The article deals with the activities of the Orenburg Zemstvo in the issues of primary and extracurricular education of non-Russian peoples. In particular, the author examines the experience of the department formed in 1915 as part of the Board of education of the Orenburg Zemstvo. Due to the efforts of the staff of the department, there were opened libraries, organized the national reading courses, lectures for adults in their native language.

The article deals with the period when the confessional schools of the southern Urals were controlledby the Soviet educational authorities, while in the country it had happened before. There were two tendencies for the future: the growth of national (Tatar, Bashkir, etc.) schools supported by the new Soviet state (People’s Commissariat of Nationalities) and the construction of the United Soviet labor school (People’s Commissariat of Education).