Educational Reform in Post-Soviet Russia : Legacies and Prospects

Ben Eklof is Professor of History and Education at Indiana University and Director of the Institute for the Study of Russian Education, as well as editor of Khronika: Chronicle of Education in Russia and Eurasia. Among his books are Russian Peasant Schools (1986), Soviet Briefing (1989), School and Society in Tsarist and Soviet Russia (ed., 1993), Democracy in the Russian School (ed., 1993), Russia's Great Reforms, 1855-1881 (ed.,1994), The World of the Russian Peasant (ed., 1990). Recently, he edited the two volume English language translation of Boris Mironov's acclaimed Social History of Imperial Russia, 1700-1917. Prof. Eklof continues to work on a volume on the daily life of the Russian school before the Revolution, and to publish on education in the post-Soviet era.

Larry E. Holmes is Professor of History at the University of South Alabama. His publications include: The Kremlin and the Schoolhouse: Reforming Education in Soviet Russia, 1917-1931 (1991); Sotsial'naia istoriia Rossii: 1917-1941 (1994); and Stalin's School: Moscow's Model School No. 25, 1931-1937 (1999). A book, Grand Theater: The Administration of Schools in the Russian Republic, 1931-1941, is under preparation.

Vera Kaplan started her professional career as a history teacher in secondary school, then as lecturer and senior lecturer in the institutions for higher education in Leningrad, USSR. After her emigration to Israel in 1992 she joined the Cummings Center for Russian and East European Studies as a research associate. Currently she leads a research project 'The Teaching of History and Formation of New Historical Narrative in Post-Soviet Russia.' Dr Kaplan authored a number of scholarly papers on the history of Russian education, as well as on educational policy and history teaching in contemporary Russia and co-edited a volume entitled, The Teaching of History in Contemporary Russia: Trends and Perspectives (Tel Aviv, 1999). Alongside her research work, Dr. Kaplan teaches courses on modern Russian history at the Department of History, Tel Aviv University.