Builders and Deserters: Students, State, and Community in Leningrad, 1917-1941 [1 ed.] 9780773567979, 9780773518810

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Builders and Deserters Students, State, and Community in Leningrad, 1917-1941

One of the most significant changes produced by the Bolshevik Revolution was the formation of an elite that identified with the new socialist order. Students in the rapidly expanding higher-education system were part of this new elite. In Builders and Deserters Peter Konecny makes use of an unprecedented range of previously unavailable sources to examine the academic, cultural, and political dimensions of student life in the Soviet Union's second largest city, Leningrad. Being a student meant much more than simply attending classes. The new Soviet student was expected to engage in activities ranging from work in local Communist Party organizations to participation in collectivization brigades in the countryside. Builders and Deserters explores how student attempts to accommodate personal ambition and established cultural traditions with the numerous obligations that came from their privileged status led to a difficult relationship with the state. Konecny discusses changes in the higher-education system and everyday life from the pre-revolutionary period to the beginning of World War II. He also considers the world of politics and political activism, training in and out of the classroom, and the ways in which students both conformed to and deviated from explicit standards of social conduct and "Communist morality" under Stalinism. This is the first comprehensive analysis of the important role played by students in the Soviet socialist revolution during the inter-war period. The breadth of subject matter and thematic issues will interest scholars and students of Soviet history, as well as specialists in comparative education and youth culture. PETER KONECNY is adjunct research professor of history at Carleton University.

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Builders and Deserters Students, State, and Community in Leningrad, 1917-1941 PETER

KONECNY

McGill-Queen's University Press Montreal & Kingston • London • Ithaca

© McGill-Queen's University Press 1999 ISBN 0-7735-1881-9 Legal deposit fourth quarter 1999 Bibliotheque nationale du Quebec Printed in Canada on acid-free paper This book has been published with the help of a grant from the Humanities and Social Sciences Federation of Canada, using funds provided by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. McGill-Queen's University Press acknowledges the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program (BPIDP) for its activities. We also acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts for our publishing program.

Canad'ai Canadian Cataloguing in Publication Data Konecny, Peter, 1963Builders and deserters: students, state, and community in Leningrad, 1917-1941 Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-7735-1881-9

i. Education, Higher - Political aspects - Russia (Federation) - Saint Petersburg. 2.. Higher education and state - Soviet Union - History. I. Title. LA839-5-L45 K65 1999

378.47'zi'o9O4i

099-900681-9

This book was typeset by Typo Litho Composition Inc. in lo/iz Sabon.

For Dad

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Contents

Tables viii Illustrations ix Preface xi Acknowledgments Introduction 3

xv

1 The Studenchestvo and Tsarism 16 2 Revolution and Civil War 3 Shaping the Community

38 62

4 Politics, Ideology, and the Studenchestvo 5 In the Classroom

142

6 Training for a New World 7 Studenty-Studentki

198

8 Disorder in the Community 9 Conclusion

176 229

258

Appendix 1 Student Life: Selected Archival Documentation 267 Appendix 2 Major Institutions of Higher Learning in Leningrad, 1917-1941 277 Abbreviations 279 Glossary 281 Notes 283 Selected Bibliography 343 Index 355

101

Tables

3.1 Gender of Leningrad Students

67

3.2. Social Composition, Selected Leningrad Vuzy 67 3.3 Social Composition of the Studenchestvo 3.4 Admissions to Vuzy

68

90

3.5 Membership in the Party and the Komsomol 91 3.6 Living Conditions

94

5.1 Subject Scores for Entrants, Leningrad Vtuzy, 1935 163 5.2 Reported Examination Scores by Institution 164 5.3 The Graduating Classes

171

Illustrations

1 "Weightlifting" 81 2

The crowded dormitory 83

3 "Species of Soviet Russia"

105

4 " Soviet science " 106 5 " In the ring of enemies "

118

6 "Convenient handrails"

119

7

The overworked student

147

8

A different kind of practical work

9 "At the unproductive Practicum" 10

A dangerous game

182 183

193

11 "Types of activists: The district lion" 12 "The domestic hearth" 13

Anti-Semitism 235

14

Vodka equals violence

213

224 236

15 "Types of activists: We are drinking for the cultural revolution!" 239 16 "Hooligans in the club" 17 "Friendly jests"

248

18 "Friendly jests"

249

246

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Preface

On 25 December 1991 I sat with a group of Russian graduate students in front of the television in our dormitory, watching Mikhail Gorbachev deliver his final speech as president of the USSR. One would expect that this momentous occasion - the formal dissolution of the Soviet Union - would have produced reflective thoughts, passionate debate, and even a few tears. Instead, we noted the event by retiring to an adjacent room and engaging in a card game that went late into the night. Looking back, I could see that it had been a perfect moment that had captured not only the ambiguities of the deceased Soviet Union, but also the ironies of student life. Life in the dormitory, especially in times of social and political change, was full of unpredictable events. During the course of the 1991-92, academic year in St Petersburg, I lived in the Shevchenko graduate student dormitory - a place familiar to many Western scholars. I had come to St Petersburg to conduct research for my doctoral dissertation, which examined the political and academic development of Leningrad State University during the interwar period. Although the environment had changed substantially since the early years of the Soviet Union, many features remained the same. Like our predecessors, we battled with the dormitory administrator (the "commandant") for better sheets and furniture and we endured many cold nights without hot water. My student companions were probably not unlike the students I had chosen to study. That visit and several others over the ensuing years gave me a sense of the complex social and political environment within which student life in this city had evolved. The dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 resulted in many new opportunities for research. Documents made recently available have added to our understanding of Stalinist high politics, relations between Moscow and the regions, and the character of everyday life in the

xii

Preface

USSR. This study of Leningrad students offers an opportunity to look at them through the prism of previously inaccessible sources. Documents from the former Leningrad Party Archives and Leningrad Archives of the Great October Socialist Revolution were of central importance to my research. The latter archives house a vast body of material covering the political, administrative, and organizational activities of students. Much of the documentation deals with curricular programs, admissions and funding committees, and students' academic proficiency or attitudes towards school work. The Party archives reveal fascinating details on organizational politics, student opposition groups, investigations into scandals, and lurid affairs. This book complements material from the Leningrad archives with relevant sources from the former Central Party Archives and the State Archives in Moscow. Most of the material drawn from the Moscow holdings deals with central directives and campaigns related to political activities. There were numerous periodicals related to students and higher education during the interwar period. Krasnoe studenchestvo (Red Students), published by the Central Bureau of Proletarian Students in Moscow, was the largest periodical devoted entirely to questions of student life. It set the standard for all other student publications. Issues such as political activism, morality, and civic duty were treated regularly in its pages. Although discussion was usually one-sided, Krasnoe studenchestvo succeeded in reflecting the broad panorama of student life. Other periodicals provided equally interesting material but, unfortunately, were not published regularly or for any extended period. In Leningrad, Krasnyi student (Red Student), published from 192.3 to 19x5, was an important and often quixotic mouthpiece for the studenchestvo (the student body). Along with several other sporadically published periodicals and yearly bulletins, student publications provide an important means of gauging the way in which major issues were presented and discussed. In order to look at cultural change and the projected images of cultured and civic-minded behaviour, one needs a broad understanding of a society, the issues, personalities, and landscape of the time and place. Newspapers offer one of the best means through which to assess processes of political and cultural change. Through the mass press the Party-state relayed its conception of socialism. Newspapers were critical in the dissemination of propaganda, the distillation of powerful images, and the cultivation of a language and discourse specific to the period. Students absorbed daily events through mass-circulation newspapers such as Pravda (Truth), Izvestiia (News), and numerous affiliated regional newspapers. They also read about issues particular to youth and education in the Moscow-based Komsomol'skaia pravda

xiii

Preface

(Komsomol Truth) and the Leningrad newspaper Smena (Changeover), both of which acted as official organs of the Komsomol. And, of course, they created and were influenced by their own newspapers. This is the first study to utilize the student newspapers of the time, a resource that provides rich chronicles of everyday life. Each school of higher learning (vuz) had its own newspaper and most had a number of smaller "wall newspapers" (these were posted on walls around the campus). They often had creative names, such as the Electro-Technical Institute's Krasnyi elektrik (Red Electric), the Polytechnical Institute's Tovarishch' (Comrade), and the Agricultural Institute's Za sotsialisticheskoe zhivotnovodstvo (For Socialist Animal Husbandry). I employ a close reading of the newspapers to elucidate the problems facing students in Leningrad and to show how they dealt with them. The Library of Congress transliteration system is used in this book, except in certain cases involving familiar names (e.g., "Trotsky" rather than "Trotskii"). For reasons of space, sources that appear in the Selected Bibliography as well as in the Notes are given in short form only in the latter. Note citations for all sources not in the Bibliography are given in full at their first appearance.

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Acknowledgments

The research for and writing of this book were made possible by generous grants from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada and the Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada, and by a Spencer Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship from the National Academy of Education. I am very grateful to the aforementioned organizations for their support and assistance. The book has been published with the help of a grant from the Humanities and Social Sciences Federation of Canada, using funds provided by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. I would also like to thank the readers and commentators along the way who have struggled through drafts of chapters and conference papers. Ours is a profession of selfinflicted punishment, and therefore I should thank myself for not abandoning this study despite feeling at many points that it was about to do me in. The book incorporates, in modified form, the following work of mine that was previously published: "The Red Don Juan' Assailed: The Male Role Model and Soviet Students, 1924-1936," East-West Education 18, nos 1-2 (Spring and Fall 1996): 35-69; "Library Hooligans and Others: Law, Order, and Student Culture in Russia, 192.438," Journal of Social History 30, no. i (Fall 1996): 97-128; and "Chaos on Campus: The 1924 Student Proverka in Leningrad," Europe-Asia Studies 46, no. 4 (1994): 617-35.

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Builders and Deserters

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Introduction

In November 1935 the main student newspaper of Leningrad State University published a number of commentaries on the current state of the student population (studenchestvo} in the Soviet Union. The commentaries, under the headline, "What Makes the Soviet Student Different from the Pre-Revolutionary Student?", contrasted the undisciplined behaviour of Russian students before the Bolshevik revolution with the well-mannered and disciplined conduct of the generation of the 19305. Mathematician N.M. Giunter, in one of the six contributions submitted by faculty members, wrote that Soviet students were much more studious than their predecessors. Botany professor V.N. Sukhachev concluded, "Soviet students are different because they recognize themselves as active builders of socialism." He claimed that today's pupils rarely exhibited the juvenile camaraderie characterizing the studenchestvo of previous decades: "The comradely solidarity of the contemporary student comes not from covering the tracks of or protecting [another] comrade when he plays some kind of dirty trick or tries to get around existing rules (as it was before the revolution), but in helping comrades in a constructive way to fulfil the goal for which they had enrolled in the university." Sukhachev's remarks were directed towards a new generation of Soviet youth targeted as the standard-bearers of socialism. His message was similar to the one repeated numerous times since 1917: without sufficient discipline and diligence, students could not become active builders in the Soviet socialist revolution.1 This book examines how students responded to and participated in the socialist experiment in the formative years of the Soviet Union. Students were part of a new social and political elite, forged in a higher-education system that was designed to train skilled professionals for positions in the economy, the Communist Party, and the state

4

Builders and Deserters

apparatus. In addition to functioning as training facilities, institutes of higher education (vuzy)2" acted as nurseries for a new type of citizen. They created an environment in which ideologies clashed, and they nurtured a community in which students responded to and formed new ideas about the world around them. Students were subjected to endless instructional campaigns and decrees designed to ensure that they conformed to established conventions, but they also took a formative part in reshaping the world around them. Students immersed themselves in the political world by crusading in the classroom against "bourgeois" professors, battling with authorities over issues ranging from mundane administrative affairs to allegations of sabotage, and participating in ambitious projects connected with the development of socialism. In short, they were in the vanguard both as the constructors of Soviet socialism and as the constructed figures of a dictatorial Party-state.3 In the years following the Bolshevik revolution, an expanding Partystate apparatus - embracing a multiplicity of political figures, organizations, and institutions, and the competing directives and channels of authority that structured their development and interaction - became a dominant presence in the life of every Soviet citizen. Students viewed the Party-state as mentor, friend, and enemy; it provided them with guidance and a focal point for self-identification, offering and denying them opportunities. The institutional environment in which students operated encompassed the studenchestvo, the professoriate, and the official organizations governing student life. It constituted something akin to a "state within a state" - a place in which voices of moral and political authority attempted to relay their vision of a socialist student community. However, while the Party-state managed to restructure the highereducation system, it faced formidable obstacles in its attempts to recast the studenchestvo in an awkward ideological and political mould. The situation that students in the Soviet Union faced contained a paradox common to all modernizing societies. Generally, students are encouraged to conform to prevailing social conventions because, as beneficiaries of professional training, they are designated to become part of a future social elite. At the same time, however, through their particular youth and "outsider" perspectives, students often feel compelled to question the established order. Despite the heterogeneous composition of higher-education enrolment in the late nineteenth century and thereafter, this feeling of exclusion persisted as a dominant feature of student life in parts of Europe and Asia (although less so in North America). Industrialization, military conflict, and resulting social crises drove an ever-deeper wedge between the older and younger generations as the latter sought to rectify social injustices. This feeling

5

Introduction

of marginalization cut across political lines, finding expression in the radical Marxist movements in pre-revolutionary Russia, in the conservative anti-parliamentary traditions in German corporatist organizations in the 19205, and in the French and American radical movements of the 19605. In short, students were caught in a familiar dilemma: the compulsion to act as social critic versus the desire to conform.4 Being a student usually means undergoing a period of confusion, self-doubt, trial, and tribulation - all part of the normal complications of youth. With privilege comes social responsibility and pressure to sort out personal goals and priorities. From this perspective, we can see that an examination of students in the Soviet Union is much more than an exploration of the difficulties facing youth or even of the problems inherent in reorganizing a professional training system. The experiences of these students provided a barometer for a society caught in a whirlpool of conflicting values and aspirations, transforming power structures, and intense debate over how transfers of power should be handled. Such questions took on a particularly urgent character as the Communist Party attempted to transform state and society according to a changing blueprint, politicizing each issue as part of the gigantic task of building socialism. Focusing on the formative years of Soviet power, this book addresses a broad range of issues related to education, social opportunity, the formation of political attitudes, and the attempt to foster new social and political values that existing literature fails to cover. Samuel Kassow's monograph on the pre-revolutionary student movement remains the best study of that period.5 The pioneering work of Sheila Fitzpatrick and Kendall Bailes on the development of education and social mobility after the Stalinist "Great Break" of 1928-29 sees the studenchestvo as a vanguard group pushing for rapid social and political change and as a target of Stalin's social promotion strategies.6 Fitzpatrick sees the students and aspiring Red specialists (graduates of the Soviet higher-education technical training system) emerging from the Stalinist revolution as the critical mass of the future "Brezhnev generation" that guided the postwar state. Bailes shows that in the late 19205, when there was a tremendous demand for technical specialists, students were willing to endure formidable pressures and hardships with the expectation that they would become part of the new professional class. Soviet historians with a different perspective tended to concentrate on the development of political organizations within the studenchestvo and on the structural changes in higher education. The general argument made in their work was that the higher-education system, despite numerous structural problems and policy "distortions," produced new generations of Red specialists who became leaders of a progressive socialist society.7

6 Builders and Deserters

The creation of a professional training system that offered incentives in return for conformity was a function of educational and political strategies. Many of the professionally trained specialists of the 19208 and 19305 emerged to become the political leaders, scientists, and cultural figures of the postwar period. But the higher-education experience included much more than academic training: it was a form of "training for life" in which students learned about formal exchanges of power and authority and informal ways of conducting social and political relations, all of which exposed the glaring contrast between Party doctrine and Soviet reality. This book adopts thematic and chronological perspectives in order to examine previously unexplored areas of the multidimensional student experience and to assess the multiplicity of conflicting messages students absorbed as they went through their professional training. The first two chapters cover the pre-revolutionary period and the civil war (1917-21), establishing the framework for the main period of focus, which runs from the initiation of the New Economic Policy (NEP) in 1921 to the outbreak of war between Germany and the USSR in 1941.1 will examine the transformation of the highereducation system, everyday life, and the social-political edifices defining the student community. I will also explore changes in ideology, the development of organized politics, education in and out of the classroom, questions relating to gender roles and sexuality, the dimensions of deviance and misconduct within the "disordered community," and the presence of alternative lifestyles among the student population. The idea of community is a central theme in this book. Communities play a critical role in formalizing relations between individuals and groups. Central to the community is its culture and, by extension, the social laws and conventions it recognizes above and beyond the "hegemonic culture" exerted by the state.8 The Communist Party employed its own version of a cultural hegemony to destroy remnants of the "old order" and set down universal guidelines for social conduct. The old student culture represented for the Party a remnant of the prerevolutionary order: before a socialist community defined by disciplined collectivism and civic-mindedness (obshchestvennost') could be created, the old culture had to be smashed. This could be done through the nurturing of a new student community, one that would cultivate a socialist world-view. By the turn of the century the studencbestvo was heterogeneous in nature, a product of rapid social change and political instability. Nevertheless, a common thread linked students in this self-contained, insular environment - the desire to use their education as a stepping-stone to something greater. Collegiality and generational perspectives fostered particular student subcultures, and these became formidable obstacles

7

Introduction

to the Party's grand scheme to create a "Soviet" studenchestvo. The primary architects of this project - the Commissariat of Education (Narkompros), the Communist Party, and their subordinate agencies treated students as a malleable commodity, but they found out that transforming social relations and the environment in which they developed could not be done by simple proclamation. Beginning with the civil war period and increasingly during the New Economic Policy era (1921-28), tremendous changes took place in the social composition of the student population and in the organizations that governed the student community. More and more children from working-class and peasant backgrounds enrolled in higher education, joining the ranks of youth from non-labouring backgrounds. They were immersed in a world in which a cacophonic symphony of interest groups - the League of Time, the Committee against Drunkenness and Hooliganism, and others - offered their prescriptions for a "rationalized" lifestyle. Special projects sprang up to improve living conditions and change personal habits. Newspapers and other publications attempted to foster an atmosphere of "socialist community" by exhorting students to join sporting and recreation groups, "red nook" reading circles, and dozens of other cultural and political organizations. The social revolution was driven in part by the political battle to transfer authority in higher education to the Communist Party. A campaign to usurp the position of non-communist professors and administrators began in the early 19205 and intensified during the first fiveyear plan (1928-32). In the 19308, a decade in which Stalin destroyed his remaining political opponents and cemented the foundations for a Party-state oligarchy, the vision of a socialist community was formalized through a vast propaganda machine. Students immersed themselves in a more disciplined work environment structured around predictable chores and a rigid set of rules governing personal habits, public duties, and carefully outlined ideological positions. But the vision of a socialist Utopia remained far removed from the reality. Poor living conditions, the scarcity of teaching resources, and the unresponsiveness of Narkompros and other state agencies to students' concerns continued to make life under socialism difficult. Amidst political turmoil and material deprivation, the future Red specialists learned the finer points of how the Soviet system functioned. They were part of the "new class," as Fitzpatrick, Milovan Djilas, and Vera Dunham have described it, a group prepared to accept hardships in exchange for implied social and material opportunities.9 Thousands of graduates immediately took on important positions, and many of them ascended to the highest echelons of political power. Nikita Khrushchev, a student at the Moscow Industrial Academy in the early

8 Builders and Deserters

19305, was appointed by Stalin in 1935 as first secretary of the Moscow Party Committee, thereafter rising to the position of general secretary and number-one man in the Kremlin after Stalin's death. Alexei Kosygin, who graduated from the Leningrad Textile Institute in 1935, became the director of a textile factory in 1937, commissar for the textile industry in 1939 (at the age of thirty-five), and in 1964 prime minister of the USSR as part of the "triumvirate" eventually dominated by Leonid Brezhnev, another technical college graduate from the 19308. Far from being static objects of totalitarian control, they participated in an ongoing exchange of power and authority and found their own ways to accommodate the regime.10 Students entering into a type of social contract with the state became aware that conformity granted them membership in a privileged group and opened doors to professional opportunities. Evren Airapet'iants was one of the beneficiaries of this system. Airapet'iants enrolled as a graduate student at Leningrad State University, eventually becoming a junior faculty member and thereafter the head of academic affairs at the university and a prominent Party official. As with many others, Airapet'iants accepted the unpredictable aspects of higher-education training with the understanding that he would get something in return. The key was to perform as an individual but to maintain an identity within the collective. For this reason most students tended to conduct themselves conservatively, looking askance at peers who misbehaved. They were engaged in what Frank Pinner has called a process of "anticipatory socialization": the act of submitting to forces of social regulation in order to realize personal or group ambitions.11 Students aspired to become "good Soviet citizens" because they understood the implications of the term. Self-regulation and the contradictions between doctrine and reality became defining themes in the complex issues surrounding gender roles and personal relations. A sexual revolution took place in Soviet Russia after 1917, but it soon stalled after concerns for order and stability smothered attempts to introduce a fundamentally different way of looking at gender roles. Amidst the furore surrounding the ideas of Bolshevik feminist Aleksandra Kollontai, Soviet youth found themselves confronted with discrepant notions of what, exactly, the "new morality" should entail.12 Part of this new moral code focused on removing barriers dividing the sexes. Students were supposed to be the leaders of a new society in which men treated women as equals and everyone had an opportunity to serve the state. But it never turned out that way. By the end of the NEP era, the stark politicization of controversies related to morality and personal conduct made it clear that a number of deeply rooted problems were not going to be resolved by the

