Stalinism, Maoism, and Socialism in Higher Education (Global Histories of Education) 3030887766, 9783030887766

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GLOBAL HISTORIES OF EDUCATION

Stalinism, Maoism, and Socialism in Higher Education

Lee S. Zhu

Global Histories of Education Series Editors Tim Allender University of Sydney Camperdown, NSW, Australia Diana Vidal University of São Paulo Butanta, São Paulo, Brazil Linda Chisholm Education Rights and Transformation University of Johannesburg Johannesburg, Gauteng, South Africa Christian Ydesen Department of Culture and Learning Aalborg University Aalborg, Denmark

We are very pleased to announce the ISCHE Global Histories of Education book series. The International Standing Conference for the History of Education has organized conferences in the field since 1978. Thanks to our collaboration with Palgrave Macmillan we now offer an edited book series for the publication of innovative scholarship in the history of education. This series seeks to engage with historical scholarship that analyzes education within a global, world, or transnational perspective. Specifically, it seeks to examine the role of educational institutions, actors, technologies as well as pedagogical ideas that for centuries have crossed regional and national boundaries. Topics for publication may include the study of educational networks and practices that connect national and colonial domains, or those that range in time from the age of Empire to decolonization. These networks could concern the international movement of educational policies, curricula, pedagogies, or universities within and across different socio-political settings. The ‘actors’ under examination might include individuals and groups of people, but also educational apparatuses such as textbooks, built-environments, and bureaucratic paperwork situated within a global perspective. Books in the series may be single authored or edited volumes. The strong transnational dimension of the Global Histories of Education series means that many of the volumes should be based on archival research undertaken in more than one country and using documents written in multiple languages. All books in the series will be published in English, although we welcome English-language proposals for manuscripts which were initially written in other languages and which will be translated into English at the cost of the author. All submitted manuscripts will be blind peer-reviewed with editorial decisions to be made by the ISCHE series editors who themselves are appointed by the ISCHE Executive Committee to serve three to five year terms. Full submissions should include: (1) a proposal aligned to the Palgrave Book Proposal form (downloadable here); (2) the CV of the author(s) or editor(s); and, (3) a cover letter that explains how the proposed book fits into the overall aims and framing of the ISCHE Global Histories of Education book series. Proposals and queries should be addressed to [email protected]. Preliminary inquiries are welcome and encouraged. More information about this series at http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/15390

Lee S. Zhu

Stalinism, Maoism, and Socialism in Higher Education

Lee S. Zhu History Loras College Dubuque, IA, USA

Global Histories of Education ISBN 978-3-030-88776-6    ISBN 978-3-030-88777-3 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-88777-3 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover illustration: © Dmitry Erokhin / Alamy Stock Photo This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG. The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

Contents

1 Introduction  1 Part I The Convergence of Maoism with Stalinism in the Early 1950s and China’s Initial Endeavor to Create a Socialist System of Higher Education  17 2 The Soviet Model and China’s Initial Endeavor to Create a Socialist System of Higher Education 19 Part II Historical Convergence Between Stalinism and Maoism: Soviet Higher Education in the First Five-­ Year Plan Period and Chinese Higher Learning During the Great Leap Forward  51 3 Class War Against the Bourgeois Intelligentsia and the Intensified Effort to Create a Proletarian Intelligentsia 53 4 The Outburst of Utopianism and Reforms in the Process of Education101

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Contents

Part III Higher Education in the Soviet Union Under High Stalinism and in China Under Late Maoism 143 5 Socialism and Goals of Higher Education in the Soviet Union Under High Stalinism and in China Under Late Maoism145 6 Transformations in Higher Education Institutions Under High Stalinism and Late Maoism191 7 Afterword235 Index245

Abbreviations

CCP CPSU Glavprofobr Gosplan HEIs Komsomol Narkompos NEP LOSNKh PRC Rabfaks Sovnarkom TsBPS TsIK VKVSh VKVTO VSNKh VTsSPS

Chinese Communist Party Communist Party of the Soviet Union Main Administration of Professional-Technical Education State Planning Committee Higher Education Institutions Young Communist League Commissariat of Enlightenment New Economic Policy Council of the National Economy of the Leningrad Region People’s Republic of China Workers’ Departments Council of People’s Commissars Central Bureau of the Proletarian Students Central Executive Committee All-Union Committee for Higher School Affairs All-Union Committee of Higher Technical Education Supreme Council of the National Economy All-Union Central Council of the Trade Unions

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List of Tables

Table 3.1 Engineering schools: First-year students enrolled and students graduated84 Table 5.1 Acceptance rates of the candidates of different social categories in Shanghai (in percentage) 165 Table 6.1 Number of faculty members by ranks at Chinese HEIs 201

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CHAPTER 1

Introduction

This book is a comparative study of the endeavors to create a socialist system of higher education in the Soviet Union under Stalin and in China under Mao. The Stalinist endeavor to create a socialist system of higher learning began with radical reforms in the First Five-Year Plan period (1928–1932). Eventually, the Stalinist regime not only rejected radical experiments undertaken during the First Five-Year Plan period, but also abandoned some political objectives that had been sought in higher education before 1928. By 1941, the Soviet system of higher education—a system that lasted until the collapse of the Soviet Union with little modifications—had come into its final shape. This system not only accepted educational conventions, but also selectively incorporated educational traditions of Tsarist Russia. But it was not a throwback to the past. It embodied the spirit of the planned economy and served the socialist state. The socialist experiments in Chinese higher education began with the adoption of the Soviet system, which was the end product of the Stalinist endeavor to create a socialist system of higher education. However, the final outcome of the Maoist endeavor to create a socialist system of higher learning was sharply different from that of the Stalinist endeavor. The book is organized around three themes: (1) the convergence of Maoism with Stalinism in the early 1950s, which induced the transnational transplantation of the Soviet model of higher education to China; (2) the historical convergence between Stalinism of the First Five-Year © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 L. S. Zhu, Stalinism, Maoism, and Socialism in Higher Education, Global Histories of Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-88777-3_1

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Plan period and Maoism of the Great Leap period (1958–1960), which was prominently manifested in Soviet and Chinese higher education policies in these respective periods; (3) the eventual divergence of Maoism from Stalinism on the definition of socialist society, which was evinced in sharply different final outcomes of the Maoist and Stalinist endeavors to create a socialist system of higher learning. These three themes provide a framework for developing a comparative analysis, but Stalinism and Maoism examined in this book were Joseph Stalin’s and Mao Zedong’s evolving views as well as policies of the Stalinist and Maoist states rather than static theories. This book pays equal attention to policy objectives and actual outcomes. The major part of the book examines the process of policy implementation, in which the actual outcomes of state policies were manifested. While examining the policy implementation process, this book considers different approaches of the different actors involved in the implementation of policies as well as the opinions of those who were critical of state policies, and it demonstrates that all these actors played some role in shaping the actual outcomes of state policies or in causing policy changes. The idea of socialism influenced higher education as well as primary and secondary education in the Soviet Union under Stalin and in China under Mao. However, the endeavor to create a socialist system of higher education in these countries had its own history, as it concerned many issues that were particular to higher learning. Such issues included the effort to create a proletarian intelligentsia, higher education management and the system of internal governance at higher education institutions (HEIs), the question of how engineering, scientific, and other specialized personnel should be educated in the socialist system of higher learning, and the question of whether there should be a legitimate space for an educated elite in socialist society. The main sources used in this book are materials from Soviet and Chinese archives and from newspapers and journals published in the Soviet Union and China. The Soviet archival materials are mainly from four collections in the State Archives of the Russian Federation: the collection of the Commissariat of Enlightenment of the Russian Republic (GARF, f. 2306), the collection of the Central Bureau of the Proletarian Students (GARF, f. 5574), the collection of the All-Union Committee of Higher Technical Education (GARF, f. 8060), and the collection of the All-Union Committee for Higher School Affairs (GARF, f. 8080). The Chinese archival sources are from two collections in the Shanghai Municipal

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Archives and one collection in the Beijing Municipal Archives: the collection of the Department of Higher Education of the Shanghai Municipal Government (SMA, B243), the collection of the Shanghai Municipal Party Committee’s Department of Education and Health (SMA, A23), and the collection of the Beijing Party Committee for Higher Schools and its successor, the Department of Universities and Science of the Beijing Municipal Party Committee (BMA, 1–22). My main methodological approach, which is applied to the second and third parts of the book, is to identify comparable phases in the evolution of Stalinism and Maoism and in the Soviet and Chinese endeavors to create a socialist system of higher education, and to examine the Soviet and Chinese endeavors in each of the comparable phases in a comparative perspective. With this approach, this book aims to develop a rigorous comparative analysis on the foundation of historical evidence while also providing a coherent picture of the efforts to create a socialist system of higher education in the Soviet Union under Stalin and in China under Mao. This book is divided into three parts, each examining one of the following themes.

The Convergence of Maoism with Stalinism in the Early 1950s: The Soviet Model and China’s Initial Endeavor to Create a Socialist System of Higher Education “Learning from the Soviet Union” was a motto promoted by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in the early 1950s. During this period of time, there was Soviet influence of various degrees in many aspects of Chinese society. However, as Suzanne Pepper noticed, “the effort to learn from the Soviet Union was most evident in higher education.”1 Immediately after the founding of the People’s Republic of China (PRC), the Ministry of Education of the new government sought Soviet tutelage in its effort to reform higher education and create a socialist system of higher learning. After two years of piecemeal reforms, Soviet tutelage eventually resulted in the transplanting of the Soviet system of higher education to China. Viewed in historical perspective, the motto “learning from the Soviet Union” as well as the transnational transplantation of the Soviet system of higher education to China represented a convergence of Maoism with Stalinism. The CCP followed Mao’s strategy of revolution before the

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founding of the PRC in 1949. Unlike the Bolsheviks, who first took power in cities and then extended their power to the countryside, the CCP built its power basis in the rural areas before taking over cities. Later, as demonstrated in this book, Mao would reject the Stalinist definition of socialist society. However, in the early 1950s, the CCP closely followed the Soviet model in its effort to build socialism (especially in industrial and cultural spheres), and even Mao himself sought tutelage from Stalin’s written works for a road map toward socialism.2 Unlike other scholars who examined Soviet influence on Chinese higher education,3 I use a comparative approach to enrich and deepen our understanding of the transnational transplantation of an educational model from the Soviet Union to China. My comparative approach reveals that although some features of the Soviet system of higher education had been criticized by professors in the Soviet Union itself, they were enforced in China either as rigidly as in the Soviet Union or even more rigidly, and problems inherent in the Soviet system of higher learning were imported to China in exaggerated form. One of the reasons for this result of the transnational transplantation of the Soviet model of higher education was the role played by the Soviet experts who served as advisors in Chinese higher education. Another reason stemmed from the ideologically driven cultural transplantation from a more developed society to a less developed one. As the Chinese decision-makers regarded the Soviet Union as a model, they willingly adopted the view that the Soviet system of higher education should be transplanted in its entirety, disregarding the differences between the two countries in educational traditions and other conditions. With the transplantation of the Soviet system of higher education, China also adopted the Soviet system of internal governance at HEIs, known as the system of one-person management. In this system, the chief executive of a HEI bore full responsibility for administering the institution, and the dean of an academic department was given full responsibility for administering the department.4 Unlike other aspects of the Soviet system of higher education, China’s adoption of the system of one-person management was followed immediately by an adaptation. While examining this topic, the comparative approach adopted in this part of the book means taking into consideration that China and the Soviet Union in the early 1950s were at different stages in the evolution of the Communist state; and it also means considering different political traditions of the CCP and the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU).

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Historical Convergence Between Stalinism and Maoism: Soviet Higher Education During the First Five-Year Plan Period and Chinese Higher Learning in the Great Leap Period Despite the fact that China rejected the Soviet model after a few years of enthusiastic learning from the Soviet Union, some scholars found in the history of the Soviet Union precedents for later Maoist policies. In an article first published in 1974, when the world had just witnessed the first phase of the Great Cultural Revolution in China, Sheila Fitzpatrick argued that there was a precedent of this cultural revolution in the Soviet Union during the First Five-Year Plan period, when the cultural revolution was defined as class war on the cultural front, and when bureaucrats as well as the bourgeois intelligentsia were challenged by the enthusiasts of the cultural revolution.5 In an article, also published in 1974, Martin Whyte argued that a precedent for radical educational reforms in China during the early 1970s existed in the Soviet Union during the 1920s.6 Suzanne Pepper proposed a thesis of backward copying to explain the similarities between policies and strategies for economic development adopted in China during the Great Leap period and in the Soviet Union during the First Five-Year Plan period. She suggested that in launching the Great Leap Forward, Mao in  all probability copied the strategies that Stalin had employed during the First Five-Year Plan period. Pepper did not argue that China also copied Soviet educational policy of the First Five-Year Plan period. Instead, she suggested that educational reforms in China during the Great Leap period, which affected primary and secondary education as well as higher learning, were in all probability inspired by educational reforms in the Soviet Union promoted by Nikita Khrushchev in the late 1950s.7 I don’t seek to find precedents for Maoist policies in the early history of the Soviet Union. Instead, I argue that the First Five-Year Plan in the Soviet Union and the Great Leap Forward in China were comparable historical episodes. Both were programs that strove for an unrealistically high speed in economic development, although the Great Leap Forward also represented China’s departure from the Soviet model of industrialization. Moreover, these programs were launched at a comparable point in the histories of the Soviet Union and the PRC. The First Five-Year Plan in the Soviet Union was launched around the same time when the Soviet

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government began its endeavor to fully socialize the economy (through the forced collectivization of agriculture and the abolition of the private sector in the urban economy). In China, the Great Leap Forward was launched right after the complete socialization of the economy (the collectivization of agriculture and the socialist transformation of the private sector in the urban economy had been completed by the end of 1956), and was accompanied by the emergence of a new organizational form for collectivized agriculture—the people’s communes. The First Five-Year Plan period in the history of the Soviet Union and the Great Leap period in the history of the PRC were also comparable phases in the Soviet and Chinese endeavors to create a socialist system of higher education. First of all, both the First Five-Year Plan in the Soviet Union and the Great Leap Forward in China were accompanied by radical reforms in higher education. More importantly, the beginning of the First Five-Year Plan was also the beginning of the Stalin era in the history of the Soviet Union, as Stalin’s policies brought an end to his alliance with Nikolai Bukharin and other moderate leaders. Thus, although the Soviet effort to create a socialist system of higher education had begun immediately after 1917, the radical reforms in higher education during the First Five-Year Plan period represented the beginning of the Stalinist endeavor to create a socialist system of higher education. As the Great Leap Forward in China represented the beginning of the CCP’s effort to seek its own socialist path of economic development, the radical reforms in higher education during the Great Leap period represented the beginning of the Maoist endeavor to create a socialist system of higher education without Soviet tutelage. Although the Great Leap Forward and the radical reforms in higher education accompanying it represented China’s rejection of Soviet tutelage, there was a historical convergence between Maoism of the Great Leap period and Stalinism of the First Five-Year plan period. This convergence was exhibited, first of all, in Stalin’s and Mao’s doctrines about class relations during or immediately after the complete socialization of the economy. The complete socialization of the economy in the Soviet Union was a departure from the New Economic Policy (NEP), which allowed small private businesses in commerce and industry and market relations between peasants and the Soviet state. As elaborated in Chap. 3, Stalin enunciated a thesis in July 1928 that as the country came closer to socialism, the class struggle became more intense. During the NEP period, although the old intelligentsia (the educated professionals who had begun

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their careers before 1917) was defined as bourgeois by the Soviet government, the latter’s policy was based on the premise that it was possible for the bourgeois intelligentsia to cooperate with the Soviet state. However, Stalin contended in 1928 that as the country was entering full socialism and class struggle intensified, a majority of the bourgeois intelligentsia was no longer willing to cooperate with the Soviet state. In 1957, the year before the Great Leap Forward was launched in China, Mao expressed a similar point of view, contending that although the socialization of the economy had been completed, the bourgeoisie and bourgeois intelligentsia had not yet been reconciled with it. Because of this Maoist doctrine, it became a new orthodox view within the CCP during the Great Leap period that the socialist revolution changed relations between the Communist Party and the intelligentsia. Both Stalin’s and Mao’s doctrines encouraged class war against the bourgeois intelligentsia, which had an enormous impact on higher education. Although the effort to create a proletarian intelligentsia had begun in the Soviet Union before the beginning of the First Five-Year Plan and in China before the launching of the Great Leap Forward, the class war against the bourgeois intelligentsia induced an intensification of this effort in both countries. Moreover, professors were the bourgeois intelligentsia at HEIs,8 and therefore they became the targets of the class war. The class war against bourgeois professors, along with the change of the system of internal governance, completely eliminated the role that professors had played in internal governance at HEIs in the Soviet Union before the First Five-Year Plan and in China before the Great Leap Forward. The class war against bourgeois professors also played a functional role as it silenced a group who would otherwise have had an influential voice in defending academic standards and educational conventions and in objecting to radical reforms in higher education. The outburst of utopianism in the Soviet Union during the First Five-­ Year Plan period and in China during the Great Leap period was another manifestation of the historical convergence between Stalinism and Maoism. This outburst of utopianism was not only exhibited in economic policies championed by Stalin and Mao, but also permeated higher education. The historical convergence between Stalinism of the First Five-Year Plan period and Maoism of the Great Leap period was an ideological convergence. It was not the CCP’s backward copying of the policies that the CPSU had employed in the past. The thesis of the historical convergence does not mean that there were no differences between Stalinism of the

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First Five-Year Plan period and Maoism of the Great Leap period. One of the important differences between them was in the definition of the proletarian intelligentsia. In the Stalinist definition, the creation of a proletarian intelligentsia was essentially the creation of educated specialists or a new elite of working-class origins and, to a lesser degree, peasant backgrounds. By contrast, in the Maoist definition, the “proletarian intelligentsia” never meant just an intelligentsia of proper class origins; social values and political behavior were also important in determining the proletarian nature of the members of the new intelligentsia. As a result, the proletarian nature of the intelligentsia was always elusive in Mao’s China. This book also shows that there were some differences between utopian visions pursued in Soviet higher education during the First Five-Year Plan period and in Chinese higher learning during the Great Leap period. Most of the utopian goals sought in Soviet higher education and measures adopted for achieving such goals emanated from the notion that if the process of education was organized according to a new and revolutionary scheme derived from scientific rationality, miracles could be achieved. This notion stemmed from a strain of Marxism. By contrast, while the Chinese Communists also sought to achieve miracles by reforming the process of education, the most important utopian goal sought in Chinese higher education during the Great Leap period was the elimination of the distinction between mental and physical labor, which derived from another strain of Marxism.

