Sovietization in Poland and its Impact on Education and Pedagogy

The purpose of this article is to identify the roots of the phenomenon known as Sovietization, and to explore its implementation in Polish education and pedagogy. In Poland (and other countries of Central and Eastern Europe), which was left in Stalin’s sphere of influence as a result of the conferences at yalta (February 4–11, 1945) and Potsdam (July 17, 1945 – August 2, 1945), Sovietization is a painful page of history. Understood as the imposition of economic, social, and cultural solutions modeled on Soviet Russia and then the USSR, combined with communist indoctrination, it had negative consequences for education and pedagogy. These effects resulted from the anthropological and cultural assumptions of Sovietization, which were implemented in education by the creation of a new paradigm of knowledge about education – socialist pedagogy. The history of Sovietization in Poland had two politically distinct stages. It operated 1) during the period of Polish independence (1918/20 – 1939) and 2) during the period of communist enslavement (1945–1989). In the first period, the influence of communism was limited. The second stage, which represents an interesting and at the same time cruel experience of the Poles, demands greater attention from historians.