9

Introduction

progressive educational approach. Scandals involving "Red Don Juans" and other philandering types raised the spectre of a moral crisis within the studenchestvo; it was a refrain that echoed the voices of commentators on youth before the revolution. Formulaic sermons on dating, relationships, and marriage failed to acknowledge the difficult realities facing students as they tried to come to terms with a new moral code that was supposed to provide guiding principles for the New Socialist Man and Woman. Since 1991 historians have had the opportunity to examine in more detail than previously the forces guiding political developments in the early Soviet period. Recent studies of local politics and the dynamics of the purges have put into question earlier assumptions about the nature of power and authority under Stalinism. The work of Stephen Kotkin, Robert Thurston, J. Arch Getty, and others has elucidated in more detail the complexities of the Party-state and shown how participation in and accommodation of this "Bolshevik" or "Soviet" political culture helped cement the new order.13 Soviet political culture can be explained as a function of the contradiction between routinized political and social behaviour (based on defined values, symbols, and attitudes) and accepted cultural traditions that predated the revolution. Individuals were required to accommodate rules and regulations that seemed to defy reality. They accepted the maxim of "saying one thing and believing another" as part of their immersion into established "patronclient" relations.14 Soviet political culture played a formative role in student politics. By the mid-19208 the old pre-revolutionary student movement had been replaced by a cluster of state-sponsored organizations, which thereafter experienced a steady erosion of their autonomy and authority. Projects and agendas carefully drafted in Moscow took the place of independent activism. Through the Central Bureau of Proletarian Students and its local organs, the Communist Party tried to fashion a political community of students that embraced specific ideological viewpoints and interacted within closely supervised organizations. An extensive purge in 1924 and a series of attacks on "alien elements" during the cultural revolution (1928-31), combined with the eventual subordination of the Central Bureau of Proletarian Students to state organizations in 1931-32, left little opportunity for students to engage in autonomous activities. Even at the height of the cultural revolution, when radicalism came to the fore, communist students experienced tight restrictions on their activities.15 Student politics became "professionalized" within a political system that enforced obedience to central directives but at the same time fostered multidimensional institutional and political rivalries.16

io Builders and Deserters

Students learned to "speak and act Bolshevik" as part of their political education. This system of indoctrination served to bifurcate the community into metaphorical categories of "builder" and "deserter," separating supporters and opponents of socialism. In the political offensive that took place during the first five-year plan, proletarian students like Gordon Gorbachenko, who worked at the Leningrad student organization's main newspaper and completed his engineering degree at the Chemical-Technological Institute in 1932., thought of themselves as the new socialist generation that was destined to wrestle power away from "bourgeois" technical specialists. They were builders of socialism and front-line crusaders against the deserters - the people who represented the antithesis of what every student should be. Student leaders, most of whom were Party members, exhorted their comrades to root out enemies in the classroom, the factory, or the Party cell. Students did this by denouncing comrades in meetings or by submitting anonymous or open letters to newspapers, accusing individuals or groups of malfeasance. In the process the accusers left themselves vulnerable to the whims of the Stalinist police state. The terrible and destructive struggles that ensued within student organizations during the dark years of 1934-38 attest to this fact. Although political affairs often dominated the lives of students, academic training was supposed to be the primary focus of their highereducation experience. The unbroken string of pedagogical and curricular reforms during the interwar period, however, made it difficult for students to obtain a well-rounded education. Ivan Nikiforov, who enrolled at the Leningrad Polytechnical Institute in 192.6, endured four major overhauls of his degree program before graduating in 1931. His case was the rule and not the exception for this period. As Larry Holmes has noted, education policy became nothing less than a political battleground of conflicting views on curricular content and pedagogical method in an environment marked by ongoing tensions between educators, institutional officials, and representatives of state organizations.17 The fundamental goal of Narkompros and the Communist Party was to create a higher-education system that fulfilled the political and economic needs socialism. However, sharp disagreement emerged over educational strategies. A running battle between "polytechnicalists" and advocates of general and qualitative training produced an endless stream of policy changes. Politics upset the delicate balance between these two camps in 1928, when proponents of industrial-technical training prevailed. In 1932 the cultural revolution experiment came to an end and the state restored most of the formerly discredited institutions, teachers, and disciplines. Languages and literature, previously assailed

11

Introduction

as un-Marxist, once again took their place in a curriculum that put emphasis on well-rounded instruction. Old icons of the academic community reintegrated themselves within a system driven by political and economic demands. The discredited "bourgeois" professors of yesterday became intellectual mentors for the students lauded - by the state as the most advanced in the world. Were Soviet students well trained or was the state engaging in an elaborate propaganda exercise? Little more than general evaluations (based on unreliable data), impressions from former students, and official government reports have been offered on this question.18 This study attempts to go beyond superficial assessments of the training system by examining the impact of policies at the institutional and individual levels as the state moved from an era of uncertainty and experimentation into a period of relative stability in which the foundations for Soviet higher education took shape. Viewed within the framework of its ascribed importance, academic performance provides an opportunity to examine some interesting cultural and political issues. Performance became a metaphor for appropriate cultural acquisition and a beacon demarcating the changing nature of the relationship between students and professors; therefore, the raw data revealing test scores and graduation rates assumed political as well as academic significance. Campaigns against teachers who refused to change their lecture styles, student protests against unfair or unpopular professors, and charges of "liberalism" in evaluations revealed aspects of a changing power relationship between students and teachers. Politics also drew the line between representations and reality. In dealing with cheating, poor performance, and the perceived need to re-evaluate the position of professors as figures of intellectual and cultural authority, the state found that facile prescriptive solutions failed to resolve the actual problems encountered. The Soviet higher-education system devoted much time and energy to expanding the frontiers of learning beyond the classroom. Putting into practice Lenin's idea that socialism could be built only by cementing an alliance (smychka) between the working class and the peasantry, students participated in practical work sessions in their degree programs. By uniting theory in the classroom with practice in the outside world, the state expected to produce graduates who were academically competent and cognizant of their social environment. Practical training inculcated individuals with the virtue of physical labour and acquainted them with working-class life. At the same time, it introduced "green" students to the real world of chaotic production quotas, harried plant managers with little time or patience for eager recruits, and corrupt collective farm chairmen presiding over Potemkin villages. Ex-

12. Builders and Deserters

posure to the underbelly of Soviet life provided a hardening experience for apprentices, but it also accentuated an elitist attitude fostered by a recognition of their own privileged status. Students may have been cast from the same mould, but not all of them embraced socialism and the ideological precepts of Stalinism. The guidelines set down by the Communist Party changed frequently, and it was all but impossible to conform to them entirely because they failed to adequately deal with real-life problems. Beyond their participation in sanctioned Party cells and special cultural or political organizations, students were involved in a number of censured activities that defined their contestation of the Party's cultural hegemony. With an air of moral sermonizing, anti-alcohol and anti-hooligan organizations set their gaze on the Leningrad Polytechnical Institute's Club for Madmen and other unsanctioned groups. But as institutional officials and Party organizations launched campaigns against misconduct and slovenliness in the dormitories, students continued to practise their much-vilified rituals. This tension between the image of an ordered community and private codes of conduct suggests another dimension of life in the Soviet Union. The methods used to bring deviant students into line illustrate how the Party-state combined coercion with the use of peer authority and social instruction. Deviance is a term normally defined by a society's dominant ideology or class. The deviant is categorized and subsequently depersonalized through social typing (the assignation of specific character attributes to a person transgressing established norms), and society finds ways to pressure perceived violators of "normal" behaviour to conform. Deviance can be understood not merely as an isolated individual act but as a manifestation of a general social crisis.19 Social deviance in fin de siecle Russia served as a metaphor for systemic tensions within that modernizing society. Hooliganism and crime became a subject of morbid fascination in the popular press. Public discourse about hooliganism reinforced the paradigm of the educated and privileged classes confronting lawless elements that were trying to disrupt the social order.20 This paradigm survived the revolution, although its nodal points were altered. Analysts of social behaviour struggled to reconcile the instructional approach towards deviance with the requirement for social and political order. As I have suggested elsewhere,21 the Communist Party assumed a puritanical stance with its goal of enforcing uniform moral and political standards on the studenchestvo. Anne Gorsuch's work on urban youth cultures in the 192.05 draws a similar picture of the relationship between youth and the state. In the 19305 the state hardened its views,

13

Introduction

the concept of social instruction giving way to harsh punitive measures against violators.22 Strange organizations with eclectic memberships, late-night card games, and fistfight rituals were just a few of the many student subcultures that flourished. Subcultures embrace individuals or groups within a recognizable set of beliefs, habits, and rituals. Subcultures are isolated from the dominant culture because they define discernibly different conventions and attitudes. But even so, they are unavoidably linked with society because they cannot function without relating themselves in an antithetical manner to prevailing social values.23 Students in the Soviet Union embraced a number of subculture rituals and beliefs that allowed them to adjust to the world and express their sense of individualism. The practices of the Club for Madmen, of the "bohemians" of the Tiuvelev literary circle at Leningrad State University, and of other groups, the unspoken assumptions of classroom dynamics, and the mutually understood code of conduct in the dormitory translated socialist theory into physical reality and fostered parallel communities that functioned alongside the institutions dominating the students' lives. The setting for this book is the city of Leningrad, the former Imperial capital originally named St Petersburg. Peter The Great had envisaged a grand city on the banks of the Neva that would provide a gateway to the economic and intellectual wealth of Europe. He and his successors commissioned Europe's finest architects to create a magnificent urban landscape that inspired awe and fear among Russia's cultural and intellectual elite. Whereas the writer Nikolai Gogol warned readers of the evil charms of Nevsky Prospekt (the main thoroughfare), the poet Andrei Bely marvelled at the city's majestic beauty during the famous "white nights" of late spring and early summer. St Petersburg was the political and cultural capital of Russia well into the twentieth century, and it was always a city of contrasts. While the upper classes danced gaily to the waltzes of Strauss and the mazurkas of Tchaikovsky, swelling numbers of workers, prostitutes, homeless, and down-and-outs struggled to eke out an existence in a metropolis that at the turn of the century showed signs of bursting at the seams.24 By then St Petersburg was home to liberal-democratic and socialist movements bent on challenging the legitimacy of the autocracy. Students in St Petersburg played an important role in the challenge to the Tsarist system. The student political movement was by no means stable and politically homogeneous, nor was it receptive to the parallel reformist movements led by liberal-professional groups. Nevertheless, students and other groups wanted Tsar Nicholas n to reform higher education and revoke many of the repressive measures that characterized autocratic rule.

14

Builders and Deserters

Petrograd, as St Petersburg was first renamed in 1914, became the cradle of revolution during the war, and its long-standing rivalry with Moscow was carried into the post-revolutionary period. Ravaged by the civil war, Petrograd lost over half of its population, many of its cultural leaders, and much of its urban pride. After the reins of political power were officially transferred to Moscow early in 1918, Petrograd had to settle for the title "Russia's second capital." In the 19208 the city on the Neva experienced something of a rebirth. One of the great centres of the avant-garde in fin de siecle Europe, Leningrad simultaneously embraced the vast spectrum of European cultural movements and the discordant voices of an experimental Bolshevik culture. Under the leadership of Leningrad Party secretary Grigory Zinoviev, the city and surrounding region retained its status as a pre-eminent economic region in the Soviet Union. Zinoviev's dismissal in December 192,5, following his declaration of opposition to Stalin's policies, and his replacement by Sergei Kirov, presaged a new and tragic period for Leningrad. Although Kirov was a Stalin loyalist, he often pursued agendas and policies that were at odds with those dictated by Moscow. Leningrad experienced further upheaval as a result of the massive industrialization effort and the internecine strife within the Party after the assassination of Kirov on i December 1934. Mass repressions of intellectuals, Party members, and others turned Leningrad into a target for Stalin's wrath. The new Party secretary, Andrei Zhdanov, presided over a city at war with itself. Zhdanov attempted to create his own political kingdom by reinforcing a rigid Stalinist line, but by the time that war broke out in June 1941, many felt that the city was but a brittle shell of its former self.15 Leningrad, though it suffered terrible deprivation and hardship during the Second World War, emerged from three years of blockade and starvation to take its place once again as a major centre for culture and education. The development of its higher-education system during the interwar period provided a crucial foundation for the postwar economy. Leningrad had maintained a strong tradition of scientific and academic achievement after 1917. St Petersburg had given birth to the Russian Academy of Sciences in 172,5, as well as to a number of academic institutions offering diverse programs of study. Leningrad State University (LGU), with the main campus situated on the banks of the Neva across from the Winter Palace, was the second largest university in the country. The university, founded in 1819, had a rich tradition of academic achievement in the sciences and humanities. Hanging in the long corridor of the main building were portraits of some of the great minds of Russia, all of whom had graduated from or taught at the university. The same corridor had been the scene of student demonstra-

15

Introduction

tions and feverish political speeches in 1905 and from 1917 to 1922.. These episodes marked the first of many ideological and political struggles between Communist Party officials, the professoriate, and studenchestvo during the interwar period. The Leningrad Mining Institute, established in 1773 on Vasilievsky Island (the westernmost district of the city), was the oldest of its kind in the world. The institute had a rich history of scientific research, exploration, and mineralresource development in Russia. The Leningrad Technological Institute, created in 182.8, was located on Moskovsky Prospekt not far from the city centre. This institute was a focal point for political protest in 1905 and 1917. Drawing from its extensive resources, the Technological Institute survived the revolutionary years and emerged as the largest industrial-technical school in the Soviet Union. The Leningrad Conservatory and the Academy of Arts had both earned reputations as fine institutions before 1917. The conservatory produced such famous graduates as Sergei Glazunov and Dmitry Shostakovich, while the academy cultivated new generations of artists who would be highly influenced by the avant-garde tendencies sweeping across Europe. During the interwar period these established academic institutions competed with the new offspring of the Soviet higher-education system. Petrograd Communist University, founded in 1918 (renamed in 192.0 after Zinoviev and in 1930 after Stalin), promoted itself as a leading force in the training of a new generation of Red specialists and political leaders. Along with the Communist University, numerous smaller institutes for industrial training emerged in the late 192.08 and early 19305 to serve as depositories for proletarian and peasant youth recruited into technical fields. (See Appendix z for a list of the major higher-education institutions in Leningrad.) Leningrad, as an urban centre peripheral to the locus of power in Moscow, offers a unique vantage point from which to examine the studenchestvo. The city had a unique cultural-political tradition but was also typical of most large cities, with its diversity of scientific and academic institutions. The contours of student politics, as well as of changing social and academic rules, were representative of broader trends in the USSR. And yet, the development of student politics in Leningrad was unavoidably influenced by the issues that defined that city's uneasy relationship with "the centre." Leningrad vuzy struggled to cope with problems traditionally associated with large institutions with established reputations; they also faced issues specific to their subordinate status in the Soviet higher-education system. The mix of politics and higher education inevitably led to clashes between opposing forces, and it was the product of these struggles that determined the environment in which students lived and learned.

CHAPTER ONE

The Studenchestvo and Tsarism

"Students are always occupied with something: restaurants, women, or politics."1 This trite analysis of Russian students, offered by Adam Lei', an alumnus of St Petersburg University, was not far off the mark. A blend of troublesome social questions, mundane pursuits, and passions of the heart shaped student life in Russia. After the Crimean War, student youth began to call for reforms to higher education and a more open dialogue with the autocracy. As their sense of social duty grew, students found themselves encumbered in a crisis of self-doubt and moral introspection. Collegial traditions and the emergence of organized political movements gave students a sense of autonomy and separateness, but the splintering of the political movement after 1905 reinforced lingering doubts and insecurities about their place in society. Along with these higher moral and social issues, students occupied themselves with less lofty pursuits such as occasional drinking, rude behaviour, avoidance of work, difficult personal relationships, and bouts of depression and social alienation. S T U D E N T S A G A I N S T T H E STATE

The Russian Empire was a multinational realm governed by a cumbersome bureaucracy, and in the first half of the nineteenth century its virtually unchallenged military reputation masked economic backwardness, illiteracy, and a bloated governing apparatus under Nicholas I (182,555). Defeat in the Crimean War forced the new tsar, Alexander n (185581), to institute major changes. Alexander was determined to reform Russia before forces of discontent toppled the autocracy. The tsar brought greater openness (glasnost') to public discussion, easing censorship and promising substantial changes to the ailing serf economy and inefficient bureaucracy. This new era of public discussion culminated in

17 The Studenchestvo and Tsarism

the Great Reforms of 1861-64, during which the tsar emancipated the peasantry, reformed the judiciary, and created new organs of local government (zemstvo). A decade later he introduced universal conscription and improved training programs for the military.1 Alexander's initiatives created high expectations but were stalled by political events. In March 1881 a member of the People's Will terrorist group assassinated the tsar. The new autocrat, Alexander in (1881-94), used the assassination as a pretext to roll back many of his predecessor's reforms. Nevertheless, Alexander was unable to stem the tide of social change brought on by modernization. Industrialization spurred mass migration to the cities, leading to rising levels of urban poverty. Poorly treated and woefully underpaid workers became the target of an underground Marxist movement known as the Emancipation of Labour Group (the offspring of the Populist movement in the 18705), established in 1883 by Georgy Plekhanov. By the time that the first congress of the Russian Social Democratic Workers' Party (RSDRP) gathered in 1898, the fractious Marxist movement had managed to organize a substantial underground network. After the split of the RSDRP in 1903 into Menshevik and Bolshevik factions (V.I. Lenin led the latter), the movement began to make greater inroads into the working class.3 Caught between the state and the people, Russia's nascent professional class struggled to find its niche. Russian professionals represented the nucleus of a new civil society defined not by inherited social status but by education and a desire to improve social conditions. Under Nicholas n, who assumed the throne in 1894, these professional groups pushed for a more prominent voice in the modernizing society. Seeking a broader participatory forum in which to promote their activities and contribute to social improvement, educated professionals and local government officials championed representative government and progressive policies related to health care and education. The autocracy regarded their activities in town assemblies, schools, and professional practices with great suspicion.4 Education represented one of the many dilemmas confronting the autocracy as it attempted to steer Russia into the modern age. Education was critical to Russia's industrialization, but the new ideas and the trained professionals issuing from academic institutions presented a threat to the autocracy. Universities became forums for open discussion following the Crimean War, and schoolteachers emerged as persistent social critics of the government. The government pledged to expand higher education but at the same time did not wish to delegate autonomous powers to academic institutions. The Ministry of Education's Janus-faced policy was evident in 1863, when, after a wave of demonstrations in St Petersburg, it pushed through university statutes that

18

Builders and Deserters

curtailed student rights and regulated enrolment. Alexander's minister of education, D.A. Tolstoi, had proposed additional restrictions on academic council and student activities, but it was not until 1884 that Tolstoi's strategy was implemented through one of his former assistants, I.D. Delianov. New statutes forced universities to adopt curricular programs that emphasized the classical disciplines, and the Ministry of Education assumed the right to nominate and dismiss faculty members. Further, the ministry employed special curators for each university to act as liaisons between state-appointed academic councils and the government.5 St Petersburg occupied a unique place in the higher-education system, emerging as a leading centre for professional training and a focal point for opposition activities. Demonstrations at St Petersburg University in the 18508 had set the tone for ensuing decades of conflict between the state and the studenchestvo. The expansion and diversification of higher education in the capital made this relationship even more problematic. St Petersburg University, the largest in the empire, enrolled students in a wide variety of disciplines and acted as an important training ground for civil servants. Along with the Mining Institute, the Polytechnical Institute, and a number of fine arts institutions, the university engaged in an ongoing struggle for a greater voice in its own academic affairs. Running battles became nothing less than political contests as a series of crises brought issues of academic autonomy and freedom of thought to the fore. Student radicalism was fuelled in part by a growing disaffection among the nucleus of Russia's educated liberal element towards the autocracy. As products of a tightly supervised political system in the first half of the nineteenth century, Russian students under Nicholas i exhibited apathy. They did not enjoy the fraternal traditions and social status of their German counterparts.6 The studenchestvo as a corporative entity began to change following the abolition of enrolment restrictions and the easing of censorship and dress codes in 1855. Students organized regional societies (zemliachestvo), held special discussion meetings, and developed mutual-aid funds (kassa vzaimopomoshchi). Utopian socialism and populism became popular subjects of discussion, and in the new political climate youth began to challenge violations of their personal freedoms and self-described corporative traditions.7 Grievances with the autocracy arose from police harassment and the periodic banning or censuring of gatherings. When a student was expelled for insulting the rector or arrested for throwing objects at the police during street demonstrations, his comrades interpreted the punitive action as an insult to them all. In the 18705 and i88os a small minority of stu-

19 The Studenchestvo and Tsarism

dents participated in revolutionary groups, but the vast majority remained uninterested in grand political causes.8 The somnolent political movement awakened owing to a combination of factors related to changes in enrolment patterns and intrusive state policies. By 1880, higher schools had begun to experience an influx of petty-bourgeois and non-titled groups along with a modest decline in the number of children from noble and civil-service backgrounds. Changes in social composition and the age structure (the average age of incoming students dropped slightly) contributed to greater cultural diversity. Furthermore, increasing numbers from small provincial towns enrolled in higher schools. Some students revelled in new-found freedom, but others felt overwhelmed. New faces, ideas, and religious faiths challenged entrenched beliefs and family values.9 Police intervention compounded the difficulties associated with adjusting to a new environment. During the time of the Tolstoi and Delianov ministries, students had little opportunity to negotiate with the autocracy, and their activities were closely monitored by the police. In 1899 a series of events prompted students to take a stand against police interference, and in the process they ushered in a new era of political activism. The 1899 general strike was one of the defining moments for the student movement. It began with the promise of radical reform but ended with disappointment and the realization that students' academic and personal concerns would continue to prevail over their interest in political causes. The nationwide protest arose from an ongoing feud between St Petersburg students and the local police and from the students' determination to oppose the revocation of their right to convene meetings and organize activities. During holidays and other festive occasions rowdy students would roam Nevsky Prospekt and other major thoroughfares in St Petersburg. Their behaviour provoked confrontations with local shopkeepers and restaurant owners, and violence often erupted when police tried to quell the disturbances. On 5 February 1899, three days before the traditional festivities marking the anniversary of St Petersburg University (usually an occasion for revelry), Rector V.I. Sergeevich warned that severe penalties would be imposed on students who disrupted the celebrations.10 Angered by this declaration, students clashed in the streets with the police after the latter beat and arrested several protestors. Police brutality provoked outrage and prompted the Organizational Committee at St Petersburg University to pass a resolution calling for a boycott of classes. Moscow students expressed solidarity with their Petersburg colleagues, and by late February over 20,000 students across Russia had walked out of their classes.11 Claiming that police brutality had insulted students' honour and deprived them of basic freedoms, the university's socialist-dominated

2.o Builders and Deserters

student council called for fundamental guarantees of personal rights and liberties. But the declarations of the Organizational Committee could not mask disagreement among students over strike tactics and the ultimate goals of the protest. Marxist-oriented members suggested that strike action was useless because students remained isolated as a singular revolutionary force. Instead, they recommended unification with the working-class movement. In the end, the Organizational Committee faced a mass of students who refused to commit themselves to political action for fear of pushing the situation too far.11 The 1899 strike failed to achieve one of its main goals, the protection of student rights. The Ministry of Education, fearful of further unrest, tightened its grip. The Temporary Rules of July 1899 allowed the government to conscript for military service any students participating in political demonstrations. In November 1901 another set of regulations drafted by the State Council forbade the creation of any new student organizations except those approved by the rector and supervised by a faculty member. The Temporary Rules resulted in the recruitment of hundreds of students for military service.13 The new regulations represented a clear restriction on the right of association, and they contributed to a more determined attitude among the leftists, who believed that reform through existing organizations was no longer possible.14 A united student movement failed to materialize during the 1899 strike, but the growing influence of the labour movement helped to radicalize individual student councils. Social Democratic proclamations urged students to reject the slogans of "university autonomy" and "moderate reform" as bourgeois concepts.15 The test for this revolutionary strategy came in 1905 as Russia descended into another period of upheaval. The situation had become increasingly unstable a year earlier, when Russia had engaged Japan in a struggle for control of naval ports on the Korean peninsula. And there were other areas of conflict: local government officials made more aggressive demands for self-government; sporadic peasant disorders in the countryside threatened the livelihood of rural nobility; and a wave of labour unrest in the cities paralysed large enterprises and provoked stern police measures. Civil unrest intensified in the wake of the Russian navy's resounding defeat at the hands of Japan. During a peaceful demonstration held in the capital in January 1905, police shot and killed hundreds of citizens who had petitioned Tsar Nicholas to hear their grievances. The incident set off massive labour unrest and a general political crisis. After a general strike Nicholas was forced to draw up a constitution in October 1905 (the October Manifesto), granting general civil liberties and giving sanction to a duma (parliament). 16

