Eradication of Illiteracy and Development of Education in Uzbekistan by Soviets

Sheeraz Ahmad Lone*
Fayaz Ahmad Rather**

Abstract

By October Revolution of 1917, the literacy level of Uzbekistan was just 3.6%. Thereafter Russians (Soviets) made revolutionary changes in the country to change the educational scenario. A large no of primary, secondary and higher schools/institutions were opened in the country. Different policies were adopted to eliminate illiteracy and get the masses educated. A huge expenditure of efforts, money and labour was spent to bring about a change. With the result the literacy level of the country reached up to 11.6% in 1926 to 78.7% in 1939. By 1959 the literacy had reached up to 98% and by 1970 to 100%. The research paper is aimed to study the growth and development of primary and secondary education in Uzbekistan during the Soviet era. It aims to discuss the Soviet policy of education in Uzbekistan, system of delivery, consequences and measures taken for its introduction and subsequent spread. Since Soviets ruled Uzbekistan for 70 years they devised a policy of educating the people and eradicating mass illiteracy in the area through some harsh and appeasing measures.
 The October Revolution of 1917 changed every aspect of life in Russia.    
  Power came into the hands of working class, with the concept of the “Dictatorship of the Proletariat”. In the economic sphere private property was abolished and all of it came into the hands of the state, with the establishment of workers control over the industries. In agriculture, land was nationalized and as such was owned by the state and given over to the peasants for use. Socially the Revolution laid the foundation of the classless society and the state guaranteed every citizen free medical care, work to earn wages, equal access to culture and cultural developments with free and equal education to all.
All these changes were also visible in the colonies (Eastern Europe and Central Asia) of the former Czars, which subsequently came under the control of the Russians to form Soviet Union. In this paper, we will try to understand the educational changes that took place in Uzbekistan soon after the Revolution and thereafter the formation of USSR. All these changes would be analysed under two broad segments as: 1) Soviet policy of education, and 2) System of delivery.

Soviet Policy of Education
           
Soviet education in the USSR as well as in all Union Republics including Uzbekistan was based on the policy of socialism and Communism established on the Marxist-Lenin approach. Lenin wrote:-
“Our object in the field of school is the same struggle for the overthrow of the bourgeoisie; we openly declare that a school outside life, outside politics is a lie and hypocrisy.”  

Lenin envisioned the whole cultural problem for Russia and her colonies, once he became the head of the state, “we can build Communism”, he declared in 1920, “only on the sum of knowledge… only on the stock of forces and means left to us by old society. You must assimilate this knowledge critically so that your mind is enriched with all the facts that are indispensable for the modern man of education.” For the practical schooling to eliminate ignorance, Lenin advised youth: “It is not enough to understand what electricity is; it is necessary to know how to apply it to industry and to agriculture. We must learn ourselves and teach it to the whole young generation of toilers.”   
The decisions regarding the Soviet education were that schools should be administered in a decentralized system of control under a central authority, socially non discriminatory, be tuition free (primary), be compulsory up to age 17, practice co-education, provide pre school keeping of infants for mothers, exclude religious confessions for instruction, give material aid to pupils, relate school to work experience, require ideological loyalty, and Soviet patriotism from the teachers, provide adult literacy and cultural programmes, involve parents in school programmes and teach a materialistic, systematic and technical labour base.
The post Revolutionary chaos in Central Asia was thought by the Soviets to be removed by educating the natives. Therefore to begin with there were also political and colonial considerations in the educational policy of Uzbekistan as well as in other colonies. In this connection a particularly interesting article by a communist S. Dimanshteyn on the education of Soviet national minorities appeared in Vowy Vostok in 1929. The author says “all the main border regions of the Soviet Union are inhabited by non-Russian peoples….. the safety of our frontiers depends not only on the strength of Red army but also on the frontier population to the Soviet Government. In this field much can be achieved by correct nationalities policy, i.e. one whose task is to unite these nationalities into a single whole. This will strengthen and decrease the danger of war.”
The traditional school and their instruction was continued to function as a necessary compromise in Soviet strategy. To this effect the Soviet Council of Peoples Commissar issued an appeal in 1918 to all the Muslims of the Empire that as the “Czars and Oppressors of Russia have violated all your national and cultural institutions like mosques and shrines and faiths and customs”   and “hence forth your beliefs and customs, your national and cultural institutions are decreed free and inviolable. Build your national life freely and without hindrance. You have the right to do it. Know that your rights, like those of all the peoples of Russia, are being protected by all the might of the Revolution.” Accordingly to achieve this objective the new rulers devised a policy that looked free from bias and opposing to that of Czars.
But this friendship and enthusiasm did not last long. Soon after as the Bolsheviks firmly controlled Uzbekistan and other Central Asian countries the traditional educational institutions were closed in 1927 and other Muslim institutions like Shari’at courts and mosques were abolished. It was because the new socialist state was contradicting its fundamental principals of existence. There was no room for the faith, customs, history, etc. The Revolution and its architects had vowed to build new society and system differently and unknown so far for the purpose of socialization and Communism. 

