Vasilii Aleksandrovich Sukhomlinskii

Born Sept. 28, 1918, in the village of Vasil’evka, now in Onufrievka Raion, Kirovograd Oblast; died Sept. 2, 1970, in the settlement of Pavlysh, in the same raion and oblast. Soviet educator. Honored Schoolteacher of the Ukrainian SSR (1969); corresponding member of the Academy of Pedagogical Sciences of the USSR (1968; from 1957, corresponding member of the Academy of Pedagogical Sciences of the RSFSR); Hero of Socialist Labor (1968).

Sukhomlinskii, who was of peasant origin, graduated from the Poltava Pedagogical Institute in 1939. He took part in the Great Patriotic War of 1941–45. From 1947 until his death he was principal of the Pavlysh Secondary School. He worked out theoretical and methodological problems of communist education in the school and in the family; he was also concerned with the all-around development of students’ personalities and with the question of pedagogical skills and propagandized the ideas of Soviet humanistic pedagogy.

Sukhomlinskii won the State Prize of the Ukrainian SSR in 1974 for his book I Give My Heart to Children (1969). He was awarded two Orders of Lenin, the Order of the Red Star, and the K. D. Ushinskii and A. S. Makarenko medals.