The Battle for Language: Opposition to

Khrushchev’s Education Reform in the

Soviet Republics, 1958–59

Jeremy Smith

Article 19 of Nikita Khrushchev’s Theses “On the strengthening of the rela-

tionship of the school with life and on the further development of the sys-
tem of public education in the country,” approved by the Central Committee
of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union on November 12, 1958 and pub-
lished two days later, dealt with the question of the language of instruction in
schools of the multiethnic and federal Soviet Union. This article, which was
inserted into the theses at a late stage in the drafting process, was to provoke
the most widespread confrontation between Khrushchev and the leaders of
the republics of the USSR during his period of office, contributing to purges in
two of them, Azerbaijan and Latvia. The text of Article 19 reads:
Instruction in the Soviet school is conducted in the native tongue. This is
one of the important achievements of the Leninist nationality policy. At the
same time, in schools of the Union and Autonomous Republics the Russian
language is studied seriously. This language is a powerful means of inter-
national communication, of strengthening friendship among the peoples of
the USSR, and of bringing them into contact with the wealth of Russian and
world culture.
Nevertheless, we must note that in the area of language study in the schools of
the Union and Autonomous Republics children are considerably overloaded.
It is a fact that in the nationality schools children study three ­languages—
their native tongue, Russian, and one of the foreign languages.
The question ought to be considered of giving parents the right to send their
children to a school where the language of their choice is used. If a child
attends a school where instruction is conducted in the language of one of the
Union or Autonomous Republics, he may, if he wishes, take up the Russian
language. And vice versa, if a child attends a Russian school, he may, if he
so desires, study the language of one of the Union or Autonomous Republics.
To be sure, this step could only be taken if there is a sufficient number of
children to form classes for instruction in a given language.
To grant parents the right to decide what language a child should study as a
compulsory subject would be a most democratic procedure. It would elimi-
nate arbitrary decisions in this important matter and would make possible
the termination of the practice of overloading children with language study.
Permission should be granted not to include a foreign language among the
required subjects in schools where appropriate conditions do not exist.1
In spite of the several ambiguities and contradictions contained within
this article, it was widely understood as undermining the very Leninist

1. Pravda, November 14, 1958, 1, in George S. Counts, Khrushchev and the Central
Committee Speak on Education, trans. George S. Counts (Pittsburgh, 1962), 45–46.
Slavic Review 76, no. 4 (Winter 2017)
© 2018 Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies
doi: 10.1017/slr.2017.273
984 Slavic Review

principle which it took as its starting point, namely, that every child should
receive school instruction in his or her native tongue. By adopting the “demo-
cratic” measure of allowing parents a choice over this, Khrushchev provoked
a severe reaction from some of the leaders of the Soviet republics, several of
whom saw the preservation of the national language as central to their roles.
The question to be addressed here is why there was so much opposition,
and how it worked out in different cases. In answering these questions, this
article draws on recent literature which underlines the flexibility and con-
tingency in center-republic relations. Influential studies from the first decade
after the end of the USSR have described center-republic relations in terms of a
set of nationality policies, which had a prescriptive if shifting character; or in
terms of an original disposition on the part of the Bolsheviks which privileged
national minorities to an excessive degree; or as structurally determined once
the ethno-federal format for the USSR had been constitutionally enshrined.2
More recent studies of individual cases challenge these approaches by reveal-
ing an undefined gap in center-republic relations, leaving some of the most
important issues of nationality status open to negotiation. The findings of
these studies undermine the privileging of “nationality policy” as the key
to understanding the status and experience of non-Russians in the Soviet
Union. Rather, the decisive factor becomes the relative ability of compet-
ing factions to wield influence or call in favors. Thus, Timothy Blauvelt has
shown that the status of Mingrelian as a nationality was the subject of nego-
tiation between Georgian central and regional elites.3 Similarly, Indrek Jääts
describes the outcome of negotiations over the status of the Komi-Permiak in
the 1920s as determined by the relative balance of influence of opposing sides
rather than by any intrinsic merits of the case or appeals to a defined poli-
cy.4 These negotiations took place within generally-understood parameters,
while Khrushchev’s move in 1958 sought, whether intentionally or not, to shift
those parameters by tackling the long embedded Leninist (in the sense that it
was genuinely associated with Lenin) principle of mother-tongue education.
Reactions to Khrushchev’s proposals therefore provide a key case study for the
limits to which the center and republics could go in competing for authority.
Khrushchev’s reform of education received immediate attention inter-
nationally for its radical approach to schooling.5 The significance of Article
19 did not take long to get out, as émigré contacts learned of widespread
opposition to the proposal to change the rules in regard to national schools,
and the proceedings of the USSR Supreme Soviet on December 22, 1958 were

2. Terry Martin, The Affirmative Action Empire: Nations and Nationalism in the Soviet
Union, 1923–1939 (Ithaca, 2001); Yuri Slezkine, “The USSR as a Communal Apartment,
or How a Socialist State Promoted Ethnic Particularism,” Slavic Review 53 no. 2 (Summer
1994): 414–52; Svante E. Cornell, Small Nations and Great Powers: A Study of Ethnopolitical
Conflict in the Caucasus (Richmond, 2001).
3. Timothy Blauvelt. “The ‘Mingrelian Question’: Institutional Resources and the
Limits of Soviet Nationality Policy,” Europe-Asia Studies 66, no. 6 (2014): 993–1013.
4. Indrek Jääts. “‘The Permiak Question’: Bolshevik Central Authorities, Russian and
non-Russian Provincial Elites Negotiating over Autonomy in the Early 1920s,” Nationalities
Papers 40 no. 2 (2012):, 241–57.
5. See for example Counts, Khrushchev and the Central Committee.
Opposition to Khrushchev's Education Reform in the Republics 985

published soon afterwards, including the speeches of Ukrainian, Armenian,

and Georgian delegates in opposition to Article 19.
Yaroslav Bilinsky’s seminal article on Article 19 has been the standard ref-
erence for scholars since.6 While Bilinsky’s account can be challenged only in
minor details, the availability of Soviet archival materials allows for a much
more detailed picture of the introduction of Article 19 to emerge, as well as
the debates surrounding it and the nature of opposition to the change in the
Soviet republics. Drawing on archives in Estonia, Latvia, Russia, and Ukraine,
this article uncovers and analyzes a number of facets which locate the fate
of Article 19 at the core of center-republic relations in the later Khrushchev
years.7 The centrality of these debates was already recognized by Bilinsky, but
a number of new findings are highlighted here. First, the problem identified
by Khrushchev “that in the area of language study in the schools of the Union
and Autonomous Republics children are considerably overloaded” was widely
recognized, but a majority of Union Republics and many of the Autonomous
Republics and regions of the RSFSR indicated clear support for an alternative
solution to this problem—namely, that this overload should be addressed by
adding an extra year of study in all schools outside the RSFSR as well as non-
Russian schools within the RSFSR. Second, opposition to this aspect of the
school reform went well beyond speeches in the Supreme Soviet and took on
a variety of forms in different republics. Third, republican leaders took advan-
tage of a public consultation exercise proposed by Khrushchev himself in
order to mobilize opinion against Khrushchev’s proposal. Fourth, legislation
that was eventually introduced in each republic in line with Khrushchev’s
theses did not mean that the principle of parental choice and the dropping of
the study of one language was actually implemented everywhere.
The school reform was implemented at the height of the Khrushchev
“thaw,” a year after, as First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet
Union (CPSU), Khrushchev had defeated his conservative opponents in the
leadership. Khrushchev’s victory owed much to the support of Ukrainian and
other non-Russian delegates in the Central Committee (CC) of the CPSU, who
now enjoyed levels of self-governance in the republics that had not been seen
since the 1920s. Whether Khrushchev meant to provoke this constituency
or not, Article 19 had the effect of sparking a struggle between the national
leaders in the republics and the central leadership in Moscow. The episode
therefore serves to illuminate both Khrushchev’s designs for the ethnoterrito-
rial organization of the USSR and also the stances and attitudes of the non-
Russian leaders in the republics.
The nature of these attitudes is so little understood that there is not even a
generally-accepted word to describe them. In a recent book, Serhii Plokhy has
described the First Secretary of the Ukrainian Communist Party Petro Shelest,
appointed by Khrushchev in 1963 and dismissed by Leonid Brezhnev in 1972,

