The Pedagogical Poem (Russian: Педагогическая поэма, romanized: Pedagogičeskaâ poèma, published in English as Road to Life) is widely known throughout the world as the most significant work of the Soviet educator and writer A.S. Makarenko (1888-1939).
The 1925-1935 novel contains an artistic and documentary description of the formation (in 1920 near Poltava) and the leadership (by the author until the middle of 1928) of the Gorky Colony (named after Gorky), where it was possible to very successfully return homeless minors and offenders to a full-fledged and cultural social life on the basis of feasible socially useful work and of thoughtful and reasonable involvement of the pupils in co-management of a single team.
"[Your] enormously important and amazingly successful educational experiment is of world-wide significance," he wrote in one of the letters.
In 1938 he was awarded the Order of the Red Banner of Labour, but only for this highly successful novel hailed as a Soviet classic,[2] not for his work as an innovative educator and social worker.
After reading the draft of its first part, Maxim Gorky strongly advised the author to finish the work and in every possible way (morally, organizationally, and sometimes financially) contributed significantly to this.