Section V
The actual practicalities of running the gymnasia also expose the reactionary nature of the Narodnik philosophy underlying the proposals. Yuzhakov had set out in detail that around 20,000 such gymnasia would be required for all of Russia. Lenin, taking into account the various groups that Yuzhakov lists as being exempt, arrives at around 72 million people, requiring a total of 72 millions dessiatines of land. Yuzhakov admits that this is a lot of land, but proposes that, as the state had lots of land, in inconvenient locations, a swap of private and peasant land for it could provide the land required, and then whole populations could be moved to it, clearing forests and so on, in order to make it cultivable.
In addition, land could be obtained by redemption payments. But, the problem, here, as with land redemption in general, is that the poorer peasants do not have the money to make it possible, and the richer peasants, like the urban population, would be likely to simply pay for education in the modern urban schools. After all, the urban producers were exempt from the scheme, and even Yuzhakov is led to admit that the more fortunate peasants would simply choose to pay for education rather than have their children bound to the land well into their 20's.
The answer to this, for Yuzhakov, is the issuing of a guaranteed loan, but that simply means that the students at the gymnasium must also then pay back the interest on the loan required to purchase the land upon which the gymnasium farm is located, as well as paying back, via labour service, the costs of this education and maintenance.
“And does Mr. Yuzhakov seriously think that our peasants are so downtrodden and ignorant as to give their consent to such a plan??” (p 477-8)
What Yuzhakov actually proposes, Lenin says, is not even a petty-bourgeois utopia, but a feudal utopia. It restores all of those feudal/paternalistic relations that tie the peasant to the land, and, in the process, as well as reintroducing feudal labour service, also removes the basis rights of citizens from them. As we have seen in Lenin's earlier essay, on Gymnasium Farms, that was clearly seen in the proposals relating to the right of students even to marry. Lenin quotes Yuzhakov,
“If... marriage is allowed between young people who have completed the course and remain at the gymnasium for another three years ... this three-year stay will be far less onerous than military service”. (p 479)
In other words, it may not be allowed. But, as Lenin points out, this raises more fundamental questions about the administration of the gymnasia itself, which is that, if the land is bought collectively, by the students, who also, collectively pay for the employment of teachers and other staff etc., should it not also be the students themselves that democratically determine the rules of the gymnasia, including their right to marry?
“But need we be surprised at this “slip of the pen” (?) on Mr. Yuzhakov’s part, when all through his “utopia,” amidst the most minute examination of teachers’ salaries, labour service by the pupils, etc., it never once occurred to him that it might not be amiss—at any rate in the “utopia”—to allow a certain share in administering the “gymnasium” and in managing the farm to the “pupils” themselves, who, after all, maintain the whole establishment and are graduated from it at from 23 to 25 years of age; that they are not only “gymnasium pupils,” but also citizens.” (p 479)
And, the uncertainty that Yuzhakov has in how attractive his proposal is is shown when he talks about the need for “corrective gymnasia” for those students guilty of bad conduct. Yuzhakov writes,
“Since it is obligatory for the whole younger generation to undergo a course of secondary education, it would be irrational to release students from it on the ground of bad conduct. In the upper classes, this might be a direct temptation and stimulus to bad conduct.” (p 479-80)
In other words, Yuzhakov fears that some students would escape the “utopia” he had planned for them by deliberately engaging in bad conduct, and so to deter such escape plans, it would be necessary to threaten them with the prospect of being sent off to prison farms!
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