For Lydia Armand (née Tumpovskaya, 1887, St. Petersburg, Russian Empire— 1931, Rostov Oblast (?), Soviet Union), the Russian Revolution was the start of the “era of Great Spirituality” in teaching. Amidst the turmoil and destruction of the Civil War, Armand, who was a member of the Socialist Revolutionary Party and a former member of the National Constituent Assembly, decided to create a new kind of school: a countryside commune that would “help young people [...] grow into humans for whom life would be both a temple and a workshop, and in this temple they would be as much a part of God as they would be priests and workers.”1

In April 1920, Armand, together with a group of companions that included Sofia Guerrier, Varvara Ievleva, Alexander Kasatkin, and Ekaterina Chekhova, finally received state accreditation of the secondary stage of the Pushkino Experimental School-Colony, located 36 km from Moscow. Armand believed that children of the “secondary stage” (school years 5 to 10) were capable of making conscious decisions about their education, and conscious choice was an important element of the selection of children for her school. Another element was the spiritual development of the child.

The core of Armand’s approach to education was anthroposophical. Students were to be completely immersed in their studies, not merely receiving knowledge but living it. Like their teachers, they were to discover the world through direct introspective experience, meditation, and complex reflexive techniques.

One of the main goals of anthroposophy was to reunite art, science, and religious thinking. While working on the program for her future school, Armand wrote in her diary that “the idea of cosmic unity is best understood through Brahmanism; that of the evolution of forms through Buddhism; and respect for the purity of nature and the ideal of expressing this purity in human life through morality, rhythm, and harmony with the world through Zoroastrianism.” 2

In addition to the main curriculum, optional study groups were organized based on students’ interests. Subjects included drawing, French, English, Italian, Esperanto, drama, and gymnastics.

The day started with readings of spiritual, philosophical or fictional texts, ranging from the Gospels to the writings of Rabindranath Tagore, Peter Kropotkin, Paul Gauguin, Jiddu Krishnamurti, and Leo Tolstoy. Then teachers and students sang a kind of spiritual hymn, and proceeded to work in the fields or in the garden. In the afternoon, classes in the sciences and humanities followed, plus work in study groups and reading. Occasionally, before the end of the day, Armand would talk to the students about the lives of the great men of faith, thinkers, and revolutionaries.

Before her experimental school even opened, Armand was accused of elitism and biased selection of “the best” children, whereas “school-colonies existed for the worst.”3 The community of teachers and students at Armand’s school was closed to the outside world and almost esoteric, which, of course, went against the very essence of the Soviet system of “people’s education.” However, confronted with mass juvenile delinquency in the 1920s, the state welcomed any initiative in educating and supporting orphans and neglected children.

In autumn 1924, following numerous checks and reviews, the school was closed. On November 12 of the same year Armand was arrested for being a member of “a counter-revolutionary organisation—the Theosophical Society.” She was detained by order of the Special Council of the Joint State Political Directorate (OGPU) issued on December 12. Less than two weeks later, she was charged with “anti-Soviet activity and the spreading of false rumors.” Following the resolution of the Panel of the OGPU Special Council on February 27, 1925, she was exiled to the town of Berezov in the Urals for three years.

Sergei Levochsky

1. Elena Armand, Blazhenny chistye serdtsem (Moscow: Arsis Books, 2012), 179.

2. Lydia Armand, Dnevniki, vol. 1, GULAG History Museum.

3. See Elena Armand, op. cit.

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