- - - - - - - -
>>
@EvanCarroll:
USSR?
@mardigrasman: And, look what the USSR did in the 70 years it existed as an enemy of the United States. It went from a peasant economy to a rival of the United States. I'm not saying that their brutality on their own people was justified, but that breaking ties with the US certainly paid off for them.
> In accordance with the Sovnarkom decree of December 26, 1919, signed by its head Vladimir Lenin, the new policy of likbez ("liquidation of illiteracy"), was introduced. The new system of universal compulsory education was established for children. Millions of illiterate adult people all over the country, including residents of small towns and villages, were enrolled in special literacy schools. Komsomol members and Young Pioneer detachments played an important role in the education of illiterate people in villages. The most active phase of likbez lasted until 1939. In 1926, the literacy rate was 56.6 percent of the population. By 1937, according to census data, the literacy rate was 86% for men and 65% for women, making a total literacy rate of 75%.[3]
@EvanCarroll: From E Notes  "The height of the Stalinist repression, known as the Great Terror, lasted from
1936 to 1939. The majority of victims during this period were from the Communist
Party, the economic ministries, the military, the Communist International, and
minority nationalities. No precise figures exist. Official KGB figures for
1937 1938 claim that just under 700,000 were executed and that at the beginning of
the 1940s there were about 3.6 million in labor camps and prisons. Stephen
Wheatcroft and R. W. Davies have calculated that the total number of excess
deaths from 1927 to 1938 may have amounted to some ten million persons, 8.5
million killed between 1927 and 1936 and about 1 to 1.5 million between 1937 and
1938." Is it possible this helped increase the literacy rate???
4951