6. Yaroslav Bilinsky, “The Soviet Education Laws of 1958–9 and Soviet Nationality
Policy,” in Soviet Studies 14, no. 2 (October 1962): 138–57.
7. Valery Vasiliev collected relevant materials in the Ukrainian archives. Daina
Bleiere assisted the author in finding materials in the archives of Latvia and collected
relevant newspaper reports. Vahur Made did the same for Estonia. I am extremely grateful
to all of them.
986 Slavic Review

as “the nationally-minded party boss of Ukraine.”8 This is a safer term than

“nationalist,” which implies a consistent, ideologically-driven approach of
supporting the cultural and material interests of one particular nation. The
behavior of somebody like the leading Latvian communist Eduards Berklāvs
(more on him later), who took measures to exclude non-Latvians from obtain-
ing residence in Riga among other things, might well be characterized as
“nationalist.” But a much broader phenomenon of “nationally-minded behav-
ior” characterizes the actions of many of the republican leaders.
This behavior is far from being fully explained by scholars. Saulius
Grybkauskas has suggested a realistic explanation of the behavior of the
Lithuanian leaders of the Lithuanian Communist Party: by presenting them-
selves as the only possible intermediaries between the Soviet state and a pop-
ulation strongly imbued with nationalist feelings from the interwar years and
resentful of the Soviet occupation, they made themselves indispensable to
the regime. Their own national mindedness was thus an integral part of the
picture they wanted to present to Moscow.9 It might be added that this picture
would also appeal to their local constituency. Other realist explanations focus
on the privileged status that party bosses could enjoy in their own republics,
as is suggested, among others, by Valeriy Tishkov.10 But the possibility that
republican leaders were genuinely nationally-minded should not be ruled
out, and the recent emphasis in historical research may give us some point-
ers as to how emotional dispositions may guide actions. As Ronald Suny has
put it, emotions “add an essential connection between structure and action
that purely structural or strictly rationalist explanations leave out.”11 The two
most nationally-minded republics of the 1950s, and those which most openly
resisted Khrushchev’s school language reform, were Azerbaijan and Latvia.
The communists in the former had always held a special status in the Soviet
Union as the leaders of the first predominantly Muslim republic, while many
of the Latvian leaders had been active in the partisan movement against the
German occupation, in contrast to their neighbors in the Estonian Communist
Party, most of whom had developed their political careers in Russia.12 The
contrast in response to the 1958 law between those republican leaders who
opposed it does suggest that issues of background and disposition influenced
both discourses and actions.

8. Serhii Plokhy, The Last Empire: The Final Days of the Soviet Union (London, 2015), 53.
9. Saulius Grybkauskas, “Antisovietiniai protestai ir nomenklatūros partikuliarizmas.
Sąveikos poveikis lietuviško nacionalizmo kaitai” (Anti-Soviet Protests and the
Particularism of Nomenklatura in the Soviet Periphery: Interactive Effects of the Change
in Lithuanian Nationalism), in: Č. Laurinavičius, ed., Epochas jungiantis nacionalizmas:
tautos (de)konstravimas tarpukario, sovietmečio ir posovietmečio Lietuvoje (Vilnius, 2013):
227–68, 256–57.
10. Valery Tishkov, Ethnicity, Nationalism and Conflict in and after the Soviet Union:
The Mind Aflame (London, 1997).
11. Ronald Grigor Suny, “Thinking about Feelings: Affective Dispositions and
Emotional Ties in Imperial Russia and the Ottoman Empire,” in Mark D. Steinberg and
Valeria Sobol eds., Interpreting Emotions in Russia and Eastern Europe (DeKalb, 2011), 103.
12. Jeremy Smith, “Republican Authority and Khrushchev’s Education Reform in
Estonia and Latvia, 1958–59,” in Olaf Mertelsmann, ed., The Sovietization of the Baltic
States, 1940–1956 (Tartu, 2003), 237–52.
Opposition to Khrushchev's Education Reform in the Republics 987

From 1953 until the end of the 1980s, there were no large-scale open
debates on the CPSU’s nationality policy, as there had been in the early 1920s,
and it is difficult to define any clear “nationalities policy” associated with
Nikita Khrushchev. Khrushchev did refer to the “merger” of nations (sliianie)
as the outcome of the “growing together” of nations (sblizhenie), and this
envisaged result of the progress of socialism was referred to in the new party
program of 1961. Prior to the program’s launch, however, Khrushchev was at
pains to make clear that this was a vision rather than a statement of intent,
and there were few signs of any active policy in this direction.
Even so, such talk would have been more or less unthinkable at the
start of Khrushchev’s tenure as General Secretary. Almost immediately after
Stalin’s death, Lavrentii Beriia established the general (though not universally
applied) principle that the First Secretary of each republican communist party
would be a national of that republic, thus further embedding nationality in an
institutional form in the administration of the Soviet federation. At the same
time, Beriia also took measures towards the de-Russification of universities
in Ukraine and Lithuania and the wider deployment of local languages in the
struggle against “bourgeois-nationalist propaganda.”13 Although following
his arrest Beriia was himself charged with encouraging bourgeois-nationalist
elements in the republics and inflaming hostility towards Russians, these
principles were not reversed and Khrushchev himself was responsible for
further measures that favored non-Russian nationalities.14 Most notably, the
early years of his ascendancy are associated with the transfer of Crimea to
Ukraine in 1954, the rehabilitation of peoples deported from their homelands
by Stalin and Beriia during the Great Patriotic War, and the promotion of non-
Russians, especially Ukrainians, who had worked under Khrushchev during
his time in the republic, to the Central Committee and other leading party-
state bodies.
These moves played a significant part in securing support for Khrushchev,
first in his rivalry with Malenkov and in 1957 in his defeat of the conserva-
tive “anti-Party group.” In the absence of any unambiguous identification of
Khrushchev with clearly-articulated principles of nationality policy, these
measures appear to have had a purely political and opportunist character.
The same may be true of his first engagement with the issue of the language
of education in schools. Shortly after Beriia’s arrest in 1953, Khrushchev set up
a commission to look into the concerns of Abkhaz parents about the absence
of opportunities for their children to study in their mother-tongue, a move
which seemed calculated to undermine the legacy of Beriia and his support-
ers in Georgia.15 The sovnarkhoz (Council of National Economy or Regional

