Supreme Soviet Research Articles

Chronicle. Vol. 69, No. 1 (1988)

By the Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the Tatar ASSR for achievements in scientific and pedagogical activities, the honorary title of Honored Scientist of the Tatar ASSR was awarded to Halima Mukhlisovna Sayfullina.

Perestroika: New Thinking for Our Country and the World

Perestroika, which means restructuring, is Mikhail Gorbachev's own account of the policies he is currently implementing in the USSR. Created 70 years after the October Revolution, perestroika constitutes a revolution in ideas, attitudes and practice that entails a radical alteration of Russian domestic and foreign policy. Frank in his criticism of the past, the Soviet leader details his convictions for tolerance, understanding and world peace. He presents a coherent vision which he offers as an alternative to the current divisions and tensions of the international political scene. Mikhail Gorbachev has been the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union's Central Committee, Chairman of the USSR Council of Defence and Member of the Praesidium of the USSR Supreme Soviet since March 1985.

Agro-Industrial Science on the Road to Restructuring

From the editors of Sovety narodnykh deputatov: We hope that our readers have taken note of the fact that the journal has published several articles on the introduction of scientific advances into agricultural production since the beginning of the year. In the second issue, this topic was the subject of the article "Intensification—the Demand of the Times" by Academician I. Glebov, chairman of the USSR Supreme Soviet's Commission on Science and Technology. Discussion of the topic was continued in the fifth issue in an article entitled "Upgrading the Knowledge of Agro-Industrial Committee Cadres "by V. Bival'kevich, first deputy chairman of the Altai Territorial Agro-Industrial Committee. The sixth issue published the article "In League with Science" by Kh. Vel'di, first deputy chairman of the Estonian SSR Council of Ministers and chairman of the republic State Agro-Industrial Committee.

Anatomy of Gorbachev's Economic Reform

The paper outlines and assesses the initial and potential effectiveness of a package of radical economic reforms, adopted by the CPSU Central Committee and Supreme Soviet in late June 1987. The areas involved include the central planning system, the enterprise, territorial versus sectoral management of the economy, the supply system, prices and wages, finance and credit, foreign trade, private and cooperative activity, and agriculture. Problems which may compromise the success of reform efforts, particularly inconsistencies between reform goals and long-established policies, are outlined as well. Journal of Economic Literature, Classification Numbers: 027, 054, 124.

The Gnosiological Aspects of Education

"The Fundamental Directions of General Education and Vocational School Reform," which were approved by the April 1984 plenary meeting of the CPSU Central Committee and the first session of the USSR Supreme Soviet (eleventh convocation), reflect the vital vested interest of our entire society in the improvement of education, in the optimal resolution of this truly cardinal challenge. As emphasized in a resolution of the CPSU Central Committee plenary meeting (10 April 1984), "the reform is expected to raise the work done in general education and vocational schools to a qualitatively new level; to eliminate the existing shortcomings in their activity; to ensure that pupils will gain an in-depth mastery of basic knowledge; to shape in them sound communist convictions, a fondness for work, and moral fastidiousness; to nurture pupils in a spirit of love for their multinational socialist Motherland and readiness to defend it in a spirit of proletarian internationalism.[See Soviet Education, vol. XXVII, nos. 6-7, p. 115.]

Dmitriy Kabalevsky and the Three Whales. Recent Developments in Music Education in the Soviet General Education School

Since January 1984 a thoroughgoing reform in Soviet education has been under discussion, and decisive steps have already been taken. The ‘Guidelines for Reform of General and Vocational Schools’, approved by the Supreme Soviet on 12 April 1984, indicated a firm intention to improve curricula, teaching methods and materials in all subjects. The arts figure prominently in the new proposals, and it is the purpose of this article to examine what is happening in music education, which has been a leader in the field.