2.1 The Studenchestvo and Tsarism

The cauldron of political unrest boiled over into Russia's academic institutions. The 1905 revolution was a critical turning-point for higher education and the student movement. Professors and students called for an end to government interference in academic life, amnesty for political prisoners, and guaranteed personal freedoms. In its weakened state the autocracy relinquished considerable control over academic institutions. Open elections for rectorships followed a Ministry of Education decree in August 1905 granting each institution the right to appoint its own administration and rector independently of the government. Young radicals saw the political crisis as an opportunity to take control of the fractious student movement. At the onset of the RussoJapanese war in 1904, Marxist students launched protests to discredit the "imperialist" conflict but arrests depleted their ranks. Consequently, Bolshevik supporters accepted a proposal by their Socialist Revolutionary (SR) counterparts to form a united group, called the Coalition Council, to work out a strategy. Members of the Partisans of Struggle (an unaffiliated leftist group) and the centrist Student Democrats also joined the council. This makeshift body lasted until October 1904, when it was absorbed by the Bolshevik-dominated Council of Student Elders.17 Outraged by the state's reaction to peaceful protests, all but the conservative faction of the professoriate joined with students in their demand for a nationwide general strike. Regarding themselves as agents of social reform and bulwarks against arbitrary autocratic policies, professors demanded an end to restrictions on academic freedom. The creation of the Academic Union later in the year and the presentation of the "Note of 342" - a manifesto that demanded freedom from police interference and greater financial support from the state - formed the basis for the professoriate's platform over the next decade.18 More than 40,000 students went on strike in January-February 1905. According to one historian, student councils nationwide voted over 95 per cent in favour of the strike (it should be noted that less than half of all students actually voted). They passed a number of resolutions calling for personal freedoms and the eradication of government interference. At this point the Bolsheviks gained significant popular support among students, although the depth of this backing was soon tested.19 Intense political activity went on in higher schools after they reopened in the fall of 1905. Mass demonstrations and heated debates turned St Petersburg University, the Technological Institute, and other vuzy into teeming public forums. For a brief time students stood side by side with workers and shopkeepers calling for political reform/ 0 As meetings convened and the discussion of tactics progressed, it became apparent that student groups were anything but united.11 Momentum

2,2. Builders and Deserters

had shifted to the radical elements, but the revolutionary tide began to turn shortly after the October Manifesto and the general strike. Universities remained closed and students became victims of sporadic attacks by city dwellers annoyed by their continuously disruptive presence. The struggle reached a denouement in December 1905, when street battles in Moscow turned into full-scale armed conflicts between Bolshevik supporters and the police. Approximately 2.50 students joined activists who manned the barricades. After the revolt had been crushed, dozens of students were arrested (one source reports that twenty-six died in the uprising).22 Without the support of the middle class and the army, the revolutionary movement was doomed to failure. Most students remained reluctant to take up Lenin's call for revolution.23 The events of 1905 produced a leftward shift in students' political views. As Daniel Brower has shown, radicals generally came from middle-class and gentry backgrounds. They joined a jumbled mass of groups who championed Zionism, Great Russian nationalism, Christian humanism, and other causes.24 According to L.A. Kleinbort, radicals had fickle views: "party-mindedness (partiinost')" depended more on personal mood than on political consciousness. Kleinbort believed that the demands of the moment and youthful curiosity made it easy for students to embrace ideals or political platforms, but superficially. Pre-revolutionary Russia, he wrote, provided a forum for groups espousing grandiose causes. Students identifying themselves with the radical left liked the appeal of camaraderie, group identity, and the advocacy of self-sacrifice for the greater good.25 As Adam Lei' wrote, radical students "wanted to show that they were a threat to the government. If a search [of their place] was conducted, it filled them with pride. Being arrested was even better, but of course not for long."26 Other commentators made similar observations. Both P. Ivanov and A.S. Izgoev, a liberal publicist who contributed to the famous collection of essays in 1909 known as Vekhi (Landmarks), implied that students were dilettantes who liked to experiment briefly with one social cause and then move on to another, believing that only they had the ability and vision to build a just society.27 The intelligentsia's perspective obviously was different than that of the students. Although they may have changed their views frequently or adopted allegiances without careful thought beforehand, student activists nonetheless remained committed to a struggle for individual rights and higher-education reform. The 1905 revolution had run its course by the spring of 1906, at which point the autocracy went on the offensive. The Fundamental Laws enacted in 1906 allowed the tsar a hand in all ministerial appointments and provided for the creation of the State Council as a counterbalance to the Duma. In July 1906, following several weeks of

23

The Studenchestvo and Tsarism

political stalemate, Nicholas dissolved the parliament. When it reconvened in October 1906, the Duma refused to pass a series of agricultural and local government reforms proposed by RA. Stolypin, the chairman of the Council of Ministers. The deadlock allowed Stolypin to dissolve the Duma again in June 1907 and impose a set of new electoral laws known as the "June 3rd system." He revoked or reduced suffrage rights earlier granted to peasants and national minorities, thereby allowing the centrist and right-wing parties to dominate the Duma. Thereafter the Duma sparred intermittently with the autocracy but was, on the whole, ineffective as a political body. During this time the revolutionary movement struggled to make an impact. A wave of arrests during Stolypin's tenure as interior minister (he was assassinated in 1911), extensive police supervision of their activities, and internal feuding over tactics undermined the agitation work carried out by Bolshevik, Menshevik, and Socialist Revolutionary activists. Although a brief surge of labour activism occurred between 1912 and 1914, the revolutionary movement remained fairly isolated, and for that reason it failed to have a profound impact on students.28 When Russian universities reopened in September 1906, students remained divided over strategies. The autocracy launched a counterattack after introducing the June 3rd System. Fearing contacts between student and working-class Marxist groups, the Ministry of Education banned student meetings outright and the Okhrana (secret police) sent in agents to infiltrate subversive organizations. In 1908 the new minister of education, A.N. Schwartz, introduced measures restricting the enrolment of women and Jews. Students called for protests against these arbitrary measures. In response a coalition of student groups published an "Appeal to Russian Society," in which they called for a general strike.29 By late September most institutions once again faced a disruption of classes. But 1908 was not 1905. Although support for action seemed to be quite strong, most of it came from leftist students. The strike lasted only a few days. Despite the fact that leftists dominated most student organizations, they were no longer able to mobilize protestors in large numbers.30 The weakening of student protest movements enabled Minister of Education L.A. Kasso (1910-14) to pass a series of measures in 1910n, retracting many of the 1905 reforms. Kasso subjected institutions to police harassment and banned all non-academic student organizations. Kasso's measures provoked renewed protests at St Petersburg University and elsewhere. Interior Minister RA. Stolypin's concerns for public order took an earlier ban on student organizations a step further in January 1911, prohibiting outright the convening of meetings on campus. Stolypin declared that no longer would the police require the

2-4

Builders and Deserters

approval of the rector to sit in on classes (and, implicitly, to apprehend suspected agitators). These measures provoked calls for a semester-long strike. Street demonstrations resulted in 409 arrests on 31 January. By the fall of 1911 the police had rounded up 1,956 students, 1,453 °f whom were from universities.31 The protests gained greater significance in the wake of a scandal at St Petersburg University involving a student, Brianov, who assaulted a professor as he exited a lecture hall and four other students who hurled objects at another. The professor's demand for the stern punishment of Brianov further aggravated the situation. But the protests eventually fizzled out, as it became apparent that most students were far more concerned with completing their academic year. By late February mass arrests and expulsions had weakened the student boycott at the university. Although it continued for another month, student leaders realized that the strike faced insurmountable odds.31 Restrictions imposed by Kasso allowed the government to maintain control of higher education, but they prevented further opportunities for constructive dialogue. Nevertheless, the higher-education system made significant advances during the twilight of the Imperial era. Enrolment expanded nearly tenfold between 1897 and 1914. As universities experienced fierce competition from specialized and technical institutions, their share of enrolment dropped considerably. At the same time, women began to make inroads. A relaxation of restrictions after the turn of the century allowed institutions such as the Bestuzhev Women's Courses, which after 1878 offered university-accredited courses, to expand significantly.33 During the First World War the government tried to heal some of the old wounds opened up by the Kasso administration. The new minister of education, N. Ignatiev, expanded enrolment and relaxed controls over liberal arts universities. Universities responded in a positive manner to the autocracy's call for unity in the face of a common enemy. Academic institutions assisted the War Industries' Committees and professors gave patriotic lectures. Students enlisted for front-line duties, helped out in relief efforts, coordinated entertainment programs for soldiers, and lent their creative talents to the war effort by publishing literary collections such as Molodaia Rus' (Young Russia) and donating the proceeds to war veterans.34 There was further cause for optimism in 1916, when university statutes standardizing procedures for faculty appointments came into effect. However, continued financial problems and a deteriorating war effort resulted in enrolment cutbacks in that year. With the onset of war, commitment to political protest waned and the relationship between students and the state seemed to improve. Under Minister of

25

The Studenchestvo and Tsarism

Education Ignatiev the government had problems providing for universities. Conscription, initiated in 1915, further reduced enrolment. Cutbacks in fuel, building materials, libraries, and paper made it increasingly difficult to continue lessons, and in June 1916 the Ministry of Education had to curtail planned enrolment in Moscow and St Petersburg because of shortages.35 Students who refused to support the war adhered to the socialist view that it was an imperialist conflict. Bolsheviks, Mensheviks, and Socialist Revolutionaries continued to find support among their peers, but Soviet historians tend to exaggerate their impact. In Petrograd (as St Petersburg was renamed in 1914), only 250-300 Bolshevik students were affiliated with the city's RSDRP committee and involved in conspiratorial activities. In 1914 socialist students had formed the Coalition Committee in order to coordinate demonstrations and activities against the government. Along with other groups, they engaged in opposition activities. By 1915, however, many had been rounded up by the secret police.36 Although a broad stratum of the Studenchestvo may have supported the principles of socialism, only a small minority remained willing to put their views into action. THE STUDENT COMMUNITY

When a nineteen-year-old peasant by the name of Vladimir Kurbskii enrolled at Moscow University, he entered a world of exciting events, new people, and new ideas. Kurbskii recalled the profound feeling of collegiality he experienced when first visiting the campus, as peers welcomed new students and gave them a sense of belonging: "They referred to us as 'colleague.' The first time I heard that word used to address me, my head went into a tizzy. Could it really be true that I was at this very moment a 'colleague'? Has this long-awaited moment really arrived?! Yes, it has really arrived!" Aside from the camaraderie, Kurbskii was astounded by the variety of special groups, organizations, and social functions. He visited evening socials where students from the Penza region sang songs and drank heavily; he had a discussion with a Zionist who pledged all his efforts towards the founding of a Jewish state; he witnessed mass demonstrations and arrests during the 1911 strike; he walked the halls, reading propaganda leaflets, advertisements for study groups and societies, and pleas from desperately hungry students willing to do anything for their next meal.37 Kurbskii's impressionistic account brings to life a community that was a sum of its contradictory parts - a place where obligation and irresponsibility, optimism and pessimism, collectivism and individualism coexisted uneasily.

2,6 Builders and Deserters

While studying the negative effects of urbanization and modernization, T. Ikov came to the conclusion that in a number of ways many students closely resembled the beggars and homeless that wandered the streets: "The pathology of the poor man differs little from the pathology of our starving student: a pale face with either a greyish or yellowish tinge, sunken cheeks, a protruding forehead sharpening the facial features - these are the distinguishing attributes."38 Ikov's remark aptly summarized the situation for students. The average dinner consisted of weak tea with some black bread (rarely the better-quality white variety); lunch was the same, occasionally with cheese or sausage (kolbasa) if one were lucky. Communal dining thus became a practical means of nutritional sustenance, although dining-halls (stolovaia) were not always noted for their gourmet fare. As one disgruntled diner noted: "The devil knows what this stuff is. It's simply impossible to eat. Slop for the first course, shoe soles for the second."39 Students tried to cope by establishing their own dining facilities. In Moscow a student-run stolovaia in 1902 was able to provide n per cent of its neediest patrons with free meals. Communal facilities became popular because they gave students the opportunity to control expenses and decide how the facilities would be run and what type of food would be purchased. The situation was not so promising for individuals who did not have access to communal dining-halls, as malnutrition, poor hygiene, and long queues for meals remained part of the student lifestyle.40 Most students had difficulty securing accommodation. They had to choose between unkempt dormitories or shabby apartments run by unscrupulous landlords. Approximately 50 to 60 per cent lived in communal apartments with roommates (rarely did students in the major cities have their own private apartment), since a shortage of dormitory space, particularly in Moscow and St Petersburg, forced young people to look for accommodation in apartment complexes or insect-ridden "student ghettos."41 Anyone able to secure a dormitory space (St Petersburg had thirty-four dormitories in 1914) was forced to deal with filthy, rundown, and overcrowded rooms. As one student explained, it was hard to study in the dormitory: "And if I - an inhabitant of this residence am stupid enough at some point to attempt to study, then I must choose the moment when the mood of my eleven roommates corresponds to my wishes. When one student plays the violin, another two argue, and the remaining eight are quiet, this can be considered the most convenient time for study, because usually things are much worse."42 But residence life was not always so bad. Some students created better living arrangements by taking the initiative of establishing reading rooms and assisting in management. The Lepeshinskii and Nicholas n dormitories in Moscow were two such examples.43

zy The Studenchestvo and Tsarism

Many students suffered ill health from poor diet and unheated rooms. The chief physician for St Petersburg University in 1911 noted that by the end of the fall semester his clinic was overflowing with patients.44 Students tried to cope through self-help agencies. Communal dining-halls and student-run facilities lightened the burden and fostered a sense of accomplishment and community. The zemliachestvo and other mutual-aid groups performed similar roles. Zemliachestvo carried on an important cultural tradition, determining migration, hiring patterns in factories, and social attitudes among the thousands of peasants employed as seasonal labourers in urban centres. Zemliachestvo had originated in the 18505, assuming the functions of mutual-aid societies, discussion groups, and networks for moral support. Zemliaki (literally, "fellow countrymen") provided a source of comfort and financial security for young peasants entering the workforce for the first time.45 By 1905 the student zemliachestvo movement was firmly rooted in most major cities. Conferences brought together individuals from varied backgrounds to discuss financial and organizational problems. The Moscow University Society in 1909 included an explicit agenda to "forge cultural unity among the members on the basis of economic selfhelp." The general membership made all decisions based on "democratic principles." Funds for the society came from membership dues, admission fees to concerts, and evening socials. St Petersburg's students in 1911 could choose from over fifty societies representing various regional or ethnic groups. For example, the St Petersburg Lithuanian student group gave fellow Lithuanians an opportunity to converse and share their common values and traditions. More importantly, members helped each other out during the academic year. By the turn of the century, zemliachestvo had become hotbeds for Social Democrats, but their supporters diminished after 1905.46 Mutual-aid societies, originating in the i88os, coordinated communal expenditures on food and other rations; they also helped members secure part-time or summer employment. One of the largest, located at St Petersburg University, consisted of members elected directly by discussion circles (kruzhki).47 N.M. Mogilianskii, a former president of this society, noted that many of the members were Marxist by orientation and that they frequently quarrelled with other student groups.48 The societies took a leading role in mapping out political strategies in 1899 and 1905, but the reimposition of restrictions on student organizations after 1906 hurt their cause. Nevertheless, mutual-aid groups remained autonomous spheres of activity that students fiercely defended.49 The failure of the 1899 strike and 1905 revolution to secure substantial political gains intensified a lingering crisis of self-doubt within the

28

Builders and Deserters

studenchestvo. Their moral quandary - caught as they were between confrontational tendencies and a realization that social conformity would bring them opportunities - led to difficult periods of soulsearching, particularly after the fervour of 1905. On top of this, the high ground taken by voices of moral authority, as they extrapolated a general youth crisis from the lingering social problems within the studenchestvo, indicated a widening of the generation gap. An ongoing discussion of youth's sexual habits was part of a larger struggle between established social conventions and the subterraneous world of urban vice in Russia. As Laura Engelstein has noted, this debate reflected public anxieties related to modernization and social change. Sexuality presented a challenge to traditional power relations and the conservative elements of moral restraint.50 Government officials, professionals, and conservative intellectuals believed that student youth were caught in the grip of a moral crisis. The Russian intelligentsia, perhaps remembering their own failures in the past, interpreted student radicalism as a symptom of moral depravity and the breakdown of society. Izgoev, in his Vekhi essay, wrote a scathing attack on the studenchestvo. He argued that educated youth had cast off their family ties, turned to a depraved lifestyle, and abandoned the disciplined work ethic characteristic of previous generations. The "corruption" of society and the dehumanization of urban life, Izgoev argued, had made an imprint on Russian youth. He claimed that students engaged in sexual activity and masturbation at a young age as a direct result of exposure to decadent literature. Izgoev concluded by comparing the studenchestvo unfavourably with youth in England and Germany, where hard work, discipline, morality ("You would not find that 75 per cent of the students in England are masturbators"), and concern for physical conditioning prevailed. Russian students preferred to hide behind the facade of political activism rather than work on character development and "moral restraint."51 Izgoev based much of his essay on a 1905 survey carried out by M.A. Chlenov, who found that over half the respondents acknowledged reading erotic literature in secondary school. In the conclusion to his report, Chlenov noted the strong influence of urban life on the formation of student attitudes towards sex. Prostitution, the degradation of the working class, and the "tradition" of acquiring sexual experience through domestic servants provided many sources of temptation for youth. Consequently, it was not surprising that 77 per cent of the respondents stated that they had engaged in sex before entering a university.52- The easing of restrictions on literature after 1905 gave students the opportunity to read racy material. Novels such as A.A. Verbitskaia's six-volume Keys to Happiness (1910-13), a tale about life on the street

29 The Studenchestvo and Tsarism

and the sexual awakening of a young woman, were popular. Izgoev believed that the flourishing boulevard literature contributed to the higher rates of sexually transmitted diseases. More likely, an absence of health education was the main culprit.53 Chlenov's survey provides but one example of how treatises on proper regulation of body and mind reflected a desire on the part of authorities to "rationalize" youth lifestyle and ease fears of social disorientation. In Britain, patriotic and socially minded youth societies became the prescription for untoward behaviour. Similar efforts in Germany invoked patriotism and restraint in an attempt to persuade youth to act in a socially responsible manner.54 Izgoev, Chlenov, and their counterparts in Germany viewed self-discipline as a critical element of youth instruction. Masturbation, as an act of self-desecration and moral cowardice, represented the ultimate act of sexual indiscipline. The masturbator, just as the individual who resorted to the use of prostitutes, succumbed to a desire for self-gratification. This paradigm of youth in crisis materialized again in the 19205, albeit in altered semantic form, as one of the defining metaphors for the ordered and disordered communities. Changing values and aspirations had a significant impact on how student youth viewed gender roles. According to the data presented in surveys around the beginning of the century, more students than in the past favoured equal rights for women (leftists tended to be more progressive than supporters of conservative political movements).55 The impact of this trend on marital relations was ambiguous. Most students entered matrimony before the age of twenty-three. Continued dependency on parents or relatives presented challenges to marital arrangements. Ivanov's sketch of Moscow students reveals how uncertainty and poverty provided the backdrop for various types of marital arrangements. As one young woman commented, most students made the best of it and relied on love and optimism to carry them through difficult times: "We live together on forty-five rubles a month and feel great. True, occasionally there is not enough money, but it doesn't bother us as a couple. We are happy and content with little because each of us supports the other in moments of anguish. And it's not that these moments of anguish never occur. We believe in the future - that is paramount. I will finish my courses in a year, and we will then go somewhere to the provinces - there to find happiness."56 But love was not the only reason for getting married: arrangements based on economic expediency and purely platonic "Tolstoian" principles were not uncommon. With regard to the former, student couples who were forced to move in with parents often found themselves getting into rows with bossy mothers. The drunken father who arrived home late

30 Builders and Deserters

and quarrelled with family members added to the tension. Given these common situations, it is not surprising that a substantial number of students were happy to avoid matrimony. Determined to pursue their interests regardless of the consequences, a variety of personalities within the student community contributed to the perception that the younger generation lacked moral direction. Dilettantes, ascetics, dictatorial committee leaders, anti-social recluses, mentally unbalanced, shy, or unassuming youths went to classes together, ate together, and roamed the halls in search of fun, and in the process became the subjects of serious and light-hearted commentaries. The editors of satirical publications offered literary affirmations of how students "really lived," publishing stories, poems, or satirical sketches describing everyday life and its strange moments. One shortlived periodical, Zigzagi, unabashedly declared how its purpose was to bring humour and pleasure to all readers: The academic year approaches, a tenacious mood arises: we need funding. The students literally have no materials, no rent money, no inheritance money. We give you the readers humour. We have tried it without politics, without quarrelsomeness. Well, excuse our deception: we are "zigzagers" who have made our way into your pocket.57

Writers provided their readers with light-hearted reflections on the personalities and habits of their colleagues. Putting their knowledge of Latin to practical use, the editors of a publication from Siberia produced new definitions for the species known as "Homo studens": "A sub-species of s. germanicus, it comes in many varieties: repetitor [failing students], alio sepponens [procrastinator], academicus [studious types], antiquus [senior students], aeternus [perpetual student], etc. We find repetitor scrounging for sausage and tea; he is occasionally a vegetarian but is always starving."58 Satirical articles such as these offered insights into the cultural environment in which students pursued their own interests. Ivanov discussed the "types" he encountered at Moscow University and categorized them by outlook and mannerisms. Firstyear students were a separate category. They were described as raw recruits soon to be transformed by the numerous temptations and infor-

31 The Studenchestvo and Tsarism

mal regulations governing campus life. Newcomers eagerly immersed themselves within a collegial atmosphere that encouraged the questioning of established conventions and prevailing political views. Over the course of the year, they learned the ropes and began to moderate their opinions (a true sign of learning "the system"). "Unbalanced" students, according to Ivanov, insisted on reading anything and everything, but they lacked direction and tended to develop narrow-minded views. The "philosophes," such as one Somov, who roamed the halls were much the same. Somov, a "hard-nosed loner" at the university, quickly lost interest in lectures and subsequently spent most of his time in a group devoted to the study of Emmanuel Kant. He pursued and romanced a young woman but was crushed when she left him after only ten days. Individuals who shunned collegiality for the pursuit of life's little pleasures provided another source of curiosity. For example, the "decadents" lived in their own world, imagining love affairs with mysterious Dostoevskian women and behaving erratically or violently. Similarly, impetuosity and a surreal view of life marked the salient features of "bon vivants" such as Denisov, who chose to pursue hedonism rather than studies. Ivanov liked to contrast studious and diligent individuals with Denisovian "bohemians," especially when the latter's habits led to a personal financial crisis.59 Ivanov's impressionistic and entertaining account of student life was similar in tone and reasoning to accounts written by his Soviet successors. Rich in content and moral judgment, it betrayed the bias of a man no longer attached to the student environment. What Ivanov did not discuss in any detail was the inability of many students to cope with personal problems. School life foisted daily physical and mental pressures on students, pushing some of them to the brink of self-destruction. Writers expended a great deal of ink describing reasons for youth anomie. N. Frolov published a short story in 1910 that captured the essence of the two-edged sword of student life. Students enrolled with great expectations to learn and make new friends, but performance expectations compelled many of them to barricade themselves in their rooms with piles of books. The subject of Frolov's story was a young student who arrived in Moscow and was quickly disillusioned with the apparent absence of collegiality and with the uncaring and (according to him) "bureaucratic" student affairs department. The protagonist ended up wandering around without any purpose, pining for his days at secondary school when he had been treated as an important person: "I go to the university every day just to kill time, although I know that nothing interesting awaits me. It's strange that I haven't yet met up with an old comrade from the [secondary school]. Perhaps I met them but did not recognize them ...

