Teaching the Non-Russian Adult Population of Orenburg Province from the Late 19th to the First Third of the 20th Century

This article examines the education of the Orenburg region’s non-Russian adults from the end of the 19th century until the end of the 1930s. It begins with a brief review of the relevant historiography and the sources. It goes on to analyse the data of the First General Census of 1897, which sheds light on the scope of the task of schooling that remained to be done among the province’s non-Russian nationalities. Already before the Revolution of 1917, local authorities and private individuals were active in cultural and educational work among this population by opening libraries as well as arranging readings and evening classes. At the same time, Zemstvos also strove to train the necessary teachers. During the early Soviet era, educational work was politicized. All educational activities were carried out using emergency methods, since the new government urgently needed a literate population. Due to the exigencies of the Civil War and famine, the authorities had no funds to spare and transferred the task’s entire financial burden to public organizations and private individuals, although in the early 1920s, education in the province practically stopped. However, as the national economy recovered by the mid-1920s, schools reopened. The next important step in eradicating of illiteracy among the non-Russian population came around 1937. The author concludes that in the pre-revolutionary and Soviet periods, educating Orenburg’s minorities faced major obstacles, namely the lack of funds, qualified personnel, as well as popular resistance.