Zelenkova A.I., Savinskaya M.P.
In the first half of the 1920s, certain border territories of modern Bryansk were closely linked to Gomel and formed a unified cultural and educational space. After the establishment of the Gomel Governorate (spring 1919), the Novozybkovsky, Klintsevsky, and Starodubsky districts became part of it. In December 1926, after Gomel’s accession to the BSSR, these districts remained in the RSFSR and were included in the Bryansk Governorate.
Considering that in February 1919, by the decision of the Central Committee of the RCP(b), the eastern Belarusian governorates were transferred to the RSFSR, the work of cultural, educational, and educational institutions was carried out in accordance with the resolutions and decisions of the People’s Commissariat of Education of the RSFSR. In April of the same year, the Gomel Provincial Department of Public Education was organized. The sub-departments of the provincial department organized the activities of the entire network of cultural institutions (preschool, school, socio-educational, political-educational, vocational-technical) that were funded by the state and local authorities. Departments of public education were created in the districts and volosts and had a similar structure. The primary tasks of the public education authorities were the reorganization of existing educational institutions into primary and secondary schools and accounting for children of school age. Their resolution was complicated by a lack of funds. The documents preserved in the State Archive of the Gomel Region about the activities of the Novozybkovsky, Klintsevsky, and Starodubsky district departments of public education in the early years of their existence mainly contain information about the difficult financial situation of the respective institutions. The number of schools was decreasing. Thus, in the reports of the Klintsevsky district department, it was noted that during 1921, the number of primary schools in the district decreased from 130 to 93, and secondary schools from 5 to 2. [State Archive of the Gomel Region. F. 60. Op. 1. D. 105. L. 2ob., 21].
In search of a way out of the difficult financial situation, the Council of People’s Commissars of the RSFSR decided to remove cultural and educational institutions from state support. Schools were transferred to the maintenance of self-taxation of the local population. The resolution of the 3rd Novozybkov Soviet Congress (December 1921) noted: “Considering that the state is unable to maintain all cultural and educational institutions with central funds, the congress finds it necessary to maintain schools, kindergartens, libraries, reading rooms, and the most important literacy points at the expense of the entire population through volost natural taxation in rural areas and monetary tax in cities, towns, and settlements, calculating the amount of annual contribution of products based on 3 poods of rye per month for an educator (36 poods per year) and in half the amount for a non-working dependent.” In the districts, agitation work among the population began. As a result, most volosts agreed to the established norm of self-taxation but decided that “the products would be managed by the village” under the supervision of the volost leadership. Some volosts rejected self-taxation or proposed to tax the parents of students in each village of the volost. [State Archive of the Gomel Region. F. 60. Op. 1. D. 100. L. 46, 47].
Overall, in the 1922/1923 academic year, there were 417 schools operating in the eastern districts of the Gomel Governorate.
| Districts | Primary Schools | Secondary Schools | Total | ||||||
| Schools | Students | Teachers | Schools | Students | Teachers | Schools | Students | Teachers | |
| Klintsevsky | 131 | 13118 | 272 | 7 | 1818 | 61 | 138 | 14936 | 333 |
| Urban | 14 | 3242 | 61 | 5 | 1614 | 52 | 19 | 4856 | 113 |
| Rural | 117 | 9876 | 211 | 2 | 202 | 9 | 119 | 10078 | 220 |
| Novozybkovsky | 116 | 9421 | 220 | 10 | 3609 | 102 | 126 | 13030 | 322 |
| Urban | 16 | 2194 | 59 | 10 | 3609 | 102 | 26 | 5803 | 161 |
| Rural | 100 | 7227 | 161 | – | – | – | 100 | 7227 | 161 |
| Starodubsky | 149 | 9784 | 240 | 4 | 1625 | 57 | 153 | 11409 | 297 |
| Urban | 11 | 859 | 83 | 4 | 1625 | 57 | 15 | 2484 | 140 |
| Rural | 138 | 8931 | 207 | – | – | – | 138 | 8931 | 207 |
[Book of the Gomel Provincial Statistical Bureau. Calendar-reference for 1924. – Gomel, 1924. – P. 56].
As the data in the table shows, there were only 21 schools of an elevated type in the studied region, and there were no secondary schools in the rural areas of the Novozybkovsky and Starodubsky districts.
As the NEP yielded positive economic results, the number of schools increased. However, by the end of the studied period, not all children of school age attended school. The documents do not provide specific data on accounting for such children. As emphasized in the essay by N. Rozhkov, “there is no old zemstvo material at hand. If you look at some collections, documents, they mention the Mogilev, Minsk, Chernigov, and Oryol governorates. These archival documents cannot help navigate the dynamics of the child population. There are no longer those areas (districts and volosts).” For example, the Semyonovskaya volost of the Novozybkovsky district was transferred to Ukraine in 1925. “No one knows what percentage of children are not covered by school. We say 52-53%. Some district departments give even higher percentages… Starodub – 56%.” [Rozhkov N. On the Road. On the Paths of Universal Education in the Gomel Governorate (essay). – Gomel: Publishing House of the Gomel Provincial Department of Public Education, 1926. – P. 13, 15].