Higher Education in the Soviet Union Under High Stalinism and in China Under Late Maoism The third part of this book examines how and why the endeavors to create a socialist system of higher education in the Soviet Union under Stalin and in China under Mao ended with sharply different outcomes. Many historians have used the term “high Stalinism,” but it does not have a universally accepted definition. For some, high Stalinism was Stalinism from 1945 to 1953.9 Others used this term to refer to Stalinism during the Great Purge (1936–1938).10 Still others used it to refer to Stalinism from 1932 to 1941.11 In this book, I use “high Stalinism” to refer to a new phase of the Stalin era in the history of the Soviet Union, which began in 1934—the year in which the Seventeenth Congress of the Soviet Communist Party proclaimed the victory of socialism. In this sense,

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it can be argued that high Stalinism lasted until Stalin’s death in 1953. But this book’s analysis of the endeavor to create a socialist system of higher education in the Soviet Union ends in 1941, by which time the Soviet system of higher education came into its final shape. There were no significant changes in Soviet higher education policy from 1941—the year in which Nazi Germany invaded Soviet Union—to 1953. The term “high Stalinism” as used in this book does not connote a putative or comprehensive theory. But high Stalinism included the Stalinist definition of socialist society. According to this definition, the Soviet Union became a classless society after the complete socialization of the economy. However, as Robert Tucker pointed out, Stalin also accepted differentials in renumeration according to the degree of qualification and stratified society as a legitimate feature of socialism.12 The term “late Maoism” is used in this book to refer to the new and last phase of the Mao era in the history of the PRC, which began in 1964 and lasted until 1976, when Mao passed away. Late Maoism was symbolized by the new Maoist doctrine of socialist society, which diverged from the Stalinist definition of socialism and socialist society in many ways. First of all, rejecting the Stalinist notion that socialist society was a classless society, the new Maoist doctrine held that not only the ideological influence of the old bourgeoisie would exist for a long time after the socialization of the economy, but a new bourgeoisie could emerge in socialist society. The new bourgeoisie included “power-holders taking the capitalist road,” or the Communist bureaucrats who betrayed the socialist ideal. Mao used the concept “power-holders taking the capitalist road” for the first time in 1964. Therefore, it could be argued that late Maoism emerged in that year. Second, the new Maoist doctrine of socialist society rejected pay differentials and especially stratified society as a legitimate feature of socialism. Third, the new Maoist doctrine also sought the elimination of the distinction between mental and physical labor in socialist society. As elaborated in Chap. 5, this was not a simple revival of a utopian goal sought in the Great Leap period. In the era of late Maoism, the elimination of the distinction between mental and physical labor largely meant preventing the emergence of a new intellectual or educated elite. I argue that although raising academic standards became a new priority in 1932, the proclaimed victory of socialism in 1934 induced a more fundamental redefining of goals of higher education in the Soviet Union. Both in the 1920s and after 1932, rabfaks (workers’ departments)—special preparatory schools created on the assumption that those with

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elementary education could be prepared for higher education at an accelerated speed with a narrower curriculum—helped many young workers and peasants to get access to higher education. During the First Five-Year Plan period, a large number of workers got their “academic credentials” for admissions to HEIs by attending short-term preparatory courses. However, from 1934, all students at HEIs, including engineering and science students, were expected to become culturally refined by reading literary works, attending lectures on arts, literature, and history, visiting museums, and going to theaters and concerts. Then, the Central Committee of the Communist Party declared in 1936 that HEIs should produce “roundly educated and cultured cadres.” This new expectation did not induce the incorporation of the concept of liberal arts education in Soviet higher learning, but it inevitably prompted a reconsideration of the ladders to higher education. Not only short-term preparatory courses, but even rabfaks were considered as inferior sources of students for HEIs in comparison with general secondary schools. Thus, the new expectation that HEIs should produce “roundly educated and cultured cadres,” along with Stalin’s definition of the Soviet Union as a classless society, which was also proclaimed in 1936, brought an end to the effort to create a proletarian intelligentsia. The transformation of the goals of higher education in the Soviet Union in the era of high Stalinism was also demonstrated in the shift in political education. In the 1920s and First Five-Year Plan period, as the would-be members of the proletarian intelligentsia were expected to be social activists, social work (extracurricular activities that supposedly served the common good) was considered as the most important form of political education for students at HEIs. However, after the mid-1930s, although student leaders still defended the political value of social work, the higher authorities downplayed social work as a means of political education and elevated the importance of the ideological courses in the curriculum. This change indicated a shift of emphasis in political education from nurturing social activism to cultivating ideological literacy. Stalin’s definition of socialism allowed a legitimate space for an educated elite. The transformation of the goals of Soviet higher education after 1934 was largely caused by the redefining of the expected traits of the Soviet educated elite. By contrast, the new Maoist doctrine of socialist society no longer allowed a legitimate space for an educated elite. The end of the Great Leap Forward in China in 1961 was also accompanied by a policy shift toward reemphasis on academic standards in higher education.

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However, from 1964 to 1976, the most important political objective in Chinese higher learning was to prevent the emergence of a new educated elite. According to a common narrative in the existing literature on the history of education in the PRC, the Great Cultural Revolution (1966–1976) brought about the last wave of radical reforms in Chinese higher education in the Mao era.13 This book demonstrates that some policy measures were contemplated or undertaken in 1964 and 1965 for the purpose of preventing the emergence of a new educated elite. The most radical one was the plan to convert all the programs in social science and humanities at HEIs into half-time work and half-time study programs. This plan was not implemented because of the beginning of the Great Cultural Revolution in 1966, but was revived in 1975. The most important reform in Chinese higher education undertaken during the Great Cultural Revolution was the new policy for selection for higher education, which cut off the direct path from secondary schools to HEIs. Suzanne Pepper suggested that the strategy in secondary education during the first half of the 1960s created inequality and disadvantaged children from working-class and peasant families in the competition for higher education opportunities.14 A closer look at the process of selecting students for higher education reveals a different picture. Based on the archival data, I contend that judged on its own merits, China’s policy for selection for higher education in the early 1960s, which aimed to balance academic qualifications with political credentials of the candidates and to balance the candidates’ family origins with their own political performance or behavior in determining their political credentials, was successful. The most important objective sought in the new policy for selection for higher education, adopted in 1970, was to prevent the emergence of a new educated elite rather than overcome inequality in access to higher education. Stalin’s view of socialist society as a classless society paved the way for the full integration of the old professors (who had begun their careers before 1917) into the Soviet elite. This book demonstrates that although the class war against the bourgeois intelligentsia was ended in 1931, many Communists still dichotomized the old and new intelligentsia and regarded the old professors as a conservative cohort until 1937. The Great Purge began in the same year when Stalin declared that the Soviet Union had become a classless society, so this declaration was followed by the most repressive period in the history of the Soviet Union. However, as Sheila Fitzpatrick pointed out, the victims of the Great Purge were defined as

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“enemies of the people” rather than class enemies.15 Many professors were arrested or dismissed from their jobs during the Great Purge. But the Great Purge also had a paradoxical consequence. As many Communist officials on the higher education front and younger faculty members at HEIs also became victims, the old ideological view that dichotomized the old and new intelligentsia became irrelevant, and the old professors who did not become victims were fully integrated into the Soviet elite in the aftermath of the Great Purge. Professors as a group were also one of the main beneficiaries of Stalin’s justification of stratified society as a legitimate feature of socialism. By contrast, during the Great Cultural Revolution in China, the definition of the bourgeois intelligentsia was expanded to include the educated professionals who had begun their careers before 1949 as well as those who had received higher education from 1949 to 1966. As a result, the old dichotomy between the old and new intelligentsia was replaced by two new dichotomies. In the first place, because Mao called for reeducating the intelligentsia by workers, peasants, and soldiers, there was now a dichotomy between the intelligentsia, on the one hand, and workers, peasants, and soldiers, on the other. Secondly, there was also a dichotomy between the redefined old intelligentsia and the new intelligentsia that would be produced by a reformed system of higher learning. These new ideological dichotomies played an important role in shaping the power structure at Chinese HEIs in the first half of the 1970s. The divergence of late Maoism from high Stalinism was also manifested in the process of education at HEIs. After the mid-1930s, uniform academic plans (curricula) and course outlines were enforced in the Soviet system of higher education with increasing rigidity. The notion of uniform academic plans meant that each specialty, no matter where it was offered, should follow a standard curriculum that was approved by a government agency and was uniform across the Soviet Union. The notion of uniform course outlines meant that any course that was offered at multiple HEIs had to be taught according to a uniform outline approved by a government agency. Stephen Kotkin argued that it was impossible to comprehend Stalinism without reference to a worldview born in the European Enlightenment and embodied in Marxism, which was to apply science or scientific rationality to society and thereby to create an explicitly rational social order.16 I contend that whereas the idea of applying scientific rationality to the organization of higher learning had propelled radical experimentations in the process of education at Soviet HEIs during the First

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Five-Year Plan period, it reinforced the authoritarian nature of the Soviet system of higher learning under high Stalinism. By contrast, although the radical reforms in the process of education at Chinese HEIs during the Great Cultural Revolution aimed to create a new and socialist system of higher education, they not only rejected the idea of applying scientific rationality to the organization of higher learning, but even precluded any systematic approach to education. Ruth Hayhoe argued that the curricular reform at Chinese HEIs during the Great Cultural Revolution amounted to no less than a total rejection of the artificial boundary among subjects and knowledge areas and a return to an integrative and organic view of knowledge based on Mao’s epistemology, which in turn drew on impulses from the informal pole of premodern Chinese higher education traditions.17 In actuality, when the Chinese HEIs began admitting students again in 1970 (after a hiatus of several years due to the chaos created by the first phase of the Great Cultural Revolution), students were still admitted into various specialties, as they had been before the Great Cultural Revolution. Therefore, the boundary among subjects was not completely rejected. But students were no longer educated according to a predesigned curriculum, and therefore higher education indeed became informal. This paradoxical nature of the reforms in the process of education at Chinese HEIs stemmed from conflicting objectives. The fact that students were still admitted into specialties indicated that creating educated specialists remained an implicit objective of Chinese higher education. But this implicit objective conflicted not only with the Maoist epistemology, but also with the political goal of preventing the emergence of an educated elite. The cultural revolutionaries who rose to power during the Great Cultural Revolution and played a prominent role in shaping higher education policy in the early and mid-1970s were never able to solve this conflict.

Notes 1. Suzanne Pepper, “Education for the New Order,” in The People’s Republic, Part 1: The Emergence of Revolutionary China, 1949–1965, ed. Roderick MacFarquhar and John K. Fairbank. Vol. 14 of The Cambridge History of China (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 198. 2. According to Hua-Yu Li, in the early 1950s, History of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks): Short Course, a book written under Stalin’s supervision, profoundly influenced Mao’s thinking in formulating the path

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to the socialist economic structure in China. Hua-Yu Li, “Stalin’s ‘Short Course’ and Mao’s Socialist Economic Transformation of China in the Early 1950s,” Russian History 29, nos. 2–4 (2002): 357–376. 3. Several scholars have examined Soviet influence on Chinese higher education. See, for example, Immanuel C.  Y. Hsu, “The Reorganization of Higher Education in Communist China, 1949–1961,” The China Quarterly, no. 19 (1964): 135–145. Leo A. Orleans, “Soviet Influence on China’s Higher Education,” in China’s Education and the Industrialized World: Studies in Cultural Transfer, ed. Ruth Hayhoe and Marianne Bastid (Armonk, New  York: M.  E. Sharpe, 1987), 184–198; Suzanne Pepper, Radicalism and Education Reform in Twentieth-Century China: The Search for an Ideal Development Model (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 164–191. 4. I use “dean” as the title of the head of an academic department at the Soviet or Chinese HEI, and use “chairperson” as the title of the head of a kefedra and its Chinese equivalent, the teaching and research group. 5. Sheila Fitzpatrick, “Cultural Revolution in Russia 1928–1932,” Journal of Contemporary History 9, no.1 (1974): 33–53. A revised version of this article, retitled “Cultural Revolution as Class War,” was included in Cultural Revolution in Russia, 1928–1931, ed. Sheila Fitzpatrick (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1978). The title of this volume suggests that she changed her view of the duration of the cultural revolution. 6. Martin K. Whyte, “Educational Reform: China in the 1970s and Russia in the 1920s,” Comparative Education Review 18, no. 1 (1974): 112–128. Whyte mainly considered reforms in elementary and secondary education. He did not notice that like higher education, Soviet elementary and secondary education experienced two waves of radical reforms in the early years of the Soviet Union. The first wave occurred in the early 1920s. The second wave began in 1928 and continued until 1931. See Larry E.  Holmes, The Kremlin and the Schoolhouse: Reforming Education in Soviet Russia, 1917––1931 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991). 7. Pepper, Radicalism, 266–277. 8. The term “professors” is used in this book to refer to the professors at Soviet HEIs and full and associate professors at Chinese HEIs. There were three faculty ranks at Soviet HEIs: professor, docent, and assistant. There were four faculty ranks at Chinese HEIs: professor, associate professor, lecturer, and teaching assistant. 9. Martin McCauley, The Rise and Fall of the Soviet Union (Harlow, England: Pearson Education, 2008), 277; Ben Fowkes, The  Rise and Fall of Communism in Eastern Europe, 2d ed. (Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire and London: Macmillan Press, 1995), 52.

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10. Peter Kenez, A History of the Soviet Union from the Beginning to Its Legacy, 3d ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017), 103. 11. Katerina Clark and Evgeny Dobrenko, eds., Soviet Culture and Power: A History in Documents, 1917–1953 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007), 139. 12. Robert C. Tucker, Stalin in Power: The Revolution from Above, 1928–1941 (New York: W. W. Norton, 1990), 111. 13. See, for example, Robert Taylor, China’s Intellectual Dilemma: Politics and University Enrolment, 1949–1978 (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 1981), 141–168; Ruth Hayhoe, China’s Universities, 1895–1995: A Century of Cultural Conflict (New York: Garland Publishing, 1996), 99–106. 14. Pepper, Radicalism, 346–348. 15. Sheila Fitzpatrick, Everyday Stalinism: Ordinary Life in Extraordinary Times: Soviet Russia in the 1930s (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999),191. 16. Stephen Kotkin, Magnetic Mountain: Stalinism as a Civilization (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995), 6–7. David Hoffmann made a similar point. David L. Hoffmann, Cultivating the Masses: Modern State Practices and Soviet Socialism, 1914–1939 (Ithaca, New  York: Cornell University Press, 2011), 2. 17. Hayhoe, China’s Universities, 102–103. In the introduction to the book, Hayhoe argued that the informal pole of Chinese higher education traditions was embodied in “Shuyuan” (usually translated as academies), which were nonformal educational institutions in imperial China.

References Clark, Katerina, and Evgeny Dobrenko, eds. 2007. Soviet Culture and Power: A History in Documents, 1917–1953. New Haven: Yale University Press. Fitzpatrick, Sheila. 1974. Cultural Revolution in Russia 1928–1932. Journal of Contemporary History 9 (1): 33–53. ———, ed. 1978. Cultural Revolution in Russia, 1928–1931. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. ———. 1999. Everyday Stalinism: Ordinary Life in Extraordinary Times: Soviet Russia in the 1930s. New York: Oxford University Press. Fowkes, Ben. 1995. The Rise and Fall of Communism in Eastern Europe. 2d ed. Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire and London: Macmillan Press. Hayhoe, Ruth. 1996. China’s Universities, 1895-1995: A Century of Cultural Conflict. New York: Garland Publishing. Hoffmann, David L. 2011. Cultivating the Masses: Modern State Practices and Soviet Socialism, 1914–1939. Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press.

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Holmes, Larry E. 1991. The Kremlin and the Schoolhouse: Reforming Education in Soviet Russia, 1917–1931. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Hsu, Immanuel C.Y. 1964. The Reorganization of Higher Education in Communist China, 1949–1961. The China Quarterly 19: 128–160. Kenez, Peter. 2017. A History of the Soviet Union from the Beginning to Its Legacy. 3d ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kotkin, Stephen. 1995. Magnetic Mountain: Stalinism as a Civilization. Berkeley: University of California Press. Li, Hua-Yu. 2002. Stalin’s ‘Short Course’ and Mao’s Socialist Economic Transformation of China in the Early 1950s. Russian History 29 (2–4): 357–376. McCauley, Martin. 2008. The Rise and Fall of the Soviet Union. Harlow: Pearson Education. Orleans, Leo A. 1987. Soviet Influence on China’s Higher Education. In China’s Education and the Industrialized World: Studies in Cultural Transfer, ed. Ruth Hayhoe and Marianne Bastid, 184–198. Armonk, New York: M. E. Sharpe. Pepper, Suzanne. 1987. Education for the New Order. In The People’s Republic, Part 1: The Emergence of Revolutionary China, 1949–1965, ed. Roderick MacFarquhar and John K.  Fairbank, 185–217. Vol. 14 of The Cambridge History of China. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ———. 1996. Radicalism and Education Reform in Twentieth-Century China: The Search for an Ideal Development Model. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Taylor, Robert. 1981. China’s Intellectual Dilemma: Politics and University Enrolment, 1949–1978. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press. Tucker, Robert C. 1990. Stalin in Power: The Revolution from Above, 1928–1941. New York: W. W. Norton. Whyte, Martin K. 1974. Educational Reform: China in the 1970s and Russia in the 1920s. Comparative Education Review 18 (1): 112–128.

PART I

The Convergence of Maoism with Stalinism in the Early 1950s and China’s Initial Endeavor to Create a Socialist System of Higher Education

CHAPTER 2

The Soviet Model and China’s Initial Endeavor to Create a Socialist System of Higher Education

“Learning from the Soviet Union” was a famous motto promoted by the CCP in the early 1950s, and it represented a convergence of Maoism with Stalinism. There were at least two obvious reasons for this convergence. First, the Soviet Union was the first socialist country. In the early 1950s, it was impossible for Mao to imagine an alternative model of socialism. Second, as the international politics scholar Robert Jervis pointed out, in the early years of the Cold War, the Soviet Union and the United States represented two alternative paths of modernization for the Third World countries.1 Tsarist Russia had been the weakest among the major capitalist countries. During the Stalin years, the Soviet Union was transformed into an industrial power, and it emerged from the Second World War as one of the two superpowers. For the CCP, the Soviet Union under Stalin not only represented socialism, but also provided a socialist model for industrializing China. The transplantation of the Soviet system of higher education to China was a result of this convergence of Maoism with Stalinism. The special circumstance in which the CCP started its endeavor to create a socialist system of higher education was also a reason for China’s importation of the Soviet model of higher learning. Since the CCP built its power basis in rural areas before taking over cities, most of its officials were poorly educated. The Communist officials who joined the CCP before the founding of the PRC were called “old cadres.” After the CCP took over cities, it sent some of its officials to HEIs, but these old cadres © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 L. S. Zhu, Stalinism, Maoism, and Socialism in Higher Education, Global Histories of Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-88777-3_2

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lacked educational qualifications for their new positions as leaders in HEIs. For example, of the 58 old cadres at Jiaotong University in Shanghai in 1955, only 10 had college-level education, 4 had attended senior high school but did not go beyond that level of education, 18 had studied in junior high school but did not go to senior high school, and 26 had only attended elementary school. Of the 61 old cadres at Shanghai Second Medical Institute, only 5 had college-level education, 7 had a “literacy level” equivalent to that of a senior high school student, and the rest had not gone beyond junior high school or elementary school in their education.2 It has to be noted that the cadres with college-level education included those who had attended college but did not graduate. There were, of course, Chinese professors, but the CCP did not consider them as reliable partners in creating a socialist system of higher education. According to the CCP’s ideological view, professors had strong bourgeois ideas or values, because they had been born in upper- or middle-class families and had been influenced by the ideology of the Nationalist regime. In such a circumstance, seeking Soviet tutelage was the natural choice. There were 615 educators among the Soviet experts that the CCP invited to China during the 1950s.3 These Soviet educators not only engaged in teaching, many of them also served as advisors in the early 1950s. These Soviet experts played an important role in the transplantation of the Soviet system of higher education to China. This chapter delineates two phases in China’s adoption of the Soviet model of higher education. The first phase, from 1950 to 1951, was characterized by a cautious and step-by-step approach. The second phase, from 1952 to 1955, was guided by a new philosophy that the Soviet system of higher education had to be adopted in its entirety. More importantly, unlike other scholars who have examined Soviet influence on Chinese higher education, I use a comparative approach to enrich and deepen our understanding of the transnational transplantation of an educational model from the Soviet Union to China. This comparative approach reveals that some features of the Soviet system of higher education were criticized by professors in the Soviet Union itself, but they were enforced in China either as rigidly as in the Soviet Union or even more rigidly. The problems inherent in the Soviet system of higher education were also imported to China in exaggerated form. One of the reasons for this result of the transnational transplantation of the Soviet educational model was the role played by the Soviet experts. They insisted that the Soviet system of higher education must be transplanted as an organic

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whole, and advocated the most orthodox and strict view on every aspect of this system, including the Soviet method of organizing instruction. Another reason stemmed from the pitfalls inherent in cultural borrowing from a developed society by a less developed one. Such pitfalls became even larger when the cultural borrowing was motivated by ideological reasons. The new philosophy that called for adopting the Soviet system of higher learning in its entirety indicated that the Chinese Communist officials not only were unable and unwilling to critically analyze the Soviet system of higher education, but also willingly ignored the differences between the Soviet Union and China in educational traditions and other conditions. With the transplantation of the Soviet model of higher education, China also adopted the Soviet system of one-person management in the internal governance of HEIs. Unlike other aspects of the Soviet system of higher education, China’s adoption of the system of one-person management was followed immediately by an adaptation. While examining this topic, the comparative approach adopted in this chapter means taking into consideration that China and the Soviet Union in the early 1950 were at different stages in the evolution of the Communist state. At the same time, this chapter also considers how the CCP’s own political tradition, which was somewhat different from that of the CPSU, affected its approach to the internal governance of HEIs.

