Dreaming of Institutions: The transformation of Children’s After-Sсhool Time Sector in Post-Soviet Countries

Abstract

The system of children’s extracurricular education in the Soviet Union had was highly institutionalized. It provided and ensured integral enrollment (coverage) and access (equity) to extracurricular activities that fulfilled not only educational goals, but also inherited social goals. The system was also an important tool for indoctrination and incorporation of the Soviet child. After the collapse of the USSR, countries faced the need to build national systems of extracurricular education. The processes of transformation of the Soviet institution had different directions and the creation of the system correlates differently with Soviet traditions. The study of the institutional transformation of the Soviet system of extracurricular education covers all 15 former Soviet republics and is based on the methods of institutional analysis, which allows to fix and describe transformation scenarios and correlate them with approaches to the assessment and analysis of institutional changes. The study also attempts to consider a child's extracurricular time as a socially important resource that can be used as a rent for economic growth.