Education of "Homo Sovieticus" in Ukraine: Committee for State Security against schoolchildren (1960-1970's)

Abstract

Examples of "anti-Soviet" behavior of schoolchildren in Ukraine during the 1960-1970s are analyzed in the article based on the materials of the State Archives Department of the Security Service of Ukraine and interviews conducted by the author. The ambivalence of family and school education as factors of upbringing of "Homo Sovieticus" is characterized.

Communist education set an ambitious goal to form a generalized canonical image of the "respectable person". Standing out was not only condemned, but also attracted attention of the Committee for State Security, regardless the child's age. Among the unauthorized actions there are the following: distribution of leaflets, inscriptions on the walls, anonymous letters, condemnation of the foreign policy of the USSR, display of Ukrainian symbols, stylisation, membership in religious communities (sectarianism), disruption or distortion of portraits of leaders and visual agitation, creation of unauthorized organizations, clubs, groups.

The forms and methods of the Committee for State Security, in combating anti-Soviet behavior of schoolchildren are revealed in the article. The Committee for State Security, found various reasons to explain the students' anti-Soviet behavior, such as medical diagnoses, games of children, lack of ideological education at school, negative influence of family, watching foreign films, listening to prohibited media channels (both interpreted as a motive of behavior and as an independent misconduct), influence of bourgeois propaganda, nationalist ideas and religious views. These motives would have to show that deviations from the norm associated with insignificant short-term influences, are not an indicator of the mistakes in the policy of juvenile communist education. However, each document of the Committee for State Security, about "anti-Soviet behavior" has personal resolution of the First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine, regardless the age of the child who committed the action.

The utopia of attempts to educate appropriate Soviet schoolchild under the conditions of "Khrushchev Thaw" and "Era of Stagnation" is stipulated. It has been argued that anti-Soviet behavior of schoolchildren was not only manifestation of juvenile maximalism, but also evidence of more significant socio-political crisis in the Soviet society of the 1960 -1970s, including those related to national issues.