3 2. Builders and Deserters

I only know that I am starving - my soul hungers, I starve from a lack of congenial company, lively events, intellectual friendship. I feel that without people, I will grow dull and stupid."60 Frolov's story fictionalized a reality for many students. Despite being liberated from familial bondage, they quickly found that freedom and independence were not always so grand. Self-help groups like the post-1905 Christian student movement attempted to redress this problem by offering students a spiritual focal point.61 Others came to the aid of depressed or suicidal students. St Petersburg University established the League for the Struggle against Student Suicides in 1910, following an apparent epidemic of suicides.6z A standard explanation for this trend was that the post-1905 letdown left youth confused and lacking in self-confidence. Confusion turned to depression and alienation as revolutionary gains were lost and Russia reverted to its former state of arbitrary rule. While it is unclear whether or not there was a de facto epidemic of youth suicides after I9O5,63 the authorities' use of epidemiological terminology and their description of suicide among students as a pathogenic phenomenon were highly suggestive of the paternalistic approach taken by the state and the professional community. But as Susan Morrissey has argued, suicide had become much larger than a purely medical-psychiatric issue. In post-i9O5 surveys, difficulties in adjusting to the social environment and lack of personal fulfilment were cited as the most common explanations for suicide. Professionals began to make the more overt connection between suicidal behaviour and social environment, interpreting individual acts of protest as metaphors for the dissipation of social order.64 Similar trends occurred in Europe, as young people participated in debates over morality and civic obligation. An apparent renaissance of nihilism and fatalism among European youth accentuated the social tensions produced by modernization and competing political forces.65 Students found numerous outlets to cope with daily pressures. Escapism was a right of youth, a way of expressing consternation about the world or denying its existence. Perhaps the most pervasive form of release was through the bottle. Most contemporaries seemed to have the impression that students were heavy drinkers (a popular student saying was, "Life is short but vodka is abundant"). However, data on drinking habits show that only 5 per cent consumed "excessive" amounts - defined here as more than two drinks per day. The stern dialogue on alcohol and youth could be heard beyond Russia and across Europe. Concerned about the proliferation of hooliganism and irresponsible social behaviour, authorities in France and Germany attempted to curb anti-social student activities through temperance and social instruction.66

3 3 The Studenchestvo and Tsarism Drinking was more than just a habit: it encompassed a culture of nonconformity, a means of escaping school work and stuffy old professors, and a way of meeting people outside of the school environment. Ivanov's account of student life in Moscow includes a sketch of the (in)famous Sedan beer hall, a popular haunt for students and the lower classes. With biting sarcasm, Ivanov described the significance of Sedan as an established institution: I am speaking of the beer hall at the Nikita Gates, widely known under the name Sedan and given the honorary title of "student beer hall." This title belongs to it by right. In the course of many years, Sedan has been a major nursery for student alcoholism and has taken the form of a student club. Numerous representatives from the ranks of the student poor gathered there during evenings; it was a place to while away evenings for persons who could not get into restaurants and other spots because of the high prices. They came to rest after a full day of intensive lessons or to forget about the difficult solitude of student life. In Sedan one could spend time with friends or languish in decrepit soul-searching solitude. The beer hall also provided a point of intersection between students and the lower classes, with alcohol being the equalizing factor.67 In Russia's rapidly changing society, it was not surprising that young people felt socially displaced. Expansion of the higher-education system brought more students into the classrooms and, consequently, increased the potential for unrest, as students began to organize themselves. The failure of the student movement to capture that magically united political agenda should be seen not only as evidence of political factionalism and repressive state policies, but also as a manifestation of contradictory forces within the student community. As the relationship between the state and the Studenchestvo deteriorated, voices of moral authority castigated students for a diminishing sense of social duty, immorality, and lack of direction. What the authorities often failed to realize was that, beyond their studies, students faced a number of obstacles - both in adjusting to a new environment and in dealing with material difficulties. These obstacles had a significant impact on the ways in which students learned in the classroom. THE LEARNING

EXPERIENCE

Contradictory forces influenced the development of organized opposition to the autocracy's education policies. The Studenchestvo and the professoriate tried to force the Ministry of Education to liberalize and

34

Builders and Deserters

diversify curricular programs and allow for greater academic freedom. But students also demanded greater access to faculty members and more input into academic affairs. At the same time, they remained divided over the politicization of academic training. These conflicting positions made it hard for them to present an effective opposition to the autocracy's policies. Russia's universities had six traditional disciplinary fields (usually differentiated as faculties): Eastern languages, history and philology, natural sciences, mathematics, law, and medicine. Although the expansion of higher technical education necessitated curricular reforms, the Ministry of Education remained reluctant to engage in far-reaching changes. The Tolstoi ministry's strategy, emphasizing the classics in literature and law instead of modern Western texts, exacerbated tensions between students and professors. Near the turn of the century, the Ministry of Education faced growing pressure to offer students a choice in technical disciplines and the liberal arts. Between 1880 and 1912., enrolment in history and philology dropped, while it rose substantially in law and the sciences. The study of law offered opportunities for a legal or civil-service career, whereas medicine and the scientific disciplines gave students a chance to enter the expanding fields of health care and scientific research. In contrast, the humanities suffered from censorship and restrictions on course content, as well as from pedagogy because of poorly paid teachers and an underfunded primary school system. The diversification of higher education paralleled the explosive increase in reading materials. The Russian popular press began to expand in the 18905, with publications ranging from scientific periodicals to cheap tabloid-style newspapers. Literature exposed students to new ideas and to the debauchery of urban life. Reports on widespread crime and sex scandals became part of the general public's daily diet of information.68 Although students joined reading centres and clubs, they tended to prefer lighter fare to the dense and profound political literature that predominated in discussion circles. Reviewing data on reading habits and comparing them with the character of academic discussion groups after 1905, Kleinbort concluded that interest in collective discussion of important social and philosophical issues peaked in 1905 and thereafter declined. In its place students pursued individual interests and self-enrichment (or pure entertainment) through fiction and scientific literature.69 Kleinbort's conclusions affirmed a widely held view: students lost their revolutionary fervour following the 1905 revolution. The 1905 revolution resulted in significant curricular changes, as academic institutions gained more control over their own programs. Students at St Petersburg University followed the national trend by

3 5 The Studencbestvo and Tsarism

enrolling mostly in law and the sciences. A loosening of restrictions allowed for the formation of dozens of new academic societies. New curricula and fresh approaches invigorated degree programs and rekindled interest in learning, and students convened academic discussion groups on a variety of topics. The brief liberalization of learning generated pressure on professors to become more accessible and less formal in their attitude towards students.70 Certain political issues produced a significant amount of rancour in academic groups. Most students complained about the teacher-student relationship, but they could not agree among themselves on the question of politicizing the classroom. Although many accepted the notion that academic pursuits should remain above politics, an even larger number at this time held fast to the view that higher education could not be wholly isolated from contemporary political events. The St Petersburg University Academic Union, an organization formed in 1905, had difficulty dealing with this issue. The Academic Union's rallying cry reflected its official agenda to put studies above politics: "Forward, academics! Forward, to the university! To the temple of pure science! Forward, to work! For the light of knowledge!" The union tried to enlist apolitical, leftist, and conservative elements into its membership to present a united front on issues related to financial support, representation in academic councils, and curricular changes, but it was hard to enforce the principle that "members must not view the university as an arena for political struggles." Supporters of the conservative Union of Russian People, as well as of the moderate Peaceful Renewal and Octobrist groups, all demanded changes to the platform and threatened retaliation if they did not get their way.71 Students viewed professors both as potential allies against the state and as adversaries. According to P. Kapnist, a Moscow University professor who wrote a treatise in 1904 on the state of university education and the student-professor relationship, a number of factors had contributed to the deterioration in the quality of education at universities. Sporadic government intervention ruined the ability of universities to design coherent curricula best suited to their needs. Incoming students from secondary institutions were woefully trained, and this made it difficult for professors to teach the required subjects effectively. Furthermore, recent political disturbances made it all but impossible to enforce discipline in the classroom. Kapnist believed that students now acted in a much more self-assured manner and that they would not hesitate to question a teacher's authority. Their insistence on participation in administrative affairs made things worse. Nevertheless, he acknowledged that students had legitimate grievances when they talked about the limitations imposed on student organizations after 1863, the formal

3 6 Builders and Deserters

teacher-student relationship cemented by the 1884 statutes, and the reluctance of the professoriate to support student strikes. The 1905 revolution did nothing to improve the situation in the long term. Reforms to the university statutes in 1905-6 allowed students to enrol in a greater variety of disciplines, but at the same time emboldened them to be more outspoken in their opposition to the state. Kapnist concluded his treatise by suggesting that the tendency of leftists to pronounce political and professional "judgments" on professors was making things worse; he believed that enhanced representation for students in academic councils would only serve to paralyse the daily business of the institution and further poison relations with professors.71 Most professors agreed with Kapnist's general position. They were determined, above all, to carry on with the business of education. Even the liberal professors who had stood with students in 1905 and joined the Kadet Party did not wish to abandon the hierarchical relationship between teacher and student completely. The professoriate concluded that before anything else their traditional authority in the classroom had to be restored. The Brianov incident in 1911 (recounted above) provides perhaps the best example of how differing perceptions of the classroom (as place of learning and political arena) and the haughty attitude of academic mentors prevented a reconciliation. The distant relationship between students and teachers caused problems even for highly motivated pupils. Nikolai Kol'tsov, a junior faculty member (privat-dotsent) at Moscow University after 1905, offered his opinion on the major stumbling blocks to better teacher-student relations. Professors tended to put students into programs that reflected their own interests, designating and promoting a select few "favourites" while ignoring the others. Worse still, professors often refused to deal with students who were or had been politically involved, despite the fact that the Ministry of Education had published a circular stipulating that these individuals were not to be discriminated against. Aside from this problem, students faced the grim reality of underfunding and shortages of textbooks and other materials. Kol'tsov wondered how, in this atmosphere, students could be expected to do well in their studies.73 Although Kol'tsov had his own agenda (as a privat-dotsent himself, he was disgusted with the tactics used by professors to block attempts to improve the pay, working conditions, and representation of junior faculty members on academic councils), his complaints resonated with groups such as the Academic Union. The presence of "perpetual students" (vechnye studenty), as Kurbskii called them, was due in no small part to the complexities of academic life. The politicization of issues after 1905, coupled with the ever-present generational divide,

3 7 The Studenchestvo and Tsarism

made it easy for students to blame their poor performance on boring teachers and political agitators.74 Conversely, professors who were disappointed with their students recalled with nostalgia the betterqualified recruits of the past. It was a stalemate that could not be resolved to anyone's satisfaction. When Narkompros launched its own ambitious plan in the 19205 to improve the learning environment, it was hampered by similar problems. The tortured course of the student movement mirrored some of the fundamental contradictions governing Russian society during the twilight of the tsarist regime. Leopold Haimson's influential work saw the Russia of 1914 as a polarized society: the autocracy was isolated from the professional class and from the working class and peasantry, and the intelligentsia found itself unable to bridge the gap between educated society and the broad mass of non-educated labourers. This tripolar split was a result of the overwhelming problems associated with rapid modernization and autocratic mismanagement.75 The studenchestvo found itself in a similar quandary, isolated as it was by the autocracy yet unable to forge close links with potential allies among the educated professional class. Students were alienated from the autocracy because the latter pursued a Janus-faced higher-education policy. Aware that expanded enrolment required curricular reform and more-open admissions rules, the Ministry of Education tried to adjust changes by keeping a tight rein on students, sporadically revoking their privileges and assuming a paternalistic and reproachful attitude towards them. Social and political changes exposed some glaring contradictions within the Studenchestvo. The Great Reforms helped transform the foundations of the higher-education system, as economic development and social changes combined with the permeation into Russia of new ideas from the West. Utopian socialist and populist movements gave way to the rising influence of Marxism and liberalism. After the turn of the century, when these ideas materialized in the form of underground organizations and legal political parties, the student movement desperately attempted to place itself on the leading edge of progressive change. This proved problematic because students were unable to sort out their priorities. An unresolved crisis of self-doubt, accentuated by the panic-stricken voices of moral authority in Russian society, exacerbated internal divisions within the student movement. The collapse of the autocracy in 1917 offered hope that unresolved issues related to the Studenchestvo would be addressed in a freer and more democratic forum. The promise of reform and renewal, however, faced equally formidable obstacles.

CHAPTER TWO

Revolution and Civil War

S.V. Soldatenkov, an active supporter of the Bolsheviks at Petrograd University during the civil war, offered a retrospective summary of the struggle that ensued between supporters and opponents of the new regime. He described oppositionists as over-the-hill romantics, bent on sabotaging the socialist revolution. In my naive impression arising from the pre-revolutionary years, a student was a synonym for a revolutionary. This is because in old times newspapers often wrote about students as victims of police shootings and participants in revolutionary acts against the tsarist ministers and other servants of the monarchist regime. They frequently wrote about the death penalty being applied to student revolutionaries. So what was the studenchestvo of our university like at the beginning of the 192,05? Among them were political philistines both in spirit and in interest. The grandiose revolutionary events, the rupture of old ways of life - all this had gone by. The leaders of these masses were older students, frequently of estimable age: representatives of the Kadet Party - lanovskii, Aizenshtadt, MaizeP, Sokolov; the Socialist Revolutionaries - Zhaba; the Mensheviks - Abramovich and others. The whole atmosphere of social life at the university had an oppositionist character towards any measures of Soviet power.1

Bolshevik supporters referred to their opponents as remnants of the "old order," even though the latter had been struggling to promote change. For many students, this provided a severe lesson in civil war politics: former political activists now became enemies of a regime determined to use force and terror to construct its new order. During the civil war, students witnessed incredible events. In March i9iy, 2 as a series of bread riots and strikes paralysed Petrograd, mass desertions in the army and the collapsing front lines spelled disaster for

39 Revolution and Civil War

the autocracy. After troops garrisoned in the capital failed to fire on the swelling mass of demonstrators, government authority disintegrated literally overnight and Nicholas n was forced to abdicate. The Provisional Government promised liberty and social reform, but its inability to amass broad support resulted in political deadlock and confusion. The country fell under the sway of a volatile duality of power (dvoevlastie] shared by the Provisional Government and the Petrograd Soviet of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies. A series of military blunders in the summer and an aborted coup attempt by General Kornilov in September threw momentum behind the Bolshevik Party. Confident that he had sufficient strength, Lenin (who had returned from a three-month period of hiding in Finland) convinced the Bolshevik Party's Central Committee to go ahead with an armed uprising. On 7 November the Bolsheviks took the Winter Palace in Petrograd, arrested several members of the Provisional Government, and declared the formation of the Soviet Socialist Republic. Over the next forty months, the Bolsheviks engaged in an all-out struggle with the White forces for political supremacy in Russia.3 Caught in the middle of the conflict, students assumed vanguard positions both for and against the revolution. Some of them fought in the Red Army and joined communist youth organizations in major cities, whereas others formed clandestine groups determined to undermine Bolshevik authority; the rest tried to avoid politics and did their best to get by. The dissolution of the autocracy had given students an opportunity to put their visions for social reform into practice, but after the Bolshevik revolution, options for change quickly diminished in the face of political realities. Higher-education reforms were ambitious and farreaching, but they failed to take firm root owing to the chaotic situation. By the end of the civil war, independent student activism had been all but neutralized by the Bolshevik doctrine of "democratic centralism." It was at this point that the studenchestvo lost its semi-autonomous role of social critic. Instead, students had to get used to their new function as the indirect representatives of state power. Traumatic changes during the civil war also produced the ethos of a new socialist community of students. As the new class of privileged students from working-class and peasant backgrounds began to emerge, the remainder of the student body confronted a choice between conformity and ostracism. THE PROVISIONAL

GOVERNMENT

On 2.3 March 1917 A.A. Manuilov, former rector of Moscow University and the new minister of education, met in Moscow with represen-

40 Builders and Deserters

tatives from vuzy to address some of the major problems facing higher education. Despite a mood of optimism, Russia's higher schools faced severe material deprivation and a number of unresolved political issues. Among other things, the meeting addressed questions related to student rights, the possibility of resuming lectures, and democratization of professorial elections. Institutional autonomy proved to be the most contentious topic of discussion. Manuilov and many of his colleagues argued that universities should return to the situation that had existed following the 1905 revolution, when they had been granted the right to appoint personnel. Widespread professorial support for autonomy resulted in a number of dismissals of faculty members who had been hired after Kasso's crackdown on universities in 19n.4 The newly appointed academic council at Petrograd University greeted the revolution with enthusiasm and promised continued support for the war effort. The council made it clear to the Ministry of Education (as it had done earlier) that the university required additional funding in order to resume classes. Foreshadowing future conflicts over institutional prerogatives, Rector E.D. Grimm made it known that he assumed that the university would be given more extensive powers to manage its own academic and administrative affairs.5 The deteriorating political situation in the summer of 1917 made the reform of higher education even more difficult. The new State Education Commission opened up admissions and gave institutions more discretion in hiring teachers and formulating curricula.6 But the real test facing the Provisional Government was to bring together groups with sharply differing opinions to form a functional academic community. The dividing lines between students, the professoriate, and the state remained clearly drawn. Participatory rights in institutional administration and curricular reform were among the most contentious issues. The Ministry of Education hoped reforms would unite professors and students who wished to advance the general cause of education. Liberal professors took the lead in this process, but their relative inflexibility and distrust of student activism did little to promote a bipartisan agenda. N.I. Kareev, a renowned historian who taught at Petrograd University, called for professorial leadership through a revival of the old Academic Union. Warning of the mass of competing political interests emerging after February 1917, Kareev challenged the professoriate to work towards a better higher-education system that would serve neither the "narrow class interests" of the past nor the radical political agendas expounded by student groups. Kareev and Petrograd University historian I.M. Grevs did not hesitate to express publicly their suspicion of radical student activists.7 Most professors tried to ignore both the political situation and the complaints of junior faculty members,

4i

Revolution and Civil War

who demanded that the Ministry of Education provide a clearer delineation of their workload and salaries. The subordinate position of privat-dotsenty made them a natural ally of students, although the latter never fully utilized this alliance to their own advantage.8 Professors remained adamantly opposed to student participation in academic councils. Running somewhat counter to this sentiment, the platforms of all political parties publicly favoured autonomy for student organizations and prominent officials promised that highereducation reform would involve student groups.9 But platforms and promises did not reflect the reality. Concerned that radicals would turn academic council meetings into a form of political theatre, the vast majority of professors fought against student participation. The Moscow and Petrograd University rectors refused to discuss the issue of student voting rights, pointing out that new regulations passed by the Ministry of Education technically did not provide for this.10 The unwillingness of the government and professariate to allow students to participate in academic councils provided the latter with a rallying platform. However, deep ideological and political cleavages within the studenchestvo made formulating a unified agenda for change highly problematic. On the eve of the March 1917 revolution, mass gatherings at Petrograd University staged in concert by liberal and socialist students suggested that factionalism was a thing of the past, but unity quickly broke down as the country descended into political crisis. Kadets and monarchists heckled Bolshevik students in the streets, calling them German agents.11 At meetings across the country, student groups representing all the major parties found themselves continually at odds with each other over politics and the war. Fractious student councils became bogged down in bickering over procedural issues, the nomination of candidates, the role of mutual-aid societies, and the dispersal of funds. In most cases, student councils arrived at a stalemate or suspended their activities.12 Political disunity continued during the June 1917 First Russian Students' Congress in Petrograd, during which the Kadet faction eventually stormed out in protest against the majority socialist group, Student House.13 The walkout typified student politics during the summer and fall of 1917. Divided along political and ethnic lines (the Jewish Bundist student movement claimed substantial support in some areas), leaders of various factions had trouble seeing the forest for the trees. According to a member of the Bundist movement, student leaders had succumbed to temptations of haute politique while ignoring the basic concerns of their followers.14 The dilemma facing students reflected the troubling paradigm of power, authority, and democratization confronting the weak and dis-

42. Builders and Deserters

oriented Provisional Government. Without power and authority, the government had no chance to engineer a viable program of social reform. At the same time, previously disenfranchised voices began to assert themselves as alternative representatives of legitimate authority. The Provisional Government managed to open a dialogue with academic institutions, but without adequate funds and a coordinated agenda not much could be done. United against authorities who intended to block their bid for greater representation in academic affairs, students tried to harness the momentum of a democratic revolution. Politics and petty feuding got in the way, as they had during the 1905 and 1911 strikes. Indeed, the complex issues and rapid pace of events stymied the emergence of any kind of coherent movement during these days of confusion. STUDENTS AND REVOLUTION