The First Step in China’s Adoption of the Soviet Model of Higher Education Immediately after the founding of the PRC, the Ministry of Education decided to reorganize Chinese higher education along Soviet lines. Suzanne Pepper noticed that according to China’s official chronology, reorganization was first proposed in mid-1950, but the tertiary sector mobilized its forces to resist. But she did not provide documentary evidence to support this claim.4 The evidence for the Ministry of Education’s initial proposal for reorganizing Chinese HEIs was actually embodied in the initial draft of the “Provisional Regulations for Higher Educational Institutions,” one of the documents adopted at the First National Conference on Higher Education, convened in early June 1950. The initial draft of this document stated that there would be two types of HEIs: universities and specialized institutes; and it defined universities as

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institutions that offered educational programs only in science, social science, humanities, and arts.5 Chinese universities before 1949 were truly comprehensive institutions. Each university was divided into colleges, which were largely standardized nationally: they were colleges of humanities, law, science, agriculture, engineering, business, medicine, and education.6 This did not mean that every university included all these colleges. However, according to laws under the Nationalist regime, in order to be qualified as a university, an institution must consist of at least three colleges, and each college must consist of at least three departments; the institutions that did not meet this requirement were called independent colleges.7 By contrast, universities in the Soviet Union were institutions of science, social science, and humanities. Therefore, the new definition of universities, given in the initial draft of the “Provisional Regulations,” implied that colleges of engineering, agriculture, medicine, business, and education would be separated from universities and reorganized into independent institutes.8 The Ministry of Education eventually retreated from its initial position. One of the reasons for this retreat was strong resistance from professors, especially from professors of engineering, who offered many objections to the separation of engineering education from universities. First, engineering could not be separated from mathematics and science; it would be difficult for independent institutes of engineering to recruit good mathematicians and scientists as faculty members, because they would only play a supporting role at such institutes. Second, because of the close connections between modern industry and society, students of engineering should take some courses in social science, without which they would most likely develop a purely technological approach to problems in industry. Third, good universities in China were few, and therefore they should be preserved rather than dismembered.9 But an equally important reason for the Ministry of Education’s retreat was that Mao called for a cautious and step-by-step approach to the reforming of education in 1950.10 The final version of the “Provisional Regulations for Higher Educational Institutions” still stipulated two types of HEIs: universities and specialized institutes; but it no longer contained the definition of universities as educational institutions of science, social science, humanities, and arts.11 The actual decision made by the Ministry of Education but not explicitly indicated in the “Provisional Regulations” was that while the existing universities would not be reorganized, the new HEIs to be established would no longer be the old type comprehensive universities, but institutes.12

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Some features of the Soviet system of higher education were adopted in 1950. First of all, specialized schools, which were part of the Chinese system of higher education before 1949, would be discontinued simply because there were no such schools in the Soviet Union. China’s specialized schools offered two- or three-year educational programs that placed emphasis on applied technology (the course of study at Chinese universities and independent colleges was four years with the exception of the students of medicine, whose duration of study was five years). 13 The “Provisional Regulations” stated that specialized schools would continue to exist only on a temporary basis.14 Because there were secondary professional schools in the Soviet system of education, such schools would be created in China as well. According to an official of the Ministry of Education, when a sufficient number of institutes and secondary professional schools were created in China, the specialized schools would no longer be needed.15 (The specialized schools were later recreated after the CCP’s rejection of Soviet tutelage.) Moreover, the internal organizational structure at universities and independent colleges was changed. The Soviet HEI was directly divided into academic departments; within each department, faculty members in the same subfield of knowledge were organized into a kafedra. Therefore, the “Provisional Regulations” called for establishing teaching and research groups, equivalent to the kafedry (the plural form of “kafedra”).16 Before 1949, colleges within the Chinese university were not just administrative units, but were also units in organizing knowledge. Students in each college took common foundational courses during their first year of study.17 However, as will be seen below, the national standard curricula, the result of the curricular reform undertaken in 1950, did not include any common course for students in the same college. This change represented a step toward the adoption of the Soviet model in two ways. It was a step toward emphasis on producing specialists, which was a feature of the Soviet system of higher education; and it also weakened the role of colleges, which did not exist within the Soviet HEI. The national standard curricula were discussed before and at the First National Conference on Higher Education. They were approved at this conference and issued by the Ministry of Education in August 1950. In addition to a stronger emphasis on producing specialists, they also represented the first step toward enforcing uniformity and standardization in the content of education, which was another feature of the Soviet system of higher education. The national standard curricula were designed for academic departments (and therefore did not include common courses for

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any college). The curriculum for each academic department specified the required as well as elective courses; for the department that offered concentrations, it specified common required courses for all the students studying in that department as well as courses for each concentration. This meant that the students in the same major or concentration but enrolled at different HEIs would take the same required courses. Moreover, in the curriculum for each academic department, most courses were required, and electives constituted a small proportion.18 The Ministry of Education recognized that many HEIs did not have qualified faculty members to offer all the required courses listed in the curricula, and therefore did not expect all the HEIs to immediately and strictly implement the new curricula. But the national standard curricula would serve as a guideline for HEIs in the designing of their actual curricula.19 Private universities and colleges were not nationalized in 1950, but both the “Temporary Regulations” and the national standard curricula were applied to these schools as well.20

The Adoption of the Soviet System of Higher Education in Its Entirety At the end of 1951, China’s adoption of the Soviet model of higher education entered the second phase, as the early cautious and step-by-step approach was replaced by a new point of view that without a complete and total reform, higher education could not effectively serve economic development.21 Moreover, the complete and total reform meant the adoption of the Soviet system of higher learning in its entirety. This new philosophy was proclaimed in an editorial of the People’s Daily (Renmin ribao), the newspaper of the Central Committee of the CCP.  It declared that in reforming higher education, China should “learn from advanced Soviet experience in its entirety.” This meant adopting the institutional structure of Soviet higher education as well as Soviet curricula, teaching materials, and even methods of teaching. Responding to the concern about possible disconnections between Soviet curricula and teaching materials and China’s own social, economic, and technological conditions, the People’s Daily declared that China should adopt them first, and worry about how to adapt them to its conditions later.22 This new phase in learning from the Soviet Union began with the reorganization of Chinese HEIs along Soviet lines, which took place in 1952.

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Thereafter, the Chinese system of higher education consisted of four kinds of institutions: Soviet-type comprehensive universities, which were actually institutions of science, social science, and humanities; polytechnic universities or institutes; specialized institutes such as institutes of chemical engineering, institutes of steel, and institutes of finance; and normal universities and institutes, whose mission was to train teachers for secondary schools.23 In this process, all the private universities disappeared. Their colleges and departments were incorporated into other institutions or reorganized into new institutes. After this institutional reorganization, even the large HEIs were directly divided into academic departments, and there were no longer colleges as administrative units. As in the Soviet Union, specialized institutes were placed under the jurisdiction of various ministries. The Ministry of Higher Education was created to directly administer comprehensive universities and polytechnics and to oversee academic affairs in all the HEIs, including those that were placed under the jurisdiction of other ministries. This time there was no open opposition from professors to such a sweeping reorganization, because it was undertaken during the thought reform campaign, which is examined in the following section of this chapter. An explanation for the names of the HEIs created in the process of reorganization is warranted, as they indicated the influence of both the Chinese cultural tradition and the CCP’s political ideology. As has been seen, some polytechnics and teacher-training institutions in China were called universities, whereas all such institutions in the Soviet Union were called institutes. The reason for this semantic difference was that university sounds more prestigious than institute in Chinese language.24 The influence of the CCP’s political ideology can be seen in how the names of the former public and private universities were treated. The names of public universities were generally retained. For example, although Qinghua University and Zhejiang University became polytechnic institutions, they retained their previous names. By contrast, the names of the private universities were not retained by the new institutions created on their campuses. Thus, the campus of Zhendan University in Shanghai, which had been a Catholic university run by missionaries from France before 1949,25 became the campus of a new medical school, which was created by merging Zhendan’s college of medicine with colleges of medicine from other two universities. This new medical school was called Shanghai Second Medical Institute.26 The most interesting example was Nanjing University, which was a Soviet-type comprehensive university, located on the campus

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of the former Jinling University, an institution founded by American missionaries in the nineteenth century and financially supported by churches in the United States before 1949. It was called Nanjing University because the name of Jinling University could not be used, and because it included departments of science, social science, and humanities from the former National Nanjing University (which had been called Central University before 1949).27 Since the name of Nanjing University was inherited by this institution, a polytechnic that was founded on the basis of the engineering college of the former National Nanjing University and was located on its campus had to use a different name, and it was called Nanjing Institute of Technology.28 The institutional reorganization was followed by the adoption of the Soviet method of organizing instruction, which most clearly reflected the desire to adopt the Soviet model of higher education in its entirety. As has been seen, China’s national standard curricula adopted in 1950 were designed for academic departments. By contrast, Soviet students were educated in academic units called specialties, each of which had its own curriculum, called the academic plan. The Soviet engineering institutes aimed to produce specialists for a specific industrial product or a narrow branch of industrial production, and therefore they educated students in narrow specialties. As Zeng Zhaolun, a deputy minister of higher education, indicated, machine building was a concentration in the department of mechanical engineering in China, but there were more than 40 specialties in this field of study in the Soviet Union.29 According to Zeng, some Chinese professors argued that while the concentrations in Chinese engineering education were too broad, the specialties offered in the Soviet Union were too narrow for the current level of industrial development in China; these professors suggested that it would be more appropriate to find a middle ground between the two. Responding to this suggestion, Zeng contended that the specialties in Soviet higher education were a result of many years of experience; by directly transplanting them, China could avoid errors that would have been committed if the Chinese professors tried to design specialties themselves. However, Chinese engineering schools did not have to offer all the specialties currently offered in the Soviet Union; they should only offer those that they were able to, and create conditions for offering other specialties in the future.30 So 107 specialties in engineering were offered in 1952; this number was increased to 137 in 1953 and 183 in 1957.31

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In some ways, the curricula in engineering and science are more transplantable from one country to another than those in social science and humanities, which have to accommodate cultural traditions and social conditions in each country. However, the transplantation of Soviet curricula in engineering and science to China posed special challenges because of the different durations of study at Soviet and Chinese HEIs, which were, in turn, related to the different lengths of primary and secondary education in these two countries. In the Soviet Union, the length of primary and secondary education was ten years,32 and the course of study at institutions of higher technical education and universities was five years. By contrast, the duration of Chinese primary and secondary education was twelve years, and the course of study at all the Chinese HEIs, with the exception of medical schools, was four years. The Soviet academic plan for each specialty not only indicated courses, but also allocated to each course a number of academic hours, which was different for different courses. The Soviet experts who served as advisors in Chinese higher education insisted that the Soviet academic plan for any specialty was an organic whole, and every course in it played its role in creating a qualified specialist.33 Therefore, it was unacceptable to remove any course from the academic plan for any specialty. Eventually, in the transplantation of Soviet academic plans for specialties in engineering and science to China, no course was removed, but the academic hours for each course were reduced by about 20 percent.34 China’s adoption of the Soviet model of higher education also affected the content of education in the programs in social science and humanities. The curricula for specialties in social science and humanities could not be transplanted from the Soviet Union without modifications, and not all the teaching materials for such specialties could be imported from the Soviet Union. Therefore, People’s University of China, a new institution of social science that had been established in 1950 with the mission to “link teaching with practice and integrate Soviet experience with China’s conditions,”35 now became a model for educational programs in social science at other HEIs. Thirty-seven Soviet experts taught at People’s University in 1950, and approximately 70 to 80 Soviet experts taught at this university from 1950 to 1957.36 The academic plan for every specialty offered at this university was designed with the help of the Soviet experts, and most courses (with the exception of such courses as Chinese History and the History of the Chinese Revolution) were taught with the course outlines and textbooks that were used in the Soviet Union or written by the Soviet

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experts specifically for this university.37 In order to integrate Soviet experience with China’s conditions, the course outlines and textbooks written for this university included a section on the Soviet Union and a section on China, but the latter was minuscule and insignificant in comparison with the former.38 These course outlines and textbooks were distributed to 420 educational institutions at the end of 1952.39 The idea of uniform curricula was embodied in China’s national standard curricula adopted in 1950, but it was not enforced rigorously. After the adoption of the Soviet method of organizing instruction in 1952, the idea of uniform curricula meant that each specialty, no matter where it was offered, had to follow the national standard academic plan issued by the Ministry of Higher Education. As will be seen in Chap. 6, the centralized control of the curricula and the rigid enforcement of uniform curricula were criticized by professors in the Soviet Union itself. But the Soviet experts working in Chinese higher education were not the kind of people who were able to critically evaluate the Soviet system of higher education. In the Soviet government’s selection of the experts to be dispatched to China, the most important criterion was the political credentials. Only members of the Communist Party were selected. Each candidate was required to complete a number of forms. Then the government conducted a careful background check on each candidate as well as his or her family and relatives. Those who passed all these checks were interviewed by the Central Committee of CPSU before being sent to China.40 The Soviet experts selected in such a way would not tolerate any deviation from Soviet practice. In managing relations between the Soviet experts working in Chinese higher education and their Chinese colleagues, the Chinese side was guided by the principle that the Soviet experts could “do no wrong,” and the Chinese colleagues were not allowed to disagree with the Soviet experts in any circumstance.41 In 1954, China’s Ministry of Higher Education issued a directive to HEIs, declaring that the standard academic plans it approved were “fundamental laws” for the educational process, and HEIs were prohibited to make any changes to them.42 There is no doubt that this point of view came from the Soviet experts. As will be seen in Chap. 6, a deputy director of the Department of Schools of the Central Committee of the Soviet Communist Party used similar language in 1938 to describe academic plans approved by the All-Union Committee for Higher School Affairs, the predecessor of the Soviet Ministry of Higher Education.

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Another feature of the Soviet system of higher education was the uniform course outlines, which meant that each course that was offered at multiple HEIs had to be taught according to a uniform course outline approved by the Ministry of Higher Education or another ministry that supervised HEIs.43 In China after 1952, the faculty members at HEIs were first required to teach their courses according to the syllabi approved by the teaching and research groups. In 1954, the Ministry of Higher Education began to issue national uniform course outlines for courses offered at multiple HEIs.44 One of the reasons for the enforcement of uniform course outlines was, of course, ideological control, and this was especially true for courses in social science and humanities. But this was not the only reason. An important part of the rationale behind the enforcement of uniform academic plans and course outlines was the spirit of the planned economy. The educated specialists produced in such a way would be like standardized parts of a large machine, and therefore they could be placed on jobs according to the state plan. But the enforcement of the uniform course outlines could not but lead to the regimentation of teaching. All the evidence indicated that as a result of the adoption of the Soviet model of higher education, teaching was regimented more rigidly in China than in the Soviet Union itself. One of the reasons was that the Soviet advisors in Chinese higher education promoted the view that the adoption of the Soviet method of organizing instruction meant the strict enforcement of discipline in teaching. In 1954, a Soviet advisor in the Ministry of Education visited East China Normal University, which, as a teacher-­ training institution, was still under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Education after the establishment of the Ministry of Higher Education in 1952. Speaking at the faculty meeting at this university, this Soviet advisor stated that in a well-planned class session, the instructor should finish the topic or topics intended for it by the end of the class period. He further declared: “If members of a teaching and research group do not have a clear understanding or have different opinions on a topic specified in the course outline, they should discuss this topic within the teaching and research group. We cannot tolerate a situation where teachers teach the same course from different perspectives and viewpoints.”45 This point of view was readily accepted by the Chinese Communist officials at HEIs. Because of such emphasis on discipline, faculty members were not only required to strictly follow the course outlines approved by the teaching and research groups or by the Ministry of Higher Education, but even

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expected to teach their courses according to pre-written lectures approved by the teaching and research groups. The latter was especially true for the faculty members who taught the courses that were common for students in different specialties, such as those who taught ideological courses at any HEI and those who taught physics or mathematics at institutions of engineering education. Collective course preparation was the norm in teaching and research groups consisting of faculty members who taught different sections of the same course.46 As a result, in order to avoid any trouble that might come from failure to minutely execute the lesson plan for any class session, many faculty members (including those who did not participate in collective course preparation) chose to simply read pre-written lectures. In 1956, when professors were allowed to speak out, an article written by Professor Wu Dakun and published in the People’s Daily stated that the party and administrative officials at HEIs regarded discipline as more important than creativity in teaching, and discipline for them meant teaching strictly according to approved course outlines and lectures; in such an environment, reading pre-written lectures was for faculty members the safest way of teaching.47 Ma Yinchu, an economist and president of Beijing University in the 1950s, complained that in many cases teaching became a monotonous recitation of written lectures.48 The Soviet system of higher education aimed to produce fully prepared specialists, who were expected to graduate from HEIs with all the knowledge they needed for their jobs. Each uniform academic plan was usually formulated by professors from different HEIs, and it was supposed to represent their consensus. A Soviet professor commented in the 1950s that all the participants in the formulation of an academic plan exaggerated the importance of their own academic subjects in shaping specialists of a given type and correspondingly demanded increased hours for their subjects in the academic plan.49 Consensus was usually achieved by increasing academic hours for all the subjects in an academic plan. All these factors contributed to the heavy course load for students at Soviet HEIs, especially for students at institutions of higher technical education. In 1936, a resolution of the Central Committee of the Communist Party and Sovnarkom (the Council of People’s Commissars) of the Soviet Union on higher education stated that the students should not be required to take more than six courses a semester.50 But even this directive from the highest authorities had little effect on reducing the course load. In the academic year 1937–1938, students in many specialties at institutions of higher

