Prosveshchenie

(Enlightenment), the largest Soviet educational and pedagogical publishing house of the State Committee on Publishing, Printing, and the Book Trade of the Council of Ministers of the RSFSR.

Prosveshchenie was founded in Moscow in 1931; until 1964 it was known as Uchpedgiz. It publishes textbooks and teaching aids in Russian for all types of general-education schools and pedagogical educational institutions, methodological materials for teachers, materials on extracurricular reading for students and pupils, methodological journals, syllabi, and visual aids. The immediate predecessors of Prosveshchenie were the literary and publishing section of the People’s Commissariat of Education (beginning in November 1917) and the pedagogical section of Gosizdat (State Publishing House of the RSFSR; from 1919). Together with Prosveshchenie, they played an important role in eliminating illiteracy and in implementing universal primary education, eight-year education, and the communist upbringing of children and adolescents.

Prosveshchenie became particularly active during the 1960’s and the early 1970’s, when universal secondary education was first effected. This period was marked by the preparation of textbooks and other materials by such major scholars as Academicians B. E. Bykhovskii, V. V. Parin, L. A. Zenkevich, A. N. Kolmogorov, I. K. Kikoin, M. V. Nechkina, and V. M. Khvos-tov. Prosveshchenie publishes the journals Nachal’naia shkola (Primary School), Doshkol’noe vospitanie (Preschool Upbringing), Russkii iazyk v shkole (Russian Language in the School), Literatura v shkole (Literature in the School), and Inostrannye iazyki v shkole (Foreign Languages in the School). In 1973 it released 1,257 titles, totaling 3.7 billion printer’s sheets and 279 million copies. Prosveshchenie was awarded the Order of the Red Banner of Labor (1974).

(Enlightenment), a legal Bolshevik monthly sociopolitical and literary journal published in St. Petersburg from December 1911 through June 1914. A total of 27 issues were published, with the circulation of some issues reaching 5,000.

Prosveshchenie was established on the initiative of V. I. Lenin to replace the journal Mysl’ (Thought), which had been suppressed by the tsarist government. Overall supervision was provided from abroad by a staff headed by Lenin, but the day-today operations were managed by an editorial staff in Russia that at various times included A. I. Ul’ianova-Elizarova, L. M. Mikhailov, M. S. Ol’minskii, A. A. Riabinin, M. A. Savel’ev, and N. A. Skrypnik. In 1913, M. Gorky took charge of the fiction section.

As a theoretical organ of the Bolsheviks, Prosveshchenie opposed Liquidators, Otzovists, Trotskyites, and bourgeois nationalists. It published 28 articles by Lenin, including “Critical Remarks on the National Question” and “The Right of Nations to Self-Determination.” Prosveshchenie was continuously placed under restrictions and was eventually suppressed by the government. Publication was renewed during the autumn of 1917, but only one (double) issue appeared; it contained Lenin’s works “Can the Bolsheviks Retain State Power?” and “Revision of the Party Program.”