Children's Ideological Education: from Soviet Union to Ex-Soviet Countries

• In Event: Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion: Educational experiences of post-Soviet students within and outside Eurasia

Proposal

Upbringing and indoctrination are the important part of education and educational policy (Franklin, 2004). Soviet State paid a lot of its attention to the issues of education, since the development of values was considered a state task (Ivanov, Kupriyanov and Kosaretsky, 2021). Currently, the state in modern period is making great efforts to "return" education and upbringing to the sphere of state interests, including the development of civic values, patriotism and social skills (Zahra, 2015). The novelty of the research is an attempt to trace the transformation of educational policy in matters of upbringing and indoctrination, based on the theory of institutional changes (Hanson, 2001).
The aim of the study is to study the phenomenon and transformation of approaches to children’s upbringing in the context of state participation and educational policy based in normative legal acts and political declarations. The sample of the research includes Azerbajdjan, Belarus, and Russia.
To study changes in state policy in the field of education and identify the main trends, we based on time comparative approach (Cowen, 2000) and used the method of analysis of normative legal acts (NLA), as well as Communist Party acts, which researchers also refer to the NLA (Tomkin, 2016) of the USSR and Azerbajdjan, Belarus, and Russia, regulating the issues of children’s indoctrination. It was a key element of the Soviet education system and state policy in the field of education (Ivanov, 2022). In total, we have analyzed about 50 legislative acts of the Soviet and post-Soviet period. These documents include constitutions, laws on education, recommendations and decisions of congresses in the period from 1918 to 2022.
We see the transformation of state policy in the field of education during the change of political discourse, the return (parallels) to the Soviet experience, as well as the growth of regulation of upbringing after the trend of decline of the late Soviet period.
The key trend during the USSR period is formation and development of children in the spirit of an exemplary Soviet citizen, a communist, devoted to the Motherland and duty. At the same time, it is worth noting that not all the provisions regulating education were purely ideological. Many documents also fixed the “simple truths”– the development of activity and initiative in children, intransigence to injustice, and intolerance to national and racial hostility, a sense of responsibility, instilling rules of personal hygiene, etc. As a result, the state has regulated provisions affecting the smallest details of the life of the younger generation. At the same time, despite the actual absence of sanctions for violating these provisions, neglect of the regulations could cause a different reaction of the society in which the child was.
After the collapse of the USSR, the legislation of the independent states in the field of education in the first years of its formation was strikingly different from the norms of the USSR. Starting in 1993 and for the next 17 years, the documents fixed the free choice of upbringing, thus “disavowing” the detailed regulation of this issue by the state.
At the present stage, the policy in the field of children’s upbringing in Azerbajdjan, Belarus, and Russia has undergone significant changes. We can attribute them to path-dependence. There is the preservation of strong authoritarian influence from the past in these countries (Giddens, 2004). This connection provides the possibility of a natural “rollback” of the education policy in context of indoctrination and upbringing. In the current situation, changes are taking place not to the model of the Cold War period, as one might expect, but to the policies and practices of the 30s of the XX century.
The development of values and upbringing is once again becoming the part of the state’s total presence in the lives of families.

Authors

• Ivan Ivanov, HSE University

• Isak Frumin, Constructor University Bremen