Female Workers By Hand and Male Workers By Brain: the Occupational Composition of the 1985 Azerbaidzhan Supreme Soviet

Female Workers By Hand and Male Workers By Brain: the Occupational Composition of the 1985 Azerbaidzhan Supreme Soviet

The Food Program and Protecting the Environment

The conversion of the economy to the intensive path of development requires the careful and effective use of land, water, and the vegetable and animal world. The fulfillment of the Food Program depends in large measure thereupon. The existing ecological situation necessitated the examination of the question of observing legislative demands regarding nature conservation and the rational use of natural resources at a session of the USSR Supreme Soviet.

Methodological Bulletin from the RSFSR Ministry of Education, No. 155-M, July 4, 1984

In accordance with the USSR Supreme Soviet resolution of April 12, 1984 entitled "Concerning the Fundamental Directions of General Education and Vocational School Reform" [Ob osnov-nykh napravleniiakh reformy obshcheobrazovatel ‘noi i professional ‘noi shkole], the Presidium of the USSR Supreme Soviet, by an Edict dated June 15, 1984, has designated September 1 a day of public celebration, [to be called] Knowledge Day.

A Major Task of the School Reform

If Soviet society is to move forward with confidence toward our great goals, comrade Konstantin U. Chernenko, General Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee, stressed at the April 1984 Central Committee Plenum, each new generation must rise to a higher level of learning and general cultivation, occupational skill and civic activism. Such, one might say, is the law of social progress. This is wholly in keeping with the Fundamental Directions of General Education and Vocational School Reform, a document endorsed at the April 1984 Plenum of the CPSU Central Committee and the first session of the USSR Supreme Soviet (eleventh convocation).

At the Center of Attention: The Decisions of the CPSU

Particularly characteristic features of the sociopolitical atmosphere in which our people live and work these days, remarked Comrade Konstantin U. Chernenko, General Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee, at a meeting with Moscow metallurgical workers, are a creative, collective quest for solutions to compelling questions, competent efficiency, and uncompromising strictness. The decisions taken at the April 1984 Plenum of the CPSU Central Committee and the first session of the USSR Supreme Soviet (eleventh convocation) have done much to affirm that atmosphere everywhere. Those decisions attune Soviet people to the need for concerted and strenuous effort in all areas of communist construction.

A New Stage in the Development of the Vocational School

The transformations outlined by the CPSU Central Committee, the USSR Supreme Soviet, and the Soviet government in documents on the school reform are an integral part of the constructive activity undertaken by the Communist Party to optimize developed socialist society and are crucial to the confirmation of socialist civilization. As comrade Konstantin U. Chernenko, General Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee, indicated in the address he gave to the April 1984 Central Committee Plenum, one main point of reference—the shaping of a comprehensively developed personality—determines the essence and the purpose of the reform. By the time Soviet young people embark on an independent existence, they should be highly cultured and well educated, and have a fondness for work.

"Good Teaching, Good Upbringing"

The Law on general education and vocational school reform passed at the [first] session of the USSR Supreme Soviet [eleventh convocation] and the resolutions subsequently promulgated by the CPSU Central Committee and the USSR Council of Ministers that relate to concrete issues of the organization of teaching and upbringing work in schools during this new phase are an expression of the whole of Soviet society's exceptionally intense interest in the problems and concerns of public education, and in the urgent tasks surrounding the provision of an upbringing to the rising generation.

Toward the Successful Realization in Life of the School Reform Concepts

The resolution passed by the April 1984 Plenum of the CPSU Central Committee ("The Fundamental Directions of General Education and Vocational School Reform"), the policy statements and inferences on the ongoing development of the Soviet education system contained in the speech given by comrade Konstantin U. Chernenko, General Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee, to that Plenum, and the endorsement which "The Fundamental Directions of … School Reform" received from the first session of the USSR Supreme Soviet (eleventh convocation) have all been taken by the Soviet people as eloquent manifestations of the unremitting attention and concern which Lenin's own Party accords to the ongoing optimization of public education in this country.

