Education in the Soviet Union was guaranteed as a constitutional right to all people provided through state schools and universities. The education system that emerged after the establishment of the Soviet Union in 1922 became internationally renowned for its successes in eradicating illiteracy and cultivating a highly educated population. Its advantages were total access for all citizens and post-education employment. The Soviet Union recognized that the foundation of their system depended upon an educated population and development in the broad fields of engineering, the natural sciences, the life sciences and social sciences, along with basic education.

In Imperial Russia, according to the 1897 Population Census, literate people made up 28.4 percent of the population. A mere 13% of women were literate.

In the first year after the 1917 Bolshevik revolution, the schools were left very much to their own devices due to the ongoing civil war of 1917–1923. The People's Commissariat for Education directed its attention solely towards introducing political propaganda into the schools and forbidding religious teaching. In the autumn of 1918 the Uniform Labour School Regulations were issued for the RSFSR. From October 1, 1918, all types of schools came under Commissariat for Education and were designated by the name "Uniform Labour School". They were divided into two levels: the first for children from 8 to 13, and the second for children from 14 to 17. During the 8th Party Congress in March 1919, the creation of the new socialist system of education was said to be the major aim of the Soviet government. After that, Soviet school policy underwent numerous radical changes.

The period of the First World War (1914–1918), of the Russian Civil War (1917–1923) and of war communism (1918–1921) led to sharp drops in the number of schools and of enrolled students. Whereas in 1914, 91% of the children were receiving instruction in schools, in 1918 figure dropped to 62%, in 1919 to 49% and in 1920 to 24.9%. As a result, illiteracy grew rapidly.

In accordance with the Sovnarkom decree of 26 December 1919, signed by its chairman Vladimir Lenin, the new policy of likbez (Russian: ликвидация безграмотности, romanized: likvidatsiya bezgramotnosti, lit. 'liquidation of illiteracy'), was introduced. A new system of universal compulsory education was established for children. Moreover, millions of illiterate adult people all over the country, including residents of small towns and villages, were enrolled in special literacy schools. Komsomol members and Young Pioneer detachments played an important role in the education of illiterate people in villages. In the Azerbaijan Soviet Socialist Republic, the women's literacy campaign was largely carried out by members of the Ali Bayramov Club, a women's organization founded by Azeri Bolshevik women in Baku in 1920. The most active phase of likbez lasted until 1939. In 1926, the literacy rate was 56.6 percent of the population. By 1937, according to census data, the literacy rate was 86% for men and 65% for women, with a total literacy rate of 75%.

An important aspect of the early campaign for literacy and education was the policy of "indigenisation" (korenizatsiya). This policy, which lasted essentially from the mid-1920s to the late 1930s, promoted the development and use of non-Russian local and regional languages in the government, the media, and education. Intended to counter the historical practices of Russification, it had as another practical goal assuring native-language education as the quickest way to increase educational levels of future generations. A huge network of so-called "national schools" was established by the 1930s, and enrollments continued to grow throughout the Soviet era. Language policy changed over time, perhaps marked first of all in the government's mandating in 1938 the teaching of Russian as a required subject of study in every non-Russian school, and then especially beginning in the latter 1950s in a growing conversion of non-Russian schools to use Russian as the main medium of instruction. However, an important legacy of the native-language and bilingual education policies over the years was the nurturing of widespread literacy in dozens of languages of indigenous nationalities of the USSR, accompanied by widespread and growing bilingualism where Russian was said to be the "language of internationality communication" (Russian: язык межнационального общения).

In 1923, a new school statute and curricula, based on the Dalton plan [1], were adopted. Schools were divided into three separate types, designated by the number of years of instruction: "four-year", "seven-year" and "nine-year" schools. Seven- and nine-year (secondary) schools were scarce, compared to the "four-year" (primary) schools, making it difficult for the pupils to complete their secondary education. Those who finished seven-year schools had the right to enter Technicums. Only nine-year schooling led directly to university-level education.^{[citation needed]}

The curriculum was changed^{[citation needed]} radically. Independent subjects, such as reading, writing, arithmetic, the mother tongue, foreign languages, history, geography, literature or science were abolished. Instead school programmes were subdivided into "complex themes", such as "the life and labour of the family in village and town" for the first year or "scientific organisation of labour" for the 7th year of education. This system proved a complete failure, however, and in 1928 a new programme completely abandoned the complex themes and resumed instruction in individual subjects.