System of Delivery
           
The establishment of Soviet power in Central Asia was followed by the formation and development of the Soviet system of public school education as early as 1917 and 1918; Lenin signed approximately thirty decrees on public education and cultural construction. The most important were: “on the institution of the state commission for education” (Nov. 9, 1917), “on transforming affairs of upbringing  and education from religious authorities to the peoples commissariat of education” (Dec. 11, 1917), “on freedom of conscience and church and religious societies”, which stipulated the separation of church and state and school and church (Jan. 20, 1918), “on the organization of public education in the Russian Socialist Soviet Republic” (June 18, 1918) and  many others.
To achieve what Lenin desired and proclaimed the Commissar of Education, Anatoly Lunacharsky in 1918, prescribed universal compulsory education. He also called for establishment of universities for higher education for all the people in Russia, which include home education and Peoples University, experimental education, school medicine and hygiene, technical schools and polytechnic education. Even though Central Asia was guaranteed freedom from new socialist approach but in April 1918 whole Central Asia was placed under the Russian Federation in the name of Turkistan Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic. The design of the governance required that Central Asia also follows the Russian SSR in the implementation of its policies, including that of education. Central Asian governors, therefore, helped Russian SSR in this respect as early as on 14 May 1918 as the “Committee of Peoples Commissar of Turkistan Republic took the decision of organizing uniform schools and in 1919 co-education.” Both of these decisions were radical in the context of Central Asia; uniformity meant to level the system and co-education meant to bring women out of their veil.
However, before 1920 the government of Turkistan had hardly exacted laws requiring the secularization of education. The decree of January 1918 on freedom of conscience and religious societies laid down that the teaching of religious doctrines is not permitted in any state, public or private educational institutions was not enforced immediately and therefore they continued as before.
By 1920 the Government of Turkistan supported by generous subsidies from Moscow embarked upon an ambitious programme of school construction and in October 1, 1921, a total of 2333 educational institutes of various types were in operation. This massive drive was still insufficient to satisfy even the most elementary educational needs of the local population. But in 1922 Moscow government’s subsidy given earlier was withdrawn, with the result many Soviet operational educational institutes closed their doors and the village school, the backbone of the Soviet education in the Muslim community almost disappeared. In response to this the Turkistan government assigned 40% of the entire budget to education, but was able to support only 1669 educational institutions.
However, at the beginning of 1923 it was decided to give incentives to all educational institutions. Soviet school specialists were also pressed into service. These measures strengthened the Soviet system of public school. In 1924 all Turkistan Congress of Soviets observed that the “Soviet power gave freedom from coloniser, gave land and the will to remove illiteracy, and collective financial help to teachers and students. Accordingly steps were taken to implement the decision of the congress with the result there was massive increase in the number of native students who joined such schools.
In 1924 Uzbekistan Union Republic was created by the re-division of the people and the territories of the Turkistan Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic. With it education got a fresh impetus in Uzbekistan SSR. The new set up allowed, Uzbekistan to adopt the Soviet educational policy in full swing. This system started from crèche to the institutions of higher learning. Delivery of education below gives the visual representation of the Soviet education system delivered through various learning units at different levels. It was a universal system in whole of Soviet Union with little changes, here and there, taking place at various periods of time. Uzbekistan SSR soon after its formation in 1924 followed this system in particular after Stalin enforced the Soviet policies in letter and spirit even with the might in his command. The result was that the traditional system of education disappeared and only the new system was allowed to run and deliver at various levels.
          

System of Educational Organization
 

 

 

 

 

 

                                                            

 

 

 

 

 

 

                                                                                  

 

 

It is interesting to note from the graphic that there was diversity of ways to get enrolled in the general compulsory schools and get the variety of jobs just after completing the general education of 8 or 10 classes.
One can study the new education system under the following sub-heads to know how well the delivery of education was carried forward. The aim is to understand how the facilities were created by the Soviets to spread education among the masses for producing people who would serve the state in a desired fashion.

1. Pre school education.
2. School education.
3. Women education.
4. Curriculum
5. Teachers training. and
6. Language of instruction

Pre School Education

The concept of incorporating pre school upbringing, consisting of crèches and kindergartens into the system of people’s education was based on freeing the families from the upbringing of their children. In this way the state from the very childhood started to inculcate in the children the new designs of Soviet programmes envisioned in the Revolution. The preschool education guarantied the right to work and equality of women, in all spheres of social, economic and political life which was not possible without freeing the women from the responsibility of looking after children.
At the age of three months, a child if parents desired, could be put in a crèche. After attaining the age of three years a child from the crèche or from the home entered the kindergarten, again if the parents desired. In Uzbekistan the programme of pre school education started in 1918 at a moderate level. In that year four such institutions were opened in Tashkent for Uzbek children. However, natives did not patronize them immediately as they looked them as centers of Russification. For example it took about ten years to raise the number of such institutions to 68 with a native enrollment of 3799. As the governance changed the life in Soviet Union in a rather harsh way and at quicker pace, there was thrust to implement the Soviet education policy more forcefully, in particular in Central Asia. This was to achieve obedience besides attainment of uniformity in educational sector as well as other sectors dependent on it. Further to overcome the resistance, Bolsheviks encouraged the employment of the native women in these institutions. Consequently the rate of growth of pre school children showed tremendous increase as shown in the table I.  
                                                             
Table – I
 
Growth of pre school institutions in Uzbekistan

Years	No. of institutions	No. of children
1924-25	11	887
1928-29	68	3797
1932-33	576	27092
1938-39	927	36710

Source:  Shams-Ud-din, Secularizatioin in the USSR: A Study of Cultural Policy in Uzbekistan, p. 90.