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technical education were still required to take eight or nine courses a semester.51 This problem inherent in the Soviet system of higher education was imported to China in exaggerated form. When the Soviet academic plans for specialties in engineering were transplanted to China, the number of courses and their scope were not changed, but academic hours for each course were reduced by about 20 percent to fit the academic plans designed for the five-year programs into the four-year course of study. Therefore, the course load for students at Chinese institutions of engineering education was even heavier. In March 1955, the Ministry of Higher Education issued a special directive on the course load for students at these institutions. It stated that when all the hours needed for class attendance and homework were added, they amounted to at least 60 hours a week. It warned that such a heavy workload might harm students’ health and prevent them from active involvement in extracurricular activities. However, the Ministry of Higher Education still regarded the academic plans imported from the Soviet Union as sacrosanct and unalterable. It only called upon faculty members to improve their teaching in order to reduce students’ workload. 52 In May, the Ministry of Higher Education decided to extend the course of study at institutions of higher technical education to five years in order to accommodate the academic plans imported from the Soviet Union.53 Chinese professors also pointed out other problems derived from the rigid enforcement of uniform academic plans and course outlines without regard to special conditions in China. Because of the weak foundation of Chinese higher education and its rapid expansion after 1949, many HEIs did not have qualified faculty members to teach courses included in the uniform academic plans, but they had to offer such courses anyway. Another result of the rapid expansion of higher education after 1949 was that many students at HEIs were recruited from outside the secondary schools and had weak academic preparation. But the uniform academic plans and course outlines compelled all the students in the same specialty, even if they were studying at different HEIs, to take the same courses and to meet the same standards in every course they took.54 The Soviet system of higher education that China adopted as a model came into its final shape after the Soviet government had abandoned its early policies that caused a decline in academic standards. Therefore, China’s learning from the Soviet Union in the early 1950s discouraged policy measures aimed to achieve political objectives with disregard for

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academic standards. The creation of an intelligentsia of worker and peasant origins was a political objective sought in China immediately after the founding of the PRC.  One of the measures adopted for achieving this objective was the creation of worker and peasant accelerated secondary schools, which mainly accepted Communist cadres of worker and peasant origins who had completed primary education, but also accepted a smaller number of actual workers with a similar educational level.55 These schools were modeled after the rabfaks (workers’ departments)—special preparatory schools for workers and peasants that had existed in the Soviet Union in its early years.56 Like the rabfaks, the worker and peasant accelerated secondary schools aimed to prepare their students for higher education at an accelerated tempo of three years.57 But they did not reach such an important status as the rabfaks had once attained. The graduates of rabfaks were admitted to HEIs without entrance examinations before 1933, and they constituted about one third of the students admitted into HEIs in the Russian Republic—the largest republic of the Soviet Union—in the 1920s.58 By contrast, the graduates of the worker and peasant accelerated secondary schools in China were not given the privilege of being admitted to HEIs without entrance examinations, but were given preference in admissions if they attained the minimum acceptable examination score.59 Moreover, despite the original plan for the rapid expansion of worker and peasant accelerated secondary schools (they accepted 29,200 students in 1954, significantly more than 12,200 admitted in 1953),60 they stopped admitting students in 1955.61 One of the reasons for this abrupt policy change was that the first class of graduates of worker and peasant accelerated secondary schools was admitted into HEIs in 1953, and during 1954 it became evident that most of these students were unable to handle college-level courses taught with academic rigor.62

Communists, Professors, and China’s Adoption and Adaptation of the Soviet System of One-Person Management With the reorganization of higher education along Soviet lines, China also adopted the Soviet system of internal governance at HEIs, known as the system of one-person management. However, unlike other aspects of the Soviet system of higher education, China’s adoption of the system of one-­ person management was followed immediately by adaptation because of

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three reasons. First, in the early 1950s, as the CCP had just taken over power in China, it did not have cadres who had academic qualifications or expertise for administering HEIs. Second, the CCP had its own political tradition, which was somewhat different from that of the CPSU. Third, the system of internal governance at HEIs was closely connected with the Communist Party’s policy toward the intelligentsia. The CCP’s policy toward the intelligentsia in the early 1950s was in some ways comparable to the Bolsheviks’ policy before 1928. But the system of one-person management at Soviet HEIs did not become reality until after 1932. After the Bolsheviks came to power in 1917, they defined the existing intelligentsia as the bourgeois intelligentsia, but also sought cooperation with the latter because the expertise of the educated professionals was needed by the new government. Reflecting the spirit of this policy, the first Soviet statute for HEIs, promulgated by the Soviet government in 1922, created a complex scheme of internal governance designed to reduce but not completely eliminate the role of professors in the governance of HEIs. The governing body of a HEI was an administrative board of three to five members, appointed by the Commissariat of Enlightenment (Narkompros)63 from among candidates proposed by the faculty, students, and the trade unions, economic organizations, and the regional government that had a special interest in a given HEI. The chairperson of the administrative board, who was also the rector of the HEI, was selected by Narkompros from among candidates nominated by the faculty members. The academic department was administered by a presidium appointed by the administrative board of the HEI and consisting of three members: chairperson selected from among professors, another member selected from among the faculty, and a representative of students. The kafedra was reorganized into the subject committee, which included faculty members as well as student representatives, whose number was equal to half of the faculty members in the committee. The subject committee elected a chairperson (who must be a professor), a deputy chair, and a secretary; these three, upon approval by the administrative board of the HEI, constituted the bureau of the subject committee.64 There was no general student organization representing all the students at the Soviet HEI during the 1920s. The student organization that had most members was the organization of the proletarian students, which was actually student sections of the trade unions, led by the Central Bureau of the Proletarian Students (TsBPS). The latter was, in turn, subordinate to the All-Union Central Council of Trade Unions (VTsSPS). The members

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of the student sections of the trade unions at first were former workers who had been members of labor unions before becoming students at HEIs. Later they also accepted students who had not been union members before being admitted to HEIs but were considered as belonging to the proletariat due to their family origins or ideological conviction.65 But they never included more than two thirds of the students at HEIs prior to the First Five-Year Plan.66 The branch of the Young Communist League (Komsomol) at the HEI was essentially also a student organization. Most members of the party organization at the HEI during the 1920s were Communist students, who, of course, also dominated the organization of proletarian students.67 It was these organizations that actually selected candidates for student representatives in the administrative board and the academic department’s presidium. Therefore, almost all of them were Communist students.68 In the early 1920s, the student representatives were the only Communists in the administrative boards of HEIs. In the mid and late 1920s, it became possible for an administrative board to include one or two Communists selected from among the faculty,69 but the student representatives remained the only Communists in the presidia of the academic departments and in bureaus of subject committees. Because the Communist students in various administrative bodies did not trust professors, they became administrators with extensive power. A 1926 article in Krasnoe studenchestvo (Red Students), the journal of TsBPS, stated, perhaps with some exaggeration, that the student representative in the administrative board usually acted as both the director of academic affairs and the director of administrative-economic affairs; the student representative in the presidium of the academic department often fulfilled the dean’s duty: made class schedules and assigned courses to faculty members. As often as not, the student representative in the bureau of the subject committee actually executed all the functions of the bureau, while holding the humble title as secretary.70 From the perspective of the Soviet government, the Communist students helped implement its policies, but their extensive power could alienate professors, whose cooperation the government needed. Therefore, in the mid-1920s, as the Communist Party’s policy toward the intelligentsia shifted toward a greater emphasis on utilizing the latter’s expertise, Narkompros sought to restrain the power of the student representatives in the governance of HEIs, but its measures were half-hearted.71

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The system of one-person management, which had been first established at industrial enterprises in the Soviet Union, was introduced into HEIs in 1930, when institutions of higher technical education were placed under the jurisdiction of the economic organizations.72 However, as will be seen in the following chapter, because there was a class war against professors in the Soviet Union during the First Five-Year Plan period, the immediate effect of the system of one-person management was the elimination of professors’ role in internal governance, but the influence of Communist students remained strong. After 1932, new measures were undertaken to enforce rigorous academic standards, which incidentally reduced the Communist students to their proper status as students. In this new political environment, the system of one-person management finally became reality at Soviet HEIs, as the dean of the academic department and the chairperson of the restored kafedra, who were again appointed from among professors, could execute their administrative duties without interference from Communist students. The CCP did not define the whole old intelligentsia as bourgeois in the early 1950s.73 This, of course, indicated the CCP’s intension not to alienate the educated professionals. But the thought reform campaign in 1951 and 1952, which required educated professionals to reform their minds, also defined relations between the CCP and the intelligentsia. The thought reform campaign has been examined by other scholars,74 but it is necessary to review main features of the campaign as it was conducted at HEIs and indicate their significance. The campaign began with the required study of speeches of the Communist leaders and other materials that introduced faculty members to the CCP’s ideology and basic policies. After this, the faculty members were required to criticize their own bourgeois ideas at small group meetings. Thus, the thought reform campaign was an official statement of the CCP’s ideological view that the educated professionals who had begun their careers under the previous regime had strong bourgeois ideas. Qian Junrui, a deputy minister of education and the head of the party organization in the Ministry of Education (therefore, the highest-ranking Communist official in this ministry), defined the bourgeois ideas embodied by faculty members at HEIs.75 Following this official definition of the bourgeois ideas, the professors confessed that in their lives and work they were motivated not by the desire to serve the people, but by self-interest and especially by the desire for wealth and fame. Professors also confessed that they only pursued their own intellectual interests, and therefore their teaching was often divorced

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from reality or practical applications.76 The thought reform campaign was conducted after the beginning of the Korean War, and it also played a functional role as a political campaign for overcoming professors’ resistance to the upcoming reorganization of higher education. Therefore, the aspiration to “American standards” in higher education and the view that Chinese HEIs should model after the American-type comprehensive universities were denounced as a form of “bourgeois ideas.”77 While all faculty members were required to make self-criticism, some professors were subjected to criticisms from others; the Communist officials directing the thought reform campaign called upon younger teachers and students to criticize senior faculty members.78 This last piece of political theatrics revealed that the Communists believed that senior faculty members had stronger bourgeois ideas than the younger members. The thought reform campaign also changed power structure at HEIs. After the Communists had taken over cities, the HEI was initially allowed to be administered by a council of university or college affairs. Allyn and Adele Rickett, American students who served as teaching assistants in the Foreign Languages Department at Qinghua University in 1949 and the first semester of 1950, noticed that in these three semesters after the arrival of the Communists in Beijing (the People’s Liberation Army entered Beijing in January 1949), all the important matters at the university were discussed and decided at faculty meetings.79 According to a Chinese source, some members of the university affairs council at Beijing University often tried to promote the interests of their own academic departments.80 These pieces of evidence indicated that the CCP generally refrained from intervening in the internal governance of HEIs before the thought reform campaign. However, as the Communist officials supervised the thought reform campaign, they also assumed greater power in the daily administration of HEIs during this campaign. At HEIs in Shanghai, the party committees that had just been established actually took the “overall leadership role.”81 As a result, the councils of university or college affairs, while preserved, lost much of its power. This was the political context in which the system of one-person management was adopted. With the adoption of this system, Communists were appointed as presidents at most HEIs. At some prestigious universities, well-known non-party academics served as presidents. In such cases, a Communist who was appointed as a vice president served as the de facto chief executive. The number of Communists at Chinese HEIs was small in the early 1950s. In addition to old cadres that the party dispatched to

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HEIs, there were also new members that were accepted into the party. But most of the faculty members accepted into the party were young teachers who had just begun their careers. For example, there were only 295 Communists among 3652 faculty members at the 16 HEIs in Shanghai in 1955; of these 295 Communists, 217 were teaching assistants (faculty members of the lowest rank), 71 lecturers, 4 associate professors, and 3 full professors.82 Because of the consensus among the Communists, formed during the thought reform campaign, that senior faculty members had stronger bourgeois ideas, as a rule, they were not accepted into the party even if they expressed an interest in joining. Moreover, seniority in the party (the year in which one joined the party) and revolutionary credentials were important factors in determining a Communist official’s ranking and position, and the chief executives of HEIs were, of course, selected from among the senior Communist officials. This meant that they were old cadres, who had revolutionary credentials but lacked educational qualifications or expertise for administering HEIs. For example, the Communist vice president of East China Normal University in the 1950s, who served as the de facto chief executive, was an old cadre who had joined the CCP in 1938 but had not gone beyond secondary school in his education.83 The system of one-person management reduced the role of the party committee. In the Soviet Union itself, while the head of the party committee was the most powerful official in every governmental jurisdiction such as a republic or region, the party committee at an industrial enterprise or a HEI only played an assisting role (assisting the chief executive in fulfilling the duties of an enterprise or educational institution). In HEIs, the party organizations were not expected to intervene in administrative or academic affairs; and the party’s will was implemented by the Communists who served as the directors (which became the title of the heads of HEIs after 1930).84 This was one of the differences between the political traditions of the Soviet and Chinese Communist Parties: in the CCP’s political tradition, the party committees in various organizations and institutions also represented the ideal of collective leadership (which was not always reality). Moreover, the party agencies supervising higher education also concluded that collective leadership could serve as a remedy to Communist presidents’ and vice presidents’ lack of expertise for administering HEIs. Therefore, the CCP adapted the system of one-person management by hitching it to a scheme of collective leadership, but this adaptation created new tensions. In July 1953, the Beijing Party Committee for Higher

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Schools (which was actually a department of the Beijing Municipal Party Committee that oversaw HEIs) proposed that a leadership core, made up of the most important Communist officials in the administrative system and in the party committee, should be created at every HEI as a mechanism of collective leadership.85 However, as the principle of one-person management could not be officially rejected, the Communist president or vice president was still considered as the chief executive. The result was a dual power structure, which created tensions when the chief executive did not agree with the majority of the leadership core.86 In Shanghai, the leadership cores were not created. Instead, one-person management and collective leadership through the party committee were equally stressed after 1954. But this also created a dual power structure. When the Communist president or vice president did not agree with the majority of the party committee, the conflict could not be easily solved.87 Because of the historical precedent in China and the precedent in the Soviet system of higher education, deans of the academic departments had to be selected from among full professors.88 However, after the thought reform campaign, the Communists were no longer willing to entrust the administration of academic departments entirely to professors. Therefore, the system of one-person management in the academic departments was also adapted, and the adaptation consisted of creating the position of administrative secretary and appointing a Communist to this position. In some cities, Communist faculty members of a junior rank were appointed to this position; in other cities, the old cadres served as administrative secretaries.89 Theoretically, the administrative secretaries were assistants to the deans. In reality, the secretaries often took over the dean’s duties. They made decisions on their own and regarded the deans’ approval on any matter as a mere formality; sometimes they even disregarded this formality. Such domineering secretaries could not but cause resentment from deans who were unwilling to be figureheads. Some of them tendered resignations. Others declared sarcastically that as administrative secretaries made all the decisions, and deans could only listen to secretaries, their positions should be switched.90 From the perspective of high-level Communist officials in the party agencies supervising higher education, this situation was not ideal either, as it violated the principle of one-person management and alienated professors who served as deans of the academic departments. The Beijing Party Committee for Higher Schools repeatedly suggested that administrative secretaries should persuade department deans to implement the Communist Party’s policies, but should not take

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over administrative duties from deans.91 However, this party agency also held the view that non-party professors were (politically) weak leaders, who, left to themselves, were unable to implement the party’s policies.92 Therefore, its suggestion only meant that administrative secretaries should act more diplomatically, which, of course, was unlikely to bring about any substantial changes. To be sure, the major source of the tensions between the Communists and deans of the academic departments as well as the dilemmas that the CCP faced on how to treat professors appointed to administrative positions was the party’s policy toward the intelligentsia. According to the CCP’s ideological view, professors had strong bourgeois ideas, and this meant that they could not be trusted; but the CCP also needed the latter’s expertise and therefore did not want to alienate them. This policy was in many ways similar to the Bolshevik party’s policy toward the intelligentsia during the 1920s, which also created tensions between the Communists and professors as well as dilemmas in the internal governance of HEIs. The only difference was that the CCP’s adaptation of the system of one-­ person management did not give Communist students any role in the internal governance of HEIs. However, it is also clear that the CCP’s adaptation of the system of one-­ person management was not successful. Therefore, as will be seen in the following section, this system was immediately rejected by the CCP after Mao’s criticism of the mechanical copying of Soviet experience.

China’s Partial Rejection of the Soviet Model of Higher Education Mao’s criticism of the mechanical copying of Soviet experience was caused by his new critical view of the Soviet Union, which, according to Bo Yibo (who served as a deputy premier of China in the 1950s and early 1960s), was provoked by what happened there after Stalin’s death: the dispute (between Khrushchev and Malenkov) on whether priority in economic development should continue to be heavy industry or should be shifted to consumer industry, the replacement of Malenkov as the successor to Stalin by Khrushchev, and finally Khrushchev’s denunciation of Stalin at a secret session of the Twentieth Congress of the CPSU in February 1956.93 All these developments, unexpected by the leaders of the CCP, showed that not everything was good in the Soviet Union. Mao’s new and critical view

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of the Soviet Union, eventually crystallized in his speech at an expanded meeting of the Politburo of the CCP on April 25, 1956, consisted of two aspects: a critical view of the Soviet Union under Stalin and an even more critical view of the new leadership in the Soviet Union (Mao declared that “those who had worshipped Stalin now condemned him”). However, at this point, Mao’s criticism of the Soviet Union under Stalin was confined to the strategy of economic development, but did not include a rejection of Stalin’s view of socialism. Mao’s criticism of the mechanical copying of Soviet experience was also made in this speech. This criticism did not mean that China should stop learning from the Soviet Union. But Mao called for a more critical approach in learning from the Soviet Union.94 In 1956 and 1957, the Soviet model was rejected in two aspects of higher education. First, the enforcement of uniform academic plans and course outlines was abandoned. This change was made in response to professors’ opinions. In June 1957, the Ministry of Higher Education issued a directive, declaring that the academic plans and course outlines it had issued would henceforth serve only as guidelines for HEIs in designing their own curricula and composing their course outlines.95 Second, the Soviet system of one-person management was officially rejected. This decision was made by the party center96 rather than the Ministry of Higher Education, and was made without consulting with faculty members at HEIs. As a matter of fact, after Mao’s criticism of the mechanical copying of Soviet experience, there was a debate on what system of internal governance at HEIs should be adopted in place of one-person management, but this debate was confined to high-level Communist officials. In May 1956, the Shanghai Municipal Party Committee’s Department of Propaganda and Department of School Affairs suggested that the president of the HEI be placed under the leadership of the party committee.97 In June, the Central Committee’s Department of Propaganda submitted an official proposal that the party committees should assume overall leadership at HEIs.98 However, the party group99 in the Ministry of Higher Education disagreed with this proposal, and it argued that the party committee’s assumption of overall leadership would make it difficult to accommodate non-party academics who held administrative positions; and that since few Communist officials had adequate academic qualifications, it would be difficult for the party committee to assume leadership in academic affairs. It further contended that if the party committee’s overall leadership at the HEI was followed by the combined party cell’s assumption of overall

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leadership in the academic department, this would create even more serious problems.100 The secretaries of the combined party cells lacked academic qualifications for providing leadership in academic departments, whose main work was teaching and research; even the administrative secretary had caused many complaints; the assumption of overall leadership by the combined party cell would further alienate professors.101 The alternative system proposed by the Ministry of Higher Education’s party group was complex and perhaps not workable. It consisted of two levels of collective leadership. Policy matters at a HEI would be first discussed by a party group, made up of the most important Communist officials but separated from the party committee. In addition to the party group, there would be a committee of school affairs. The Communist president or vice president would bring opinions of the party group to the committee of school affairs, and the latter would make decisions on all the important matters, which would then be implemented by the president. According to the Ministry of Higher Education’s party group, such a system would not only guarantee the party’s leadership at HEIs, but also accommodate the non-party administrators.102 However, it could not convince the party center, and the proposal of the Department of Propaganda was approved at the CCP’s Eighth National Congress in September of 1956.103

Conclusion Because of the convergence of Maoism with Stalinism in the early 1950s, the CCP’s initial endeavor to create a socialist system of higher education resulted in the transplantation of the Soviet model to China. After implementing piecemeal reforms for about two years (1950 and 1951), the CCP embraced at the end of 1951 a new philosophy that the Soviet system of higher education had to be adopted in its entirety. Thereafter, not only were the Soviet institutional structure, curricula, and teaching materials imported, but uniform academic plans and course outlines—a feature of the Soviet system of higher education that was criticized by professors in the Soviet Union itself—were enforced rigidly in China. With the enforcement of uniform course outlines, the Chinese Communist officials regarded discipline as more important than creativity in teaching. All the evidence indicates that teaching was regimented in China even more rigidly than in the Soviet Union. Due to the differences between China and the Soviet Union in educational traditions and other conditions, problems

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inherent in the Soviet system of higher education were also imported to China in exaggerated form. After Mao’s criticism of the mechanical copying of Soviet experience, the Ministry of Higher Education stopped enforcing uniform academic plans and course outlines. This change was made in response to professors’ opinions, which were voiced in 1956 when professors were allowed to speak out. With the transplantation of the Soviet model of higher education, China also adopted the system of one-person management in the internal governance of HEIs. But the CCP endeavored to adapt this system immediately after its adoption. After Mao’s critique of the mechanical copying of Soviet experience, the CCP replaced the system of one-person management with the principle of party committee leadership. This change was made without consulting with professors.

