Notes: Chapter I Education and Soviet Society

Notes
Chapter i Education and Soviet society

1. The class categories normally used by the Bolsheviks were * workers',
'peasants', * employees' (white-collar workers and professionals) and
* others' (the lowest category, including entrepreneurs, merchants,
artisans, priests, former Tsarist policemen, former nobles, etc.). There
were a number of problems implicit in these categories. The peasant
category included 'poor peasants', whom *he Bolsheviks regarded as
sympathetic to the regime, 'middle peasants', regarded as neutral,
and 'kulaks', regarded as hostile; but these sub-groups — which were
in any case extremely difficult to identify - were not distinguished in
educational admissions. Agricultural labourers, as rural proletarians,
were classified as workers. Artisans were clearly wrongly included in
the category of 'others', since the regime did not really regard them
as hostile 'social aliens' but as a more or less neutral group. There
was considerable overlap between the categories of 'others' and
'employees' since even social aliens might and often did obtain
salaried employment. Within the 'employee' category, trudovaya
intelligentsiya (professionals) almost always had higher priority in
educational admissions than ordinary office workers; and Communist
administrators and their children obviously ranked as high as workers
in principle, and higher in practice.
2. 'Principles of Communism' (1847), S. M. Kovalev (compiler)
O kommunisticheskom vospitanii, 2nd ed. (Moscow, 1966), p. 26.
3. Marx, instruction to delegates to the First International (1866), in
ibid., p. 34.
4. Ibid., p. 35.
5. Dewey, School and Society, as quoted in one of the most influential
pedagogical works of the 1920s, A. P. Pinkevich's The New Education
in the Soviet Republic, translated by Perlmutter and Counts (New
York, 1929), p. 163.
6. 'Pearls of Narodnik hare-brained scheming' (on S. N. Yuzhakov),
V. I. Lenin, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, 11, 5th ed. (Moscow, 1958),
PP- 473-5O4-
7. See Lenin's sardonic comment of circa 1894, quoted N. K. Krupskaya,
Vospominaniya o Lenine, 2nd ed. (Moscow, 1968), pp. 12-13.
8. See Leopold Haimson, 'The Problem of Social Stability in Urban
Russia, 1905-1917', Slavic Review, December 1964 and March 1965.
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256 Notes to pages g-22
9. See T. H. Rigby, Communist Party Membership in the U.S.S.R.
igiy-ig6y (Princeton, 1968), ch. 2.
10. On Proletkult and Lenin's objections to it, see Sheila Fitzpatrick,
The Commissariat of Enlightenment (London and New York, 1970),
pp. 175-87 and passim,
11. See, for example, Lenin's speech to the First All-Russian Congress on
Extramural Education (1919), Polnoe sobranie sochinenii XXXVIII,
5th ed., p. 330; and 'Better less, but better', ibid, LV, pp. 387ff.
12. See Jeremy R. Azrael, Managerial Power and Soviet Politics (Gam-
bridge, Mass., 1966), pp. 30-2.
13. N. K. Krupskaya, Narodnoe obrazovanie i demokratiya (author's
preface dated 1915) (St Petersburg: Zhizn' i znanie, 1917).
14. Partiya i vospitanie smeny (Leningrad, 1924), p. 37.
15. Narodnoe prosveshchenie, 1929 no. 3-4, p. 30.
16. A. Lunacharsky, 'The artistic policy of the Soviet state', Zhizn'
iskusstva, 1924 no. 10 (Leningrad), p. 1.
17. See L. Trotsky, The Revolution Betrayed (New York, 1937), pp. 97-8.
18. I. N. ,Yudin, SotsiaVnaya baza rosta KPSS (Moscow, 1973), p. 128.
19. Industrializatsiya SSSR ig26-ig28 gg. Dokumenty i materialy
(Moscow, 1969), p. 348.
20. O. I. Shkaratan, Problemy sotsiaVnoi struktury rabochego klassa
SSSR (Moscow, 1970), p. 295.
Chapter 2 The new Soviet school

1. F. F. Korolev, T. D. Korneichik and Z. I. Ravkin, Ocherki po istorii
sovetskoi shkoly i pedagogiki ig2i-igsi (Moscow, 1961), p. 447.
2. Na putyakh k novoi shkole, 1922 no. 3, pp. 3-5.
3. Ibid., pp. 12-13.
4. The 1924 revised programmes for primary schools, quoted Korolev,
Korneichik and Ravkin, Ocherki, p. 72.
5. For the debates of the Civil War period on this subject, see Fitz-
patrick, The Commissariat of Enlightenment, ch. 3.
6. A. M. Bolshakov, Derevnya igiy-ig2j (Moscow, 1927), p. 234.
7. Ibid., p. 233.
8. Narodnoe prosveshchenie, 1926 no. 4-5, p. 67, quoted Russkaya
shkola za rubezhom, 1927-28 no. 32, p. 140.
9. A. Lunacharsky, Prosveshchenie i revolyutsiya (Moscow, 1926), p. 398.
10. P. P. Blonsky, Moi vospominaniya (Moscow, 1971), p. 172.
11. Korolev, Korneichik and Ravkin, Ocherki, pp. 72-3.
12. Programmy GUSa V—IX klassov. Matematika (1925), quoted
Korolev, Korneichik and Ravkin, Ocherki, p. 73.
13. Quoted ibid., p. 188.
14. See Krupskaya's defence of the Narkompros position in Na putyakh

Notes to pages 22-7 257
k novoi shkole, 1928 no. 7-8, p. 7, and the attack by Oleshchuk, of
the League of Militant Godless, in Revolyutsiya i kuVtura, 1928 no.
10, p. 21.
15. Lunacharskyss theory of 'Godbuilding* and his two-volume Religiya i
sotsializm (1908, 1911) had been harshly criticized by Lenin in the
pre-revolutionary years. However, Lunacharsky was never religious
in any conventional sense.
16. On the atheism circles, see Korolev, Korneichik and Ravkin, Ocherki,
pp. 292-6.
17. Ibid., pp. 182-3.
18. Na putyakh k novoi shkole, 1926 no. 5-6, p. 63.
19. Korolev, Korneichik and Ravkin, Ocherki, p. 92.
20. Russkii yazyk i literatura v trudovoi shkole, 1928 no. 1, p. 81.
21. Quoted by Lunacharsky, Literaturnoe nasledstvo, vol. 82 (Moscow,
1970), P. 77-
22. Ibid.
23. For the views of Pokrovsky and other members of the Pedagogical
Section of GUS on the teaching of history, see minutes of the debate
of 24 March 1926 in Na putyakh k novoi shkole, 1926 no. 5-6, pp.
6iff.
24. See debates cited above, and discussion and resolutions on history
teaching in Na putyakh k novoi shkole, 1926 nos. 10 and 11 and 1927
no. 3.
25. 'On the teaching of history in a Communist school', Lunacharsky,
Prosveshchenie i revolyutsiya (1926), p. 106.
26. Na putyakh k novoi shkole, 1926 no. 5-6, pp. 61-2 and 76.
27. Ibid., p. 67.
28. Quoted Korolev, Korneichik and Ravkin, Ocherki, p. 91, from M. N.
Pokrovsky, Istoricheskaya nauka i bor'ba klassov (1933).
29. For categories of person deprived of the right to vote, see Istoriya
sovetskoi konstitutsii. Sbornik dokumentov, 1917-1957 (Moscow,
1957), p. 85, for 1918 Constitution of the RSFSR; and 1926 instruc-
tions on elections to urban and rural Soviets in Sobranie uzakonenii i
rasporyazhenii rabochego i krest'yanskogo praviteV stva RSFSR, 1926
no. 75, art. 577.
30. N. Ognev, 'Dnevnik Kosti Ryabtseva', Sobranie sochinenii, in
(Moscow, 1929), pp. 25-6.
31. See, for example, ibid. pp. 46-8; Yu. Libedinsky, Rozhdenie geroya
Leningrad, 1930), pp. 145!!.
32. The School Soviet consisted of teachers and one representative of
each grade between grade v and grade ix. Komsomol and trade
union organizations also had the right to send representatives. 'Con-
stitution of the United Labour School* (1923), Direktivy VKP(b) i
sovetskogo praviteV stva o narodnom obrazovanii 1917-1947 gg., 1
(Moscow-Leningrad, 1947), pp. 129-32.

Notes to pages 2J-9
33. Narodnoe prosveshchenie, 1926 no. 9, p. 76. There is a similar report
in Prosveshchenie Sibiri (Novosibirsk), 1926 no. 1, p. 35.
34. Krupskaya, B. Olkhovy, ed., Zadachi agitatsii, propagandy i kuV-
turnogo stroitel'stva (Moscow-Leningrad, 1928), pp. 88-9.
35. Ibid,
36. See 'Laws of the Young Pioneers' (1922), Tovarishch Komsomol.
Dokumenty syezdov, konferentsii i TsK VLKSM igi8-ig68 (Moscow,
J
969)> PP* 96-7-
37. Narodnoe prosveshchenie, 1928 no. 12, pp. 35 and 37.
38. Bukharin, report on youth, XIII syezd RKP(b). Stenograficheskii
otchet (Moscow, 1963), pp. 515-19.
39. Osnovnye uzakoneniya i rasporyazheniya po narodnomu prosvesh-
cheniyu (Moscow-Leningrad, 1929), p. 245.
40. For a Komsomol justification of this position, based on the experience
of the European socialist movement in the First World War, see
Chaplin, VII syezd VLKSM. Stenograficheskii otchet (Moscow-
Leningrad, 1926), p. 53.
41. Bukharin, report on the Komsomol, XIV syezd VKP(b). Steno-
graficheskii otchet (Moscow, 1926), p. 824.
42. Itogi desyatiletiya sovetskoi vlasti v tsifrakh igij-ig2j (Moscow,
J
927)> P- 90-
43. IV syezd RKSM. Stenograficheskii otchet (Moscow-Leningrad, 1925),
P- 350-
44. Ralph Fisher, Pattern for Soviet Youth (New York, 1959), p. 133.
45. Vseobshchee obuchenie. Likvidatsiya negramotnosti. Podgotovka
kadrov, p. 79.
46. See VII syezd VLKSM. Stenograficheskii otchet (Moscow-Leningrad,
1926), p. 205.
47. Resolution of vi Komsomol Congress, Tovarishch Komsomol, pp. 158
and 162.
48. 'On the position and work of the RLKSM in the countryside',
Direktivy VKP(b) po voprosam prosveshcheniya (Moscow-Leningrad,
W1)* P- J94-
49. Narodnoe prosveshchenie, 1925 no. 2, p. 140.
50. The party leadership, however, issued numerous instructions to the
Komsomol to establish friendly relations with the teachers. See, for
example, the resolution on youth in XIII syezd RKP(b), p. 674; the
Central Committee resolution of 15 May 1925 on Komsomol work in
the countryside, Direktivy VKP(b) po voprosam prosveshcheniya,
p. 194; Zinoviev, Partiya i vospitanie smeny (Leningrad, 1924),
P- 37-
52. Narkompros-Komsomol Central Committee 'Statement on Pioneer
outposts in the school5, 8 January 1927, Osnovnye uzakoneniya, p. 240.
53. In 1927, 5% of teachers in the RSFSR were Communists and 6%

belonged to the Komsomol. Rabotnik prosveshcheniya, 1927 no. 17-
18, p. 21.
54. In September 1924, 63.8% of Russian rural teachers were of peasant
origin, 15.4% from the clergy, 13.7% from the intelligentsia and
7.1 % from the working class. Of urban teachers, 40.8% were from the
peasantry, 6.3% from the clergy, 34.8% from the intelligentsia and
18.1% from the working class. Oskar Anweiler, Geschichte der
Schule und Pddogogik in Russland vom Ende des Zarenreiches bis
zum Beginn der Stalin-Ara (Berlin, 1964), p. 293.
55. XIII syezd RKP(b), p. 469.
56. Direktivy VKP(b) po voprosam prosveshcheniya, p. 180.
57. Narodnoe prosveshchenie, 1927 no. 4, p. 43; ibid., 1926 no. 1, p. 34.
58. Krupskaya, co-report 'On work in the countryside' (with Kalinin),
XIII syezd RKP{b), pp. 454-7.
59. Narodnoe prosveshchenie, 1924 no. 8, pp. 10 and 130-31.
60. Trud, 25 December 1928, p. 2.
61. In 1927/28, only 8,000 out of 315,000 teachers were still outside the
union. Vseobshchee obuchenie. Likvidatsiya negramotnosti. Podgo-
tovka kadrov, p. 42.
62. Less than half the union's total membership in 1927 were school-
teachers. Itogi desyatiletiya, pp. 344-5.
63. For a biographical note on Aleksandr Alekseevich Korostelev, see
Rabotnik prosveshcheniya, 1927 no. 19-20, p. 61.
64. Narodnoe prosveshchenie, 1926 no. 6, pp. 108-9.
65. Ibid.
66. Direktivy VKP(b) i sovetskogo praviteVstva o narodnom obrazovanii
igij-ig4J gg., 1, p. 130; Narodnoe prosveshchenie, 1928 no. 12, pp.
15-16.
67. P. S. (Dzhankoi), ' "Tricky passages" in the collective agreements',
Rabotnik prosveshcheniya, 1928 no. 24, p. 19.
68. Zinoviev, * Proletarian revolution and the teaching profession', Pravda,
24 April 1924, pp. 2-4.
69. XIII syezd RKP(b), pp. 479-85 passim.
70. Ibid., p. 477.
71. Decisions on the teachers are contained in the resolutions on Zinoviev's
Central Committee report and the reports on the countryside, agita-
tion and propaganda work, and youth. XIII syezd RKP(b), pp. 60,
640, 659 and 674.
72. See Central Committee resolution and instruction of February 1925
on the procedure for enrolling teachers into the party in Direktivy
VKP(b) po voprosam prosveshcheniya, p. 183.
73. XIII syezd RKP{b), p. 601.
75. Ibid., p. 39.
76. Ibid., pp. 72-3.

260 Notes to pages 33-6
77. Narodnoe prosveshchenie, 1929 no. 8-9, pp. 103-4.
78. Kalinin, speech to vn All-Union Congress of Education Workers,
Pravda, 7 March 1929.
79. XIII syezd RKP{b\ p. 470.
81. Quoted Korolev, Korneichik and Ravkin, Ocherki, p. 121.
82. Lunacharsky, Prosveshchenie i revolyutsiya (1926), p. 398; Bolshakov,
Derevnya igiy-ig2j, p. 426.
83. Uchitel'skaya gazeta (December 1924), quoted Korolev, Korneichik
and Ravkin, Ocherki, p. 122.
84. Speech of peasant I. N. Glazkov at public meeting on education,
Rostov on Don, June 1929, Voprosy prosveshcheniya na Severnom
Kavkaze (Rostov), 1929 no. 11, p. 45.
86. For reports on non-Marxist progressives in Soviet schools, see
Russkaya shkola za rubezhom, 1925-26 no. 15-16, pp. 251-2.
87. It was reported that natural-science teachers (through the Society for
the Spread of Natural-Historical Education and its journal Zhivaya
priroda) took a leading part in the campaign of 1926/27 against the
'complex*. Russkaya shkola za rubezhom, 1927/28 no. 32, pp. 139-40.
88. XIII syezd RKP{b), p. 512.
89. Speech to Fifth All-Russian Congress of Heads of Education Depart-
ments, Narodnoe prosveshchenie, 1926 no. 6, p. 7.
90. Krupskaya, XIII syezd RKP(b), p. 457.
91. VTsIK xi sozyva, Vtoraya sessiya (Moscow, 1924), p. 151.
92. See Lunacharsky, 'Is there a new course in Narkompros?', Narodnoe
prosveshchenie, 1926 no. 7, pp. i6ff.
93. The Dalton Plan, an American teaching method by which children
worked individually on projects using teachers as consultants, was
highly regarded by the Leningrad education department in the 1920s,
though the central Narkompros methodologists thought it over-
emphasized the individual at the expense of the group.
94. N. Ognev, 'Dnevnik Kosti Ryabtseva. Tretii trimestr, 1923/24 g.',
Ognev, Sobranie sochinenii, 111, pp. 9 and 65-6.
95. For an endorsement (1923), see Lunacharsky, Prosveshchenie i
revolyutsiya (1926), p. 229; for doubts (October 1925), see ibid.,
PP- 397-9-
96. See below, p. 106.
97. Resolution 'On the condition of secondary schools', 23 July 1926,
Direktivy VKP(b) i postanovleniya sovetskogo praviteV stva o
narodnom obrazovanii, 1, p. 138.
98. Izvestiya, 3 November 1926, p. 7.
99. VTsIK instructed Narkompros 'to intensify its work on the simplifica-
tion and clarification of programmes and methods of teaching in
schools, and on the establishment and provision of a firm minimum of

knowledge and skills (ability to read, write and count) obligatory for
primary schools'. Narodnoe prosveshchenie, 1926 no. 11, p. 5.
100. Korolev, Korneichik and Ravkin, Ocherki, p. 86. On the profuklon,
see below, p. 56.
101. Obshchestvovedenie v trudovoi shkole, ii-m (Moscow, 1927), pp. 7-8.
102. * Social studies programme for senior secondary school', ibid., pp. 109-
25-
103. Ibid., p. 118.
104. Ibid., p. 97.
105. Quoted Korolev, Korneichik and Ravkin, Ocherki, pp. 172-3.
106. Korneichik (later co-author with Korolev and Ravkin of the best
history of the Soviet school in the 1920s, cited above), Obshchestvo-
vedenie v trudovoi shkole, n—in, p. 15.
107. Ibid., pp. 10-11.
108. Lilina was almost constantly at odds with the Narkompros collegium;
for her department's claims to be more progressive, see Narodnoe
prosveshchenie, 1926 no. 3, pp. 83-92, and Lunacharsky, Prosve-
shchenie i revolyutsiya (1926), p. 398. However, when she died -
expelled from the party as an Oppositionist and in disgrace - in 1929,
this was not mentioned in the generous obituaries written by
Lunacharsky (Narodnoe prosveshchenie, 1929 no. 6) and Krupskaya
(Na putyakh k novoi shkole, 1929 no. 4-5).
109. The Siberian department was headed by N. V. Vikhirev, a Com-
munist student activist in 1917 who worked in Narkompros' rabfak
department at the beginning of the 1920s. For his hostile attitude to
the old Narkompros leadership, see Prosveshchenie Sibiri, 1930 no. 6,
pp. 3ft". On G. I. Broido, head of the Saratov department, see below,
pp. 138 and 292 (note 15).
Chapter 3 The education system: problems of mobility and specialization

1. Narkompros RSFSR, 'Statute on the United Labour School' and
'Declaration on the United Labour School', Izvestiya, 16 October
1918, pp. 5-6.
2. Protokoly VTsIK 5 sozyva (Moscow, 1919), p. 231.
3. See Patrick L. Alston, Education and the State in Tsarist Russia
(Stanford, 1969), chs. 6-7.
4. See Sheila Fitzpatrick, The Commissariat of Enlightenment (London
and New York, 1970), pp. 59ft".
5. Paul N. Ignatiev, Dimitry M. Odinetz and Paul J. Novgorodtsev,
Russian Schools and Universities in the World War (New Haven,
1929X PP. M 6 -?-
6. Only a few schools bore the name of 'technician' before the Revolu-
tion, and the term seems to have come into widespread use during the
Civil War (A. N. Veselov, Professional'no-tekhnicheskoe obrazovanie

v SSSR (Moscow, 1961), p. 149). In the 1920s, it was applied to all
vocational secondary schools recruiting students with seven years
general schooling, including teachers' training colleges (pedagogical
technicums), agricultural and medical schools training semi-profes-
sionals, and schools training industrial technicians (tekhniki).
7. Veselov, Professional'no-tekhnicheskoe obrazovanie, pp. 191-2;
Ryappo, Kommunisticheskaya revolyutsiya, 1928 no. 20, p. 38.
8. Prilozhenie k byulletenyu VIII syezda sovetov, posvyashchaemoe
partiinomu sobraniyu po voprosam narodnogo obrazovaniya (Moscow,
10 January 1921), p. 9 and passim.
9. Kupidonov, Izvestiya, 24 April 1929, p. 3.
10. Preis, Krasnoe studenchestvo, 1927/28 no. 14, p. 54.
11. Ryappo, Narodnoe prosueshchenie, 1927 no. 4, p. 30.
12. Ibid.
13. The Party Meeting was first scheduled for November 1924 (TsGAOR
2306/1/3328, presidium of Narkompros RSFSR collegium, 14 August
1924). In the spring of 1925, Lunacharsky said that it was to be held
in 'the near future' (Narodnoe prosveshchenie, 1925 no. 3, p. 7).
In December 1927, the party Central Committee announced that it
would be convened in March 1928 (Pravda, 3 December 1927, p. 3);
and in May 1928 it was put off until the autumn (Izvestiya TsK,
1928 no. 16-17, p. 14); then rescheduled for 1929 and put off again
until January 1930 (Pravda, 29 September 1929, p. 4). It was finally
held in April 1930 - by that time, merely confirming the radical
reorganization of both systems which had already been decided.
As a broad generalization, the previous announcements that the
Meeting was to be held coincide with defeats or unusual political
weakness of Narkompros RSFSR, while the postponements represent
Narkompros' recoveries.
14. Theses on 'Education of worker youth and reform of the school',
11 vserossiiskii syezd RKSM (Moscow-Leningrad, 1926), pp. 163-4.
15. V vserossiiskii syezd RKSM (Moscow-Leningrad, 1927), pp. 205-6.
16. Resolution on Shokhin's paper, ibid., pp. 317-20.
17. The first FZU schools actually emerged in the early 1920s under
trade union sponsorship, and were not very clearly distinguished from
the existing trade schools. It was only after their transfer to Narkom-
pros in 1924 that the Komsomol became an enthusiastic advocate of
the FZU and the school assumed an identity quite distinct from that
of the old trade schools.
18. E. N. Danilova, Deistvuyushchee zakonodateVstvo o trude SSSR i
soyuznykh respublik, 1 (Moscow, 1927), p. 584.
19. Ibid., pp. 585 and 630.
20. XIII syezd RKP(b). Stenograficheskii otchet (Moscow, 1963), p. 464.
22. N. K. Krupskaya, Pedagogicheskie sochineniya, 11, p. 312.

23. Narodnoe prosveshchenie (monthly), 1920 no. 18-19-20, p. 7.
24. TsGAOR 2306/1/634: Narkompros collegium meeting of 18 August
1921 (report of V. P. Volgin on reduction of VUZy and resolution
of collegium); I. I. Khodorovsky, ed., Kakogo inzhenera dolzhny
gotovit' nashi VTUZy? (Moscow-Leningrad, 1928), p. 119.
25. See below, pp. 87-8.
26. Ezhenedel'nik Narodnogo Komissariata po Prosveshcheniyu RSFSR,
1924 no. 8(29), p. 10.
27. Khodorovsky, ibid., 1924 no. 10(31), pp. 19-20.
28. Narodnoe prosveshchenie, 1924 no. 8, p. 6; EzhenedeVnik NKP, 1924
no. 14(35), P- 2*>; ibid., 1924 no. 8(29), p. 3.
29. V vserossiiskii syezd RKSM. Stenograficheskii otchet (1922), pp.
221-2.
30. A. Lunacharsky, Prosveshchenie i revolyutsiya (Moscow, 1926), p. 377
(article dated May 1924).
31. See V. Ukraintsev, KPSS — organizator revolyutsionnogo preo-
brazovaniya vysshei shkoly (Moscow, 1963), p. 83.
32. TsGAOR 2306/1/3328: resolution of presidium of Narkompros
RSFSR collegium on motion of Khodorovsky, 11 June 1925.
33. 'Ten years of the rabfak', Krasnoe studenchestvo, 1928-29 no. 11, p. 2.
34. Statisticheskii sbornik po narodnomu prosveshcheniyu RSFSR ig26 g.
(Moscow, 1927), pp. I74-5-
35. Ibid.
36. The social composition of urban primary schools in 1927/28 was given
as
34-5% working-class, 25.3% employee, 12.2% peasant and 28%
other in Massovoe prosveshchenie v SSSR, 1 (Moscow-Leningrad,
1932), p. 46. Excluding the immigrant peasant group, the working-
class share goes up to 39% and the employee to 29% - both groups
slightly over-represented, if we accept the calculation of TsSU for
1926/27 that workers and their families made up 3 3 % of the urban
population of the USSR and employees and their families 24%
(Statisticheskii spravochnik SSSR za ig28 (Moscow, 1929), pp. 42-3).
37. The breakdown for urban grades v-vn in 1926/27 was 26.3%
working-class, 36.5% employee, 15% peasant and 22.2% other.
Massovoe prosveshchenie v SSSR, 1, p. 46.
38. K kharakteristike sotsiaVnogo sostava uchashchikhsya sotsvosa i
profobra (Moscow-Leningrad, 1929), pp. 24-5.
39. The calculation - for the RSFSR only - is based on data in Narodnoe
prosveshchenie v RSFSR. Statisticheskii sbornik (Moscow, 1928),
pp. 46-7, 54—5, 70, 178-9; Bor'ba za rabochie kadry (Moscow, 1928),
p. 9; and Statisticheskii sbornik po narodnomu prosveshcheniyu
RSFSR igs6 g. (Moscow, 1927), p. 174.
40. Narodnoe prosveshchenie, 1929 no. 3—4, p. 45.
41. Data on Komsomol membership from TsGA RSFSR 1565/19/34:
presidium of Narkompros RSFSR, 19 April 1929; Vseobshchee

obuchenie. Likvidatsiya negramotnosti. Podgotovka kadrou (Moscow,
1930), p. 79; Narodnoe prosveshchenie, 1927 no. 2, p. 77.
42. See Fitzpatrick, The Commissariat of Enlightenment, ch. 10.
44. See the resolution of the Narkompros collegium on the undesirability
of this practice in Narodnoe prosveshchenie, 1924 no. 8, p. 161.
45. These plans were drawn up following the rather half-hearted resolu-
tion of VTsIK and Sovnarkom RSFSR 'On the introduction of
universal elementary education in the RSFSR' (31 August 1925),
Direktivy VKP(b) i postanovleniya sovetskogo praviteVstva o narod-
nom obrazovanii, 11 (Moscow-Leningrad, 1947), pp. 92-5.
47. Osnovnye uzakoneniya i rasporyazheniya po narodnomu prosvesh-
cheniyu (Moscow-Leningrad, 1929), pp. 90—1.
48. Ibid.
49. Ibid., p. 104. For members of the 'free professions' the maximum
was 150 roubles; for persons living on unearned income, 300 roubles.
50. Na putyakh k novoi shkole, 1929 no. 1, p. 47.
51. The Moscow Soviet, after reportedly charging very high fees for
grades vin—ix, abolished secondary-school fees altogether for workers,
peasants and employees (Pravda, 1 September 1927, p. 6).
53. Ibid., 1929 no. 2, p. 80.
54. L. S. Rogachevskaya, Likvidatsiya bezrabotitsy v SSSR iQij-1930
(Moscow, 1973), pp. 175 and 251.
55. According to the 1926 census, there were 12 million men and women
aged 25-29, 13.8 million aged 20-24, 17 million in both the 15-19
and 10-14 age groups, and 15.3 million aged 5-9. The 15-19 age
group had been particularly affected by wartime dislocation of
schools: male literacy in this group was 72% compared with 79-80%
in the 20—29 age group (Vsesoyuznaya p erepis', vn, pp. 8—13).
56. In the population as a whole in 1926 there were 72 employees for
every 100 workers. But among 20-year-olds in 1926 there were only
46 employees for every 100 workers, and among 16-year-olds in 1923,
22 for every 100. Data from Statisticheskii sbornik SSSR za 1Q28,
p. 42, and B. Urlanis, Istoriya odnogo pokoleniya (Moscow, 1968),
pp. 174-5 and 179.
57. Combining the data for 1923—27 in Itogi desyatiletiya sovetskoi vlasti
v tsifrakh igij—ig2J (Moscow, n.d., 1927), pp. 336—7, with those for
1925-29 in Sotsialisticheskoe stroiteVstvo SSSR (Moscow, 1934),
pp. 344—5, we get the following pattern of employment of workers
under 18 in census industry:
1 Jan. 1923 89,350 = 6.6% of the total labour force
1924 80,390 5.5%
1925 87,400 (92,600) 5.2% (5.2%)

