The 1970s and the Early 1980s: Portrait of the Soviet School before Perestroika – Some Personal Impressions of the 1970s and Early 1980s

Abstract

When I first went to the Soviet Union in 1952, to work as a junior member of the Russian Secretariat, the department concerned with the internal affairs of the Soviet Union in the British Embassy, there was little direct opportunity to study the system of education. It was the end of the Stalinist period (he died on 5 March 1953) and the Cold War was at its height. For Western diplomats contact with Soviet people was minimal. We had Soviet servants, Russian language teachers and occasionally met Soviet officials in the course of official business. Otherwise we met Soviet citizens only in shops, markets or theatres, on trains or aeroplanes, in other words in public places. Anyone who was known to have contact with a Western diplomat other than in such circumstances, and not on an official basis, was likely to be in trouble. One of my closest contacts with Soviet citizens in the early 1950s was at the main maternity hospital, where I went to accompany and interpret for the Embassy Doctor. He was an obstetrician by profession and for years had been asking to see a hospital of his speciality. His request was unexpectedly granted one day, and much to my surprise I found myself on the first occasion in the middle of the labour ward, and on the second in the operating theatre, witnessing a Caesarean operation.