Administration and regulation of the Soviet system of general, secondary and higher education in the context of state policy and ideology in the USSR (A historical and legal aspect)

The Soviet state-legal system built a specific model of administration and normative regulation of all spheres of life of the state and society. The sphere of general, secondary and higher education in Soviet times was an important sociocultural, political and ideological factor in the internal policy of the Soviet state. At the same time, many aspects laid down in the Soviet education system have survived to this day. Therefore, the relevance of this study is due to the need to investigate the genesis and to analyze the development of the education system and its legal regulation in order to understand the processes that are still taking place in the Russian education system today. The author also sets an objective of analyzing the genesis of the branch of educational law in the Soviet period and determining its main features. For a comprehensive description of the object of research, the author examined the legislation and by-laws of the national level , the acts of the higher, central, sectoral and other state authorities of the USSR and the RSFSR on the organization of general, secondary and higher education. Based on the structural-functional and problem-chronological approaches in characterizing educational legislation, the author found that the system of sources of educational law was qualitatively changing throughout the Soviet period. It developed towards systematization and a clear hierarchy. The system of sources of educational law developed from the diversity of types of acts in the late 1910s-1930s that regulated relations in the field of education (decrees, orders, etc.) to a clearly built hierarchy of laws and by-laws “headed” by special generalizing laws. In the course of the study, the author came to the following conclusions. The desire to subordinate education at all levels to the goals and objectives of state building, and to arrange it into an administrative-command system of management resulted in the formation of a central- ized, vertically integrated system, on the one hand, but deprived the system of flexibility and eliminated any grassroots initiative in the organization of education. It was the relatively “mild” conditions of the 1920s and the Perestroika that softened these processes (in matters of management of educational institutions, financing, determining the nature of their work, etc.). The unconditional achievement of the Soviet period in matters of education and its management was the systematic introduction of universal school education (from primary to complete); the expansion of the network, types and levels of educational institutions; the creation of an effective system and measures to support students; and other activities. In the first decades of the Soviet period, under the influence of objective and subjective historical factors, the set of normative legal acts was formed primarily as a branch of legislation, and, subsequently, it was shaped into an independent branch of law.

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