Responding to a survey conducted by the Petrograd Technological Institute in 1918, a student by name of E. Poliakov complained that his living conditions had made it all but impossible to study. "I have a wife and a child. We have nothing to eat, no heat in our room, and no hope for the immediate future." 15 Poliakov was not alone. The country was swept into another period of destruction and hardship after the Bolsheviks seized power. In the ensuing weeks Lenin declared an end to military hostilities, instituted a program of economic nationalization and land reform, and created the Red Army and Extraordinary Commission in Combatting Counter-Revolution and Sabotage (Cheka). The new state had to deal immediately with the advancing German army. After a series of negotiations and protracted debate within the Party, Soviet Russia concluded the humiliating treaty of Brest-Litovsk with Germany in March 1918. Meanwhile, anti-Bolshevik White forces gathered strength in southern Russia, the Far East, and the Arctic region. During the course of the 1918-19 campaigns, the Red Army was pushed back into a central region (known as Sovdepia) that roughly corresponded to the area held by the princes of Muscovy in the seventeenth century. But the tide turned later in the summer of 1919, and by the end of 1920 the Reds had expelled most of the opposition White and anarchist forces from southern Russia and the Far East.16 The military struggle siphoned all available resources from the domestic front and aggravated an already serious economic crisis. Lenin wanted to create a centralized administrative and political apparatus from which to build a socialist society. He instituted a program known as "war communism" in an attempt to control production and distribution. Nationalization of banking and industry, currency reform, and

43

Revolution and Civil War

requisitions of grain from the peasantry constituted the most important measures of this program. Lenin encountered formidable opposition, however, and by the spring of 1919 he was forced to reassess his economic policies. The proliferation of people's commissariats, as well as their affiliated agencies and subdepartments, bloated the state apparatus and devoured the resources of a system that was already overtaxed. The growth of the new bureaucracy exacerbated financial problems and the human misery it produced. Russia's major cities were especially hard hit. The population of Petrograd, the capital until 1918, dropped by almost 50 per cent. Food was scarce, and crime and unemployment rates soared. A report from the Commissariat of Internal Affairs in 1918 noted that arrests for crimes skyrocketed from 1,411 in June 1918 to 2,267 the following month; in June alone, there were thirtynine murders and thirty-three suicides.17 Public health suffered as the military situation worsened. Citizens roamed the streets in search of food and fuel, not knowing if they were going to make it through the night.18 Petrograd witnessed a prolonged battle over higher-education reform and attempts on the part of competing political groups within the studenchestvo to assert their agendas. The struggle to reform higher education was played out as part of the debate over culture and power in revolutionary Russia. Lenin faced a strong lobby of Party radicals who believed that only a total elimination of all vestiges of bourgeois culture could provide the nurturing environment for a socialist revolution. Attacking the idea that there was value in the pursuit of "pure science," proponents of the new cultural militancy argued that culture (and science) must serve the interests of society. The Proletkul't (Proletarian Culture) group visualized a new cultural hegemony that would cater to the needs of the working masses. The Proletkul't established its own clubs, institutions, and discussion forums as a way of cultivating a state-sanctioned proletarian culture. However, the limitations of this movement quickly became evident. In the realm of art, literature, and education, the Communist Party eventually accepted the Leninist position that to build socialism one must draw from the resources of existing cultures and traditions.19 A similar tension between socialist idealism and political -realities guided higher-education reform during the civil war. The leaders of academic institutions regarded their autonomy as a prerequisite for cooperation with the new government. Responsible officials at Petrograd University, the Technological Institute, and the Mining Institute (almost all of whom had been Kadet supporters or were politically nonaligned) defined autonomy as the right to appoint faculty members and design curricula without state interference. Not surprisingly, most aca-

44 Builders and Deserters

demic councils in Petrograd dispatched hostile declarations following the Bolshevik revolution. In reaction to several decrees by A.V. Lunacharsky, the new commissar of education, that effectively put institutes of higher education under state control, the Petrograd University academic council published a decree on 26 November 1917 that rejected opening a dialogue with Narkompros and condemned the arrest of several of its faculty members. The council registered its continuing support for the war effort against Germany and defiantly declared that the forthcoming Constituent Assembly was the only legitimate executive body in Russia. Even a group of "leftist" professors in Petrograd, who supported the idea of closer ties between the academic community and the state (they helped establish the state-sponsored Scientific Society of Marxists in 1918), warned that nationalization must not deprive academic institutions of the right to design programs that they believed best suited their needs.zo Exasperated Narkompros officials could not resolve the stalemate during meetings in 1918. Preliminary statutes of April 1918 gave local Soviets (councils), as representatives of the government, the right to participate in decisions of the academic council. Later in the year, Lunacharsky approved new laws that eliminated admissions requirements for students and compelled all faculty members to submit themselves every ten years to elections before a council of local trade-union, executive committee, and Narkompros representatives.21 The reforms established a basis for the nationalization of the higher-education system and the subordination of its executive organs to the state. In 1919 the Council of People's Commissars (Sovnarkom) created the [Main] Committee on Professional Education (Glavprofobr) under Narkompros. Regional departments in Petrograd and elsewhere were established, beginning in the spring of 1920. In an effort to streamline the preparatory system and bring in larger numbers of working-class recruits, Sovnarkom created workers' faculties (rabfaki) in September 1919 under the jurisdiction of the Committee on Professional Education. Rabfaki had three-year preparatory courses in the sciences, humanities, and social sciences. The professoriate's negative reaction to the workers' faculties epitomized the stalemate at this point between the state and the academic community. With their patience all but exhausted, Narkompros officials pushed through a final set of statutes in September 1921. The new regulations stipulated that rectors and deans were to be nominated and approved by the state. Higher schools now came under the direct scrutiny of the state, but the boundaries of authority between state organs, administrators, and student councils remained nebulous. On paper a centrally controlled system existed, but there remained plenty of room for opponents of the new governing structure to manoeuvre.22

45

Revolution and Civil War

Amidst these ongoing battles, Narkompros turned its attention towards students. As part of its strategy to provide greater accessibility, Narkompros declared a policy of open admissions to institutes of higher education regardless of the candidate's social or political background. The new admissions rules swelled enrolment in the RSFSR (Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic) to 169,982 by September 1918. Shortly thereafter, Narkompros closed down schools located near military fronts and approved several mergers of higher schools. By spring 1920 enrolment had declined to n 6,947.Z3 Petrograd vuzy were especially hard hit because of their location and their ongoing battles with Narkompros (enrolment dropped by 10,000 between 1916 and 1919). The number of students who actually attended classes was much lower. For example, at the Mining Institute only 75 of the 398 students enrolled made it to class. Several schools, including the Civil Engineer Institute, closed entirely.14 One anonymous observer put it succinctly: "All the talk about reforming higher education, on the opening of new [f^zy], on the changes in programs, etc., falls by the wayside if the element for which academic institutions are created is absent. One cannot hide the truth. All the Petrograd institutions of higher education are empty. According to professors, only 10 percent of the students attend even the most popular lectures."25 In this impossible situation the graduating class in Petrograd had shrunk to less than 100 by 1920. The student community emerging out of world war, revolution, and civil war stood at the edge of a great social, political, and generational divide. As the first wave of working-class and peasant youth flooded into classrooms in 1918-20, they clashed with senior students who held ambivalent or hostile attitudes towards the new regime. With the backing of the Communist Party, a small socialist vanguard set out to wrestle control of the student councils away from the "former people" (as pre-revolution student leaders were called). But students of all political persuasions held fast to ideas of self-government, collegiality, and the untrustworthiness of authority. Deprivation, made worse by the effects of hyperinflation, was a defining feature of student life during the civil war. According to an alumnus of Petrograd University, the standard diet consisted of 400 grams of black bread and perhaps a serving of "extremely disgusting" Red Army ration soup (doled out at the local dining-hall). Rations were cut in half by the spring of 1919 as the military situation worsened. Students called this the "horsemeat period," when the only meat available was indigestible equine flesh. Owing to the lack of fuel, resourceful persons used wooden planks or newspapers to fire small stoves in order

46

Builders and Deserters

to keep themselves warm. Things were not that much better for anyone lucky enough to receive stipendiary assistance. The average range of stipendiary support in 1920 (from 1,350 rubles per month for junior students to 2,700 for seniors) was not adequate for subsistence needs.26 A survey of 195 first-year students at the Petrograd Technological Institute in 1918 provides one of the few detailed snapshots of student life during the civil war, even though this sample was not entirely representative of the studenchestvo along social lines (most of the respondents were under the age of nineteen and almost all were men). The survey included questions pertaining to personal background, living conditions, academic work, and political views. As E. Poliakov told us earlier, accommodation and health were overriding concerns. Sixty-five per cent said that, owing to their financial situation, they were forced to live with their family. Just about everyone who rented accommodation complained of cold, damp, and dark rooms. As for food, the subsistence diet took its toll on personal health. The typical student was forced to work part time in one or more capacities, making it difficult to manage studies. In short, the average student was worse off than before the revolution.17 The desperateness of the students' material situation created something of a paradox. Camaraderie seemed to wane because everyone concentrated on the mundane task of survival. As an alumnus of Petrograd University noted, the clubs, informal gatherings, and exclusive societies that had added spice to daily life began to disappear in I9I8. 2 - 8 On the other hand, the difficult situation encouraged students to draw from the self-help tradition. Collectivism became an imperative for basic survival. R.I. Markova, a young communist who studied at Petrograd University during the civil war, described with nostalgia the convivial atmosphere that flourished at her dormitory: On the sixth floor of Mytnia, where I lived, students from different departments and faculties were packed tightly together. Every morning each of us went downstairs for hot water. The samovar was down on the first floor, and there was always a lively crowd around it. It was a great spot for students to get together. There you could find out the latest news from the university, listen to news from one another, meet with friends, or just have a chat with anyone who was around ... The samovar was like a club. Here you could even listen to someone from the Department of Literature reciting poetry or something else.19

Running battles between Narkompros and student councils over the control of finances made the students' situation worse. Narkompros asserted its authority through the Committee for the Improvement of the Social Welfare of Students (KUBUch). Created in 1919, the commit-

47 Revolution and Civil War

tee delegated all funds for KUBUch to the treasury of each institution. This system was intended to enforce financial discipline on student council leaders, whom Narkompros often accused of spending recklessly. KUfiuch agencies at the local level assigned certain tasks (industrial and social) to students, supervised the building and maintenance of dormitories and dining-halls, ran medical-care facilities, and looked after funding needs.30 Students who refused to take on work assignments were denied financial assistance - a rule that proved highly contentious. At the November 1918 Petrograd student conference, Railway Institute student Kheladze and other delegates agreed that the state was responsible for the welfare of students but said that in return students should be expected to give something back: "There must be obligatory work in exchange for aid for students: i.e., the studenchestvo that makes use of state help should put itself in the hands of the state during the summer months; furthermore, the studenchestvo should give part of its time during the academic year to production according to a plan worked out by special commissions." Most of the delegates seemed to agree with Kheladze, or at least they believed that students should contribute something to society. But Petrograd University delegate lanovskii (a Kadet supporter) and several others openly opposed this position. lanovskii considered compulsory labour service a surreptitious means of financially crippling students who did not support Bolshevism. He believed that by acquiring knowledge one was fulfilling the highest duty to society: "Those who think that the state should provide only for those who will work according to its political aims are incorrect. Work on scientific activities is the highest form of service to the people." Even the supporters of Narkompros remained suspicious of any attempt on the state's part to dictate how student councils should spend their funds. In the end, delegates only managed to establish a commission that would look further into ways of providing adequate financial assistance for needy students.31 These disagreements demonstrate the fundamentally different viewpoints among the studenchestvo on its role and purpose. The Bolshevik agenda for higher education specified the creation of a socialist student corporation, subordinate to the state. On 2,2, November 1917 Lunacharsky spoke to a gathering at the Smolnyi Institute in Petrograd. The Bolshevik revolution, he said, was a triumph for socialism and democracy. Students would reap the benefits of free access to higher education, but only if they worked with the new state.32 Although Lunacharsky favoured a policy of persuasion, he eventually found this agenda overtaken by a political strategy based on military recruitment, intimidation of student councils, and persecution.

48

Builders and Deserters

Most students met the Bolshevik revolution with the same degree of hostility and suspicion exhibited by the intelligentsia. At meetings in Russia's major cities, Kadet and SR students insisted that the Constituent Assembly be preserved as a precondition for cooperation with the Bolsheviks. When several members of the assembly were arrested in December 1917, the Kadet-dominated Petrograd University student council published a declaration expressing its general solidarity with the apprehended delegates. Anti-Bolshevik activities occurred throughout 1917-18. One gruesome incident, involving the murder of six anarchist students by the police, resulted in a mass demonstration in April 1918.33 Communist students in Petrograd launched their activities on 2,5 November 1917 under the auspices of the Petrograd Committee of the Bolshevik Party. Several of the original seventy were members of the Bolshevik Party. Apart from carrying out duties on campus, they engaged in district committee and agitation work.34 In a November 1917 speech opening the second general meeting of the organization, chairman and university student N.A. Bukhbinder admitted that the vast majority of his peers were either apolitical or hostile towards the regime. Communist students, he said, faced the urgent tasks of mobilizing "apolitical" masses into collective and constructive work for socialism while at the same time weeding out "hostile elements."35 The fact that "white-collar" students remained in the majority made the official task of political mobilization all the more urgent.36 The Petrograd Committee declared in January 1918 that its goal was to work for a society based on new social and political foundations. As Bukhbinder later noted, students in past years had succumbed to career-oriented temptations. "The typical student from that time [was] a careerist, dreaming only of a diploma, an attestation, and a nice cushy job; others operated as speculators, strikebreakers, and police informers, and still others were well-known frequenters of cafes, avoiding professors and lectures; a third type - and there were quite a few of them - were their own persons 'in secret' [tsarist agents]."37 The Petrograd Committee published pamphlets and promoted its activities through lectures on "The Studenchestvo and Socialism," "The Intelligentsia and the Socialist Revolution," and other themes. By January 1918 the organization had recruited 200 members. However, as a former activist admitted in his memoirs, most were not ardent Bolshevik supporters and they spent a great deal of time disrupting meetings or criticizing the government.38 Merle Fainsod gave us one of the first glimpses into the chaos that reigned as local Party organizations attempted to strengthen their apparatus and deal with pressing matters.39 Creating an effective chain of

49 Revolution and Civil War

command between the centre and the periphery was all but impossible in this environment. Documentation in the Party archives related to the development of student organizations confirms this picture. The Communist Party had only modest successes in penetrating academic institutions during the civil war. A few Party organizations appeared in major institutes of higher education in 1918-19, but most did not begin their activities until I92I-Z3. Cells in student organizations, faculties, and employee associations took on the task of coordinating propaganda campaigns and political activities. District committees (raikom) initially directed the Party cells of individual faculties, and municipal bureaus of student councils supervised the cell work of students. To plan its strategy, the Central Committee in 1918 appointed special committees in Petrograd and in other centres to study the development of local Party cells.40 The paucity of communist supporters and the absence of political direction hampered the effort to penetrate Petrograd higher schools. In the summer of 1918 the Petrograd Poly technical Institute became one of the first vuzy to have a Communist Party organization. Elsewhere in Petrograd there was very little activity. The Medical and Civil Engineer institutes did not enrol a single Party member until 1919, and at the Mining and Technological institutes there were only a few activists. At Petrograd University, the Party organization started its work in October 1918. Sofia Lappo, the first head (organizer) of the group, established links with the district committee. Later that year the Red Army called half of the nineteen-member group, including Lappo, to active duty at the front. As a result of several fatalities and transfers, the organization had shrunk to a total of five members by January 192.0.4I Communist activists found themselves shouldering an impossible academic and political workload. For example, K.I. Kochergin, who was head of the Petrograd University Party organization in i92,i-z2, and had also served in the Don Rifle Corps, was concurrently the chairman of the student fraction at the Mytnia dormitory and student representative for the Vasilevsky district committee in the Petrograd Soviet. A. loselevich, a student at Petrograd University, also had a very busy extracurricular schedule, having joined the secret police in 1918 and later been appointed head of the Petrograd Cheka. The mass exodus of students to the front and the tremendous demands made on the individuals who stayed behind led to very little being accomplished. Communist supporters remained in the minority in most student councils, with the result that meetings dealing with the structure of student organizations, membership nomination, and military service continued to produce stalemates. Despite their repeated calls for the dismissal of current administrators, Party activists did not have a major impact during this period.4Z

50 Builders and Deserters

The Communist Youth League (Komsomol) also failed to make a significant impact. The Komsomol emerged in 1918 as a working-class youth organization but it had trouble gaining support among students. It had a number of problems, the most serious being internal disunity over the issue of membership standards. Rivalry with local Party organizations further complicated matters. Although student groups eventually came into the Komsomol fold, there was concern that an influx of non-proletarian youth would dilute the working-class composition of the organization.43 The first independent Komsomol organization, established at Petrograd University in February 192.1, had a grand total of three members. Feuding between local Party organizations and Komsomol organizations, with the latter claiming they were being shut out of the political process, further weakened Komsomol authority.44 The Bolsheviks believed they could resolve the problems of organizational autonomy and financial support by eliminating independent student councils. For most students this represented the ultimate betrayal, but there was little they could do about it. A vaguely worded clause that granted student organizations a form of self-government was contained within the November 1918 declaration that democratized access to higher education. Student councils elected an elder to their university's academic council who had the authority to participate in administrative meetings, manage funds, and address problems involving admissions. While student leaders interpreted this decree as a first step towards self-government, Narkompros was worried about the potential problems entailed in this arrangement. As early as June 1918 Narkompros began to backtrack on the issue of student representation in academic councils and sided with the professors, who complained that argumentative students paralysed council business. This discrepancy in the interpretation of participatory rights made reaching a middle ground difficult, particularly because student activists continued to demand an end to outside interference. The 1919 charter for the Petrograd University student council (in which Kadets dominated) declared that its duties were, among other things, to advise administrators on academic matters.45 The Bolshevikdominated student council at the Technological Institute offered a different perspective. Council representative Ilya Bychkov complained in January 1919 that students were powerless because funding was in the hands of commissariats and other agencies that tended to ignore their needs. Proposed statutes for the institute's student council, formulated in January 1919, revealed a desire on the part of the formulators to tap the best traditions of student democracy and self-government. The council would put all policy matters to a general membership vote and

51 Revolution and Civil War

resolutions would be referred to the executive council of representatives. However, the creation of the government committee to aid students and the transfer of the management of funds from the student elder to the institute's chancellery restricted the powers of the student council. Menshevik activist Sergei Zhaba, chairman of the Petrograd Central Student Committee (created in April 1919) and chief representative for the university, viewed the new state policies, coupled with the mass recruitment of non-communist students for military service later in 1919, as the beginning of the end for student democracy. Some of his Bolshevik counterparts must have felt the same way, but for different reasons.46 The Petrograd Central Student Committee made a brief effort to bring non-communist elements into the fold, but the committee proved to be too independent-minded for its own good. Constant quarrels over funding and the restriction of the powers of student council representatives were symptomatic of the problems inherent in sustaining a semi-autonomous student organization under the Party. Pressured by Communist Party student fractions, in July 1919 Narkompros reversed its decision taken eight months earlier to delegate financial responsibility to student elders. Instead, it transferred funding matters to committees on social provisioning attached to each academic institution.47 The public dialogue with student councils continued into 1920, but during this period there seemed little hope that the students' organizational autonomy could be preserved. Speaking to a general conference of Petrograd students in June 1920, Grigory Zinoviev criticized his predominately non-communist audience for failing to understand the difference between the "political revolution" already achieved and the "social revolution" still to be realized. The Petrograd Party leader warned that student organizations would "not be tolerated by the working class" if they failed to support communism. Zinoviev offered the delegates a final chance, saying that it was "better late than never" for students to declare their loyalty to the state. He proceeded to criticize Zhaba, accusing him of being a monarchist and of attempting to subvert the "mood of reconciliation" among his peers. Warning that disunity threatened the survival of Soviet Russia, Zinoviev concluded: "You will laugh at today's vacillation (whether or not we should cooperate), and you will acknowledge with pride that, if we had doubted ourselves, capitalism would have torn us to shreds." Despite Zinoviev's attempt to rouse his audience, only three Bolshevik supporters were elected to the student committee of twenty-five.48 While all this was going on, brute force was being used against independent student groups. The military recruited large numbers of students from non-labouring backgrounds in order to make room for

jz Builders and Deserters

working-class youth. The Petrograd Technological and Polytechnical Institutes, both with a high proportion of students from non-labouring backgrounds, were specific targets.49 Early in 1921, amidst calls by Lunacharsky and others for reconciliation between the state and opposition-minded students, the Cheka announced the discovery of several counter-revolutionary plots. One of the groups exposed was the socalled Petrograd Military Organization; its members - professors and other intellectuals - were accused of planning a coup. After the arrest and execution of several professors (including Petrograd University rector candidate N.I. Lazarevskii),50 student organizations too felt the heavy hand of the Cheka. By September 1920 several activists in the Petrograd Committee had been expelled. In August 1921 the committee disbanded, and in November 1921 elections were held to staff a new council with Bolshevik supporters. According to an anonymous correspondent, "X," the Cheka arrested and incarcerated 362 students who had protested these measures. At Petrograd University a number of students had criticized the voting process during the November elections, and their subsequent protests resulted in several expulsions. Events reached a climax in February 1922, when dozens were rounded up following attempts to block resolutions of communist student councils at the university, the Petrograd Railway Institute, and other institutions.51 What impact did the destruction of independent student organizations have on the political attitudes of students? Perhaps this can best be summarized by a former activist who was well acquainted with opposition groups in Petrograd. According to him, there were a few leftists and a few reactionaries, but "between them swayed, more or less, an inert mass." Right-wing students rarely participated in academic or social affairs, whereas their leftist counterparts tended to be more active. Most non-aligned students preferred to concentrate on their education. When they protested, it was usually with reference to academic issues. Of course, academic-related grievances may have seemed like anti-Soviet activities in the eyes of authorities.51 Students struggling to find a niche within the new state grappled with their misgivings about the socialist revolution. It was a dilemma faced by all groups during the civil war. Fellow travellers who supported Lenin's blueprint for revolution quickly became disillusioned as repression removed public venues for a dialogue with the state. The hostility expressed by Proletkul'tists towards any form of cultural compromise deepened the sense of alienation among the intellectual elite. As Kendall Bailes noted in his examination of natural scientists, many found it expedient to accept Lenin's pragmatic policy of using their services for the socialist cause. Beyond that, however, the scientific community displayed little affinity for the Bolsheviks.53 There were similar

