This book sums up one of the most profound educational reforms in modern Russian history. Rejecting the Soviet system of schooling, this reform engendered an array of new strategies of education. At the same time, the very fact of radically rejecting of the past, the attempt to start from the beginning, might be seen as a revitalization of an approach typical of previous generations of Russian educational reformers. The essays included in the volume compare current educational reform to the past, analyze it in the broader cultural, political and social context, and study the shifts that...

Grand Theater examines bureaucracy not as a readily identifiable structure but rather as a process of day-to-day operation. Thus it is concerned with how agencies of both the communist party and the state apparatus not only implemented directives from above but also responded to perceived successes and failures, chose to produce, share, and conceal information, and reacted when common citizens injected themselves into governance by making demands and complaints. It concentrates on the 1930s as a seminal period when Stalin's regime established a hypercentralized system that dominated the...

War, Evacuation, and the Exercise of Power examines the history of the Pedagogical Institute, located in the USSR's Kirov region from 1941 to 1952. Holmes reveals a tangled and complex relationship of local, regional, and national agencies. While it recognizes the immense strength of the center, it emphasizes a contentious diffusion, although not a confusion, of authority. In so doing, it departs from traditional models of Soviet power with their neatly drawn vertical and horizontal lines of command. It also demonstrates institutional and personal behavior simultaneously consistent with and...

In the post-Soviet era, Russia has witnessed profound educational reform. This volume offers an assessment of the changes & how they have been implemented.