13. Rudolf Pikhoia, Moskva. Kreml΄. Vlast΄: Sorok let posle voyny 1945–1985 (Moscow,
2007), 241–46.
14. “Proekt postanovleniya plenuma TsK KPSS ‘O prestupnykh antipartiinykh i
antigosudarstvennykh deistviiakh Beriia,’” July 4, 1953, in V. Naumov and Iu. Sigachev,
eds., Lavrentii Beriia. 1953. Stenogramma iiul΄skogo plenuma TsK KPSS i drugie dokumenty
(Moscow, 1999), 361.
15. “Dokladnaya zapiska komissii TsK KPSS N.S. Khrushchevu o rezul΄takh proverki
raboty uchebnykh zavedenii i gazet v Gruzinskoi SSR,” (unpublished report, September
30, 1953).
988 Slavic Review

Economic Soviet) reform of 1957 gave further authority to the republics, espe-
cially the larger ones like Ukraine, who now had a much greater say in the
organization of their economies within the overall parameters of the central
plans.16 Remedying Stalin’s mistreatment of the republics was a central theme
of Khrushchev’s de-Stalinization and, all in all, until 1958 Khrushchev’s incli-
nation was to devolve more decision-making to the republics rather than take
it away.
Nevertheless, while most republics continued to support Khrushchev
politically, if he was expecting the eternal gratitude of the non-Russian
populations of the USSR he was to be severely disappointed. Even before
Khrushchev’s Secret Speech denouncing Stalin in February 1956, there were
growing signs of increasing disaffection in the Baltic Republics, where much
of the local population had never come to accept Soviet rule. The Secret Speech
and, more markedly, the invasion of Hungary later in 1956 gave further impe-
tus to the nationalist movement in all three Baltic Republics, expressed in the
form of graffiti and leaflets and even occasional demonstrations protesting
the invasion while also calling for the removal of Russians from their repub-
lics.17 More dramatically, the denunciation of Stalin and references to Georgia
in the Secret Speech led directly to a series of demonstrations in Tbilisi and
other cities in Georgia, which culminated in the shooting of unarmed demon-
strators on March 9, 1956.18
While the CPSU leadership could respond to these manifestations of
popular nationalism with a combination of repression and concessions, of
an altogether different order were the growing signs of nationally-minded
behaviors on the part of communist leaders in the republics. The leaders of
the Georgian Republic escaped blame for the Tbilisi events, but in neigh-
boring Azerbaijan the leadership was getting out of hand. In August 1956,
the Azerbaijan Supreme Soviet passed a law making Azeri the sole official
language of the republic. While this brought Azerbaijan in line constitution-
ally with Georgia and Armenia, it was immediately viewed with suspicion
in Moscow.19 In Estonia and Latvia, meanwhile, official discrimination had
reached the highest levels of the communist leadership, with accusations
abounding of deliberate attempts to alienate recent immigrants and discrimi-
nation against Russians in employment and housing allocation.20
Popular displays of nationalism in the USSR had clearly been fueled by
the Secret Speech and the invasion of Hungary. But the growing evidence

16. Nataliya Kibita, “Moscow-Kiev relations and the Sovnarkhoz reform,” in Jeremy
Smith and Melanie Ilic, eds., Khrushchev in the Kremlin: Policy and Government in the
Soviet Union, 1953–1964 (Milton Park, 2011), 94–111; Valery Vasiliev, “Failings of the
Sovnarkhoz Reform: The Ukrainian Experience,” in Smith and Ilic, eds., Khrushchev in
the Kremlin, 112–32.
17. Rossiiskii gosudarstvennyi arkhiv noveishei istorii, hereafter RGANI (Russian
State Archive of Contemporary History), f. 5, op. 31, d. 59, ll. 158–63, 202–11.
18. See Timothy K. Blauvelt and Jeremy Smith, eds., Georgia after Stalin: Nationalism
and Soviet Power (London, 2015).
19. E. I. Gromov and K. V. Lebedev, “Report on Ibragimov’s Language Law,” November
16, 1956, RGANI, f. 5, op. 31, d. 60, ll. 10–12.
20. M. Gavrilov, “Report on recent nationalist and anti-Soviet displays in Estonia,
Lithuania and Latvia,” November 27, 1956, RGANI, f. 5, op. 31, d. 59, ll. 203–12.
Opposition to Khrushchev's Education Reform in the Republics 989

of national mindedness among leading communist officials in the republics

would have been more disturbing for the Kremlin leadership. In a repeat of a
pattern seen in the 1920s, republican and regional leaders appeared increas-
ingly as defenders of a national constituency rather than the local implement-
ers of the CPSU’s Marxist-Leninist policies.
From this perspective, Khrushchev’s surprise decision to include Article
19 may have been partially motivated by a desire to flush out recalcitrant,
or nationally-minded, republic leaders. Ever since the first Soviet constitu-
tion of 1918, after all, language policy had been the most important preserve,
by law, of the Autonomous and Union Republics. The preservation of local
languages and opposition to linguistic russification had been at the core of
Lenin’s nationality policies, while Stalin had done little more than tinker with
this principle by passing into law the compulsory study of Russian, which had
become standard practice already.21 Given that leaders in Azerbaijan, Latvia,
and elsewhere had already taken measures to strengthen the status of local
languages and other markers of national identity, it is not surprising that they
should react negatively to the move, whatever Khrushchev’s actual intentions.
In both the Union and Autonomous Republics and regions of the RSFSR,
there had been overwhelming support for an alternative solution to the ques-
tion of languages in national schools prior to the publication of Khrushchev’s
theses. The rationale behind making changes to do with the language of
instruction in the context of a broader reform of education was that, in the
non-Russian republics, children were being taught in their own language
and therefore had to learn a second language—Russian for the non-Russians,
or the local language for Russian pupils—as well as a compulsory foreign
language. Russians in the RSFSR, by contrast, were taught in Russian and
learned only the one foreign language. Thus in the republics, pupils were in
effect studying one more language as an extra subject.
One aspect of Khrushchev’s proposals was to standardize the length of
the compulsory first stage of middle education to an eight year period (age
seven to fifteen, typically). Previously, the length of this stage had varied from
seven to nine years. Notably, in the Baltic Republics nine years was the norm,
which helped to accommodate the additional language. This flexibility was
now being removed. Given that a fully standardized curriculum was being
introduced across the USSR under the new proposals, the additional language
subject could be taught either at the expense of hours devoted to other sub-
jects, or else would result in a significant extra burden on school children.
In Khrushchev’s vision of the new Soviet man and woman, either option
would interfere with the essential scientific education and work experience
for school students which were at the core of his education reform.
This was a genuine problem, and one which was already recognized
in many republics. But Khrushchev’s solution—dropping the second Soviet
language—was not the only proposal on offer. While Article 19 came as a