Notes 1. Robert Jervis, “Identity and the Cold War,” in The Cambridge History of the Cold War, 3 vols, ed. Melvyn P.  Leffler and Odd Arne Westad (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 2: 25, 35–36. 2. SMA, A23-2-41, ss. (sheets) 26–28; A23-2-46, ss. 7–8. 3. Zhihua Shen and Guy Alitto, “A Historical Examination of the Issue of Soviet Experts in China: Basic Situation and Policy Changes,” Russian History 29, nos. 2–4 (2002): 379–380. The term “Soviet experts” refers to Soviet educated specialists sent to China. 4. Pepper, Radicalism, 164, 174. 5. This information was conveyed in Chen Jianxiu’s article “Gaodeng yuanxiao kexizu de fenye jiqi yu kecheng de lianxi,” Guangming ribao, 8 June 1950. 6. The college of law was actually a college of law and social science. It usually included the departments of law, politics, and economics. At a small university, science and engineering could be in one college. See Xin jiaoyu 1, no. 3 (1950): 9. 7. Li Huaxing et al, Minguo jiaoyushi (Shanghai: Shanghai jiaoyu chubanshe, 1997), 602. 8. Both the institute and college are called “xueyuan” in Chinese language. The word “institute” is used here because such institutions in the Soviet Union were called institutes. 9. Wenhui bao, 1, 6 June 1950; Guangming ribao, 1 June 1950. 10. Wenbu gaige gaodeng jiaoyu: Jiaoyu gongzuo cankao ziliao (Shanghai: Xin jiaoyu she, 1950), 18. 11. Ibid., 50–59.

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12. Guangming ribao, 29 June 1950. 13. Li et al., Minguo jiaoyushi, 602, 603. 14. Wenbu gaige gaodeng jiaoyu, 51. 15. Guangming ribao, 29 June 1950. 16. Wenbu gaige gaodeng jiaoyu, 54. 17. Li et al, Minguo jiaoyushi, 603. 18. Guangming ribao,13, 14 September 1950. 19. Ibid.; Xin guancha 1, no. 1 (1950): 33–35. 20. Guangming ribao, 19 August 1950. 21. For this new point of view, see Qian Junrui’s article “Gaodeng jiaoyu gaige de guanjian,” Guangming ribao, 2 November 1951. Qian was the highest-ranking Communist official in the Ministry of Education. He served as a deputy minister and the head of the party organization in the Ministry of Education in the early 1950s. The minister of education in the early 1950s, Ma Xulun, was not a member of the CCP. 22. Renmin ribao, 25 September 1952. 23. For more detailed information about this reorganization of Chinese HEIs, see Chung Shih, Higher Education in Communist China (Hong Kong: Union Research Institute, 1960), 40–47; Pepper, Radicalism, 174–179. 24. Almost all the institutes in China were renamed universities in the 1980s and 1990s. 25. Xiang Bolong, ed. Zhonggong Shanghai shi jiaoyu weisheng tiyu xitong dangshi wenji, vol. 1 (Shanghai: Tongji daxue chubanshe, 1994), 83, 84. 26. Wenhui bao, 13 November 1952. 27. https://www.nju.edu.cn/EN/glance/list.htm (website of Nanjing University), accessed on 5 January 2021. 28. https://www.seu.edu.cn/ (website of Southeast University), accessed on 5 January 2021. Nanjing Institute of Technology was renamed Southeast University in 1988. 29. Renmin jiaoyu (a monthly), September 1952: 7. 30. Ibid. Zeng was not a member of the CCP. But he was apparently defending the position of the Ministry of Higher Education. 31. Zhongguo jiaoyu nianjian, 1949–1981 (Beijing: Zhongguo dabaike quanshu chubanshe, 1984), 239, 292. 32. In the Soviet Union, the length of primary and secondary education was nine years before 1930, when the senior division of the general secondary schools was reorganized into technicums. When the senior division of the general secondary schools was restored in 1932, the length of primary and secondary education was extended to ten years. 33. See an article about Qinghua University’s effort to learn from the Soviet Union. Guangming ribao, 27 May 1953.

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34. Renmin jiaoyu, November 1952: 22–24. 35. Renmin jiaoyu, June 1954: 23. 36. Douglas Stiffler, “ ‘Three Blows of the Shoulder Pole’: Soviet Experts at Chinese People’s University, 1950–1957,” in China Learns from the Soviet Union, 1949–Present, ed. Thomas P.  Bernstein and Hua-Yu Li (Lanham, Maryland: Lexington Books, 2010), 305. 37. Renmin jiaoyu, June 1954: 25; Guangming ribao, 18 February 1955. 38. The section on China was given only three or four academic hours in a course at first. It was gradually expanded. However, even with this expansion, it constituted only a quarter or one third of the content in most courses in 1954. Renmin jiaoyu, June 1954: 26. 39. Guangming ribao, 18 February 1955. There were a little more than 200 HEIs in China in the early 1950s. Zhongguo jiaoyu nianjian, 1949–1981, 234. The 402 educational institutions that received course outlines and textbooks from the People’s University perhaps included some secondary schools. 40. Deborah A. Kaple, “Soviet Advisors in China in the 1950s,” in Brothers in Arms: The Rise and Fall of the Sino-Soviet Alliance, 1945–1963, ed. Odd Arne Westad (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998), 125–126. 41. Stiffler, “ ‘Three Blows of the Shoulder Pole,’ ” 307. 42. Zhongguo jiaoyu nianjian, 1949–1981, 294. 43. See Chap. 6 for an elaboration of this feature of the Soviet system of higher education. 44. By 1956, the year in which Mao’s criticism of the mechanical copying of Soviet experience induced a reconsideration of the Soviet model of higher education, the Ministry of Higher Education had approved and issued uniform course outlines for every specialty in engineering that was offered at three or more institutions. But fewer uniform course outlines were completed in other areas of higher education. Zhongguo jiaoyu nianjian, 1949–1981, 284, 298, 311. 45. Renmin jiaoyu, March 1955: 20. 46. Renmin jiaoyu, June 1952: 23; April 1953: 25: Chung Shih, Higher Education, 52–53. 47. Renmin ribao, 19 August 1956. 48. Renmin ribao, 11 July 1956. 49. Alexander G.  Korol, Soviet Education for Science and Technology (New York: Technology Press of MIT and John Wiley & Sons, 1957), 211. 50. N.  I. Boldyrev, ed. Direktivy VKP(b) i postanovleniia Sovetskogo pravitel’stva o narodnom obrazovanii: Sbornik dokumentov za 1917–1947 gg, 2 vols. (Moscow: Izdatel’stvo Akademii pedagogicheskikh nauk RSFSR, 1947), 2: 96 (hereafter cited as Direktivy o narodnom obrazovanii).

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51. Vysshaia shkola, no. 3 (1938): 47. 52. Renmin jiaoyu, April 1955: 5–10. 53. Zhongguo jiaoyu nianjian, 1949–1981, 294. Thereafter, the course of study for some specialties at comprehensive universities and other HEIs was also extended to five years. Ibid., 252, 272. 54. Renmin ribao, 5, 17 August 1956; Guangming ribao, 31 July, 12, 20 August 1956. 55. Twenty-four worker and peasant accelerated secondary schools were established in 1950, and their number increased to 58 by the end of 1953. Of 27,900 students studying at such schools at the end of 1953, workers made up only 25.5 percent, cadres of worker and peasant origins constituted 56.3 percent. Renmin jiaoyu, November 1954: 34. 56. The first rabfak was established in Moscow in January 1919. Narodnoe prosveshchenie, nos. 18–19–20 (1920): 94–95. These preparatory schools were called workers’ departments because they were affiliated with HEIs and were considered as departments of the latter. 57. Guangming ribao, 17 February 1951. 58. They constituted 38 percent of the first-year students at Russian HEIs in 1925. Krasnoe studenchestvo, no. 4 (1927): 5. 59. Zhongguo jiaoyu nianjian, 1949–1981, 338; Guangming ribao, 25 May 1954. 60. Zhongguo jiaoyu nianjian, 1949–1981, 175. 61. Ibid., 175, 177. 62. In the spring of 1954, the Ministry of Higher Education had to issue a special directive, calling upon HEIs to take special measures to help students who had been cadres of worker and peasant origins. Guangming ribao, 21 March 1954. 63. The Commissariat of Enlightenment was a government agency of the Union republic. Unless indicated otherwise, the term “Narkompros” is used to refer to the Commissariat of Enlightenment of the Russian Republic in this book. The policies of the Russian Narkompros were generally followed by the Commissariats of Enlightenment of other republics. 64. Boldyrev, Direktivy o narodnom obrazovanii, 2: 39–46. This statute was first promulgated in September 1921. It was revised because of the opposition from professors and re-promulgated in 1922. The most important revision was adding an article stating that the rector was appointed by Narkompros from among the candidates nominated by faculty members. N.  L. Safraz’ian, Bor’ba KPSS za stroitel’stvo sovetskoi vysshei shkoly (1921–1927gg.) (Moscow: Izdatel’stvo Moskovskogo universiteta, 1977), 29. 65. Krasnoe studenchestvo, nos. 3–4 (1928–1929): 43–46. The student sections of trade unions were originally organized according to students’

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former union affiliations. Therefore, not only students at the same HEI, but even students studying in the same department could belong to different sections. Starting in 1928, students in the same department within a multi-­departmental HEI or at the same specialized institute were organized into one trade-union section. Ibid. 66. Krasnoe studenchestvo, no. 1 (1927–1928): 38. 67. For example, there were only 46 Communists among the faculty members at the 16 HEIs in Petrograd in February 1923; by contrast, there were 4250 Communist students at these HEIs in 1923. A. P. Kupaigorodskaia, Vysshaia shkola Leningrada v pervye gody Sovetskoi vlasti (1917–1925 gg.) (Leningrad: Nauka, 1984), 114. 68. Even the majority of student representatives in the bureaus of subject committees were Communists, although the student representative in the bureau of each subject committee was supposed to be elected by all the students who had taken or were taking courses taught by the faculty members of a given committee. Krasnoe studenchetvo, nos. 3–4 (1928–1929): 37. 69. Kupaigorodskaia, Vysshaia shkola Leningrada, 117. 70. Krasnoe studenchestvo, no. 1 (1926): 54. 71. Before 1927, student representatives in the administrative boards of HEIs and in presidia of the academic departments received special stipends for their positions. In 1927, Narkompros abolished the stipends for these student representatives in order to discourage them from acting as administrators. GARF, f. 5574, op. 5, d. 10, l. 71. 72. This topic is further discussed in Chap. 3. 73. The term “bourgeois intellectuals” was used occasionally in the early 1950s. For example, in 1954, when Yu Pingbo, a literary scholar, was criticized for his interpretation of the novel Dream of the Red Chamber, Mao used the phrase “bourgeois intellectuals such as Yu Pingbo” in his comments. Mao Zedong, Jianguo yilai Mao Zedong wengao. 11 vols. (Beijing: Zhongyang wenxian chubanshe, 1987–1996), 4: 575 (hereafter cited as Wengao). But this label was not applied to the whole old intelligentsia before 1957. 74. Theodore H. E. Chen, Thought Reform of the Chinese Intellectuals (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 1960), 30–36, 59–71; Pepper, Radicalism, 166–74. 75. Guangming ribao, 2 November 1951. 76. Renmin jiaoyu, May 1952: 19–20; June 1952: 37–40; Xin jianshe, May 1952: 53–55; Guangming ribao, 19 November 1951. 77. Renmin jiaoyu, February 1952: 22; Guangming ribao, 25 March 1952. 78. Renmin jiaoyu, July 1952: 51–52; Wenhui bao, 6 May 1952.

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79. Allyn and Adele Rickett, Prisoners of Liberation (New York: Cameron Associates, 1957), 27–28. 80. Guangming ribao, 19 November 1951. 81. SMA, A23-1-26, s. 5. 82. SMA, B243-1-27, s. 69. 83. SMA, A23-2-8, s. 19. 84. Even in the 1920s, before the introduction of the system of one-person management into Soviet HEIs, the Central Committee of the Communist Party instructed the party organizations at HEIs not to intervene in administrative affairs, and declared that the party’s leadership at HEIs was realized through the Communists who entered the administrative boards. Safraz’ian, Bor’ba, 40. 85. BMA, 1-22-66, s. 31. 86. Ibid. 87. SMA, A23-1-26, s. 5-6. 88. The “Provisional Regulations for Higher Educational Institutions” stipulated that deans of academic departments and chairpersons of the teaching and research groups should be selected from among full professors. Wenbu gaige gaodeng jiaoyu, 54, 56. 89. SMA, A23-2-41, s. 8; BMA, 1-22-66, s. 82 90. BMA, 1-22-49, s. 61. 91. BMA, 1-22-49, ss. 63-64; 1-22-66, s. 85 92. BMA, 1-22-66, s. 85. 93. Bo Yibo, Ruogan zhongda juece yu shijian de huigu, 2 vols. (Beijing: Zhonggong zhongyang dangxiao chubanshe, 1991 and 1993), 1: 472. 94. Mao, Wengao, 6: 82–104. 95. SMA, B243-1-132, s. 24. The content of this directive can also be found in Zhongguo jiaoyu nianjian, 1949–1981, 253, 273. 96. The term “party center” (Dang zhongyang) is often used in China. It does not always mean the Central Committee of the CCP. More often it means the Politburo or the standing committee of the Politburo. 97. SMA, A23-2-155, s. 28. 98. BMA, 1-22-228, ss. 2–4. 99. The party group in a ministry of the central government of the PRC is an equivalent to the party committee in a province, but it is less visible than the latter. 100. The combined party cell (Zhongzhi) was the party organization in the academic department, which was divided into several party cells (Zhibu). 101. BMA, 1-22-228, s. 17–22. 102. Ibid. 103. Zhu Zheng, 1957 nian de xiaji: Cong baijia zhengming dao liangjia zhengming (Zhengzhou: Henan renmin chubanshe, 1998), 284.

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References Archives BMA—Beijing Municipal Archives (Beijing shi danganguan) GARF—State Archives of the Russian Federation (Gosudarstvennyi arkhiv Rossiiskoi Federatsii) SMA—Shanghai Municipal Archives (Shanghai shi danganguan)

Chinese Newspapers

and

Journals

Guangming ribao Renmin jiaoyu Renmin ribao Wenhui bao Xin guancha Xin jiaoyu Xin jianshe

Russian Journals Krasnoe studenchestvo Narodnoe prosveshchenie Vysshaia shkola

Books

in

Chinese

Bo Yibo. 1991 and 1993. Ruogan zhongda juece yu shijian de huigu, 2 vols. Beijing: Zhonggong zhongyang dangxiao chubanshe. Li Huaxing, Zhou Yongxiang, Chen Zuhuai, and Zhang Yuanlong. 1997. Minguo jiaoyushi. Shanghai: Shanghai jiaoyu chubanshe. Mao Zedong. 1987–1996. Jianguo yilai Mao Zedong wengao. 11 vols. Beijing: Zhongyang wenxian chubanshe. Wenbu gaige gaodeng jiaoyu: Jiaoyu gongzuo cankao ziliao. 1950. Shanghai: Xin jiaoyu she. Xiang Bolong, ed. 1994. Zhonggong Shanghai shi jiaoyu weisheng tiyu xitong dangshi wenji. Vol. 1. Shanghai: Tongji daxue chubanshe. Zhongguo jiaoyu nianjian, 1949–1981. 1984. Beijing: Zhongguo dabaike quanshu chubanshe. Zhu Zheng. 1998. 1957 nian de xiaji: Cong baijia zhengming dao liangjia zhengming. Zhengzhou: Henan renmin chubanshe.

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Books

in

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Russian

Boldyrev, N.I., ed. 1947. Direktivy VKP(b) i postanovleniia Sovetskogo pravitel’stva o narodnom obrazovanii: Sbornik dokumentov za 1917–1947 gg, 2 vols. Moscow: Izdatel’stvo Akademii pedagogicheskikh nauk RSFSR. Kupaigorodskaia, A.P. 1984. Vysshaia shkola Leningrada v pervye gody Sovetskoi vlasti (1917–1925 gg.) Leningrad: Nauka. Safraz’ian, N.L. 1977. Bor’ba KPSS za stroitel’stvo sovetskoi vysshei shkoly (1921–1927 gg.). Moscow: Izdatel’stvo Moskovskogo universiteta.

Books

and

Articles

in

English

Chen, Theodore H.E. 1960. Thought Reform of the Chinese Intellectuals. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press. Chung, Shih. 1960. Higher Education in Communist China. Hong Kong: Union Research Institute. Jervis, Robert. 2010. Identity and the Cold War. In The Cambridge History of the Cold War, ed. Melvyn P.  Leffler and Odd Arne Westad, 3 vols. 2: 22–43. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kaple, Deborah A. 1998. Soviet Advisors in China in the 1950s. In Brothers in Arms: The Rise and Fall of the Sino-Soviet Alliance, 1945–1963, ed. Odd Arne Westad, 117–140. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Korol, Alexander G. 1957. Soviet Education for Science and Technology. New York: Technology Press of MIT and John Wiley & Sons. Pepper, Suzanne. 1996. Radicalism and Education Reform in Twentieth-Century China: The Search for an Ideal Development Model. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Rickett, Allyn, and Adele Rickett. 1957. Prisoners of Liberation. New  York: Cameron Associates. Shen, Zhihua, and Guy Alitto. 2002. A Historical Examination of the Issue of Soviet Experts in China: Basic Situation and Policy Changes. Russian History 29 (2–4): 377–400. Stiffler, Douglas. 2010. ‘Three Blows of the Shoulder Pole’: Soviet Experts at Chinese People’s University, 1950–1957. In China Learns from the Soviet Union, 1949–Present, ed. Thomas P.  Bernstein and Hua-Yu Li, 303–326. Lanham, Maryland: Lexington Books.

