MAKING NEW SOVIET CHILDREN: EVGENII RADIN AND THE TRANSFORMATION OF CHILDHOOD IN REVOLUTIONARY RUSSIA

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 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 systemAfter 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