21. Peter A. Blitstein, “Nation-Building or Russification? Obligatory Russian

Instruction in the Soviet Non-Russian School, 1938–1953,” in Ronald Grigor Suny and
Terry Martin, eds., A State of Nations: Empire and Nation-Making in the Age of Lenin and
Stalin (Oxford, 2001), 253–74.
990 Slavic Review

surprise, most of the other major provisions had been well signaled during
a prolonged consultation on the proposed law. Laurent Coumel has shown
that the first draft of Khrushchev’s theses was substantially toned down
from his original radical vision. Mid-ranking officials in the apparatus of the
Central Committee of the CPSU (CPSU CC) and educational specialists were
able to intervene successfully to challenge a number of key provisions.22
Further input was available from the mass consultation exercise conducted by
Khrushchev immediately after the theses were announced. According to one
official, in the RSFSR alone 200,000 meetings were held involving 13 million
people in discussion of the theses in December 1958.23 If the purpose of this
exercise was both to present a veneer of popular endorsement for the project
and to generate some enthusiasm for its implementation, it could equally well
be manipulated by republican and other regional authorities to express oppo-
sition to particular aspects of the theses. Thus the reports emanating from the
consultation exercise in Estonia, as well as articles and letters in the Estonian
press, unrelentingly emphasized public opposition to any change from the
present system when it came to the question of mother-tongue education and
the need for citizens of all nationalities in the republic to master both the
Estonian and Russian languages.24
Khrushchev introduced Article 19 in the teeth of a remarkably consistent
message which was coming from all of the national republics and regions
of the USSR. In addition to the public consultation exercise conducted after
the publication of Khrushchev’s theses, there were earlier consultations con-
ducted through the CPSU organizations in each of the republics, Autonomous
Republics, and autonomous regions of the USSR. The response from Georgia,
dated September 10, 1958, stated: “Given that, in the conditions of the
national republics, young men and girls ought, along with study of the basics
of chemistry [and so on] . . . to learn their mother language and literature,
and the history and geography of the given republic, the Commission con-
siders it appropriate to propose for Georgia a 9-year period of study.”25 The
response from Estonia echoed this: “Furthermore, in schools in the Estonian
SSR pupils learn three languages (Estonian, Russian, and a foreign language)
and in that connection one more year of study time is needed than in schools
of the RSFSR, where pupils learn only two languages.” It goes on to specify
that “we need to set the same nine year period of study in all of the schools of
the republic, that is as with schools where Estonian is the language of instruc-
tion, so also in schools with Russian as the language of instruction. That gives
schools with Russian as the language of instruction the possibility of spend-
ing the necessary number of hours on the study of Estonian.” It was not just

22. Laurent Coumel, “L’appareil du parti et la réforme scolaire de 1958. Un cas

d’opposition à Hruščev,” Cahiers du monde russe et soviétique 47, no.1–2 (2006): 173–94.
23. Rossiiskii gosudarstvennyi arkhiv sotsial΄no-politicheskoi istorii, hereafter
RGASPI (Russian State Archive of Social and Political History), f. 556, op. 16, d. 35, l. 78.
24. Jeremy Smith, “Popular Opinion under Khrushchev: A Case Study of Estonian
Reactions to Khrushchev’s School Reform, 1958–59,” in Timo Vihavainen, ed., Sovetskaia
vlast΄—narodnaia vlast΄?: Ocherki istorii narodnogo vospriiatiia Sovetskoi vlasti v SSSR (St.
Petersburg, 2003).
25. RGANI, f. 5, op. 35, d. 91, l. 159.
Opposition to Khrushchev's Education Reform in the Republics 991

in languages that pupils in Estonia faced a possible extra burden, but in cul-
ture as well: “The study of the literature of the native land ought to be closely
linked to the study of Russian classical literature and the literature of other
peoples of the USSR.” The teaching of history should start with the history of
the home republic in grade 4, moving to the history of the USSR, including the
home republic, in grades 5–9.26
Although this implied an emphasis on Estonian history ahead of USSR
history, in language and literature there was an asymmetry which was the
other way around. In the detailed Estonian proposals for the curriculum
structure under a 9-year school, pupils in Russian language schools would
devote, after the second grade, one more hour a week to Russian language and
literature than their equivalents in Estonian language schools would spend
on Estonian language and literature. Conversely, pupils in Estonian language
schools would spend one hour a week more on Russian language and litera-
ture than pupils at Russian language schools would spend on Estonian lan-
guage and literature.27 Estonia at this time followed the “Leninist principle”
that all children should receive school education in their mother tongue, so
the assumption here was that one type of school catered to Russian pupils,
while the other catered to Estonian pupils. Thus an acknowledgement of the
greater body of Russian than Estonian literature was implied in the greater
length of time given over to the study of Russian in both types of schools.
A similar asymmetry is found in the proposals submitted from Moldova,
although here it was in the framework of an 8-year school.28
The submission from Lithuania simply assumed a 9-year system, while
Latvia made the case for an extra year based on the calculation that 1,200
hours were needed for the study of an extra language (this exceeds the hours
proposed for the study of Russian in Estonian and Lithuanian schools, but
not by much).29 Tajikistan was then working on a 7-year system and welcomed
the increase to eight years, but pointed out that in the last four grades under
their proposals less time would be devoted to political economy, history,
physics, chemistry, and physical culture because of the extra time devoted to
Russian.30 Kazakhstan, Moldova, and Ukraine did endorse the 8-year school,
but this involved devoting less time to the study of a non-Soviet foreign lan-
guage and other subjects than in the proposals based on a 9-year school.31
Support for an extra year of school was also evident in the Autonomous
Republics of the RSFSR. A report from a Russia-wide meeting on restructuring
the Middle School, held in Moscow from July 31 to August 2, 1958 indicated
that many participants felt that national schools should move to a 9-year sys-
tem so that locals could master Russian to a high level without losing out in
other subjects, while other delegates believed that this requirement could be
met within the 8-year system.32 A series of statements from the Autonomous

26. Ibid., ll. 39–43.

27. Ibid., ll. 57–60.
28. Ibid., ll. 122–28.
29. Ibid., ll. 63–67; ll.134–54.
30. RGANI f. 5, op. 35, d. 92, ll. 2–43.
31. RGANI f. 5, op. 35, d. 91, ll. 96, 197; RGANI f. 5, op. 35, d. 92, ll.114–44.
32. RGASPI f. 556, op. 16, d. 38, ll. 12–17.
992 Slavic Review

Republics and regions, immediately before or soon after the publication of

Khrushchev’s theses, showed how widespread support for the first option
was. Yakutia, North Ossetia, Chechnia-Ingushetiia, Kabardino-Balkaria,
Kalmykia, and Buriatiia all indicated a preference for a 9-year system, while
the statement from Dagestan noted that “many teachers want a [additional]
preparatory year.”33 High-level official endorsement for this position was
provided in the form of a report signed by RSFSR Minister of Education E.
Afanasenko and President of the Academy of Pedagogical Science I. Kairov.
This report supported the introduction of the 8-year school only with the pro-
viso that RSFSR Autonomous Republics be allowed to extend the period of
study by a year.34 From all of the opinions expressed from across the USSR
only one, from Dagestan, mentioned (without endorsing) an alternative solu-
tion to the problem of over-burdening (peregruz) in the 8-year school—drop-
ping the compulsory non-Soviet foreign language.35
Reports coming in after the campaign of public discussion held at the end
of November 1958 were just as consistent. Kazakhstan now saw the situation
as a choice between two alternatives—drop the non-Soviet foreign language
or extend school to nine years in the republics.36 The report from Ukraine
noted that there was high demand from Ukrainian parents for their children
to go to Russian-language schools since Russian was the language of higher
education and of economic institutions, but all the same they defended the
principle that children should learn both Ukrainian and Russian. The Kyrgyz
Republic somewhat perversely issued a proposal to reduce the number of
hours devoted to Russian language, while only Uzbekistan showed some
support for Khrushchev’s proposals, agreeing that Uzbek should not be
compulsory in Russian schools but maintaining that Russian would remain
compulsory in Uzbek schools, which strictly speaking was against the stipu-
lations of Article 19.37
Azerbaijan, Latvia, Estonia, Georgia, and Armenia all remained firmly
committed to three compulsory languages and a 9-year school system in their
republics, while Belarus, Ukraine, Lithuania, and Kazakhstan all expressed
some opposition to Article 19. The arguments given for these positions did
not vary much and followed two tacks: the practical need to be able to com-
municate both locally and at the all-Soviet level, and the beneficial effects
that knowledge of both languages by all pupils in the republics would have
on national relations.38 National languages were an important element of
national culture and, as the report from Ukraine admitted, needed careful
nourishing where those languages were young and lacking deep roots.39
Russian, in the words of Kazakhstan’s rapporteur, was “the language of
progress, civilization, international communication between peoples, and of