PART II

Historical Convergence Between Stalinism and Maoism: Soviet Higher Education in the First Five-Year Plan Period and Chinese Higher Learning During the Great Leap Forward

CHAPTER 3

Class War Against the Bourgeois Intelligentsia and the Intensified Effort to Create a Proletarian Intelligentsia

Both the Great Leap Forward and radical reforms in higher education that accompanied it represented China’s breakaway from Soviet tutelage. For example, the highly centralized method of managing industry and higher education, which had been imported from the Soviet Union in the early 1950s, was rejected in 1958, and the local governments were given greater power in managing and developing industry as well as higher education.1 While the Soviet model of higher education was partially rejected in 1956 and 1957, the decentralization of higher education management and reforms in the process of education at HEIs during the Great Leap period represented a more radical breakaway from Soviet tutelage. However, there was a historical convergence between Maoism of the Great Leap period and Stalinism of the First Five-Year Plan period. Both the Great Leap Forward in China and the First Five-Year Plan in the Soviet Union were programs that strove for an unrealistically high speed in economic development. More importantly, these programs were launched at a comparable point in the histories of the Soviet Union and the PRC. The First Five-Year Plan in the Soviet Union was launched around the same time when the Soviet government began its endeavor to fully socialize the economy, which was achieved through the abolition of the private sector in the urban economy and the forced collectivization of agriculture.2 The Great Leap Forward in China was started right after the complete socialization of the economy (the collectivization of agriculture and the socialist © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 L. S. Zhu, Stalinism, Maoism, and Socialism in Higher Education, Global Histories of Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-88777-3_3

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transformation of the private sector in the urban economy in China had been completed by the end of 1956), and was accompanied by the emergence of a new organizational form for collectivized agriculture—the people’s communes. The historical convergence between Stalinism and Maoism was exhibited, first of all, in the Stalinist and Maoist doctrines that the socialist transformation of the economy caused an intensification of the class struggle and changed relations between the Communist Party and the intelligentsia. The beginning of the First Five-Year Plan was also the beginning of the Stalin era in the history of the Soviet Union, as Stalin’s policies brought an end to his alliance with Nikolai Bukharin and other moderate leaders, who were branded as the “right” in the spring of 1929, when they were defeated by Stalin and his allies. Stalin’s strategy for rapid industrialization predicated on the Soviet state’s ability to obtain cheap grains from peasants. This strategy brought an end to market relations between the Soviet state and peasants, and eventually led to the forced collectivization of agriculture, which began in the second half of 1929. From Stalin’s point of view, the socialist offensive in the countryside meant “squeezing out” rural capitalist elements.3 It was accompanied by an assault on private businesses in the urban economy, the capitalist elements in cities and towns. It was in this circumstance that Stalin propounded a thesis that as the Soviet government advanced more toward full socialism, the greater would be the resistance of the capitalist elements, and sharper would be the class struggle.4 This Stalinist doctrine had serious implications for relations between the Communist Party and the intelligentsia. During the NEP period, the Soviet government’s policy toward the educated specialists was based on the premise that it was possible for the bourgeois intelligentsia to cooperate with the Soviet state. In September 1925, as a sign of the Communist Party’s effort to improve relations with the bourgeois intelligentsia, the Central Committee adopted a special resolution on specialists, which called for fighting against groundless and sweeping criticism of the specialists in the party and professional newspapers and journals and for improving living and working conditions for specialists. It also declared that the evaluation of specialists should not be exclusively based on their class origins, but should take into consideration the contributions they made in their fields of expertise.5 However, in mid-1928, 53 engineers from the mining region of Shakhty in southern Russia and from the nearby Donbass were put on a show trial for alleged sabotage.6 On July 13, 1928, in a speech to the

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Communists in Leningrad about the plenum of the Central Committee of the Communist Party that had been just concluded,7 Stalin declared that the lesson of the Shakhty Affair was that “the old experts prepared to work hand in hand with the Soviet government are becoming relatively fewer and fewer.”8 As this remark was made just a few days after Stalin had propounded his theory about the intensification of the class struggle, he apparently meant that as the country was moving closer to full socialism and the class struggle became sharper, it was no longer possible for the old specialists who did not embrace socialism to cooperate with the Soviet government. Mao arrived at a similar thesis in a different circumstance. At the end of 1955, the CCP leaders came to believe that the old intelligentsia’s political attitude had changed under the influence of the party’s successful policies, and therefore the CCP even became more willing to accept professors and senior educated professionals in other professions as its member.9 This was one of the reasons that Mao launched in the spring of 1956 the Hundred Flowers movement. Initially, this movement, symbolized by the slogan “let a hundred flowers bloom, let a hundred schools of thought contend,” simply meant loosening restrictions on intellectual life. In the spring of 1957, as Mao invited the educated professionals to constructively criticize the Communist Party and its officials, the Hundred Flowers movement entered the second phase. When criticisms from the intelligentsia became unexpectedly harsh, Mao transformed the Hundred Flowers movement into the anti-rightist campaign, in which many of those who criticized the CCP’s policies or Communist officials were labeled as “rightists” and punished. At the same time, Mao defined the old intelligentsia as the bourgeois intelligentsia and placed the bourgeois intelligentsia and bourgeoisie in the same category.10 Interpreting what he saw as the hostility of the intelligentsia toward the Communist Party, Mao connected it with the socialization of the economy. In late 1957, he enunciated a theory that although private ownership of means of production had been abolished, the bourgeoisie, the bourgeois intelligentsia, and part of upper middle peasants were not yet reconciled with it.11 This theory, which meant that new class conflict was caused by the socialization of the economy, was similar to the doctrine that Stalin had propounded. Moreover, in May 1957, Mao stated to the visiting Kliment Voroshilov (chairperson of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union): “Capitalism and capitalists have been disgraced in society. But the bourgeois intelligentsia still has influence.”12 As will be seen in the second section of this chapter, because of this Maoist theory,

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the Chinese Communists adopted in 1958 a new orthodox view that the socialist revolution changed relations between the Communist Party and the intelligentsia. As has been indicated in the introduction to this book, Sheila Fitzpatrick discovered that there was a cultural revolution, defined as class war on the cultural front, in the Soviet Union during the First Five-Year Plan period. This class war was, of course, instigated by Stalin’s doctrine. Mao’s doctrine also encouraged class war on the cultural front. As a matter of fact, the term “cultural revolution” was also used in China during the Great Leap period, and it was defined both as cultural development and class struggle on the cultural front. Zhou Yang, a deputy director of the Propaganda Department of the Central Committee of the CCP, declared in 1958: “The cultural revolution involves the raising of the cultural level of the workers and peasants as well as the struggle against bourgeois ideas …. Therefore, it is … a form of class struggle.”13 The class war on the cultural front was a class war against the bourgeois intelligentsia. It had an enormous impact on higher education. Professors were the bourgeois intelligentsia at HEIs, and therefore they became the targets of the class war. The class war against professors, along with the change of the system of internal governance, completely eliminated the role that professors had played in internal governance at HEIs in both the Soviet Union and China. The historical convergence between Stalinism of the First Five-Year Plan period and Maoism of the Great Leap period was also manifested in Stalin’s and Mao’s promotion of the intensified effort to create a proletarian intelligentsia, which was a corollary of their doctrines about the class struggle. In Stalin’s speech on July 13, 1928, he also called for expediting the creation of “a new technical intelligentsia consisting of members of the working class.”14 In the summer of 1957, when Mao defined the old intelligentsia as the bourgeois intelligentsia, he also asserted: “To build socialism, the working class must have its own army of technical cadres, professors, teachers, scientists, journalists, writers, artists, and Marxist theorists …. This task should be largely accomplished in the next ten to fifteen years.”15 This chapter develops a comparative analysis of the class war against professors and the intensified efforts to create a proletarian intelligentsia in the Soviet Union during the First Five-Year Plan period and in China during the Great Leap period. Fitzpatrick examined the class war against the

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bourgeois intelligentsia in the Soviet Union during the First Five-Year Plan period,16 but no other scholars have examined the class war against the bourgeois intelligentsia in China during the Great Leap period. I argue that unlike the class war against landlords in China during land reform and against kulaks (rich peasants) in the Soviet Union during the forced collectivization of agriculture, the class struggle against professors was partially punitive and partially reformative, and Maoist policy carried a stronger reformative aspect. But there were tensions between the punitive and reformative aspects in both the Soviet Union and China. I also contend that the class war against professors played a functional role, as it depowered a group who would otherwise have had an influential voice in defending educational conventions and objecting to radical reforms in higher learning. While analyzing similarities between the intensified efforts to create a proletarian intelligentsia in the Soviet Union and China, I also argue that the Maoist definition of the proletarian intelligentsia differed from the Stalinist concept. In the Stalinist definition, the proletarian intelligentsia essentially meant a new intelligentsia of working-class origins and (to a lesser extent) peasant backgrounds. As has been seen, in July 1928, Stalin called for accelerating the creation of a new technical intelligentsia consisting of members of the working class. In 1936, while talking about social changes that had taken place in the Soviet Union, Stalin declared that 80 to 90 percent of the members of the Soviet intelligentsia came from the working class, the peasantry, and other strata of the working population.17 By contrast, in the Maoist concept, the proletarian intelligentsia was only partially defined by the social origins; to a large extent it was also defined by the political performance or behavior of its members. This chapter considers how these different definitions of the proletarian intelligentsia affected policies for selection for higher education in the Soviet Union and China. The following chapter includes a discussion of how the Maoist definition of the proletarian intelligentsia also influenced the reforms in the process of education at Chinese HEIs.

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Class War Against the Bourgeois Intelligentsia and the Transformation of the System of Internal Governance at Soviet Higher Education Institutions The main reason for the class war against professors, the bourgeois intelligentsia at HEIs, was Stalin’s doctrine about the intensification of the class struggle caused by the socialist offensive in the economy. But radical reforms in higher education, which began in the fall of 1928, also created a functional reason. As will be seen in the following chapter, continuous production practice, which eventually required students to spend about half of their time on off-campus experiential learning, was the most important experiment in the process of education at the Soviet HEIs during the First Five-Year Plan period. Andrei Vyshinsky, who was appointed in the summer of 1928 as director of Glavprofobr (the Main Administration of Professional-Technical Education, an organ within Narkompros with the main responsibility of overseeing HEIs and secondary professional schools), wrote that at many meetings in the fall of 1928 he heard from professors “an enormous amount of refined and witty words intended to persuade the audience of the impossibility of continuous production practice.”18 When Narkompros called for reforming curricula in order to accommodate both continuous production practice and the new scheme for training engineers,19 it met an equally strong resistance from professors. Many of them viewed the new curricular reform as a repetition of the hasty and foolish reform that had been undertaken in the early 1920s and abandoned in 1926.20 Because of Stalin’s doctrine about the intensification of the class struggle, many Communist officials interpreted professors’ resistance to educational reforms as a form of class war against the socialist reconstruction of higher education. Andrei Bubnov, who was appointed Commissar of Enlightenment in the spring of 1929, after Anatoly Lunacharsky’s resignation, took this approach.21 He declared in October 1929: “At the present time our higher educational institutions are an arena of class struggle, which sometimes is very fierce. The reactionary part of the professoriate not only resisted the active implementation of a full set of measures, without which we cannot put our schools on the right footing, but they also conduct an active policy of offensive.”22 The first battle in the class war against professors was the campaign of faculty reelections, which started at 14 major HEIs during the summer of 1929. In theory, the reelections were an enforcement of a previously

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ignored legal requirement that faculty members should seek a renewal of their appointments after a certain period of time.23 But speeches of the Narkompros officials made it clear that the real purpose was political. At the Third All-Union Congress of Academic Workers, a representative of Glavprofobr declared that faculty members at HEIs were unsatisfactory, but it was unnecessary to launch a general purge; instead, Glavprofobr proposed removing those with an obviously anti-Soviet attitude, a majority of whom were beyond their term of appointment.24 In January 1930, speaking about the faculty reelections at 14 institutions conducted in 1929, A.  Abinder, a Narkompros official, declared: “The experience of conducting the campaign at fourteen higher educational institutions showed that we succeeded in isolating and removing reactionary strata of professors who were hostile to us.”25 The class war against the bourgeois intelligentsia embodied both punitive and reformative aspects. The punitive aspect was most clearly demonstrated in the Shakhty Affair in 1928 and the Industrial Party Affair in 1930. In both these cases, engineers were accused of sabotage and sentenced to death or imprisonment. Removing professors from their positions also indicated the punitive aspect. The reformative aspect was intended to compel members of the bourgeois intelligentsia to change their political or ideological position. In the Soviet Union, this aspect was demonstrated in the effort to overcome the inclination of the majority of the old educated specialists to maintain political neutrality. In his speech at a party conference of the Moscow region on September 14, 1929, Viacheslav Molotov declared that while political neutrality could have been a shelter for the old specialists from the storm of the revolution in the recent past, it became an illusion amid the socialist transformation of agriculture and the intensification of class struggle. The Communist Party should encourage a minority of “active and conscious supporters of socialist construction” among old specialists to distinguish themselves from the rest, and compel other specialists to take a clear political position.26 The reformative goal was also sought in faculty reelections. The faculty members seeking a reelection had to go through a “public review”: they were required to give an oral report on their work at a public meeting; then both their political and academic qualifications were evaluated by other faculty members and students who attended the meeting. Thus, for faculty members who would not be dismissed from their positions, reelections were a process of criticism and self-criticism, which was intended to

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compel them to change their political position as well as their attitude toward the radical reforms in higher education. Most faculty members demonstrated strong professional solidarity during faculty reelections. They refused to criticize their colleagues who were undergoing a public review. After a professor at Plekhanov Institute of the National Economy had criticized another professor, many of his colleagues reportedly stopped saying “hello” to him and shaking hands with him.27 Although the positions of professors whose term of appointment had expired were declared open to other candidates in the campaign of reelections, few were willing to compete with these professors for their positions. At Moscow University, 104 professorial positions were declared open, but only 132 applications were received, among which only about 30 were from “fresh” candidates who had not occupied these positions before the campaign of reelections.28 Narkompros embraced the class war policy toward professors, but it also attempted to balance the punitive and reformative aspects of the class struggle for the reason that was stated in an editorial of Pravda (a newspaper that was the official organ of the Communist Party) about faculty reelections. This editorial condemned the “reactionary professors” who “actively oppose all the attempts to change the old order.” At the same time, it warned that “the heights of science and pedagogy remain almost monopolistically controlled by the old professors;” there were no red scholars of equal academic qualifications to replace the old professors. Therefore, in reelections the qualifications of professors should not be determined only by political criteria; otherwise “there is a direct danger that the scientific-pedagogic level of higher schools will decline.”29 However, Communist and proletarian students (these two groups overlapped to a great extent because many students who came from among workers were Communists) were a powerful force at Soviet HEIs during the 1920s and early 1930s. As beneficiaries of the Soviet government’s class-based policy for selection for higher education, many of them were not only strong supporters of the class-based ideology, but also the fundamentalists in the sense that they were against any pragmatic policy that seemed to be a concession from that ideology. As the official policy of the Communist Party now encouraged class war against the bourgeois intelligentsia, many of these students believed that this class war should be as punitive as possible. One of the instances that demonstrated the conflict between the fundamentalist approach advocated by many Communist and proletarian students and the stance of Narkompros involved a professor of

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chemistry at Leningrad University, A.  E. Uspensky. On the initiative of student leaders, Uspensky was verbally attacked, and his position was declared open to applicants, although his tenure had not expired. In June 1929, Narkompros called a special meeting, with the participation of three prominent scientists, a student representative from Leningrad University, and a representative from TsBPS, to discuss the case. The resolution of this meeting declared the charges against Uspensky groundless and called for his public rehabilitation; and it recommended that Uspensky be transferred to another HEI due to the unpleasant situation created at Leningrad University.30 The conflict also played out at a plenum of TsBPS held in January 1930. Reporting on the faculty reelections held in 1929, Abinder, a Narkompros official, stated: In the last year there were cases of servile mood, that is, the students decided not to criticize a professor or teacher for this or other considerations, although there are adequate reasons for doing so. On the other hand, comrades, we observed that charges—extremely inconsiderate charges—were brought against some outstanding representatives of science, whom we could use with extreme benefit to us under our conditions.31

But many student leaders viewed Narkompros’ position as too conciliatory. A student from Leningrad charged that in the reelections campaign of 1929 “the social opinion, the (social) organizations say one thing, but Glavprofobr says that this is a world-famous figure, this is an academic with hundreds of scientific works, and so on; therefore, he must be retained, although he is a person with an alien ideology, an element alien to us.” This student demanded that the new round of faculty reelections should be organized differently; “send to the devil all those who are ideologically alien to us,” he declared, “we must kick them out, even though they are world-famous figures.”32 The second round of faculty reelections did not take place because of the institutional reorganization of higher education (which is discussed in Chap. 4). However, the class war against professors continued, although it no longer took the form of specific campaigns. In February 1930, the dean of the Department of Civil Engineering at Moscow Higher Technical School was removed from his position and labeled as an “inveterate enemy” in a national newspaper, because he objected to the upcoming institutional reorganization, in which his department would become an

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independent institute.33 After the institutional reorganization had been completed, the state organs supervising higher education attempted to achieve a breakthrough in the reform of the methods of teaching, and faculty members who were unwilling or unable to adopt active methods of teaching promoted by these state organs were viewed as enemies. Speaking at a meeting in April 1931, an official from Kyiv Institute of Power Engineering declared that “organizations at Kyiv Institute of Power Engineering had to endure serious battles with reactionary professors for (the adoption of) active methods of teaching.” He named professor Krukovsky as one of such reactionaries. Krukovsky once asked a student to write some mathematical formulas on the board in front of class. When this student was not able to write these formulas, Krukovsky stated: “If there were no active methods, I would explain these formulas to you, but now you have to learn these formulas on your own.”34 The system of internal governance at HEIs was changed during the First Five-Year Plan period. The principle of one-person management, which had been first introduced in industry, was applied to higher education as well. According to decrees issued by Narkompros in early 1930, the administrative board of the HEI as well as the presidium of the academic department were to be abolished, and the rector and department dean were to acquire all the administrative power. While according to the first Soviet statute for HEIs, rectors and department deans should be appointed from among candidates nominated by faculty members, they were now to be simply appointed, without consulting faculty members.35 This new principle was adopted when HEIs were reorganized into smaller specialized institutes, which were usually established on the basis of the academic departments of the formerly multi-departmental institutions. Heads of these new institutes were now called directors. As Bubnov indicated later, worker administrators drawn from industry (rather than deans of the former academic departments, who had been professors before 1930), were appointed directors of the new institutes.36 After the institutional reorganization, faculty members were organized into sections or divisions (rather than kafedry) at many HEIs. Heads of these academic units were either recent graduates or even students in the graduating class.37 Thus, the class war against professors and the establishment of the system of one-person management completely eliminated the role that the professors had played in internal governance. With the abolition of the administrative boards and the presidia of academic departments, there were no more student representatives in any

