Korean Korenizatsiia and Its Socialist Construction 71felt ourselves a Soviet people. [Serafima let out a chortle.] But the best [na-
tionality] of them all, Koreans!”^90
In 1927, all private schools were taken over by the state. By 1931, Korean
education and educational institutions were running at full throttle. The
overall number of institutions, students, and teachers increased tremen-
dously. There were 380 Korean schools, 33,595 students, two technical col-
leges, two teacher training colleges, and one major university called the
Korean Pedagogical Institute (KPI) in Nikolsk- Ussuriisk that had depart-
ments in history, lit er a ture, physics, math, and biology,^91 established in
1923.^92 All students in the KPI were Korean and all courses were conducted
in Korean.^93 In the 1920s, only union and autonomous republics were given
technical institutes/universities in order to train titular nationals of the named
republics.^94 The Koreans were one case of a nationality that was given three
institutes of higher education yet did not have an autonomous oblast or
union republic. This is an example of the contradictions in building nation-
ality raised by Koreans as a diaspora group and Soviet fears about their po liti-
cal allegiance.
Literacy campaigns were an impor tant part of Sovietization for older
peasants and proletariats or those who lacked a formal education. As Lenin
stated, “The illiterate person stands outside of politics.”^95 Koreans showed
remarkable gains in literacy during the korenizatsiia literacy campaigns of
1924 to 1930. It appears that the local Far Eastern leadership targeted So-
viet Koreans as having the most potential because they were provided with
more resources than the Rus sians, Chinese, or Siberian natives. In general,
the campaign against illiteracy targeted illiterate people from the age of
eight to fifty. The adult campaign targeted adults from sixteen to thirty- five.
To initiate the campaign for the Korean community, a pamphlet/book was
printed called Down with Illiteracy. The next year, 17,000 copies of this pam-
phlet w ere printed.^96 The main prob lem in the Korean community was il-
literacy among women. In 1924, 22,995 Koreans were deemed “literate” out
of a total population of 106,193— that is, 21.7 percent were literate. How-
ever, when differentiated by sex, one found that 33 percent of the men were
literate with only 8.8 percent of Korean women being able to read. So the
regional government set up a massive educational campaign for illiterate and
semiliterate full- time workers and women. In 1924, 125 “study cells” were
set up for the eradication of illiteracy wherein 5,000 people learned to read
that year. In 1925 alone, 3,080 people were taught to read, 1,695 of whom
were women.^97 By 1929, these illiteracy liquidation points grew to 478 in
the Primoskii krae alone: forty- three schools for the semiliterate opened
that year and 2,500 students studied there in 1929. In the 1927/28 academic
year, an adult illiteracy school opened that had twelve Korean, three Chinese,