33. RGASPI f. 556, op. 16, d. 44, ll. 172–74; RGASPI f. 556, op. 16, d. 46, ll.19–23, 27–30,
35–40, 56–63, 85–89.
34. RGASPI f. 556, op. 16, d. 38, ll. 37–39.
35. RGASPI f. 556, op. 16, d. 22.
36. RGANI f. 5, op. 35, d. 96, l. 23.
37. Ibid., ll. 60–77.
38. Ibid., ll. 100–36.
39. Ibid., ll. 41–42.
Opposition to Khrushchev's Education Reform in the Republics 993

strengthening the friendship of peoples”; or, in the more succinct Armenian

summation, “Russian is the language of October.”40
In the consultations that preceded publication of Khrushchev’s theses,
amid the welter of proposals for the new school reform to include the proviso
that the eight years of middle school could be extended to nine years in the
non-Russian republics and regions, there is not one mention of the idea of
dropping the compulsory learning of a second Soviet language. It was, in fact,
simply assumed that in each republic three languages—Russian, the republic
national language, and a foreign language—would each continue as either
the language of instruction or a taught subject for every pupil. Dropping a
foreign language was occasionally suggested, but dropping one of the Soviet
languages (with the exception of Uzbekistan noted above) was not. Even
republics like Kazakhstan that endorsed the proposed 8-year system sent
detailed submissions on how three languages could be studied in such a
system, at the expense of other subjects. The problem, as recognized in the
Theses, was how to accommodate these subjects in a curriculum that was
designed for only two languages. A practical solution to this in the form of an
extra school year, a system that was already working in the Baltic Republics,
had widespread support across the Soviet Republics and the RSFSR.
And yet Khrushchev chose to adopt an entirely different solution to the
problem of work overload, one which apparently had played no part at all
in the discussions leading up to the publication of the Theses. Even after
Khrushchev’s “voluntary principle” had been advanced as a solution, sup-
port for maintaining the compulsory learning of both the local language and
Russian in the republics was unanimous.
For the larger non-Russian groups and their leaders language was, natu-
rally enough, one of the key markers of their national status, which for the
titular nations in the republics was a fairly privileged one. Upsetting the prin-
ciples of language policy, whether out of naïveté or deliberate provocation,
was therefore bound to evoke storms of protests. This it did, among the repre-
sentatives of almost all of the republics attending the session of the Supreme
Soviet of the USSR which debated the new education law on December 22,
1958.41 The main objection seemed to be not, as some commentators have
stated, that it would allow parents of any nationality to send their children
to Russian-language schools; rather, it was that it would no longer be com-
pulsory for children at non-titular schools to learn the titular language of the
republic.
Most interpretations of Khrushchev’s Article 19 suggest that it was
intended to pave the way towards the linguistic Russification of the USSR, but
the evidence for this is circumstantial.42 While Khrushchev’s motives remain

40. Ibid., l. 23; l. 129.

41. Bilinsky, “The Soviet Education Laws.”
42. Bohdan Nahaylo and Victor Swoboda, Soviet Disunion: A History of the Nationalities
Problem in the USSR (New York, 1990), 131–37; Gerhard Simon, Nationalism and Policy
toward the Nationalities in the Soviet Union: From Totalitarian Dictatorship to Post-Stalinist
Society, trans. Karen Forster and Oswald Forster (Boulder, 1991), 246–48. This analysis
has been prevalent in more general histories, e.g. Robert Service, A History of Modern
Russia from Nicholas II to Putin (Cambridge, Mass., 2003), 367.
994 Slavic Review

unclear, there was a variety of responses from the republics which opposed
this aspect of the reform. The understanding that the new system “ought to be
settled in each Union Republic in conformity with its economic and cultural
development,” together with Khrushchev’s call for broad public discussion of
all aspects of the proposed reforms, seems to have led republican leaders and
citizens to believe that it would be permissible to drop or modify Article 19 in
each republic.43 In both Estonia and Latvia, counter-proposals were officially
advanced to extend the period of school study by a year. These proposals were
almost identical to each other, and would allow children to continue being
taught Estonian, Latvian, or Russian as a second language as well as a third
foreign language.44
The law passed by the Supreme Soviet of Latvia on March 17, 1958 did not
stipulate the total length of school attendance, nor did it include the principle
of parental choice in the study of a second language. In part, these omissions
are explained by unfortunate timing. When the leading body, known at the
time as the Buro of the of the Latvian Communist Party, met to discuss the
law five days before it was voted on by the Latvian Supreme Soviet, Latvian
CC Secretary Arvīds Pelše reported that he had been unable to receive clari-
fication on these questions from the Secretariat of the CPSU CC in Moscow
because a key official was away on a trip to Paris.45 By the end of May the
Latvian leaders had been forced to amend their education law to bring it in
line with Khrushchev’s theses. But even then, in explaining this change of
tack, education minister Samsons insisted that “refusal of compulsion in the
teaching of languages does not mean that we should diminish our attention
to these languages. In fact, they should be taught even better and more than
previously, because everybody needs knowledge of Latvian and Russian for
their work and studies in our Republic.”46 The clear implication of this was
that, whatever the legal situation, schools would continue to ensure both lan-
guages were taught to children. This was an open and brazen declaration of
intent that, in practice, nothing would change with regard to the compulsory
study of languages.
The course of events was similar in Azerbaijan, where the new education
law failed to make the study of Azerbaijani optional, and it took two months of
intervention by the CC CPSU secretariat before a special resolution corrected
the discrepancy with Khrushchev’s theses.47 Azerbaijan and Latvia were, ulti-

