1) Russian Higher Education and the Post-Soviet Transition. 2) Between ‘modernisation’ and ‘transition’: the discourse of the Serbian 2001 civic education policy.

1) The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1989 required the system of education, as with all other Soviet institutions, to adjust if it were to survive in the new Russian conditions. It was faced, above all, with the need to identify a new social and economic role as the education system of a radically different society and economy. This raised fundamental questions that required urgent answer. What was its purpose? Who should it serve? How was it to be organized and financed? 2) This project explored the development of the Serbian 2001 civic education policy, a policy which marked the start of an all-encompassing education reform that was hailed as one of the tools in assisting the country’s transition from various forms of authoritarianism to a modern democracy. It was also a strong political signal that the then governing elite was dedicated to joining Serbia with other post-communist countries on their way ‘back to Europe’.