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“Knowledge is Power”.. Perhaps, many people here in the West have heard this expression, which is a quote from Sir Francis Bacon. What a powerful tool Google is, huh? I should put it honestly, I haven’t known much about Sir Francis Bacon until after I have made a search on this one. However, I heard the name years ago - from a course of history and philosophy (can’t you believe?! -  future pilots attending flight training institutions in the USSR had to satisfactory pass a mandatory course of the ‘Marxist-Leninist Philosophy’ in the educational curricula!) at our flight college.

But it may be a surprise for many people here too, that a literal translation of this expression into Russian is quite a popular aphorism in this country, known from very long ago.

I believe, it at least goes back to the late twenties - early thirties in the Soviet Union, when the communist government was so eager to build an educational system that would be affordable and accessible for the youth, and as always they did, they loaded a campaign with a great deal of propaganda, and such a strong expression as “Knowledge is Power” happened to be so suitable, and appealed tremendously by its precise succinctness. As we know, in the course of decades all the efforts done brought about a sort of ‘cult of higher education’ in the Soviet Union.

As for aviation, different branches of it in the Soviet Union set up and developed their own training centres and institutions on the government money. The civilian aviation, as well as the military, had a few large schools to train pilots, and a handful of institutions to prepare other kind of specialists for covering needs of the ‘then-Aeroflot’. (The nice thing about it was that the education was free for students; however, there was a sort of ‘entry selection system’ in place, and ‘competition for a seat’ often was ‘very hot’) On the pick of the Soviet Union’s evolution it was quite a sophisticated system, steadily providing industry with full range of engineering cadre and work force.

And then, all of a sudden, as if ‘from nowhere’ the Perestroika ‘had fallen upon us’, the Soviet Union collapsed, and tremendous change began to unfold, and we all at once had become spectators and participants of an ‘epic proportion’ event..

(to be continued..)