Editor's Introduction

Abstract

Abstract Five years ago, Soviet Education published two issues (November and December 1976, Volume XIX, No. 1 and No. 2) on schooling and higher education at the beginning of the Tenth Five-Year Plan for socioeconomic development in the USSR. Five years later, it is time to take stock of the results of the work done during that planning period — the years 1976 to 1980 — and to project policy goals for education in the years of the new, Eleventh, Five-Year Plan - 1981 to 1985. Such is the rhythmic cycle followed in Soviet policymaking. The successive five-year plans are launched by the congresses of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU): the Twenty-Fifth Communist Party Congress was held in February 1976 at the start of the Tenth Plan, and the Twenty-Sixth was held in February 1981 at the beginning of the Eleventh.