 to his friends back home in India, where he narrated his encounter with the Soviet brand of socialism. Tagore was equally impressed and sceptical about the State’s approach to its people. He admired the Soviet determination towards providing quality education in the remotest parts of the country, and the remarkable results achieved in inculcating a scientific temper in the once-ignorant masses. He also admired the Soviet administration’s priority to education, in stark contrast to the British Indian administration’s obsession with ‘law and order’. However, the Russian education system had its obvious shortcomings, on which Tagore deliberated extensively. Tagore was also impressed with the results that farm collectivization had produced. He reflected on the Indian peasants’ sad state of affairs faced with falling productivity owing to small individual holdings. The Soviet State system implied massive concentration of power in a few hands. Tagore was critical of the submission of a person’s individuality to societal whims, which he argued, would be detrimental in the long run. Tagore, writing in the 1930s prophesied what eventually materialized into the disintegration of the USSR in 1991.){kind=link}
Rabindranath Tagore is widely renowned for his literary masterpieces ranging from poems, songs, short stories, novels, dramas, and dance dramas. At the same time, he was a philosopher, educationist, social reformer, and an avid traveller! He toured more than thirty countries between 1878 and 1932. Notable among them are his visits to the United States, the United Kingdom, Japan, Argentina, Rome, Southeast Asia, Germany, and the Soviet Union. Every visit was an opportunity for learning, introspection, and debates and discussions with some of the most influential thinkers and leaders of the world. He met poets like Yeats, intellectuals like Romain Rolland and Victoria Ocampo, the Italian Fascist dictator Il Duce Benito Mussolini, the Nizari Ismaili Imam Aga Khan III, the Shah of Iran, Albert Einstein, only to name a few. During his trips, he wrote diaries and letters to friends and intellectuals back home, recounting his experiences along the journey, and highlighting his understanding of the country, its people and their culture, and how certain of their thoughts and practices could be inculcated in his people. Hence produced were works like Japan-Jatri (Traveller to Japan), Pashchim Jatrir Diary (Diary of a Traveller to the West), Java Jatrir Patra (Letters from the Traveller to Java) and Russia’r Chithi (Letters from Russia).
Russia’r Chithi is especially important as it provides a glimpse into the poet’s understanding of the socialist functioning of Soviet Russia. He landed on Soviet soil on September 11, 1930 at the invitation of Anatoly Lunacharsky, playwright, critic and journalist. Although he was involved with the Ministry of Education, Tagore was invited out of his personal capacity. Tagore’s visit came at a time when the national movement for independence was at full swing, and the victory of the Bolsheviks against the imperial Romanovs had enthused freedom fighters with an ennewed patriotism. The decade prior had marked an ideological shift within the Congress when socialists like Jawaharlal Nehru and Subhash Chandra Bose rose to prominence. Success of the Soviet Five-Year Plans against the Great Depression that gripped the west, and Marxist reorientation among several British intellectuals influenced many Indian leaders to positively look up to Soviet Union.
Rabindranath also wrote along similar lines. Two concerns that he voiced the most were education and agriculture. In the first few letters addressed to his son Rathindranath Tagore, the stalwart statistician Prashanta Chandra Mahalanobis, and his wife Nirmal Kumari Mahalanobis, the poet expressed his thoughts on the massive enterprise undertaken by the Soviet State to educate their people. He reminded how both India and Russia were in a similar state of destitution when it came to mass education. However, the enthusiasm and dedication that the Soviets had shown to promote quality education to the remotest corners of their country was praiseworthy. In the process, peasants and workers could develop a certain level of sophistication, in stark contrast to the working classes in the West.
To Tagore, mass education was also a means of eradicating differences and promoting harmony among communities. Communal tensions between Hindus and Muslims in India were always headlined throughout the world. In fact, similar tensions were also prevalent in England between Catholics and Protestants in early modern Europe. Tagore identified ignorance as the root cause of all communal tensions. But the Europeans overcame all differences through education and annihilating ignorance. Even the Soviet Union was a republic of diverse geographies and ethnicities. The level of depth, industriousness, dedication, and enthusiasm shown by the Soviets in extending quality education to the remotest corners of their country was reflected in the community solidarity enthused in the Russians. Sectarian differences could thus be removed, and peace and harmony could be forged. On the other hand, the British Indian administration’s preoccupation with ‘law and order’, and excessive allotment of funds for the police barely left any to be utilised in education. The system, Tagore feared, would effectively turn into a mere mould that would end up producing robots, instead of bringing up humans.
Tagore, in his very first letter acknowledged the role of entrenched social inequality and disparity in the formation and flourishing of civilizations. Civilization stems from leisure. Excesses of one civilization are built on the depletion of another. The same phenomenon occurs even within societies. Tagore observed that the Russian peasants, like in India, were socially and educationally plunged into the darkness of ignorance. They became easy pawns of exploitation by the upper classes. However, after the revolution, the new education system was successful in inculcating a scientific temper in the peasantry. Through collectivization of farms and scientific agricultural techniques, productivity could be increased manifold, fruits of which were enjoyed by the peasants. In stark contrast, Tagore was remorseful about the plight of Indian peasants drowned in superstition and ignorance. Neither was the enthusiasm towards collectivization present in India, nor any efforts towards a scientific approach towards agriculture.
To Tagore, Moscow was a city marked by frugality, removed from the grandeur of other western European cities. But it also gave a sense of equality, effectively demonstrating that dwellings of the poor need not be ugly when there is equitable distribution of wealth. Because a display of wealth is ultimately a display of financial disparity. Tagore argued that lavish displays of wealth came to India with the advent of British rule; indulging in Western leisure became the benchmark of the rich. Such attitudes were, to his liking, wiped out from Russia. Equality in wealth fostered a better interpersonal relationship, and vested on the general populace honour and self-esteem. Tagore understood that shared suffering united the poor working class, something that has always been conveniently ignored by the bourgeois. A revolution occurs when the working class unites and rises against their oppressors, like what had happened in Russia.
But in such cases, practical problems regarding the ‘personal’ and ‘social’ arises. Tagore critically observed in his letter to Kalimohan Ghosh how the communists had misunderstood the boundaries of the ‘personal’ and the ‘social’. In Soviet Russia, a child doesn’t merely belong to its parents, but to the society as a whole. Therefore, the upbringing of the child also becomes a societal obligation. This effectively surrenders a person’s individuality to the shackles of society. Tagore did not subscribe to the Russian way of weakening the individual to strengthen society. To him, this was nothing short of a fascist approach. It would result in concentration of limitless powers in a few hands, and, despite producing positive results in the short run, would be detrimental in the long run. Tagore, writing in 1930 cautioned against dictatorial tendencies, which ultimately manifested into the collapse of the USSR in 1991. Standing in the 21st century, Tagore’s words have never echoed louder!
Sharanyo Basu
Sharanyo Basu is an undergraduate student of History at Presidency University, Kolkata. He is a history enthusiast with interests in social and cultural history, literature and films, and histories of interactions, conflicts and accomodations.