1926 133,850(130,000) 5.9% (5.7%)
1927 137,330(136,100) 5.8% (5.7%)
1928 120,000 4'7%
1929 116,800 4-2%
58. Adolescents registered unemployed in the USSR for the month of
October numbered 118,300 in 1924; 125,800 in 1925; 144,100 in
1926; 168,800 in 1927; 240,300 in 1928 (L. S. Rogachevskaya,
Likvidatsiya bezrabotitsy v SSSR 1917-1930 (Moscow, 1973), pp. 92,
133 and 147). From 1925, the adolescent share of total unemployment
tended to rise.
59. A. Lunacharsky and A. Shokhin, K edinoi sisteme narodnogo obrazo-
vaniya (Moscow-Leningrad, 1929), p. 55.
60. A. Lunacharsky, Tretii front (Moscow, 1925), p. 116.
62. See below, pp. 98-100.
63. Khodorovsky, Narodnoe prosveshchenie, 1924 no. 8, p. 5.
64. XIII syezd RKP(b). Stenograficheskii otchet (Moscow, 1963), p.
672.
65. Chaplin, VI syezd RLKSM. Stenograficheskii otchet (Moscow, 1924),
p. 131.
66. The minutes of the July 7 meeting are not filed with the others in
TsGAOR 2306/1/2945: it took place between meetings no. 38/590
and 39/591. A report was published in Narodnoe prosveshchenie,
1924 no. 8, pp. 51-4, Epshtein, head of the Narkompros schools
administration, hints at pressure, ibid., 1927 no. 1, p. 11.
67. F. F. Korolev, T. D. Korneichik and Z. I. Ravkin, Ocherki po istorii
sovetskoi shkoly i pedagogiki 1921-1931 (Moscow, 1961), p. 39.
68. Narodnoe prosveshchenie, 1926 no. 7, pp. 131-2. Narkompros recom-
mended 7-9 hours on the uklon in grade vm and n - 1 3 hours in
grade ix (Korolev, Korneichik and Ravkin, Ocherki, p. 80).
69. Russkaya shkola za rubezhom, 1927/28 no. 25, p. 18.
71. Komsomol'skaya pravda, 12 May 1928, p. 3.
72. Narkompros endorsed the instruction of the Commissariat of Labour
that * graduates of schools with a pedagogical bias may be included in
the lists of those seeking [teaching] work only after they have taken
the labour exchange tests of expertise established for unemployed
persons who have had a considerable time away from work' (Narodnoe
prosveshchenie, 1929 no. 3-4, pp. 139-40).
74. Ibid., 1928 no. 4, p. 106.
75. Deev-Khomyakovsky of the Teachers' Union reported 'a massive
block on the teaching market' caused by provincial teachers coming
to seek work under better conditions in the capitals, and gave a figure
of 62,680 unemployed union members (including obsluzhivayushchii

personal) for the RSFSR. Rabotnik prosvesheniya, 1928 no. 5, p. 14.
76. See below, pp. 106, 123.
79. Ibid., p. 119. Of the remainder, 35% had graduated in 1926 and
36.9% in previous years.
80. Smolensk Archive, WKP 33: meeting of bureau of Smolensk gubkom,
22 December 1927 (appended document headed 'Results of recruit-
ment to Smolensk State University and Smolensk Rabfak in 1927').
82. Peasants were divided into bednyaki (poor peasants), batraki (landless
agricultural labourers), serednyaki (middle peasants), zazhitochnye
(prosperous peasants) and kulaks. The first two categories belonged to
the proletariat, the last to the exploiting classes.
83. Meeting in the Central House of Peasants, Moscow, 16 April 1927,
reported in Narodnoe prosveshchenie, 1927 no. 6, p. 67.
84. Ibid., p. 66.
85. Lunacharsky and Shokhin, K edinoi sisteme, pp. 28-9.
86. James G. McClelland, * Proletarianizing the Student Body: The
Soviet Experience during the New Economic Policy', Past and
Present, August 1978, p. 135.
87. M. Ya. Sonin, Vosproizvodstvo rabochei sily v SSSR i balans truda
(Moscow, 1959), p. 180.
88. O. I. Shkaratan, Problemy sotsiaVnoi struktury rabochego klassa
(Moscow, 1970), p. 304.
89. See Narkompros circular of 27 December 1923, EzhenedeVnik NKP,
1924 no. 1(22), pp. 36-8.
90. The Ukrainian ShKM experimented briefly with the teaching of
large-scale farming techniques and inculcation of 'the necessary collec-
tive habits' during NEP, but in 1927 - on the instruction of the
Ukrainian Central Committee - the Ukrainian Narkompros fell in
line with the Russian Narkompros5 emphasis on individual farming
{Narodnoe prosveshchenie, 1927 no. 1, p. 56, note). On the ShKM
during collectivization, see below, pp. 166-7.
91. Korolev, Korneichik and Ravkin, Ocherki, p. 27; Lunacharsky and
Shokhin, K edinoi sisteme, p. 17.
92. See above, p. 8.
93. A. Lunacharsky, Prosveshchenie i revolyutsiya (1926), p. 357.
94. Ibid.
95. Narodnoe prosveshchenie, 1925 no. 5—6, pp. 189-99.
96. Statistic he skii spravochnik SSSR za 1928, p. 867.
97. In 1928, Epshtein of Narkompros reported that 14.5% of ShKM
teachers were party members, as against 5% of all secondary-school
teachers. Pravda, 20 December 1928, p. 5.
98. Komsomol'skaya pravda, 20 April 1928, p. 3.

99. Izvestiya, 7 April 1926, p. 5; TsGA RSFSR 1565/19/34: meeting of
Narkompros RSFSR collegium, 19 April 1929.
100. Plenum Sibirskogo Kraevogo Komiteta VKP(b), 3-7 marta 1Q28
goda. Stenograficheskii otchet, part 1 (Novosibirsk, 1928), pp. 17-18.
Similar data are cited in Yu. S. Borisov, Podgotovka proizvodstven-
nykh kadrov sel'skogo khozyaistva SSSR v rekonstruktivnyi period
(Moscow, i960), p. 159.
101. During the First Five-Year Plan period, the term ShKM was often
used for the rural secondary school in general; and in 1927,
Narkompros RSFSR had in fact instructed that all rural secondary
education should be remodelled along ShKM lines (Narodnoe
prosveshchenie, 1927, no. 5, pp. 336°.). But the original ShKMs had
only about one eighth of the total number of students in all rural
secondary schools of the USSR in 1926/27 (see Statisticheskii
spravochnik SSSR za 1928, p. 867; Kul'turnoe stroitel'stvo SSSR
(I956),pp. 122-3.
102. Data from Kul'turnoe stroiteVstvo SSSR (1956), pp. 82-5.
103. Ibid.
Chapter 4 Professors and Soviet power

1. Permskii Gosudarstvennyi Universitet (Perm, 1966), pp. 22-3.
2. Tomskii Gosudarstvennyi Universitet (Tomsk, 1934), p. 16.
3. Krasnoe studenchestvo, 1927/28 no. 4-5, p. 118; Tomskii Gosudar-
stvennyi Universitet, p. 16.
4. S. E. Belozerov, Ocherki istorii Rostovskogo Universiteta (Rostov,
!959)> P- 163.
5. On the early relations of the universities and the Soviet government,
see Sheila Fitzpatrick, The Commissariat of Enlightenment (Cam-
bridge, 1970), ch. 4.
6. P. Sorokin, The Long Journey (New Haven, 1963), p. 182; Istoriya
Leningradskogo Universiteta (Leningrad, 1969), p. 196.
7. V. I. Prokofyev, Moskovskoe Vysshee Tekhnicheskoe Uchilishche:
125 let (Leningrad, 1955), p. 297; Moskovskaya SeV sko-Khozyaistven-
naya Akademiya imeni K. A. Timiryazeva. K stoletiyu osnovaniya,
1865-1965 (Moscow, 1969), p. 112.
8. See Novikov's own account, M. M. Novikov, Ot Moskvy do N'yu-
Iorka (New York, 1952).
9. N. V. Krylenko, Sudebnye rechi (Moscow, 1964), pp. 57-60.
10. Sobranie uzakonenii, 1921 no. 65, art. 486; 1922 no. 43, art. 518.
11. V. S. Emelyanov, O vremeni, o tovarishchakh, o sebe, 2nd ed.
(Moscow, 1970), p. 55.
12. See Permskii Gosudarstvennyi Universitet, p. 31; Istoriya Lenin-
gradskogo Universiteta, p. 268; L. Milkh, Pravda, 3 April 1928, p. 4.
13. Partiya i vospitanie smeny (Leningrad, 1924), pp. 122-3.

14. Among such Communist officials was Evgeny Preobrazhensky, co-
author with Bukharin of Azbuka kommunizma, economist, organizer
of the Trotskyite Opposition campaign in 1923/24 - who was at this
time head of Narkompros' administration of higher and technical
education, though at loggerheads with others in the Narkompros
collegium. He was blamed, probably rightly, for provocative handling
of the professors both in 1921 and 1922. After the second strike he
was reprimanded and removed from the job.
15. See V. I. Lenin, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, LII, 5th ed. (Moscow,
1965), P. 388.
16. See Istoriya Moskouskogo Universiteta, 11 (Moscow, 1955), pp. 88-9,
and V. Stratonov, * Moscow University's loss of freedom', V. B.
Elyashevich, A. A. Kizevetter and M. M. Novikov, ed., Moskovskii
Universitet 1755-1930 (Paris, 1930), pp. 226-35. Stratonov was then
head of the physics and mathematics school of Moscow University.
17. Stratonov, 'Moscow University's loss of freedom', p. 218.
18. Istoriya Leningradskogo Universiteta, p. 211; Novikov, Ot Moskvy do
N'yu-Iorka, pp. 122-3.
19. Istoriya Leningradskogo Universiteta, p. 211.
20. Novikov, Moskovskii Universitet, pp. 122-3.
21. Istoriya Leningradskogo Universiteta, pp. 211-12.
22. On the early history of party schools, see L. S. Leonova, Iz istorii
podgotovki partiinykh kadrov v sovetsko-partiinykh shkolakh i
kommunisticheskikh universitetakh {1921-1925 gg.) (Moscow, 1972).
23. M. N. Pokrovsky, 'What Lenin was for our higher school', Pravda,
27 January 1924, p. 2.
24. L. V. Ivanova, U istokov sovetskoi istoricheskoi nauki. Podgotovka
kadrov istorikov-marksistov 1917-1929 (Moscow, 1968), p. 13.
25. Early in 1921, Pokrovsky asked Lenin's opinion about the desirability
of employing Mensheviks (naming Groman, Ermansky, Sukhanov,
Cherevanin and Martov) in the Moscow University FON. Lenin's
answer was: 'I am very doubtful, and think it had better be put
before the Politburo of the Central Committee' (Ivanova, U istokov,
p. 22, quoting Leninskii sbornik xxxv, p. 231). Whether or not there
was a Politburo resolution, a number of Mensheviks were in fact
employed.
26. Ivanova, U istokov, p. 14.
27. Iz istorii Moskovskogo Universiteta (Moscow, 1955), p. 118.
28. Istoriya Moskovskogo Universiteta, 11, pp. 82-3.
29. Sovnarkom resolution of 4 March 1921 'On the plan of organization
of schools of the social sciences in Russian universities', Sobranie
uzakonenii, 1921 no. 19, art. 117.
30. Iz istorii Moskovskogo Universiteta, p. 113.
31. Saratovskii Universitet 1909-1959, p. 33.
32. For lists of Communists sent to the Moscow University School of

Notes to pages jo-i 269
Social Sciences, see Ivanova, U istokov, pp. 23 and 25—6; Ukraintsev,
KPSS — organizator revolyutsionnogo preobrazovaniya vysshei shkoly
(Moscow, 1963), p. 115; Istoriya Moskovskogo Universiteta, 11, pp.
250-1; Moskovskii Universitet za 50 let (Moscow, 1967), pp. 57 and
457; G. D. Alekseeva, Oktyabr'skaya revolyutsiya i istoricheskie nauki
v Rossii (igiy-ig23 SS-) (Moscow, 1968), p. 260.
33. Detailed instructions on the subject were published in Izvestiya TsK
in 1922 and 1923. The xn Party Congress resolved 'to draw all mem-
bers of the old party guard completely into service both in the
Communist VUZy and the VUZy in general. It is necessary to put
an end to the casual attitude which a number of the most responsible
comrades have to the business of teaching in the higher school.'
Quoted Izvestiya TsK, 1923 no. 6(54), pp. 53-4.
34. Iz istorii Moskovskogo Universitet a, p. 134. In 1922, V. P. Volgin,
N. M. Lukin, M. N. Reisner and I. D. Udaltsov were the most
prominent Marxists on the faculty of the Moscow University School
of Social Sciences. Reisner and Lukin may have been teaching full-
time (though not only at Moscow University), but Udaltsov and
Volgin (who was Rector of the University as well as holding a
responsible position in Narkompros) were certainly not. The faculty
included such notable non-Marxists as the jurist A. M. Vinaver and
S. A. Kotlyarevsky, the medieval historian D. M. Petrushevsky, the
philosopher P. F. Preobrazhensky, the linguist A. M. Selishchev and
the formalist literary scholar M. D. Eikhengolts. See list of faculty in
Otchet o sostoyanii i deistviyakh I-go Moskovskogo Gosudarstvennogo
Universiteta za 1Q22 g. (Moscow, 1923), pp. 22-32.
35. M. K. Korbut, Kazan'skii Gosudarstvennyi Universitet imeni V. I.
UVyanova-Lenina za 125 let 1804/5—ig2g/30,11 (Kazan, 1930), p. 309.
36. Rabochii fakul'tet Kazan'skogo Gosudarstvennogo Universiteta imeni
V. I. Lenina, Na putyakh k vysshei shkole. Vosem' let raboty 1919-
ig2j (Kazan, 1927), pp. 156-7; Alekseeva, Oktyabr'skaya revolyutsiya,
p. 260.
37. See, for example, Izvestiya TsK, 1923 no. 2(50), p. 20: in 1922
Ter-Vaganyan was sent as a lecturer to Kursk, Dvolaitsky to
Voronezh, Skvortsov-Stepanov to Kharkov, Ekaterinoslav and Kiev
and Felix Kon to Bryansk.
38. Tomskii Gosudarstvennyi Universitet, p. 17.
39. Ivanova, U istokov, pp. 23-4.
40. The Kazan school of social sciences reverted to a law school (Korbut,
Kazan'skii Gosudarstvennyi Universitet, p. 311) and the Perm school
of social sciences to teacher-training (Permskii Gosudarstvennyi
Universitet, p. 35). Konstantin F. Shteppa, then an historian at Kiev
University, says that the second course was more common (Shteppa,
Russian Historians and the Soviet State (New Brunswick NJ, 1962),
p. 11).

270 Notes to pages ji-6
41. Quoted S. E. Belozerov, Ocherki, pp. 164-5.
42. See the comment by V. N. Yakovleva at a meeting of VUZ rectors,
EzhenedeVnik NKP, 1924 no. 1(22), p. 18.
43. Ivanova, U istokov, p. 35. Members of the commission included
Pokrovsky, A. S. Bubnov and K. A. Popov.
44. Moskovskii Universitet za §0 let, pp. 60, 563, 564-5.
45. Istoriya Leningradskogo Universiteta, pp. 226-9.
46. For the first version, drafted by Lenin, see Sovnarkom resolution of
4 March 1921 'On the establishment of a general scientific minimum
compulsory for teaching in all higher schools of the RSFSR',
Sobranie uzakonenii, 1921 no. 19, art. 119.
47. Sovnarkom resolution of 1 November 1922, signed Kamenev,
Sobranie uzakonenii, 1922 no. 75, art. 929.
48. Partiya i vospitanie smeny, p. 104.
49. Pravda, 19 January 1924, p. 5.
50. Quoted Leonova, Iz istorii podgotovki partiinykh kadrov, p. 115.
51. Robert C. Tucker, Stalin as Revolutionary (New York, 1973), pp. 316-
19.
52. Krasnaya molodezh' (monthly journal of the Central Moscow Bureau
of Proletarian Students), 1924 no. 1 (May), pp. 45-9.
53. Iz istorii Moskovskogo Universiteta, p. 141.
54. Ukraintsev, KPSS — organizator, p. 114.
55. Krasnaya molodezh'', 1924 no. 1, p. 103.
56. Ivanova, U istokov, p. 39; Programmy po istorii klassovoi bor'by v
Rossii, istorii klassovoi bor'by na zapade, istorii VKP(b). Na fakuVtete
sovetskogo prava I-go MGU (Moscow: MGU, 1928). The programmy,
unlike those for secondary school, include bibliographies. Lenin's
works predominate in the course on party history, though there is
also some Marx, Engels, Pokrovsky and Stalin (Voprosy leninizma
and speech to the xiv Party Congress).
57. See V. Astrov, Krucha (Moscow, 1969), pp. 173-4, 210-11, 288-9,
403-5 and passim.
59. Loboda, Nauchnyi rabotnik, 1927 no. 10, pp. 57-8.
60. Izvestiya, 18 May 1926, p. 3.
61. Upadochnoe nastroenie sredi molodezhi (Moscow, 1927), pp. 68-9.
62. Stratonov, 'Moscow University's loss of freedom', pp. 214-18;
Loboda, Nauchnyi rabotnik, 1925 no. 1, pp. 160-1.
63. On the Committee and its dissolution, see Fitzpatrick, The Com-
missariat of Enlightenment, pp. 233-4, and Bertram D. Wolfe, The
Bridge and the Abyss (London, 1967), pp. 109-18.
64. Stratonov, 'Moscow University's loss of freedom', pp. 214-16.
65. The memoir, as already cited, was published in Elyashevich,
Kizevetter and Novikov, ed., Moskovskii Universitet 1755-1930
(Paris: Sovremennyya zapiski, 1930).

Notes to pages j6-g 271
66. Izvestiya TsK, 1922 no. 11-12, pp. 47-8.
67. For membership of the group expelled and information on their
academic disciplines and institutional affiliations, see Sorokin, The
Long Journey, p. 192; Stratonov, 'Moscow University's loss of free-
dom', pp. 241-2; Istoriya Moskouskogo Universiteta, 11, p. 83; Iz
istorii Moskovskogo Universiteta, p. 118; Istoriya Leningradskogo
Universiteta, p. 244; Korbut, Kazan'rskii Gosudarstvennyi Universitet,
p. 318; A. Solzhenitsyn, Arkhipelag Gulag, i-n (Paris, 1973), p. 378.
68. Izvestiya TsK, 1923 no. 4(52), p. 25: Central Committee report to
the XII Party Congress.
69. Speech to First Congress of Scientific Workers, November 1923,
Pravda, 24 November 1923, p. 4.
70. Report to the Petrograd guberniya conference of scientific workers,
Pravda, 9 November 1923, p. 4. This statement was greeted with
great approval by the Petrograd intelligentsia, and Zinoviev was
elected a member of the Scientific Workers5 Section of the Teachers'
Union.
71. On Shklovsky's return, see Victor Erlich, Russian Formalism: History-
Doctrine, 2nd ed. (The Hague, 1965), p. 136.
72. Nauchnyi rabotnik, 1925 no. 2, pp. i85ff., and 1925 no. 3, pp. i6off.:
'Losses to Russian science'.
73. See below, note 83; and Loren R. Graham, The Soviet Academy of
Sciences and the Communist Party, ig2?-ig32 (Princeton, 1967), p. 88.
74. Resolution of First Congress of Workers in Education and Socialist
Culture (1920), quoted Nauchnyi rabotnik, 1928 no. 2, p. 44.
75. Nauchnyi rabotnik, 1927 no. 1, p. 7.
76. Ibid., p. 21.
77. Ibid., pp. 4 and 7.
78. See above, pp. 30-31.
79. Earlier, the Commission had been on the Narkompros budget. When
Narkompros decided in 1924 to liquidate the institution and transfer
its assets to the Section of Scientific Workers, Sovnarkom RSFSR took
it over. TsGAOR 2306/1/2101: meetings of presidium of Narkompros
collegium, 3 and 10 September 1924; TsGAOR 2306/1/3328: meet-
ing of Narkompros collegium, 1 September 1924; Pyatr let raboty
tsentraVnoi komissii po uluchsheniyu byta uchenykh pri Souete
Narodnykh Komissarov RSFSR (TseKUBU) (Moscow, 1927), p. 8.
80. Pyatf let raboty, pp. 19-25 and 28-35.
82. Pyat' let raboty, p. 11.
84. Vechernyaya Moskva, 5 February 1930, p. 2.
85. Khodorovsky, Narodnoe prosveshchenie, 1925 no. 5-6, p. 3; Luna-
charsky, Krasnaya molodezh', 1924 no. 1, p. 96.

87. Narodnoe prosveshchenie, 1925 no. 5-6, p. 3; Krasnaya molodezh',
1925 no. 5(9), p. 118, quoted in Ukraintsev, KPSS - organizator,
P- l3f
88. Salaries as expressed in byudzhetnye roubles were about 60% of what
was actually paid in chervonnye roubles (see, for example, tables in
Itogi desyatiletiya sovetskoi vlasti, pp. 342-3). Most writers do
not differentiate, and there was an obvious temptation for Narkompros
or professorial spokesmen asking for higher salaries to use the bud-
getary measure for pathetic effect.
89. An investigation of 268 Section members throughout the USSR
showed that they held 466 academic jobs, an average of 1.66 per
person. Nauchnyi rabotnik, 1925 no. 3, p. 113.
90. Nauchnyi rabotnik, 1925 no. 1, p. 176; 1925 no. 2, p. 145.
91. Professor Sergievsky in 1925 gave 200-250 roubles as an average
professorial income (Nauchnyi rabotnik, 1925 no. 1, p. 177); 350
roubles was the level at which the Commission discontinued salary
supplements (Pyat' let raboty, p. 18).
93. Itogi desyatiletiya sovetskoi vlasti, pp. 342-3 and 347.
95. Resolution of VTsIK and Sovnarkom RSFSR of 31 July 1924,
Nauchnyi rabotnik, 1925 no. 1, pp. 212-13.
98. See, for example, Seifullina's story 'Invasion', in Lidia Seifullina,
Izbrannye sochineniya, 1 (Moscow, 1958), pp. 387!!.
99. Mitskevich, letter to the editor, Izvestiya, 31 August 1926, p. 4.
100. Decree of Sovnarkom RSFSR of 21 January 1924, Sobranie
uzakonenii, 1924 no. 7, art. 44; and Narkompros instructions remind-
ing VUZy of the Sovnarkom decree in Nauchnyi rabotnik, 1925 no. 3,
p. 165.
101. Decree of VTsIK and Sovnarkom RSFSR of 15 December 1924, in
Nauchnyi rabotnik, 1925 no. 1, p. 217.
102. In the 1924 enrolment for Russian VUZy, the Section was allocated
350 VUZ places. For the 1926 enrolment, it got 560 places, 164 of
them in Moscow and 135 in Leningrad. Nauchnyi rabotnik, 1925 no. 2,
pp. 172-3; 1926 no. 4, pp. 36 and 95.
103. Central Committee circular of 25 May 1923 'On the creation of new
teaching cadres in the VUZy', Izvestiya TsK, 1923 no. 6(54), p. 83.
104. Statisticheskii sbornik po narodnomu prosveshcheniyu RSFSR 1Q26 g.,
PP- 38-9.
105. Pokrovsky, Izvestiya, 11 April 1926, p. 3, and 19 May 1926, p. 3.
106. Pokrovsky, speech to Fifth Plenum of the Soviet of Scientific Workers,
December 1928, Nauchnyi rabotnik, 1929 no. 1, p. 20.
107. There was, at least formally, a 'compulsory Marxist minimum' for

all graduate students between 1925 and 1927 (Istoriya Leningradskogo
Universiteta, p. 252). For Pokrovsky's defensive comments on it to the
Section of Scientific Workers, see Nauchnyi rabotnik, 1927 no. 3,
PP. 41-3.
108. Izvestiya, 17 April 1927, p. 5. The speaker was Pozern.
109. Izvestiya, 17 April 1927, p. 6.
110. Sud'by sovremennoi intelligentsii (Moscow: Moskovskii komitet
RKP(b), 1925), P- 17-
in. Bukharin, 'On the world revolution, our country, culture and other
matters', Krasnaya nov', 1924 no. 1 and 2. I. P. Pavlov's text, which
Bukharin quotes extensively, was apparently not published.
112. Stephen F. Cohen, Bukharin and the Bolshevik Revolution (New
York, 1973), p. 237.
113. Sud'by sovremennoi intelligentsia p. 27.
114. Trenirovka was a word much used by the theatre director Vsevolod
Meyerhold in connection with the c bio-mechanical' preparation of
actors. It was also used by the poet and theorist of the scientific
organization of labour, A. K. Gastev (see below, pp. 126-7).
115. Sakulin, writing in Nauchnyi rabotnik, 1928 no. 5-6, p. 45, said that
Bukharin had promised that concessions would be made 'kogda nam
skazhet politicheskii razum, a razum skazhet verno'. This remark does
not appear in the published stenogram of the debate, Sud'by
sovremennoi intelligentsii.
116. See Oldenburg, 'The tasks of the Section of Scientific Workers in
cultural revolution', Nauchnyi rabotnik, 1928 no. 5-6.
117. The idea of such a partnership, implicit in many of Oldenburg's
statements, may also be found in the resolution of the First Congress
of Scientific Workers calling for 'struggle for the creation of a free
society built on the union of science and labour' (my emphasis added),
118. Izvestiya, 12 February 1927, p. 2.
119. Ibid.
120. Ibid.
121. At this time, the All-Union Vesenkha was pressing for transfer of
various higher educational and scholarly institutions from the Russian
Narkompros to Vesenkha (see below, ch. 6). The Academy of
Sciences had recently passed out of Narkompros control into that of
the Academic Committee (Uchenyi komitet) under TsIK. Thus the
scientific workers' demand for organizational change in the Narkom-
pros administration of higher education and scientific research,
reported by Loboda in Nauchnyi rabotnik, 1927 no. 1, pp. 16-17,
strongly suggested that the Section might look to Vesenkha or TsIK
for support if Narkompros failed to satisfy them.
122. See below, pp. ii3ff.
123. For the worsening situation of rural teachers, see above, ch. 2. Writers,

who were under pressure from the militant young Communists of

RAPP, also had grounds for pessimism about the future. For a
more detailed discussion of these questions, see Sheila Fitzpatrick,
'The "Soft55 Line on Culture and Its Enemies: Soviet Cultural
Policy 1922-1927 s, Slavic Review, June 1974.
124. Lunacharsky, 'The intelligentsia and its place in socialist construc-
tion5, Revolyutsiya i kuVtura, 1927 no. 1 (15 November), pp. 32-3.
125. Ibid., p. 29.
Chapter 5 Recruitment to higher education

1. Vikhirev, later head of Narkompros' rabfak department, joined a
Bolshevik group of seven at the Shanyavsky People's University in
August 1917 (Krasnoe studenchestvo, 1927-28 no. 4-5, p. 67). In the
Moscow Commercial Institute, there was a small but active Bolshevik
group whose members quickly went into full-time party work
(K. V. Ostrovityanov, Dumy o proshlom (Moscow, 1967), passim);
and the same was evidently true of the Petrograd Polytechnical
Institute, whose Bolshevik cell a few years earlier had included
Molotov, Syrtsov, Epshtein (later of Narkompros?), Stetsky and
Andreev {Krasnoe studenchestvo, 1927-28 no. 4-5, p. 95). For further
information, see L. M. Shalaginova, 'The student movement on the
eve and during the February Revolution5, Voprosy istorii KPSS,
1967 no. 2.
2. Ostrovityanov, Dumy o proshlom, p. 165; Istoriya Leningradskogo
Universiteta i8ig-ig6g (Leningrad, 1969), p. 194.
3. Ostrovityanov, Dumy o proshlom, pp. 260-2.
4. Sovnarkom decree of 2 August 1918 'On rules of enrolment in
higher educational institutions5, Sobranie uzakonenii i rasporyazhenii
rabochego i krest'yanskogo praviteVstva RSFSR, 1918 no. 57, art. 632.
5. For a view from each side, see V. Stratonov, 'Moscow University's
loss of freedom5, Moskovskii Universitet 1755-1930 (Paris, 1930), and
A. Ya. Vyshinsky, quoted in V. I. Bessonova, 'Creation and develop-
ment of workers5 faculties in 1919-19215, in Iz istorii velikoi oktyabr'-
skoi sotsialisticheskoi revolyutsii (Moscow, 1957), pp. 153-4.
6. Quoted V. V. Ukraintsev, KPSS — organizator revolyutsionnogo
preobrazovaniya vysshei shkoly (Moscow, 1963), p. 74.
7. M. K. Korbut, Kazan''skii Gosudarstvennyi Universitet imeni V. I.
UVyanova-Lenina za 125 let 1804/5—1929/30,11 (Kazan, 1930), p. 307.
8. Istoriya Lenin gradsko go Universiteta, p. 264.
9. Quoted N. M. Katuntseva, RoV rabochikh fakuVtetov v formirovanii
kadrov narodnoi intelligentsii v SSSR (Moscow, 1966), p. 13. Essenti-
ally the same story is told in Bessonova, 'Creation and development
of workers5 faculties5, pp. 153-4.

