Dagestan comprehensive secondary school in 1920-1940: particularities of development in a multilingual society

The article examines the characteristics of Dagestan comprehensive school in 1920-1940. On the general background of school education development in the Republic there was confrontation between patriarchal, routine and progressive principles in this process. The author focuses on the complexities of the language problem, the importance of which was closely linked with the need to choose the language of instruction in schools of Dagestan in the conditions of multilingual society. The paper describes the transition of writing of Dagestan’s peoples from the alphabet based on Arabic script (Ajami) to the Roman alphabet in 1928, and to Cyrillic one in 1938, and the introduction of separate education for boys and girls in 1943.