  This paper is an introduction to our ongoing more comprehensive work on a
critically important period in the history of Russian mathematics education; it
provides a glimpse into the socio-political environment in which the famous
Soviet tradition of mathematics education was born. The authors are
practitioners of mathematics education in two very different countries, England
and Russia. We have a chance to see that too many trends and debates in current
education policy resemble battles around mathematics education in the 1920s and
1930s Soviet Russia. This is why this period should be revisited and
re-analysed, despite quite a considerable amount of previous research. Our main
conclusion: mathematicians, first of all, were fighting for control over
selection, education, and career development, of young mathematicians. In the
harshest possible political environment, they were taking potentially lethal
risks.
