Stanislav Shatsky
Stanislav Shatskii (alternative spelling Shatsky) (1878-1934) was an important humanistic educator, writer, and educational administrator in the late Russian Empire and the early Soviet Union.
Shatskii established a number of experimental and progressive educational institutions between 1905 and 1934. A member of the Russian intelligentsia, Shatskii imported many of the values of late tsarist educational experimentation (many of which were based on the methods of American progressive education) into early Soviet approaches to creating a communist school and constructing 'a new Soviet person'.
His work as a communist educator complicates our understanding of communist education. Shatskii, unlike those who would follow him, denied the primacy of politics and class struggle in the creation of a new communist man. He also resisted indoctrinational techniques, instead preferring to demonstrate to pupils the relevance and importance of a reasoned approach to life. For Shatskii, true communist education was the release of the individual from the strictures of the capitalist system. The importance of his work is only recently being recognized as many of his publications were suppressed by Stalin and the Soviet educational orthodoxy that sought to ensure that all 'communist education' had a class-based element. He deserves a place in Russian pedagogy with Anton Makarenko and Lev Vygotsky.
He sought to build a liberal, child-centered version of communist education that drew on John Dewey's activity-based educational methods and Lev Tolstoi's focus on an aesthetically based, free education. Placing these ideas in a Marxist framework, Shatskii hoped that a communist education - founded on the principles of cooperation and self-motivation - would release the child's innate potential and help him develop into a well-rounded human being. His ideal student was a child that appreciated art, culture, and music, yet also knew the value of a hard day's work: "A child of high culture with callused hands".
His first major educational institution was The Settlement (Setlment) which was established in northern Moscow in 1905. This complex of institutions drew its ideological inspiration from the settlement movement. Specifically modelled on the Chicago-based Hull House, where Shatskii's collaborator, architect Alexander Zelenko had lived for a year, the Settlement was a complex of children's clubs and informal classes. At the center of the Settlement was the Zelenko-designed Communal Club for working children, opened in 1907 in Moscow's blue-collar North End (Vadkovsky Lane, 5) and funded by industrialist Nikolay Vtorov. The Club was a part of a larger drive to set up a cultural and social center in remote working class district of Moscow (Miusskaya Square project).
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