By 1940 there were 33,700 infants enrolled in preschool programmers in Uzbekistan. Post war plans called for increase in enrollments 60,000 by 1950, but the actual figure reached only half that number. Thereafter steady progress raised it to 68,600 in 1956, to 83,500 in 1958 and to 1,40,100 in 1961. In 1970 there were 3,48,000 and in 1980 there were 8,48,000 enrollments of preschool children. The high ratio of enrollments from 1958 is due to high birth rates of 34 per thousand of population and as such from 1959 to 1970 the Uzbek population increased by 53%. The pre school institutes were usually located in urban centers, with very few rural areas having access to them. As such by 1980 there were 6000 children enrolled in 500 kindergartens of Tashkent city alone.
By 1940 there were not even 5% (33,700 out of total 8,50,000) children of the preschool age group going to these schools but by the end of the Soviet period in 1993 the percentage had reached up to 35%. Thereby meaning that after the harsh measures of Stalin Central Asian’s, to some extent shed their age old orthodoxy in favour of a new, possibly forced system.

Operational System 

The crèches and kindergartens were headed by a director, who was a graduate from pre school pedagogical institution. The children were looked after by the matrons who are especially trained for the purpose. Besides these, there were special instructors for music, dance, and fine arts and so on, with service personal like doctors, nurses, cook and sanitary personnel, etc.
In the kindergartens socio-ethical, aesthetic and similar aspects were taught in the first two years. In the third year elementary preparation was made to allow the child to join the school one year later. Thus the child was trained to understand alphabet and basic numbers in the mother tongue.
The objective of these institutions was to inculcate among the children social equalities through a uniform socialization and a sense of group belonging and collective living. The children were made to be orderly, co-operative, helpful, obedient and conforming. This was achieved by a combination of friendly persuasion, individual attention, and careful programmed conditioning involving speech training, group games and media effects.
Pre school education was not wholly free. The upbringing of a child in a preschool institute was costing 414 rubles a year. The parents were paying 18% of this some, the remaining 82% was provided by the state.

School Education

The general education in the whole USSR as well as in Uzbekistan SSR was imparted at different levels in various types of schools run by the government. These were primary schools, first cycle secondary or incomplete secondary (middle schools) and second cycle secondary or complete secondary. The total number of school years varied from time to time. To begin with the system of school education that was in place in Russia was adopted. However, certain changes were brought in it after the Revolutionary forces were established in the country. The Russian’s brought changes periodically in the system. Say for example, in 1918 the People’s Commissariat of education introduced a uniform labour school of nine years with five years of primary education and four years of secondary education. In 1920 the first party conference on public education recommended to replace the nine years of general education with seven years of education. After the restoration from World War and civil war a four year primary education and five year secondary education was introduced.
However, in July 25, 1930 the Central Committee of Russian Communist Party passed a historical resolution under the head, “on all general compulsory education” which declared that from academic year 1930-31 there would be free compulsory education up to the fourth grade and seven year compulsory education in industrial cities and workers settlements.
In 1934 for the first time a generalized unified system of general education was introduced. It consisted of four years of primary education (grades 1-4), three years of incomplete secondary (grades 5-7) and three years of full secondary (grades 8-10). Thus creating a system of three tier of school education was to replace the earlier two tier one. By this arrangement it was required that all the children in the Soviet Union would get free primary education of first four grades and as well were required to study compulsorily for the next three years the middle classes up to grade seven. The further higher classes of three years were left to the chosen will of the children. This was changed in 1977 when all the grades were made compulsory. Further to enhance the years of secondary education it was resolved in 1984 to raise the years of schooling from ten to eleven.
The eight year programme (incomplete secondary) required full time study; the additional years required for complete secondary was achieved by either part time or full time study. Most of the schools provided full range of educational classes, but in some rural areas primary school existed as separate units. In such cases the children transferred to the nearest secondary school to complete their education. The academic year began on the same day in early September and ended in late May, working through out the year with some official holidays and vacations. There were six working days in a week with five or six classes per day.
It is noteworthy that education was free not only up to general secondary education but also up to higher learning. It costed the state annually 144 rubles to teach one pupil at general schools, 557 rubles at specialized secondary schools and 92 rubles at higher educational establishments.

