As one of the founders of Soviet pedagogy, he elaborated the theory and methodology of upbringing in self-governing child collectives and introduced the concept of productive labor into the educational system.

[4] In the aftermath of the Revolution of 1917, he established self-supporting orphanages for street children — including juvenile delinquents — left orphaned by the Russian Civil War of 1917-1923.

Makarenko wrote several books, of which The Pedagogical Poem (Педагогическая поэма; published in English as The Road to Life), a fictionalized story of the Gorky Colony, became especially popular in the Soviet Union.

[5] In 1988 UNESCO ranked Makarenko as one of four educators (along with John Dewey, Georg Kerschensteiner, and Maria Montessori) who determined the world's pedagogical thinking of the 20th century.

In August 1914 he enrolled into the Poltava Training College, but had to interrupt his education and in September 1916 joined the Russian Army, from which he was demobilized in March 1917, due to poor eyesight.

In 1923 Makarenko published two articles on the Gorky Colony (in Golos Truda newspaper and Novimy Stezhkami magazine) and two years later made a public report at the All-Ukrainian Conference for the orphanage teachers.

In 1927 Makarenko was appointed as the head of the Dzerzhinsky labour commune, an orphanage for street children near Kharkiv, where the most incorrigible thieves and swindlers were known to be put into rehabilitation.

"[8] Encouraged by Gorky, whom he admired, Makarenko wrote The Pedagogical Poem (better known in the West under its English title, The Road to Life) based on the true stories of his pupils in the orphanage for street children, which he started in 1925 and published in 1933–1935.

[11] In 1936 he was appointed the head of another colony, in Brovary, and according to the Patrice Lumumba Peoples' Friendship University of Russia "in less than a year turned an unruly bunch of pupils into a highly disciplined working collective.

[citation needed] He continued writing, and in 1937 his acclaimed The Book for Parents came out, followed by Flags on the Battlements (translated into English as Learning to Live) in 1938, a sequel to The Road to Life.

[8] Although there was some opposition by the authorities at the early stages of Makarenko's "experiments",[12] the Soviet establishment eventually came to hail his colonies as a grand success in communist education and rehabilitation.

[11] The commission emphasized that these restrictions would not apply to the research of Makarenko's activities and its "storage, purchase/sale, reading of editions of his works, exhibiting objects and documents related to the teacher in museums, etc.