Seite 44 [44]
OCR
VICTORIA MCGOWAN however, maintain a massive agrarian rate of production, and financially supported itself largely with grain sales to other countries, indicating it was participating in the global industrialized economy." Since most public primary education occurred in urban centres and towns in Europe and the Americas at this time, it follows that, in large part due to Russias exceptionally low rate of urbanization, peasants in Russia remained largely uneducated compared to those in areas such as Britain or Canada. It is worth noting that public schools were well established at this time in Alberta (or the Northwest Territories as it was known at the time, since it was not made a full province until 1905), and that the biggest guestion was not whether children would be educated, but rather if two school boards (Protestant and Catholic), both of which had already existed for decades in the Northwest Territories, would be legally maintained in the new province. During the debates, Henry Bourassa, a prominent Catholic member of Parliament, summed it up nicely that not only was education assured in any district with sufficient children, but that those "who went to settle" in Alberta "would have the liberty of education" in accordance with their religious beliefs." Ihus, when refugees fleeing the Russian Revolution began to arrive in Alberta, they found themselves largely undereducated relative to existing settlers, who at the time were predominately British, Scottish, Irish, and, to a lesser extent, Quebecois/French settlers. This helped isolate former Russian citizens into kinship groups, which became foundational in Albertan society, as they often failed to possess the necessary education or skills to move successfully into urbanized areas. The final key contextual piece for understanding the Russian peasant experience in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries is the ethnic makeup of the Russian Empire. Many of the countries which exist today in eastern Europe and northern Asia, most notably Ukraine, but also Belarus (formerly Belorussia), Azerbaijan, Georgia, and Uzbekistan amongst others, were a part of the Russian Empire, and though several briefly had independence in the post-World War One order, the vast majority of them and their ethnic groups remained a part of the Soviet Union. In the only completed census before the revolutions, undertaken in 1897, ethnic Russians (“Great Russians” in the census) made up the largest single group of the population; however, at just over 44%, ethnic Russians did not even constitute the majority of the population.’ Ukrainians (called “Little Russians” by the census) made up just under 18% of the population.'° Combined, the two ethnic groups, which 7 Ibid., 311. 8 House of Commons, Hansard, 28 March 1905, 10 Canadian Parliament, 1‘ Session, Government of Canada, 3260. Documents of the First General Census of the Population of the Russian Empire in the Ukrainian Archives, 1897, trans. Hannah Devereux. 19 Ibid. + 42 +