Growth of Primary and Secondary Schools

On the eve of the Revolution there were about 160 schools in Uzbekistan. By the academic year 1924-25 their number rose up to 907 with the support of the Soviet government. The Soviet government was aware of the fact that illiteracy of the region was to be eradicated with the tool of education not only to press on the message of Communism directly through curriculum and literature but also to address the issues that were envisaged by the labour leader’s way in the Revolution of 1917. Accordingly the architects of the Revolution brought about a set of changes in the education system. The major thrust to the education development in Uzbekistan was achieved by adopting mother tongue as the medium of instruction. Second was that it guaranteed employment to almost all educated and trained persons in various institutions. As the Sovietisation became almost complete in Uzbekistan with the formation of Uzbekistan SSR, the Soviet thrust became more visible and instructional materials in the Uzbek language-teacher’s manuals, curricula and syllabus outlines, classroom aids became available in substantial quantities from 1926 onwards. There was gradual increase in the number of schools from 1928 onwards. With the implementation of compulsory education there was requirement of increased number of schools, which grew very fast. All these trends of schools are summarized in table II.

Table – II

Growth of Primary and Secondary Education in Uzbekistan
(1924-25 to 1937-38)

School Year	Number of schools
	Total	Rural areas	Primary		7- year Middle schools		Secondary
			Total	Rural areas	Total	Rural areas	Total	Rural areas
1914-15	160	52	135	52	13	-	12	-
1924-25	907	640	867	638	-	2	24	-
1928-29	2320	1898	2194	1880	83	17	38	1
1929-30	2720	2293	2622	2265	96	26	2	2
1930-31	5038	4568	4861	4502	170	66	7	-
1931-32	7061	6368	6855	6283	206	85	-	-
1932-33	6444	5935	6167	5801	265	134	12	-
1933-34	5906	5503	5573	5332	298	170	35	1
1934-35	5514	5128	5083	4880	390	247	41	1
1935-36	5216	4794	4577	4370	476	420	63	4
1936-37	4506	4065	3592	3405	824	655	90	5
1937-38	4614	4162	3449	3275	989	825	176	62

Source: Shams-Ud-din, Secularizatioin in the USSR: A Study of Cultural Policy in Uzbekistan, p. 92.
           
The Soviet rule was much more concerned to establish a wide network of primary schools. The first ten years or so (by 1929-30) the increase of the primary schools was many fold not only in urban areas but through out the republic. The objective was not only to create favorable conditions for inculcating new values among the younger generation, but also to see that the network of school spreads to all areas to introduce what Soviets wanted a uniform pattern of education through out the Union. However, it was the period when contrary to its fundamental principals, Soviets also allowed Muslim schools to exist. Notwithstanding the figures, education was aimed to produce literate workers who were entirely available to work for Soviet might. From 1930 onwards Soviet Union passed through a new phase of Communism based on coercion and oppression. The era of Stalin was marked by the use of force to lead the people to adopt and follow what Communism and socialism was meant for. Accordingly in Uzbekistan, besides many other forced measures the development of education was vigorously forced. The number of schools was raised not only to two to three times but in many schools there were conducted double shifts to engage the children. It was only by the middle of the 1930’s that the number of middle and secondary schools showed signs of increase correspondingly to cater the needs of large number of children leaving the primary schools.
The rate of growth of the pupils at different levels of education also suggest that right up to school year 1928-29 the government concentrated on primary schools. In the academic year 1924-25 the total number of pupils in primary institutions was 565 thousands while in the middle and secondary levels of education there were 74 and 116 thousands respectively, a ratio of 3 to 1. This increasing ratio of primary education continued but with the onset of Stalin era this increased many fold in the mid thirties as shown in the table III.

Table – III

Rate of growth of pupils in schools of Uzbekistan SSR
(1924-25 to 1932-33) (In thousands)

School year	Number of pupils in schools
	Primary schools		Middle schools		Secondary schools
	Total	Of which In rural areas	Total	Of which In rural areas	Total	Of which in rural areas
1924-25	56.6	30.7	7.4	0.9	11.6	-
1925-26	73.2	42.7	12.9	1.3	12.9	-
1926-27	87.5	50.5	18.5	1.9	16.3	-
1927-28	100.5	57.7	19.7	2.0	19.6	0.3
1928-29	123.7	81.0	22.7	2.4	21.5	0.4
1929-30	167.5	100.0	23.4	3.3	n. a	0.5
1930-31	297.0	253.6	60.0	8.3	6.5	-
1931-32	427.9	364.7	87.0	10.5	-	-
1932-33	474.5	402.3	81.0	22.0	12.9	-

Source: Shams-Ud-din, Secularization in the USSR: A Study of Cultural Policy in Uzbekistan, p. 94.

Primarily the Soviet policy in Uzbekistan was to spread primary education but the ratio of primary education to secondary education created serious problem for the nativization of the Soviet socio-political apparatus at different levels. However, once Stalin government accelerated the process of development of middle and secondary education, the result was that there was sharp increase in number of middle and secondary schools and in their intake as shown in the table IV.

