WORKERS’ FACULTIES OF Kazan UNIVERSITIES OF THE 1920s – A SCHOOL OF POLITICAL EDUCATION OR IMPERATIVE OF THE TIME?
Authors: Habibrahmanova Olga A. 
Published: November 2024

The unprecedented steps taken by the Soviet government to transform higher education were the beginning of titanic transformations of the entire education system in the country. In this regard, the experience of creating workers’ faculties intended to become “pioneers” in building a new educational space and their functioning is especially interesting. The functions of the workers’ faculties were clearly defined by the Soviet Government and formulated in numerous resolutions. But were all the regulations of the new government strictly observed on the ground? What role did the participants of the educational process play in the development of the workers’ faculties?

The purpose of the study is to study the position of the university intelligentsia in relation to creation of workers’ faculties and their functioning.

Materials and methods. The study used documentary sources indicating the emergence of new forms in organizing the educational process in higher educational institutions of the country. The used set of archival documents made it possible to reveal the purpose and functions of workers’ faculties. The history of workers’ faculties formation was reconstructed by analyzing the socio-cultural practices of representatives of Kazan University faculty corporation. Based on the study of diary entries, reports of scientists at conferences, various meetings, as well as on the basis of the analysis of university protocol documentation, the views of the university intelligentsia on reforms in the higher education system, in particular on the establishment of workers’ faculties, were reconstructed.

Research results. Very ambiguous positions of professors and teachers of Kazan University, revealed in the course of the study, showed both the difficulties and the specifics of the process of forming a new Soviet education. Studying the socio-cultural practices of the university intelligentsia showed the multi-layered, polyphonic character of processes. Due to the specifics of perceiving the changing socio-cultural (academic) space, the university intelligentsia was not inclined to unequivocally “accept” or “reject” Soviet innovations. The clash of different socio-cultural practices, those that were acquired in the pre-revolutionary educational space, practices of a marginalized nature and, finally, practices of a revolutionary nature, gave rise to other cultural landmarks, destroying once familiar cultural and educational landscape. As a consequence, the initial intentions and views of the authorities on the structure of higher education also changed.

Conclusions. The analysis of documentary sources shows that by the end of the 1930s, the workers’ faculties, having fulfilled their primarily ideological function of proletarizing the country’s higher education institutions, turned out to be an unnecessary educational element in the higher education system. Time, or rather the social practices of university professors and teachers, proved the uselessness of flooding universities with proletarian youth, whose share began to decline rapidly in the late 1930s.