Schools for peasant youth

Schools for peasant youth [школи селянської молоді; shkoly selianskoi molodi]. Rural general polytechnical schools created in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics in 1923. These schools admitted 12- to 18-year-olds who had completed three- or four-year elementary school programs. Schools for peasant youth offered a four-year program that provided a general education with an agricultural theory and practice component. In 1928, one- and two-year evening courses were introduced, which, among other things, trained tractor operators. In the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic in 1928, there were 115 schools for peasant youth. In the 108 such schools for which data exist, there were 7,018 students, of whom 1,304, or 18 percent, were women. In 1930, schools for peasant youth were renamed schools for collective-farm youth. In 1934 these schools were reorganized into seven-year schools.

[This article originally appeared in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. 4 (1993).]