Table – IV

Rate of growth of different types of schools and their corresponding enrollments during the school years from 1933-34 to 1937-38

School year	No. of schools			No. of students (in thousands)
	Primary	Middle	Secondary	Primary	Middle	Secondary
1933-34	5573	298	35	424.3	85.0	26.1
1934-35	5083	390	41	427.3	117.6	29.4
1935-36	4577	476	63	436.0	143.6	49.4
1936-37	3592	824	90	428.0	241.5	69.8
1937-38	3449	989	176	446.3	303.4	111.5

Source: Shams-Ud-din, Secularization in the USSR: A Study of Cultural Policy in Uzbekistan, p. 95.

Compared to 1914 the number of schools in 1938 increased 29.3 times with primary schools at the ratio of 22.3 times and middle at 81 times. In spite of the measures, appeasement and enforcement and the sharp increase in the number of schools and the school going children there was still a good number of children who were not attending any school. In 1926 there was only 26/1000 who received instructions. Even though by 1933 it was 260/1000 and in 1939 it was 340/1000, yet there was just one person in every three who had some kind of elementary knowledge meaning that Stalin measures by then were still showing very low results. Stalin measures in fact showed better results in urban areas than in rural areas in particular at the middle and secondary levels.
The table V below gives the distribution of pupils by grade wise in rural and urban areas during 1938-39. in fact the figures show that middle level education was picking up as compared to secondary level one because by then it was compulsory to study up to grade seven and join a job; second the workers were not interested in to pursue education for gaining knowledge.

Table – V

Urban-Rural distribution of pupils by grade levels during
(1938-1939)

Administrative Unit.	Total No. of students	Primary Classes I-IV	%	Middle Classes V-VII	%	Secondary Classes VIII-X	%
USSR	1106457	887746	80.2	191399	17.3	16014	1.4
Bukhara Oblast	244030	204030	83.9	35272	14.5	2106	0.9
Bukhara city	6741	4894	72.6	1595	23.7	252	3.7
Samarqand Oblast	196119	164287	83.8	25710	13.1	1710	0.9
Samarqand City	23820	16433	69.0	6394	26.8	993	4.2
Tashkent Oblast	218480	157880	72.3	51028	23.4	7842	3.6
Tashkent City	92747	58842	63.4	27182	29.3	6723	7.2
Fargana Oblast	313595	250648	79.9	58479	18.6	3380	1.1
Fargana City	6330	3991	63.0	1911	30.2	428	6.8
Khorezm Oblast	59081	46091	78.0	12266	20.8	639	1.1
Kara-kalpak ASSR	75182	64032	85.2	8644	11.5	337	0.4

Source: W. K. Medlin, W. M. Cave, F. Carpenter, Education and Development in Central Asia: A Case Study of Social Change in Uzbekistan, p. 110.
           
To achieve what was, the Uzbekistan government had a concern that all were not going to school and therefore had adopted a ten year plan for the abolition of illiteracy among urban dwellers between the ages of 18 and 35 and among rural inhabitants between 14 and 30 by the end of the 1934. In addition to that, government organized general educational recourses to raise “the cultural and political level” of adults in urban centers. Library, clubs, cottage reading rooms, and peasant houses were established in numerous towns and villages. In order to encourage workers to master literacy and other basic educational skills the government promised higher wages and technical work levels of those who met the higher requirements, like to pass special tests to qualify.
To recover those youth who failed in primary schools or simply did not enroll compulsory primary schools were organized for those aged between 11- 15, a form of remedial primary education.
By all these measures taken by the Soviet Uzbek government and the decree of universal primary education in 1930 the literacy level which was just around 3.6 before Revolution reached up to 11.6 in 1926 and 78.7 in 1939. What the tremendous increase in educational achievements indicates is that the measures went a long way to eradicate the illiteracy.
The results started to appear after the Stalin measures were wholly pursued and by 1939-40 there was not only 78.7% literacy but also almost 80% enrollment in the schools. The number of students attending the higher secondary classes was not significant as there were only 35 students per 1000 of population attending these schools . It looks that there was thrust only on primary education rather than on higher. As compared to primary level literacy rate of 78% the middle level had reached only up to 17% and higher to meager 1.4%. As the primary level was compulsory the results so achieved were therefore on that account. By the year 1949 it became mandatory to read up to middle level (grade 7) and therefore in 1956 the percentage of these enrolled raised to 48% and by then there were nearly 19% (almost 1/5) of enrolled in grades  8, 9 and 10, (with out technical secondary students). The ratio of pupils in secondary schools was more in urban areas than in rural areas as is suggested by:-
Samarqand city              41.6/1000         
Samarqand oblast           34.4/1000

The growth in the opening of new schools and the increase in the number of students were moving at pace that remained almost static till it was decided to make education compulsory up to 10th standard. Once this was done, the growth in the number of students increased at a pace that was almost double. It is what the table VI reveals.