43. Bilinsky states that the controversy over Article 19 prompted the Soviet leadership
to follow an exceptional procedure in leaving each republic to pass its own separate law
on education (a claim often repeated, for example by Bohdan and Swoboda). This is a
misconception—the role of individual republics in passing their own legislation in certain
areas had been greatly curtailed by Stalin, but this right had been recently restored by
Khrushchev. Thus this was a normal procedure.
44. Speech by Leonid Lentsman, Branch of Estonian State Archives (Eesti Riigiarhiivi
Filiaal—ERAF) 1–4-2151, 44–58; report in Sovetskaia Estoniia, November 28, 1958, 2;
Skolotāju Avize, October 17, 1958; Latvian State Archives (Latvijas Valsts arhīvs – LVA)
290–1-5169, 54–5, 90.
45. LVA 101–22–51, 133.
46. Skolotāju Avīze, May 29, 1959.
47. A.A. Fursenko, ed., Prezidium TsK KPSS 1954–1964 tom 1, Chernovye protokol΄nye
zapisi zasedanii, stenogrammy, postanovleniia (Moscow, 2003), 366.
Opposition to Khrushchev's Education Reform in the Republics 995

mately, the only republics to fail altogether to enact the appropriate legisla-
tion on this matter, and by the end of 1959 there had been wide-scale purges
of the top political leadership in both republics. The initial refusal to imple-
ment Article 19 in full was only one, and not the most serious, of a number of
charges raised in the course of these purges. It is the only charge that both had
in common, however, and was the nearest in time: most other charges went
back to 1956. From the language of official discussions about the fate of both
republics, it is clear that the refusal to comply with Khrushchev’s theses on
this point was the final straw prompting action against their leaders.48
In a series of articles and a book, William Prigge has argued that
Khrushchev played no role in the initiation of the Latvian purge, and indeed
was ready to defend the careers of the leader of the Latvian “national com-
munists” Eduards Berklāvs and others. According to this interpretation,
Khrushchev was outmaneuvered by a combination of Russian military lead-
ers based in Latvia, Latvian Buro member Arvīds Pelše, and a Kremlin faction
headed by Mikhail Suslov.49 The main sources for this argument, the memoirs
of another Latvian national communist, Vilis Krūmiņš, and later recollections
of Berklāvs, are inconsistent and inconclusive. Prigge’s conclusion rests cru-
cially on the assumption that Khrushchev had been unaware until the sum-
mer of 1959 of the charges of nationalism levelled against Latvian leaders,
which seems unlikely given that Khrushchev had himself been following
Latvian affairs since the summer of 1953, including the welter of reports that
were being sent to the CC CPSU in 1956 and 1957.50 Prigge also plays down the
significance of the education reform in the Latvian purge of 1959, yet this was
specifically referred to at the meeting of the Presidium of the CC CPSU at which
Khrushchev confronted Latvian leaders on July 1, 1959.51 While Prigge’s exten-
sive study reveals important details of the different forces at work in resolving
the question of national communism in Latvia, the matter of Khrushchev’s
personal involvement remains an open one.
Certainly, the documents pertaining to both the initial CC CPSU inves-
tigation of Latvia and the transcripts of the Presidium meetings discussing
both Latvia and Azerbaijan, as well as the timing of the purges, suggest
that Article 19 played a decisive role in the fall of the political leaderships
of both republics.52 While Azerbaijan and Latvia pushed the limits of defi-
ance too far, defense of the interests of the republics and, in particular, of

48. Ibid., 357–87.

49. William Prigge, “The Latvian Purges of 1959: A Revision Study,” Journal of Baltic
Studies 35, no. 3 (Fall 2004): 211–30; “The Strange Death of Latvian National Communism,”
in David J. Smith, David J. Galbreath and Geoffrey Swain, eds., From Recognition to
Restoration: Latvia’s History as a Nation-State (Amsterdam, 2010), 77–98; “Power, Popular
Opinion, and the Latvian National Communists,” Journal of Baltic Studies 45, no. 3 (2014):
305–19; Bearslayers: The Rise and Fall of the Latvian National Communists (New York,
2015).
50. Such as Gavrilov’s report cited in footnote 7. For further examples, see Aleksandr
Pyzhikov, Khrushchevskaia “Ottepel” (Moscow, 2002), 190–95.
51. Prezidium TsK KPSS 1954–1964, tom 1, 355, 370–82. This source is not used by
Prigge.
52. LVA 101–22–48a, 22, 237–39; Fursenko,ed., Prezidium TsK KPSS 1954–1964 , esp.
355, 366, 379.
996 Slavic Review

their titular nationalities, did not have to end in such open confrontation. In
Estonia, identical objections to Article 19 were raised as in Latvia, and the
same counterproposals were discussed. Estonian leaders were even in a mood
to go further and complain about the failure of Russians in the republic to
get acquainted with the local language and culture. Thus, the Chair of the
Estonian Republican Council of Trade Unions, Leonhard-Friedrich Illisson,
noted sarcastically at a plenum of the Estonian CC that “perhaps it is right
that, in Russian schools of the Estonian SSR, Estonian literature and geog-
raphy is studied to the same extent as it is in Sakhalin.”53 The consultation
campaigns and discussion in newspapers suggest that feelings against
Khrushchev’s proposal were running especially high in the republic.54 Here,
however, the official approach was much more tactful than in neighboring
Latvia. On February 20, 1959, First Secretary of the Estonian CP Ivan Käbin
wrote to CC CPSU secretary N.A. Mukhtidinov, explaining in reasoned and
respectful terms the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Estonia’s
request for the republic to be allowed to retain the compulsory 3-language
system in schools and to retain an extra school year. He laid great stress on
the fact that this was the clear and overwhelming wish of both Russian and
Estonian citizens of the republic (for which there was a great deal of evidence
in the form of letters sent to Sovetskaia Estoniia), and took care to emphasize
the unique situation in Estonia so as not to appear to be attacking in general
the principles embodied in Article 19.55
No response to this letter has emerged, but clearly the request was
declined. The law passed by the Supreme Soviet of Estonia on April 23, 1959
affirmed the role of parental choice in the teaching of a second language, in
line with Khrushchev’s theses. The law also stated that “instruction in all
schools of the Estonian SSR is carried out in the mother-tongue of the pupils,”
albeit reference to the desire for “more thorough learning of Russian in
Estonian schools” is not balanced by anything equivalent regarding Estonian
in Russian schools. A further nod to Russia’s leading role is given in the over-
all preamble to the law, which points to “the fraternal help of other peoples
of the USSR and especially the great Russian people. . . .”56 The penitential
pro-Russian tone suggests a slap on the wrist may have been administered.
But the rewards for compliance were substantial: Käbin, appointed first sec-
retary in 1950, stayed in that post until 1978, when he was semi-retired to the
honorable position of Chair of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of Estonia.
During his term of office, in spite of his originally Russified background, Käbin
earned a reputation for skillful and successful defense of the republic’s inter-
ests and the promotion of the cultural demands of the Estonian nation. Not
least of these achievements was the preservation, in practice, of the predomi-
nance of Estonian-language over Russian-language schools and the teaching
of Russian or Estonian as a second language in all schools.57

53. ERAF 1–4-2151, 102–4.

54. Smith, “Popular Opinion.”
55. ERAF 1–196–31, 4–6.
56. Sovetskaia Estoniia, April 29, 1959, 1–2.
57. Toivo Raun, Estonia and the Estonians, 2nd ed. (Stanford, 1991), 192, 211.
Opposition to Khrushchev's Education Reform in the Republics 997

The Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine was quicker

off the mark in raising objections to Article 19. On October 30, 1958, before the
official publication of the theses, first secretary N.V. Podgorny sent a note to
Suslov defending the status quo on the question of the language of instruction
and the compulsory study of Ukrainian or Russian as a second language. In
practice, parents already had a choice over which type of school their children
should attend, but the study of both Russian and Ukrainian was compulsory.
National languages played an essential role in the development of national
cultures, but the danger with opening up everything to parental choice was
that parents who wanted their children to progress through higher education
or special institutes would focus solely on the Russian language, to the detri-
ment of national languages and cultures. Conversely, children taught exclu-
sively in the national language would be cut off from the rest of Soviet life.
Podgorny also made the argument that language policy in the Soviet Union
was observed closely by the rest of the world, and any change might reflect
badly on Soviet conditions.58
The Ukrainian CC proposed a new version of Article 19, which included as
original formulations:
In the schools of the Union and Autonomous Republics, it is obligatory to
study Russian as well. . . there are also schools where Russian is the lan-
guage of instruction, where it is obligatory to study the national language of
the republic as well. Every year the aspiration to master the Russian language
is growing in the national republics, the network of schools with Russian as
the language of instruction is growing broader and broader. This is a natural
and inevitable process, which proceeds in parallel with the development of
national languages, which are a most important form of national culture and
of the spiritual development of peoples. . .59
This was followed by a longer report sent on December 8, in which exactly the
same arguments were made but were presented as the overwhelming opinion
of Ukrainian society as elicited through the public consultation campaign ini-
tiated by Khrushchev in November. The report added the argument that the
practice in Ukrainian schools at that moment showed that learning a second
language did not overload children, and moreover insisted that learning a
foreign (a third) language would aid understanding of the cultural level of
workers abroad and of world culture generally.60
These suggestions were rebuffed and the appropriate law enacted in line
with Khrushchev’s theses. Ukraine, having offered a detailed counter-proposal
in December 1958, toed the line like Estonia and fully adopted Khrushchev’s
proposals into the republic’s legislation. Here, however, implementation of
the law became an object of greater controversy, as parents sought to take
advantage (in their own view) of the provisions of Article 19 and were able
to get their complaints heard at the highest level. On September 15, 1959, two
senior officials in the CC CPSU Department for Science, Higher Education, and

58. Tsentral΄nyi derzhavnyi arkhiv hromads΄kykh ob΄iednan΄ Ukrainy (Central State

Archive of Public Organisations of Ukraine—TsDAHOU) 1–22–4694, 66–67.
59. Ibid., 68.
60. Ibid., 73–89.
998 Slavic Review

Schools–V. Kirillin and N. Kuzin—sent Suslov a report on violations of the

education law in Ukraine. They gave details of several areas where parents
had been refused the right to send their children to Russian language schools;
in some Russian schools, first-year classes had been converted to Ukrainian
language classes; children of Ukrainian parents or mixed parentage had been
turned away from Russian language schools and told they could only study in
Ukrainian schools; in certain regions the number of Russian schools had been
drastically cut and new Ukrainian schools opened; there were cases where
Russian schools were being transferred to inferior buildings and were work-
ing on more shifts than Ukrainian schools; and children in Russian schools
were still being forced to study Ukrainian against their wishes. The Ministry
of Enlightenment of the Ukrainian SSR had done nothing to correct these vio-
lations except when the CC CPSU had intervened directly in specific cases.61
Clearly the CC department had been dealing with a large number of such
complaints, and the circulation of this report to the top figures in the CPSU
indicates the seriousness with which it was treated. The biggest volume of
specific complaints came from Crimea, which had joined the Ukrainian SSR
only in 1954, and where the obligatory study of Ukrainian against the wishes
of parents and teachers served to confirm the fears of Ukrainization first aired
at the time of Crimea’s incorporation into Ukraine.62 The Crimean obkom did
respond to open violations of the education law, but only reprimanded those
responsible.
Podgorny sent the CC CPSU a robust rebuttal of Kirillin and Kuzin’s criti-
cisms, many of their facts were wrong, especially about the closure of Russian
schools, which were in fact seeing a rapid growth in numbers. Numerous com-
plaints came from areas where only a handful of parents had asked for one
of the obligatory languages to be dropped, the requests had only been made
on the first day of the school year, and it was simply not practical to arrange
alternative subjects. There were some Russian schools located in inadequate
buildings, but so were many Ukrainian schools, and there were 4,000 sub-
standard school buildings in the republic overall. In total, the number of
Russian language schools had risen by 150 over the previous school year,
while the number of Ukrainian language schools had fallen by fifty-nine.63
In sum, there were a number of teething problems at the very beginning of
the first school year after the reforms, but the extent of violations had been
greatly exaggerated and the vast majority of parents were satisfied with the
way things were.
Whichever account one believes, it seems clear that the Ukrainian author-
ities were intent on maintaining the status quo as far as possible, claiming
the support of an overwhelming majority of parents for the study of three
languages, and thus able to argue that the passing into law of Khrushchev’s
theses had little impact on the actual situation of languages in schools. The
vigilance of the CC CPSU meant that Ukraine could not altogether ignore the
implications of the new measures, but skillful maneuvering and delaying

61. TsDAHOU 1–22–4925, 108–11; also in RGANI f. 5, op. 35, d. 125, ll. 77–79.
62. TsDAHOU 1–22–4925, 102–4; TsDAHOU 1–46–6910, 3–5.
63. TsDAHOU 1–22–4925, 102–4; also in RGANI f. 5, op. 35, d. 125, ll. 84–86.
Opposition to Khrushchev's Education Reform in the Republics 999

tactics could achieve a lot. Certainly the fortunes of Podgorny, promoted to

full membership of the Presidium the following year, did not suffer from his
championing of the three language system.
A year later, a parallel report on Belarus by one of the authors of the Ukraine
report, Kirillin, raised similar charges against local authorities. Citizens com-
plained about the lack of access to schools with Russian as the language of
instruction. In a number of regions, schools had not introduced a single paral-
lel Russian language class at year one, as promised in the Belarusian law, and
hundreds of parents had lodged requests for their children to be excused from
studying the Belarusian language at Russian schools.64
These reports from Ukraine and Belarus also show how simple it was to
avoid Khrushchev’s stipulations at the republican and local levels. Failure
to invest in the new type of school or the setting of local curricula effectively
restricted parental choice. Harry Lipset showed a decade after the school
reform that it had minimal impact on the situation of national schools in
the Union Republics: enrolment in national schools continued at least at
the same levels, while publication of school books in the non-Russian lan-
guages of the USSR expanded in most cases. According to Lipset’s estimates,
the number of pupils studying in non-Russian languages fell only modestly,
from 35% of the total in 1954 to 33.1% in 1964.65 The situation was different
in the Autonomous Republics and regions of the RSFSR, in most of which
Russian came to predominate as the language of instruction. But this process
was already well underway in advance of the adoption of Khrushchev’s 1958
theses.66 Resistance in the republics to the enforcement of a school system
restricted to instruction in one language and learning of a second language
meant that the problem of overload in non-Russian schools remained. In 1964,
the Minister of Education of Lithuania complained that the heavy emphasis in
the curriculum on Russian language and literature was met . . . by an increase
in class hours per week and a reduction of school time in some general educa-
tion disciplines. As a result, an already large load on the children has become
even larger. . .the contents of secondary education must undoubtedly be basi-
cally alike and common for all schools of the country. At the same time the
school curricula of the Union Republics must reflect nationality features.”67
The contradictions contained in this statement sum up accurately the general
approach to the reform in many republics—to pay lip service to the demand
for a standardization of schools across the Soviet Union while ensuring in
practice that differences remained in the republics.
Thus, Article 19 of Khrushchev’s Theses on Education provoked wide-
spread opposition in the republics, was connected to leadership purges in
two of them, and was implemented in law but widely ignored in practice
elsewhere. If the aim had been linguistic Russification of the USSR, at least

