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Soviet Union [USSR] Society and Culture in the 1920s
In many respects, the NEP period was a time of relative freedom
and experimentation for the social and cultural life of the Soviet
Union. The government tolerated a variety of trends in these
fields, provided they were not overtly hostile to the regime. In
art and literature, numerous schools, some traditional and others
radically experimental, proliferated. Communist writers Maksim
Gorky and Vladimir Maiakovskii were active during this time, but
other authors, many of whose works were later repressed, published
work lacking socialist political content. Film, as a means of
influencing a largely illiterate society, received encouragement
from the state; much of cinematographer Sergei Eisenstein's best
work dates from this period.
Education, under Commissar Anatolii Lunacharskii, entered a
phase of experimentation based on progressive theories of learning.
At the same time, the state expanded the primary and secondary
school system and introduced night schools for working adults. The
quality of higher education suffered, however, because admissions
policies preferred entrants from the proletarian class over those
of bourgeois backgrounds, regardless of the applicants'
qualifications.
Under NEP the state eased its active persecution of religion
begun during war communism but continued to agitate on behalf of
atheism. The party supported the Living Church reform movement
within the Russian Orthodox Church in hopes that it would undermine
faith in the church, but the movement died out in the late 1920s.
In family life, attitudes generally became more permissive. The
state legalized abortion, and it made divorce progressively easier
to obtain. In general, traditional attitudes toward such
institutions as marriage were subtly undermined by the party's
promotion of revolutionary ideals.
Data as of May 1989
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