EDUCATION PRIORITIES IN SOVIET REGULATORY DOCUMENTS: HISTORICAL LESSONS ; ПРІОРИТЕТИ ВИХОВАННЯ В РАДЯНСЬКИХ НОРМАТИВНИХ ДОКУМЕНТАХ: ІСТОРИЧНІ УРОКИ

The value priorities of education, declared in Soviet regulatory documents, have been analysed in this article, as well as historical lessons, that should be taken into account in the process of forming of the value orientations of modern student youth, have been defined. It was established that among the basic regulatory documents that formed the legal and ideological basis for the regulation of social relations in the Soviet Union, the monopolist party’s programs played the leading role. According to the research results, higher education institutions had to apply a comprehensive approach to educational work, consisting in a combination of ideological and political, labor and moral upbringing. And communist education, constructed from international, atheistic, moral, legal, professional-labor, and aesthetic components, became a thoroughly dominant educational value. It was found that the main task of teachers was to educate students in the spirit of militant atheism – not just non-believers, but conscious, convinced, militant atheists; accordingly, faith and religion were presented as anti-values. It has been investigated that, even during the period of «perestroika», atheist education remained to be the priority direction; the fight against religious values and practices was encouraged through the introduction of new Soviet rites and customs. It was established that such an approach ignored the needs of the spiritual development of the personality, hindered the formation of his/ her moral values based on traditional Christian ethics and culture. It was concluded that the leitmotif of the Soviet legislative and regulatory framework in the field of higher education was ideological and political education in order to form the communist beliefs and morals, boundless devotion to the «socialist Motherland», feelings of collectivism, internationalism, and love of work in student youth. Such experience indicates the inadmissibility of ideologizing of the educational sector, which should function on democratic, ...