Les cahiers d’école comme source pour l’étude de la culture scolaire en URSS (années 1920-1930)

The history of material culture is a very special object of study for Soviet Union during the period between the two world wars because since the late 1920s the planning of economy strongly influenced consumption of the Soviet population’s and its social behavior and practices. Despite of the classless society described by the propaganda discourses, the access to material goods and objects was not equal for all the citizens.

The purpose of this contribution is to study school notebooks as particular objects of material culture, that is their consumption and use, in order to seize their double material and symbolic values front the point of view of the function they really had but also from the point of view of the role they played for the propaganda through the illustration of the covers. Indeed, from one side they have a material aspect, linked to the planned production and distribution of this particular support for the diffusion of literacy, from the other side they play a symbolic role, linked to the iconographic message of the cover. Furthermore as material mean of literacy they present a content that was related to the learning of the different school subjects.

For this reason this contribution is constituted of 3 parts. The first part will analyze the very material aspect of the production of this object of consumption through the reconstruction of both the central legislation for the production and the distribution of school notebooks to the different areas of the country, and of the internal structure of the paper notebook with rows and trunks for different school subjects. The aim is to understand whether the notebooks have become an object of mass consumption or if they were a limited support for some privileged school of the urban areas. The second and third aspects concern the analysis of the contents of the notebooks from the point of view of their symbolic value, namely the evolution of their covers as a propaganda tool and of their content as “written space” of literacy practices.

The choise of exercise books found in various collections (from different Russian National Archives: RGASPI and GARF, and personal collection of the author), will be analysed from the point of view of the evolution of the cover (the illustration of the cover, the quality of the paper and the message of the propaganda) and from the point of view of the content illustrating a big variety of teaching practices: first-grade and second grade exercise books from the 1920s and from the 1930 concerning different school subjects.

Obviously, the learning of reading, writing, and various school subjects (literature, history and natural sciences) has undergone an important evolution in the history of Soviet school in the interwar period. For the conference I’ll present the three level of analysis, but as part of a broader project, these particular sources – that constitute one of the main sources of the history of school –, will be put in relation with other documentation (such as text books) in order to reconstruct the didactical practices of the school.

The conclusions will underline the significance of these sources for the history of the material culture of literacy, will show in which way the government organized the production and the distribution and the way in which they can be considered the mirror of didactical practices of the soviet school. Indeed, the history of the materiality allows to write an history from below of the school practices and culture and to highlight the real level of literacy and diffusion of soviet literacy and schooling during the Twenties and the Thirties.