Schools for Kolkhoz Youth

rural general-education schools in the USSR that provided a seven-year education for students having a primary level education. The schools first appeared in 1923 and were called schools for peasant youth; in 1930 they were renamed schools for kolkhoz youth and the course of instruction was shortened to three years. In addition to providing a general education, the schools taught the fundamentals of agronomy and the basic principles for organizing agricultural production as applied to conditions in specific regions or zones.

The first evening schools for kolkhoz youth were established in 1928, and the first accelerated schools in 1930. Production training, which was subordinated to the task of socialist transformation of the countryside, was conducted at training farms, sovkhozes, cooperatives, kolkhozes, and machine-tractor stations. The schools for kolkhoz youth helped create an activist contingent of kolkhoz workers in the countryside, raise the cultural level of the peasants, increase the peasants’ knowledge of agronomy, and bring new agricultural machinery into use on the kolkhozes. In 1934 the schools for kolkhoz youth were converted into incomplete secondary schools (seven-year schools).