The soviet educational-propaganda system during the reign of Nikita Khrushchev

Abstract

The main Nikita Khrushchev achievement in the reforming of Soviet educational system was the introduction of the universal and compulsory education in an eight-year primary school. The school was called an incomplete secondary comprehensive polytechnical vocational school. This resulted in prolongation of the non-obligatory education in a high school to 11 years. This reform was revoked in 1966 by Leonid Brezhnev and the Soviet Union returned to a ten-year secondary school. Despite his progressive reforms, Khrushchev continued the Stalinist methods of children and youth upbringing which stated that the labour is the best way to materialize the ideal of the communistic state. After the 1958 reform, practically all adolescents learning in a secondary school were forced to work or had their placements in workshops, plants or factories. This was called the ‘Polytechization’.