Ministry of Education (Soviet Union)

The Commissariat of Popular Enlightenment (or Ministry of Education and Culture) was established in 1917, soon after the October Revolution, by the Bolsheviks. Headed by Anatoly Vasilyevich Lunacharsky, one of the institution's earliest successes included the promotion of the ProletKult (proletarian culture) movement, which had amassed to around 400,000 followers by early 1920.

In the year of 1917 the establishment and the maturation of the soviet government materialized. After the revolution of the October 1917, the commissariat was the only creditworthy of the education as well as the arts. No doubt at that time education and the arts were the only way to access and to intercommunicate within the government and the Bolshevik party on one side and the Russian clerisy on the other. During these times the commissar, Anatoly Lunacharsky was collectively as a, “Bolshevik among intellectuals and an intellectual among Bolsheviks' (Bolshevik: Russian “one of the majority”).

Lunacharsky was a multi talented man. He was a very famous author among the Russian authors, in addition, he was a publicizer he also held a great respect among the politicians who worked a lot to preserve the existed work on arts, culture and education from being ruined during the times of the civil war which lasted from 1918 up to the year of 1920. During the March of 1917 he was associated with Lenin and Trotsky in Russia. Furthermore, he was nominated as a political commissar for the field of education. The newly appointed job gradually helped him in several ways to save and to preserve the art works and many other buildings with the historic backgrounds from facing the destruction of the civil war of 1917.

Lunacharsky was very much fascinated with the performing arts especially theatre.His keen interest in the field of cultural theatre gave courage to a great number of the dramatic experiments and reformed the theatre through his great innovations. His dramatic creativity was not only restricted to the Russia, his works were translated and dramatized in many other languages like the English. Out of his great dramatic work three were translated and were performed in the year of 1923. Assuming these dramatic abilities, he was chosen as a Soviet ambassador to Spain.

Proletkult (Russian “Proletarian Culture”) can be taken as an organization that came into being in the boundaries of soviet union during the year of 1917 under the supervision of Lunacharsky. The purpose of the organization was to permute the genuinely proletarian art. This organization also acted as a platform to collect the maximum art pieces, furthermore, they currently held efforts to protect and save the cultural depictions through the medium of the art. For the awareness of the community different educational field and the art seminars were carried all over the nation in order to actualise the peoples about the values of the art and the other educational and historical assets.

This effort to educate people in the fields of education, culture and the art resulted in a very positive manner. On account of the work done mainly by the Lunacharsky, started a position among the people to think, read, write plays novels and the poems. This time period of the 1917 in the real means revolutionized the Soviat Union. Soon after the revolution of 1917 the most hard works by the Bolsheviks in the social and cultural changes forced two fundamental conceptions. The first argument was given by the Bolsheviks, dealing with the measures that were more important and were the necessity of the current time in comparison to the measures which should be prolonged till the desired time dealing with both the cultural, educational as well as political matters. This debate about the preference of the programmes contributed a lot to disturb and to raise the conflicts. The economics of the Soviet Russia was disturbed badly on account of these difficulties.

The revolution in the Russia after the year of 1917 leads the culture and the religion under the communism. This conversion in the culture and the religion pushed the Russia towards the popular enlightenment in the Soviet Union. Bolsheviks rearranged the political as well as economical matters but the significant issue was not just limited to the economics or politics. Infect they affected every part of the education, culture, society and religion. Bolsheviks modernize the artists and the writers. They were allowed to write both positive and negative subjects of their likings. Furthermore, the newspapers and the media that time was also liberated, as long as they did not oppose the political criticism.The early mid of the 1920 resulted in a huge conception in the field of arts and literature along with any other practice which was involved in creating any kind of political barrier. The communists of the Soviet Union after the year of 1917, carried out many revolutionary changes in the field of education, curriculum and the syllabi of the educational courses were totally changed.Furthermore, all the schools were given under the command of the commissariat of enlightenment after they were nationalized. On account of this activity the teachers were not allowed to punish the students. Higher educational institutes, colleges, universities were always open for all the interested people.

Sources

• Bird, Alan. A History of Russian Painting. G.K. Hall Painting, Russian, 2007.
• Graham, Loren R. . Science in Russia and the Soviet Union. Science-- Soviet Union, 1993.
• Constantin, Nathan . A Study of Bolshevism. Free Press, 1953.
• Smele, Jon . The Russian Revolution and Civil War. Continuum International, 2003.
• Fitzpatrick, Sheila . The Commissariat of Enlightenment. Cambridge University, 1970.