Notes to pages 88-g^ 275
10. Rabfak figures from Narodnoe prosveshchenie, 1929 no. 3-4, pp. 164-
5; VUZ figures from Narodnoe prosveshchenie v RSFSR (Moscow,
1928), pp. 46-7.
11. Krasnoe studenchestvo, 1927/28 no. 4-5, pp. 101 and 126.
12. Stratonov, 'Moscow University's loss of freedom', p. 201.
13. Istoriya Leningradskogo Universiteta, pp. 266-7. The Menshevik
journal Sotsialisticheskii vestnik, publishing in Berlin in 1924, gave
well-informed reports on the purge in nos. 10, 14 and 15 of that year,
implying the continued existence of Menshevik groups among the
students.
14. Quoted Ukraintsev, KPSS — organizator, pp. 72-3.
15. Sovnarkom resolution of 17 September 1920 'On workers' faculties',
quoted Ukraintsev, KPSS - organizator, p. 73, and Katuntseva, RoV
rabochikh fakuVtetov, p. 27.
16. Istoriya Moskovskogo Universiteta, 11 (Moscow, 1955), p. 40.
17. Izvestiya TsK, 1922 no. 9(45), p. 9: report of the registration and
allocation department of the Central Committee for the period
15 July-15 September.
18. See Izvestiya TsK, 1921 no. 34, pp. 12-14; 1921 no. 35, p. 4; 1922
no
- 3(39)> PP- 7 and 61; 1922 no. 9(45), pp. 5 and 9.
19. Narkompros instruction of 21 June 1921, quoted Istoriya Leningrad-
skogo Universiteta, p. 259.
20. Iz istorii Moskovskogo Universiteta (igiy-iQ4i) (Moscow, 1955),
p. i n .
22. Narkompros instruction of 27 February 1923, Byulleten' offitsiaVnykh
rasporyazhenii i soobshchenii Narodnogo Komissariata Prosvesh-
cheniya, 1923 no. 15, p. 10.
23. EzhenedeVnik Narodnogo Komissariata Prosveshcheniya RSFSR,
1924 no. 14(35), P- 2 6 -
24. 'On enrolment in higher educational institutions' (signed Molotov,
Central Committee secretary, 15 June 1923), Izvestiya TsK, 1923 no.
6(54), p. 17.
26. Quoted Katuntseva, RoV rabochikh fakuVtetov, p. 19.
27. Molodaya gvardiya, 1924 no. 5, pp. 2o6fT.
28. Rukovodyashchie kadry R.K.P. {boVshevikov) i ikh raspredelenie,
2nd ed. (Moscow, n.d. (1924)), p. 159.
29. Industrializatsiya SSSR IQ26-IQ28 (Moscow, 1969), p. 370; Narodnoe
prosveshchenie v RSFSR (Moscow, 1928), pp. 46-7.
30. Pravda, 14 December 1923, p. 1.
31. Chaplin, VI syezd RLKSM. Stenograficheskii otchet (Moscow, 1924),
p. 132.
32. Rukovodyashchie kadry, p. 164.
33. Quoted Zinoviev, Partiya i vospitanie smeny (Leningrad, 1924), p. 14.

The students were from Sverdlovsk Communist University and the
Moscow University social science school.
34. See Izvestiya TsK, 1924 no. 5(63), p. 16: Central Committee report
'Towards the XIII Congress of RKP(b)\
35. See V. Astrov, Krucha (Moscow, 1969), pp. 53-4. This is an autobio-
graphical novel of political life in Sverdlov Communist University in
the 1920s; the author later worked with Bukharin on Pravda and
supported the Right Opposition. I am indebted to Stephen F. Cohen
for drawing my attention to this work.
36. Izvestiya TsK, 1923 no. 9—10, p. 14; Pravda, 30 December 1923, p. 3.
All but four of those named as members of the 'Rabochaya pravda'
group were students: four of them were associated with Sverdlov
Communist University, two with Moscow Higher Technical School
and its rabfak, and two with Moscow University.
37. E. Enchmen, 18 tezisov o lteorii novoi biologiV (proekt organizatsii
Revolyutsionno-nauchnogo Soveta Respubliki i vvedeniya fiziologi-
cheskikh pasportov (Pyatigorsk, 1920), discussed by David Joravsky,
Soviet Marxism and Natural Science, 191J-1Q32 (New York, 1961),
P-94-
38. See Sheila Fitzpatrick, 'Sex and Revolution. An Analysis of Statistical
and Literary Data on the Sexual Mores of Soviet Students in the
1920s', Journal of Modern History, June 1978.
39. Pravda, 4 January 1924, p. 5. Bukharin's article c " Enchmeniada" '
was published in Krasnaya nov', 1923 no. 6.
40. Pravda, 15 January 1924, p. 5 (letter paraphrased by Bubnov, of
Central Committee agitprop department).
41. Pravda, 14 December 1923, p. 1.
42. L. Trotsky, 'The New Course' (letter to party meetings preparing for
the XIII Party Conference), Pravda, 11 December 1923, p. 4.
43. Quoted Zinoviev, Pravda, 21 December 1923, p. 4.
45. Ibid.
46. Pravda, 21 December 1923, p. 5; 8 January 1924, p. 4. In December,
the Sverdlov Communist University cell voted as follows: 554 for
Preobrazhensky's resolution (i.e. for Trotsky); 421 for resolution
supporting the Central Committee majority; 7 for resolution proposed
by Shlyapnikov.
47. Zinoviev, Pravda, 3 February 1924, p. 4; Robert V. Daniels, The
Conscience of the Revolution (New York, 1969), p. 227.
48. Pravda, 5 February 1924, p. 5.
49. Pravda, 12 February 1924, p. 5 (information from Ilya Vardin, a
supporter of the Central Committee majority).
50. N. Akimov, Krasnoe studenchestvo, 1927/28 no. 6, p. 47.
(Moscow, 1970), p. 57.

Notes to pages 96-g 277
53. See, for example, Pravda, 27 February 1924, p. 3: 'Breakthrough in
the VUZy', on the Second Moscow University.
54. Pravda, 9 and 11 January 1924, with additional signatures published
13 and 15 January. The initiative seems to have come from a group of
working-class Communists in the engineering schools: see Emelyanov's
account (Emelyanov, O vremeni, pp. 58-9) of his own participation
and that of fellow Mining Academy student Tevosyan (who, like
Emelyanov, later became a major industrial administrator) and Fadeev
(who headed the Soviet Writers' Union in the 1930s and 1940s).
55. Pravda, 19 January 1924, p. 5: Resolution on the results of the
discussion and on petty-bourgeois deviation in the party.
57. Pravda, 5 February 1924, p. 5: speech to Communist fraction of
Second Congress of Soviets of the USSR.
58. See list of expulsions, Izvestiya TsK, 1924 no. 4(9), appendix 2,
pp. 3-8.
59. Krasnoe studenenchestvo, 1928/29 no. 14, p. 4.
60. L. S. Leonova, Iz istorii podgotovki partiinykh kadrov v sovetsko-
partiinykh shkolakh i kommunisticheskikh universitetakh (7921-/925
gg.) (Moscow, 1972), p. 46.
61. Industrializatsiya SSSR ig26-iQ28, p. 370.
62. TsGAOR 2306/1/2945: Narkompros collegium meeting of 17 March
1924 (Zinoviev's request announced by Lunacharsky).
63. TsGAOR 2306/1/2945: Narkompros collegium meeting of 26 March
1924.
65. See Sovnarkom resolution of 16 May 1924 'On the reduction of the
number of pupils in the VUZy of the RSFSR', Pravda, 17 May 1924,
p. 5; statements by Khodorovsky, Pravda, 30 April 1924, p. 1, and
Krasnaya molodezh', 1924 no. 1, p. 113.
66. Pravda, 20 May 1924, p. 8.
67. TsGAOR 2306/1/2945: Narkompros collegium meeting of 7 May
1924. K. A. Popov represented the agitprop department of the
Central Committee on the Commission.
68. Smolensk Archive, WKP 518: report on work of the guberniya
agitprop department for March—May 1924, p. 56.
69. V. Sh-rin, 'They are purging' (described as an account 'from life, and
according to official documents'), Krasnaya molodezh', 1924 no. 2,
p. 126.
70. TsGAOR 2306/1/2903: Narkompros instruction no. 445, dated 21
August 1924 and endorsed by Rykov (president of Sovnarkom), on
the liquidation of the Central Purge Commission.
71. A. V. Lunacharsky, Na froute prosveshcheniya (report to Second
Session of VTsIK, 9 October 1924) (Moscow, n.d.), p. 34.

278 Notes to pages gg-102
73. Sotsialisticheskii vestnik, 1924 no. 15, p. 14.
74. TsGAOR 2306/1/3328: meeting of presidium of Narkompros col-
legium, 25 September 1924.
75. Smolensk Archive, WKP 518, p. 71: letter from agitprop department
of Smolensk guberniya committee dated 27 September 1924.
76. TsGAOR 2306/1/3328: Narkompros collegium meeting of 23
September 1924 (resolution proposed by Lunacharsky).
77. EzhenedeVnik NKP, 1924 no. 21(41), 15 October, p. 2.
79. Data from Narodnoe prosveshchenie v RSFSR (Moscow, 1928),
pp. 46-7 (total enrolments at beginning of year); Narodnoe prosvesh-
chenie, 1925 no. 4, p. 118 (enrolment in May); ibid., 1925 no. 3, p. 20
(admissions); ibid., 1926 no. 11, p. 76 (graduations).
80. See above, note 79.
81. Industrializatsiya SSSR 7926-/928 gg., p. 370.
83. Narodnoe prosveshchenie v SSSR za ig28-2g g. (Moscow, 1930),
p. 39; KuVturnoe stroiteVstvo SSSR (Moscow, 1940), p. 113.
84. Bukharin, Partiya i vospitanie smeny, p. 108; Rykov, Nauchnyi
rabotnik, 1925 no. 2, p. 95.
85. See SotsiaVnyi i natsionaVnyi sostav VKP(b). Itogi vsesoyuznoi
partiinoi perepisi ig2j g. (Moscow, 1928), p. 26, for a discussion of
the inadequacy of social origin as a determinant of class.
86. Krasnaya molodezh', 1924 no. 2, p. 126.
87. Using data cited above (notes 79 and 81), the following table can be
compiled for VUZy of the RSFSR:
Total Workers Peasants Employees and Others

Student enrolment
1923/24 150,893 23,087 35,46o 36,818 55,529
Admitted 1924 15,280 5,424 4,508 5,348
Student enrolment
1924/25 117,485 24,319 28,784 42,060 22,322
Loss through drop-out,
purge and graduation 48,688 4,192 11,184 33,313
Numbers in each class category are calculated from percentages, in a

source which gives no aggregate figure for enrolment. With the total
enrolment figures used in this table, 'employees' would show a loss
only if fewer than 106 'others' were among the 5,348, 'employees
and others' admitted in 1924. However, if the class percentages
were applied to the student body as of May 1924 (135,000 students
instead of 150,893), 'employee' numbers would actually appear to
have increased during the purge year by 4,000-9,000.

2
88. Partiya i vospitanie smeny, p. 14.
89. On Eseninshchina, see Fitzpatrick, 'Sex and Revolution.' For
contemporary discussions of the moral degeneracy of youth, see
I. T. Bobryshev, Melkoburzhuaznye vliyaniya sredi molodezhi
(Moscow, 1928); S. I. Gusev, ed., Kakova zhe nasha molodezhf?
(Moscow-Leningrad, 1927); I. M. Razin (compiler), Komsomol'skii
byt (Moscow, 1927); Upadochnoe nastroenie sredi molodezhi. Esenin-
shchina (Moscow: Kommunisticheskaya Akademiya, 1927).
90. The full title is Luna s pravoi storony, Hi neobyknovennaya lyubov'.
It was first published in Molodaya gvardiya, 1926 no. 9, and appeared
in book form in 1927. Malashkin's suggestion — later repeated by
Gusev and others - that Trotsky was in some way responsible for the
degeneracy of youth was probably prompted by the emotional essay
written by Trotsky on Esenin's death ('In memory of Sergei Esenin',
Pravda, 19 January 1926, p. 3), often cited as an encouragement of
' Eseninist' tendencies.
91. Upadochnoe nastroenie sredi molodezhi, p. 112.
92. K. Radek, ' I t is not the thermometer which is to blame',
Komsomol'skaya pravda, 27 June 1926, p. 2. For other comments
from Oppositionists on the degeneracy phenomenon, see speeches by
Preobrazhensky and Radek, Upadochnoe nastroenie sredi molodezhi,
and G. Lelevich, 'The crisis of Soviet culture and class war in
ideology', Kommunisticheskii put' (Saratov), 1927 no. 21(84).
93. ' I t is not the thermometer which is to blame', Komsomol'skaya
pravda, 27 June 1926, p. 2.
94. E. Troshchenko, 'VUZ youth', Molodaya gvardiya, 1927 no. 4, p. 137.
95. A. Milchakov, Pervoe desyatiletie. Zapiski veterana Komsomola, 2nd
ed. (Moscow, 1965), p. 148.
96. The Komsomol journal Molodaya gvardiya published several detailed
and only minimally critical reports of the Opposition platform in
1926: see, for example, Milchakov, Molodaya gvardiya, 1926 no. 4,
p. 83, and Khanin, ibid., 1926 no. 9, p. 100. The recommendations on
student life were made by Radek in ' It is not the thermometer which
is to blame', Komsomol'skaya pravda, 27 June 1926, p. 2.
97. On Komsomol Oppositionism 1925-27, see V. Sulemov, Soyuz
molodykh bortsov (Moscow, 1971), pp. 199-209.
98. Reports on VUZ discussions of the Opposition platform indicating
very small overt support for the Opposition are to be found in
Izvestiya, 8 October 1926, p. 2, and 10 October 1926, p. 3. Further
discussions were held in November 1927, with a reported Opposition
vote in the VUZy of Moscow, Leningrad, Nizhny Novgorod and
Rostov on Don ranging from 2% to 4 % of the more than 13,000 votes
cast. In Moscow, the biggest Opposition vote was in the Plekhanov
Institute (129 out of 1,850), with 93 Opposition votes out of a total of
1,805 m Moscow University and 43 out of a total of 976 in Moscow

280 Notes to pages 104.-6
Higher Technical School. The Opposition vote in the Leningrad
Poly technical Institute and Leningrad University was about 4%.
99. N. Akimov, in Krasnoe studenchestvo, 1927/28 no. 6, p. 47. The only
firm report of an * appearance1 by an Opposition leader was that of
Radek at a meeting held in an apartment and attended by 30
Leningrad VUZ students (Molodaya gvardiya, 1927 no. 12, p. 172).
However, Trotsky and Zinoviev were described as having suddenly
become 'accessible to the lower cells' at a meeting of Communist
scholars in the autumn of 1926. Izvestiya, 8 October 1926, p. 2.
100. The figure which is for the RSFSR alone is calculated from data in
Narodnoe prosveshchenie, 1925 no. 3, p. 20; 1925 no. 10-11, p. 167;
1926 no. 11, p. 76; 1927 no. 11-12, pp. 89, 91 and 92.
101. Sotsial'nyi i natsional'nyi sostau VKP(b) (Moscow, 1928), p. 41.
102. Izuestiya TsK, 1926 no. 49, p. 8. Although the author (L. Milkh) was
writing specifically of the Urals, the statement quoted seems to have
general application.
103. V. Strelnikova, 'Son of Professor Malkov', Krasnoe studenchestvo,
1927/28 no. 1, p. 14.
104. Potashnikov, in Krasnoe studenchestvo, 1927/28 no. 2, pp. 35ff.
105. L. Milkh, 'Party work in the VUZy', Krasnoe studenchestvo, 1927/28
no. 1, pp. 44-5. VUZ students were not the only Komsomol members
unable to enter the party: Chaplin, of the Komsomol Central Com-
mittee, reported that in 1926 there were 123,000 pererostki (over-age
Komsomols) unable to enter the party. 'On an average about 20,000
pererostki ought to leave every year. Most of them are from the
countryside. Most of them, undoubtedly, cannot be accepted into the
party' {Molodaya gvardiya, 1926 no. 2, p. 96).
106. Troshchenko, Molodaya gvardiya, 1927 no. 4, pp. 133-4.
107. Speech to xvr Moscow guberniya party conference in 1927, quoted
Korbut, Krasnoe studenchestvo, 1927-28 no. 11, p. 32.
108. In the RSFSR, only 15,280 students were admitted in 1924, as against
34,815 in 1923. In 1925, admissions rose slightly to 19,257. Narodnoe
prosveshchenie, 1924 no. 3(12), p. 81; 1925 no. 3, p. 20; 1925 no.
I O - I I , p. 167.
109. Narodnoe prosveshchenie, 1926 no. n , p. 76.
n o . TsGAOR 2306/1/3328, Narkompros collegium meeting of 26 June
1925: theses of a report to the Rykov commission of Sovnarkom.
Vesenkha's intervention is further discussed in Chapter 6.
i n . Narodnoe prosveshchenie, 1926 no. 4, pp. 36-8. The reserved places
for children of specialists were distributed among the appropriate
unions, the greatest number going to engineers, followed by professors,
rural schoolteachers and doctors.
112. Narodnoe prosveshchenie, 1926 no. n , p. 80. According to Khodorov-
sky, the introduction of rabfak finals produced a 30% drop-out in

transition from rabfak to VUZ. From 1926, rabfak graduates were
also directed to technicums.
113. For the professorial endorsement, see Kancheev, of the Scientific
Workers' Section of the Teachers' Union, in Izvestiya, 3 November
1926, p. 7. Concern for working-class percentages was expressed by
L. Milkh, of the agitprop department of the Central Committee, in
Kommunisticheskaya revolyutsiya, 1927 no. 8, p. 46.
114. Derived from the admission percentages for employees (33%) and
intelligentsia (an additional 12.5%) given for 1926 in Narodnoe
prosveshchenie, 1926 no. 11, pp. 124-5.
115. Working-class admissions were 35.5% of the total in 1924, 32.5% in
1925, 28.7% in 1926 and 34.7% in 1927. Narodnoe prosveshchenie,
1927 no. 11-12, p. 91.
116. See Table 2 and, for 1927-28 figures, O. Schmidt, 'Vysshie uchebnye
zavedeniya', BoVshaya sovetskaya entsiklopediya, xiv, 1st ed.
(Moscow, 1929), p. 34.
117. Sources as above, note 100.
118. The 1924/25 figures from Industrializatsiya SSSR ig24~ig28, p. 370;
1927/28 figures from Schmidt, 'Vysshie uchebnye zavedeniya', p. 34.
To estimate total Communist-Komsomol numbers, allowance must
be made for the 8-10% of Komsomol members who were also party
members in the latter years of NEP. Slavnyi put' Leninskogo
Komsomola, 1 (Moscow, 1974), p. 356.
119. Calculated from data in Narodnoe prosveshchenie, 1927 no. 11-12,
p. 89. It should be noted that only 7% of the applications came from
* others' who, according to some population breakdowns, ought to
constitute 15-20% of the population (see, for example, Statisticheskii
spravochnik SSSR za IQ28 (Moscow, 1929), pp. 42-3; Moskva i
moskovskaya guberniya ig2^l4~ig2j/8 (Moscow, 1929), pp. 68-9).
c
Others' may, of course, have simply been too discouraged to apply.
But it seems more likely that many in this category succeeded in
obtaining a more desirable social classification for purposes of school
entry. The statistics in Moskva i moskovskaya guberniya suggest that
the 'others' category was highly unstable: one set of figures, for
December 1926, classifies less than 10% of primary-school pupils as
* others', while the figures for December 1927 have 15-20% of
primary-school pupils in this category (pp. 68-9).
121. Statisticheskii sbornik po narodnomu prosveshcheniyu RSFSR ig26 g.
(Moscow, 1927), p. 169.
122. Sobranie uzakonenii, 1922 no. 35, art. 413.
123. There are reports that many or most students worked at outside jobs
in the early 1920s in Saratovskii Universitet igog-ig§g (Saratov,
1959), p. 33, and in Permskii Gosudarstvennyi Universitet imeni
A. M. Gorfkogo. Istoricheskii ocherk, igi6-ig66 (Perm, 1966), p. 32.

282 Notes to pages
In 1924, Bukharin said that most students worked, as labourers, care-
takers etc. {Partiya i vospitanie smeny, p. 104).
125. Upadochnoe nastroenie sredi molodezhi, p. 121.
126. Pravda, 5 July 1928, p. 3.
127. Calculated from Statisticheskii sbornik po narodnomu prosvesh-
cheniyu RSFSR ig26 g., p. 169.
128. Narodnoe prosveshchenie, 1926 no. 9, p. 7; Nauchnyi rabotnik, 1926
no. 3, p. 47; Krasnoe studenchestvo, 1927/28 no. 3, p. 33.
129. Narodnoe prosveshchenie, 1926 no. 9, p. 7; Krasnoe studenchestvo,
1927/28 no. 3, p. 33; Pravda, 9 February 1928, p. 5 (survey of Moscow
VUZy by Professor Zalkind).
130. In the RSFSR, white-collar students were strongly represented in the
medical VUZy (40.1%) as well as in the pedagogical; but in the
medical VUZy an unusually high percentage were adult employees
rather than children of white-collar families {Narodnoe prosvesh-
chenie, 1926 no. 11, p. 125). 8.4% of pedagogical students and 11.9%
of medical students were rabfak graduates; and, for Communists, the
corresponding figures were 9.2% and 7.4%. (Agricultural VUZy were
somewhat better supplied both with rabfak graduates and Com-
munists.) In all three types of VUZ, students tended to be young and
the graduation rates higher than average. Data from Statisticheskii
sbornik po narodnomu prosveshcheniyu RSFSR IQ26 g., pp. 162-3.
131. Vseobshchee obuchenie. Likvidatsiya negramotnosti. Podgotovka
kadrov (Moscow, 1930), p. 128. In 1929/30, over 40% of medical and
pedagogical students were under 23 - 10% higher than the average
for all VUZy.
132. Statisticheskii sbornik, pp. 162-3; 58-7% of pedagogical students were
women, compared with 31 % in all types of VUZ.
I
33- Women constituted only 15% of Communists studying in all types of
educational institution in January 1927. SotsiaVnyi i natsionaVnyi
sostav VKP(b), pp. 42 and 50.
134. See, for example, the survey of Odessa students published by D. I.
Lass, Sovremennoe studenchestvo {byt, polovaya zhizn') (Moscow-
Leningrad, 1927). This survey is analysed by Fitzpatrick in 'Sex and
Revolution \
135. Molodaya gvardiya, 1927 no. 4, p. 139. The observer, E. Troshchenko,
was evidently one of the rare Communist or Komsomol activists
among the women students.
136. Statisticheskii sbornik, pp. 162-3; Vseobshchee obuchenie, p. 128.
In 1926, the largest concentrations of Communists were in the
Moscow socio-economic VUZy (3,274 students) and the Moscow
industrial-technical VTUZy (3,455 students). Rabfak graduates, also
concentrated in Moscow and Leningrad, made up 35.1% of all
students in socio-economic VUZy and 29.7% in industrial-technical

Notes to pages iog-15 283
VTUZy in 1926. In 1929/30, almost 70% of students in industrial
and transport VTUZy were aged 25 years or over, as against less
than 50% in all VUZy (this figure reflects the mobilizations of 1928
and 1929, and is therefore too high for the NEP period, but no
earlier data on age is available).
137. The total working-class percentage in socio-economic VUZy was 27,
and in industrial-technical VUZy 32.4. This compared with an
average for all VUZy of 25.4%. But the crucial factor was the high
representation of adult workers. The admissions data quoted here is
from Narodnoe prosveshchenie, 1927 no. 11-12, p. 95.
138. Statisticheskii sbornik po narodnomu prosveshcheniyu RSFSR 1Q26 g.,
p. 169.
139. Ibid,, p. 170. For all VUZy, 15.3% of students were Jewish.
140. In 1926, Jews constituted 0.56% of the population of the RSFSR
and 15.3% of VUZ students (Statisticheskii spravochnik SSSR za
ig28, pp. 32-5, and note 139 above). 4 % of all party members in
1927 were Jewish (Itogi desyatiletiya souetskoi vlasti v tsifrakh igiy-
ig2y, p. 26). But it is likely that the Jewish percentage among
Communist VUZ students was higher than that of the party as a
whole.
141. A. V. Lunacharsky, Ob antisemitizme (Moscow-Leningrad, 1929),
pp. 43-4 and 9-10.
142. Statistic heskii sbornik po narodnomu prosveshcheniyu RSFSR IQ26 g,
p. 169.
143. See I. N. Yudin, SotsiaVnaya baza rosta KPSS (Moscow, 1973), p. 181.
Chapter 6 The lgreat turning-point* of /92S-/929