A feature of the Gomel Governorate was its multinational composition. This is confirmed by the censuses. For example, we present data from the censuses of the urban population in 1920 and 1923 for some cities in the Bryansk region (in %)
| Districts and Cities | Belarusians | Jews | Great Russians | Ukrainians | Poles | |||||
| 1920 | 1923 | 1920 | 1923 | 1920 | 1923 | 1920 | 1923 | 1920 | 1923 | |
| Klintsy | 0.1 | 14.4 | 29.9 | 29.8 | 68.6 | 46.1 | 0.3 | 7.8 | 0.5 | 0.4 |
| Surazh | 0.1 | 14.9 | 51.6 | 42.5 | 46.9 | 38.3 | – | 3.6 | 0.9 | 0.7 |
| Novozybkov | 0.9 | 6.4 | 33.1 | 27.8 | 62.7 | 57.7 | 0.5 | 5.5 | 1.9 | 0.9 |
| Zlynka | – | 0.8 | 12.6 | 12.1 | 86.5 | 85.3 | – | 1.6 | 0.7 | 0.1 |
| Starodub | – | 2.5 | 37.8 | 34.9 | 43.3 | 33.4 | 18.6 | 28.3 | 0.2 | 0.3 |
[National Archive of the Republic of Belarus. F.4. Op.21. D.99. L. 35].
Changes in the percentage ratio of Belarusian and Ukrainian populations according to the censuses of 1920 and 1923 were caused by both objective and subjective factors.
At the local level, work on national issues was carried out by special departments, national sections at the executive committees. In the conditions of the recovery period, it was difficult to resolve all issues of the life and activities of national minorities. A priority direction became the development of education and culture. The Gomel Provincial Department of Public Education created Jewish and Polish sections, which launched work among the population of the respective nationalities. By 1923, the Jewish section managed to open the following cultural and educational institutions in the Novozybkovsky, Klintsevsky, and Starodubsky districts: 4 schools, 4 orphanages, 3 kindergartens, and 3 libraries. [People’s Education in the Gomel Governorate. Results and Prospects for the 1922-1923 Academic Year. Gomel, 1923. – P. 58].
The leadership of the BSSR, striving to expand the territory of the republic, sought to annex governorates with a predominance of the Belarusian population but faced stubborn resistance from representatives of the provincial and district authorities. Therefore, it was quite difficult to expand Belarusian work in the Gomel Governorate. By order of the NKP of the RSFSR, the provincial department conducted a study in the autumn of 1923 on the linguistic, domestic, and ethnic specifics of the population of the governorate. For this purpose, a questionnaire was developed and sent to all district executive committees and departments of public education. Often, the responses to the questionnaire contained not real facts but personal understanding of the problem. For example, the leadership of the Starodubsky district reported: “The population is linguistically mixed Russian-Belarusian-Ukrainian. In terms of clothing, lifestyle, and housing, the Belarusian component predominates. No work is being done in the Belarusian language. Belarusian issues were not discussed by the district department, as this was not required. The population does not strive to learn the Belarusian language.” A similar response came from the Novozybkovsky district department: “The predominant population is Russian, the rest are mixed, of difficult-to-determine nationality. Belarusian work issues were not raised at meetings anywhere… Due to the lack of an appropriate environment, the Belarusian question did not mature independently and was not subjected to discussion.” The resolution of the Gomel Provincial Department of Public Education on October 22, 1923, noted the unserious attitude of the district department towards the work with the questionnaire and suggested providing more complete information. The Novozybkovsky and Starodubsky district departments replied that they considered their information “exhaustive” and “…do not accept the provincial department’s reproaches about contradictory responses and will not engage in this work a second time” [State Archive of the Gomel Region. F. 60. Op. 1. D. 1547. L. 37, 38, 65].
Despite the claims of the district leadership, archival documents contain information that contradicts their opinion. Thus, in the autumn of 1923, a Belarusian circle of 18 people was created at the Novozybkov Political Technicum at the initiative of the students. Maxim Bondarchuk was elected as the leader of the circle. At the first meeting, held on November 26, 1923, the main tasks of the circle’s work were outlined: “study of the language, the national economy, and the cultural-national and socio-historical life of the Belarusians.” Defining the necessity of creating such a circle, the students noted: “We, future agronomists and educators, will have to direct all our attention to the village for the cultural and economic revival of the Western region, whose population consists mainly of Belarusians, and for successful work, it is necessary to have a comprehensive knowledge of both the economy and the folk life, language, and history of the Belarusian people.” The members of the circle decided to study the Belarusian language for 6 hours a week and requested the Belarusian section of the Gomel Provincial Department of Public Education to send textbooks, literature on geography, the history of Belarus, works by Belarusian writers, newspapers, and magazines. The students’ request was satisfied by the Belarusian section. [State Archive of the Gomel Region. F. 60. Op. 1. D. 1547. L. 33-34].
In December 1925, at a meeting of the Council of Nationalities at the Gomel Provincial Department of Public Education, the head of the Novozybkovsky district department, Sushenok, noted: “When I personally went to schools with Smigelsky (head of the Belarusian section of the Gomel Provincial Department of Public Education) and gave children articles in Russian and Belarusian, I saw that they understood and retold better and faster in Belarusian. When I compared the children’s spoken language with the Belarusian book (having not seen Belarusian books before), I realized that the children spoke Belarusian.” At the end of her speech, Sushenok concluded that over time, a large number of schools could be transitioned to the Belarusian language. [State Archive of the Gomel Region. F. 500. Op. 1. D. 887. L. 55]. However, as the issue of the accession of the Gomel Governorate to the BSSR was being resolved, the local leadership sought to reduce the number of Belarusian nationality students in the region in the information provided, as evidenced by the data in the table (in %).
| Districts | 1924 | 1925 | 1926 |
| Klintsevsky | 15.6 | 8.8 | 3.5 |
| Novozybkovsky | 16.9 | 13.0 | 1.9 |
| Starodubsky | 5.7 | 0 | 1.4 |
[National Archive of the Republic of Belarus. F.4. Op.21. D.99. L. 189].
In the post-revolutionary years, school education in the Klintsevsky, Novozybkovsky, and Starodubsky districts had certain features determined by both general historical factors and the fact that they were part of the Gomel Governorate.