This article sheds light on a paradox in the Soviet educational landscape: the development of specialised foreign-language schools in the context of a purported egalitarian society. These schools endured, and even thrived, through the collapse of the Soviet Union. First, a historical overview for Soviet-era development of specialised-school…

The educational literature often includes debate over the nature and nurture of mathematical giftedness. The varied schools of thought reflect discrepancies between views, which are to a large extent functions of philosophical, political, and economic considerations. To address this debate, in the context of the current ZDM Special Issue, I…

This research deals with the Soviet pedagogy proposed by Moisey M. Pistrak, which typified the structuring of the young people's school life in ancient Russia aiming at educating the new man. The objective of this research was to analyse the Pistrakian proposal for a unified labour school in the context of the Bolshevik revolution, seeking a…

Beginning in the twenties of the previous century, the writings of Anton Semjonovitch Makarenko, an educator who was born in the Ukranian part of the former Russia and mainly spoke and wrote in Russian, attracted much attention among educators not only in the Russian-speaking world and in communist states but also in the Western world and other…

This paper problematizes the dichotomy between neo-liberalism and socialism and the tendency to view the post-socialist condition as a process of convergence with 'Western' and 'global'. It does so by analysing the development and implementation of a quality assurance and evaluation (QAE) policy in school education in the context of the Russian…

The high rate of child mortality registered during the early months of the Civil War led the Republican authorities to initiate several operations to evacuate youngsters with the purpose of protecting and saving the children of Spain. At the beginning, the children were evacuated to zones in the interior of the country far removed from the front…

This paper analyses the current state of student representation in Russia as deeply rooted in the institutional structure of the Soviet higher education system. The study traces the origins of existing institutional arrangements for student representation at the level of university governance and analyses how representation practices have been…

This study focuses on the Soviet introduction of local studies to Ukrainian schools during the 1920s. It argues that, through their efforts at pedagogical reform, educational planners sought a fundamental re-imagining of place. The Ukrainian Commissariat of Education asked teachers and their students to engage the "productive" world…

This article was designed to assess the view that Soviet education differs little in essentials from that of the Tsarist era, in that the theoretical and practical foundations of the present system stemmed from pre-Revolutionary Russia. (Author)

Examines the ending of reform efforts in the former Soviet Union immediately prior to the establishment of the Commonwealth of Independent States. Indicates that inadequate facilities and resources, lack of trained personnel, promotion on noneducational grounds, economic hardship, and bureaucratic resistance hindered these reforms. (15 references)…

Describes different systems of art education for different student populations, professional art training, historical changes in art education, art education research, aesthetic education, and art education as it is currently practiced in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (RK)

Describes implementation of the new Soviet general elementary and secondary curriculum from 1964-74. Emphasized at all levels and in all subject areas are life and works of Lenin, Lenin's theoretical legacy, and documents of the Communist Party of the Soviety Union. Specific changes in humanities, languages, social studies, math, and science are…

Reform of the Soviet Union's educational system was begun again in the 1980s under Mikhail Gorbachev with the goal of educating the Soviet citizen to function effectively in a newly restructured economy. This paper takes stock of the efforts to reform Soviet schools undertaken between 1984 and 1990. Soviet educators recognized that reconstruction…

This multilingual and annotated bibliography designed to serve as a reference to scholars and students of Russian-Soviet Education contains 1,652 annotations and lists 103 dissertations whose abstracts are readily available. It covers resource materials published in both the 19th and 20th centuries. Also included is a chapter outlining the…

Advances in public education in the USSR have been impressive. Over a relatively short historical span, the country has seen not only the eradication of illiteracy but also the establishment of universal elementary and secondary education. Higher and secondary specialized education has expanded prodigiously. (RM)