Soviet Circus

Proud of their tractors and power plants, Russians are even more proud of their schools. Their claims are that illiteracy has all but vanished; that there is education for everyone, from three-year-olds up to the oldest peasants; that Soviet educators have pioneered in developing group project work; that education is grounded on machines.

Last week President Frederick Trubee Davison of Manhattan's American Museum of Natural History opened his institution to the first big U. S. exhibition of Soviet education, sponsored by the American Russian Institute. Most newsworthy exhibit was not the school models, not the illiteracy charts, not the pictures of Soviet youngsters at work and play, but photographs of a school which only Russia could have, the Technicum of Circus Art.

For the last nine years the Technicum has been training clowns, acrobats, jugglers and bareback riders for the 150-odd circuses which are perpetually junketing up & down & across the Soviet Union, furnishing entertainment which the "little brothers" like almost as well as cinemas. To U. S. circus troupers, toughened in the service of Barnum's, the Technicum's method of training is apt to seem funnier than the serious-minded clowns it produces.

For four years the young students are given food, lodging and a salary, trained intensively in circus work, especially acrobatics and gymnastics. Besides that, they learn mathematics, physics, hygiene, history of the circus. Most important of all, they get a thorough grounding in Marx, Lenin and Stalin, for the circus, like every medium of Soviet entertainment, is also a medium of propaganda. All loyal clowns try to make their buffoonery a satire on the enemies of the Party without, inefficient bureaucrats within. To the infinite disgust of old and unsympathetic moujiks who go to the circus for amusement, the eager young graduates of the Technicum of Circus Art like nothing better than to drop their fun-making and stunts, put on a pageant of the class struggle.

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