Reform of higher education and technical universities of Belarus in 1930–1936
Abstract
The article presents the results of the analysis of the main directions of the reform of higher technical education of the USSR in the 1930s and their features in Belarus. On the basis of archival materials introduced into scientific circulation for the first time, the specifics of the development of the higher technical school of Belarus are revealed on the example of the Belarusian State Polytechnic Institute (Minsk) and the Belarusian State Mechanical Engineering Institute (Gomel). It is noted that the short period of restructuring of higher education on the principles of Western European approaches soon showed its inconsistency in the USSR. Huge territories, large-scale projects of industrialisation and collectivisation required not a narrow specialist, but an engineer capable of solving complex problems. Agricultural engineering already in 1930 began to abandon the use of Western European models of equipment, which, due to their orientation to the farmer in conditions of the huge size of collective farms and state farms, were unproductive and ineffective. These circumstances contributed to the change in the concept of higher education, which was oriented in 1932 to the consolidation of universities and specialties. The reforms carried out were enshrined in the USSR Constitution of 1936, which allowed the higher school to acquire those features that distinguished it in a favorable light in the world – accessibility, democracy and fundamentality. The liquidation of the All-Union Committee on Higher Technical Education in the same year and the creation of the All-Union Committee on
Higher Education meant the completion of the process of building a higher school in the USSR.
References
- Volkova IV. The Soviet schools in preparation for the Great Patriotic War: the critical year of 1936. Problems of modern education. 2012;6:125–138. Russian.
- Zelev MV. The formation of the system of higher and secondary technical education in the Middle Volga, 1928–1932. Integration of Education. 2013;4(73):69–77. Russian.
- Pisanova AK. [Modernisation of higher education in the Soviet period in Russian historiography]. Proceedings of Petersburg Transport University. 2013;1:194–199. Russian.
- Donchenko AS, Samolovova TN. Reforming of the Soviet state higher educational establishment in the decrees and resolutions of the party and the government (1917–1938). The Bulletin of KrasGAU. 2014;10:229–235. Russian.
- Kostenko IP. Problema kachestva matematicheskogo obrazovaniya v svete istoricheskoi retrospektivy [The problem of the quality of mathematical education in the light of historical retrospect]. Moscow: Rostov State Transport University (branch in Krasnodar); 2013. 502 p. Russian.
- Kuksa AN. [BSPI: the first technical university of Belarus]. Vesnik Magiljowskaga dzjarzhawnaga universitjeta imja A. A. Kuljashova. 2022;1:69–73. Russian.
- Kuksa AN. [The revival of the Belarusian Higher Education Institution and the form of higher education in 1930]. Vyshjejshaja shkola. 2022;2:47–51. Russian.
Copyright (c) 2022 Journal of the Belarusian State University. History
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
The authors who are published in this journal agree to the following:
- The authors retain copyright on the work and provide the journal with the right of first publication of the work on condition of license Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial. 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0).
- The authors retain the right to enter into certain contractual agreements relating to the non-exclusive distribution of the published version of the work (e.g. post it on the institutional repository, publication in the book), with the reference to its original publication in this journal.
- The authors have the right to post their work on the Internet (e.g. on the institutional store or personal website) prior to and during the review process, conducted by the journal, as this may lead to a productive discussion and a large number of references to this work. (See The Effect of Open Access.)