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administrative bodies at HEIs. But student leaders could still exert influence on academic affairs. First of all, the production conferences, which had been held in factories and were regarded by the party leaders as means of workers’ participation in management, were also introduced into HEIs with the establishment of the system of one-person management. The production conferences discussed academic affairs and made suggestions to the administrators.38 Although both students and faculty members could attend production conferences, they were usually controlled by students.39 Secondly and more importantly, as the class war against professors essentially deprived them of any influence on academic affairs, the student leaders (most of whom were Communists) could not but gain stronger voice in academic affairs in comparison to professors. Professor A. I. Nekrasov, who had served as a deputy director of Glavprofobr from 1926 to 1929, complained in 1932 that “one-person management in the school is one-sided, since it affects professors, but often is powerless in dealing with student organizations.”40

Class War Against Bourgeois Professors and the Change in the System of Internal Governance at Chinese Institutions of Higher Learning In 1958, the Chinese Communist officials embraced a new orthodox view that the old intelligentsia was a part of the exploiting classes, although the educated professionals themselves argued that they always lived off their salaries and never exploited any one.41 Another part of the new orthodox view was that while the bourgeoisie and the bourgeois intelligentsia had been part of the revolutionary forces in the phase of the “new democratic” revolution, the targets of which were imperialism, feudalism, and bureaucratic capitalism,42 they became the target of the socialist revolution.43 This new orthodox view was, of course, induced by Mao’s doctrine that the bourgeoisie and bourgeois intelligentsia had not reconciled themselves with the socialist transformation of the economy. As in the Soviet Union during the First Five-Year plan period, radical reforms in higher education undertaken in China during the Great Leap period created a functional reason for the class war against professors. According to an estimate made by Communist officials at HEIs in Beijing in 1958, only about 15 percent of professors supported new educational

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policy, while about 20 percent of them stubbornly objected to it, and about 65 percent were skeptical about it; among younger faculty members, about 30 percent supported new educational policy, while 10 percent were resistant to it and about 60 percent were skeptical.44 This estimate not only indicated that a large proportion of faculty members had reservations about radical educational reforms, but also showed that the Communist officials believed that professors as a group were less supportive of the educational reforms than the younger faculty members. More importantly, they believed that the opposition to educational reforms from 20 percent of professors derived from their bourgeois ideological position, whereas the reason for the resistance from 10 percent of the younger faculty members was the lack of understanding of the value of physical labor (the effort to integrate education with productive labor was an important experiment in Chinese higher education during the Great Leap period, as will be seen in Chap. 4).45 The class war against the bourgeois intelligentsia in China also embodied both punitive and reformative aspects. The punitive aspect was most clearly manifested in the anti-rightist campaign. Most of those who were branded as “rightists” were dismissed from their jobs or demoted to less important positions. Some were sentenced to punitive labor on prison farms.46 However, the class struggle against the bourgeois intelligentsia in China during the Great Leap period carried a stronger reformative aspect than that in the Soviet Union during the First Five-Year Plan period. At HEIs, the class struggle took the form of criticizing professors’ bourgeois ideas. Professors whose ideas were criticized were not dismissed from their jobs, although some were removed from the administrative positions they had held. But criticisms often became verbal attacks. These attacks came in several waves. Unlike the anti-rightist campaign in 1957, these waves of attack were not directed by the party center, but were initiated by the Communist officials on the higher education front and therefore were marked by strong local variations. The number of professors who were subjected to verbal attacks was large, but varied in various HEIs. 26.5 percent of professors at Beijing University were denounced in various waves of class struggle, and this proportion was as high as 60 percent at Beijing Agricultural University. Many of these professors were attacked multiple times.47 One of these waves of class struggle was a campaign against bourgeois scholarly ideas, that is, theories and views propounded by professors in

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their scholarly works. The first attempt to criticize bourgeois scholarly ideas had been undertaken in late 1954 and early 1955. In order not to alienate too many professors, Communist officials at that time expected critiques to be made in the form of scholarly discussions. But professors, who were expected to play a major role in scholarly discussions, were unwilling to make ideological critiques of their colleagues’ scholarly works.48 The campaign against bourgeois scholarly ideas in 1958, which began in June and continued into the fall, was different from the attempt of 1954 and 1955 in both objectives and methods. The new objective was to eliminate the influence of professors’ bourgeois scholarly ideas on young faculty members and students. The new method consisted of party officials choosing some professors as special targets for criticism and then mobilizing students and younger faculty members to criticize them.49 Most of the professors who were chosen as targets for criticism in the campaign against bourgeois scholarly ideas were prominent scholars in social science and humanities. They included Ma Yinchu, an economist and president of Beijing University, Feng Youlan, a prolific philosopher at Beijing University.50 Most of the criticisms were made in wall posters and at meetings, but some articles written by students and young faculty members that criticized prominent scholars were assembled in special collections.51 Some professors were subjected to especially intensive dose of criticism. For example, Liu Dajie, a professor in the Department of Chinese at Fudan University, was criticized in numerous wall posters and at many meetings for more than one month.52 Although the campaign was supposed to be about scholarly views and theories, more serious political accusations were made against some professors. Ominous political labels were attached to them. Some of them were labeled as “white banners.”53 As the red flag was a positive symbol for the revolution as well as revolutionary heroes, the epithet “white banner” was used as a negative label for villains. Five professors in the Department of Agricultural Economics at Beijing Agricultural University were labeled as “filial sons and grandsons of the imperialists” and were even accused of forming a “reactionary conspiratorial clique.” Some of these five professors had been the dean of the department or chairpersons of the teaching and research groups. They were removed from these leadership positions.54 These professors, of course, experienced greater emotional suffering than others. A small number of professors in science, engineering, and medicine was also selected by Communist officials as special targets for criticism in the

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campaign against bourgeois scholarly ideas. The targets for criticism selected in Shanghai included two professors of medicine, one at Shanghai First Medical Institute and another at Shanghai Second Medical Institute.55 At Beijing Institute of Railroads, several professors were selected as targets for criticism, and the institute’s journal devoted a special issue to criticizing these professors’ bourgeois scholarly ideas. In articles written by students and published in this issue, extremely abusive language was used: the professors were called “ignoramuses” and “sham experts,” and it was asserted that it was hard to expect anything positive or valuable from their mouths.56 The functional role of the class struggle against professors was clearly demonstrated in the campaign for removing “white banners,” which hit campuses of many HEIs during the second half of 1958. In a way, this campaign overlapped with the campaign against bourgeois scholarly ideas, as many professors whose scholarly works were criticized were labeled as “white banners.” But the campaign for removing “white banners” was mainly targeted at those who had reservations about radical educational reforms or were perceived to be objecting to these reforms. Several professors at Qinghua University were branded as “white banners” in June 1958, when they were criticized for their views on education, which conflicted with educational reforms being undertaken.57 From September to November, the campaign for removing “white banners” was launched at many other HEIs in Beijing.58 While most of those who had been verbally attacked for their bourgeois scholarly ideas were prominent professors with publications, more faculty members, including some lecturers and teaching assistants, were denounced in the campaign for removing “white banners.” Of the 47 faculty members in a teaching and research group at Beijing Institute of Geology, seven were denounced as “white banners.” One of such faculty members was Sun Dongyi, a lecturer. He served as the leader of a mineral exploration team of students and faculty members that traveled to Shandong Province. He was denounced as a “white banner” because he did not show enough respect for a student who served at the head of the party cell in this team.59 It has to be pointed out that the campaign for removing “white banners” did not actually remove any faculty members from their jobs, but those who were identified as “white banners” were criticized or verbally attacked at meetings and in wall posters. In Shanghai, the label “white banner” was also applied to some professors, but these instances did not develop into a widespread campaign for removing “white banners.”60 At HEIs in other provinces, the educational

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reforms were also accompanied by a campaign for removing “white banners.” One example was Wuhan University in Hubei Province. Here the radical experiments undertaken in an academic department or a specific course were called the “red flags”, while professors who had reservations on these experiments were branded as “white banners” and denounced.61 There were also tensions between the punitive and reformative aspects of the class struggle against the bourgeois intelligentsia at Chinese HEIs. According to a report from the party committee at Qinghua University, some Communists believed that the only purpose of having the senior faculty members around was to let them serve as an object of the revolutionary struggle, and that any talk “about letting old teachers play their role in teaching” would only lead to an unacceptable relaxation of the revolutionary struggle.62 This report showed that as in the Soviet Union, some Communists in China believed that the class struggle against professors should only be punitive. The party committee at Qinghua University defined these Communists’ point of view as ultra-leftist, and its report claimed that it had overcome this ultra-leftist tendency. When Mao read this report in the internal journal edited by the Central Committee’s Department of Propaganda, he wrote a letter to Lu Dingyi, director of the Department of Propaganda, instructing that this report be distributed to all the HEIs and calling upon the Communist cadres to win over all the professors, lecturers, teaching assistants that could be won over.63 Encouraged by Mao’s letter, the Beijing Party Committee for Higher Schools issued an internal directive in January 1959, reprimanding the Communist cadres who had not yet stopped their attack on professors, and declaring as “one-sided and wrong” the views that regarded professors as enemies, their knowledge as outdated, and their expertise as valueless.64 In the spring of 1959, the successor to this committee, the Department of Universities and Science (of the Beijing Municipal Party Committee), took an even bolder step and decided to rectify what it saw as errors committed in the campaign against bourgeois scholarly ideas. As a remedy, the Department of Universities and Science organized scholarly forums in late April and early May 1959, and invited professors who had been criticized to give presentations or participate in discussions at these forums.65 However, the class struggle against professors was not ended in 1959. At the plenum of the CCP’s Central Committee held in Lushan, Jiangxi Province, in July-August 1959, Defense Minister Peng Dehuai criticized the Great Leap Forward, and was in turn denounced by Mao as a rightist

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opportunist. This soon developed into a campaign against a rightist tendency within the party.66 In this new political environment, many Communist officials at HEIs came to believe that being soft on the bourgeois intelligentsia was an expression of the rightist tendency, and they became more militant toward professors. For example, leaders of the combined party cell in the Department of Chemistry at Beijing University subjected six professors to harsh criticisms in January 1960. One of these professors was Fu Ying, who would become a vice president of Beijing University later. He was attacked verbally at several meetings in early 1960. Another professor was subjected to criticisms from students at a meeting that lasted from 3:00 pm to 11:00 pm.67 As in the Soviet Union during the First Five-Year Plan period, the class struggle against professors in China resulted in the complete elimination of the professors’ role in internal governance at HEIs, although the formal system of internal governance adopted in China was different from that adopted in the Soviet Union during the First Five-Year Plan period. As has been seen in Chap. 2, the system of one-person management was formally replaced by the principle of party committee leadership in 1956. On September 19, 1958, the Central Committee of the CCP and the State Council issued a directive on education—a comprehensive proclamation of new policy measures and objectives in Chinese education. It reiterated the principle of party committee leadership at HEIs, and called for establishing a new administrative system in higher education, in which each university or institute would be administered by a committee of school affairs under the leadership of the party committee.68 But this directive did not include instructions on how the committee of school affairs was to function as an administrative body. As the committee of school affairs was created at each HEI in 1958, its members usually included the president and vice presidents, deans of academic departments, some party officials and some representatives from faculty, staff, and students.69 According to a directive from the Beijing Municipal Party Committee’s Department of Universities and Science, the committee of school affairs should consist of about 30 members.70 In Shanghai, the committees of school affairs at most HEIs were even larger. At Shanghai Institute of Music, a small institution, the committee of school affairs consisted of 41 members. At Fudan University, the committee of school affairs consisted of 101 members.71 Both its composition and size indicated that the committee of school affairs could not function as an administrative body.

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The principle of party leadership at HEIs was reinterpreted during the Great Leap period. One of the criticisms made by professors in the spring of 1957 was that the Communist officials at HEIs were incompetent. In response to this criticism, Mao declared in May 1958 that “it is the universal law for the layman to lead the expert.”72 The September 19 directive of the Central Committee of the CCP and the State Council on education also condemned the view that educational institutions should be run by experts and amateurs could not lead experts. In the context of the class war against professors, this new rhetoric of Mao and the party center created a new interpretation of party leadership in higher education, according to which party leadership meant leadership by party officials. Party officials were leaders of party organizations at different levels, such as the secretary and deputy secretaries of the party committee at a HEI, and the secretary of the combined party cell in an academic department. They were also known as political cadres. During the Great Leap period, even decisions on academic matters were made by these officials. As has been seen, the CCP became more willing to admit professors as its members in 1956. After Mao defined the old intelligentsia as the bourgeois intelligentsia, the CCP again became cautious on accepting professors as its members, but a small number of them were still admitted. However, because the Communist professors usually held leadership positions in the administrative system rather than the party system, even they did not play any role in internal governance during the Great Leap period. Zhou Peiyuan, a professor of physics and a vice president at Beijing University, was admitted into the CCP in February 1959. He later made the following complaint: starting in 1958, the deputy secretaries of the party committee served simultaneously as the university’s director and deputy director of academic affairs, and they issued directives to the combined party cells in academic departments. Although he was sometimes invited to meetings, he could only listen to the decisions of the party committee, but was unable to voice any opinion because he was not involved in any administrative work.73 The meetings Zhou referred to were apparently meetings of the committee of school affairs. As the party group in the Ministry of Higher Education predicted in 1956, overall leadership by the party committee at the HEI naturally led to overall leadership by the combined party cell in the academic department. After the committee of school affairs had been established at each HEI, a committee of department affairs was also created in each academic department, and its nominal duty was to administer the department under

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the leadership of the combined party cell.74 In reality, the combined party cell now assumed all the administrative duties. For example, in the Department of Chinese at Beijing University, duties of the combined party cell included discussing and deciding upon the curriculum, deciding upon courses to be offered each semester, assigning teaching duties to faculty members, responding to students’ critiques of teaching, and supervising research projects. The committee of department affairs rarely met. When it did meet, the secretary of the combined party cell, not the department dean who served as the committee’s nominal chair, was the main speaker, and other members of the committee simply said that they supported the decisions of the combined party cell.75 The dean of the Department of History at Shanghai Pedagogic Institute later said that during the Great Leap period he was not even informed of the appointment of teaching assistants to the department.76

The Intensified Effort to Create a Proletarian Intelligentsia and Policy for Selection for Higher Education in the Soviet Union The Soviet government began its effort to create a proletarian intelligentsia immediately after 1917. As has been seen in Chap. 2, the first rabfak was established in 1919. After the end of the Civil War, the Soviet government instituted the policy of class-based selection in admissions to HEIs, which gave special preference to workers, peasants, and Communists. From 1921 to 1925, preference for the above-indicated groups was embodied in the system of apportionment and nomination: a certain percentage of the seats at HEIs was assigned to the rabfaks, whose graduates were automatically admitted; another proportion of the seats was apportioned among the various commissariats and the party, Komsomol, and trade union organizations, which then nominated candidates to be admitted into HEIs. Only after these two groups of candidates had been admitted, were other applicants admitted to the remaining seats.77 In 1926, the system of apportionment and nomination was abolished; graduates of rabfaks were required to take graduation examinations at their own schools, and only those who passed these examinations were eligible for admissions to HEIs; all other candidates were required to take subject-based entrance examinations given at HEIs, to which they applied. However, among

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those who passed the entrance examinations, preference was given to workers, workers’ children, peasants, and peasants’ children.78 There were two dilemmas in the Soviet government’s effort to create a proletarian intelligentsia. The first dilemma was clearly stated by Narkomrpos in 1920  in an account of its activities in higher education during the first two years of its existence: “The making of this new intelligentsia (meaning the proletarian intelligentsia) requires time measured in years, but the feverishly rapid work of revolutionary self-defense and economic construction does not tolerate delay for any minute, and requires non-stopping inflow of qualified specialists regardless of their social origins and political sympathy.”79 The main reason for the policy change undertaken in 1926 was to raise academic standards in admissions to HEIs. The second dilemma concerned the class-based discrimination, which was a corollary of the policy of class-based selection in admissions to HEIs. Evgeni Preobrazhensky, who served as director of Glavprofobr in the early 1920s, took a class-war approach to the question of access to higher education. He argued in 1921 that there was a class war between the worker-­ peasant majority of the population and the bourgeois intellectual stratum who wanted to help their children retain the level of education and social status they themselves had attained before the revolution. He declared: “The proletarian government openly stands on the side of its own people, and all preferences in admissions (to HEIs) are given to the toiling classes and the fighters for the Soviet power. … We will make exceptions only for the most talented part of the youths who are not of the worker-peasant origins.”80 To some degree, Preobrazhensky’s stance reflected the Bolsheviks’ attitude toward the intelligentsia during the Civil War and in the early 1920s. In the mid-1920s, as has been seen, the Central Committee of the Communist Party called for improving working and living conditions for the intelligentsia. Reflecting this new spirit in the party’s policy toward the intelligentsia, the Soviet government took a special measure to remove the discrimination that children of the educated professionals experienced in access to higher education. In 1926, 11 percent of the first-­ year seats at HEIs were reserved for the children of the “toiling intelligentsia” (engineers, scientists, faculty members at HEIs and rabfaks, agronomists, school teachers, and medical doctors); in 1927, the children of the  “toiling intelligentsia” were equalized with workers’ children in admissions to HEIs.81 The intensified effort to create a proletarian intelligentsia in the Soviet Union during the First Five-Year Plan period was proclaimed in two

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special resolutions on training technical personnel, adopted by the Central Committee of the Communist Party at its plenums in July 1928 and November 1929. As the First Five-Year Plan called for the rapid development of industry, engineering education received special attention from the Central Committee and Stalin. Both resolutions of the Central Committee, while addressing many issues regarding training technical personnel, included a special provision on how to expedite the creation of a new proletarian technical intelligentsia. The provision in the first of these resolutions stated that workers and their children should constitute at least 65 percent of the students admitted to institutions of higher technical education.82 The second resolution raised this working-class quota to 70 percent. In addition, it also extended the class-base quota to institutions of agricultural higher education, requiring that workers, farm laborers, poor peasants, and members of the collective farms should constitute at least 75 percent of the students admitted to such institutions.83 Although the Central Committee only established the class-based quota for institutions of higher technical and agricultural education, it set the tone for other areas of higher education. Moreover, as the class-based quota was the corollary of Stalin’s doctrine about the intensification of class struggle, this doctrine encouraged the effort to further raise the working-class quota that had been established. In the spring of 1929, Narkompros directed that at least 65 percent of the students admitted to pedagogic institutes should be selected from among workers, peasants, and their children; workers and their children should constitute at least 50 percent of the students admitted to programs in social science and humanities.84 In December 1929, Narkompros called for raising the minimum proportion of working-class students in admissions to engineering institutes to 75 percent in the following academic year, and to 65 percent in admissions to programs in economics and management (15 percent higher than the working-class quota it had established for programs in social science in the spring of 1929). It also established the working-class quota for admissions to medical schools (60 percent) and schools of arts (50 percent).85 To some extent, the intensified effort to create a proletarian intelligentsia was a continuation of the initial endeavor that had begun immediately after 1917, but it also differed from the initial endeavor in many significant ways. First of all, it could be argued that setting the working-­class quota for admissions to institutions of higher technical education, Stalin and the Central Committee of the Communist Party implicitly embraced