1. Pravda, 10 March 1928, p. 1: editorial and information on the
discovery of a counter-revolutionary economic conspiracy' from the
Prosecutor of the Supreme Court of the Soviet Union.
2. Ekonomicheskaya kontrrevolyutsiya v Donbasse. Itogi Shakhtinskogo
dela. Stat'i i dokumenty (Moscow, 1928), p. 120.
3. Deyatel'nost' partiinoi organizatsii Tatarii po osushchestvleniyu
leninskikh idei stroiteVstva sotsialisticheskogo obshchestva (Kazan,
1971), pp. 188-9. For a history of the factory, see A. S. Klyuchevich,
Istoriya kazanskogo zhirovogo kombinata imeni M. N. Vakhitov
(i855-i945) (Kazan, 1950).
4. 3 sessiya TsentraVnogo IspolniteVnaya Komiteta Soyuza SSR 5
sozyva. Stenograficheskii otchet (Moscow, 1931), Bulletin 10, p. 13.
5. See, for example, V. N. Ipatieff, The Life of a Chemist (Stanford and
London, 1946); E. J. Larsons, An Expert in the Service of the Soviet
(London, 1929).
6. S. A. Fedyukin, Velikii oktyabr' i intelligentsiya (Moscow, 1975),

pp. 303-4; A. Solzhenitsyn, Arkhipelag Gulag, 1-11 (Paris, 1973),
pp. 340-45.
7. Pravda, 24 February 1924, p. 5.
8. For other NEP trials of engineers for wrecking and sabotage, see
S. A. Fedyukin, Sovetskaya vlast' i burzhuaznye spetsialisty (Moscow,
1965), p. 105, note 1.
9. For local reports of intensified spetseedstvo resulting from the
Shakhty trial, see Fedyukin, Velikii oktyabr' i intelligentsiya, pp. 386—
7. The Smolensk archives contain a report of June 1928 that * things
are very bad with the specialists; 20 out of 40 persons in the industrial
section have been put under suspicion. The mood of the engineers is
panic-stricken.. .The engineering section requests, if it is possible, that
specialists should not be pulled out in bunches but gradually, so as not
to denude industry* (Smolensk Archive, WKP 33: bureau of Smolensk
gubkom, 11 June 1928). In April 1929, the secretary of the engineer-
ing union reported that * after the Shakhty affair the number of
engineers in production jobs declined by 17%'. Spetseedstvo had
increased, especially with the influx of inexperienced peasant workers,
but the engineers were afraid to complain about it (Report of Con-
gress of Engineers and Technicians of the USSR, Rabochaya gazeta,
17 April 1929, p. 8).
10. Klyuchevich, Istoriya, p. 206; Ocherki istorii partiinoi organizatsii
Tatarii, 2nd ed. (Kazan, 1973), pp. 381-2.
11. A. I. Krinitsky, Osnovnye zadachi agitatsii, propagandy i kul'turnogo
stroiteVstva (Moscow-Leningrad, 1928), p. 17.
12. See, for example, Lenin's 1923 article 'On cooperation', and, for a
compilation of Lenin's writings on the subject, G. Karpov (compiler),
Lenin o kuVturnoi revolyutsii (Moscow, 1967).
13. For a detailed discussion of this phenomenon, see Sheila Fitzpatrick,
ed., Cultural Revolution in Russia, 1928—ig$i (Bloomington, Ind.,
1978).
14. The quotation, from the Oppositionist Lelevich, was made by
Krinitsky at the xv Party Congress in December 1927. XV syezd
VKP{b). Stenograficheskii otchet, 11 (Moscow, 1962), p. 1,237.
15. See Alfred G. Meyer, 'The War Scare of 1927', Soviet Union, 1978
no. 1.
16. See Theodore Draper, 'The Strange Case of the Comintern', Survey,
vol. 18, no. 3(84), Summer 1972, on the adoption of the Comintern's
'class against class' policy and the initial attitudes of Stalin and
Bukharin.
17. A. Avtorkhanov, Stalin and the Soviet Communist Party (London,
1959), p. 29, says that Stalin, against the wishes of Yagoda (head of
the GPU), decided to turn a 'conspiracy' unmasked by Evdokimov
(head of the North-Caucasus regional GPU) into a national cause
celebre. Evdokimov's role is also mentioned by Ordzhonikidze, then

head of the Central Control Commission of the party, XVI syezd
Vsesoyuznoi Kommunisticheskoi Partii Stenograficheskii otchet, 1
(Moscow, 1931), p. 568.
18. I. Stalin, Sochineniya, xi, pp. 54-7, 63-4: 'On the work of the April
joint plenum of the TsK and TsKK' (13 April 1928).
19. Ibid., pp. 57-8.
20. Speech to the Eighth Congress of the Komsomol (16 May 1928), ibid.,
pp. 76-7.
21. Stalin, Sochineniya, xm, p. 41: 'On the tasks of the industrialists'
(4 February 1931).
22. Speech to the Eighth Congress of the Komsomol, Stalin, Sochineniya,
xi, p. 75.
23. Stalin, Sochineniya, xm, pp. 66-7: 'A new situation - new tasks of
economic construction' (23 June 1931).
24. Statement by Kaganovich, XVI syezd VKP, 1, p. 77.
25. Stalin, 'On the work of the April joint plenum of the TsK and
TsKK', Sochineniya, xi, p. 59.
26. A. I. Lutchenko, 'CPSU leadership in the formation of cadres of
technical intelligentsia (1926-1933)', Voprosy istorii KPSS, 1966 no.
2, p. 31.
27. 'The Shakhty affair and practical tasks in the struggle with defici-
encies of economic construction', KPSS v rezolyutsiyakh i resheniyakh
syezdov, konferentsii i plenumov TsK, iv (Moscow, 1970), p. 90.
28. N. I. Skorutto and L. G. Rabinovich, together with engineer S. G.
Imenitov, made up the 'Moscow centre' of the plot. Ekonomicheskaya
kontrrevolyutsiya v Donbasse, pp. 154-8.
29. Sotsialisticheskii vestnik, 3 August 1928, p. 14.
30. Pervaya moskovskaya oblastnaya konferentsiya Vsesoyuznoi Kom-
munisticheskoi Partii (bol'shevikov). Stenograficheskii otchet, part 1
(Moscow, September 1929), p. 45. For a further discussion of
Molotov's attitudes, especially on the link between internal and
external enemies, see my article 'The Foreign Threat during the First
Five-Year Plan', Soviet Union, 1978 no. 1.
31. Estimates of the numbers of engineers arrested after the Shakhty trial
range from 2,000 to 7,000. See Kendall E. Bailes, 'The Politics of
Technology: Stalin and Technocratic Thinking among Soviet
Engineers', American Historical Review, April 1974, p. 446.
32. Pravda, 30 March 1928, p. 3 (Kuibyshev); ibid., 28 March 1928, p. 1
(Ordzhonikidze).
33. Ordzhonikidze, speaking at XVI syezd VKP I, p. 568.
34. Pravda, 30 March 1928, p. 3. See also Kuibyshev's remarks quoted in
Fedyukin, Velikii oktyabrf i intelligentsia, pp. 382-3, 389.
35. Lutchenko, 'CPSU leadership', p. 33.
36. Vtoroi plenum MK VKP(b), 31 yanv.s fev. 1Q28. Doklady i
rezolyutsii (Moscow, 1928), p. 43.

37. Krinitsky, Osnovnye zadachi, p. 53. In February 1929, Lunacharsky
referred to this pamphlet and its recent publication as 'directed
against Narkompros and its local organs' (Narodnoe prosueshchenie,
1929 no. 3-4, p. 10).
39. Quoted from Narodnoe prosveshchenie, 1928 no. 5, p. 7, and
Nauchnyi rabotnik, 1928 no. 5-6, p. 25.
40. See Sheila Fitzpatrick, 'The Emergence of Glaviskusstvo. Glass War
on the Cultural Front, Moscow, 1928-29', Soviet Studies, October
41. See below, pp. 196-7.

42. Narodnoe prosveshchenie, 1928 no. 12, p. 3; Vechernyaya Moskva,
17 October 1928, p. 1; Pravda, 20 December 1928, p. 5.
43. Pravda, 16 August 1928, p. 2.
44. Krinitsky, Osnovnye zadachi, p. 53. Krinitsky accused Narkompros of
' passivity' in regulating the social composition of the schools.
45. Editorial 'Militant tasks of cultural revolution', Pravda, 5 February
1929, p. 1. This editorial recommended 'renewal [osvezhenie] of the
class composition' and 'review of the student cadres' in the schools.
46. Instruction of 18 April 1929, published EzhenedeVnik NKP, 1929
no. 20-1, pp. 20-3.
47. Krupskaya, 'Glass war in educational institutions', Pravda, 8 June
1929, p. 2.
48. TsGAOR 5462/11/i2: speech to Congress of Teachers' Union,
March 1929, p. 45.
49. Ibid., p. 12.
50. Information of Lunacharsky's former secretary, I. A. Sats.
51. TsGAOR 5462/11 /12, pp. 38-40.
52. A. Kamensky, 'VUZy and industry', Krasnoe studenchestvo, 1928/29
no. 3-4, p. 59.
54. Kamensky, 'VUZy and industry', p. 58.
55. Izvestiya, 8 January 1927, p. 2. A. P. Smirnov, deputy chairman of
Sovnarkom RSFSR, led the opposition to Vesenkha's proposal.
56. Reported by Khodorovsky in Narodnoe prosveshchenie, 1927 no. 6,
p. 28.
57. TsGAOR 5574(i86)/5/33: 'Themes for the report of A. V. Luna-
charsky at the Vesenkha meeting', dated 19 September 1927.
58. Izvestiya, 28 September 1927, p. 3.
59. Torgovo-promyshlennaya gazeta, 4 October 1927, p. 2; Komsomol'-
skaya pravda, 5 October 1927, p. 1; Pravda, 28 September 1927, p. 3.
Such a resolution was passed at the meeting, since it was later
confirmed by the presidium of Vesenkha USSR (Komsomol'skaya
pravda, 25 January 1928, p. 2).
60. From the meeting's resolution on a paper by G. B. Ioffe (Vesenkha

RSFSR) on engineering profiles, Torgovo-promyshlennaya gazeta,
4 October 1927. p. 2. The issue had earlier been lîised in the autumn
of 1926, when Gosplan RSFSR had proposed a draft resolution
evidently approved by Vesenkha on the training of specialists accord-
ing to * broad' and * narrow' profiles. Sovnarkom RSFSR rejected the
idea, which was accounted a victory for Narkompros, and the
amended resolution ('On types of specialists produced by higher
educational institutions', 23 February 1927) was published in Izvestiya,
13 April 1927, p. 7. For further information on the controversy, see
articles by Khodorovsky and Osadchy, I. Khodorovsky, ed., Kakogo
inzhenera dolzhny gotovit' nashi VTUZy? (Moscow, 1928).
61. See the contribution by GOMZA engineer Manuilov in Khodorovsky,
ed., Kakogo inzhenera, pp. 119-20.
62. A. E. Beilin, Kadry spetsialistov SSSR. Ikh formirovanie i rost
(Moscow, 1935), pp. 137 and 209.
63. See Kendall E. Bailes' discussion, Technology and Society under
Lenin and Stalin (Princeton, 1978), pp. 176-7.
64. TsGAOR 5574/5/33: Theses of report by G. G. Ioffe, p. 13;
Izvestiya, 29 September 1927, p. 3.
65. For Shabshai's views on the engineering profession, see his article
'The engineering intellectual and the engineer without diploma',
Krasnoe studenchestvo, 1927/28 no. 2 and 3. A favourable comment
on Shabshai's Institute by Molotov (himself a former student of the
Petersburg Polytechnical Institute) is in ibid., 1928/29 no. 1, p. 17.
Critical views are expressed in Professor B. Bekker, 'Engineering
"intellectual" or engineering "ignoramus" ', ibid., 1927/28 no. 8, and
Lunacharsky, Pravda, 12 July 1928, p. 5.
66. Torgovo-promyshlennaya gazeta, 28 September 1927, p. 1 (editorial).
67. See Komsomol'skaya pravda, 22 September 1927, pp. 1 and 4; ibid.,
25 September 1927, p. 5; ibid., 28 January 1928, p. 4; ibid., 1 February
1928, p. 4; Narodnoe prosveshchenie, 1928 no. 1, p. 27; ibid., 1928
no. 4, p. 114.
68. Komsomol'skaya pravda, 5 October 1927, p. 1; Torgovo-promy-
shlennaya gazeta, 4 October 1927, p. 2.
69. Ustanovka rabochei sily, 1928 no. 1-2 (20-21), p. 6.
70. See Lunacharsky in Pravda, 2 June 1928, p. 7.
71. Bor'ba za rabochie kadry (Moscow: Narkompros RSFSR, 1928), p. 38.
72. Lunacharsky, 'The problem of training worker cadres', Narodnoe
prosveshchenie, 1928 no. 11, p. 52.
73. Dogadov (VTsSPS), Ustanovka rabochei sily, 1929 no. 1-2, p. 32.
74. Lunacharsky, ibid., p. 20.
76. Ekonomicheskaya zhizn', 10 May 1928, p. 2.

79. Pravda, 22 April 1928, p. 7.
80. V. Molotov, 'Training of new specialists', Krasnoe studenchestvo,
1928/29 no. 1 (1 October 1928), pp. 17-18.
81. * On the results of the July plenum of the TsK VKP(b) J (13 July 1928),
I. Stalin, Sochineniya, xi, p. 216.
82. A. I. Lutchenko, Sozdanie inzhenerno-tekhnicheskikh kadrov v gody
postroeniya sotsializma v SSSR 1926-195$ gg. (Minsk, 1973), p. 47.
83. Ibid.
84. See Skrypnik's statement in March 1929, after the transfer of the
Stalino Mining Institute from the Ukrainian Narkompros to Vesenkha
USSR, that 'only an inveterate, dyed-in-the-wool chauvinist could
demand that on the transfer of the Mining Institute in Stalino...,
scientific disciplines and business in general would have to change
from the Ukrainian language to Russian'. A. V. Lunacharsky and
N. A. Skrypnik, Narodnoe obrazovanie v SSSR v svyazi s rekonstruk-
tsiei narodnogo khozyaistva (Moscow, 1929), p. 36.
85. Stalin, XVI syezd VKP, 1, p. 293.
86. Krupskaya's association with the Right was well known, and in 1929/
30 she was frequently heckled on this attack at party meetings.
In the midst of the last struggle of the Right Opposition (and of
Narkompros' last struggle on educational policy), Krupskaya publicly
supported the Rightist line on agriculture ('Lenin and kolkhoz con-
struction', Pravda, 20 January 1929), and Bukharin, in return, pub-
lished a glowing tribute to her on the occasion of her 60th birthday
(Pravda, 27 February 1929).
87. Quoted E. H. Garr and R. W. Davies, Foundations of a Planned
Economy, 1 (London, 1969), p. 594. •
88. Stalin, XVI syezd RKP, 1, p. 293.
89. Central Committee resolution 'On improving the training of new
specialists' (12 July 1928), KPSS v rezolyutsiyakh, iv, p. 115. The
VTUZy transferred were Moscow Higher Technical School (MVTU),
Leningrad Technological Institute, Moscow Mining Academy, Men-
deleev Chemical Institute, Stalino Mining Institute and Moscow
Textile Institute (Pravda, 14 July 1928, p. 5).
90. There were 48 Central Committee votes needed for a two-thirds
majority, but in a straightforward factional vote the Right would
scarcely have mustered 20 votes, even if the whole trade union and
Moscow party groups had voted as a bloc.
91. 'On improving the training of new specialists', KPSS v rezolyutsiyakh,
iv, pp. 11 iff.
92. Lunacharsky's temperament led him to prefer non-coercive solutions
to problems, and he had good personal relations with Rightists like
Rykov and A. P. Smirnov. However, his relations with Bukharin and
Tomsky were always strained; and his unpublished diaries for 1930
(briefly shown to the present author by his daughter I. A. Lunachar-

skaya) seem to indicate an attitude of increasing impatience with the
Right and respect for Stalin's leadership qualities.
93. Gastev, in Pravda, 7 June 1928, p. 6.
94. Pravda, 2 June 1928, p. 7.
95. For Tomsky's commitment to Gastev and his Institute, see VIII syezd
professional'nykh soyuzov. Stenograficheskii otchet (Moscow, 1929),
p. 192.
96. Lunacharsky, speech to the Dogadov commission on labour training,
Ustanovka rabochei sily, 1929 no. 1-2, p. 18.
97. Trudy 10 November 1928, p. 3.
98. See his speech to the Eighth Congress of the Komsomol (May 1928)
and greetings to Komsomol'skaya Pravda (May 1928), in Stalin
Sochineniya, xi, pp. 72-4 and 78-9.
99. VIII syezd professional'nykh soyuzov, p. 116. A number of historians
have confused I. P. Zhdanov, head of the labour and education
department of the Komsomol Central Committee in 1928, with
A. A. Zhdanov, then head of the Nizhny Novgorod kraikom but
shortly to become one of Stalin's closest political associates.
100. Ibid., p. 193.
101. Komsomol'skaya pravda, 12 March 1929, p. 2; Torgovo-promy-
shlennaya gazeta, 9 June 1929, p. 4; Ezhenedel'nik NKP, 1929 no. 26,
pp. IO-II.
102. D. Petrovsky (head of Glavtuz), speaking in April 1929, in XVI
konferentsiya VKP(b). Stenograficheskii otchet (Moscow, 1962),
P- 253-
103. According to Vyshinsky's estimates, the budgets of Vesenkha VTUZy
increased by 70%, with an 8% increase in student numbers, while the
Narkompros budgets increased only 40-60%, with a 15% increase in
student numbers (Narodnoe prosveshchenie, 1928 no. 8-9, p. 185).
Slight variants of these figures are to be found in Nauchnyi rabotnik,
1929 no. 10, pp. 29 and 85.
104. Voprosy istorii KPSS, 1966 no. 2, pp. 33-4; Krasnoe studenchestvo,
I929/3 0 n o - x> P-9-
105. Pervaya moskovskaya oblastnaya konferentsiya VKP(b), p. 140.
106. Ekonomicheskaya zhizn', 4 January 1930 (unnumbered page headed
'For the new school').
107. A. V. Lunacharsky and A. Shokhin, K edinoi sisteme narodnogo
obrazovaniya (Moscow-Leningrad, 1929), p. 44.
108. KPSS v rezolyutsiyakh, iv, pp. 180-99.
109. See Sheila Fitzpatrick, 'Cultural Revolution as Class War', Fitz-
patrick, ed., Cultural Revolution in Russia 192S-1937, p. 257, note 27.
n o . 'On contradictions', Pravda, 7 March 1929, p. 2.
i n . TsGAOR 5462/11/12, p. 48: Speech to Teachers' Union Congress,
March 1929.
112. For Narkompros' attack, see above, pp. 12-13. Reports of the removal

of large numbers of ' anti-Soviet' and ' socially alien' persons from the
electoral rolls (often including teachers and other members of the
intelligentsia) are in Izvestiya, 26 March 1929, p. 2, and Narodnoe
prosveshchenie, 1929 no. 3-4, p. 32. The ambiguous official stand on
educational rights of children of lishentsy is in Izvestiya, 2 March
1929, p. 3; 5 March 1929, p. 3; 10 March 1929, p. 3; and 26 March
1929, P- 2.
113. This letter has not been published in full, but is preserved in the
Central Party Archives in Moscow. The extract quoted appears in
several Soviet sources including Fedyukin, Sovetskaya vlast' i bur-
zhuaznye spetsialisty, p. 244.
114. This information is from a letter to the author, dated 27 December
1971, from I. A. Sats, Lunacharsky's former secretary. According
to Sats' recollection, resignations were offered by Lunacharsky,
Krupskaya, Pokrovsky, Yakovleva, Svidersky and M. S. Epshtein.
'Lunacharsky was released in April (or the beginning of May) but the
decision was published in September.. .N. K. Krupskaya and Moisei
Solomonovich Epshtein were not allowed to leave their posts.'
115. Ibid.
116. Izvestiya, 13 September 1929, p. 2 (Lunacharsky); Pravda, 24 Septem-
ber 1929, p. 2 (Yakovleva); Izvestiya, 11 September 1929, p. 5
(Svidersky). The departure of Lunacharsky and Yakovleva from
Narkompros was described as 'by his (her) own request5.
117. See below, pp. 189-92.
118. See below, p. 199. In an interview shortly after Vesenkha's announce-
ment on the FZU schools, Lunacharsky congratulated Kuibyshev and
stated that Narkompros bore Vesenkha no ill-will over the transfer of
the schools, as long as they were well looked after. Zhizn' rabochei
shkoly, 1929 no. 6, pp. 12-13.
119. Quoted in Kul'turnaya revolyutsia v SSSR. 79/7-/965. gg. (Moscow,
^7), P- 325-
120. 'On the creation of conditions of real accessibility of primary and
secondary schools to children of workers, kolkhozniks, batraks and
poor peasants', 31 January 1930, Direktivy VKP(b) i postanovleniya
sovetskogo praviteVstva o narodnom obrazovanii, 1 (Moscow-Lenin-
grad, 1947), pp. 149-50; 'On removing abuses of electoral legislation
of the USSR', 22 March 1930, Istoriya sovetskoi konstitutsii. Sbornik
dokumentov 1917-1957 (Moscow, 1957), p. 290. The issue is exten-
sively discussed in the monthly TsIK journal Sovetskoe stroitel'stvo
in 1930.
121. Pravda, 25 September 1928, p. 6 (interview with Vyshinsky, newly
appointed to Narkompros).
122. I. Khodorovsky, ed., Kakogo inzhenera dolzhny gotovit' nashi
VTUZy? (Moscow, 1928). Vyshinsky mistakenly rendered the title as
Kakoi inzhener nam nuzhen?

<P
123. A. Vyshinsky, The "Industrial Party" affair', Nauchnyi rabotnik,
1930 no. 11-12, pp. 24-5.
124. Vyshinsky recalled Lunacharsky's performance as a prosecutor in the
1922 show trial of the SRs. A. B. Khalatov, ed., Pamyati A. V.
Lunacharskogo (Moscow, 1935), p. 41.
125. See below, pp. 217-20.
126. See Robert Conquest, The Great Terror (London, 1971), pp. 539-40
and 541, note. Khodorovsky's involvement was to a large extent
determined by his last job as head of the Kremlin medical administra-
tion. Yakovleva had in fact been associated with Bukharin in his
'left Communist' phase, and she had also been a member of the
Trotskyite-Zinovievite Opposition.
Chapter 7 Cultural Revolution and the schools

1. Pravda, 13 September 1929, p. 5.
2. For biographical details, see A. Binevich and Z. Serebryansky, Andrei
Bubnov (Moscow, 1964).
4. See resolution 'On results and immediate tasks in the struggle with
bureaucratism' (April 1929), XVI konferentsiya VKP(b). Steno-
graficheskii otchet (Moscow, 1962), pp. 646-8.
5. Molodaya gvardiya, 1929 no. 3, p. 80; Vechernyaya Moskva, 7
February 1929, p. 2.
6. Vechernyaya Moskva, 8 April 1929, p. 1; ibid., 19 April 1929, p. 2.
A verbatim report of the collegium's meeting with workers of the
Gosznak plant, in which a former Gosznak worker who had become a
Narkompros vydvizhenets reported on his job and on the com-
missariat, is in TsGA RSFSR 2306/69/1879: collegium of Narkom-
pros RSFSR, meeting of 28 September 1929.
7. Vechernyaya Moskva, 3 October 1929, p. 3.
8. Ibid., 27 December 1929, p. 1.
10. Ibid., 1930 no. 6, p. 12; and Izvestiya, 14 May 1930, p. 3. Detailed
reports on the Narkompros purge are in Vechernyaya Moskva, 24
February 1930, p. 1; 14 March 1930, p. 3; and 19 March 1930, p. 1.
For all local and central branches of the government apparat sub-
jected to the purge, the dismissal rate was around 11%. I. Trifonov,
Ocherki istorii klassovoi bor'by v gody NEPa, ig2i-igs7 gg-
(Moscow, i960), p. 174.
11. EzhenedeVnik NKP, 1929 no. 43, p. 3.
12. Central Committee resolution of 5 August 1929 'On leading educa-
tional cadres', Partiinoe stroiteVstvo, 1929 no. 1, p. 67. For further
information on the Komsomol draftees, see Vospominaniya o N. K.

