Bourgeois Ideas in Communist Construction: The Development of Stanislav Shatskii's Teacher Training Methods

This article traces the role of the non‐communist, late Tsarist, ‘new education' movement in shaping early Soviet views of teacher training. Comparing the teacher‐training approach of one of the leaders of this Tsarist educational movement—Stanislav Shatskii—with that of the Soviet Commissariat of Enlightenment (Narkompros), the article first reveals the power of the ‘new education' movement in shaping Soviet teacher training practices. It then describes how Marxist ideology and practical problems of implementation forced new educators to work out a compromise solution to teacher training that blended Marxism‐Leninism with the values and approaches of the new education movement. This compromise suggests that early visions of communism incorporated important ‘socialist‐universalist' values: internationalism, experimentation, non‐violence, freedom and unleashing human potential. Although this 1920s ‘amalgam' was abandoned in 1932, elements of the new education approach have remained important in Russian education to this day, including a focus on active, outreach education, an emphasis on character education (vospitanie), and a belief in the power of community‐based education.