The Fate of the Communist Ideal of Education

Abstract

During the first fifteen years of Soviet rule, the basic principles of school policy of the Communist Party have gone through at least five transformations. During the period of war communism (1917-22) the prevailing idea was what was known as "polytechnism," which many took to be nothing other than an extreme development of democratic pedagogy. For radical educators of all countries, in particular the "bourgeois" countries, this original communist ideal of education has to this day preserved its dazzling force and covers up the harsh reality of the Soviet school system. Meanwhile, as early as the NEP [New Economic Policy] period, the ideal of the polytechnically developed individual, freely proving himself under conditions of a classless society, was relegated to the background by the ideal of the "fighter for the interests for the proletariat" who had firmly assimilated the Marxist worldview and all the knowledge needed by the "red specialist."