Krupskoi (Moscow, 1966), pp. 206-8; and Krupskaya, Pedagogi-
cheskie sochineniya, xi, p. 358.
13. Glavpolitprosvet, Krupskaya's administration of political education,
lost its separate identity during the reorganization of Narkompros in
1930. It became part of the new Sector for Mass Measures, mainly
concerned with schools administration and headed by Shokhin.
14. The kul'tpokhod as a literacy campaign is discussed below, ch. 8.
15. Broido had been head of the State Publishing House and an ex officio
member of the Narkompros RSFSR collegium from 1925 to 1927.
TsGAOR 2306/1/3328: meeting of presidium of Narkompros
collegium, 17 March 1925; Izvestiya, 2 June 1927, p. 2, and 23 June
1927, P- 3-
16. 'On the Saratov kul'tpokhod\ cited from Pravda, 13 October 1929,
V. A. Kumanev, Sotsializm i vsenarodnaya gramotnost' (Moscow,
1967), P. 191.
18. Lunacharsky attended his last collegium meeting on 4 July 1929,
Bubnov his first on 22 September. TsGA RSFSR 2306/69/1879.
19. The circular, dated 26 July 1929, was published in Novye formy i
metody prosvetiteVnoi raboty (Moscow: Narkompros RSFSR, 1929).
The quotation is from p. 27.
20. 'On militant issues of public education' (editorial), Pravda, 30 August
I929> P- 1.
22. M. A. Aleksinsky, O reorganizatsii organov narodnogo obrazovaniya
(Moscow, 1930), pp. 18-19.
23. For a series of different versions of Narkompros' position on the
relation of the new educational Soviets to the old education depart-
ments, see Nauchnyi rabotnik, 1930 no. 5-6, pp. 102-3; Byulleten'
NKP, 1930 no. 19, pp. 2iff.; and Narodnoe prosveshchenie, 1930 no.
19, pp. 2 iff.; and Narodnoe prosveshchenie, 1930 no. 5, pp. 4-6.
24. 'On current tasks of cultural construction in connection with the
results of the Second All-Union Meeting on Education', Central Com-
mittee resolution of 25 July 1930, Byulleten' NKP, 1930 no. 23, p. 5.
25. XVI syezd VKP(b). Stenograficheskii otchet, 1 (Moscow, 1935), p. 330.
26. V. N. Shulgin, Pamyatnye vstrechi (Moscow, 1958), pp. 3-9.
27. Spornye voprosy marksistskoi pedagogiki (Moscow, 1929), p. 71.
28. V. N. Osipova, 'V. N. Bekhterev's school and pedology', Pedologiya,
1928 book 1, pp. 11-13.
29. See, for example, articles 'On the social investigation of the rural
schoolchild and statistical analysis of data obtained', 'The social and
everyday environment of unruly schoolchildren' and 'Correlation
between mental development and some data from social investigation
of schoolchildren', P. P. Blonsky, ed., Pedologiya i shkola, 11 (Moscow,
J
929); and articles, Pedologiya, 1929 no. 1-2, under headings 'The

methodology of pedological study of the environment', 'The environ-
ment and [physical] constitution' and 'The urban and rural child'.
30. For the focus of the Institute's work, see Shulgin, Na putyakh k novoi
shkole, 1930 no. 1, pp. 63—4. The Institute's pedological department
was headed by N. Rybnikov, whose article *The ideology of the
contemporary schoolchild' was published in Pedologiya, 1928 no. 1.
Other Institute publications on similar themes are listed in Pedologiya,
1929 no. 4(6), pp. 595-612 passim,
31. Speech to the First Pedological Congress (1927), A. B. Zalkind,
Pedologiya u SSSR (Moscow, 1929), p. 12.
32. The Kammerer story, including its Soviet ramifications, is related in
A. Koestler, The Case of the Midwife Toad (New York, 1971).
Lunacharsky's film scenario Salamandra, based on the Kammerer
affair, is in Lunacharskii o kino (Moscow, 1965), pp. 299-309.
33. Speech to First Pedological Congress, reported Na putyakh k novoi
shkole, 1928 no. 1, pp. 11-12.
34. See Loren R. Graham, 'Science and Values: The Eugenics Movement
in Germany and Russia in the 1920s', American Historical Review,
December 1977.
36. Krupenina, Za politekhnicheskuyu shkolu, 1931 no. 1, p. 21.
37. For reports of anti-Communist, religious, pornographic and other
illegal organizations in the schools, see E. Strogova, Komsomol'-
skaya pravda, 1 April 1928, p. 2; I. Chernya, Kommunisticheskaya
revolyutsiya, 1928 no. 17-18; Narodnoe prosveshchenie, 1928 no. 5,
PP- 25> 3 2 anc * 395 a n d (a participant's account) M. Koryakov,
' "Eseninshchina" and Soviet youth', Vozrozhdenie, xv (Paris, 1951).
Communists were also concerned at the growth of religious youth
organizations: in 1928 the Baptist 'Bapsomol' and Mennonite
'Mensomol' reportedly had more members than the Soviet Komsomol.
M. Gorev, Izvestiya, 13 June 1929, p. 4; F. Oleshchuk, Revolyutsiya i
kul'tura, 1928 no. 10, p. 21; Kommunisticheskii put' (Saratov), 1929
no. 19, p. 41.
38. Spornye voprosy marksistskoi pedagogiki, p. 44.
39. Ibid., p. 18.
40. A. Lunacharsky, O narodnom obrazovanii (Moscow, 1958), pp. 464-5.
41. At the Narkompros meeting on pedagogical theory of December 1928,
Shulgin objected to suggestions by Pistrak and Lunacharsky that he
'rejected the school'. Spornye voprosy, pp. 80 and 145.
42. Quotations from Shulgin's articles, Narodnoe prosveshchenie, 1925
no. I O - I I , p. 126, and Na putyakh k novoi shkole, 1927 no. 9, p. n ,
cited from F. F. Korolev, T. D. Korneichik and Z. I. Ravkin,
Ocherki po istorii sovetskoi shkoly i pedagogiki ig2i-igî gg.
(Moscow, 1961), pp. 437 and 414.
43. See Epshtein's comment in Spornye voprosy, p. 70.

44. Lunacharsky, O narodnom obrazovanii, pp. 459-60.
45. P. N. Gruzdev, Spornye voprosy, p. 37.
46. Spornye voprosy marksistskoi pedagogiki contained the stenogram of
the meeting, which was held on 3 December, lasted seven hours, and
was attended by 200 educationalists (Na putyakh k novoi shkole, 1928
no. 12, p. 139).
48. Kommunisticheskoe prosveshchenie, 1931 no. 12, p. 18.
49. Quoted F. F. Korolev, Sovetskaya shkola v period sotsialisticheskoi
industrializatsii (Moscow, 1959), pp. 26-7.
50. A. V. Lunacharsky and A. Shokhin, K edinoi sisteme narodnogo
obrazovaniya (Moscow-Leningrad, 1929), pp. 55-62. See also Theses
of the Komsomol Central Committee 'On labour and education of
youth in connection with the Five-Year Plan of economic develop-
ment', published Komsomol'skaya pravda, 25 March 1928, p. 2, and
later endorsed by the vin All-Union Congress of the Komsomol.
51. For Krupskaya's support of the Komsomol proposal to convert grades
VIII-IX of general secondary school into technicums, see Korolev,
Sovetskaya shkola, pp. 25-6. For her criticisms of the general
secondary school in 1928, see Krupskaya, Pedagogicheskie sochineniya,
x, pp. 268-9.
52. Theses on the education system, endorsed by the collegium of
Narkompros RSFSR on 18 May 1929 and published in Lunacharsky
and Shokhin, K edinoi sisteme (appendix).
53. The 'olive branch', in Pokrovsky's words, was extended by Ukrainian
commissar Skrypnik in his article 'On the differences between the
Ukrainian and Russian education systems', Izvestiya, 15 February
1929, p. 3. For reactions of Lunacharsky and Pokrovsky, see
Narodnoe prosveshchenie, 1929 no. 3-4, pp. 6-7 and 41.
54. On the Ukrainian profshkola, see above, pp. 45-6.
55. Central Committee resolutions 'On improving the training of new
specialists' (July 1928) and 'Cadres for the national economy'
(November 1929), KPSS v rezolyutsiyakh, iv, pp. 117 and 341.
56. Korolev, Korneichik and Ravkin, Ocherki po istorii sovetskoi shkoly
i pedagogiki /92/-195/ (Moscow, 1961), p. 42.
57. On the creation of grade x, see resolution of Narkompros collegium
of 20 December 1928, EzhenedeVnik NKP, 1929 no. 2, p. 2; resolu-
tion of Sovnarkom RSFSR of 5 February 1929, quoted Korolev,
Sovetskaya shkola, p. 27; and Narkompros instruction of 7 June 1929,
EzhenedeVnik NKP, 1929 no. 26(b), pp. 13-14. On admission of
secondary-school graduates to VUZ without examination, see resolu-
tion of Narkompros collegium of 28 January 1929, confirmed by
presidium of collegium on 2 April, TsGA RSFSR 2306/69/1877.
This decision was strongly attacked, Komsomol'skaya pravda, 17 May
1929, p. 4, and defended by Epshtein, ibid., p. 3.

Notes to pages 146-g 295
58. Vechernyaya Moskva, 21 November 1928, p. 2.
60. Lunacharsky and Shokhin, K edinoi sisteme, pp. 4-5.
61. Ibid., p. 142.
62. Ibid. This is no doubt a paraphrase rather than a direct quotation by
Lunacharsky.
63. Voprosy prosveshcheniya na Severnom Kavkaze (Rostov), 1929 no. 8,
pp. 56-8.
64. Prosveshchenie Sibiri (Novosibirsk), 1929 no. 6, p. 11.
65. Report from Smolensk education department, Narodnoe prosvesh-
chenie, 1929 no. 3-4, pp. 20 and 45.
66. Nizhnevolzhskii prosveshchenents (Saratov), 1929 no. 3, p. 24; ibid.,
1929 no. 7-8; article by V. N. Markov.
67. Izvestiya, 17 February 1929, p. 4; N. K. Krupskaya, Pedagogicheskie
sochineniya, 11, p. 375.
68. Prosveshchenie na Urale (Sverdlovsk), 1929 no. 2, passim', ibid., 1929
no. 4, p. 8.
69. Ekonomicheskaya zhizn', 11 December 1929, p. 4; Molodaya gvardiya,
1930 no. 3, p. 66; Voprosy truda, 1930 no. 4, pp. 31-2.
70. This estimate is based on data from A. N. Veselov, Professional'no-
tekhnicheskoe obrazovanie v SSSR (Mosow, 1961), p. 287, and
Podgotovka kadrov v SSSR i$2j-ig3i (Moscow, 1933), pp. 33, 64
and 74.
71. Totol numbers of pupils in grades vn-x in 1928/29 from KuVturnoe
stroiteV stvo SSSR (Moscow, 1956), pp. 122-3. Because of the 1930
reorganization of grades vm-x into technicums, no exact estimate can
be made of the secondary school's losses to the FZU during the
1929/30 school year.
72. Narodnyi uchiteV, 1930 no. 4-5, p. 24.
73. Shulgin, quoting his own Pedagogika perekhodnoi epokhi (1930),
Na putyakh k novoi shkole, 1931 no. 3, p. 40.
74. Egorov (Vesenkha RSFSR), Vtoroe vsesoyuznoe partiinoe sovesh-
chanie po narodnomu obrazovaniyu. Stenograficheskii otchet (Moscow,
1930, P-69.
75. Statement of Bubnov, Vtoroe vsesoyuznoe partiinoe soveshchanie,
P- 23.
76. Bubnov, ibid., p. 188, rebuking Otto Schmidt of Narkompros, who
had been advocating such a reorganization since 1920; Skrypnik,
Izvestiya, 4 May 1930, p. 4, repudiating claims of a 'Ukrainian
victory' made by his former deputy Ryappo.
77. Izvestiya, 4 May 1930, p. 4.
78. Vtoroe vsesoyuznoe partiinoe soveshchanie, pp. 80-1. The speaker
was probably Mariya Orakhelashvili, sometime deputy commissar of
education in Georgia and a Narkompros RSFSR worker in the mid-
19308. Her husband Mamiya was an Old Bolshevik member of the

Georgian Central Committee disciplined by Stalin and Ordzhonikidze
in 1921/22.
79. Resolution of the party Central Committee, 25 July 1930, 'On current
tasks of cultural construction in connection with the results of the
Second Ail-Union Party Meeting on Education', Byulleten' NKP,
1930 no. 23, p. 4.
80. See below, pp. 217-20.
81. See, for example, remarks by Pozern, Krupskaya and Bubnov, Vtoroe
vsesoyuznoe partiinoe soveshchanie, pp. 64, 86 and 187.
82. This expectation seems to have been quite accurate. Jurisdiction over
buildings was predictably confused and contested by various authori-
ties (Byulleten' NKP, 1930 no. 23, p. 13); but the end result, according
to Bubnov in 1931, was that the 7-year schools which had formerly
been 9- or 10-year schools lost their best teachers and many of their
best buildings in the reorganization (Kommunisticheskoe prosvesh-
chenie, 1931 no. 8, p. 85).
83. See Novye formy i metody prosvetitel'noi raboty, pp. 48-50; and
Korolev, Korneichik and Ravkin, Ocherki, p. 270.
85. F. Korolev, Protiv antileninskoi teorii otmiraniya shkoly (Moscow,
1932), p. 67. The slogan put forward by the Pioneer leaders was
'Ne shkola, a detskoe kommunisticheskoe dvizhenie'.
86. P. Blonsky, Moi vospominaniya (Moscow, 1971}, p. 173.
88. Ezhenedel'nik NKP, 1929 no. 50, p. 25.
89. Byulleten' NKP, 1930 no. 10, p. 49.
90. Ibid., 1930 no. 5, pp. 15-16.
91. Korolev, Korneichik and Ravkin, Ocherki, p. 199.
92. Resolution of Sovnarkom RSFSR, 6 September 1930, 'On the results
of the Congress on Polytechnical Education', Sobranie uzakonenii,
1930 no. 42, art. 519.
93. In 1924, the Komsomol had proposed that the normal primary school
for working-class children should be an FZS, i.e. a primary school
linked with an industrial enterprise and preparatory to the FZU
school (TsGAOR 2306/1/3328: meeting of presidium of Narkompros
collegium, 3 November 1924, discussing memorandum from Rudnev
of the Komsomol Central Committee; Narodnoe prosveshchenie,
1924 no. 8, pp. 59-60). Narkompros agreed in principle with this
suggestion, but its lack of enthusiasm is indicated by the fact that
in 1929 Lunacharsky was still emphasizing the 'extraordinary
complexity' of the task and the need for prolonged and careful
consideration (Lunacharsky and Shokhin, K edinoi sisteme, pp. 16-
17).
94. Narkompros collegium resolution 'On the factory 7-year school', 10
April 1930, Politekhnicheskii trud v shkole, 1930 no. 4-5, pp. 6off.

95. Komsomol'skaya pravda, 11 December 1928, p. 4; 12 December 1928,
p. 1.
96. A. Ya. Shumsky, Za shkolu Marksa-Lenina (Moscow-Leningrad,
I931)* P- 16.
97. Na putyakh k nouoi shkole, 1930 no. 11-12, p. 66.
100. Ibid., 1931 no. 3, pp. 66 and 69, note.
101. Shumsky, Za shkolu, p. 15.
102. Quoted ibid., p. 13.
103. Za politekhnicheskuyu shkolu, 1931 no. 11-12, p. 27.
105. Byulleten' NKP, 1930 no. 18, pp. 8-9.
106. Byulleten' NKP, 1930 no. 4, p. 14.
107. Vtoroe vsesoyuznoe partiinoe soveshchanie, p. 147. For reports of
children's kolkhozy, see Byulleten' NKP, 1930 no. 19, p. 35; Za
kommunisticheskoe prosveshchenie, 9 January 1931, p. 3; Nizhnevol-
zhskii prosveshchenets, 1929 no. 5—6, pp. 636*.
108. Quoted Korolev, Korneichik and Ravkin, Ocherki, p. 99.
109. Kostyukevich, in Bestuzhevki v ryadakh stroitelei sotsializma (Mos-
cow, 1969), p. 137.
n o . Za kommunisticheskoe prosveshchenie, 15 April 1931, p. 3.
i n . Korolev, Korneichik and Ravkin, Ocherki, p. n o .
112. Byulleten' NKP, 1930 no. 26, p. 38; ibid., 1930 no. 28, p. 17.
113. Korolev, Korneichik and Ravkin, Ocherki, p. n o ; M. E. Shilnikova,
Uchebno-vospitatel'naya rabota v shkoly v 1930—1934 SS- (Moscow,
I959)> P- 32.
114. See below, ch. 10.
115. Bubnov, Statyi i rechi, p. 198.
r 16. The trade unionists' outrage is described in TsGAOR 5451/15/715,
pp. 24-5. The interdepartmental feud is expressed in a confidential
letter from Petrovsky, head of Glavpromkadrov, to Mantsev, deputy
chairman of Vesenkha (14 September 1930), bitterly complaining that
the labour department was maliciously obstructing his methodological
circulars - the main offender being Beilin, a statistician frequently
quoted in these pages who had earlier been 'purged' from Petrovsky's
department. TsGANKh 3429/79/63, p. 22: File of Glavpromkadrov,
I93O-
117. Quoted Shumsky, Za shkolu, pp. 21-2.
118. Pedologiya, 1930 no. 3(9), pp. 408-19 passim; A. S. Zaluzhny,
Lzhenauka pedologiya v 'trudakh* Zalkinda (Moscow, 1937), p. 31.
119. Pedologiya, 1930 no. 3(9), p. 335.
120. Cited by the head of the Urals agitprop department in XI Ural'skaya
oblastnaya konferentsiya VKP(b). Stenograficheskii otchet. 23-30.
yanv. 1932 g. (Sverdlovsk-Moscow, 1932), p. 112.

121. Bubnov, Statyi i rechi, p. 203.
122. See I. V. Stalin, Sochineniya, xn (Moscow, 1949), pp. 369-70.
123. Za kommunisticheskoe prosveshchenie, 20 May 1931, p. 3; ibid.,
1 June 1931, p. 2.
124. See David Joravsky, 'The Construction of the Stalinist Psyche5,
Fitzpatrick, ed., Cultural Revolution in Russia, J92S-7951 (Blooming-
ton, Ind., 1978), p. 122.
125. See below, pp. 229-30, and on the professional identity crisis, see Na
putyakh k novoi shkole, 1932 no. 6, pp. 46-7, 51-2 and 54.
126. Narkompros RSFSR directive 'On the organization of pedological
work under the education authorities', 6 May 1931, Byulleten' NKP,
1931 no. 14-15, pp. 21-3, and appendix 23-6; Sovnarkom RSFSR
resolution 'On the organization of pedological work conducted by
various government agencies in the Republic', 7 March 1931,
Byulleten' NKP, 1931 no. 12, p. 3.
127. Narkompros directive 'On expanding the network of schools for
physically defective and mentally retarded children and those suffer-
ing from speech handicaps in 1932', Byulleten' NKP, 1932 no. 17,
pp. 2-3; Sovnarkom resolution 'On the procedure for enrolment of
children in schools and recruitment of pupils to schools', 7 May 1933,
ibid., 1933 no. 11, p. 7; resolution of the Narkompros collegium
'On the conditions and task of pedological work', ibid., 1933 no. 13,
p. 6.
128. See Bubnov, Statyi i rechi, pp. 358-9. The collapse of pedology
followed the Central Committee resolution 'On pedological distor-
tions in the system of the education commissariats', 4 July 1936,
Direktivy i postanovleniya sovetskogo pravitel'stva o narodnom
obrazovanii, 1 (Moscow-Leningrad, 1947), pp. igoff.
129. Za kommunisticheskoe prosveshchenie - the First Five-Year Plan title
of UchiteVskaya gazeta - was edited by Averbakh in April and May
1931. Until September 1931, he was also a member of the presidium
of the Teachers' Union (Za kommunisticheskoe prosveshchenie, 22
September 1931, p. 1). His writings on education are to be found in
L. Averbakh, KuVturnaya revolyutsia i voprosy sovremennoi literatury
(Moscow-Leningrad, 1928) and L. Averbakh, Spornye voprosy
kuVturnoi revolyutsii (Moscow, 1929).
130. See Za kommunisticheskoe prosveshchenie, 10 April 1931, p. 2.
131. Shumsky, Za shkolu, p. 58.
Chapter 8 Mass education and mobility in the countryside

1. Y. V. Arutyunyan, 'The collectivization of agriculture and the freeing
of labour force for industry', in Formirovanie i razvitie sovetskogo
rabochego klassa (igiy—ig6i gg.) (Moscow, 1964), p. i n .
2. Frank Lorimer, The Population of the Soviet Union: History and

Prospects (Geneva, 1946), pp. 147-50, estimates that peasant migra-
tion to towns provided 23 million of the urban population growth in
this period.
3. XVI syezd VKP(b). Stenograficheskii otchet, 11 (Moscow, 1935),
p. 1,250.
4. For earlier goals, see Pyatiletnii plan narodno-khozyaistvennogo
stroitel'stva SSSR. Svodnyi obzor, 11, 2nd ed. (Moscow, 1929), pp. 218
and 263.
5. Prosveshchenie Sibiri, 1929 no. 4, p. i n .
6. Prosveshchenie na Urale, 1930 no. 1-2, p. 63.
7. Izvestiya, 17 April 1929, p. 3.
9. Kommunisticheskaya revolyutsiya, 1928 no. 20, p. 75.
10. Smolensk Archive, WKP 33: meeting of Smolensk gubkom and
presidium of guberniya control commission, 30 June 1928.
11. Pravda, 11 July 1928, p. 1.
12. EzhenedeVnik NKP, 1928 no. 42, pp. 12-13; ibid., 1929 no. 7, p. 17;
ibid., 1929 no. 8-9, pp. 19-21; Pravda, 26 September 1928, p. 4.
13. See Narodnoe prosveshchenie, 1929 no. 3-4, pp. 25 and 39.
15. Ibid., 1929 no. 12, p. 52.
16. Smolensk Archive, WKP 215: letter of OGPU official to the oblast
party committee, stamped Absolutely secret', dated 8 August 1929.
18. L. S. Frid, Ocherki po istorii razvitiya politiko-prosvetiteVnoi raboty
v RSFSR {(1917-1929 gg). (Leningrad, 1941), p. 141.
19. See N. K. Krupskaya, Pedagogicheskie sochineniya, VII, p. 105, and x,
p. 270.
20. Izvestiya TsK, 1925 no. 19-20, p. 7; Izvestiya, 16 March 1926, p. 2.
21. Krupskaya, Pedagogicheskie sochineniya, ix, pp. 390-91.
22. Rumour cited, V. A. Kumanev, Sotsializm i vsenarodnaya gramotnost'
(Moscow, 1967), p. 221.
24. Kumanev, Sotsializm, p. 226.
26. Kumanev, Sotsializm, p. 225. Other gruesome examples may be found
in the Smolensk Archive, WKP 525: material of the criminal
investigation department, p. 80; and Prosveshchenie Sibiri, 1929 no.
7-8, pp. 106-12.
28. Sbornik tsirkulyarov Narodnogo Komissariata Yustitsii RSFSR
deistvuyushchikh na I iyunya 1931 g. (Moscow, 1931), p. 210.
29. Oblastnoi Komitet VKP(b) Avtonomnoi Tatarskoi SSR, Stenografi-
cheskii otchet XV oblastnoi partiinoi konferentsii {5-15 iyunya
g.) (Kazan, 1930), p. 124. •

30. I. Ya. Trifonov, Likvidatsiya ekspluatatorskikh klassov v SSSR
(Moscow, 1975), p. 387.
31. Resolution of the Presidium of TsIK 'On the procedure for re-
establishing the voting rights of children of kulaks', 17 March 1933,
Sbornik zakonov, 1933 no. 21, art. 117.
32. Trifonov, Likvidatsiya, p. 389.
35. Ibid., p. 17.
36. Ibid., p. 16. For other similar examples, see Sbornik tsirkulyarov
Narodnogo Komissariata Yustitsii, p. 111.
37. Smolensk Archive, WKP 525: material of the criminal investigation
department, p. 199 (marked 'secret').
39. Iz istorii partiinykh organizatsii Urala, 11 (Sverdlovsk, 1973), p.
127.
40. Za vseobshchee obuchenie, 1930 no. 4, p. 19; Byulleten' NKP, 1930
no. 29, p. 4.
41. Vechernyaya Moskva, 1 April 1930, reporting instructions of Kolkhoz-
tsentr; Za vseobshchee obuchenie, 1931 no. 7, p. 16 (directive of
Kolkhoztsentr and Teachers' Union).
42. Narodnoe prosveshchenie, 1930 no. 7-8, p. 8. Even Kolkhoztsentr
admitted that deductions of 10-25% of salary were common {Za
vseobshchee obuchenie, 1931 no. 7, p. 16).
43. Prosveshchenie Sibiri, 1930 no. 11, p. 98; Iz istorii partiinykh
organizatsii Urala, 11, p. 127.
44. Instruction of 11 November, signed by Narkompros, Kolkhoztsentr
and other bodies, Byulleten' NKP, 1930 no. 34, p. 13.
45. In mid-1932, Narkompros tried to recover the school property which
had earlier been transferred to kolkhozy and sovkhozy. See memoran-
dum from Shokhin, dated 14 August 1932, Byulleten' NKP, 1932
no. 47, p. 11.
47. Za politekhnicheskuyu shkolu, 1931 no. 9, p. 45.
48. See above, pp. 60-61.
49. Na putyakh k novoi shkole, 1929 no. 12, pp. 46-8.
50. Resolution of the collegium of Narkompros RSFSR, 5 February 1930,
'On the reconstruction of ShKMs in accordance with the tasks of total
collectivization', Byulleten' NKP, 1930 no. 6, pp. 3-5.
51. KuVturnoe stroiteVstvo SSSR (Moscow, 1956), pp. 122-3.
52. Compare data cited above (note 51) on numbers of pupils in all rural
grades v-ix with data on numbers in ShKM schools in Yu. S.
Borisov, Podgotovka proizvodstvennykh kadrov seVskogo khozyaistva
v rekonstruktivnyi period (Moscow, i960), p. 161.
53. This is ftrongly suggested by the fact that at the beginning of the

Notes to pages i6j-jo 301
Second Five-Year Plan the ShKM reverted to a purely general-
educational function (Borisov, Podgotovka, p. 161).
55. See report of Gosplan projections on training of cadres for kolkhozy
and sovkhozy, in Nauchnyi rabotnik, 1929 no. 10, p. 86.
56. Borisov, Podgotovka, p. 97.
57. Ibid., pp. 97-8; V. V. Melnikov, KuVturnaya revolyutsiya i Komsomol
(Rostov, 1973), p. 240.
58. 'On the kolkhoz movement and the progress of agriculture5, KPSS v
rezolyutsiyakh, iv, p. 457.
59. Borisov, Podgotovka, pp. 144—6.
60. In the last years of Tsarism, following a large expansion of primary
education mainly sponsored by the zemstva, it had been planned to
introduce universal primary education in European Russia by 1925.
For more detail on pre-war projections and investment in primary
education, see N. V. Chekhov, Pedagogicheskaya entsiklopediya, 11
(1928), pp. 122-4.
61. See data on literacy, broken down by age and sex, Vsesoyuznaya
perepis' naseleniya iy dekabrya 1926 g. Kratkie svodki, vn (Moscow,
1928), pp. 8-13.
62. For pre-war literacy, see A. G. Rashin, * Literacy and education in
Russia in the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries', Istori-
cheskie zapiski, 1951 no. 37, p. 49.
63. Narodnoe prosveshchenie v RSFSR v osnovnykh pokazatelyakh
(Moscow-Leningrad, 1932), p. 6 (data - for the USSR as a whole —
is from the 1926 census).
64. For European Russia, literacy for the male age group 12-16 was
77-79% in 1926 — ten percentage points lower than the literacy of
males in their 20s in 1926. Vsesoyuznaya p ere pis', v, p. xvii.
66. A drop in literacy was reported in Moscow guberniya in 1928, and
literacy among the Orenburg Cossacks had fallen from a pre-war
level of 98% to 90% (Vechernyaya Moskva, 21 August 1928, p. 2,
and ibid., 30 March 1929, p. 2).
67. Kul'turnoe stroiteVstvo SSSR (1956), pp. 122-3; Rashin, 'Literacy
and education5, p. 68.
68. Pyatiletnii plan narodno-khozyaistvennogo stroiteVstva SSSR. Svodnyi
obzor, 11 (Moscow, 1930), part 2, pp. 217-18.
69. Lunacharsky said in 1926 that 60.5% of Russian children of primary-
school age were in school (Narodnoe prosveshchenie, 1926 no. 11,
p. 17); Krupskaya stated in 1928 that only 50% of these children
were in school (Pravda, 1 May 1928, p. 7); and a year later Lezhava
gave the figure of 55% (XIV vserossiiskii syezd sovetov, Bulletin 5,
P . 18).
70. Resolution of the Central Committee 'On universal and compulsory

primary education', 25 July 1930, KPSS v rezolyutsiyakh, iv, p. 474.
71. For data on the social composition of Soviet primary schools, broken
down by republics, see Massovoe prosveshchenie v SSSR, 11, pp.
40-61.
72. Numbers of pupils in rural primary schools of the USSR rose from
7.3 million in 1927/28 to 8.8 million in 1929/30. Over the same
period, urban numbers dropped by about 20,000. Kul'turnoe
stroitel'stvo SSSR (1956), pp. 82-5.
73. Za vseobshchee obuchenie, 1931 no. 4, p. 11.
74. Ibid., p. 10.
75. Resolution of TsIK and Sovnarkom USSR 'On the introduction of
compulsory primary education', 14 August 1930, Narodnoe obrazo-
vanie u SSSR. ObshcheobrazovateVnaya shkola. Sbornik dokumentov
i9i7-*973 gg- (Moscow, 1974), p. 113.
76. Prosveshchenie Sibiri, 1929 no. 10, p. 112.
77. Za vseobshchee obuchenie, 1931 no. 4, p. 10.
78. Ibid., 1931 no. 2, p. 12; and ibid., 1931 no. 4, p. 11.
79. The 1932 figure from K. Subbotina, Narodnoe obrazovanie i byudzhet
(Moscow, 1965), p. 46. The TsIK and Sovnarkom USSR resolution
of 14 August 1930 (see above, note 75) provided for central subsidy (1)
through the school building fund and (2) through a special allocation
on the Ail-Union budget at an amount to be determined. But
Gosplan's projections for 1931 (for RSFSR without autonomous
republics) indicate that no substantial contribution was forthcoming
from either the Ail-Union or republican governments (Za vseobshchee
obuchenie, 1931 no. 5, p. 32).
80. See editorial * Self-taxation - the lever of cultural revolution', Pravda,
27 September 1929, p. 1, In 1931, for the RSFSR alone, self-taxation
brought in 239 million roubles; in 1932, 327 million roubles.
Sotsialisticheskoe stroiteVstvo SSSR (Moscow, 1934), pp. 458-9.
81. The decrees instituting the special tax are in Sbornik zakonov, 1931
no. 3, art. 34; 1931 no. 3, art. 35; 1932 no. 2, art. 9; and 1932 no. 2,
art. 10. See also R. W. Davies, The Development of the Soviet
Budgetary System (Cambridge, 1958), p. 225.
82. In 1929/30, only 3.7% of all pupils in literary schools in the USSR
were in schools financed on the central budget; 39% were being taught
by unpaid teachers, 19% were in schools maintained by various
institutions, and the rest were in schools financed on the budget of
the local Soviets (Massovoe prosveshchenie v SSSR, 11, p. 122).
83. See Central Committee resolution 'On universal and compulsory
primary education', KPSS v rezolyutsiyah, p. 476.
84. XVI syezd VKP(b). Stenograficheskii otchet, 1 (Moscow, 1935), p. 330.
85. Kumanev, Sotsializm, pp. 187-9; Broido, Narodnoe prosveshchenie,
1928 no. 11, pp. 41-2.
86. On kuVtestafeta, see Kumanev, Sotsializm, p. 249. The terms start,

