“…In countries of the Eastern Bloc, early childhood had an 'iconic status' (Penn, 2011, p. s16) and children were placed in the centre of the social, political and economic re-making of society as they were viewed as an embodiment of a new social order (Silova, et al, 2017). Typical of the era is that education became a slave to party politics (Pukánszky & Németh, 1996) and extended to the education of children's morals and consciousness (Vu, 2021). Kindergartens and schools, as subjugating instruments of ideological indoctrination (Jelača and Lugarić 2018), were to nurture a new generation of Soviet citizens, who were to be shaped by socialist political ideals, values, beliefs and behaviours (Millei et al, 2019;Millei & Imre, 2016) in order to secure fidelity to the single socialist party.…”