[19] The mistrustful attitude of our peers from the other side of the River Zbrucz595 towards us was slowly vanishing. We were spending more time together, sharing our feelings and experiences. We delicately pointed out their faults to them – the superficiality of their education and their total isolation from the intellectual life abroad – and they taught us a lot too. We were growing into the new life with every day. We were shedding our old skin.
1 October 1940 brought a decree altering the scholarship granting mode. From then on scholarships were to be granted only to those with at least twothirds A+ marks from semester exams and the rest of the marks Bs. At the same time one million young men above the age of 16 were enrolled in vocational, craft, and railway schools. They were to constitute reserves in case of war. The change of the scholarship-granting mode was a severe blow [20] to those who had no other means of support. In many cases an exam mark depended not on the student’s abilities but on chance. In the Soviet educational system only exam marks were taken into consideration, while the student’s or pupil’s work throughout the year was ignored. During an exam a student drew a sheet of paper with three questions which he had to answer perfectly in order to get an A+. Admittedly, the requirements imposed on students during exams were not stringent, and therefore a large percentage of students did receive scholarships anyway.
The system of socialist competition was widespread everywhere, in all Soviet factories, institutions, schools, and institutions of higher education. At the beginning of work every labourer, clerk, pupil, or student planned the tasks he undertook to do. The competition [21] might be individual or group, that is, between individual members of a given institution, factory, or kolkhoz, or between two collectives. The notion of socialist competition is of great educational importance, as it shapes character and will. It also constitutes something like a sublimation of the instinct to fight lingering in every man. Unfortunately, socialist competition plans were often made only on paper and were ignored, and in those as well as in many other cases the one to blame was the narrow-minded Soviet bureaucrat who treated everything mechanically and was snowed under with mounds of papers – documents, which never were to be truly executed. Senselessly manufacturing plans of work and
