During the Cold War over half a million Asians, Africans and Latin Americans studied and graduated in the Soviet Union's universities and technical schools as part of this country's educational aid policies. Cuba was an intermediary player in the Cold War geopolitical contest between the United States and the Soviet Union, fuelled by the imposition of the US embargo on Cuba in 1961 and its subsequent alignment with the socialist bloc. Cuba was a recipient of educational aid from 1961 until 1990. Current studies about Soviet educational aid to less-developed countries generally, and the Cuban case in particular, are mainly based on the analysis of state policies and intercountry agreements. There is a lack of personal student recollections among this research. In this paper, the author uses an autoethnographic approach to reflect on her schooling in Cuba and university studies in 1980s socialist Uzbekistan. The reflections and analysis focus on three themes: universal access to education, comprehensive or integral education, and socialist political formation through education. The article critiques the rhetoric and practice of socialist education in these contexts, and shows how traditional pedagogy both supported and undermined official and broader educational objectives. It argues that the main aims of Soviet and Cuban educational programmes to train the new socialist technical elite for the Third World achieved mixed results, producing well-educated graduates with uneven ideological outcomes. (Contains 9 notes.)