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Abstract
The article, using the example of the organization and activities of schools for peasant youth in Karelia, reveals the problem of the relationship between educational policy for the training of personnel for agriculture and agrarian reforms, national and cultural construction in the conditions of the border region in the 1920s. The relevance of the study is determined by modern reforms of agrarian vocational education, as well as the increased interest in regional models of modernization, mechanisms of socio-economic and cultural transformation of the village and instruments of integration of border territories into the Soviet state space. The objective of the article is to clarify the role of schools for peasant youth in the processes of frontier modernization of the agricultural sector of Karelia in the 1920s. The main sources of the study were documents from the funds of the National Archives of the Republic of Karelia, as well as published materials: decrees of the workers’ and peasants’ government of the RSFSR; circulars of the People’s Commissariat of Education of the RSFSR; programs and methodological notes of schools for peasant youth; resolutions of the congresses of the RCP(b) – AUCP(b); materials of congresses, conferences and plenary sessions of the Central Committee of the RKSM – RLKSM – VLKSM. The study analyzed the legal framework for organizing schools for peasant youth, examined the content of general and regional curricula, and explored the dynamics of the student body, social and ethnic composition, and teaching staff. It also explored the characteristics of teaching in national regions, established the role of the Finnish factor in the work of schools in border counties, and presented their economic, agricultural, and socially beneficial activities. It also revealed the transformation of the mission of schools for peasant youth under the influence of political change in the late 1920s and assessed their contribution to the modernization of the agricultural sector and the reorganization of the Karelian village during the New Economic Policy (NEP). This article is intended for those studying the history of Soviet society, public education, and the modernization of the country’s economy.
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