ABSTRACT
Soviet childhood, children’s books, book illustrations and reading habits, education and schooling have all been the focus of a number of academic studies and these have provided an important insight into the early processes of formal socialisation beyond the family into the socialist regime. The Soviet way of teaching and learning was in itself, then, sufficient to stir signs of rebellion in the more free-thinking children. Most Soviet schoolchildren, having already spent a number of years in state-run pre-school childcare institutions, started formal education around the age of seven. The content of some school subjects inevitably changed over time in line with the current political thinking and policy agenda of the Soviet leadership. Raissa Berg’s critical assessment of the Soviet variant of the academic discipline was that ‘Historians are deprived of the chance to have their own opinions’. The Soviet education system inevitably served as an important basis for socialisation into the regime.
