Ministry_of_Education_(Soviet_Union)
Ministry of Education (Soviet Union)
Government office in the Soviet Union
The Ministry of Education of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) (Russian: Министерство просвещения СССР), formed on 3 August 1966, was one of the most important government offices in the Soviet Union. It was known as the People's Commissariat for Education (Russian: Народный комиссариат просвещения), or Narkompros, until 1946. Narkompros was a Soviet agency founded by the State Commission on Education (Russian: Государственная комиссия по просвещению) and charged with the administration of public education and most of other issues related to culture.
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Its first head was Anatoly Lunacharsky. However he described Nadezhda Krupskaya as the "soul of Narkompros".[1] Mikhail Pokrovsky and Evgraf Litkens also played important roles.
Despite Lunacharsky's efforts to protect most of the avant-garde artists such as Vladimir Mayakovsky, Kazimir Malevich, Vladimir Tatlin and Vsevolod Meyerhold, the official policy after Joseph Stalin put him in disgrace.
Narkompros had a number of sections, in addition to the main ones related to general education, e.g.,
- Likbez, a section for liquidation of illiteracy,
- "Profobr", a section for professional education,
- Glavlit a section for literature and publishing (also in charge of censorship in publishing),
- "Glavrepertkom" (Главрепертком), a commission for approval of performers' repertoires.
- Department of the Mobilisation of Scientific Forces, to which the Russian Academy of Sciences reported to after 1918.
- A Theatre Department which published Vestnik Teatra
- Vneshkol'nyi Otdel, the adult Education Department run by Krupskaya
Some of these evolved into separate entities, others discontinued.