ABSTRACT
In prison and in exile, a prime duty of the Communist members of collectives or communes was to organise an educational programme. Their aim was to increase their own usefulness to the Party by raising their own level of knowledge and skills. In addition, they put on a variety of classes for non-Communist members of their groups. While not necessarily political in content, these classes had a propaganda element in that they were taught in a very different way from any other kind of lessons which the inmates had attended at primary or secondary school or at any higher level. Someone who taught one class might be a student in another, students in the same class or at different levels were encouraged to help each other, and there was an atmosphere of friendly competition and mutual endeavour rather than of authoritarian hierarchy. Students in different classes also met members of the commune from different dormitories and different regional associations. There was an obviously proselytising function to the curriculum in that a history class, for example, would have a Marxist orientation, but those who attended need not make any commitment to the philosophy behind the teaching. There seems to have been an expectation that the combination of lessons and living a communal form of life had its own power of persuasion.