64. RGANI, f. 5, op. 35, d. 152, ll. 90–91.

65. Harry Lipset, “The Status of National Minority Languages in Soviet Education,”
Soviet Studies, 19, no. 2 (October 1967): 181–89.
66. Xavier le Torrivellec, “Languages, Education, and Politics: Soviet Bashkiria in the
1950/1960s” (unpublished paper, 2007).
67. Jaan Pennar, “Five Years after Khrushchev’s School Reform,” Comparative
Education Review, 8, no. 1 (June 1964): 73–77, here 75.
1000 Slavic Review

in this it did not succeed in the Union Republics, although the change may
have had a deeper impact in the national areas of the RSFSR.68 Naturally the
final outcomes may not have been foreseen by Khrushchev and if his intention
had been simply to change the way in which schools operated in the repub-
lics, then it would not have been the first or last time that an initiative of his
ended in failure. But opposition to the change was led, with a greater or lesser
degree of determination, by nationally-minded republic leaders. Transcripts
of discussions at sessions of the Republic Supreme Soviets, Communist Party
Central Committees, and local party meetings, as well as coverage in the
media, underscore the extent to which emotional arguments about the value
of local cultures and languages were deployed as widely as the more practi-
cal arguments about the needs of communication. For example, a meeting of
Communist Party activists held in Riga on November 20, 1958 was replete with
comments like: “every citizen should know both languages”; “understanding
of both languages strengthens the historic development of friendship between
the Latvian and Russian peoples”; “a decline in the study of the Russian and
Latvian languages will not aid the strengthening of the friendship of peoples,
but rather the reverse.”69
Khrushchev’s education reform called for a wholesale restructuring of the
Soviet education system to get away from what was considered the stale con-
tent of the Stalinist curriculum and to provide Soviet citizens with the skills
needed to meet the challenges of the new technological era, which was so cen-
tral to Khrushchev’s vision of the development of socialism. The most radical
proposals involved including hands-on work experience in factories or farms
in the later years of school education, and it was these aspects which received
the most attention in the central Soviet press and which were the source of
numerous complaints later on.70 Article 19 was a minor part of the overall
reform, but it did provoke some of the fiercest opposition.
The archival material presented in this article highlights a number of
important aspects to this dispute.
• Prior to the publication of Khrushchev’s theses, there was overwhelming sup-
port from the leaderships of almost all of the Union Republics and a majority of
the Autonomous Republics for retaining the principle of mother-tongue educa-
tion, with either Russian or the republic language as a second language, plus
one foreign language; this approach was to be retained within the framework
of a middle school curriculum that ran for one year longer than for Russian
students in most of the RSFSR (nine years instead of eight).

68. Dmitry Gorenburg, “Soviet Nationalities Policy and Assimilation,” in Dominique

Arel and Blair A. Ruble, eds., Rebounding Identities: The Politics of Identity in Russia and
Ukraine (Washington DC, 2006), 273–304.
69. LVA 101–21–448, 70–88. Pages 99–113 and 120–25 of this file contain numerous
similar accounts of meetings, as do other files in the Latvian and Estonian archives.
Similar sentiments were expressed regularly in letters to Sovetskaia Estoniia, for example,
a letter from Colonel I. Marechevskyi in the issue for November 25, 1958, 3.
70. Jeremy Smith, “Khrushchev and the Path to Modernization through Education”
in Markku Kangaspuro and Jeremy Smith, eds., Modernisation in Russia since 1900
(Helsinki, 2006), 221–36.
Opposition to Khrushchev's Education Reform in the Republics 1001

• Khrushchev ignored these proposals in his published theses, advancing

instead the possibility of dropping the study of one of the principal languages,
while at the same time introducing the “voluntary” principle whereby parents
could choose which language of instruction their children could be taught in.
• This move was interpreted by many of the republican leaders, especially in the
western republics of the USSR, as a violation of the long established “Leninist”
principle of mother-tongue education.
• Republican leaders were able to mobilize public opinion, through the mass
consultation campaign that Khrushchev himself had called for, to reinforce
their position of opposing Article 19.
• Republican legislatures were left to promulgate their own education laws and
in doing so displayed varying degrees of resistance. This resistance ranged
from outright refusal to implement the provisions of Article 19 to introduc-
ing appropriate legislation while failing to provide full implementation in
practice.
• The republics which showed most open resistance to the implementation of
Article 19—Azerbaijan and Latvia—were subjected to wide-ranging leadership
purges in the summer of 1959.
• Elsewhere, accusations against republic authorities for failure to implement in
full the spirit of the change were met with robust denials.
• In practice, the provisions of Article 19 had little immediate impact on the
language of instruction in schools of the Union Republics of the USSR, but
may have altered the situation in the Autonomous Republics and regions of
the RSFSR.

Comparison of both the similarities and differences in the course of official

opposition to Article 19 of Khrushchev’s theses in Latvia, Azerbaijan, Estonia,
and Ukraine leads to important conclusions. First, in all four cases, similar
objections were raised, and it was clear that the republican leaders felt an affin-
ity to the dominant nationality and its cultural and linguistic status. Second,
even if they shared a common starting point, republican leaders had differ-
ent options open to them, and tactful and diplomatic dealing with Moscow
could ensure not just survival, but a fairly wide leeway for implementing poli-
cies favorable to the preservation of the language and culture of the titular
nationality. Third, the lengths to which republican leaders were prepared to
go in defiance of Moscow were considerable, suggesting either a strong emo-
tional attachment to the principle of national education among senior com-
munists, or an awareness of the unpopularity of such changes among the
broader population, or both. Fourth, the selective punishment of republican
leaders and the occasional but not wholehearted intervention against individ-
ual abuses elsewhere was characteristic of Khrushchev’s approach to man-
aging the national question by monitoring and circumscribing the activities
of republican leaders without prescribing any meaningful nationality policy.
The outcome of the Battle for Language and other local engagements was a
victory for Khrushchev to the extent that it tightened up the limits of this cir-
cumscription, set examples, and drew lines not to be crossed. The limits were
broadened again under Brezhnev, but not removed altogether, as the demo-
tion of Petr Shelest in Ukraine in 1972 illustrates. Ultimately, Khrushchev won
the battle but not the war. The more passive forms of resistance adopted in
Estonia, Ukraine, and elsewhere allowed a breed of republican leader who
1002 Slavic Review

considered and represented themselves as a national leadership to consoli-

date and develop. In many cases, their “nationally-minded” successors were
to evolve into fully-fledged nationalists under the impact of Gorbachev’s
perestroika.
The Battle for Language took place in the gap that was left open by an
ill-defined center-periphery relationship. By, on the one hand, publishing his
theses for discussion and, on the other hand, encouraging a public debate
on the theses, Khrushchev, wittingly or not, brought the negotiations that
typified center-periphery relations very much into the open. It was this that
leant the debate over Article 19 a particularly intense character. Since Stalin’s
death, authority over local affairs had swung in favor of the republics, and had
strengthened as recently as the sovnarkhoz reform of 1957. Now, the republi-
can leaders who had increased their authority since 1953 felt a possible swing
of the pendulum against them. Those who responded with outright defiance,
in Latvia and Azerbaijan, paid for it. Polite negotiation did not lead to any for-
mal change of heart, but seems to have allowed republics to avoid the spirit,
if not the letter, of the new laws. Thus the Battle for Language circumscribed
new, if still vague, boundaries for negotiation which were to characterize
­center-republic relations until the mid-1980s.