Claim: Before receiving funding from the government,  professional technical schools, a type of vocational education facility established in the former Soviet Union to train qualified industrial workers and servicemen, started out as vocational schools.
Evidence: A professional technical school (Russian: профессиона́льно-техни́ческое учи́лище) – "professionalno-tehnicheskoye uchilishche" (acronym: PTU; ПТУ, пэ-тэ-у́) is a type of vocational education facility established in the former Soviet Union to train qualified industrial workers and servicemen. In 1940, they were reorganized to "vocational schools" (Russian:"реме́сленное учи́лище" – "Remeslennoye uchilishche"), and in 1959 to PTUs. PTUs, increasingly standardized through the 1960s, formed a government-funded USSR-wide system for school graduates who didn't intend to receive a university degree.