А Review of Mirjam Galley, Building Communism and Policing Deviance in the Soviet Union: Residential Childcare, 1958–91. Philadelphia: Routledge, 2020, 240 pp.

Аннотация

Mirjam Galley’s monograph, devoted to the history of boarding schools in the USSR from 1958 to 1991, fills a significant gap in the historiography of Soviet boarding establishments: there was practically no detailed description of this phenomenon across the whole post-Stalin period until the appearance of this book. The monograph sets out the reasons for the establishment of boarding schools, and their way of life and everyday routine — which the author strives to present as unchanging for thirty years — are recreated. There is also an attempt to reconstruct the personal experience of the teachers and pupils of the boarding schools. However, the author’s main interest is concentrated on the principles of government of these institutions, stemming, on the one hand, from principles of strict economy, and on the other, from an almost total indifference both to the schools themselves and to their pupils on the part of the officials at various institutions, despite a supposed high level of care and concern. The author shows how a task of national importance — the education of future workers — in fact depended on the personal will of individuals, and equally on their ability to present the results of their work in the best light on paper.