Notes to pages 173-5 3°3
finish, marshrut and obshchestvennyi buksir (referring to the 'towing5
of a backward region by a more advanced one) came into use with the
kuVtestafeta.
87. Pamyatnik uchastnika kuVtestafeta {kuVtboitsa) (Stalingrad, 1930),
PP- 4~5> 7 and 11-12.
88. Kumanev, Sotsializm, p. 200; Bubnov, XVI syezd VKP{b), 1, p. 331.
89. Kumanev, Sotsializm, p. 227. Other details on Baptist cultural activity
- including the organization of a Day of Classless Solidarity with
Brothers-in-Christ on May 1 and of a two-week Struggle against
Biblical Illiteracy in Saratov, directly imitating the kuVtpokhod -
will be found in Kommunisticheskii put' (Saratov), 1929, no. 19,
p. 41.
92. Calculated from KuVturnoe stroiteVstvo SSSR (1956), pp. 80-5.
93. Melnikov, KuVturnaya revolyutsiya, p. 196.
94. Trud v SSSR. Statistic he skii spravochnik (Moscow, 1936), p. 321.
95. Trud v SSSR (1934 god) (Moscow, 1935), p. 265; Melnikov,
KuVturnaya revolyutsiya, p. 196.
96. KuVturnoe stroiteVstvo SSSR (1956), pp. 122-3.
97. Massovoe prosveshchenie v SSSR 1, p. 6. In 1931-2, there were 17.7
million children in grades I-IV (and preparatory grades) in the Soviet
Union (source as above, note 96), and probably 13-14 million in the
8-11 age group (extrapolated from Lorimer, Population, p. 143).
An age breakdown, for the RSFSR only and excluding preparatory
grades, suggests that around 73% of children in grades I-IV in 1931/
32 were aged 8 to 11 {Narodnoe prosveshchenie v RSFSR v osnovnykh
pokazatelyakh, p. 76).
98. Massovoe prosveshchenie v SSSR 1, pp. 27 and 29.
99. V. N. Panfilov, KuVturnye pyatiletki (Moscow, 1930), p. 108.
100. TsGA RSFSR 2306/69/1879: meeting of Narkompros collegium,
n July 1929.
101. KuVturnoe stroiteVstvo SSSR v tsifrakh 1930-1934 (Moscow, 1935),
p. xvi.
102. KuVturnoe stroiteVstvo SSSR (Moscow, 1940), p. 84.
103. Itogi vypolneniya pervogo pyatiletnego plana razvitiya narodnogo
khozyaistva SSSR (Moscow, 1933), p. 222.
104. A later edition of Itogi vypolneniya reduced the figure, without
explanation, to 30 million {Summary of the Fulfilment of the First
Five-Year Plan for the Development of the National Economy of the
USSR, 2nd revised ed. (New York, n.d., p. 246)); Bubnov gave the
estimate of 29 million illiterates trained during the First Five-Year
Plan, but, as a Soviet commentator adds, 'it has unfortunately not
been possible to establish on what sources A. S. Bubnov based these
figures' (Kumanev, Sotsializm, pp. 265-6); and, after the publication

of the 1939 census, it was officially estimated that 23 million illiterates
had been trained in this period (Kul'turnoe stroitel'stvo SSSR (1940),
P- 92).
106. Lorimer, Population, pp. 198-9.
107. Ibid.
108. The 1926 data from Vsesoyuznaya perepis' naseleniya ij dekabrya
1926 g. Kratkie svodki, vn, pp. 8—13; 1939 data calculated from
Lorimer, Population, pp. 143-4 anc ^ 19&-
109. The estimate of the total population on 1 January 1933 is from
Lorimer, Population, p. 135, with a subtraction of 22.5% of total
population to cover the 0-8 age group. (In 1926, 24% of the total
population was aged 0-8; and in 1939, 21%.)
n o . See Kul'turnoe stroitel'stvo SSSR (1940), p. 92; 23 million illiterates
were taught in the First Five-Year Plan period, according to these
figures, and 25 million in the Second.
i n . Kumanev (Sotsializm, pp. 162-3) calculates that 10 million adults
were taught to read and write in the period 1918-27.
112. On illiteracy among the new members of trade unions, see Profso-
yuznaya perepis' 1932-1933 g., 1 (Moscow, 1934), p. 44. Urban literacy
schools taught 5.5 million illiterates and semi-literates in the
period 1927-32 and 8.8 million in the period 1933-38 {Kul'turnoe
stroitel'stvo SSSR (1940), p. 92).
113. Itogi vsesoyuznoi perepisi naseleniya 1959 goda SSSR (Svodnyi torn)
(Moscow, 1962), p. 89.
114. A. I. Vdovin and V. Z. Drobizhev, Rost rabochego klassa SSSR.
*9I1~I94O gg- (Moscow, 1976), p. 127.
115. Ibid., p. 133.
117. Resolution of TsIK and Sovnarkom USSR 'On training of technical
cadres for the economy of the Soviet Union5, 13 January 1930,
Resheniya partii i pravitel'stva po khozyaistvennym voprosam (1977-
*967 gg-\ n (Moscow, 1967), p. 163.
118. Narodnoe prosveshchenie, 1929 no. 3-4, pp. 3 and 7.
119. Quoted by Lunacharsky, Ustanovka rabochei sily, 1929 no. 1-2, p. 20.
120. Vdovin and Drobizhev, Rost rabochego klassa SSSR, p. 119. In 1930,
only 15% of FZU students were peasants according to this breakdown.
But by the autumn of 1935, 5 ° % of new admissions were peasants.
121. See M. T. Goltsman, 'Composition of construction workers of the
USSR in the years of the First Five-Year Plan (on materials of the
trade union censuses of 1929 and 1932)', in Izmeneniya v chislennosti
i sostave sovetskogo rabochego klassa (Moscow, 1961), pp. 124!?.
122. TsGAOR 5451/15/715: VTsSPS, Sector of Industrial Cadres (1931),
P- 57.
123. Trifonov, Likvidatsiya, pp. 379, 381-2.

124. John Scott, Behind the Urals (Bloomington, Ind., 1973), p. 85.
125. M. Ya. Sonin, Vosproizvodstvo rabochei sily v SSSR i balans truda
(Moscow, 1959), p. 182 (Table 45).
126. Borisov, Podgotovka, pp. 273-4.
127. Melnikov, Kul'turnaya revolyutsiya, p. 240.
128. Borisov, Podgotovka, p. 275. See also Arutyunyan, 'Collectivization',
p. in.
129. TsGA RSFSR 2306/69/1877: presidium of Narkompros collegium,
meeting of 11 June 1929.
130. Resolution of TsIK and Sovnarkom USSR 'On training of technical
cadres for the economy of the Soviet Union', 13 January 1930,
Resheniya par Hi, p. 163.
131. Data from TsGAOR 5451/15/715, p. 18.
132. Trud v SSSR. Statisticheskii sbornik (Moscow, 1968), pp. 268-9 and
286-7.
133. See below, pp. 237-8.
Chapter g The making of a proletarian intelligentsia

1. I. Stalin, Sochineniya, xm, 1951, p. 41, and xi, p. 58.
2. Developments in higher military education are described in A. I.
Iovlev, DeyateVnost' KPSS po podgotovke voennykh kadrov (Moscow,
1976), ch. 2. On the need to strengthen the 'worker and party nucleus5
in the Army command, see the Central Committee resolution 'On the
command and political composition of the Red Army', 25 February
1929, KPSS v rezolyutsiyakh, iv, pp. 176-9; and on the need to
improve the technical expertise and general educational level of the
officers, see the Central Committee resolution 'On the command and
political composition of the Red Army', 5 June 1931, ibid., pp. 521-4.
3. The Industrial Academies (Promakademii) offered high-status training
to a small number of mature students with administrative experience:
although highly publicized and praised, their contribution to the First
Five-Year Plan vydvizhenie was actually less significant than that of
the VTUZy. In 1932, the 11 Industrial Academies had 3,507 students
(Voprosy istorii KPSS, 1976 no. 10, p. 83).
4. See above, ch. 6; and V. Molotov, 'The training of new specialists',
Krasnoe studenchestvo, 1928/29 no. 1, pp. 9-21.
5. SotsiaVnyi i natsionaVnyi sostav VKP(b). Itogi vsesoyuznoi perepisi
I 2
9 7 goda (Moscow, 1928), p. 42; Kommunisty v sostave apparata
gosuchrezhdenii i obshchestvennykh organizatsii. Itogi Vsesoyuznoi
perepisi 192J g. (Moscow, 1929), p. 25 (data on otvetrabotniki is for
32 guberniyas of RSFSR).
6. M. Ryutin, 'Leading cadres of the VKP(b)', Bol'shevik, 1928 no. 15,
p. 20 (data for 1927).

7. SotsiaVnyi i natsionaVnyi sostav, p. 41; Kommunisty v sostave

apparata, p. 14 (data for 32 guberniyas of RSFSR).
8. Kommunisty v sostave apparata, pp. 12 and 14; Ryutin, 'Leading
cadres', p; 27.
9. See, for example, Stalin, Sochineniya, xi, pp. 57-9.
10. Yu. Borisov, Podgotovka proizvodstuennykh kadrov seVskogo
khozyaistva v rekonstruktivnyi period (Moscow, i960), pp. 153-4.
11. Komsomol'skaya pravda, 9 September 1932, p. 3.
12. 'On the improvement of the training of new specialists', KPSS v
rezolyutsiyakh, iv, pp. 114-17.
13. Pravda, 25 July 1928, p. 5.
14. Izvestiya TsK, 1928 no. 28; Sovetskaya intelligentsia (Istoriya
formirovaniya i rosta 19/7-7965 gg). (Moscow, 1968), p. 176; Krasnoe
studenchestvo, 1929/30 no. 30, p. 18.
15. In fact, the Thousanders did not like the social and academic
atmosphere of Kagan-Shabshai's Institute: they organized a student
protest movement there, and two-thirds of them left within a year.
Komsomol''skaya pravda, 15 March 1929, p. 4; Krasnoe studen-
chestvo, 1929/30 no. 2, p. 8.
16. On the distribution of Party Thousanders, see Pravda, 24 July 1928,
p. 4; ibid., 26 July 1928, p.5; Komsomolfskaya pravda, 15 March
1929, p. 4; Krasnoe studenchestvo, 1929/30 no. 2, p. 8.
17. B. S. Telpukhovsky, 'The activity of the GPSU in strengthening the
defence of the USSR in the years of socialist reconstruction of the
economy (1929-1937)', Voprosy istorii KPSS, 1976 no. 8, p. 93;
Colonel E. I. Soldatenko, Ukreplenie oboronosposobnosti SSSR v
pervoi pyatiletke (7929-/952 gg.) (Kharkov, 1957), p. 49.
18. TsGAOR 5451/15/785: file on the Trade Union Thousanders (1931),
p. 65; Pervaya moskovskaya oblastnaya konferentsiya Vsesoyuznoi
Kommunisticheskoi Partii [boVshevikov). Stenograficheskii otchet,
part 1 (Moscow, 1929), pp. 139 and 157.
19. Pervaya moskovskaya oblastnaya konferentsiya, p. 157.
20. See, for example, interjections from the floor when Uglanov spoke
disparagingly of working-class vydvizhenie, Vtoroi plenum MK
VKP(b), 31 yanv.-2 fev. IQ28. Doklady i rezolyutsii (Moscow, 1928),
p. 43; Pervaya moskovskaya oblastnaya konferentsiya, p. 166.
21. Pervaya moskovskaya oblastnaya konferentsiya, p. 52.
22. TsGAOR 5451/15/785, p. 65: Table - Composition of Trade Union
Thousanders (April 1931); TsGAOR 5451/15/715, p. 19: Report of
Sector of Industrial Cadres, VTsSPS (1932).
23. Of the first trade union Thousand, 70% were classified as unprepared
for immediate entry to VUZ, and there was a further 13% which the
VTUZy tried (unsuccessfully) to reject outright. Vechernyaya Moska,
26 August 1929, p. 2.
24. TsGAOR 545 I / I 5/7 I 5> P- l9-

Notes to pages 186-go 307
25. Krasnoe studenchestvo, 1929/30 no. 17, p. 3.
26. TsGAOR 5451/15/715, p. 19; S. Fedyukin, Sovetskaya vlast' i
burzhuaznye spetsialisty (Moscow, 1965), p. 243.
27. See, for example, Stalin, 'Speech to the V I I I Congress of VLKSM 5
(16 May 1928), Sochineniya, xi, pp. 76-7; 'On the tasks of the
industrialists' (4 February 1931), Sochineniya, xm, pp. 41-2.
28. There were under 25,000 Communists in higher educational institu-
tions of the USSR at the beginning of 1928 (Podgotovka kadrov v
SSSR, IQ27-IQ3I (Moscow-Leningrad, 1933), pp. 13 and 19); over
30,000 Communists graduated in the period 1928-32 (I. N. Yudin,
SotsiaVnaya baza rosta KPSS (Moscow, 1973), p. 181); and in the
1932/33 school year there were 106,000 Communists in higher educa-
tional institutions (Sotsialisticheskoe stroitel'stvo SSSR (Moscow,
1934), p. 410, and N. de Witt, Education and Professional Employ-
ment in the USSR (Washington DC, 1961), pp. 638-9).
29. Calculated from Sotsialististicheskoe stroiteVstvo SSSR, p. 410, and
de Witt, Education and Professional Employment, pp. 638-9.
30. Of all 89,000 party members with completed higher education in
early 1937, 47-3% n a d entered the party as workers (Yudin,
SotsiaVnaya baza, p. 186). If the pre-1928 graduates are excluded (see
data, SotsiaVnyi i natsionaVnyi sostav VKP(b), p. 41), the percentage
of former workers is 51; and it must be still higher for the 1931-36
graduates who had entered the VUZy during the First Five-Year
Plan. The working-class 50% which I have used in my calculations of
the Communist vydvizhenie is almost certainly too low.
31. Sostav rukovodyashchikh rabotnikov i spetsialistov Soyuza SSR
(Moscow, 1936), pp. I O - I I . This survey (described in ch. 12, note 28)
is not ideal for our purposes, since the bulk of First Five-Year Plan
entrants to VUZ had yet to graduate, and probably a third to a half
of the First Five-Year Plan graduates had entered VUZy before 1928.
But no comparable data are available for later years.
32. KuVturnoe stroiteVstvo SSSR v tsifrakh (1930-1934 gg.) (Moscow,
1935), P- 43-
33. Vechernyaya Moskva, 9 October 1929, p. 2; KomsomoVskaya pravda,
16 January 1929, p. 3.
35. TsGA RSFSR 2306/69/1879: Narkompros collegium meeting of
29 August 1929: report on uninterrupted practical work; Nauchnyi
rabotnik, 1929 no. 7-8, p. 90; ibid., 1929 no. 12, p. 100; ibid., 1930
no. 8-9, pp. 34-8.
36. KomsomoV skaya pravda, 7 March 1929, p. 4.
37. Pravda, 13 April 1928, p. 4; Krasnoe studenchestvo, 1929/30 no. 24,
p. 9; Nauchnyi rabotnik, 1930 no. 1, pp. 40-1.
38. Krasnoe studenchestvo, 1920/30 no. 20, p. 4; Byulletenf NKP, 1930
no. 31, p. 13.

308 Notes to pages igo-2
39. For Gosplan statements, see Pyatiletnii plan narodnokhozyaistvennogo
stroiteVstva SSSR. Svodnyi obzor, 1, 2nd ed. (Moscow, 1929), pp. 78-9
and speech of Krzhizhanovsky, XVI konferentsiya VKP(b). Steno-
graficheskii otchet (Moscow, 1962), p. 264. On the German 'Technical
Week', see Vechernyaya Moskva, 14 January 1929, p. 1, and Anthony
C. Sutton, Western Technology and Soviet Economic Development, 1
(Stanford, 1968), p. 322.
40. VARNITSO, 1930 no. 2, p. 48.
41. Central Committee resolution 'On cadres for the national economy',
November 1929, KPSS v rezolyutsiyakh, iv, p. 338.
42. I. P. Barmin, Iz opyta raboty KPSS i sovetskogo gosudarstva po
sozdaniyu kadrov sovetskoi intelligentsii (/928-JQ33 gg.) (Moscow,
l
§&b\ PP- 38-9; Za promyshlennye kadry, 1931 no. 2, p. 119. Reversal
of the trend began in late 1930: according to the VTsSPS Sector of
Industrial Cadres, the credit belonged to Shvernik (VTsSPS head),
who was the first to call for 'a struggle for quality of training against
opportunistic whimperings about tempos and "leftist" attempts to
reduce the length of training mechanically. After that, a number of
party organizations directed the VUZ and VTUZ party committees
to work in that direction (the disbanding of the Moscow Power
Institute's party committee by the Bauman raikom, the analogous
decision of the Stalino raikom, and so on)'. TsGAOR 5451/15/715,
p. 24: Report prepared for ix Trade Union Congress (1932).
43. See above, ch. 7.
44. Krasnoe studenchestvo, 1930/31 no. 14-15, p. 11.
45. Moskovskii Institute Narodnogo Khozyaistva imeni G. B. Plekhanova,
50 let Instituta (Moscow, 1957), p. 67. See also Iz istorii Moskovskogo
Universiteta igiy-igî (Moscow, 1955), p. 248.
46. 'On cadres for the national economy', KPSS v rezolyutsiyakh, iv,
P-339-
47. A summary of the Schmidt commission's work, together with a
collection of TsIK and Sovnarkom instructions, may be found in
Materialy po reorganizatsii VUZov, VTUZov, tekhnikumov i
rabfakov SSSR (Moscow, 1930). A complete list of Soviet VUZy and
their administering institutions as of 1 January 1931 is in Podgotovka
kadrov v SSSR ig2j-iQ3i (Moscow, 1933), pp. i98ff.
48. See, for example, Markov, 'Do we need universities?', Krasnoe
studenchestvo, 1929/30 no. 3, pp. 10-11, and Laushtein, 'Do we need
universities? (For discussion)', Vechernyaya Moskva, 19 February
1930, p. 2. Laushtein refers to a project for university reform, in-
volving the splitting up of the universities into specialized institutes,
which was presented to Narkompros RSFSR in November 1929 by
Professor Pinkevich, educational theorist and Rector of the Second
Moscow University.
49. KuVturnoe stroiteV stvo SSSR (Moscow, 1940), p. 106.

50. E.g. the Commissariat of Health, which refused to accept the pro-
vincial medical schools, and the Commissariat of Justice, which refused
all the law schools. Krasnoe studenchestvo, 1929/30 no. 29, p. 2.
51. Gorbunov, an Old Bolshevik, was a former Rector of Moscow Higher
Technical School. His protest was occasioned by Sovnarkom USSR's
resolution of 26 July 1930 'On programmatic-methodological direc-
tion of professional-technical educational institutions5, and is filed in
TsGANKh 3429/79/63, p. 56. The same file (Glavpromkadrov,
Vesenkha USSR, 1930) contains a protest against the new law signed
by Mantsev, deputy chairman of Vesenkha, and Petrovsky, head of
Glavpromkadrov, addressed to the Central Committee and asking
the Orgburo to review the decision.
52. Borisov, Podgotovka proizvodstvennykh kadrov, p. 191.
53. E. V. Mikhin, * Class war and scientific workers', Nauchnyi rabotnik,
1930 no. 5-6, p. 16.
54. Kommunisticheskaya revolyutsiya, 1929 no. 1, pp. 19 and 21;
Smolensk Archive, WKP 309: meeting of bureau of party cell of
Smolensk Medical Institute, 25 February 1931.
55. See Vyshinsky, 'Re-election of professors and lecturers', Pravda,
9 June 1929, p. 2; and editorial, Pravda, 12 June 1929, p. 1.
56. Vyshinsky's original announcement was made in October 1928
(Vechernyaya Moskva, 30 October 1928, p. 2), but it took almost the
full academic year to organize the first elections. When they were
finally held, the Narkompros collegium concluded that it had been
demonstrated 'that the majority of scientific workers in the VUZy
are worthy of their appointments, difficult to replace, and will not
even be opposed in the concourse' (Nauchnyi rabotnik, 1929 no. 9,
P- 95) ~ seemingly a suggestion that further elections would not be
necessary.
57. Izvestiya, 24 March 1929, p. 2.
58. Vechernyaya Moskva, 18 June 1929, p. 3; Nauchnyi rabotnik, 1929
no. 11, pp. 111-12.
59. Vechernyaya Moskva, 13 November 1929, p. 2.
60. Nauchnyi rabotnik, 1929 no. 9, p. 95; Vechernyaya Moskva, 28 May
1929, P- 3-
62. Voprosy istorii KPSS, 1966 no. 2, p. 34.
63. Krasnoe studenchestvo, 1929/30 no. 10, p. 5; Smolensk Archive, WKP
309: Communist fraction of Smolensk University administration,
meeting of 3 October 1929.
64. Podgotovka kadrov, pp. 45-6; Sovetskaya intelligentsiya, p. 192.
65. Vysshaya tekhnicheskaya shkola, 1934 no. 1, p. 76.
66. By the beginning of 1934, the number of positions in scientific research
institutes had grown to 96,000. KuVturnoe stroiteVstvo v tsifrakh
{I93O-I934 gg-)> P- M8-

67. Data from Podgotovka kadrov, pp. 46-7 and 162-3.
68. Ibid., p. 47.
69. Ibid., and KuVturnoe stroiteV stvo SSSR 1935 (Moscow, 1936), p. 97.
70. Resolution of Narkompros RSFSR collegium, Nauchnyi rabotnik,
1929 no. 10, p. 97.
71. Vysshaya tekhnicheskaya shkola, 1934 no. 1, p. 84.
72. Pravda, 26 July 1928, p. 5, and ibid., 4 August 1928, p. 8; 1,674
applications were received for the 43 places at Moscow Higher
Technical School.
73. Komsomol'skaya pravda, 29 July 1928, p. 3; Lunacharsky and
Skrypnik, Narodnoe obrazovanie v SSSR, p. 96.
74. See, for example, Komsomol'skaya pravda, 29 July 1928, p. 3.
75. See the resolution of a local party conference (August 1928) 'to carry
out a ruthless purge of rabfaks and VUZy', Smolensk Archive, WKP
33; and purge recommendation from the party committee of Krasnaya
Presnya raion (Moscow), V. Ukraintsev, KPSS — organizator revol-
yutsionnogo preobrazovaniya vysshei shkoly (Moscow, 1963), p. 64.
76. Lominadze, who visited Smolensk as Central Committee rapporteur
on the July (1928) plenum, evidently raised the question of excluding
social aliens from the VUZy, since one of the questions put to him
after his speech was: 'Comrade Lominadze, you say that sons of
priests, kulaks and the like are studying in the VUZ; but why does
[Narkompros] reinstate those that have been expelled, even if it is
just in Smolensk University?' (Smolensk Archive, WKP 33: plenum
of Smolensk gubkom, 16 July 1928). The Central Committee's only
published recommendation on social purging came in November 1929,
in the resolution 'On cadres for the national economy', which approved
'purging [ochishchenie] of hostile elements from the VTUZy - not as
a campaign, but by systematically studying and improving the com-
position of the student body* (KPSS v rezolyutsiyakh, iv, p. 340).
But by this time, the mass purging of VUZy had died down, and the
Central Committee may actually have been taking a moderate stand
against purging by failing to approve local purge 'campaigns'.
77. KuVturnaya revolyutsiya v SSSR 1917—ig6§ gg. (Moscow, 1967),
P- 325.
78. Smolensk Archive, WKP 51: bureau of Western Oblast party com-
mittee, 28 October 1929. See also ibid., WKP 309: party fraction of
Smolensk University administration, 4 July 1929, and bureau of party
collective of the University, meetings of 2 and 20 March 1930; and
ibid., WKP 155: file of obkom agitprop department, letter from
Rector of Smolensk University dated 9 January 1930.
80. E.g. in the drop of 17,000 in the number of VUZ students classified as
'others' in 1928 (Robert A. Feldmesser, 'Aspects of Social Mobility in
the Soviet Union', unpublished Ph.D. diss. (Harvard, 1955, p. 162);

Notes to pages igy-200 311
and in the 11% drop-out of final-year students in Russian industrial
VTUZy in the same year disclosed in Vseobshchee obuchenie.
Likvidatsiya negramotnosti. Podgotovka kadrov (Moscow, 1930), p.
139-
81. Sotsialisticheskoe stroiteVstvo SSSR, pp. 406 and 410.
82. Data from Podgotovka kadrov, p. 19; Sotsialisticheskoe stroiteV stvo,
p. 410; and de Witt, Education and Professional Employment, pp.
638-9.
84. Komsomolskaya pravda, 2 August 1928, p. 3.
85. See, for example, the pseudonymous but apparently autobiographical
account, M. Moskvin, Khozhdenie po vuzam (Paris, 1933).
86. John Dornberg, Brezhnev, The Masks of Power (New York, 1974),
pp. 54-5; Leonid I. Brezhnev. Pages From His Life (New York, 1978),
pp. 26-32.
87. Calculated from data in Kul'turnoe stroiteVstvo SSSR (Moscow,
1956), pp. 122-3, a n d Podgotovka kadrov v SSSR, pp. 14, 31, 36 and
64. For the 1928/29 calculation, general secondary schools with an
industrial bias are not included in the industrial-training category.
88. de Witt, Education and Professional Employment, pp. 638-9.
89. Itogi vypolneniya pervogo pyatiletnego plana razvitiya narodnogo
khozyaistva SSSR (Moscow, 1933), pp. 173 and 175.
91. According to Gosplan's calculations, evidently made in the spring of
1929, even doubling the output of the FZU schools and tripling that
of TsIT courses by 1932/33 would leave a deficit of approximately
one million skilled and semi-skilled (kvalifitsirovannye) industrial
workers. Pyatiletnii plan, 1, p. 79. Note the misprints in the table,
giving FZU figures to trade schools, TsIT figures to FZU, etc. The
correct categories are quoted by speakers at the xvi Party Conference
(April, 1929).
92. A general swing of opinion towards the FZU school in April and May
of 1929 is noticeable in the discussion in XVI konferentsiya VKP{b),
especially pp. 210-14 (approving interjections during a Komsomol
attack on TsIT principles and defence of the FZU), and the resolution
on cultural construction of the xiv Congress of Soviets of the RSFSR,
XIV vserossiiskii syezd sovetov (Moscow, 1929), Bulletin 19, p. 15.
93. Directive to all glavki, presidents of trusts and directors of enterprises,
published Komsomol'skaya pravda, 9 June 1929, p. 1.
94. Accompanying order to all trusts and enterprises published Torgovo-
promyshlennaya gazeta, 9 June 1929, p. 4; A. V. Koltsov, Kulturnoe
stroiteVstvo v RSFSR v gody pervoi pyatiletki (Moscow, i960), p. 162.
95. TsGAOR 5451/15/715, p. 42: VTsSPS, Sector of Industrial Cadres.
96. Itogi vypolneniya pervogo pyatiletnego plana, p. 175.
97. TsIT i ego metody NOT (Moscow, 1970), p. 119.

