The aim of the paper is to research the important process of the history of the educational development of Estonia, the reform of the national school curriculum which began after the teacher's congress in 1987 and ended in 1996 when government approved the document. That reform was carried out in the context of thoroughgoing and dramatic historical changes that deeply affected the whole Estonian society. The distinctive features of the Estonian model of general education became more visible with the nascent space for liberalization caused by the Gorbachev's "perestroika" in the Soviet Union in the middle 1980s. Although Estonians already had certain autonomy to teach and learn in Estonian and use Estonian textbooks, it was just after the collapse of the Soviet system that abolished Soviet traces in the framework of the Estonian school curriculum. [For complete volume, see ED567118.]