Ministry of Education (Soviet Union)

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Ministry of Education of the USSR

Министерство просвещения СССР
All ministry seals of the Soviet Union used the Soviet coat of arms
Agency overview
Formed	3 August 1966
Dissolved	5 March 1988
Superseding agency	State Committee for People's Education (1988–1991) Ministry of Education of the Russian Federation (1991–1996) Ministry of Science, High School and Technical Policy of the Russian Federation (1991–1993)
Jurisdiction	Government of the Soviet Union
Headquarters	Moscow, Russian SFSR, Soviet Union

The Ministry of Education of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) (Russian: Министерство просвещения СССР), formed on 3 August 1966, was one of the most important government offices in the Soviet Union. It was known as the People's Commissariat for Education (Russian: Народный комиссариат просвещения), or Narkompros, until 1946. Narkompros was a Soviet agency founded by the State Commission on Education (Russian: Государственная комиссия по просвещению) and charged with the administration of public education and most of other issues related to culture.

Its first head was Anatoly Lunacharsky. However he described Nadezhda Krupskaya as the "soul of Narkompros".^[1] Mikhail Pokrovsky and Evgraf Litkens also played important roles.

Despite Lunacharsky's efforts to protect most of the avant-garde artists such as Vladimir Mayakovsky, Kazimir Malevich, Vladimir Tatlin and Vsevolod Meyerhold, the official policy after Joseph Stalin put him in disgrace.

Narkompros had a number of sections, in addition to the main ones related to general education, e.g.,

• Likbez, a section for liquidation of illiteracy,
• "Profobr", a section for professional education,
• Glavlit a section for literature and publishing (also in charge of censorship in publishing),
• "Glavrepertkom" (Главрепертком), a commission for approval of performers' repertoires.
• Department of the Mobilisation of Scientific Forces, to which the Russian Academy of Sciences reported to after 1918.
• A Theatre Department which published Vestnik Teatra
• Vneshkol'nyi Otdel, the adult Education Department run by Krupskaya

Some of these evolved into separate entities, others discontinued.