Russian Federation

Abstract

Public schooling and vocational education only developed in the course of the latter half of the nineteenth century. After the October Revolution, Bolsheviks made the education system one of the priorities: the abolition of widespread illiteracy was to be pursued; the emancipation of national minorities was to be encouraged by the development of their languages and cultures; and measures were to be taken to educate a qualified workforce for the centrally planned process of industrialization. The basic principles of the international education reform movement were mixed together with revolutionary concepts of linking school and society, learning and working, general and vocational education, and instruction and production. With the establishment of Stalinism at the beginning of the 1930s, the education system increasingly became an executive tool of a central, hierarchical, and totalitarian government. At the same time, it was an additional resource deployed to serve the planned economy. The school system returned to an authoritarian and uniform school type, with strict control over content and ideology. Initially, compulsory schooling was limited to 4 years and was then gradually extended in repeated attempts at reform. However, before the breakup of the Soviet Union, it was not possible to fully extend it to 10 years or-by starting school at the age of 6 instead of 7 years-to 11 years. As Perestroika took root, the fundamental ideas of the Soviet school system and the principles of its pedagogy and educational policies were no longer unquestioningly accepted. For decades the educational ideas of the early Soviet period, as well as of prerevolutionary Russia and modern international reformers, had been a taboo subject. However, as debate became more open, Soviet pedagogy was publicly condemned as “education from the military barracks,” “education without children,” and “leveling down.” Blame for the mistakes made was directed at the way contents had been influenced by the ideological dictates of the monolithic Communist Party and by the requirements of an economy and employment sector dominated by the so-called military-industrial complex. Calls now arose for the removal of ideology from education, for the introduction of a more humane approach, and for the humanities to be stressed rather than the natural sciences that had dominated until then. In addition, the concept of individualization was introduced, which meant that the all-round development of a person’s character was to be encouraged along with the fostering of his or her special skills and gifts. The state monopoly of the school system was dissolved, and schools were to fulfill a service function directed toward the interests of an increasingly pluralistic civil society.