The purpose of the article is to determine, characterize and trace the ways of implementation of the principles of primary education during the school reform in Ukraine in 1954-1964 on the basis of the analysis of the legislative and normative documents, reference documentation and educational literature. The methodological basis of the study are the source studies (provided the opportunity to identify and analyze different types of sources, which highlighted the basic principles of primary

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... ation in the selected chronological framework) and historiographical (contributed to identify the problem in historical and pedagogical science) approaches, as well as epistemological principles of historicism, objectivity, systematics. To achieve the goal of the study the following methods were used: general science (analysis, synthesis, comparison, systematization, generalization, which became the basis for studying the outlined issue), historical and structural (contributed to the development of the research structure), historical and genetic (allowed to structure the factual information). The scientific novelty of the research is that the article reveals and characterizes the principles of primary education, implemented during the school reform in 1954-1964 in Ukraine, which was not the subject of a special study. Conclusions. Primary education in Ukraine in 1954-1964 was based on the system of principles defined and implemented in the previous decades (compulsory, accessible, free, external differentiation, Sovietization, Russification, unification, atheism), restored (joint education of children of both sexes) and proclaimed in the context of school reform (polytechnic education, the connection of school with life). We consider the revival and implementation in the author's schools (V. O. Sukhomlynskyi, I. H. Tkachenko) of the principles of humanization and child-centeredness as a positive tendency of the studied period. At the same [...]