Concerning the Familiarization of General Education School Pupils with Materials from the April 1984 Plenum of the CPSU Central Committee

Abstract Soviet educators, in common with the rest of the Soviet people, endorse wholly and in full the decisions taken at the April 1984 Plenum of the CPSU Central Committee and the first session of the USSR Supreme Soviet (eleventh convocation).

Strengthening the Scientific Foundations of the Activity of the Organs of Internal Affairs

The political line of the Twenty-sixth Congress of the CPSU, developed in resolutions of subsequent plenums of the CPSU Central Committee and in speeches by the General Secretary of the Committee and Chairman of the Presidium of the USSR Supreme Soviet K. U. Chernenko, embodies the scientific strategy of the Party and the socialist state for comprehensive improvement in the society of mature socialism. Grounded in political and scientific realism in its analysis, evaluation, and creative development of the general concept and key problems of scientific socialism, the Party has defined the immediate and long-term goals, the role, the place, and the concrete tasks of political, state, ideological, and economic institutions in communist construction.

Non-competitive elections and national politics: The USSR Supreme Soviet elections of 1984

Elections to the ‘eleventh convocation’ of the USSR Supreme Soviet took place on 4 March 1984. The process by which the elections took place is examined in detail, from the calling of the election on 16 December 1983, through the nomination, approval and registration of the candidates, to the pre-election meetings with constituents and the poll itself. The level of turnout (99.99 per cent) and the vote in favour of the single list of candidates (99.94 and 99.95 per cent respectively for the two chambers) were in each case the highest in Soviet history; they must, however, be adjusted for the use of ‘absentee certificates’ and an apparent increase in the number of citizens not recorded on the electoral register. Elections without choice, as in the USSR. are not necessarily elections without political significance. Soviet elections appear in fact to perform at least three important functions: legitimation; political communication between regime and citizenry; and political mobilization and socialization. Given the increasing economic difficulties they are likely to face in the later 1980s and beyond, the Soviet authorities may be expected to make even more use of such mechanisms in the future in order to secure acceptance of their decisions without resort to overtly coercive means.

Following Leninist Principles for the Development of Public Education

Important decisions taken at the CPSU (Communist Party of the Soviet Union) Central Committee Plenum and the first session of the USSR Supreme Soviet (eleventh convocation), both of met in April 1984, mapped out the ways in our Motherland's economic might and defense capability are to be further reinforced and developed socialism is to be optimized. Documents from the [CPSU] Plenum and the [Supreme Soviet] session, and the speeches given by comrade Konstantin U. Chernenko, General Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee and Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet, express the demonstrably valid strategy that is guiding the Party during this present phase. are speaking here of a strategy for advancement toward communism, Comrade Chernenko told the Plenum, which has nothing in common with either dilatory action or with skipping historically necessary stages of development. We are speaking of the fact that enroute to the Party's great goals there are still a fair number of major and...

Editorial: The School Reform and the Tasks of Public Education

The April 1984 Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) Central Committee Plenum and the first session of the USSR Supreme Soviet (eleventh convocation) have reviewed and endorsed "The Fundamental Directions of General Education and Vocational School Reform." The question of reform arose in connection with the need to optimize Soviet society comprehensively now that it has entered the historically protracted phase of developed socialism. Defining the factors that are crucially important in addressing this task, the June 1983 Plenum of the CPSU Central Committee stressed that shaping the new Soviet man is not just a crucial goal but also an indispensable condition of communist construction.

The General Education and Vocational School Reform: Tasks and Avenues of Actualization

A joint session of the USSR Academy of Pedagogical Sciences General Assembly, the Council of the Secondary General Education School, and the USSR Ministry of Education administrative board was convened in Moscow on May 15 and 16, 1984 to discuss the challenges that the education system faces in carrying out the decisions of the April 1984 Plenum of the CPSU Central Committee and the resolution entitled The Fundamental Directions of General Education and Vocational School Reform [Ob osnovykh napravleniiakh reformy obshcheobrazovatel ‘noi i professional’ noi shkoly], adopted at the first session of the USSR Supreme Soviet (eleventh convocation).