Igor Ivanov

Igor Petrovich Ivanov (5 November 1923 – 9 August 1992) was a Soviet pedagogue, initiator and founder of the "social-pedagogical youth movement" known in Russia as the Communard movement. He was a member of the Soviet Academy of Pedagogy, full professor of the Herzen Pedagogical State University, author of several books, laureate of the Makarenko Prize named after early Soviet educator Anton Makarenko. Russian scholars consider Ivanov to be a creator of the "Communard methodology" or, as the author himself called it, the Collective Creative Deeds methodology (commonly referred to as Metodologiya Kollektivnich Tvorcheskich del (KTD) in Russian pedagogical literature), founder of the "pedagogy of partnership", which is also named "collective creative pedagogy" and "pedagogy of social creativity". Ivanov's scholarly works continued the development of Creative Pedagogy. Igor Ivanov laid foundation for the Communard movement in the mid-1950s in Leningrad by gathering young teachers and instructors from several schools into a creative group called Union of Enthusiasts (Soyuz Entuziastov). In this Union, during the years of 1956-1958, Ivanov developed and began to implement his ideas concerning the involvement of teenagers into a prototype of youth social organization which would not impose strict dogmatic rules on its participants. This was in contrast to Communists' practice at that time when most social activities in post-World War II Soviet schools were under the auspices of the pro-communist Pioneer organization. Yet, the death of Stalin in 1953 and the ascension of Nikita Khrushchev to power in 1955 led to certain liberalization of Soviet society. And Ivanov's actions were strictly in context of those changes. In 1959, Union of Enthusiasts led by Igor Ivanov and his close colleguages including Ludmila Borisova and Faina Shapiro gave birth to an organization of high-school students - Commune of Frunze High Schoolers (Kommuna Yunych Frunzentsov), named so after the Frunze - Russian Civil war hero, whose name was also on the precinct in Leningrad, where Commune was located. In the core of this Commune was an active, creative, organizational pedagogical mechanism developed by Ivanov. The organization had a voluntary membership and promoted, yet in unobtrusive and implicit manner, the author's Collective Creative Deeds methodology.