this concept from different ideological
and institutional perspectives. However, the place of children in this ideological project has
not been fully explored, yet the propaganda of the “New Soviet Man” encompassed not
only men and women but also, children. This study examines the process of upbringing
healthy and energetic Soviet children through analysis of Evgenii Radin’s works, the head
of the Department for the Protection of Children’s and Adolescents’ Health, who was
actively engaged in the promotion of the forest schools. The forest schools were medical
and educational facilities established after the Revolution and located at the outskirts of the
cities or near the forests, where children’s tenure lasted for the period of six months. Radin
considered the forest schools as a radical alternative to the secondary schools because they
entailed “total” control over the lives of the Soviet children for medical and pedagogical
experts employed at the forest schools. The isolation of the forest schools provided an
opportunity to nurture and educate children in a new environment, in which children were
exempt from the factors of external interventions. Through forest schools, Radin tried to
nurture The New Soviet Children by inculcating them a sense of collectivism and ensuring
their harmonic development, which perfectly aligned with the communist ideology.
However, by studying Radin’s works holistically, we find that his interests in the process
of upbringing healthy children goes back to the imperial period, when he was involved in
the survey that studies the factors that caused disenchantment among students of the higher
educational institutions. The examination of Radin’s analysis of this survey demonstrate
his criticism expressed towards traditional secondary educational institutions, the hostile
environment of which negatively affected the child’s personality, led to his subsequent
alienation from society and even to suicide. Radin proposed his own reforms the essence of iv
which ensured children’s harmonic development and inculcation of collectivism that would
contribute to the process of upbringing healthy children. Hence, we can see that the
identical concepts stood at the basis of the process of upbringing healthy children in two
different historical periods. Through examination of Radin’s both pre- and post Revolutionary works and interests, this study challenges the originality of the concept of
The New Soviet Child, proposed by Radin on the pages of his brochures. This study also
offers a glimpse into the functioning, schedule and subsequent fate of the forest schools in
Radin’s works, the overlooked topic in the historiography of the Soviet educational system.
After 1925, Radin became less enthusiastic about the forest schools and appealed to a
wider audience of the Pioneers, the vozhatye (pedagogues in Pioneer camps) and the
peasants. Hence, by delving into Radin’s post-1925 works, this study will try to find out
the causes of such sudden shift and see the extent to which the legacy of the forest schools
lived on in his post-1925 works