This book examines the largest experiment with radical, early twentieth-century new educational ideas ever implemented. Focusing on the educational theory and educational institutions of a leading pedagogue (Stanislav Shatskii), it describes how early Soviet educators attempted to implement cutting-edge educational ideas amidst the famine, war, and revolution of 1920s Russia. Although these attempts to formulate a radical communist educational system eventually foundered on the unwritten rules of the Russian village and the top-down commands of Stalinist orthodoxy, they are important. This...