What comes after post-Soviet? Towards a new concept of de-Sovietization in higher education and research

For almost three decades, scholars sought to understand the transformations of higher education systems previously subjected to totalitarian Soviet control. Early attempts to investigate post-Soviet reforms provided limited explanations of the chaotic and challenging nature of these transformations, inducing a valid critique of the dominant interpretation of the post-Soviet changes as a unidirectional transition from the party/state-dominated model to a Western market-oriented system. The processes of deconstructing the Soviet legacy have remained under-studied, while post-Soviet research in education largely accepts the legitimization and even re-integration of the past. By drawing on existing theoretical and empirical scholarship, this article explains why a new conceptualization of de-Sovietization is needed in higher education research and why the processes of re-envisioning values, practices, and institutions in the post-Soviet education and research are necessary to promote critical inquiry, academic freedom, and scholars’ agential responsibilities.