The recently published study on the literacy of the Russian population, based on the 1920 census (“Literacy in Russia,” Moscow, 1922, Central Statistical Administration, Department of Statistics on Public Education), represents a profoundly significant development.
Below is a table of literacy rates among the Russian population for 1897 and 1920, drawn from this very work:
Per 1,000 male inhabitants:

literates in:   Per 1,000 female inhabitants:

literates in:   Per 1,000 total population:

literates in:
1897   1920   1897   1920   1897   1920
1. European Russia   326   422   136   255   229   330
2. North Caucasus     241   357   562   151   502   281
3. Western Siberia    170   307   461   341   108   218
Total                318   409   131   244   223   319
While we were engaged in idle chatter about proletarian culture and its relationship to bourgeois culture, the facts presented us with figures that revealed just how weak our position actually was—even when compared to bourgeois culture. It turned out that, as one might have expected, we still lagged far behind in terms of universal literacy; moreover, even our progress relative to the tsarist era (1897) proved to be far too slow.