Clark writes book on Russia’s literacy campaign

The history and failure of a literacy campaign imposed by Vladimir Lenin in the 1920s Soviet Union is the subject of a new book written by a University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point lecturer in history.

"Uprooting Otherness: The Literacy Campaign in NEP-Era Russia," is the first book written by Charles Clark, who also serves as the executive assistant to the chancellor. Susquehanna University Press in Selingsgrove, Pa., publishes it for academic use.

Lenin’s government began the campaign in 1921 as a means to recover from World War I and the Russian revolution. They used the unions as a means to educate the workers, brought reading rooms to rural villages and used mobile libraries.

"The government saw the literacy campaign as a means to level society and make everyone as equal to each other as possible," Clark said. But when the campaign gave rewards such as child care and increases in pay to those who learned to read, workers began to use the program to further their own ends.

The campaign also educated the people about the structure of the new government, Clark said. Literary societies were created to involve as many literate people as possible as a means to educate citizens about the new government. These societies were structured parallel to the government.

Six million out of 17 million adults learned to read. But the campaign was abandoned in 1925 when it was realized that an equal number of children had dropped out of school to go to work and there was no net gain. Instead, a new campaign began that aimed at having universal education in place by 1932. By then, a school structure was created and it evolved from there.

Today, the literacy rate in the Russian Republic is comparable to or better than that in the United States, Clark said. This is attributable to the emphasis on widespread education in primary and secondary institutions and not due to the literacy campaigns under Lenin and his successors.

Clark began the book as part of his doctoral dissertation, doing research in both the United States and Russia. He was able to study and research in Moscow during the 1990-91 academic year, working in the Lenin Library, Archive of the Moscow Province and Archive of the Russian Republic.

A speaker and reader of the Russian language, Clark was able to experience firsthand many of the political changes that were going on at the time.

In November during the celebration of the Bolshevik revolution, Clark witnessed protests of the Communist government and anti-state parades. Lenin, historically seen as a grandfather figure, was being referred to by protestors as a murderer and criminal, Clark said, adding that this kind of behavior just one year before would not have been tolerated.

It was shortly after Clark left that the Communist government fell in August 1991.

Clark has been teaching at UWSP since 1993. He has a Ph.D. from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, a master’s degree from the University of Kansas and a bachelor’s degree from Moorhead State University. He also has served as the state coordinator of Wisconsin History Day and as the associate editor of the "East/West Education" academic journal.

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