In the spring of 1944, as Allied victory in WWII became more real, preparations for the renewal of Soviet dictatorship in the Baltic States began. Communist “operative groups” were created in Moscow and followed on the heels of the Red Army. The task of these groups was to import Soviet ideology and order into all spheres of Baltic life. Oberländer (2007) calls this restructuring “Sovietization” and singles out several instruments of Sovietization, which also concern educational research: the transformation of the political system, which is propagandised as ‘democratization’; the formation of the Communist Party as the only political power; repressions and control over social movements and information; the mass influx of Soviet officials to ensure the replacement of the social elite in a specific territory, the nationalization of industry, trade, and banks and their incorporation into the centrally planned Soviet economy; and the unification of the educational system and culture.

Some researchers also consider the concepts ‘colonialism’ (Kalertas, 2006) or ‘covert colonialism’ (Lane, 2001) to be appropriate discourse for explaining the behaviour and actions of the Soviet Union towards smaller and/or weaker states, considering their military power. 

Analysing Soviet policies in German universities, Tsvetkova (2013) speaks of ‘cultural transfer’, ‘expansion’, ‘Sovietisation’, and ‘cultural imperialism.’ 

Sometimes, concepts dealing with Soviet restructuring of its “colonies” in Eastern Europe neglect the actual people/actors, their ability (or inability) to influence events, and their subjective motivations and explanations for their actions.

For this reason we have chosen to analyse the actions by particular Soviet “missionaries”, who participated in the restructuring, or Sovietisation, of the history of education in Latvia. We studied this Sovietisation based on the dimensions of the research discipline developed by Hofstetter et al. (2014): institutional status; construction of networks; ability of a discipline to define its own credentials and to form future practitioners; and theoretical models and methods for collecting and analysing data.

The actions of these Soviet missionaries were, of course, influenced by their previous histories. Thus, we reconstructed and analysed their biographies, using Fischer-Rosenthal’s (2000) theory about hermeneutic/biographical case reconstruction, as well as theories on missionaries as agents of change (Depaepe, 1992, 1995, 1998).   

Biographies of the Soviet missionaries and historians of education were analysed using three sets of questions: (1) Why did these people undertake the duties of missionaries of Soviet power? (2) What were the instruments and mechanisms available that allowed for and contributed to their actions as Soviet agents in the field of the history of education? How effective were these missionaries in changing and influencing the development of the history of education in Latvia? What was the “new”, imported history of education? (3) How can we view the work of these missionaries and their inspired changes from today’s perspective?

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