Social and economic causes of development of primary school in Transcarpathia: postwar period

After the end of the Second World War the Transcarpathia was annexed to the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic. This process was accompanied by the socio-economic, socio-political and cultural changes which caused the postponement of the transformations in the educational sphere. The most influenced by these changes were the educational institutions, which provided the primary education, the primary schools. In this article, the author examines the socio-economic peculiarities such as the administrative, toponymic and land reforms; the demographic changes such as the urbanization, the ethnic changes; the alterations of language policy as factors of progressive and regressive changing that have taken place in the primary schools of Transcarpathia of the postwar period. Herein it was analyzed by the author the contents of the keyword documents which regulated the activity of the primary schools in Transcarpathia of the postwar period and their orientation to the implementation of the Soviet education system. The author has analyzed the archival data that presents the statistical information regarding the number of primary schools both in the city and in countryside, the number of pupils who studied therein, the average number of pupils per one teacher in the urban and the rural school. In the given article the problems related to the preservation of the national schools, and the schools which the religious communities held for their own funds are elucidated. The content of the article is submitted by the extracts from the reports of that time period, and the extracts from plans on construction of new schools, in particular in the rural and remote areas of Transcarpathia. The changes in the educational sphere in first years of formation of Soviet power had the positive consequences such as the increasing of the number of the primary schools through construction of new schools, especially in the mountain areas, due to the repair the old school buildings, strengthening the material-technical base, etc. However, along with progressive phenomena in the schooling sphere were observed other negative phenomena such as the changing of the ideology and its influence on the contents of the primary education, on the realization of the rights of the ethnic minorities who lived on the Transcarpathian area, on the right to study in their native language, and more.