The first all-Russian congress on extracurricular education and the formation of a system of cultural and educational activity in Soviet Russia

The First All-Russian Congress on Extracurricular Education (1919) is considered as a source of ideas for the modernization of cultural and educational practices in Soviet Russia. The article analyzes the General prerequisites of the process of transformation of extracurricular education in the 1920th and the principles of extracurricular education formulated by the participants of the Congress: the principles of free creative self-activity, accessibility of institutions of extracurricular education, planned secularism, etc. It is concluded that Congress has predetermined organizational and institutional specificity, state the nature of the educational activities of the Soviet period, and also laid the Foundation for positive change (universal and mass character, General availability and gratuity, etc.) and negative trends in the total political indoctrination, rejection of diversity of forms of social control, a centralized bureaucratization of the work of cultural institutions. The Congress is evaluated as a social and cultural project that anticipated many forms of national cultural and educational work and activities of institutions of extracurricular education in the XX century.