Grade repetition as a pedagogical and socio-economic problem of the Soviet universal education in 1920s-1930s

The author studies the problem of grade repetition, which was a pedagogical and socio-economic invariant of the Soviet education system in the pre-war decade. The study shows the priority areas of activity of the People’s Commissariat of Education to reduce the number of repeaters and prevent students from dropping out of schools. The analysis of diverse historical, statistical, and regulatory sources provides comprehensive and integrated review of the agency’s activities. The authorities considered grade repetition not only as a pedagogical problem, but, first of all, as a financial and economic burden on the budget, criticized the school for educational and methodological inefficiency, negligence in work, “fraud” in the presentation of results. At the same time, the state policy of underfunding the education system during the period under review not only affected the material and technical base for providing universal education, but also in many ways hindered and preserved the solution of the problem of second-year education.