53

Revolution and Civil War

misgivings within the broad political spectrum that encompassed the studenchestvo. For radical students opposed to the Bolsheviks, anomie was based to a large extent on the perception that promises for a better society had been betrayed. The memoirs of T.L Til', a former leader of the student underground who wrote extensively about his experiences, shed light on the mentality of the Social Democratic and Menshevik student activists. Til' suggested that they were driven by the romantic notion of belonging to an illegal organization and by the expectation that they would take a leading role in social reform. Rebels such as Andrei Kranikhfel'd, leader of the Moscow Social Democratic organization, devoted many hours to theoretical and philosophical argument and to the wording of declarations. Others were attracted to underground movements because of a particular attitude. Georgii Dmitriev was one such student. Til' quoted some of Dmitriev's reminiscences: "He would frequently say in a dreamy tone, 'It was a hungry time and I often remember [thinking], glancing at the ceiling in a melancholy manner, how wonderful it would be to eat a [couple of pounds] of meat.' Like so many others, after years of wandering from prison to prison, he died in exile in the camps after 1937."54 Alongside opposition-minded students, another casualty of the Bolshevik revolution was the large group of displaced youth from non-labouring backgrounds who faced social ostracism and discrimination in the classroom. Having this awkward status, they tended to adopt a cynical attitude towards the Soviet higher-education system. Financial difficulties forced some of them to drop out, while political persecution discouraged others. Those who remained learned that adaptation was the key to survival, as adherence to official rules and regulations became a necessary part of getting through the program. According to Nikolai Poppe, a former philosophy student who later became a professor, many of his peers would criticize non-Marxist professors in public but in private would work under them eagerly as proteges. Maintaining a profile of activism was often a necessary condition for continuing to study. Former students recalled that they were forced to sign up for political and social work (agitation brigades, political discussion groups, and so on) but rarely participated in these activities. Ayn Rand, then a young student at Petrograd University, quickly recognized that official acceptance of public duties was a prerequisite for staying in school.55 The new generation of students, which was more favourably disposed (or at least not overtly hostile) towards Soviet socialism, had different expectations. The Communist Party expected these students to carry the banner of socialism into their professional life, but as the framework for the instruction of young specialists and the incentives

54

Builders and Deserters

designed to integrate them into the new system had not yet become firmly established, most students remained ambivalent. The available evidence suggests that many had fairly high expectations for their future under socialism, but not all were convinced that the present government offered the solution to Russia's ills. The Petrograd Technological Institute survey in 1918 provides an interesting crosssection of opinions related to these questions, although it is impossible to know whether the respondents were being completely honest in their answers (the questionnaire included a guarantee of anonymity). One of the questions was, "What is your principal attitude towards Soviet power?" Students had a choice of two responses: "favourable" (polozhitel'noe) and "negative" (otritsatel'no). Sixty-one per cent gave a positive answer, and only 5 per cent said they harboured a negative attitude. The remaining 34 per cent pencilled in their own responses: 60 per cent of these (22 per cent of all respondents) said "either way" or "all the same," and the remainder (12 per cent of the total) failed to give an answer. Several of the individuals who had a favourable impression of Soviet power felt compelled to add qualifying statements such as "in general" or "either way - anything that will allow me to work." Only two of the nine students who held an openly negative view of the government dared to add their own remarks. One may have echoed the private feelings of others when he wrote: "Afraid to speak out." The supplementary comments of one ambivalent student perhaps typified the attitude of those in the final category: "I am entirely uninterested in questions of politics and socialism." Judging from the results of the survey, it seems that a significant number of students were willing to serve in a professional capacity under the new state if they were given hope for the future, but many felt uncertain about their future employment. Public work and scientific or professional occupations were the most popular career choices. When questioned about how they could contribute time and energy towards the cultural and educational advancement of society, the vast majority did not respond. Among those who did, two typical answers were, "To conduct lectures and literary work among the people" and "To make use of our knowledge for the benefit of the people." More indicative of political apathy was the fact that only 10 per cent gave an affirmative answer to the question, "Do you currently take part in political life?" 56 This looming spectre of apathy became a dominant theme in the anxious dialogue between the state and the studenchestvo in the 19205. Politics had an ambiguous impact on the attitudes of students who joined the Party and Komsomol. Eager young activists betrayed their immaturity by engaging in bombastic diatribes against professors and faculty members or by getting involved in tendentious discussions

5 5 Revolution and Civil War

about Party democracy and strategies for replacing anti-Bolshevik teachers and administrators. Deans found themselves petitioning Narkompros at regular intervals, complaining that self-styled student "administrators" were walking into council meetings and telling professors how to run their institution. By the end of the civil war, communist youth began to exhibit a change in attitude towards political activism. District and regional Party organizations noted poor discipline, political inactivity, "passivity," and low attendance at meetings. Students recognized that "rehearsed" (planned, formulaic) behaviour in Party cells (a tendency later to be labelled "careerism") was essential for political survival and self-promotion. It should be noted that during the civil war quite a few students engaged in academic life with enthusiasm. Despite hardship, they became keen learners and were grateful for the privilege to attend classes. Some pupils were lucky enough to attend lectures by famous historians such as E.V. Tarle; such mentors provided inspiration for future studies.57 However, the Technological Institute survey suggests that the state faced formidable obstacles in its attempt to transform a heterogeneous mass of activist-minded, ambivalent, and apathetic youth into a cohesive socialist student movement. The process required weeding out "hostile" students through a combination of instructional and punitive measures, but to be effective it also demanded that the state do more to improve students' living conditions. CHANGES IN THE CLASSROOM

During the civil war Narkompros attempted to construct an unbroken educational ladder, linking labour with knowledge through a system of preparatory, secondary, and specialist schools. The task of curricular reform became part of an ongoing political battle between the advocates of polytechnical instruction on the one hand and general instruction on the other. The Communist Party's abrupt intervention in 192,8, granting a victory to the polytechnists, resolved this struggle. The polytechnists called for almost exclusive emphasis on the sciences, mathematics, and industrial training but the professoriate remained divided over curricular reform. A small group of professors called for the infusion of Marxist-oriented subjects and pedagogical methods, but the majority demanded a system based on generalist instruction within a free academic environment. Narkompros, placing itself somewhere between these two camps, attempted to satisfy political demands while adopting an aggressive approach towards the professoriate. The leftist bloc, the chief representative of which was Glavprofobr chairman E.A. Preobrazhensky,

5 6 Builders and Deserters

wanted to "militarize" the studenchestvo through rapid training programs in heavy industry and engineering. Preobrazhensky believed that universities and other institutes of higher education had to satisfy immediate economic and political demands and not their own narrow scientific and academic interests.58 The State Academic Council (GUS) was created in March 1919 to standardize curricular programs and to act as a central regulatory agency in this area. After initial discussions with institutional representatives, the GUS proposed a scheme for the "rationalization" of higher education and the institution of a number of structural reforms to faculties. Forced mergers of several smaller vuzy into larger ones in the same year were intended to eliminate duplication and cut down on potential arenas for resistance. In Petrograd the most notable result of this policy was the consolidation of the three universities, including medical and economic disciplines, into a single institution. Mergers aroused a great deal of opposition among professors, who interpreted the changes as a direct attack on institutional autonomy, but the financial situation made it impossible for institutions with duplicate programs to coexist. Academic disciplines came under greater scrutiny. The main goals of Narkompros - more practical training and the development of politically oriented disciplines - were outlined early in 1919, along with proposals for a new faculty structure designed to replace "bourgeois" disciplines and introduce Marxist approaches towards teaching and scholarship. Narkompros notified Petrograd University of the elimination of the "antiquated" Law Faculty and the transfer of the departments of Political Economy, Finances, and History and Philology to the new Faculty of Social Sciences (FON). The university's professoriate was almost unanimously opposed to the new faculty. They feared losing their jobs and the creation of what they deemed to be an illogical realignment of requirements in the social sciences and humanities. The student council believed that the new system discriminated against seniors who had almost completed their education and that juniors would be forced to take extra courses halfway through their degree program. Some of the more outspoken professors, such as historian N. Kareev, surmised that the new faculty put far too much emphasis on Marxist methodology and teleological conceptions of history.59 But the reforms went ahead anyway. The Faculty of Social Sciences was established in the summer of 1919 in universities all across Russia. At Petrograd University, the FON replaced three of the four existing faculties (History and Philology, Eastern Languages, and Law). The other faculty, Physico-Mathematics, united the disciplines of mathematics with the pure and applied sciences. Under the new system, Social Sciences became the largest faculty. In 192.1 the faculty was reformed

57 Revolution and Civil War

once again, leaving it with three departments: Law, Economics, and Socio-Pedagogy.6o Whereas most professors vehemently opposed attempts to reform their chosen courses, student representatives on the academic council (the majority of whom by 1921 were either Party members or sympathizers) tended to favour the measures, believing that they would result in necessary changes to an outdated system. According to the new structure, students took general instruction for their first two years and then specialized for their final two years of study. Narkompros emphasized the importance of the social sciences for students not specializing in this area, because it introduced the basics of Marxism and dialectical materialism. In fact, it was the proposal to include new "socialist" disciplines that generated the most controversy. Following the arrest and deportation of professors and the disbanding of anti-Bolshevik student organizations in the spring of 1922, Sovnarkom introduced new compulsory "political minimums." Courses on "Capitalism and the Proletarian Revolution," "The Political Structure and the Socialist Tasks of the RSFSR," and similar subjects became compulsory.61 The dire economic situation created an obvious need for technical specialists. In May 1920 all higher technical schools (vtuzy) were instructed to condense their programs and open up admissions in order to graduate students at a faster rate. This mandate included the enrolment of 1,245 students in special fast-track programs at the Mining, Technological, and Polytechnical institutes.6z The new system of higher technical schools was designed to produce specialists in areas such as engineering, metallurgy, and applied chemistry. Instead of the four-year program specified for universities, most of the technical institutions adopted, for the time being, a three-year course of study consisting of a balance between lecture and laboratory training, with summer practicums and an honours project in the final year. These institutions, however, suffered from the same problems and high drop-out rates afflicting other branches of higher education.63 Pedagogical and medical education also underwent substantial changes. In November 1918 the Third Pedagogical Institute in Petrograd (later known as the Herzen Pedagogical Institute, the largest in the Soviet Union) opened its doors. The Humanities, Physico-Mathematics, and Natural Sciences-Geography faculties offered broad training to aspiring teachers. Academic disciplines were divided into general and specialist "cycles," with junior students taking subjects in the sciences and humanities.64 Petrograd's medical schools - the First Medical Institute, the Military-Medical Academy, and the Psycho-Neurological Institute were very active during the civil war. Hundreds of students took on medical duties at the front and behind the lines in army clinics. Many

5 8 Builders and Deserters

received two-week crash courses in sanitary disinfection in order to aid front-line and civilian casualties.65 The basic plan for medical education was to combine lectures in general fields with laboratory work, but the dearth of facilities and the financial crisis brought enrolment numbers down by 1919/2.0. Less than 300 medical students graduated during the civil war.66 By September 1920, when most of the curricular and structural reforms had been put into place, the higher-education system had become more clearly delineated along disciplinary lines. There were seven categories of vuzy under the control of Narkompros: general instruction (socialeconomic), pedagogical, fine arts, medical, agricultural, economic, and technical. Universities and general instruction institutions continued to dominate enrolment. Of the forty-five institutes of higher education in Petrograd in the fall of 192,0, the five largest - behind the university were the Medical, Polytechnical, Pedagogical, and (two) Technological institutes. There were glaring gender imbalances in some areas: in socialeconomic vuzy, 54.9 per cent of the students were female; in pedagogical schools, women accounted for 79.5 per cent of the students; in higher technical schools, only 7.1 per cent were women.67 Increasing the proportion of students enrolled in higher technical education and the number of women in fields such as engineering, agronomy, and the applied sciences became priorities for Narkompros following the end of the civil war. Along with instituting curricular changes, Narkompros attempted to deal with the issue of how students were to acquire knowledge. The Bolshevik revolution ushered in new ideas about state-building and the need to bridge the gap between city and countryside. A union (smychka) between workers and peasants became the basis for the idea that hands-on acquaintance with the rudimentary processes of production and social organization would create an educated population with a social conscience. Pedagogue V. Aleksandrov and others argued that the old university system encouraged a passive absorption of knowledge - a process that hindered the development of applicable skills and practical knowledge. Established techniques of laboratory training and lectures, Aleksandrov wrote in 1919, gave students little of the practical knowledge they needed to cope with real-life demands. Rather than the mindless repetition and "scholasticism" inherent in old methods, Aleksandrov promoted a new system of instruction - incorporating hands-on experience, excursions, and individual projects - as a way of giving students "illustrations of real life." This combinative approach of theoretical and practical training became the basis for apprenticeship work in the 1920S.68 Implementing the system proved an entirely different matter. Despite their precarious political situation, professors hostile to the Bolsheviza-

59 Revolution and Civil War

tion of higher education could declare a partial victory in the war that played out in the classroom. By 1922 many prominent intellectuals had been arrested or exiled, and those who remained were forced to deal with the regime on its own terms. Nevertheless, in addition to resisting or ignoring revolutionary proclamations concerning academic training as best they could, professors used financial and logistical problems to their advantage. The opening up of admissions produced a growing mass of unqualified, even illiterate, students who held others back. A significant majority of students bypassed the secondary school system (the subject of fierce criticism) after Narkompros decided in 1918 to abolish entrance examinations and eliminate the requirement that each candidate submit a certificate attesting to completion of a secondary school degree. The regulations created an artificial levelling of candidates and brought in a new cohort whom professors believed were wholly unqualified for advanced studies. Their displeasure translated into sustained pressure on Narkompros to reintroduce entrance examinations for all students. Sociologist Pitrim Sorokin noted that the "zero students" (communists, mostly from a working-class background, who had managed to enrol only because of the new regulations) were so poorly prepared that any effort to teach them was fruitless. V. Stratonov, who taught at Moscow University, echoed this complaint. Communist students, he wrote, "gushed into Moscow," expecting to be admitted just because of their status. Stratonov and many of his colleagues simply refused to teach them, partly because the majority had no grasp whatsoever of the fundamentals of the social sciences, but also because the professors wanted to make the political statement that socialism could not produce higher academic standards merely by decree.69 The quality of students was not the only factor responsible for unimpressive academic achievements during the civil war. As student councils noted time and again, the ongoing financial crisis and the shortage of textbooks made it difficult for newcomers to receive qualitative training. Furthermore, students complained that very little time was devoted to their practical training: anyone enrolled in technical disciplines had to receive practical training in order to qualify for work as an engineer or foreman. Given the chaos at the time, it was not surprising that little effort was expended in improving the situation.70 Perhaps the most effective strategy employed by the professoriate was simply to ignore official decrees and carry on as usual. Memoirs from this period attest that professors sincerely believed that few, if any, of the changes would last. Philosophy professor N.O. Losskii conducted a course on materialism, but he blatantly disregarded its guidelines and taught it from an anti-materialist perspective. N.S. Timashev,

60 Builders and Deserters a sociologist at the Polytechnical Institute, openly criticized Marxist interpretations of law.71 At the same time, there was a great deal of resistance against attempts to change the hierarchical relationship between students and professors. Students seemed to have an alternating respectful-fearful attitude towards their professors. Almedingen, being of non-labouring background, re-enrolled in medieval history studies at Petrograd University in 1919 after a three-year absence and was forced to take some difficult entrance tests. She recalled discussing with other students a Professor Dobiash, who had a reputation for toughness: "Once or twice, when calling at the college library, I heard someone mention Dr Dobiash. 'Thorough, isn't she? And what a teacher!' 'Yes,' replied someone else, 'but doesn't she just grill you?' [With that] my heart sank below all conceivable depths."71 S.E. Frish and D.P. Konchalovskii described a similar environment, with professors haughtily dismissing students they deemed unworthy and becoming particularly annoyed if upstarts attempted to challenge their intellectual authority.73 Even if it could be said that the professoriate's strategy of ignoring political events was no more than partially effective (the events of 192122 confirm this), the new generation of students was even less successful in its attempts to overturn the hierarchical relationship in the classroom. Concerned about the disruptions caused by these ongoing battles, Narkompros and even the Communist Party had weighed in and concluded that before any kind of fundamental transformation could take place, the classroom would have to be put in order. Indeed, the problem of reining in over-eager students became a dominant theme in relations between students and the state over the ensuing decade. The civil war ended with a bloated Party and state apparatus, a ruined economy, the countryside in revolt, and a violent uprising by Kronstadt sailors against the state. The intelligentsia, a victim of the political wrath of the Bolsheviks and of the physical and emotional devastation of the civil war, emerged as a shrivelled and dyspeptic remnant of its earlier form. The revolutionary political, economic, and cultural policies envisioned by Lenin had undergone drastic modification owing to the immediate demands of maintaining power. Beyond that, power gradually became an end in itself for the growing mass of competing groups and political figures at all levels of the apparatus. The blueprint for a dictatorship of the proletariat was never realized. Instead, the foundations for a bureaucratized state had been established, although the major economic and cultural initiatives remained subject to a number of factors related to the growing rivalry within the Party leadership. The transformation of higher education during the civil war materialized within this paradigm of massive structural changes exacerbated

61 Revolution and Civil War

by burdensome social and economic realities. A centrally managed system of higher schools, with the student body altered by a series of changing admissions policies, took the place of the old system but had yet to become firmly rooted. The Communist Party had minimal success creating a political and academic environment reflecting a Bolshevik vision of the future. As a new wave of proletarian recruits flooded the classrooms in 1918, it quickly became evident that higher schools were unable to accommodate them. The Party managed to dismantle autonomous student councils and other opposition organizations; however, the more difficult task of recasting the studenchestvo within a new "socialist community" had yet to be completed. Student leaders remained independent-minded, suspicious of state authority, and extremely defensive when it came to defending their academic and institutional prerogatives. And from the perspective of the Party leadership in the 19208, students remained politically apathetic. These issues were addressed repeatedly during the years of the New Economic Policy and the first five-year plan, with vastly different solutions offered as the political environment underwent a further series of drastic changes.

CHAPTER THREE

Shaping the Community

By 1929, when the New Economic Policy had been abandoned in favour of the maniacally ambitious first five-year plan, it was clear that many of the promises offered by the revolution had not been fulfilled. Poor living standards, unstructured academic programs, bureaucracy, and the mere facade of a socialist community had left many students cynical and embittered. Looking back, a student by the name of Donskoi, a resident of the Leningrad Agricultural Institute's main dormitory, felt that the state had failed on many fronts. His remarks at a general discussion convened on the problems of everyday life (byt) resonated among students throughout the 19208. Although access to higher education had been improved, the living situation remained unsatisfactory and officials continued to ignore students' requests. Worse still, there remained little sense of community. "We don't only lack friendship but also simple comradeliness ... People live for three or four years in the same room but hardly ever get to know each another. Rarely do they use the first name and patronymic of a comrade." Others chimed in, noting that senior students rarely helped newcomers and that the reading material they were forced to work with was terribly unsatisfactory.1 These complaints were symptomatic of the widespread problems in the formative period for Soviet higher education. In the spring and summer of 1921, students demobilized from military service gradually filtered back into Petrograd to resume their academic training. Joining others who had struggled through three years of hardship, the young war veterans aspired to be part of an emerging socialist student community in higher education. However, the higher-education institutions much like the state institutions, faced many problems as they desperately tried to adjust to endless structural realignments and contradictory decrees. The struggle for the Party leadership during the NEP

63

Shaping the Community

years, a growing Party-state apparatus, and the forging of political empires at the regional and local levels all complicated this struggle. Lenin's premise - that society could be transformed only through modernization and education - was applied to students on the assumption that they were going to be among the leaders of a new society. The Communist Party tried to create a homogenized community, forged from civic instruction (vospitanie] and policies regulating the social composition of the studenchestvo and the new learning environment. Coercion, moral suasion, and the eventual abandonment in the 19305 of the principle of "social-levelling" in favour of a meritocratic system granting incentives to recognized achievers marked the course of this grand social-engineering project. In this chapter I will examine the structural transformation of the higher-education system and the social and cultural beacons defining the new community from 1921 to 1941. The ideas of community and community-mindedness (obshchestvennost'} were consecrated through iconographical, discursive, and instructional strategies within the changing spectrum of social and political relations in the Soviet Union. Having little opportunity to develop during the civil war, the ambitious strategy for social engineering began to mature in the 192.08, but even in the 19305, the contrast between proclamations and social realities made a "model" community seem an illusive goal indeed. As Donskoi noted, things were so tense and frantic that the lofty goal of socialism usually took a backseat to more pressing concerns. THE NEP AND THE TRANSITIONAL COMMUNITY

Following the defeat of the White forces in the spring of 1921, Lenin launched his New Economic Policy by ending grain requisitions and eliminating some of the restrictions on private trading and manufacturing. At the Tenth Party Congress in March 192.1, Lenin made the case that a disciplined retreat from war communism was necessary in order to resuscitate a devastated economy that did not have enough trained specialists. Congested urban centres and a stagnant rural economy informed the fledgling state that without modernization, technology, and professional training, the socialist revolution would stall in its tracks.2 The task confronting Narkompros was to develop a coherent system of professional training that fulfilled economic demands. But as Larry Holmes has written with reference to secondary education, Narkompros's propensity to continually redefine academic goals in the face of criticism or political pressure undermined its own strategies.3 Similar problems governed higher education as Narkompros and its rivals

64 Builders and Deserters

struggled to devise the new training system. The task was further complicated by differences between the politically oriented goals of the Komsomol and the practical economic concerns of the Supreme Economic Council (vSNKh). 4 The civil war ended with Narkompros gaining greater control over the administration of higher education but facing significant institutional opposition. At the Eleventh Party Congress in March 1922,, the Central Committee declared that the primary duty for Narkompros was to "transform schools from a weapon of bourgeois class domination into a weapon for the total destruction of class divisions within society." Lunacharsky proposed that access to institutes of higher education be expanded and that the curricula be drastically reformed in order to meet the demand for a closer link between theory and practice.5 Such high-minded principles faced formidable obstacles, as financial problems and political conflicts intermittently threw highereducation policy off course. As early as August 1922, a budgetary deficit forced Narkompros to close or merge eighty vuzy and seventy workers' faculties, reducing overall student enrolment in the RSFSR by more than 30 per cent.6 The desperate financial situation was exacerbated by "institutionalized localism" (the practice of pursuing local interests and resisting central directives), and internal Party struggles politicized these conflicts.7 In the sphere of higher education, drawn-out conflicts between Narkompros and its persistent critics - the Komsomol, trade unions, and the Supreme Economic Council - made it all but impossible to work out coherent policies. Disagreements over ideological affiliation, political power, and educational theory extended to the recruitment and political training of students, seriously hampering professional education. The most strident critics of Narkompros demanded a proletarianization of the classroom and the expulsion of "bourgeois specialists" from higher-education schools. Narkompros, after 1921, tried to accommodate the proletarian agenda by promoting the development of workers' faculties. Critics of the rabfaki (senior professors, foremost among them, became convenient political targets because of their remarks) correctly pointed out that unqualified, fast-track working-class graduates placed a tremendous burden on the higher-education system. Nevertheless, workers' faculties assumed an important place in the new professional training strategy over the next decade.8 The Soviet higher-education system expanded considerably during the NEP period, although not without growing pains. Enrolment increased threefold, while the number of institutions decreased. Leningrad vuzy experienced difficulties similar to higher schools in other cities. An inordinately large number of smaller institutions - formed as