98. Ibid., p.« 137; quotation from M. Anstett, La Formation de la Main-
d'Oeuvre qualifiee en Union sovietique de iQiJ a ig54 (Paris, 1958),
p. 115. Vesenkha, in a joint instruction with the Commissariat of
Labour (21 March 1931), directed all construction organization
'immediately to begin short-term training of skilled construction
workers by TsIT methods', but added the provision 'that the training
should be undertaken directly on the construction sites', that is, not on
the TsIT training bases. TsGANKh 3429/1/5254, p. 492: Orders of
Vesenkha.
99. This was one of the main solutions to the critical shortage of labour at
Krammashstroi reported by Serebryakov on 10 July 1931 (TsGANKh
3429/1/5242, p. 3: Minutes of Presidium of Vesenkha SSSR); and a
similar case involving the Nizhny Novgorod auto plant was reported
in Ekonomicheskaya zhizn\ 6 December 1929, p. 4.
100. TsGAOR 5451/15/715, p. 58: VTsSPS, Sector of Industrial Cadres,
1931; Industrializatsiya SSSR ig2g-igs2 (Moscow, 1970), pp. 415-16.
101. Central Committee resolution 'On the work of the Central Institute
of Labour', Partiinoe stroiteVstvo, 1931 no. 23, 63-4.
102. 'On cadres for the national economy', KPSS v rezolyutsiyakh, IV,
pp. 344-5.
103. Vesenkha issued an order on the creation of higher and middle
technical courses in enterprises on 24 May 1930. A memo from
Petrovsky (Glavpromkadrov) to Dogadov (deputy chairman of
Vesenkha) noted that such an order was long overdue, not because of
the Central Committee's resolution (which was not mentioned) but
because it 'is in fact only a formalization of the spontaneous move-
ment to create such courses which exists at almost all the big enter-
prises'. TsGANKh 3429/1/5220, pp. 82-5.
104. It is unclear how common this practice was, but on 3 December 1932
the Commissar of Heavy Industry, Ordzhonikidze, signed an order
awarding the title of engineer to the first graduating class (34 persons)
of the Stalin Metallurgical Zavod-VTUZ in Leningrad. TsGANKh
7297/1/9: Orders of the Commissariat of Heavy Industry of the
USSR.
105. See above, ch. 7.
106. TsGAOR 5451/15/715, pp. 227 and 230: VTsSPS, material of the
VUZ and VTUZ group of the Sector of Industrial Cadres (193.1).
107. Nauchnyi rabotnik, 1930 no. 2, p. 106; ibid., 1930 no. 8-9, p. 99;
Krasnoe studenchestvo, 1929/30 no. 30, p. 6; Barmin, Iz opyta KPSS,
pp. 46-7.
108. A. N. Veselov, Professionalno-tekhnicheskoe obrazovanie v SSSR
(Moscow, 1961), p. 296.
109. See reports in Iz. Kuzminov, 'Mastering the new factories and the
new technology and the problem of cadres', Problemy ekonomiki, v
(1935).

n o . TsGAOR 5451/15/751, P- 65. According to this report, 100% of
workers were in study programmes at the C OGPU S mine, 45% at
Rosselmash and 25% at 'Serp i molot' plant in Moscow.
i n . See below, pp. 237-8.
112. Industrial, building and transport VTUZy graduated 62,700 students
in the years 1931—34. About 11,000 of the graduates were in transport,
but the great majority of the rest came from VTUZy under the
Commissariat of Heavy Industry — approximately 50,000. The output
of industrial technicums in the same period was around 110,000. But
the number of persons holding engineers' and technicians' jobs in the
enterprises of heavy industry increased by only 34,632 and 74,452
respectively in the years 1931-34. Many of the technicum graduates
(40% of the graduating class of 1932!) went straight on to VTUZy.
while a substantial proportion of VTUZ graduates went to work in
the central apparats or proceeded on to graduate school. Data from
Kul'turnoe stroiteVstvo SSSR (1940), p. 112; A. E. Beilin, Kadry
spetsialistov SSSR. Ikh formirovanie i rost (Moscow, 1935), pp. 324-5;
Vysshaya tekhnicheskaya shkola, 1934 no. 2, p. 97.
113. Beilin, Kadry spetsialistov, pp. 324-5.
114. TsGAOR 5451/15/734, pp. 96-7 and 171: VTsSPS, Sector of
Industrial Cadres (1931): Stenogram of Leningrad meeting on part-
time training of cadres; Memo to presidium of TsKK-RKI on train-
ing in industry.
115. Veselov, Professional'no-tekhnicheskoe obrazovanie, p. 297.
116. White-collar students constituted 17.3% of FZU pupils in 1930 and
x
5-4% m I93I> compared with 11.7% in 1928/29, when the total
FZU numbers were very much smaller (Kuzminov, 'Mastering the new
factories', p. 39; Veselov, ProfessionaUno-tekhnicheskoe obrazovanie,
p. 208). This was the immediate result of the influx following the
collapse of the upper level of general secondary school. In the
admissions of the autumn of 1931 (with the exception of Moscow and
Leningrad schools), the white-collar percentage was much lower and
the percentage of peasants rose (see above, ch. 8, note 120).
117. Although the large recruitment of peasants into industry had an
impact on the composition of the apprenticeship school, there was a
markedly lower percentage of peasants among the apprentices than
among the adult workers in most major branches of industry: see
data in M. Goltsman and L. Kogan, Starye i novye kadry proletariat a
(Moscow, 1934), p. 35. In the FZU schools of heavy industry, 68%
of students in 1930 and 47% in 1932 were working-class {Novye kadry
tyazheloi promyshlennosti, p. 106).
118. Za promyshlennye kadry, 1933 no. 5-6, p. 66; Veselov, Professional no-
tekhnicheskoe obrazovanie, p. 314.
119. Za promyshlennye kadry, 1933 no. 8-9, p. 72. This author was
probably describing a situation more characteristic of Moscow and

Leningrad than, for example, Magnitogorsk. Whereas white-collar
children constituted only 7% of those admitted to all Russian FZU
schools in the autumn of 1931, they provided 15% and 13% of
admissions in Moscow and Leningrad. TsGAOR 5451/15/715, pp. 45
and 179: VTsSPS, Sector of Industrial Cadres.
120. Veselov, Professional'no-tekhnicheskoe obrazovanie, p. 285.
121. Resolution of Sovnarkom USSR 'On speeding up the training of
specialist—technicians from among the more qualified young workers',
21 June 1931, Sobranie uzakonenii, 1931 no. 42, art. 288.
122. Za promyshlennye kadry, 1933 no. 8-9, p. 76.
123. Data from Veselov, Professional'no-tekhnicheskoe obrazovanie, p.
285; Kuzminov, * Mastering the new factories', p. 39; de Witt, Educa-
tion and Professional Employment, pp. 604-5 anc* 636-7. For the
purposes of this calculation, it is assumed that admissions to the
VTUZy and technicums of heavy industry made up three-quarters of
those in the general category of 'industry and construction'.
124. Byulleten' vsesoyuznogo komiteta po vysshemu tekhnicheskomu
obrazovaniyu pri TsIK SSSR, 1933 no. 9-10, p. 7.
Chapter 10 The restoration of order: new policies in education, 1931-1934

1. See Kendall E. Bailes, Technology and Society under Lenin and
Stalin (Princeton, 1978), ch. 7.
2. Bukharin was, of course, a former * Right Oppositionist'. Krzhi-
zhanovsky, though never an oppositionist, had had an acrimonious
dispute with Stalin and Molotov over energy policy in 1930/31, as a
as a result of which he was removed from the chairmanship of
Gosplan and then from leadership of Vesenkha's energy authority: see
Yu. N. Flakserman, Gleb Maksimilianovich Krzhizhanovskii (Moscow,
1964), ch. 6.
3. A list of such enterprises - including the Dnepr Hydroelectric
Station, the metallurgical plants of Magnitogorsk and Makeevka, the
Nizhny Novgorod Auto Plant, the Kramatorsk Machine-Building
Plant and the chemical plants at Berezniki and Bobriki - is given in
Vtoraya sessiya TsIK Soyuza SSR 6 sozyva. Stenograficheskii otchet i
postanovleniya 22-28 dek. 1931 g. (Moscow, 1931), Bulletin 9, pp. 7-8.
4. Provision of worker cadres - for the new enterprises in general, for
Magnitogorsk, Kuznetsk, Kramatorsk, Bobriki, the Nizhny Auto Plant
etc. — was on the agenda of almost all meetings of the presidium of
Vesenkha USSR (1931) in TsGANKh 3429/1/5239 and 3429/1/5242.
It was a central preoccupation of the Sector of Industrial Cadres of
VTsSPS (1931), as is indicated by the material in files TsGAOR
5451/15/715 and 5451/15/734. For the concern of the party leader-
ship, see Spravochnik partiinogo rabotnika, vypusk 8 (Moscow, 1934),
pp. 389-499-

5. Reference to this decision is in the resolution of Sovnarkom USSR
and the Central Committee 'On the complete cessation of mobiliza-
tion of workers from the bench for the needs of current campaigns by
local party, soviet and other organizations', 25 March 1931, Spravo-
chnik partiinogo rabotnika, vypusk 8, p. 386.
6. 'On the complete cessation of mobilization of workers... 5 , Spra-
vochnik partiinogo rabotnika, vypusk 8, pp. 385—6. In June,
Vesenkha USSR cancelled its previous decrees (all dated 1929) giving
students from the factories a 2-hour reduction of the working day,
releasing engineers from the enterprises for the time necessary for
teaching, and reducing the workload in the factory for workers
enrolled in preparatory courses for VTUZ. TsGANKh 3429/1/5256,
p. 293: Vesenkha instruction, signed Kosior, 25 June 1931.
7. Central Committee resolution 'On checking the implementation of
the decision of the Central Committee of 25 March 1931...', 26 May
1931, Spravochnik partiinogo rabotnika, vypusk 8, pp. 386-7.
8. TsGAOR 5451/15/785, passim and p. 36: VTsSPS, Sector of
Industrial Cadres (1931), file on the Trade Union Thousanders.
9. TsGAOR 5451/15/734, pp. 60 and 97: VTsSPS, Sector of Industrial
Cadres (1931), file on the training of industrial cadres without taking
them out of production.
10. See Za industrializatsiyu, 2 September 1931, p. 2, and Vechernyaya
Moskva, 10 August 1932, p. 3.
11. Resolution 'On study programmes and regime in the elementary and
middle school', 25 August 1932, Narodnoe obrazovanie v SSSR.
ObshcheobrazovateVnaya shkola. Sbornik dokumentov 1917—1973 gg>
(Moscow, 1974), p. 164.
12. Vechernyaya Moskva, 23 June 1932, p. 3.
13. Ibid., 10 August 1932, p. 3.
14. Ibid.
15. I. Stalin, 'A new situation - new tasks of economic construction',
23 June 1931, Sochineniya xm, p. 77.
16. On the industrialists' discussion of wages and salaries, see below,
note 22, and articles by A. Yurisov, Za industrializatsiyu, 4 June 1931,
p. 3, and 5 June 1931, p. 2. On uravnilovka, see Za industrializatsiyu,
12 March 1931, p. 2; on obezlichka, see ibid., 26 April 1931, p. 2.
17. None of the newspapers published Stalin's speech of 23 June until
5 July, and the meeting of industrialists at which he spoke was not
reported even in Za industrializatsiyu. Pravda's editorial 'Work in a
new way, lead in a new way' (25 June 1931), gave part of the content
of Stalin's speech without attributing it to Stalin.
18. Za industrializatsiyu, 2 July 1931, p. 2; ibid., 23 June 1931, p. 2.
19. Speech to the joint plenum of the Central Committee and Central
Control Commission (December 1930), V. Molotov, V bor'be za
sotsializm. Rechi i statyi, 2nd ed. (Moscow, 1935), pp. 63—4. Molotov

had made the same point at the Moscow party conference in
September 1929, adding that the comrades he had in mind were
Especially.. .the Communist industrialists'. Ordzhonikidze, making a
later appearance at the same meeting, expressed very lukewarm
support for the attacks on the specialists: he said that he knew
Groman, the Gosplan 'wrecker', to be 'a man who could not
be bought', although his ideology made him dangerous. Pervaya
moskovskaya oblastnaya konferentsiya Vsesoyuznoi Kommunisti-
cheskoi Partii (bol'shewkov). Stenograficheskii otchet, part 1 (Moscow,
1929), pp. 42 and 181—2.
20. See his remarks to the Industrialists' Conference, Za industrializatsiyu,
2 February 1931, p. 2, and reproduced in the paper's editorial on
23 June 1931, p. 2.
21. Za industrializatsiyu, 27 June 1931, p. 2.
22. See speeches by Pavlunovsky (Vesenkha USSR), Veinberg (VTsSPS)
and Ordzhonikidze and subsequent discussion, Za industrializatsiyu,
3 February 1931, pp. 1 and 3, and ibid., 9 February 1931, p. 1.
23. In heavy industry, employees and engineering—technical personnel
earned an average of 188% of an average worker's wage in 1925/26,
183% in 1926/27 and 174% in 1929. Data from Sovetskoe stroiteVstvo
SSSR (Moscow, 1934), PP- 3 x 6-17-
24. See A. Putyatin, c Uravnilovka survives in the payment of engineering-
technical personnel', Za industrializatsiyu, 15 December 1932, p. 3.
25. See tables in Sovetskoe stroiteVstvo SSSR, pp. 316—17, and M.
Yanowitch, 'The Soviet Income Revolution', Slavic Review, Decem-
ber 1963, p. 688. In 1932, engineering-technical personnel earned an
average of 263% and employees an average of 150% of an average
worker's wage. This dropped to 236% and 126% (1935), 210% and
I(
>9% (i94°) a n d 175% a n d 9 3 % (i95 0 )-
26. Pravda, 8 August 1931, p. 1. Simultaneously, Vesenkha awarded
prizes of 10,000 roubles to Professors Lebedev and Yushkevich, and
5,000 roubles to each of four engineers involved in the research
projects. TsGANKh 3429/1/5259, p. 64: Order of Vesenkha, signed
Ordzhonikidze, 7 August 1931.
27. See S. V. Krasikov, S. M. Kirov v Leningrade (Leningrad, 1966),
pp. 96-109.
28. On the specialists' privileges during NEP, see above, ch. 4.
29. Za industrializatsiyu, 6 September 1931, p. 3.
30. Pravda, 3 August 1931, p. 2.
31. An eloquent and appropriate response to Stalin's speech of June 23
was the publication by the State Legal Publishing House of a 350-page
collection of unrepealed laws guaranteeing various privileges to
the specialists. See notice of publication of ZakonodateVstvo o
spetsialistiakh v promyshlennosti, seVskom khozyaistve, na transporte,
in Za industrializatsiyu, 14 July 1931, p. 4.

Notes to pages 21J-19 317
32. A. K. Grigoryants, Formirovanie i razvitie tekhnicheskoi intelligentsii
Armenii (1920-1 g6$) (Erevan, 1966), p. 169.
33. John Scott, Behind the Urals (Bloomington, Ind., 1973), PP- 2 3 I - 5
and passim.
34. Resolution of Sovnarkom USSR and the Central Committee of the
party 'On constructing houses for specialists', 25 March 1932, Za
industrializatsiyu, 26 March 1932, p. 1.
35. XVII konferentsiya VKP(b). Stenograficheskii otchet (Moscow, 1932),
p. 21.
36. Za industrializatsiyu, 27 January 1932, p. 3. Vesenkha's VTUZy
alone graduated 12,026 new engineers in 1931.
37. Ibid., 14 February 1932, p. 3; 8 March 1932, p. 3; 2 July 1932, p. 2.
38. Ibid., 27 January 1932, p. 3; 1 February 1932, p. 3.
39. See Ordzhonikidze's comment, quoted above, p. 217, and Molotov,
XVII konferentsiya VKP(b), p. 154.
40. S. Koff, 'New tasks in the struggle for the higher school', Za
industrializatsiyu, 2 July 1932, p. 2, and 4 July 1932, p. 2.
41. Front nauki i tekhniki was created in 1930 out of a merger of
Nauchnyi rabotnik, the organ of the Section of Scientific Workers of
the Teachers' Union, and VARNITSO, the organ of the Association
of Scientific and Technical Workers for Support to Socialist
Construction.
43. Front nauki i tekhniki, 1932 no. 7-8, p. 104.
44. 'On study plans and regime in the higher school and technicums',
19 September 1932, Narodnoe obrazovanie v SSSR, pp. 420-26. Note
that it was unusual for TsIK to issue such a decree: most of its major
resolutions were issued together with Sovnarkom USSR; and in this
period the main resolutions on educational questions normally came
from the party Central Committee, or jointly from the Central
Committee and Sovnarkom USSR.
45. At the end of 1933, the Committee had only 42 responsible workers
listed in Sostav rukovodyashchikh rabotnikov i spetsialistov Soyuza
SSR (Moscow, 1936), pp. 8-9, compared, for example, with 516 in the
Ail-Union Radio Committee under Sovnarkom and 815 in the
Supreme Council for Physical Culture of the USSR.
46. GUUZ, created in December 1932, took over responsibilities earlier
held by the Commissariat's Sector of Cadres. TsGANKh 7297/1/9,
p. 240: Orders of the Commissariat of Heavy Industry.
47. Za industrializatsiyu, 9 December 1932, p. 4; Byulleten' vsesoyuznogo
komiteta po vysshemu obrazovaniyu pri TsIK SSSR, 1933 no * 9~"I0>
p. 21; Za promyshlennye kadry, 1933 no. 1, p. 65.
48. In this capacity, he often acted as liaison between the scientific com-
munity and the commissariat. In January 1931, for example, he con-
veyed a request from the Academy of Sciences' Council for the Study

318 Notes to pages 2ig-2i
of Natural Productive Forces that Vesenkha finance its work. The
request was approved by the presidium of Vesenkha. TsGANKh
3429/1/5239, p. 7: Minutes of the Presidium of Vesenkha, meeting
of 13 January 1931.
49. See, for example, Vysshaya tekhnicheskaya shkola, 1934 no. 1, pp.
21-2.
50. Maltsev (deputy Commissar of Education of RSFSR), Za industrializa-
tsiyu, 24 July 1932, p. 4.
51. TsGANKh 7297/1/8, pp. 98-9: Order of the Commissariat of Heavy
Industry, signed Ordzhonikidze, 23 October 1932, on the creation of
'qualification commissions' for awarding academic titles. The com-
mission scrutinizing professors, which included four Academicians,
was headed by Professor Veger; the commission on dotsenty was
headed by Professor Butyagin.
52. Vysshaya tekhnicheskaya shkola, 1934 no. I> PP- 73~5-
53. TsGANKh 7297/1/8, p. 252: Order of the Commissariat of Heavy
Industry, signed Kaganovich (Mikhail, not Lazar), 19 November 1932,
on aspirantura in the VTUZy of heavy industry; Za promyshlennye
kadry, 1933 no. 8-9, p. 174.
54. Za promyshlennye kadry, 1933 no. 7, p. 3.
55. The total number of VUZy and VTUZy dropped from 719 in 1932/
33 t 0 594 m 1933/34- Among those downgraded was Kagan-
Shabshai's Institute. KuVturnoe stroitel'stvo SSSR (Moscow, 1940),
p. 105; Za promyshlennye kadry, 1933 n o - 5~6, p. 116.
56. Numbers of students in industrial and transport VTUZy dropped
from 233,400 in 1932/33 to 188,300 in 1933/34. In 1933/34, 13% of
all students in these VTUZy were part-timers, and 23% of students
in industrial and transport technicums. N. de Witt, Education and
Professional Employment in the USSR (Washington DC, 1961),
pp. 638-9; KuVturnoe stroiteVstvo SSSR v tsifrakh 1930-34 gg.
(Moscow, 1935), p. 56.
57. In 1934, J 4-6% of all those admitted to VUZ were secondary-school
graduates, while 16.5% came from technicums and 40% from
rabfaks. By 1938, the secondary schools provided 58.8% of VUZ
entrants, while the share of technicums and rabfaks fell to 12.9% and
22.9%. KuVturnoe stroiteVstvo SSSR 1935 (Moscow, 1936), p. 96;
KuVturnoe stroiteVstvo SSSR (1940), p. 127.
58. Such articles appeared in Krasnoe studenchestvo from the October
issue of 1932 (no. 23-4). For a student's lament that he had failed to
learn basic work habits in four semesters at the VTUZ, see Za
promyshlennye kadry, 1933 no. 4, pp. 72-9.
59. Za promyshlennye kadry, 1933 no. 1, pp. 4off.
61. XVII syezd VKP. Stenograficheskii otchet (Moscow, 1934), p. 564.
62. Bubnov reported that such suggestions were made at a meeting of

technicum representatives, probably held in July 1931 (Kommunisti-
cheskoe prosveshchenie, 1931 no. 17, p. 5).
63. Pravda, 19 August 1931, p. 2.
64. See, for example, Bubnov's reflections on * service relationships
between people, the ordering of authority,.. .duties based on con-
scious proletarian discipline', Kommunisticheskoe prosveshchenie,
1933 no. 4, p. 26.
65. Epshtein's name appears with increasing frequency in Narkompros
instructions published in the weekly bulletins. In April 1933, remain-
ing deputy commissar, he was put in charge of the schools sector
(the job he had held under Lunacharsky); and in June Bubnov signed
an order celebrating his ten years of service to the commissariat and
naming two schools in his honour. Byulleten' NKP, 1933 no. 9-10,
p. 9; ibid., 1933 no. 13, p. 9.
66. This backhanded tribute came from the young Korneichik, later an
historian of Soviet education. It was published in Kommunisticheskoe
prosveshchenie, 1933 no. 3, p. 23.
67. One account of the pre-history of the resolution states that 'Stetsky,
then head of the kuVtprop department of the Central Committee...
called a meeting of former directors and teachers of Tsarist gymnasia.
The foundations of the new "reform" were laid here' (unpublished
manuscript by I. A. Sats of Moscow, quoted with his permission).
But Bubnov, at any rate, delivered the report (or one of the reports)
to the Central Committee in July 1931 on the state of the schools.
See A. S. Bubnov, Shkola na povorote (Moscow, 1931), p. 18.
68. The text of the decree is in Narodnoe obrazovanie v SSSR, pp. 156-
61. The decree is often dated 5 September 1931, but this was actually
the date of its publication in Pravda.
69. See below, pp. 227, for Krupskaya's comment of April 1931 on
unidentified forces 'now organizing a campaign for the old school'.
71. Reports on local reactions from Byulleten' NKP, 1931 no. 52, p. 3;
1931 no. 55, p. 5; 1932 no. 1, p. 2; 1932 no. 2-3, p. 4; and
Kommunisticheskoe prosveshchenie, 1933 no. 2, p. 107.
72. See Kommunisticheskoe prosveshchenie, 1933 n o - 2> P- I 0 7-
73. Bubnov, instruction of 29 January 1932 'On transfer of the schools to
work on the new programmes', Byulleten' NKP, 1932 no. 10, p. 4.
74. Quoted M. E. Shilnikova, Uchebno-vospitatel'naya rabota shkoly v
i930-ig34 gg. (Moscow, 1959), pp. 29-31. On the new programmes
and methodological instructions, see ibid., pp. 16-25, a n d Krupskaya,
Pedagogicheskie sochineniya, x, pp. 428-37.
75. Byulleten' NKP, 1931 no. 48-9, p. 12; Za politekhnicheskuyu shkolu,
1931 no. 10, pp. 52ff. (model contract for the guidance of schools and
enterprises).
76. Za politekhnicheskuyu shkolu, 1932 no. 4, pp. 3-4.

