The Cognitive Abilities of the Russian Peasantry at the Turn of the Twentieth Century

Abstract

In Russia of 1917, two-thirds of the male and female peasants age 10 and older had not had systematic schooling and were illiterate; the rest were able to read and do basic arithmetic. Only 0.1% of peasants studied in secondary or higher educational institutions. As a result, 99.9% of all peasants had a particular mode of thinking - concrete, situational, and directly related to sensations and actions. Mastery of the world in practical terms, through the window of the senses, left a deep imprint on the nature and content of peasants’ knowledge, on how they conceptualized the social and physical world, and on how they behaved.