Education for decline: Soviet vocational and technical schooling from Khrushchev to Gorbachev

Abstract

Dennis Soltys. Education for Decline: Soviet Vocational and Technical Schooling from Khrushchev Gorbachev. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1997. 222 pp. Tables. Notes. Bibliography. Index. $60.00, cloth. $21.95, paper.In its title, this book promises assess Soviet vocational and technical schooling in the years from Khrushchev Gorbachev. However, it focuses primarily on the last decade of the existence of the Soviet Union, from 1981 1991, leaving the periods in the shadows.The book has four parts and a total of ten chapters. The first part has an historical and contextual character. In the introduction and chapter 2, Dennis Soltys provides a review of the Western literature in the field of his research. His following chapter is based on Soviet sources and further substantiates the main features of Soviet education and economy as portrayed in the Western literature reviewed earlier (p. 9). Unfortunately, the author decided dispense with the review of Soviet publications on the same topic, which could have significantly benefited his research.The second part of the book covers education policies from 1981 1984. It outlines the making and substance of the 1984 educational (p. 10), trying find out whose political or institutional interests were behind the reform. Soltys makes the point that the impulse for the reform came from a modernizing central government, but it was not supported by many in the country because intellectual ferment and policy criticism were virtually absent during Brezhnev (p. 10). The result was a generally backward-looking concept of reform.The third part of the book considers the implementation of the reform up 1988. It analyzes the steps made by the central government implement the reform. The section also pursues the question of whether co-ordination of central policy was achieved at the different levels of the administration of education.The fourth part covers discussions on the course and implementation of the reform in 1988 and attempts summarize the result of Soviet educational policies. In the tenth and final chapter the author provides a summary of his major findings. The book has an impressive bibliography and contains a good index and endnotes.The book will certainly be of interest those who analyze Soviet educational policies or specialize in and study late Soviet history. The basic underlying thesis is that in the 1980s, Soviet education continued be deeply rooted in a vocational education/applied science paradigm (p. 137). Soltys suggests that Soviet policy in the field of education was idea-driven and managerial and that the 1984 reform was designed within a context of the ideological self-isolation of the Soviet elite and of the USSR as a whole (p. 137). He also justly believes that lack of public interest, involvement, and criticism contributed the poor character of the reform. As he presents it, the two major targets of the reform were to increase the proportion of vocational/technical students at the secondary level and strengthen the integration of school and factory (p. 138). However, the clash of different interests represented by the central government, enterprises, municipalities, and educational institutions led the failure of the reform.In approaching the period associated with Mikhail Gorbachev, the author admits that the era brought more freedom in the discussions of the fate of the reform. He states that, [h]owever, most criticisms centred not around basic assumptions and strategies in education, but around narrower topics of institutional fragmentation and implementational slippage (p. 138). It is difficult disagree with such statements, as they are well supported by quantitative and qualitative evidence from different sources.However, the author attempts enlarge his agenda by taking the reader out of an analysis of vocational-technical schooling and into a general evaluation of the Soviet education system. …