65

Shaping the Community

a result of the splintering of disciplines during the civil war - struggled for financial and academic survival. In December 1921 there were twenty-six vuzy in Petrograd, enrolling more than 45,000 students. Many of the smaller ones, such as the Institute of Firefighting Engineers (which had all of twenty-seven students in 192.2), competed for scarce funds while trying to justify their continued existence. Financial cutbacks in August 1922 preceded a process of "rationalization" that began with the closure of six Petrograd vuzy and ended with the merger of several others into larger institutions.9 Within the context of severe financial problems and ongoing political battles, the state attempted and then abandoned a series of curricular experiments; these will be noted here and examined more closely in chapter 5. The NEP "system" could be defined as a combination of shifting policies, persistent shortages of teaching materials, and disputes over methods of instruction. In 1922 the State Academic Council (GUS) attempted to reduce the number of disciplines offered, condense course material, and force students to specialize early on in their degree programs. In the spring of 1924 Narkompros restructured the Faculty of Social Sciences in all universities and liquidated parallel courses in economics and related disciplines. A little more than a year later, this faculty was eliminated altogether and replaced by Soviet Law and EthnographyLinguistics (lamfak). The GUS, criticizing lectures as a passive learning technique, replaced them with the group-seminar method and obligatory political education courses. In 1926 the GUS made further reforms, lengthening most degree programs and instituting stricter entrance standards.10 The intelligentsia experienced increasing pressure to conform as the institutional changes came into effect. This was part of what Katerina Clark has called the "quiet revolution" against the old order.11 In higher education this revolution was evident in attempts to remove professors who harboured ambivalent or hostile attitudes towards the regime. Although Lunacharsky favoured a policy of persuasion and guarded cooperation, the Central Committee after Lenin's death in January 1924 seemed less willing to compromise. The perception that professors continued to run their own academic kingdoms fortified suspicions that the "soft line" was not working. Younger Marxistoriented teachers, many of whom had joined the Party or Komsomol as a way into the system, had begun to gain a foothold in vuzy by the mid-i92os. The vast majority of senior academics - they continued to command the highest levels of professional and administrative authority - remained reluctant to join the Party. The absence of communist teachers gave the Party additional ammunition as it launched an all-out offensive against the professoriate in 1926-27. In February 1925 the

66 Builders and Deserters

Central Committee ordered that regional and institutional Party organizations conduct "re-elections" in academic councils, the goal being to replace senior professors with communist sympathizers.11 This campaign quickly bogged down in institutional infighting. By 1928 Leningrad's regional Party committee announced that it had successfully cleansed academic councils of bourgeois specialists. This claim was exaggerated. At Leningrad State University and other vuzy, electoral battles more often than not resulted in the appointment of compromise candidates. Frustrated deans and department heads reported to their Party organization that the situation was out of control.13 Changes in the social and political composition of the studenchestvo must be understood within this ongoing process of institutional restructuring and conflict. Data on social composition are highly problematic. Archival and published sources often fail to provide comprehensive yearly reports on admissions and social background, and in many cases only a checkerboard picture is available. Furthermore, the confusing and inconsistent nature of the classification system produces additional complications.14 Students were expected to fill out questionnaires on their social background, current occupation, and previous political and academic training. Quite naturally they would have been tempted to exaggerate or falsify their qualifications. Nevertheless, data on social composition do allow us to draw a portrait of the changing student community. In 192.3 peasants and workers combined to make up 41 per cent of the student population in the USSR. Byi9z8 this figure had risen to 5 3 per cent. The problematic nature of these data has sparked a debate over their relevance and accuracy. Although the temptation for falsification was high, the data presented in Tables 3.1-3.3 suggest that working-class and peasant representation in the higher-education system had, in fact, changed considerably since 1917.15 Changes in the social composition of the Leningrad studenchestvo reflected patterns at the all-Union level. They show the expansion of working-class enrolment accompanied by a social and political segregation of students by discipline. Candidates from working-class and peasant backgrounds gained wider access to higher education. Women experienced the opposite effect: in the 192.0/2.1 academic year women outnumbered men in vuzy and predominated in medical and pedagogical institutes, but after demobilization men once again constituted the majority in higher-education schools, as in pre-revolutionary days. Women did not succeed in penetrating the technical disciplines traditionally associated with men until the late 19205 (Table 3.1). In sum, the social revolution in higher education during the NEP produced some significant changes, although by 1928 the majority of students in most institutions were from "traditional" backgrounds (Tables 3.2 and 3.3).

Table 3.1 Gender of Leningrad Students (per cent) 193 5 /363

1926/272

1 920/2 11 Male

Female

Male

Female

Male

Female

RSFSR

51.0

49.0

69.2

30.8

48.3

51.74

Leningrad

48.2

51.8

73.5

26.5

67.0

33.0

Leningrad State Univ.

45.3

54.7

56.7

43.3

60.6

39.4

Medical Institute

13.9

86.1

33.2

66.8

24.1

75.9

Mining Institute

95.3

4.7

96.4

3.6

74.9

25.1

Technological Institute

94.1

5.9

92.0

8.0

46.7

53.3

Sources: (i) Narodnoe obrazovanie po osnovnomu obsledovaniiu 1920 goda, i; 129. (RSFSR figures do not include 34,579 students who did not specify their gender.) (z) Narodnoe prosveshchenie v SSSR, 1926-1927, 161-2. (3) TSGA SPb, £62.76, op.35, d.85- (4) GARF, £2306, op-70, ed. khr.36i8, 1.14 (figures for institutions under Narkompros, fall 1937).

Table 3.2. Social Composition, Selected Leningrad Vuzy (per cent) Technological Institute

Medical Institute

Leningrad State Univ.

1924/25 Worker Peasant Other

20.2 7.0 72.81

17 A 4.1 78.53

15.3 36.5 48.25

1927/28 Worker Peasant Other

36.9 11.4 51.72

25.4 20.1 54.54

18.9 15.9 65.26

1935/367 Worker Peasant Other

Communist University

Industrial Institute

Electro-Technical Institute

State Conservatory

Academy of Arts

58.7 31.3 10.0

61.3 3.6 35.1

62.1 4.1 33.8

26.6 5.8 67.6

35.3 5.8 58.9

Sources: (i) TSGA srb, f_3oz5, op.i, d-4475, l.z. (z) Leningradskii tekhnolog, zo October I9z8. (3) TSGA SPb, £3132, op.i, d.i36, U.i-6. (4) Pul's, 25 June i9Z7. (5) TSGA IPD, £24, op.ib, d.z6i, I.z8. (6) TSGA IPD, £984, op.i, d.249, l.i. (7) TSGA SPb, £6276, op.35, d.85-

68 Builders and Deserters Table 3.3 Social Composition of the Studenchestvo (per cent) 1924/25

1929/30

1935/36

Worker Peasant Other Worker Peasant Other Worker Peasant Other Total RSFSR Students RSFR

40,4129 21.8

Total Leningrad Students

25.8

171,90010 12

52.6

26.9

12,2009

24.2

519,300"

n/a

13

48.9

42,0318

63,9903

Leningrad Average

20.8

22.1

57.11

49.6

34.3

16.12

56.2

10.4

33.43

Leningrad State Univ.

15.3

36.5

48.24

22.0

17.6

60.45

44.1

9.4

46.53

Mining Institute

27.3

30.6

42.16

47.9

26.3

25.87

64.2

7.6

22.23

Sources: (i) TSGA spb, f.6zy6, op.69, d-35,1.8. (z) TSGA IPD, £.2.4, op.ib, d.z6i, 1.2.8. (3) TSGA srb, i.6zj6, op.35, d.85_ (4) A. Ross'e, "Proverka," Student-proletarii, no. 3 (192.4): i. (5) TSGA IPD, {.984, op.i, d.37O,1.30. (6) Leningradskii Gornyi Institut, 39. (7) TSGA srb, £.2.556, op.z, d.37i, 1.95. (8) TSGA srb, £.6x76, op.70, d.33, ll.i6z-4. (9) Narodnoe obrazovanie v RSFSR za 1923-24 god, 2.18-31. (10) K.N. Plotnikov, Ocherki istorii biudzheta sovetskogogosudarstva (Moscow, 1932,), 152,. ( n ) K.N. Bukhman, "Vtuzy i vuzy SSSR k nachalu 1935/36 uchebnogo goda," vrs, no. z (1936): 133 (figure is for USSR only), (iz) Narodnoe obrazovanie v RSFSR (1916), 185. (13) Narodnoe prosveshchenie v RSFSR, mai 1929 g., diagramma 31.

New recruitment strategies and attrition brought on by the civil war reshaped the face of the student population. Pressured by the Communist Party to ensure higher working-class and peasant enrolment, in 192,3 Narkompros introduced a system of nomination and selection by organization affiliation (komandirovanie). The arrangement stipulated that priority be given to students from workers' faculties, trade unions, and the Communist Party (white-collar students competed for the few spots not reserved for specific groups). Narkompros instructed regional and institutional admissions committees to establish specific quotas by social category and for Communist Party and Komsomol candidates, depending on the type of institution and the given faculty or department. Technical and agricultural institutions, given their special role in the economy, received higher quotas for workers and peasants than universities and others specializing in the social sciences.16 Between the Party demanding that more communists and workers be enrolled and vsNKh officials pushing for improved preparatory training

69 Shaping the Community

(particularly for those entering higher technical schools), Narkompros found itself in a no-win situation. Following the student verification in 192,4 (see chapter 4), advocates of higher admissions standards were temporarily discredited and quotas for non-mbfak graduates and noncommunist candidates diminished once again. Although more stringent entrance standards gradually came into effect, workers' faculty students remained exempt from writing admissions examinations. The Communist Party's pursuit of a "Face to the Countryside" policy in 1925 put pressure on admission committees to pay more attention to applicants from the countryside. The poor quality of peasant recruits forced academic institutions to choose between meeting the political demands of the state and satisfying the requirements of their academic programs. Faculty deans often resisted the quota system and tried to find ways of admitting better-qualified students. All these factors resulted in wide disparities in student composition between technical and general instruction institutions. Admissions quotas of 45-60 per cent for workers and 30 per cent for peasants were rarely met in the latter. The reluctance of institutions to conform to guidelines that did not take their needs into account was understandable, given the fact that their reputations depended to a considerable degree upon the quality of students.17 Building a New Student Community Structural reforms to higher education and the segregation of students along social, political, and academic lines were the preconditions for altering the dimensions of the student community. Speaking at the Second All-Union Conference of the Central Bureau of Proletarian Students in January 192.7, F. Eideman, the new chairman, repeated what had become by then a standard refrain: "It has been noted at the allUnion level and at all local student conferences that our student community in vuzy has declined significantly, that our cultural work in vuzy and political instruction of the studenchestvo are not at a sufficiently high level."18 Eideman's remarks reinforced a prevailing assumption that to this point students had failed to live up to the tasks of building socialism and that efforts to construct a "socialist" student community had so far been inadequate. The would-be builders of this community - Narkompros, the Communist Party, the Komsomol, and students - attempted to ratchet ideological doctrine onto academic study, political activity, and civic instruction. The community setting acted as a "common place" in which narratives on culture and politics combined with symbols and established institutions to form idealized landscapes, organized both spatially and discursively. As the goals of higher education and civic instruction became linked with the broader

jo Builders and Deserters cause of building socialism, the idea of "campus" stretched far beyond the confines of academic institutions. Student newspapers played a critical role in this process of public engagement, associating official directives with the moral authority of the community and offering models for cultured and responsible individuals. The newspapers assumed an important role by presenting the prevailing values of the day and contrasting them with spectacular examples of what not to do, how not to act. Furthermore, they brought to light the seamier realities of everyday student life in undigested form. Articles on hooliganism, indiscipline, truancy, and the unmasking of political "enemies" provided glimpses into the binary world of socialist order and Soviet chaos. The newspapers offered a point of association between culture and knowledge, performance and reward, suggesting possibilities open to the achieving individual and contextualizing issues related to students within the day's major issues. At the same time, they illustrated the limits of an "official discourse" that tended to paper over deeply rooted problems.19 The problems of everyday life could not be solved merely by enunciating ambitious social engineering strategies. Through new forms of social organization, leisure, and work, the socialist visionaries believed they could transform society fundamentally. In this era of experimentation and social criticism, the state found itself unable to fulfil many of the promises made after 1917. Students lived the example of this gap between promise and reality. In i9z6 the Leningrad Technological Institute completed one of the most detailed surveys of student life ever undertaken in Russia. The survey, conducted by a five-member committee of students, physicians, and administrators (Rector L.I. Veller edited the final version of the survey results), had the goal of constructing an "objective picture of student life" at the institute and examining the changes that had occurred since the war. Although it might not have been definitively representative, the survey did offer an unprecedented insight into the lives of students. It included ninety-seven questions related to personal background, health, living conditions, sexual relations, academic and public work, and political attitudes.20 At the bottom of the form students were asked to add general remarks about any aspect of their academic, political, or personal lives. Their comments, which were never formulaic in nature and which represent a cross-section of student attitudes in raw form, give us a rare opportunity to hear the anonymous and anxious voices of the revolutionary generation. More than of anything else, the students spoke of overwhelming physical and psychological exhaustion. Inadequate financial support, a rushed academic program, political pressures, and a spartan living environment were major factors contributing to fatigue. One

7i

Shaping the Community

respondent's remarks summed up the situation: "As a result of an overburdened academic schedule and too much public work in the past year, I developed severe anaemia and neurasthenia. I lost my memory faculties, which had serious consequences for my academic situation. I need to take six months to one year off, but [the Dean's Office] isn't allowing it. They should increase the program length in the vuz to seven years." Acknowledging that nothing much had changed under Soviet power, Veller noted in his concluding remarks to the survey: "Students as a whole live in poor, unhealthy conditions and eat poorly; therefore they get ill, quickly wear themselves out, and lose much of their ability to work long before the end of the [academic] year."21 The wide variety of responses to this survey suggests the ambiguous state of the "community" in which students found themselves. The problems related to academic programs, political pressures, and personal isolation (which will be examined later on in this book) had a great deal to do with this austere environment. Technological Institute respondents overwhelmingly listed financial support as their biggest concern ("For the delegation of stipends, the administration should pay less attention to social background than to material need," one student commented). In response to the question "What changes of an academic nature do you feel should be implemented to improve student life in vuzyt" another wrote curtly: "Decrease the number and increase the quality of stipends."22 A number of political and financial factors determined the funding situation. Students received various forms of state support depending on their social origins, academic performance, academic program, and, in many cases, political outlook. The financial crisis confronting Narkompros at the end of the civil war resulted in the reversal in January 192,2 of the ban on tuition payments. All students except for Komsomolites, Party members, and workers' faculty graduates were compelled to pay tuition. Narkompros established a new agency in charge of student funding, the Central Stipend Commission, under the direction of the Committee on Professional Education. Three types of funding opportunities existed: state stipends, private stipends, and those awarded through industrial enterprises or state organizations. State stipends were the most common form of funding (students from working-class and peasant backgrounds were given priority). Serving as another option, a network of funding agencies and labour groups provided students with financial assistance and work opportunities.23 In the 19208 only one-third of all students received some form of stipendiary aid; yet even for individuals blessed with stipends, the money always seemed to fall short of basic needs. In the mid-i92os stipendiary support ranged from 10 to 30 rubles per month (most received less

72. Builders and Deserters

than 20 rubles). However, student leaders estimated that individuals required 2,2-25 rubles per month for subsistence living in the two major cities.24 Private stipends, donated by institutions or individuals, funded no more than 10 per cent of all students in the 19205 (most students from non-labouring backgrounds obtained support from parents or relatives). Stipends through "contracted out" work became an increasingly important means of funding students. All of this had the effect of pushing the issue of financial support into the spotlight as the most consistent grievance registered by the Central Bureau of Proletarian Students (TSBPS) and its affiliated student organizations. At meetings of local, regional, and central student organizations, blame was deflected upwards - from local to central student representatives, and from the TSBPS to offices of harried state officials, each in turn promising to address the financial plight of students.25 The housing situation was another example of how bureaucratic inertia and inadequate resources left students out in the cold. Here is a sampling of grievances pencilled in by Technological Institute students in 1926: "Total darkness"; "Dampness"; "Always cold"; "Too windy"; "There is never any sun"; "The sixth floor"; "Neighbours with kids." As the following short sketch of a typical moment in the kitchen of an overcrowded dormitory at the Leningrad State Institute of Medical Technology reveals, communal life was never easy. Mayhem reigned in the crowded kitchen as all the residents tried to prepare their dinner at the same time. After one young woman finished her cooking, a struggle of "stove-top imperialism" ensued for rights to the burners: "Comrade, are you going to be done soon?" a cook asks. "Yes, but I have a candidate for this spot." "What do you mean by 'candidate'? This isn't an election to a parliament, you know." An argument and shoving match ensue, with the result that both leave - disarmed by spilt soup.

Students at the institute often complained about missing items or the annoying habits of others. Occasionally, comrades left messages in the kitchen: "To the person who mistakenly took the copper pot with soup in it, please return it to room no. ..."; or "To the person who mistakenly took the silver spoon from the kitchen, please return it. With communist greetings, Student N."26 This scenario was repeated in communal kitchens all across Leningrad. There was little improvement in access to private housing (rent gouging and negligent landlords were common). Instead, Narkompros devoted its resources to improving student residences. Dormitories

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Shaping the Community

brought students together in an enclosed space and promoted an intensive form of socialization. The problem was that many dormitories were a considerable distance from their associated institution (the Mytnia facility for Leningrad State University was over one hour away by tram). Furthermore, putting students together in cramped and poorly heated quarters, and in many cases with non-students, fostered problems. As an anonymous commentator noted in 192.7, students continued to live far below the standards aspired to by Narkompros. Reviewing fortythree dormitories in Leningrad, the commentator described impossible study conditions in inferior quarters. "Those who have felt boots and warm clothes can get settled in 'not too poorly' during lessons," but for others it was just a question of keeping warm. Furthermore, residents were forced to deal with a commandant (the dormitory administrator) who most often was less interested in good management than in using his position for access to black market goods. In the ongoing war between students and commandants, the former often described the latter as a bureaucrat and class enemy.27 The lamentable housing situation contributed to a litany of other problems. A survey of 1,351 students at the Leningrad Medical Institute in 19x4 linked poor living conditions with bad health and negative general attitudes. E.V. Poliakov, the physician who compiled this report, wrote that the combination of physical hardship and stress related to studies had created a generation of unhealthy students, many of whom "suffered from a psychoneurosis" or had exhibited other signs of psychological strain and apathy. Poliakov found that while 69 per cent lived one or two to a room, the overwhelming majority reported unsatisfactory conditions, problems with excessive noise, or troublesome roommates.28 Poor hygiene, improper diet, lack of exercise, and the generally hectic pace of life also affected students' health. Hygiene became a priority in the 192,05, as legions of officials from the Commissariat of Public Health (Narkomzdrav) attempted to establish instructional programs and improve the abysmal state of health care.29 Soviet sociologists and physicians, in their attempt to "rationalize" byt, conducted a number of timebudget studies to find ways of improving health and health services. A cursory review of seven surveys from Leningrad and elsewhere shows the extent to which students were burdened with a wide variety of obligations, including an average of three to four hours of public work per day (these consisted of political duties and work in labour brigades and social organizations). Exhaustion was a pervasive theme in these surveys. Long queues for stipends or food, two-hour trips on public transportation to and from class, and interminable hours spent waiting for administrators to deal with complaints took up a great deal of time and energy.30

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Builders and Deserters

Improper diet constituted the norm for workers and peasants in the 19205. The situation was no different for students, as communal dining-hall (stolovaia) patrons continued to put up with bland fare. Students relied on the dining-hall as a chief source of nourishment because of its low prices and proximity to campus. Some of the stolovaia were managed by student cooperatives, while others were sponsored by the municipal government through the local housing bureau (zhBK). Almost every higher school had at least one dining-hall, although very few could claim to offer high-quality fare. Because they were dependent on supplies from local cooperatives, dining-halls quite often fell victim to the bottlenecks that commonly plagued the food distribution network. A meal with fresh vegetables or milk remained the exception rather than the rule. Even though most students spent 40-50 per cent of their income on food, few could afford fresh goods when they were available. The main dining-hall at the Technological Institute was fraught with problems typical of communal dining facilities at other institutes. Many of the survey respondents noted their disgust with the daily offerings. The food was bad, line-ups for various dishes atrociously long, and the atmosphere generally unpleasant. The "perpetual question," as one student put it, entailed how could the quality and variety of food be improved without exceeding the dining-hall's limited operating expenses. Apparently, no one was experienced in the area of culinary algebra. The omnipresent "permanent cutlet" - a dry and stale piece of breaded so-called meat presented as the main course - attested to this fact. Concerns about rude employees and poor kitchen hygiene rounded out the complaints. Apparently, students could take only so much, and in 1925-27, visits to the dining-hall dropped sharply.31 All this was part of the picture of poor health and diet for students in the 19205. The absence of adequate health-care facilities or prescription drugs, medical personnel at local clinics complained, made the situation worse.32 From one perspective, everyday life in the 19205 was not so very different from previous decades. Poverty, poor health, and overcrowding united students in a culture of material despair. But that was only one dimension of student life. An entirely new sphere of organized activities emerged during the NEP, many of them based in student clubs. Clubs had traditionally offered students a place to relax or to discuss the burning political issues of the day. Clubs began to expand their activities in 1922, when communist student councils took over club administrative duties and promoted their own agendas. Whereas the Commissariat of Public Health promoted clubs as an ideal way of

