This research pays its attention to the history of the formation of education for children with special educational needs [SEN] with focus on Soviet (1917-1991)/Post-Soviet (1991-2012) periods. Even though, both of these ‘time frames’ are designated as the most radical and fundamental in their educational reforms, they are a part of the continuity in the field. During 1917-1991 a formation of education for children with SEN was permanently processed in line with building equality in education for all children as one of the alternative experiments among other original worldwide ‘projects’ and is acknowledged as the most massive social experiment in the history of modernization. The retrospective idea of this research is motivated by three main essentials. The first one: the Soviet educational reforms, being built upon highly centralized, specialized and standardized schools and agencies, developed an educational system for children with disabilities, inside general educational laws. This pattern was kept, following the 1991 Post-Soviet educational laws. The question, which is raised out of this feature is: How was the legalization of special education issues formulated and implemented across these two periods? The second essential has its roots in the state policy provision of the ideological frame for Soviet sciences, in general, and educational science, in particular. After the revolution of 1917, the need of new power in new ‘sciences that reflected the new image of socialist man’ looked for new paradigmatic assumptions in education. Marxism-Leninism was employed as an ideology of power for building a progressive society and science to serve these goals. Soviet educational science got its philosophical and methodological transformation. Dialectical materialism established philosophical foundations and ground-rules for guiding research in educational science turned it to became programmatic. The other question, addressed to this research is: What scientific perspective/s challenged educational and pedagogical issues in regard to children with disabilities during these two periods? The third essential of this research is directed to the justification of a school curriculum for children with SEN. An intensive process of searching for new scientific ideas how to upbring and educate children with disabilities in a young Soviet state was combined with a new course to cultural revolution, targeting ‘a fight against illiteracy’. Strong beliefs in professional and research communities that by literacy force, new methodology and pedagogical methods, children with disabilities would become useful societal members as other children, contributed to the loss of the ‘specificity’ of the special school. In 1931 schools for deaf, blind and mentally retarded children got state order to teach children employing a mass school curriculum. The research question out of this essential became: What special education curriculum was created and what it was resulting in within Soviet and Post Soviet time? This study is based mainly on Russian sources, relating to policy documents in general and compulsory education within the relevant political and scientific framework. Historical documents are represented by Constitutions and Educational Laws of the RSFSR and USSR; chronological collection of the state decrees, orders, government letters, reports and regulations of education for children SEN. Scientific sources are based on authoritative monographs in the history of Soviet education and special education; defectological vocabularies issued by the Research Institute of Defectology of the Academy of Pedagogical Sciences of the USSR. The data analysis was based on an overall hermeneutic approach to data collection. The descriptions were collected and then interpreted through historical and phenomenological inquiries and critically met. The main findings were divided into two big themes: Desired contours of the future and a state order for experimentand ‘Unfinished experimentation: disrupting the pattern’.

This study is based mainly on Russian sources, relating to policy documents in general and compulsory education within the relevant political and scientific framework. Historical documents are represented by Constitutions and Educational Laws of the RF and the USSR; a chronological collection of the state decrees, orders, government letters, reports and regulations of education for children with intellectual disabilities. Scientific sources are based on authoritative monographs in the history of Soviet education and special needs education Data from the research texts were collected as a peer review resources through the Russian State Library (journals: Special School [Spetsialnaya Shkola]; Defectology [Defecktologoya]); electronic international data bases Discovery, Google scholar; the electronic platform of the research Institute of Correctional Pedagogy (ICP) of the APS of the RF (journal: Almanac of the Institute of Correctional Pedagogy). Of particular interest was a number of articles by professor Dyachkov, the director of the Scientific Research Institute of Defectology, written during 1961-1967 in the journal of "Special School"; several articles by this author are covering the Soviet history of the formation of special education and the provision of tasks for the defectology as a science in the period 1917-1967 were selected for subsequent analysis. The data analysis has an overall hermeneutic approach to data collection. The descriptions were collected and then interpreted by historical and phenomenological inquiries. The main task of the perusal of documents and research texts was to detect and utilize certain formulations relating to understanding disability issues, rights to education and its realization, the scientific perspectives challenged educational and pedagogical (curriculum) issues for children with SEN across Soviet and Post-Soviet educational reforms. The content analysis was proceeded through the idea to ‘make a symbolic reading of the text in question’ for further ‘uncovering meaning, develop(ing) understanding, and discover(ing) insights relevant to the research problem’. Units of analysis of the findings were identified as ‘themes’ perspective, where significance of the words and phrases, expressions and frequency of certain words was noted. The main findings were divided into two big themes: Desired contours of the future and a state order for experiment’ and ‘Unfinished experimentation: disrupting the pattern’.

The research paid its attention to the history of the ‘experimental’ formation of special needs education [SNE] and its transition during the Soviet/Post-Soviet periods. Research was addressed to the three main essentials: legislation, science and school curriculum. Examining the results of the study, it was found that revolutionary formation of SNE emerged from the discourse of child defectiveness and class radicalism discourse, addressed to the formation of a new school as a place for social engineering of a new mankind. In practice, class radicalism institutionalized inequality in education by recognizing, categorizing/randomizing and alienating those who didn’t fit desirable contours of the future. State required similar achievements for all students, those who couldn’t follow were marginalized. Even though, later the discourse of child defectiveness became more differentiated and the class radicalism discourse was softened by the Soviet origins of the ‘socialist humanism’, a full recognition of rights of these children to education was formulated in the educational law of 2012. The implementation of this law still needs further monitoring and analysis. Analyzing a school curriculum issues, emphasize, that special schools were instructed how to adapt a curriculum and were extra resourced for that purpose. Since late 1930s adaptation of the curriculum gradually raised differentiation among students, diversified typology of special schools and further individualization of a learning instruction. The growing educational diversification unfolded in segregated contexts, where children with SEN experienced learning and socialization. The science perspective of challenging SNE was originated by pedology and defectology. Pedology failed. Defectology took over the SNE issues and developed itself in a program science, serving a state order for further formation of SNE, manifesting its scientific hegemony across the Soviet geographical space. Research Institute of Defectology monopolised the right to deconstruct defectology into correctional pedagogy, keeping control for the future development in the field.

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