Table – VI

Number of schools and the enrollment from 1940-41 to1983-84

Year	No. of general schools of all types	No. of students ( in thousands)
1940-41	5448	1315
1955-56	6418	1350
1958-59	6877	1373
1959-60	7165	1431
1960-61	7511	1552
1970-71	-	3142
1979-80	9500	4000
1983-84	9400*	4300

  *Besides schools for pathological retarded children like deaf, blind etc.
Compiled on the basis of:  Lawrance Krader, Peoples of Central Asia, p. 239; Shrine Aknier, Islamic Peoples of Soviet Union, P.280; M. Y. Sharpe’s Journal of Translations, p. 132; Ann Sheehy, Primary and Secondary Education in Central Asia and Kazakhstan, The Current Situation, Central Asian Review and E. Yuspov, Achievements Of The Socialist Cultural Revolution, Socialist Uzbekistan: A Path Equaling Centuries, Ed. P. N. Fedoseev, p. 112.

It was not only of the fact that school enrollments increased because of compulsarisation of education but also because there was substantial increase in the population of the republic. The high birth rate of 53% of the Uzbek population was recorded from 1959 to 1970.
In the 1960’s it was found that the rate of growth of school building constructions was less than the growth of school enrollments. To cope up with the situation the number of schools had to operate in two or three shifts. By 1966 only the capital Tashkent was successful in eliminating the third shift, however, more than 75% of the countries schools were in two shifts. Accordingly a large sum of the countries budget was allocated for building the schools on account of what it was claimed in 1968 that all rural and majority of urban schools were working in one shift. The trend of new school construction continued as during the period 1976-80 new schools were constructed for 8,00,000 pupils. But the situation continued to be grim as by early nineties more than 50% of the schools were in double shifts.
There were far reaching consequences of the higher number of school enrollments. In 1959 the literacy level of primary classes had reached up to 98%, which was only 78.7% in 1939 and by 1970 it had reached up to 99 to 100%. In addition to that by 1985 two-thirds of the population aged 10 years and above had secondary or higher education in the republic.

Women Education

While Russian administration on the eve of the Revolution proclaimed new policies based on the doctrine of Revolution, it had to bring certain changes in the execution of its policies in Turkistan. One of these was to open schools exclusively for women against the set principals of co-education. This was to allow them to uphold their tradition of using yasmark or paranjan (veil). Accordingly the Soviet government and the Communist Party of Uzbekistan introduced several legislative and political measures to remove obstacles in the way of female education. Besides co-education special women’s schools were opened. During the academic year 1924-25 there were 44 such schools with 2158 native female students. During the succeeding year many more schools were opened as shown in table VII.

Table – VII

Growth of women education from 1924-25 to 1927-28

Year	No. of women’s schools	Total number of students	Number of native students
1924-25	44	Not given	2158
1925-26	97	23308	9454
1926-27	101	Not given	9723
1927-28	Not given	29138	9961

Source: Shams-Ud-din, Secularization in the USSR: A Study of Cultural Policy in Uzbekistan, p. 97.

In 1926 the total number of non-Russian girls of school going age, was about 4,44,673, in which only about 2.13% were attending schools, which increased up to 2.25 in 1927. In 1927-28 the percentage of female students to total number of students varied from 1/6 to 1/3 in different districts as shown in table VIII.

Table – VIII

Percentage of female students among the total students during
1927-1928

Source: W. K. Medlin, W. M. Cave, F. Carpenter, Education and Development in Central Asia: A Case Study of Social Change in Uzbekistan, p. 95.               
To overcome the slow growth of girl’s education the Communist Party of Uzbekistan took many steps. The first was the campaign of emancipation, called Hujum (offensive) launched at the end of 1926 . Second was the closing down of traditional institutions for girls, called Otin Bibi schools in which the native girls were receiving instructions like the boys in the Islamic institutions of Maktaba, to be able to read the Qur’an and understand some basic elements of Islam.
The Hujumcampaign ended in 1932 and that year marked the beginning of a new era for Central Asian women and that of Uzbekistan as it witnessed the first generation of women to be trained and educated by the Communist Party. With the result a good number of girls (both urban and rural) attended the secular co-education and by 1938-39 there was a great increase in percentage of girls attending the schools as shown in table IX.

Table – IX

Percentage of girl students in different regions during 1938-39

Regions	% of female students  in 1938-39
	Total	Rural areas
Tashkent	48.3	40.7
Fergana	42.3	42.4
Samarqand	42.1	41.1
Bukhara	42.6	42.3
Khorezm	41.4	40.3

Source: Shams-Ud-din, Secularization in the USSR: A Study of Cultural Policy in Uzbekistan, p. 98.

In 1940 among 8,84,000 pupils enrolled in grades 1-4 nearly 46% were female students. With the result the %age of female literacy reached from 7.3 in 1926 to 73.3 in 1939 and to 97.3 in 1960.
The ratio of female students in secondary classes was again low as there was in general education before the 1960’s. In 1960 only 24% of the female population had completed the secondary education. The trend increased by the universal compulsory secondary education as it was in case of general education. By 1970-71, 40% of the total numbers of higher educated were women and accordingly in 1979 census 99.6% of Uzbek women were literate of primary classes.

