Talking to the People and Shaping Revolution: The Drive for Enlightenment in Revolutionary Russia

The Provisional Government and the soviets regarded the campaigns to make "yesterday's village philistines" into conscious citizens as pivotal to the success or failure of the new regime. Without popular support, their stated goals of overseeing democratic elections, keeping Russia in the war, maintaining food supplies, and preventing civic disorder were unachievable. Ordinary people were to be educated so that they would understand their new duties and responsibilities, as well as their new freedoms. These attempts to educate the population about the new political climate and transform their cultural lives were regarded by educated society as their great opportunity to bridge the gulf separating them from Russia's ordinary people.' The political elite sought to bring cultural transformation to ordinary people through literacy, political education, and citizens' training (grazhdanskoe vospitanie). While educational literature recognized that mass political literacy could not be achieved in the short term, ordinary people had to understand the rudimentaries of political life if the forthcoming elections to the Constituent Assembly