• Born in 1888 in the Kharkiv region - at the time part of the Russian Empire, now a region in north-eastern Ukraine
• 1920: appointed director of the Gorky Colony (an institution for juvenile delinquents)
• Published a large number of educational works in the second half of the 1930s, the content of which later became particularly important in socialist countries, but was also studied and received in various ways in non-socialist countries

Makarenko's Collective Education had a great influence on education within the Soviet Union, but his work was also widely received outside these borders.

The project examines how Makarenko's Collective Education was received across national borders - in particular across the Iron Curtain and with a focus on Japan and the GDR - and how his ideas on Collective Education were appropriated and implemented in different cultures.

According to Toshihiko Fujii (1934-2008), educational and Makarenko researcher at Hiroshima University, Japan is one of the capitalist countries that have been strongly influenced by Makarenko's ideas. Fujii analyzed numerous West German publications on Makarenko and found that while West German Makarenko researchers such as Elisabeth Heimpel, Leonhard Froese and Elisabeth Blochmann tended to evaluate Makarenko's collective education positively despite the Cold War, but without advocating an unconditional Makarenko-reception, Japanese Makarenko researchers were much more convinced of his idea.

(Fujii, Toshihiko.「世界のマカレンコ研究の動向とマカレンコ教育学の評価の問題」(“The tendency of international Makarenko research and the problem of assessing Makarenko's pedagogy”). In: Makarenko, Anton S., Fujii, Toshihiko & Iwasaki, Shogo (translation). 『 科学的訓育論の基礎 』 (Fundamentals of educational science), Meiji, 1988).