Curriculum

All the schools imparted education in the mother tongue in Uzbekistan, be it Uzbek or Russian. Up to primary level it was mandatory to teach in the mother tongue to the students. Accordingly in Uzbekistan there were 94.5% schools where the native language or the mother tongue was Uzbek and only in 5.5% of schools Russian was the main language. In accordance to it the curriculum of the two types of the schools was set. While as in the Uzbek Native School Russian was taught in besides the Uzbek, in Russian School it was only the Russian that was taught. The later group of schools therefore led to lesser group of subjects to deal with. To teach Russian as II language became compulsory from 1938 even though it was part of the curriculum since the beginning of the Soviet education in the country.
A primary graduate was necessarily required to read and write the native language (Uzbek or Russian). For such a literate it was to prepare one who was able to read or write the language besides have some elementary knowledge of arithmetics, history and for non-Russians to be able to converse in Russian. At the middle level students, besides the mother tongue, attained the knowledge of mathematics, history, geography and natural science. At the secondary level students learned literature, algebra, trigonometry, geography, history, physics, chemistry and foreign language.
In fact the general line schools were meant to prepare a class of educated personal that had enough study of mother tongue, were taught about the history geography and math’s besides subjects like biology, physics, chemistry so that one who was to pursue further education had the foundation laid out at the lower level and ones fundamentals were clear to attain heights.    
From 1960’s there was the innovation of the introduction of optional subjects in the curriculum of 7th to 10th grades. Among the optional subjects offered were fine and applied art, history of art and music, electronics, radio electronics, technical drawing, agro techniques and short hand. From 1985 onwards computer science was added to among the subjects for the secondary classes.
Teacher’s Training

After the Bolshevik Revolution and the Soviet system of school establishment in Uzbekistan, the greatest difficulty was presented by the lack of trained teachers. To overcome this shortage, teachers were selected from different sources like from former Russian schools, Russian native and Muslim schools who were not of the standard that would match with Marxist ideology and intellectualism, therefore they were provided with two to three and some times five to six months instruction or a summer course in pedagogical institutes to qualify them for school teaching . It was also aimed to inculcate among them the philosophy of Marxism so that products were molded in the way the ideology demanded them to be with out noticeable interference.
After that the Turkistan national commissariat of education carried out in 1923 an examination of teachers in order to determine their professional qualifications. The teachers were divided into two groups each of four categories with a careful distinction between their intellectual and political merits. The first group with a satisfactory educational background required political training. The other group was considered ‘unworthy element’ and was dismissed.
To prepare new teachers, many pedagogical institutes were opened in Uzbekistan. There were four such institutions opened in Tashkent and one in Samarqand in 1920 for the training of teachers of the native nationalities. In 1924 three women’s pedagogical institutions were opened each in Tashkent, Bukhara and Samarqand to train the female teachers. During the middle and late twenties, several pedagogical technicums were established in different cities for preparing teachers for lower grades and by 1927 they had a total enrollment of 2500.
All these institutions and technicums hardly supplied teachers on mass basis. By 1930 their total enrollments were about 3500. Substitute arrangements were therefore made for the qualified teachers. As in 1924, 1000 persons were given special summer courses in pedagogy, which by 1925 rose to 1500 and in 1926 to 2500.
In 1930 a new type of teacher training school was established for the upgrading of teaching profession. The institute named as the Institute of Raising Qualifications of Primary Teachers was meant to enhance the qualifications of the teachers and meet the new requirements based on the communist ideology. Besides the main route of imparting training during the day hours the institute also offered courses through evening pedagogical schools as well as through correspondence.
From 1930 onwards there was a phenomenal growth of teachers. During the academic year 1928-29 the total number of teachers (natives as well as Russian) was 6308. In 1930-31 the number rose to 11767. Table XVI gives the region wise growth of teachers in Uzbekistan from 1927-28 to 1938-39.

Table – XVI

Region wise growth of teachers from 1927-28 to 1938-39

Region (Oblast)	1927-28		1938-39
	Total No. of teachers	In rural schools	Total No. of teachers	In rural areas
Tashkent	2019	454	7821	3788
Ferghana	1423	695	9305	7323
Samarqand	820	276	6116	5015
Bukhara	738	451	7187	4665
Khorezm	142	63	1956	1783
Krakalpak ASSA	544	209	2169	1859
Total	5686		34554

Source: Shams-Ud-din, Secularization in the USSR: A Study of Cultural Policy in Uzbekistan, p. 105.

