The following publication is based on a research project in support of doctoral students whose topic is: Education in children organisations in Bulgaria (1944-1990) presented through sources’’, funded by the state budget of the University of Sofia ‘’St. Clement of Ohrid’’and functioning as scientific research.This research is historical,pedagogical and scientific and it aims to reconstruct the basic trends in the development of children’s intellectual education in Bulgaria in the second half of XX century by means of historical sources. Its chronology spans half a century and includes one entire period of Bulgaria’s latest history. The key motive of the research is the absence of a new non-ideologised and objective scrutiny of the educational development of children within this period,including intellectual education as one of its types. This is only possible if based on a comprehensive source-centered research which is the actual sort of this project that has systematised sources from the Central State Archive, the Scientific Archive of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, the Bulgarian Historical Archive of the ''St. St. Cyril and Methodius'' National Library and the periodical press.Retrospectively, the publication presents the essential specifics, the content and the manifestation forms of intellectual education of children within the period of state democracy (1944-1947); the imposing of totalitarism and its development, called ‘’Todor Zhivkov’s power (zhivkovism in Bulgarian);the first decade of post-totalitarian development of Bulgaria, also known as Democratic transition. Considering the specific social situation in the country and the form of power, we put highlight on the organised school and extra-curricular intellectual education. The extracted positive practices and methods of intellectual education,existing in various extra-curricular forms, are a valuable historical capital for contemporary structures for informal education of children.The conclusions in this aspect are logically drawn from a historical view of the relation between the social situation in Bulgaria and the organised education of children – school or extra-curricular education, as well as from historically grounded place, role and importance of intellectual education prior to other kinds of education - patriotic, international, aesthetic, moral, physical and labour education.The definition of „child“ is explained by a normative order existed back then in the researched period.