Sergei Gessen at work on the book on Soviet educational policy (based on letters to Nikolai Hans)

The article presents a little-known episode from the biography of Sergei Gessen (Sergius Hessen), an outstanding Russian philosopher and pedagogue, - the history of the creation of Educational Policy in Soviet Russia (1930) by Sergei Gessen and Nikolai Hans, and its German version (1933). In 1929 in London during his trip to England Gessen met Hans, a well-known historian of education and leading figure in Russian emigre public life. On the basis of Gessen's letters from Hans' archive at the Institute of Education (University College of London), the authors reconstruct the course of work on the English and German versions of the book and determine the volume of what was written by each of the coauthors. It is established that in the first case Hans was responsible not only for writing about half of the text, but also for its translation into English and its final editing. In addition, Hans negotiated with London publishers and supported financially the publication. The book was highly appreciated by the Western and emigre pedagogical community, in particular, reviews on it were published by the outstanding American philosopher and educationist John Dewey and the leading representative of Orthodox pedagogy, philosopher and psychologist Vasily Zenkovsky. However, due to the intensification of the global economic crisis, the book turned out to be financially unprofitable and did not bring the authors the expected income. The idea of publishing the book in German emerged while the co-authors worked on the English version. Having started the translation in 1930, Gessen finished it in January 1932 only, although he had originally planned to complete it much earlier. The delay was due to many reasons: the crisis of the German pedagogical literature market, the publisher's unwillingness to take risks in these situation and deliberate slowness in the publishing process of the manuscript, the appearance of additional materials related to significant changes in the Soviet educational policy in the early 1930s. As a result, the German edition was supplemented with four chapters and enlarged by about one third. In May 1933, Gessen informed Hans that he had received his copies. The authors point out that due to Nazis coming to power, Gessen and Hans' book was not sufficiently demanded. However, the book materials appeared as articles in Russian emigre, Czech, and Polish journals. The Polish edition of the book (1934) strengthened Gessen's position in the Polish academic community and contributed to his university career in Warsaw and Lodz. The archival materials presented in the article are introduced into scholarly discourse for the first time. The authors declare no conflicts of interests.

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