1930s Soviet school mathematics textbooks: a reflection of Stalinist culture and ideology

Stalinism permeated all aspects of the private and public spheres of everyday life: the economy, industry, farming, art, literature, and of course, education. It was an ideology that aimed to build a new national history, culture, and identity. The most vulnerable and perhaps important group to indoctrinate were children, who constituted the future of the state. This paper presents a detailed investigation of six Soviet mathematics textbooks for school grades 1–7, translated from Russian to English, demonstrating that Stalinist ideology can be found even in mathematics textbooks, through the themes of industrialization, collectivization, gender, new Soviet culture, the Red Army and the practice of self-criticism (samokritika).