Antin Semenovych Makarenko

Abstract

Antin S. Makarenko has been hailed in the Soviet Union as a leading educator and theoretician. His Pedagogical Poem helps us to understand the history of the development of the Soviet education system, its philosophical and ideological foundations. It is nearly impossible to understand current ideological assumptions of Soviet education without acknowledging Makarenko's profound contributions. He was described by Maxim Gorky as an educator of the new type. Those who extol Makarenko's contributions today acknowledge that he was not 'an armchair' ideologist, but an activist, 'a doer'. His main 'dogmas' are still the foundations of Soviet education. They can be summarized briefly as follows: The 'a priori' unquestionable acceptance of the primacy of the communist ideology and leadership; the main goal of education as the upbringing of 'a new person', a builder of communist society; importance of a collective (the concept elaborated by Makarenko) in education and formation of 'new socialist personality'. The timeliness of this paper should be viewed in the context of announced 'openness' (glasnost) in the Soviet Union.