In spite of all these measures there were a good number of teachers who had not received any methodological and professional instruction beyond the general education. By about 1940, 85% of the teachers had not completed either a high school or university level education. Teachers with higher qualifications were mostly meant for the upper grades of secondary schools, located primarily in the urban areas. 98% of all teachers with out secondary education were in rural schools and therefore till 1940 all the primary and secondary schools had not the teachers who possessed higher qualification.
By 1955-56 the teacher number increased up to 70,000 . With it the teacher qualifications improved substantially both in academic level preparation and in professional training. The result was that one teacher in every five had completed higher education, 1.4 in every five had finished upper secondary and 0.2 in every five had finished high school.     
To meet the tremendous increase in student enrollments, the number of teachers also showed substantial increase. In 1966/67 there were about 1,50,000 teachers twice as many as ten years ago. These teachers were better qualified than the teachers before, with fifty percent of them having higher education. To train these teachers a large number of new teacher training institutes and colleges were opened from 1960’s. Six new institutes were opened from 1964-67. The teachers were now being trained in two universities, 18 teachers training institutes and 16 teachers training colleges. In spite of these efforts there was still the shortage of teachers in all Central Asian Republics including Uzbekistan particularly in rural areas. In 1967 Uzbekistan was having a shortage of 10,000 teachers and the situation did not improve radically even after.  

Language of Instruction
           
It is held that Uzbek literary language had begun to take form in the 17th century from the old language of ‘Chagatai’. Written in Arabic script it evolved further during the period of Czarist rule.
Following the 1917 Revolution the Soviets sought to modify the Arabic script universally used by the Central Asians in writing the language. Various reasons were given for the proposed reforms and indeed there were some Central Asian intellectuals who wanted to get rid of the script. One of the chief reasons was that the rich system of vowel harmony found in Turkic languages can not be represented equally by the Arabic alphabet, since the Arabic letters form only three vowel phenomenon. In addition, the script contains several other letters not found in Iranian or Turkic languages and most graphemes have different forms depending on their position in the word.
In 1923, an improved Arabic alphabet was adopted for Uzbek, but it also did not satisfy the elites of the Marxist party on the ground that it was the script of the Arabs. This was because the alphabet of the Qur’an and all the great Islamic literature of the past, whether Arabic or Persian was a powerful symbol of the religious and cultural landscape of the area. Therefore in 1925 by a decree the importation of the materials printed in Arabic was forbidden. As early as 1924, a Latin alphabet had been introduced in the Soviet Azerbaijan just across the Caspian Sea. In 1926, at a Turcological congress at Baku (Azerbaijan), it was decided to replace Arabic alphabet by Latin alphabet.
A year later a unified Turkic Latin alphabet was presented for propagation, with a few symbols to represent special Turkic phenomenon. In 1928- 29 the Latin alphabet replaced the Arabic. By 1930 all the languages of the Central Asia had been provided with Latin alphabets and these were used in text books prepared for the new schools being set up and in the news papers, journals, and books published by newly established press.
But Turkey’s adoption of similar Latin alphabet aroused new fears in Soviet leaders. There was a potential danger that a new Pan-Turkic literature may develop in the Latin alphabet and that this new script might attract the Central Asian people towards Turkey. So finely the last change came when the Latin alphabet was changed to Cyrillic alphabet by 1 September 1940. The process was completed by January 1942.
 In Uzbekistan this step was justified in the following words:
“The Uzbek language is enriched every year with new words which have been produced by the Soviet epoch. The existing Latin alphabet is no longer in line with the development of the language and it is in fact an obstacle to the further development of the language and culture of the Uzbek people. The new alphabet will make it possible to establish an orderly system of Uzbek orthography (the rules of correct spelling) and there by to eradicate the existing confusion. Moreover the unification of the alphabet will improve our printing facilities”.

Another advantage of the Cyrillic alphabet was said that it would make the study of Russian easier for native children, as learning the Russian language was made obligatory in 1938. By changing the Arabic script first to Latin and then to Cyrillic, the number of Persian and Arabic words used in Uzbek language declined and that of the Russian increased. In fact the process had already began as between 1923 and 1940 words of Arabic and Persian in Uzbek language declined from 37% to 25% of the total lexicon, while words of Russian origin increased from 2% to 15%.
Conclusion

Before the Soviet occupation, the Uzbek society was illiterate, backward and superstitious. There were hardly any modern educational institutions and as such people were unable to write and read. Soviets made tremendous effort to eradicate illiteracy by establishing a number of educational institutions. Not only by establishing the schools but by making compulsory education of different grades at different stages. In addition to general schools Library, clubs, cottage reading rooms, and peasant houses were established in numerous towns and villages to raise “the cultural and political level” of adults in urban centers. To recover those youth who failed in primary schools or simply did not enroll compulsory primary schools were organized for those aged between 11- 15, a form of remedial primary education. . With it the literacy level which was just around 2 percent before the Revolution reached up to 100 percent during the seventy years of Soviet Occupation, with 2/3rd of the population having secondary or higher education. The female folk which was confined to four walls before the Revolution was liberalized. They too acquired the modern education at par with the males with 100 percent literacy. Well trained teachers were employed in the schools for imparting education. They taught the modern subjects of arithmetic’s, chemistry, life sciences, physics, history, culture, computer etc. Uzbeks learnt Latin and Russian besides their native language. The feudal society of medieval times was replaced by the socialist society with equal avenues for all.

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