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Shaping the Community

broadening the horizons of education, the Communist Party and Komsomol focused on agitation and propaganda work.33 The October Club, opened in November 192.2. at Moscow State University, was one of the largest. With over 2,000 members, the club established "red nooks" (krasnye ugolki) and a number of discussion circles devoted to political education, oratory, and team sports.34 Leningrad clubs, the largest of which were at Leningrad State University and the Technological and the Polytechnical institutes, expanded rapidly after 192,3. The student councils appointed a "cultural committees" to manage the various sections of the clubs. Students were encouraged to take advantage of excursions to museums and galleries, watch films, and read newspapers. The Technological Institute by 1924 had a thriving club scene. Its club reported 7,500 reader subscriptions to local and regional newspapers. Students regularly visited the theatre and went on other "cultural excursions." Club members spent evenings discussing Party doctrine, the work tasks in the countryside, and other issues.35 The development of organized sports sections in student clubs reflected the emphasis at the time on physical culture and collectivism. Recreational and competitive sports began to grow in popularity in the 19205 as mass spectacles, the cult of body, and synchronous production-line labour came into fashion. Mass sporting events (spartakiad), promoted as an alternative to bourgeois competitions, epitomized the ethos of a strong body being essential to a healthy social attitude. Similar to their counterparts in Western Europe, Soviet sports theorists believed that sports moderated the young person's libido.36 Although the Komsomol played an important part in staging mass events, local trade unions assumed control over sports. The largest clubs - the Dinamo and Red Army - spawned a number of smaller affiliates. Komsomol activists, in conjunction with clubs, launched in 192,4 the first sporting events in vuzy. Not much went on until the early 19305, when sports became an obligatory part of the curriculum. 37 Clubs offered special lectures on current topics, but students often found them to be boring propaganda sessions rather than informative seminars. In the wake of scandals involving the Leningrad Party organization and the Komsomol (see chapters 7 and 8), the student club at the Polytechnical Institute in the fall of 1926 hosted lectures and discussions on "Heroism of the Revolution in the Days of NEP," "Esenin and the Eseninshchina," "The Sex Question and Youth," and other controversial topics. Other clubs convened discussions on the dangers of tuberculosis and the importance of good hygiene. There were even educational films about the countryside, the evils of capitalism, and the importance of good personal grooming.38

7 6 Builders and Deserters

Another dimension to club life escaped the grasp of authorities. Students embraced clubs as meeting places and centres for cultural and political activity, but often not in the way that organizers had imagined. Students would commonly sign up for an activity with enthusiasm but then find that they had neither the strength nor the desire to pursue it. Furthermore, their personal conduct was often not up to Komsomol standards. Clubs acted as retreats for activities like smoking, lounging around, and raucous debates injected with foul language. Most of the films that were shown at the clubs did not reflect the tastes of their audience. As Denise Youngblood has noted in her study of early Soviet cinema, the general public seemed to be more interested in watching Hollywood movies starring the swashbuckling Douglas Fairbanks and his wife, Mary Pickford, than in viewing propaganda pieces or cheap productions with thin plot lines. Until 1926, when new censorship and import rules came into effect, the foreign films shown to Russian audiences far outnumbered domestic productions.39 Students had similar tastes, preferring big-budget imports to educational fare. Acknowledging the popularity of foreign movies, the Communist Party made every effort to convince audiences to give more of their attention to educational or politically useful pursuits than to popular films. But this plea usually fell on deaf ears.40 The following question was included in the Technological Institute survey: "What interests do you have aside from your studies at the institute?" Many indicated that they were interested in theatre, concerts, the literary classics, or sporting activities. On the other hand, a little more than half failed to elaborate on this question, suggesting that nothing struck their fancy or that they had not given it much thought. Perhaps the response of one young woman offers a plausible explanation for this seeming apathy: "I am interested in a lot of things, but I have no time." Most students claimed to have read more than just academic material. Fiction and social and political works were popular choices, but only 20 per cent said that they read mass-circulation newspapers like Leningradskaia pravda regularly. Reading may have been a popular pastime, but academic work and survival remained priorities.41

THE "GREAT BREAK" In May 192,9 the Fifth Ail-Union Congress of Soviets formally adopted an accelerated version of the first five-year plan, instituted one year earlier. The amended plan projected a 236 per cent increase in gross industrial output and a no per cent elevation in labour productivity over the next four years, thereby allowing the USSR to "catch up and over-

77 Shaping the Community

take" the capitalist states while building a fortress of socialism in one country. During the five-year plan Stalin moved against remnants of the Party's opposition and, through a policy of forced collectivization, against the wealthy peasants (kulaks) who had been demonized as class enemies. The Stalinist Great Break of 1928-29 marked an attempt to expand the dimensions of the revolution and create a new social elite. The working class, discontented with low wages, poor living conditions, and the continued presence of bourgeois managers in industry, in some ways benefited from this massive effort. The announced discovery in the spring of 1928 of a conspiracy by Soviet and foreign engineers in the coal-mining region of Shakhty to overthrow the Soviet government, followed by their subsequent trial, underscored the urgent need to promote workers and peasants as future leaders of the Soviet system. Changes were occuring at breakneck speed, with Soviet society constantly having to catch up as the state raced forward.42 Stalin's Central Committee presented the five-year plan as a time for action, not for patience and compromise. The denunciation of Bukharin's "deviationist" Right Opposition and the execution of several Shakhty engineers in 1928 confirmed this position. In every city, Soviet citizens were exhorted to struggle for the five-year plan and stand guard vigilantly against saboteurs and class enemies. Sergei Kirov, who took over as Party secretary for Leningrad in 192,6, loyally implemented the heavy industry and collectivization targets dictated by his superiors in Moscow. As a major industrial centre, Leningrad became critical to the success of the fiveyear plan. Russia's second capital remained a centre for professional training, and for this reason it was subjected to intense pressure from Moscow to restructure its schools of higher education. A reckless storming of the ivory towers of academia occurred during the "cultural revolution" from 1928 to 1931, casting aside the old order and replacing it with an unmanageable and incoherent system. The proletarianization of the classroom, an attack on the administrative organs governing higher education, and a complete reorientation of academic programs constituted the main themes of this period. The eventual retreat in 1931 from these excesses suggested that revolutionary experimentation had been repudiated, but as Gail Warshofsky-Lapidus has noted, the rejection of experimentation following the "cultural revolution" did not signal a total abandonment of the reforms introduced in 1928-30. The Stalinist highereducation system of the 19308 resurrected some of the old Russian cultural icons, but it did this within the framework of Marxist-LeninistStalinist ideological orthodoxies.43 In July 1928 the Central Committee introduced measures to mobilize Communist Party recruits ('thousanders - so named because the Party

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demanded that no fewer than 1,000 communists be recruited for higher education) with no less than four years of work experience for enrolment in institutes of higher education. The 'thousanders and other promoted workers (vydvizhentsy] were part of a new generation of recruits targeted as the eventual replacements of the predominantly noncommunist, politically hostile intelligentsia.44 Meanwhile, the Central Committee stepped up its political war against Narkompros, replacing Glavprofobr chairman Khodorovskii with A.Ia. Vyshinsky (special prosecutor in the Shakhty trials) and launching a massive purge of the commissariat in 1929. The attack on Narkompros was too much for Lunacharsky, who resigned in protest. He was replaced in the spring of 1929 by A.S. Bubnov, a former member of the Organizational Bureau and a firm supporter of the Stalinist line.45 The new emphasis placed on industrial-technical training resulted in a transfer in June 1930 of most scientific and technical disciplines under Narkompros jurisdiction to professional schools controlled by the Supreme Economic Council and its affiliated commissariats.46 These measures provided momentum for a frontal assault on universities as outdated institutions. A contributor to the main student periodical in 1929 described universities as "an unwanted conglomeration of the most variegated faculties, united in the single aim of creating a more potent 'higher-scientific' bureaucracy." University officials realized that their institutions were on the brink of extinction and that a new system of professional training was on the horizon. Although Narkompros was unwilling to totally abandon the concept of universities, the commissariat found itself in a politically precarious position. Instead of reorganizing vuzy into consolidated centres with specific specialties, the new measures broke them up into competing institutions with parallel programs.47 Several new industrial and technical institutions in Leningrad, most of them modest in size, emerged in 1930. The Institute of Marine Transport Engineers, the Institute of Soviet Trade, and the Institute for Mechanics and Optics competed with larger and more established schools. Factory-technical schools created in 1930 to link institutions more closely with industry, represented part of this new group. A remarkable structural transformation had taken place. Enrolment in agricultural and medicine increased fivefold in the RSFSR, while higher technical schools witnessed a jump from 48,900 in 1928 to 2.21,400 in 1932 (this was due in part to the transfer of departments and faculties previously attached to universities).48 A similar leap forward in higher technical education took place in Leningrad, where authorities projected that over 12,000 engineering "cadres" would graduate over the course of the first five-year plan.49

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Shaping the Community

By spring 1931 the damaging effects of policies instituted over the previous three years had become clearly visible. As the available pool of working-class specialists dried up and economic planning was complicated by panic-stricken managers of enterprises desperately trying to meet quotas, the industrial sector increasingly complained about the counterproductive aspects of "specialist baiting." During his June 1931 speech, Stalin ordered that there be more individual and group responsibility for enterprises and other organizations; he also decreed the institution of wage differentials and an end to the harassment of technical specialists.50 Stalin's speech signalled a move away from a discriminatory system in higher education that favoured workers towards a system based on a meritocratic model. The retreat of 1931 contained an implicit admission that the institutional war launched against higher-education schools, and in particular against universities, had produced some deleterious effects. New policies, introduced by Narkompros in the fall of 1931, set the task of reunifying specialized programs in higher schools and making them more responsive to economic demands. The brigade-laboratory method of instruction (whereby "brigades" of students were assigned to specific tasks and evaluated on a collective basis) was discredited. Academic institutions had to integrate their research projects more closely with current state demands while enforcing stricter rules of conformity in the areas of teaching, course content, and administrative procedures. Three years of chaotic upheaval had a significant impact on the social composition of the studencbestvo. Working-class representation in Leningrad's higher-education schools increased from 32.5 per cent in 192,8/29 to 51 per cent in 1930/31. In addition to imposing discriminatory admissions quotas favouring proletarian candidates, the state poured more resources into a special program for the rapid promotion of selected students. The Supreme Economic Council had established the Institute for Vydvizhentsy in 1926 in order to regulate the training of specially selected apprentices (almost all of them from workingclass or peasant backgrounds) in designated enterprises. By 1930 there were 558 promoted workers in Leningrad, 65 per cent of whom were working-class or peasant youth; 262 were members of the Communist Party and 171 belonged to the Komsomol.51 As the figures in Table 3.3 show, there had been a massive influx of working-class youth into vuzy by the fall of 1929. The political composition of the studencbestvo exhibited a similar transformation. The Central Committee in 1930 introduced communist student quotas of 10 to 20 per cent, depending on the institution. Admissions figures for Leningrad reflected the changes brought about by these new recruiting policies, Party and Komsomol candidates accounting for over half the incoming students between 1929 and i93i. 5Z

8o Builders and Deserters

A Community in the Vanguard Changing the social composition of the student population proved easier than constructing a new type of community. Commenting in the winter of 1928 on the current mood of the studenchestvo, V. Balkin, a Komsomol student at the Leningrad Technological Institute, suggested that an "everything for yourself" attitude had appeared over the preceding few years. He was especially concerned that cultural activity and a "spirit of struggle" among his peers had declined: "The reactionary flower of pessimism, arising out of hesitancy, is visible from the following fact: a young female rabfak student and Komsomolite mentions in her diary that she does not believe in socialism, that Darwinism contradicts Marxism; besides that, she generally doubts the purpose of someone building socialism. Occasionally other comrade Party members, having grown soft, echo this type of pessimism: 'It's too bad that we need to struggle and that these are relevant ideas,' they say."53 Balkin's comments fit the tone of the period. Collective struggle, vigilance, and the promotion of a new generation of Red specialists constituted the new benchmarks for the socialist student community. Their assault on apathy, as I will describe here and in subsequent chapters, pervaded all dimensions of student life during the cultural revolution. This was a period during which the walls of individualism, bureaucracy, political resistance, and laziness were broken down and a new collectivized order took their place. "We Are Collectivizing Life," one headline proclaimed in the Leningrad student newspaper in 192.9 vis-a-vis the transformation of dormitories into communes. "A New Form of Wrecking," another declared with reference to suspicious activities going on in a dormitory. "We Give a Decisive Rebuff to Rightist Attacks," one commentator wrote, condemning students who had deserted their brigade duties in the countryside. In response to demands that they move in record time to help complete the building of socialism, Komsomol and Communist Party students announced that they would storm fortresses occupied by bourgeois professors, perpetual students, bureaucrats, and class enemies, ridding the student community of anyone who failed to conform. Obshchestvennost' implied leadership from Komsomolites, Party members, and working-class students. Attempts to improve students' living standards constituted part of the strategy to promote socialism. The financial situation for students had improved only marginally since 1922,, as the chairman of the Central Bureau of Proletarian Students noted disapprovingly in the fall of i9z8.54 New funding policies in 1928 explicitly discriminated in favour of workers (using "worker coefficients"), workers' faculty graduates, and peasants. In 1930 stipends

81 Shaping the Community

Illus. i "Weightlifting." Written on the sign: "Average standard of living for a worker." Below it, a student stands on a platform marked "Five rubles. Stipend." "Oh! I can't jump that high! ...," he says. (KP, 2.4 September 1929)

for those in the priority categories increased by approximately 10 per cent, and a differentiated scale according to type of institution came into effect (higher technical schools received priority). Candidates from non-labouring backgrounds lost out in this system. Left with no other recourse, they desperately appealed to local officials and even to Lunacharsky for a chance to enrol.55 In 1931 Narkompros tried to balance financial and political demands by establishing a special commission for students, the Commission for Social Support, but this new body failed to make much progress. During the first five-year plan, issues related to everyday life became further politicized. The housing question, for example, remained a major grievance. Such issues mobilized collective political forces after the promises for a better life had faded into the background. Commandants, often perceived as standing in the way of better living conditions, had become symbols of bureaucratic disinterest and corruption. Student councils denounced despised commandants as slovenly bureaucrats and petty tyrants who ignored requests and embezzled funds. An article in the Agricultural Institute newspaper in 1929, titled "We Demand the Dismissal of the Commandant" and undersigned by a "Light-Cavalry Brigade," offered an example of how easily grievances could become politicized. The "brigadiers" attacked their commandant for neglecting his duties and ignoring complaints. Because the article

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appeared during a massive Party purge, everyone understood the intent of the expose: "The fact that the commandant, Smirnov, downs vodka daily is well known to all those living in the dormitory; no one can get a hold of him or find him. There was a suggestion from some of the fellows about establishing office hours - he didn't take it up. There was talk about the poor work of the cleaning lady (she worked only two hours a day and wasn't maintaining a clean dormitory) - measures were not taken. The rooms for washing up are filthy and flooded. To this point a list of students hasn't even been posted. So, you can see, we need decisive measures ('Light.')." 56 Commandants probably felt that they had a thankless task. Harassed by state officials and pestered by students, even the diligent ones could not avoid getting into trouble. Communal living offered a practical alternative to both costly apartments and dormitory life. Communes offered an environment for socialization and security to students seeking financial assistance or camaraderie. They drew from a romanticized tradition dating back to the revolutionary era of N.I. Chernyshevskii in the 18508, a time when individuals aspired to live collectively in harmony, to work together to produce a better living environment, and in the process to help establish a new way of life. The student commune movement experienced steady growth during the early 19208. In 192.3 only two officially registered communal organizations in Leningrad existed (one at the university, the other at the Polytechnical Institute), and they had a combined total of twenty students. By 1929 there were twenty-five communes with a total of 2,500 members; membership ballooned to 7,700 members in 1930, inhabiting sixty communes.57 Most communes established detailed rules and administrative structures - partly for practical purposes but also to lend them greater legitimacy. The commune for water transport students at the Polytechnical Institute, established in December 192,3, had twelve members. They voted on issues in a collective assembly.58 The Leningrad ElectroTechnical Institute commune, created in 192,4, started with sixty students (the majority from first and second year), most of whom were poor and had difficulty coping with studies and part-time work. A former commune member, M. lankovskii, recalled that he and several other Komsomol students organized a discussion circle that dealt with a range of issues; members talked about the need to improve the quality of meals, the domestic and international political situation, and other grandiose causes. The commune was governed by an executive threesome (troika) that controlled the finances. General meetings usually took place in the dining-hall, the "club and parliament of the commune." Students were expected to exhibit exemplary behaviour and to devote all of their energy to academic work. All noise was banned after

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Illus. 2 The crowded dormitory. Written at the top: "Moscow Construction Union." Written on the barrel: "Dormitory." At the bottom: We are "fulfilling" and "overfulfilling." In a satirical reference to the five-year plan slogan of "fulfil and overfulfil," a Moscow bureaucrat is shown trying to stuff as many students as possible into the dormitory. This was one of many cartoons addressing the problem of crowded quarters - a common complaint among residents. (KP, 9 October 1930)

n:oo P.M., and a sign stating, "Those who do not have the mind to rest, do not have the mind to work," reinforced this point. Honours students conducted study sessions for fellow members. The commune developed several other services, including a special reading room in which members could peruse various newspapers and journals along with the commune's own wall newspaper.59 Buttressed by the official policy to change every dormitory into a commune, the Central Bureau of Proletarian Students in 192.9 called for a conversion of all available dormitory space into communal units. In June 1930 a conference of the Leningrad Bureau set the new agenda: "The commune is a voluntary organization of proletarian students, setting its tasks as conducting propaganda, practical instruction

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on the socialist way of life, and the education of a new collectivist person, a proletarian specialist - an organizer, an active fighter and builder, freed from the ways of private property."60 This doctrine complemented mass-recruitment policies for workers and the emphasis placed on political education. The principle of turning every dormitory into a commune encouraged a pooling of resources and the revocation of private space in favour of public interaction, which in turn were designed to accelerate the development of a collectiveminded and socially conscious individual. In reality, these communes were nothing more than enclosed dormitory communities with fancy new governing regulations. Faddish administrative appendages, such as "revision commissions" (they periodically checked commune members' work performance) and "academic-domestic committees" (they managed cultural-education, academic, sanitary-domestic, and finance "sectors"), bogged down the decision-making process. The collective form of administration and decision-making inevitably led to conflicts over group and individual needs. At the ElectroTechnical Institute, heated debates arose over whether or not members should have to keep their doors open. At one point, lankovskii recalled, the leftists argued that members should be available at all times and should hold no secrets. But a few students noted that without privacy it would be impossible to have girlfriends or boyfriends as guests. In the end the leftists won out, confident in their belief that commune members were better off casting aside petty-bourgeois notions of personal privacy. Other problems revolved around members failing to do their assigned chores or hoarding personal items. Commune members (the term kommunar was often used, directly borrowed from the days of the Paris Commune), not surprisingly, had difficulty accommodating individual requests while maintaining a spirit of collectivism and the integrity of the commune's rules. Apart from that, they complained about the negligent elected administrators who had left them in 1930 with a budgetary deficit. By this time attendance at commune meetings had dropped substantially. Students took matters into their own hands and secured the local Party control commission to conduct an investigation. Here and elsewhere, problems related to discipline began to dominate business at general meetings.61 Interminable political campaigns, compressed academic programs, and the generally miserable housing situation tended to strain the collectivist ethos. In 192.9 the Technological Institute's Party committee encountered the protests of students exhausted by the convergence of numerous pressures. An ongoing dispute at the institute's Egorov Dormitory, involving two fourth-year students Party members Znamenskaia and Pirnavskii, took up a fair amount of the time that the committee devoted to a study

8 5 Shaping the Community of the general mood among students. Like Donskoi, whose comments were introduced at the beginning of this chapter, Znamenskaia and Pirnavskii did not have a rosy perspective on life. Several of Znamenskaia's peers complained that she had become withdrawn and was rarely around to take part in communal activities. For her part, Znamenskaia claimed that she was only reacting to difficult circumstances: "Every day I work from nine o'clock in the morning to eleven or twelve in the evening. We study with Beller [another student], so that I have little time left for self-education or anything else." According to Zbarovskaia, one of the roommates who was interviewed, Znamenskaia's self-imposed isolation was symptomatic of the larger problem of poor relations between comrades and the propensity of a few to take an elitist attitude towards others.6* The situation at the Egorov Dormitory was not unique. It exposed a thinly veiled truth: the cultural revolution had done little to improve the living situation for students - and no amount of official proclamations could convince the students otherwise. In addition to the ongoing housing issue, nagging problems related to communal dining remained unresolved. Empowered by the rhetoric of class warfare, students used the lessons not learned from past mistakes as political ammunition. Communist students kept a watchful eye on the operations of communal dining facilities, sending in letters to the editors of student newspapers exposing corruption, sloth, and mismanagement. The bureaucratic problems were such that even the normally silent voices of students from non-labouring backgrounds joined the condemnatory chorus of communist activists. Complaints from Leningrad State University students at dining-hall no. 8 suggest a typical scenario. The food was of very poor quality, and dining-hall employees cheated students out of their bread rations (they were getting less than 300 grams instead of the allotted 400 grams). Patrons were forced to line up for an average of thirty to sixty minutes for each meal, for a total of two to two and a half hours per day in queues. To make matters worse, the cooks ignored a basic rule of hygiene, using unwashed meat knives for chopping or slicing other foods. The bad feeling in the dining-hall led to many incidents of swearing and rudeness between employees and students.63 Dining-halls had closed down all over the country as financial shortfalls left the People's Commissariat of Provisioning (Narkomsnab) with inadequate operating expenses. In the Vasilievsky district of Leningrad, budgetary cutbacks forced the district council to close down three cafeterias that regularly served over 3,000 students.64 Students who spoke of "apocryphal menus" ("I have never seen the twenty-five meat dishes [in a month] that the chairman of the regional bureau talked about in his report," one patron commented in 1930)

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mused aloud that managerial negligence must have been the work of class enemies.65 The cultural revolution could not resolve the contradictions arising from inadequacies in the physical living space and material support for students. Naturally, these generated significant disaffection and feelings of isolation among students. The Party chose to deal with the problem by promoting a more intensive program of civic and cultural instruction. Forging ahead with the construction of socialism, students found themselves participating in a number of political campaigns described as "cultural activities." They read brochures and watched films on industry and agriculture before setting out for the countryside in antireligious or collectivization brigades.66 With all this going on, students had neither the time nor the energy for such interests as leisure reading and other recreational activities.67 As for how they chose to use their disposable income, they continued to spend a greater share of their budget on tobacco and alcohol rather than on reading material or cultural activities. As a survey of 180 students at the Agricultural Institute in 1929 showed, the average student spent more on alcohol and tobacco than on theatre, cinema, and newspaper subscriptions combined. This may not have been a valid comparison, as tickets to cultural events were generally quite cheap, but in any event, the survey made it clear that students needed to devote more time and energy to cultural pursuits.