In the Czech movie Kolya, a woman who taught Russian was a native Czech, which I suppose would have been typical. I imagine that those who dedicated themselves to teaching the language of world communism would have received privileges.

Anecdotal experience follows :-) I had compulsory Russian class for 5 years, between 9-14 years of my age. Actually I don't remember the first teacher, but she had to be good because I was interested in the language. Next year we got the most hated teacher in the school - but I don't think it was because of her subject. Then we got an elderly male teacher for two years, who was again quite good, but by this time the times were changing, it was getting clear that Russian knowledge will be useless, so we were utterly unmotivated to learn. The teacher retired and then we got an unlucky female Russian teacher who graduated just before the Russians left for good. It was the sign of the changing times that she spent the whole summer before that last year sunbathing topless at the local beach, so I was pleasantly surprised when she arrived in miniskirts in September. However, even her couldn't motivate anybody - by the time we graduated from primary school, I think most of the class couldn't even read all of the Cyrillic letters. All of the teachers were local.

In retrospect the problem with Russian language education was not only that people (and their children) loathed the Communists - it's methodology was also bad. I don't remember actually talking in Russian in class while later in high school I did have to talk in English and German even when my vocabulary consisted of only 10 words.

My experience shows that most people (who went to school in 1960-80) from the satellite countries could speak Russian, so the education system was effective. It mostly employed teachers from those countries (not from Soviet Union). I suppose that the system of training these teachers collapsed after dissolution of the Eastern block. But the system of training of teachers was effective, and I suppose many traveled to Soviet Union for practice.

I had Russian lessons in 5th grade to 8th grade (when most kids were 10-15 years old). We were taught by a local teacher, but I don't know where he learned Russian. We were also taught French by a local teacher. In high school we were taught French and German by a local teacher, and also English was taught by local teachers. Even in university (Technical University though) our foreign language teachers were locals.

In my country, 6-7 years old was the 1st grade, thus 5th to 8th grade had 10-15 year old kids. The school system had a 8+4+5 structure. In the second, there were large differences in the satellite states, but as far I know, the start was always with 6-7

My wife is an ethnic Albanian from Kosovo, formerly part of Yugoslavia. There too Russian was compulsory and taught by locals. At the time in the part of Kosovo where she lived, approximately half the local population was ethnically Serbian, and spoke Serbo-Croat. Given the linguistic similarities between Slavic languages, my wife tells me that most of her Serbian contemporaries could speak Russian very well. As to the ethnic Albanians, it tended to depend on how well they spoke (or were willing to speak) Serbo-Croat. Enthusiasm for learning Russian varied greatly, with a strong correlation to ethnic background!

The Slavic language connection was common in many of the former satellite countries of the USSR. Thus for many people, learning Russian was not as onerous as it might have been.

It was local teachers teaching Russian in Poland. Another interesting tidbit, is what happened when the USSR collapsed. I was born in 1980, and was lucky enough to be the first class of students who no longer had to learn Russian. If I were 1 year older, I'd be stuck having to learn it as well. Instead, we ended up studying English, and couldn't be happier about it.

Anecdotal reports from friends suggest that in the German Democratic Republic, the teachers were mostly Germans.

TL;DR

• Teachers were local.
• Instruction was good enough for the majority of the victims ;-) to read a simple text and understand slow direct speech.

Why?

The foreign/second language teachers all over the world are overwhelmingly trained local professionals for whom the language is usually also foreign/second (the only major exception is the Israeli Ulpan).

The reason is that a language is not just vocabulary/pronunciation/idioms, but, more importantly, syntax, and children in the critical period learn the syntax unconsciously, while adults have to learn it consciously and systematically. Thus, there is little benefit from the teacher being a native speaker for the basic instruction: it is more important that (s)he understands the syntax well and can explain it well to the students.

Once the students have a solid grasp of the language, the benefits of the teacher being a native speaker increase dramatically, but most students never reach that level.

PS. Phonetics/Pronunciation

These are important, but only for oral communication. Reading a howitzer manual does not require it. ;-) Foreign travel is still relatively uncommon outside of the wealthy countries, and was extremely rare in the Soviet block.