Stanislav Teofilovich Shatskii

Born June 1 (13), 1878, in the village of Voronino, in what is now Dukhovshchina Raion, Smolensk Oblast; died Oct. 30. 1934, in Moscow. Soviet educator; member of the collegium of the People’s Commissariat for Education of the RSFSR (1929–34). Member of the CPSU from 1928.

Shatskii graduated from the division of natural sciences of the faculty of physics and mathematics at Moscow University. He began his educational work in 1905 in one of the outlying districts of Moscow, where he organized the first clubs in Russia for the children of workers. In 1911, using public funds, he and his wife, V. N. Shatskaia, organized a summer work colony known as Cheerful Life for members of the children’s clubs.

After the October Socialist Revolution of 1917, Shatskii became head of the First Public Education Experiment Station of the People’s Commissariat for Education of the RSFSR; he held this position from 1919 to 1932. The station had an urban division in Moscow and a rural division in Kaluga Oblast that included the Cheerful Life school-colony. It was a complex of pedagogical scientific research institutions, kindergartens, schools, extracurricular establishments for children, and cultural-educational establishments for adults. Methods of communist education were developed and put to practical test at the station. Particular attention was given to combining education with socially useful labor, to making classroom instruction more efficient, to developing group awareness, and to studying the interdependence of the school and its environment.

From 1932 to 1934, Shatskii headed the Central Experimental Laboratory of the People’s Commissariat for Education of the RSFSR and served as the director of the Moscow Conservatory.