Before Soviets, Russian population was largely uneducated; could not read or write. Soviets immediately started a country-wide educational campaign, Likbez: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Likbez
Soviets did many things, some good and some very bad. But their push for free & universal education has been good.
I consider the wide-scale and fairly high-quality scientific education system to be the only genuine upside of Soviet communism. Admittedly, part of its success was the fact that it offered many people the only way to the middle or upper class (the Soviet Union was an extreme class society, with peasants forced to stay on their collective farms and non-Muscovites banned from settling in Moscow unless they took up professions that were currently desired by the system). Another caveat is that it was STEM-only, and excluded computer science (which the Soviet system was unconducive to for various reasons) until the 80s. The SU was particularly unwilling to teach anyone foreign languages, unless one chose (and was cleared) to work for intel.
The last statement is completely wrong; there were many avenues to study foreign languages, either for adults or children. Children could attend schools that specialized in foreign language instruction, and extracurricular classes were also available. Same went for adults that could study languages as full-time students, or attend after-work classes, or participate in a directed self-study. Private tutoring was easy to find in major metro centers. I have to mention though that the quality of foreign language education in regular schools was dismal. While in school, I participated in an after-school study group that studied Spanish under a guidance of a university professor (for free), and a part-time job that I took over the summer allowed me to pay for French tutoring. My school had an exchange program with schools in Manchester, with plenty of opportunities to become fluent in English.
Speaking of a middle class, it was not unusual that a factory worker's salary exceeded that of a high-school teacher with a university diploma.
Good point -- I was implicitly talking about serious instruction on advanced levels. There was no shortage of classes where you got to listen to French music and read some easy books; but nothing that would bring you to fluency.
An exchange program with Manchester, though? That must have been late in the 80s?
Understood, that's true, to do any serious study people had to apply to and enter a formal program, day, evening, or remote. The other option was private tutoring.
Before Soviets, Russian population was largely uneducated; could not read or write. Soviets immediately started a country-wide educational campaign, Likbez: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Likbez
Soviets did many things, some good and some very bad. But their push for free & universal education has been good.