The fall of the socialist system, and of the Soviet Union as a political entity, created a situation where external assistance to the transformation of the ex-Soviet countries into market economies and multi-party democracies became a domain of "development assistance". While the attractiveness of the ex-Soviet countries to the providers of development assistance was obvious, it was less clear, what the possible legitimization could be for interventions in the education sector. On the basis of documentary data the article traces the conceptions of development assistance that are embedded in the international analyses of the state of education in the ex-Soviet countries and prescriptions for educational reform in these countries since the 1990s.