77. XVII syezd VKP, p. 565.
78. The Central Committee resolutions on the school 1931-35 were as
follows: 'On the elementary and middle school' (25 August 1931);
'On the study programmes and regime in the elementary and middle
school' (25 August 1932); £On textbooks for the elementary and
middle school' (12 February 1933); 'On t n e overloading of school-
children and Pioneers with social and political tasks' (23 April 1934);
'On the teaching of civil history in the schools of the USSR' (with
Sovnarkom USSR, 15 May 1934); 'On the teaching of geography in
the elementary and middle schools of the USSR' (with Sovnarkom
USSR, 15 May 1934); *^ n t n e structure of the elementary and
middle school in the USSR' (with Sovnarkom USSR, 15 May 1934);
'On the introduction of an elementary course of universal history and
history of the USSR in the elementary and incomplete middle school'
(9 June 1934); *O n ^ e construction of schools in cities and on enrol-
ment in higher pedagogical educational institutions' (with Sovnarkom
USSR, 22 February 1935); 'On the publication and sale of textbooks
for the elementary, incomplete middle and middle school' (with
Sovnarkom USSR, 7 August 1935); 'On the organization of study and
internal discipline in the elementary, incomplete middle and middle
school' (with Sovnarkom USSR, 3 September 1935); and 'On school
writing materials' (with Sovnarkom USSR, 14 September 1935).
79. B. M. Volin, formerly a RAPP activist, was head of the department
in mid-1935 (Kommunisticheskoe prosveshchenie, 1936 no. 1, p. 21).
The department was established in May 1935 by a Central Com-
mittee resolution on the reorganization of the former kul'tprop
department quoted Malenko, Voprosy istorii KPSS, 1976 no. 2,
p. 120.
80. 'On the study programmes and regime in the elementary and middle
school', Narodnoe obrazovanie v SSSR, pp. 161-4.
81. 'On journal-textbooks', circular of 13 November 1931, signed by
deputy commissar Maltsev, Byulleten' NKP, 1931 no. 53-4, p. 7.
82. XVII syezd VKP, pp. 564-5.
83. Narodnoe obrazovanie v SSSR, pp. 164-5.
84. 'On study programmes and regime in the elementary and middle
school', Narodnoe obrazovanie v SSSR, p. 164.
85. See A. N. Veselov, ProfessionaVno-tekhnicheskoe obrazovanie v SSSR
(Moscow, 1961), pp. 297-9.
86. All-Union Commissariat of Heavy Industry, order on reconstruction
of FZU schools dated 16 August 1933, Organizatsiya truda, 1933
no. 10(54) ( n o P a g e number).
87. 'On factory apprenticeship schools', 15 September 1933, Resheniya
partii i praviteVstva po khozyaistvennym voprosam, n (Moscow, 1967),
pp. 438-41.
88. Of 153,000 FZU drop-outs of 1933 on whom information was avail-

Notes to pages 226—30 321
able, 5 3 % left because of 'transfer to other study, change of work,
change of profession and other reasons'. Kul'turnoe stroitel'stvo SSSR
v tsifrakh 1930-1934 gg, p. 74.
89. Kul'turnoe stroitel'stvo SSSR (1940), p. 107.
90. Kul'turnoe stroitel'stvo SSSR 1935, pp. 16-17; Kul'turnoe stroitel'-
stvo SSSR (1956), pp. 122-3.
91. Kommunisticheskoe prosveshchenie, 1931 no. 1, pp. 14-15. The
announcement was followed by articles by A. Z. Ioanisiani 'On the
theoretical front of pedagogy', ibid., 1931 no. 2 and 4.
92. Za kommunisticheskoe prosveshchenie, 25 September 1931, p. 2.
94. Quoted by Ravkin, Narodnoe obrazovanie, 1964 no. 2, p. 48.
95. Bubnov, Kommunisticheskoe prosveshchenie, 1931 no. 17, p. 18.
96. Ibid., p. 9.
98. V. N. Shulgin, Pamyatnye vstrechi (Moscow, 1958), pp. 39-40.
99. Quoted Ravkin, Narodnoe obrazovanie, 1964, no. 2, p. 48.
100. A. Ya. Shumsky, Za shkolu Marksa-Lenina (Moscow-Leningrad,
1931), p. 58. This is the stenogram of Shumsky's speech to the joint
meeting of the Central Committee of the Teachers' Union and the
republican commissariats of education, 15 September 1931. Shumsky's
role in the policy change is obscure, as is his career as a whole.
He had been Ukrainian Commissar of Education between 1925 and
1927, but was purged from the Ukrainian government for nationalist
deviations. He then appears to have spent some time in Leningrad
before emerging on the Russian educational scene in the spring of
1931 (see above, p. 157) as an opponent of the pedagogical left.
His tenure as head of the Teachers' Union was brief. In 1933, he was
again branded a counter-revolutionary Ukrainian nationalist, and
disappeared.
101. 'On some questions of the history of Bolshevism', Proletarskaya
revolyutsiya, 1931 no. 6 (published late October or November); also,
Stalin, Sochineniya, XIII, pp. 84-102.
102. Sovetskaya pedagogika, 1959 no. 3, p. n o .
103. Resolution of the Central Committee and Central Control Com-
mission, 'On the fractional activity of Syrtsov, Lominadze and others',
1 December 1930, VKP(b) v rezolyutsiyakh i resheniyakh syezdov,
konferentsiyakh i plenumov TsK, 11 (Moscow, 1941), p. 821.
104. Vestnik Kommunisticheskoi Akademii, 1931 no. 12, p. 41.
105. Pedologiya, 1931 no. 4(16), p. n .
106. Krupskaya, Pedagogicheskie sochineniya, x, p. 450.
107. A. S. Zaluzhnyi, Lzhenauka pedologiya v 'trudakh* Zalkinda
(Moscow, 1937), pp. 20-1.
109. The phrase is from N. S. TimashefT, The Great Retreat. The Growth

and Decline of Communism in Russia (New York, 1946). For discus-
sion of the concept, see below, p. 249.
n o . See above, ch. 2.
i n . The basic disciplines were twice listed in the decree, geography being
included both times but history only once. Narodnoe obrazovanie v
SSSR, pp. 157 and 158.
112. 'On the study programmes and regime in the elementary and middle
school', Narodnoe obrazovanie v SSSR, pp. 161-2.
113. 'On the teaching of civil history in the schools of the USSR' and
'On the teaching of geography in the elementary and middle school
of the USSR', 15 May 1934, Narodnoe obrazovanie v SSSR, pp.
166-7.
114. 'On the introduction of an elementary course of universal history and
history of the USSR in the elementary and incomplete middle
school', 9 June 1934, Narodnoe obrazovanie v SSSR, p. 168.
115. On 1 January 1935, only 22% of history teachers and 17% of social
studies teachers had entered the teaching profession before 1925
(compared with 44% of mathematics teachers and 47% of language
and literature teachers), 28% of the history teachers had entered the
profession between 1931 and 1934. Trud v SSSR. Statisticheskii
spravochnik (Moscow, 1936), p. 323.
116. S. Kh. Ghanbarisov, Formirovanie sovetskoi universitetskoi sistemy
{1917-1938 gg.) (Ufa, 1973), p. 287.
117. The scientists' letter is quoted, ibid., p. 288, and the Central Com-
mittee's resolution 'On the functions [tselevykh ustanovkakh] of the
universities' is paraphrased, ibid., p. 292. The Central Committee
resolution, which was not published, is referred to by other Soviet
historians like Kim and Ukraintsev, but always without citation of
source.
118. Chanbarisov, Formirovanie, pp. 294 and 299-30; E. V. Chutkerashvili,
Razvitie vysshego obrazovaniya v SSSR (Moscow, 1961), p. 185.
119. M. A. Verchenko, 'The re-establishment of the historical faculty and
its role in the struggle for training of cadres of Marxist historians',
Iz istorii Moskovskogo Universiteta 1917—1941 (Moscow, 1955), p.
262.
120. See George M. Enteen, 'Marxist Historians during the Cultural
Revolution: A Case Study of Professional In-Fighting', Sheila Fitz-
patrick, ed., Cultural Revolution in Russia, 1928-1931 (Bloomington,
Ind., 1977).
121. L. P. Bushchik, Ocherki razvitiya shkoVnogo istoricheskogo obrazova-
niya v SSSR (Moscow, 1961), p. 262.
122. The outlines were prepared by Vanag, a former student of Pokrovsky;
Mints, also a former Pokrovsky student but an adherent of the
Yaroslavsky faction; and the Ukrainian Marxist Lozinsky. Resolution
of Sovnarkom USSR and the Central Committee, 'On the front of

historical science', Direktivy VKP(b) i postanovleniya sovetskogo
praviteVstva o narodnom obrazovanii igiy—ig^y gg., 11 (Moscow-
Leningrad, 1947), p. 183.
123. The perhaps impressionistic comment on Kirov's unwillingness is
from Adam B. Ulam, Stalin (New York, 1973), p. 379.
124. * Notes on the outline of a textbook on "History of the USSR" ' and
* Notes on the outline of a textbook on "Modern History" }, signed
I. Stalin, A. Zhdanov and S. Kirov, dated 8 and 9 August 1934,
I. V. Stalin, Sochineniya, 1 (xiv) (Stanford, 1967), pp. 37-45.
125. Bushchik, Ocherki, pp. 275 and 282.
126. Pokrovsky died in 1932. In 1936, Sovnarkom and the Central Com-
mittee noted the * harmful tendencies and attempts to liquidate history
as a science, linked in the first place with the mistaken historical views
characteristic of the so-called "historical school of Pokrovsky" and
widespread among some of our historians'. These views were
described as 'anti-Marxist, essentially anti-Leninist, liquidationist
[and] anti-scientific' ('On the front of historical science', Direktivy
VKP(b), 11, p. 183). A number of Pokrovskyite historians were
arrested. In 1939 and 1940, two volumes of denunciation of Pokrovsky
appeared under the titles Protiv istoricheskoi kontseptsii M. N.
Pokrovskogo and Protiv antimarksistskoi kontseptsii M. N. Pokrov-
skogo,
127. See Konstantin F. Shteppa, Russian Historians and the Soviet State
(New Brunswick, NJ, 1962), p. 179 and passim.
128. 'Bourgeois' authors of basic historical texts published after the 1934
decree include V. I. Picheta, M. N. Tikhomirov, V. S. Sergeev,
E. V. Tarle, E. A. Kosminsky, M. V. Bazilevich and S. V. Bakhrushin.
Bakhrushin, Bazilevich, Picheta and V. Grekov (one of the most
prominent of the 'bourgeois' historians) contributed to the two-
volume attack on Pokrovsky published in 1939/40. Moskovskii
Universitet za §0 let (Moscow, 1967), p. 570, note 1; Bushchik,
Ocherki, passim.
129. The reference is to the Kratkii kurs istorii VKP(b) (Moscow, 1938),
written by a collective of party historians under Stalin's close super-
vision or, according to contemporary rumour, by Stalin himself.
Chapter 11 The 'New Class9: social mobility and education under Stalin
1. This statement is not to be found in any of Stalin's published speeches
or articles. But there are at least two authoritative citations attributing
it to Stalin. In 1938, S. Kaftanov, chairman of the All-Union Com-
mittee on the Higher School, warned against unjustified expulsion of
students whose relatives had been arrested, since this was contrary to
'the instructions of comrade Stalin, the party's Leader, that "a son
does not answer for his father" ' (Vysshaya shkola, 1938 no. 3, p. 16).

At the XVIII Party Congress of 1939, Zhdanov referred to the premise
'more than once emphasized by Stalin* that 'a son is not answerable
for his father [syn za ottsa ne otvetchik]' {XVIII syezd VKP(b).
Stenograficheskii otchet (Moscow, 1939), p. 523).
2. Izvestiya, 24 February 1930, p. 5, carries two small personal announce-
ments typical of the genre: ' I , as the son of a former priest, break all
ties with the spiritual calling. [Signed] Yurii Mikhailovich, Teacher.5
' I , Evgeniya Afanasyevna Golubtsova, renounce my father, a psalm-
reader.'
3. 'On admissions to higher educational institutions and technicums5,
resolution of TsIK and Sovnarkom USSR, 29 December 1935,
Narodnoe obrazovanie v SSSR. Obshcheobrazovatel'naya shkola.
Sbornik dokumentou, 191J-1923 gg. (Moscow, 1974), p. 426.
4. 'On the draft of the constitution of the USSR', 25 November 1936,
Stalin, Sochineniya 1 (xiv), edited by Robert H. McNeal (Stanford,
1967), p. 169.
5. One must always be hesitant about drawing a negative conclusion, but
this is strongly suggested by the absence of questions on social origin
or parents' occupations in the forms filled out by schoolchildren, VUZ
applicants, etc. in the late 1940s. The data are examined in my paper
'Social Mobility in the Late Stalin Period: Recruitment into the
Intelligentsia and Access to Higher Education, 1945-1953', delivered
at the Kennan Institute Conference 'The Soviet Union in the 1940s5
(Washington DC, April 1977).
6. Social breakdown of VUZy from KuVturnoe stroitel'stvo SSSR
(Moscow, 1940), p. 114; population breakdown from N. de Witt,
Education and Professional Employment in the USSR (Washington
DC, 1961), p. 352.
7. Pedagogicheskii slovar', 11 (Moscow, i960), p. 246. There was
apparently no decree abolishing the rabfaks: they were gradually
phased out in Russia and elsewhere as the secondary schools gained
strength. However, it should be noted that institutions similar to
rabfaks were created in newly acquired Soviet territories and in post-
war Eastern Europe. See, for example, the resolution of the Estonian
Sovnarkom in 1941 'On the organization of preparatory courses for
the entry of young people from the toiling masses into higher educa-
tional institutions5, Kul'turnaya zhizn' v SSSR 1928-1 941 (Moscow,
1976), p- 769-
8. Resolution of Sovnarkom USSR 'On the establishment of tuition
fees in the senior classes of middle schools and in higher educational
institutions of the USSR and on change in the procedure of awarding
stipends', 2 October 1940, Sobranie postanovlenii praviteVstva SSSR,
1940 no. 27, art. 637.
9. See resolutions of Sovnarkom USSR 'On the formation of the Chief
Administration of Labour Reserves under Sovnarkom USSR 5 and

'On the conscription of urban and kolkhoz youth into trade
schools, railway schools and FZO schools' (October 1940), Sobranie
postanovlenii pravitel'stva SSSR, 1940 no. 25, articles 602 and 603;
and E. S. Kotlyar, Gosudarstvennye trudovye rezervy SSSR v gody
Velikoi Otechestvennoi uoiny (Moscow, 1975).
1 o. For a more detailed discussion, see Fitzpatrick, ' Social Mobility in the
Late Stalin Period5.
11. Statisticheskii spravochnik SSSR za 1928 g. (Moscow, 1929), pp. 42-3;
Itogi vsesoyuznoi perepisi naseleniya 1959 goda (Moscow, 1962),
pp. 164-5.
12. See, for example, Solomon M. Schwarz, Labor in the Soviet Union
(New York, 1951), pp. 77-8.
13. Kotlyar, Gosudarstvennye trudovye rezervy, p. 14.
14. A. G. Aganbegyan and V. F. Mayer, Zarabotnaya plata v SSSR
(Moscow, 1959), p. 202.
15. Alex Inkeles and Raymond Bauer, The Soviet Citizen (New York,
1968), p. 145 and ch. 6, passim.
16. A. N. Veselov, Professional'no-tekhnicheskoe obrazovanie v SSSR
(Moscow, 1961), p. 298.
17. For a teacher's account of the fakuVtety osobogo naznacheniya
(FONy) raising the qualifications of managers, see Alexander
Miropolsky, * Faculties of Special Purpose: Odessa', George L. Kline,
ed., Soviet Education (New York, 1957).
18. KuVturnoe stroiteVstvo SSSR (1940), p. 137. Outside industry and
transport, the biggest worker training programmes in 1937/38 were
in agriculture and trade, and the biggest specialist training pro-
grammes were for economists, lawyers and teachers.
19. Profsoyuzy Moskvy. Ocherki istorii (Moscow, 1975), p. 228.
20. Resolution on 'The Third Five-Year Plan', KPSS v rezolyutsiyakh, v
(Moscow, 1971), p. 367.
21. L. Trotsky, The Revolution Betrayed (New York, 1937), ch. 5.
22. Data from de Witt, Educational and Professional Employment, p.
781, and KuVturnoe stroiteVstvo v SSSR (1940), p. 112.
23. Kendall Bailes, Technology and Society under Lenin and Stalin
(Princeton, 1978), pp. 188-9, takes the absence of social data on
graduations as an indication that Soviet policies of proletarian
vydvizhenie may have been less effective than claimed; and, in
further support of this argument, he cites de Witt's computation -
based on figures for admissions and graduations during the First and
Second Five-Year Plan - of a drop-out rate much higher than that
shown in official VUZ statistics. There certainly were extravagant
claims, especially those based on statistics for admissions in the early
1930s. But there is really no mystery about the publication of social
data on admissions but not on graduations: the VUZy collected
admissions data because they had to meet Central Committee require-

ments which were expressed in terms of admissions percentages. No
central bureaucracy set targets for graduations, so such data were
rarely collected.
In fact, both the social and aggregate data on admissions are almost
worthless because of very high student mobility, especially during the
reorganization of VUZy in the early 1930s, which resulted in more
than one VUZ claiming the same student in the annual report on
admissions. This makes de Witt's computation a rather academic
exercise (and, as the present author discovered, it also makes it
impossible to calculate purge-related drop-out for different social
groups during the early years of the First Five-Year Plan: some groups
register a statistically remarkable negative rate of drop-out). Almost
all the social data cited in this study refer to total student population,
not admissions. It is very unlikely that the official statistics conceal an
excessively high rate of drop-out for vyduizhentsy, since the data on
Communist VUZ students can be checked from other sources: of
approximately 110,000 Communists entering higher education during
the First Five-Year Plan, 70-80,000 had already graduated by
January 1937, and the large entering class of 1932 was still in school
(see above, pp. 187-8, and below, pp. 241-2).
24. Sotsialisticheskoe stroitel'stvo SSSR (Moscow, 1934), p. 410.
25. The Second Five-Year Plan for the Development of the National
Economy of the USSR (London, 1937), pp. 632-3. The 1937 figures
are estimates, but where they can be checked against de Witt's actual
figures they appear to have been quite accurate.
26. Sostav rukovodyashchikh rabotnikov i spetsialistov Soyuza SSR
(Moscow, 1936), pp. 18-19.
27. A. V. Iovlev, Deyatel'nost' KPSS po podgotovke voennykh kadrov
(Moscow, 1976), p. 129.
28. M. N. Rutkevich, 'Social sources of recruitment of the Soviet intelli-
gentsia', Voprosy filosofii, 1967 no. 6, pp. 22—3.
29. Yu. V. Arutyunyan, SotsiaVnoe i natsionaVnoe. Opyt etnografi-
cheskikh issledovanii po materialam Tatarskoi ASSR (Moscow, 1973),
pp. 46-7.
30. I. N. Yudin, SotsiaVnaya baza rosta KPSS (Moscow, 1973), p. 186.
31. Ibid., p. 181.
32. Kommunisticheskaya partiya — urn, chest' i sovest' nashei epokhi
(Moscow, 1969), pp. 221-2.
33. Sostav rukovodyashchikh rabotnikov i spetsialistov Soyuza SSR,
pp. 8-9. The group included responsible personnel in commissariats
and other government agencies (down to the raion level), industrial
administration and enterprises (down to the level of mastera and
desyatniki), scientific research institutes and VUZy. Military officers
and party officials were excluded, as were certain categories of trained
specialists working in their professions, notably doctors and teachers.

34. Ibid., pp. 8-11.
35. Partiinoe stroiteVstvo, 1937 no. 10 (May 15), p. 24. This figure, unlike
that in Yudin (Sotsial'naya baza, p. 181), evidently included Com-
munists in the armed forces with higher military education.
36. Ibid., and Partiinaya zhizn', 1977 no. 21, p. 30.
37. Yudin, SotsiaVnaya baza, p. 186; Vsesoyuznaya partiinaya perepis'
IQ2? goda. Osnovnye itogi perepisi (Moscow, 1927), p. 58.
38. See his speeches to the February-March plenum of the Central Com-
mittee (1937), I. V. Stalin, Sochineniya, edited by Robert H. McNeal,
vol. 1 (xiv) (Stanford, 1967), pp. 203 and 236. The question of Stalin's
intentions and the link between the vydvizhenie and the Great Purge
is discussed in my article (Stalin and the Making of a New Elite,
1928-1939', Slavic Review, forthcoming).
39. The Great Purge and the emergence of the 'Men of 1938' are
illuminatingly discussed in Jerry F. Hough, The Soviet Prefects
(Cambridge, Mass., 1969), pp. 38-47, and David Granick, Manage-
ment of the Industrial Firm in the USSR (New York, 1954), ch. 3.
40. BoVshaya sovetskaya entsiklopediya, xxxiv, 2nd ed. (Moscow, 1955),
pp. 142-3.
41. A. Chuyanov, Na stremnine veka. Zapiski sekretarya obkoma
(Moscow, 1976), pp. 1-41, passim.
42. Ibid., pp. 41-2.
43. 'From the report of the Commissariat of Heavy Machinery of the
USSR to the Central Committee of the Communist Party on work
with leading cadres' (not earlier than 1 December 1939), Industrializa-
tsiya SSSR 1938-1941 gg. Dokumenty i materialy (Moscow, 1973),
pp. 228 and 230.
44. Ibid., p. 230.
45. These examples come from David Granick's card files on industrial
enterprises and managers in the 1930s. The data on Morozov is from
Mashinostroenie, 27 July 1939, p. 4, and on Padalko from Industriya,
11 April 1938, p. 4.
46. On turnover of industrial managers 1936-41, see Granick, Manage-
ment, ch. 3. Outside the industrial sphere, see P. A. Serebryakov's
brief but poignant account of his promotion in 1938, as a 29-year-old
Komsomol activist and junior faculty member, to be director of the
Leningrad Conservatorium of Music: Leningradskaya konservatoriya
v vospominaniyakh (Leningrad, 1962), p. 282.
47. 'Extract from a memorandum of TsSU USSR to the Presidium of
Gosplan USSR on the results of the count of leading cadres and
specialists on 1 January 1941', Industrializatsiya SSSR 1938-1941 gg.,
pp. 269-79.
48. Kul'turnoe stroiteVstvo SSSR (1940), p. 112.
49. 'Extract from a memorandum of TsSU USSR', Industrializatsiya
SSSR 1938-1941 gg., p. 270.

328 Notes to pages 246-g
50. These examples are taken from the Hough files (see below, note 51).
51. Based on Jerry Hough's card files on party and government personnel.
For 104 of the 125 full members of the 1952 Central Committee, the
biographies are complete enough to determine whether the subject
did or did not have higher education, and when and where he
received it. (There are, of course, possibilities of error, especially in
those cases when date of graduation but not date of entrance to
higher education is given.) Those who went to Communist VUZy,
the Institute of Red Professors or Marxist-Leninist courses under the
Central Committee are included as having higher education; those
who went to Higher Party School or other types of Marxist-Leninist
courses, or whose biographies attribute to them an unspecified type
of 'incomplete higher education', are excluded.
52. Khrushchev's own account of his days at the Industrial Academy is
in Khrushchev Remembers (Boston, 1970), pp. 34-44. The great battle
with the 'right opportunists' is recalled in Za industrializatsiyu,
1 June 1932, p. 3.
53. For short outlines of Brezhnev's career, see Ezhegodnik BoVshoi
Sovetskoi entsiklopedii igyi (Moscow, 1971), p. 583, and Deputaty
verkhovnogo soveta SSSR. Sed'moi sozyv (Moscow, 1966), p. 72.
54. The Hough files include biographical data, including data on educa-
tion, for 115 ministers and deputy ministers in the All-Union govern-
ment in 1952 - about 20% of the total; 15 of the ministers were also
full members of the Central Committee, and are thus included in the
analysis of Central Committee members offered above as well as the
analysis of the government group.
56. Hough files. Members of this group were neither full nor candidate
members of the Central Committee in 1952. Their oblasts were the less
important ones, and predominantly agricultural rather than industrial.
57. Hough, The Soviet Prefects, pp. 47 and 76.
58. For short biographies of these men, see Ezhegodnik BoVshoi
entsiklopedii iyji and Deputaty verkhovnogo soveta SSSR (1966).
59. L. Trotsky, The Revolution Betrayed (New York, 1937).
60. The phrase comes from M. Djilas, The New Class, An Analysis of
the Communist System (London, 1966).
61. See Vsesoyuznoe soveshchanie zhen khozyaistvennikov i inzhenerno-
tekhnicheshkikh rabotnikov tyazheloi promyshlennosti. Stenografiches-
kii otchet 10-12 maya ig^G g. (Moscow, 1936), and Vsesoyuznoe
soveshchanie. zhen komandnogo i nachaVstvuyushchego sostava
RKKA. Stenograficheskii otchet (Moscow, 1937).
62. Nicholas S. Timasheff, The Great Retreat The Growth and Decline
of Communism in Russia (New York, 1946).
63. Vera S. Dunham, In Stalin's Time. Middleclass Values in Soviet
Fiction (Cambridge, 1976), ch. 1.

64. Kotlyar, Gosudarstvennye trudovye rezervy, p. 220.
65. For Krupskaya's appeals and protests to Ordzhonikidze, Andreev and
Zhdanov in 1936/37 against the removal of labour from the curricu-
lum, see Dridzo, Istoricheskii arkhiv, i960 no. 2, 184-5; Sharapov,
Voprosy istorii KPSSy 1959 no. 1, pp. 149-50; and Krupskaya's letter
to Zhdanov of 9 February 1937, Sovetskaya pedagogika, 1961 no. 11,
pp. 142-3. According to his biographers, Bubnov also objected to the
removal of labour from the curriculum and the abolition of school
workshops. A. Binevich and Z. Serebryansky, Andrei Bubnov
(Moscow, 1964), p. 65.
66. Resolution of Sovnarkom USSR and the Central Committee 'On the
work of higher educational institutions and the leadership of the
higher school', 23 June 1936, Narodnoe obrazovanie v SSSR, p. 428.
67. The universities of Erevan and Central Asia re-established philological
faculties in 1933; and in the Ukraine, the universities of Kharkov
and Kiev revived philosophy, literature and economics from around
1926. Leningrad University recovered its philological faculty (the
former LIFLI) in 1937. The last to achieve full restoration was
Moscow University, whose professors and administration agitated in
vain for the return of the philological faculty (then existing indepen-
dently as MIFLI, the Moscow Institute of Philosophy, Literature and
Art) in 1933 and again in 1935. MIFLI was in fact merged with
Moscow University in 1942. E. V. Chutkerashvili, Razvitie vysshego
obrazovaniya v SSSR (Moscow, 1961), p. 89; Sh. Kh. Chanbarisov,
Formirovanie sovetskoi universitetskoi sistemy (igiy-ig^8 gg.) (Ufa,
1973), pp. 299 and 307-8; Istoriya Leningradskogo Universiteta
(Leningrad, 1969), p. 336; Moskovskii Universitet za §0 let sovetskoi
vlasti (Moscow, 1967), pp. 74, 459 and 628.
68. See N. Reshetovskaya, Sanya. My Life with Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
(Indianapolis and New York, 1974), pp. 15-17.
69. This is discussed at greater length in my 'Culture and Politics under
Stalin: a Reappraisal', Slavic Review, June 1976.
70. See Fitzpatrick, 'Culture and Politics under Stalin', p. 226.
71. See Inkeles and Bauer, The Soviet Citizen, ch. 6; Dunham, In Stalin's
Time, pp. 91-3, 107-8, 149-50.
72. Quoted Dunham, In Stalin's Time, p. 92, from P. Angelina, 'People
of the kolkhoz fields', Oktyabr', 1948 no. 6, p. 125.
73. Quoted Dunham, In Stalin's Time, p. 108, from V. Kochetov, 'The
Zhurbin family', Zvezda, 1952 no. 1, pp. 25 and 55.
(Moscow, 1974), pp. 238-9.
75. The most controversial entries in the competition were those of
Corbusier and I. V. Zholtovsky, a respected 'bourgeois' architect of
pre-revolutionary reputation whose preference was for the style of
the Italian Renaissance. The committee, headed by Molotov, awarded

33° Notes to page 253
no first prize, but gave second prize to the wedding-cake design sub-
mitted by B. Yofan, V. Gelfreith and V. Shchuko. Lunacharsky
evidently clashed with Molotov on the committee; and after the result
was announced in 1932 he received a passionate protest from Le
Gorbusier on the incongruity of the committee's choice and Soviet
modernization objectives. See Anatole Kopp, Town and Revolution.
Soviet Architecture and City Planning 1917-1935 (London, 1970),
pp. 214 and 222-3; A. V. Lunacharsky, Ob izobrazitel'nom iskusstve, 1
(Moscow, 1966), pp. 479-88 (Theses of Lunacharsky's paper on the
tasks of proletarian architecture in connection with the construction of
the Palace of Soviets), and 489-92 (letter of Le Gorbusier to
Lunacharsky, dated 13 May 1932).


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Chapter i Education and Soviet society

Cambridge Books Online © Cambridge University Press, 2009

Chapter 2 The new Soviet school

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Chapter 3 The education system: problems of mobility and specialization

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Chapter 4 Professors and Soviet power

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who were under pressure from the militant young Communists of

Chapter 5 Recruitment to higher education

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Total Workers Peasants Employees and Others

Numbers in each class category are calculated from percentages, in a

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Chapter 6 The lgreat turning-point* of /92S-/929

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41. See below, pp. 196-7.

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Chapter 7 Cultural Revolution and the schools

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Chapter 8 Mass education and mobility in the countryside

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