Building the New Socialist Person Key Issues in Grecophone School Reading Textbooks of the Soviet Union, 1927–1937

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Published: Apr 12, 2023
DOI: https://doi.org/10.12681/historein.26287
Keywords:
USSR Greek readers New socialist person Polytechnical education
Eleftheria Papastefanaki
Adjunct faculty, University of Crete.Postdoctoral Researcher, University of Ioannina.
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9180-4949
Christos Papathanasiou
PhD candidate, University of Ioannina
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2112-7655
Nikos Vafeas
Associate Professor, Department of Philosophy and Social Studies, University of Crete
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7792-9497
Harris Athanasiades
Abstract

 This study explores the concept of the new socialist person as it emerges from the pages of interwar Soviet readers for Grecophone populations. It focuses on the modifications the concept underwent to meet conjunctural needs and in the context of the social, political, ideological and economic changes in the USSR and the politics of the communist parties. The building of the new socialist person involved a renegotiation of identity markers such as gender and nationality, which were subordinated to a labour-centred picture. Accordingly, the new citizen identity was defined in terms of participation in the fulfilment of production targets, socialist emulation, defence of the socialist homeland and political participation in Communist Party organisations as mediated by the personality cult and total respect for hierarchy.

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Author Biographies
Eleftheria Papastefanaki, Adjunct faculty, University of Crete.Postdoctoral Researcher, University of Ioannina.

Eleftheria Papastefanaki teaches and works as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Crete. She received her BA in philology from the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens and she completed her postgraduate and doctoral studies at the Department of Philosophy and Social Studies of the University of Crete. Her master’s thesis dealt with the educational work of Roza Imbrioti. Her doctoral dissertation was published in edited form by the National Center for Social Research (EKKE) in 2020, entitled Left Pedagogical Thought in Greece (1910–1951). From the liberal progressive education to the polytechnism. Her research interests focus on history of educational ideas (19th–20th), history of women’s education, women’s movement and political activities, history of socialism and communism (the movement of ideas), social history of Greek Civil War (1946–1949).

Christos Papathanasiou, PhD candidate, University of Ioannina

Christos Papathanasiou is a PhD student in the history of education at the University of Ioannina. His research interests focus on the analysis of the Greek school textbooks of primary education. In particular, he has been engaged in the study of the school textbooks of the Metaxas regime (1936-1940) and broadly into the period of interwar Greece (1919-1940). He has also involved in a Hellenic Parliament exhibition entitled “Ioannis Kapodistrias (1776–1831): His course in time”. He participated in the International Conference “Duty to Revolt: Transnational and Commemorative Aspects of Revolutions”, where he presented a paper on “Building the new person: the Greek Revolution in the Mountain Readers”.

Nikos Vafeas, Associate Professor, Department of Philosophy and Social Studies, University of Crete

Nikos Vafeas was born in Athens in 1970. He studied sociology at Panteion University and then followed postgraduate studies in history at the École des hautes études en sciences sociales in Paris. He received his PhD from the European University Institute of Florence in 1998 (Dissertation topic: “Pouvoir et conflits dans l’ Empire ottoman: La révolte de 1849-1850 dans la Principauté de Samos”). He is currently Associate Professor at the Department of Political Science of the University of Crete, where he teaches historical and political sociology.

Harris Athanasiades

Harris Athanasiades is Professor of public history in the Department of Political Science and History at the Panteion University. In tandem, he is the director of the postgraduate programme on public history at the Hellenic Open University. His publications, research interests and public interventions focus on public history and the history of education. His most known publication, Τα αποσυρθέντα βιβλία: Έθνος και σχολική ιστορία στην Ελλάδα, 1858–2008 [The withdrawn books: nation and school history in Greece, 1858–2008] is an analysis of the confrontations over Greek school history and an anatomy of the dominant representations of our national past in the public sphere.

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