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the position Preobrazhensky had advocated in 1921, although Preobrazhensky, as a member of the Left Opposition, had been expelled from the Communist Party. The working-class quota meant that young people of other sections of the population could be accepted to HEIs, especially institutions of higher technical education, only after the working-­ class quota had been fulfilled or when no working-class candidates were available. As will be seen later, this policy encouraged an unprecedentedly strong discrimination based on individuals’ social origins. Secondly, as the above-quoted Narkompros’ statement in 1920 indicated, the creation of a proletarian intelligentsia had been viewed as a long-term project before 1928, but the Stalinist policy during the First Five-Year Plan period sought an accelerated speed and the immediate result. This mentality derived both from Stalin’s doctrine about the intensification of class struggle and from the spirit of the First Five-Year Plan. Therefore, the effort to rapidly raise the proportion of working-class students in admissions to HEIs, which was implied in the working-class quota, took place along with the rapid expansion of higher education.86 The number of students admitted to HEIs increased from 42,800  in 1928 to 245,800  in 1932, with the greatest expansion of enrollment taking place in the last three of these years.87 Thirdly, setting the working-class quota also constituted the rejection of the effort undertaken in 1926 to balance the creation of a proletarian intelligentsia with maintaining academic standards. As will be seen later, the working-class quota that had to be met regardless of the availability of candidates with adequate academic preparation, combined with the rapid expansion of higher education, made it impossible to maintain any academic standards in admissions to HEIs. Even before 1928, most of the working-class students at HEIs were young workers who came through the rabfaks rather than workers’ children who came through general secondary schools. This was partially a result of the ideology of the Communist Party, which considered the adult workers with actual experience in industry as more politically valuable than workers’ children. But it was also due to the failure of the general secondary schools to graduate a sufficient number of working-class students.88 It seems that in 1928 the Central Committee of the Communist Party decided to take actual measures to make general secondary schools an effective ladder to higher education for workers’ children. It called for setting up secondary schools in the working-class districts and creating a better material condition for these schools.89 After the July plenum of the Central Committee, Molotov wrote that while the Soviet government

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brought a large number of young workers into HEIs through rabfaks, the state of affairs with the general secondary schools as a ladder to higher education for workers’ children was “a disgrace that we should eliminate immediately.”90 Viewed in retrospect, this would have been the best way to increase working-class students at HEIs, because working-class students with adequate academic preparation would receive the full benefits of higher education, and the HEIs did not have to sacrifice academic standards in order to admit such students. But eventually this was the road not taken. One of the reasons was that any policy measure designed to make general secondary schools an effective ladder to higher education for workers’ children would not immediately yield a large number of working-­ class students for HEIs, and therefore conflicted with the drive for the immediate result in the Stalinist effort to create a proletarian intelligentsia. Another reason was that the intensified effort to create a proletarian intelligentsia during the First Five-Year Plan period was accompanied by a stronger emphasis on recruiting adult workers to HEIs as students. This emphasis was embodied in the resolution that the Central Committee of the Communist Party adopted at the November 1929 plenum and the additional measures undertaken after this plenum. Back in 1928, the Central Committee decided to select 1000 Communists and send them to HEIs as special students with special stipends, which were higher than those paid to other working-class and peasant students. These students were called the “party thousand.”91 At its November 1929 plenum, the Central Committee not only decided to continue and expand the program of “party thousands,” but also called upon VTsSPS to start a similar program: the latter was to recruit 8000 industrial workers and 2000 agricultural and forest workers as students of a special category at HEIs in the following two years. These students were called “trade-union thousands,” and would receive the same high stipends as members of the “party thousands.”92 In addition, in order to encourage other workers (who were not nominated as members of the “trade-union thousands”) to study at HEIs, stipends for other stipendiary students were raised significantly in 1930.93 As the rabfaks did not have the capacity to accept a large number of additional students, and their three-year program was too long for many workers, short-term preparatory courses were created for workers who had not completed secondary education and intended to study at HEIs (both the workers who were nominated as members of “trade-union thousands” and other workers).

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As fulfilling and overfulfilling the working-class quota became the most important objective in admissions to HEIs, all the academic barriers were removed. Starting in 1929, graduates of rabfaks were again admitted to HEIs without graduation examinations, which they had to take from 1926 to 1928.94 The original rationale for the short-term preparatory courses, which began to be organized by Narkompros in 1928, was that they would accept students with a higher level of education than those admitted to rabfaks, and therefore could prepare such students for higher education in a shorter period of time. According to the statute for short-term preparatory courses, enacted by Narkompros in 1928, and instructions issued by Glavprofobr, they would be organized at HEIs, would admit primarily workers and their children with seven or eight years of education, and prepare these students for higher education in an accelerated program that lasted for one year.95 The students who completed a preparatory course were required to pass graduation examinations in order to be eligible for admissions to HEIs in 1929.96 But they were exempted from any examinations in 1930 and 1931.97 Moreover, after the November 1929 plenum of the Central Committee, as the number of the short-term preparatory courses exploded, they accepted workers with only three to five years of previous education, and reduced the length of study to six or even four months.98 With such a sacrifice of academic standards, many HEIs were able to overfulfill the working-class quota despite the expansion of enrollment. For example, workers and workers’ children made up more than 80 percent of the first-year students at most institutions of higher technical education in Leningrad in the fall of 1930, attaining 100 percent in Leningrad Institute of Water Transportation.99 By 1932, workers and their children constituted about 70 percent of the student body at institutions of higher technical education for industry, and their proportion was as high as 80–90 percent at some of these institutions.100 As Stalin’s doctrine about the intensification of class struggle induced an effort to expedite the creation of a proletarian intelligentsia with a blatant disregard for academic standards, his industrialization drive, in which many large industrial plants with advanced technology imported from the West were built, required highly qualified engineers. Eventually, the imperatives of the industrialization drive prevailed, and increasingly rigorous academic standards were enforced at HEIs after 1932. As a result, a majority of the students who were accepted to HEIs in 1930, 1931, and 1932 did not actually graduate. According to Nicholas De Witt, the

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graduation rate for the classes admitted to HEIs in the early 1930s was only 30 percent (30 graduations per 100 admissions).101 When we assess the opportunities of upward social mobility that Stalin’s intensified effort to make a proletarian intelligentsia created,102 we must consider the high attrition rate of the worker-students admitted to HEIs as well as the lost opportunities (policy measures for making general secondary schools an effective ladder to higher education for workers’ children that were considered but were not actually undertaken). The intensification of the creation of a proletarian intelligentsia was accompanied by an escalation of the discrimination based on students’ social origins. After the July 1928 plenum of the Central Committee of the Communist Party, waves of purges, aimed to “improve” the social composition of the student body at HEIs by expelling students of “wrong” family backgrounds, swept the Soviet Union. Narkompros attempted to limit the scope of the purges and clarify categories of students that could be expelled. It adopted a resolution on May 23, 1929, which stated that only the students who had gotten into HEIs by falsifying their social origins and those who themselves or whose parents were deprived of the voting right in Soviet elections should be expelled.103 However, even purges conducted according to Narkompros’ resolution would expel a large number of students. According to article 65 of the 1918 constitution of the Russian Republic (which became article 69 of the same constitution after the revision in 1925, made in accordance with the 1924 constitution of the Soviet Union), the disfranchised included people using hired labor to make profit, people living on “unearned income” (interest from capital, profit from enterprises, income from property), private traders and commercial middle men, monks and priests, former employees and agents of the Tsarist police, secret police, and special corps of gendarmes.104 During the NEP period, although small private businesses were allowed, private entrepreneurs (known as NEPmen) were deprived of the voting right.105 However, children of the disfranchised parents were not explicitly denied the right to receive higher education before 1928. They could become students at HEIs by paying a large fee.106 The rules for admissions did not require the candidates to submit any document about their parents’ voting right. Narkompros’ resolution indicated that it was no longer possible for children of the disfranchised parents to be students at HEIs even by paying a large fee. Starting in 1929, the rules for admissions to HEIs included a stipulation that the candidates must submit a proof, certified by the city

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or district government, indicating that they themselves and their parents were not disfranchised.107 This stipulation, which meant explicitly denying children of the disfranchised parents the right to receive higher education, came at a time when the number of the disfranchised increased. During the Soviet elections in 1929, 8.6 percent of the adult population in the Soviet Union were disfranchised, up from 7.7 percent in 1927.108 The forced collectivization of agriculture was accompanied by an attack on kulaks, in which a large number of peasants, including those who were not rich but resisted the collectivization, were branded as kulaks and deported from villages. They became new disfranchised people.109 Discrimination against those who were not explicitly denied the right to receive higher education was also escalated, and this was most clearly demonstrated by the experience of the children of educated specialists (the intellectual stratum in Preobrazhensky’s wording). The rules for admissions to HEIs for 1928 and 1929 still stated that children of specialists should be treated in the same way as workers’ children.110 But this status could no longer prevent them from increasing discrimination. In 1928 and 1929, with the exception of the graduates of the rabfaks (the number of workers who completed short-term preparatory courses was small in 1929), all other candidates for admissions to HEIs were still required to take entrance examinations. Although many candidates who failed part of the subject-based entrance examinations were admitted in 1928, a large number of the children of educated specialists who had passed all the entrance examinations was rejected. For example, in Voronezh, 236 workers and workers’ children were admitted, although only 109 candidates in this category passed all the examinations; 356 peasants and peasants’ children were admitted, although only 191 candidates from this social group passed all the examinations; by contrast, 171 children of specialists passed all the examinations, but only 104 were admitted.111 In Leningrad, 4455 candidates passed all the entrance examinations, but 4985 were admitted to HEIs.112 However, Leningrad University admitted 75 out of 145 children of specialists who had passed all the examinations, and Leningrad Polytechnic Institute accepted only 20 out of 291.113 In order to ameliorate the consequence of such widespread violation of a still effective policy, Sovnarkom of the Soviet Union ordered that additional 600 children of specialists be admitted (400  in the Russian Republic).114 But even after these additional admissions, the proportion of children of specialists among the students admitted to HEIs in the Russian Republic still dropped to 11.3 percent from 14 percent in 1927.115

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In 1929, the proportion of children of educated specialists admitted to institutions of higher technical education, which were most popular in these years because of Stalin’s program of industrialization, further decreased to 4.2 percent from 8.9 percent in 1928.116 According to a letter from an engineer in Leningrad to a newspaper, 1000 children of specialists took entrance examinations at HEIs in that city, but only 230 of them passed all the examinations because they were given examinations of a higher level of difficulty,117 and only 144 were admitted.118 This time Leningrad University accepted only 27 children of specialists, and Leningrad Polytechnic Institute accepted only 16119; and the government did not call for additional admissions. The organizations that served as spokespersons for young workers and working-class students at HEIs, the Central Committee of Komsomol and TsBPS, had strongest hostility toward children of educated specialists and other white-collar employees, because they viewed the latter as competitors with young workers for higher education opportunities. Their hostility even affected Narkompros’ effort to change rules for admissions to HEIs. As has been seen, Narkompros abolished the graduation examinations for rabfak students in the spring of 2019. At the same time, it also decided to exempt the graduates of the general secondary schools from entrance examinations given at HEIs.120 According to the Commissariat of Enlightenment’s plan, HEIs would select students from among graduates of the secondary schools according to the recommendations from school councils and attestation commissions created at secondary schools.121 One of the reasons for this decision was the progressive educational philosophy, which Narkompros embraced at that time and which objected to all sorts of examinations.122 However, because most students in the general secondary schools were children of white-collar employees, Narkompros’ decision encountered strong resistance from TsBPS and Komsomol. The Third All-Union Conference of Proletarian Students adopted a resolution, declaring that the exemption of secondary school graduates from entrance examinations would threaten the cause of proletarianizing HEIs123 Komsomol’kaia pravda, the newspaper of the Central Committee of Komsomol, published a strong article, asserting that this would open “a loophole into higher educational institutions for the alien elements.”124 Because of this opposition, Narkompros had to reconsider its decision, and eventually it postponed the implementation of this decision to 1930 in order to give secondary schools more time to prepare for it.125

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In 1930, the rules for admissions to HEIs duly exempted the graduates of the secondary schools from entrance examinations.126 But this could hardly be considered as a victory of Narkompros, because the senior division of the general secondary schools was reorganized into technicums (secondary professional schools) according to a resolution of the Second Party Conference on Education, which was held in April 1930.127 This decision was promoted by the technical lobby, which pushed for the expansion of vocational education at the secondary level, and the Central Committee of Komsomol, which regarded the general secondary schools as bourgeois.128 As the graduates of the technicums could apply for admission to HEIs only after three years of employment,129 the direct pathway from the secondary schools to HEIs was cut off until the upper division of the general secondary schools was restored by a resolution of the Central Committee of the Communist Party in 1932. To be sure, the enormous expansion of enrollment at HEIs in 1930 and 1931 created more educational opportunities even for children of educated specialists and other white-collar employees. But a large number of people of this social category, despite their good academic preparation, was still unable to get into HEIs in 1930 and 1931, when workers who completed short-term preparatory courses were admitted despite the fact that they had only three or five years of previous education. This was shown by evidence about previous education of the students admitted to HEIs in 1932. As a moderate measure for raising academic standards in admissions to HEIs, entrance examinations were partially restored in 1932.130 As a result, 20 percent of the students admitted to HEIs in 1932 were those who had graduated from nine-year schools (general secondary schools) in the previous years, and their absolute number was 46,000.131 Workers’ children who completed secondary education and wanted to receive higher education should have been admitted to HEIs before 1932, because graduates of nine-year schools were exempted from entrance examinations from 1930 to 1932. In all likelihood, these 46,000 students were unable to get into HEIs before 1932 because they were children of educated specialists or other white-collar employees; they joined the industrial labor force and had worked in industry for three or more years by 1932. They were admitted into HEIs in 1932 because they could be considered as workers after working in industry for three or more years,132 and the moderate measure undertaken for raising academic standards also improved their chance for admissions.

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The Creation of a Proletarian Intelligentsia and Policy for Selection for Higher Education in China In China, immediately after the founding of the People’s Republic, the creation of an intelligentsia of worker and peasant origins became one of the new objectives in higher education.133 In addition to the establishment of worker and peasant accelerated secondary schools, a special measure for achieving this objective was included in policy for admissions to HEIs. Starting in 1950, while all those who intended to pursue higher education were required to take subject-based entrance examinations, workers with three or more years of employment in industry and cadres who had worked in the cause of the (Communist-led) revolution for three or more years were accepted to HEIs even if they fell a little short of acceptable examination scores.134 This provision, however, was changed in 1953, when workers and cadres of worker or peasant origins, including graduates of worker and peasant accelerated secondary schools, were given preference in admissions only if they attained examination scores required for their intended specialty.135 In 1955, students were selected in a new procedure: candidates were ranked according to their scores attained on entrance examinations, with each ten points in the total score constituting a rank; candidates were admitted from higher ranks to lower ranks, but in each rank candidates of the preferred groups were admitted first.136 Due to the reason indicated in Chap. 2, the CCP’s initial effort to create a new intelligentsia of worker and peasant origins did not induce a blatant disregard for academic standards, which had accompanied the Soviet government’s initial effort to create a proletarian intelligentsia in the early 1920s. But the dilemma between creating an intelligentsia of worker and peasant origins and maintaining academic standards in admissions to HEIs also existed in China. While the new procedure for selecting students for HEIs adopted in 1955 aimed to raise academic standards, some Communist officials complained that this procedure essentially nullified the policy of preferential admissions.137 Therefore, in 1956, instead of ten points, twenty points in the total examination score constituted a rank.138 This increased the number of candidates in the same rank and therefore improved the chance of members of the preferred groups to be accepted to HEIs of their first choice. When Mao called for creating a vast army of working-class intelligentsia and accomplishing this task within ten to fifteen years in the summer of

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1957, the concept of working-class or proletarian intelligentsia was used in China for the first time. But in some ways, the new task that Mao put in front of the CCP meant the intensification of the effort to create a new intelligentsia of worker and peasant origins. The proportion of students of worker and peasant origins (including children of workers and peasants and those who had been workers or peasants themselves) in the student body at HEIs had increased from 20.5 percent in 1952 to 34.1 percent in 1956.139 However, in their interviews with the newspaper reporters in January 1958, chief Communist officials at HEIs in Beijing declared that in order to create a vast army of working-class intelligentsia, the students of worker and peasant origins should at least constitute a majority of the student body in the near future.140 The Central Committee of the CCP never established a working-class quota or a worker-peasant quota for admissions to HEIs. But some provincial party committees and individual HEIs set a numerical target. The Shanghai Municipal Party Committee’s Department of Education and Health called for raising the proportion of students of worker and peasant origins in the student body at HEIs to 70 percent in ten years.141 Fudan University declared that it would raise the proportion of students of worker and peasant origins to somewhere between 40 and 50 percent in five years and 70 percent in eight years.142 This new emphasis on rapidly raising the proportion of students of worker and peasant origins was comparable to the effort in the Soviet Union to rapidly raise the proportion of working-class students at institutions of higher technical education and the proportion of working-class and peasant students at other HEIs. But a special working-class quota in admissions to certain kinds of HEIs was not politically imaginable or acceptable in China. Because the CCP first built its power basis in the countryside, the poor peasants played a much greater role as a surrogate proletariat in the Chinese Communist leaders’ view of society. For this reason, when referring to the social composition of the students at HEIs, the Chinese Communist officials and the official statistical data never separated the working-class students from students of the peasant backgrounds (students of peasant origins did not include those from families that had been defined as landlords or rich peasants during land reform). As in the Soviet Union during the First Five-Year Plan period, the intensified effort to create a proletarian intelligentsia in China during the Great Leap period was accompanied by a stronger emphasis on recruiting workers and Communists to HEIs as students, and special measures were undertaken for this purpose. One of such special measures was to admit

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without entrance examinations workers, peasants, cadres of worker and peasant origins, and graduates of worker and peasant accelerated secondary schools who were nominated by various organizations (the worker and peasant accelerated secondary schools stopped admitting students in 1955, but those who had been enrolled were allowed to continue their education, and their course of study was extended from three to four years).143 In Shanghai, the number of students to be admitted in such a way was first determined by the Organization Department of the Municipal Party Committee and then apportioned among different government departments. For example, the city government’s Department of Machinery and Electrical Industry was asked to nominate 500 workers and cadres to be sent as students to Jiaotong University; part of them would first study at a preparatory school at that university, and part of them would be directly admitted into the university. Workers and cadres, upon becoming students, would be paid stipends equivalent to 40 percent of their wages or salaries, while the peasants would be offered financial assistance.144 In 1959, the nomination of workers, peasants, and cadres continued; those who were nominated were still exempted from regular entrance examinations, but they were required to take separate entrance examinations given at the HEIs to which they were nominated.145 An important change was made to the rules for admissions to HEIs. At the beginning of 1958, many Communist officials charged that the ranking system, which ranked students according to their scores on entrance examinations, prioritized the examination scores and conflicted with the newly declared “class line” in admissions to HEIs.146 It was abolished in 1958. Workers, peasants, cadres of worker and peasant origins, and graduates of the worker and peasant accelerated secondary schools who were not nominated and took regular entrance examinations were given preference in admissions as far as they met the minimum standards from 1958 to 1960.147 In order to encourage workers and cadres of worker and peasant origins to take entrance examinations and increase their chance of acceptance, special preparatory courses were offered for them in some cities. In Shanghai, the municipal government issued a special directive about such preparatory courses, instructing officials at factories and in other organizations to encourage workers, cadres of worker and peasant origins, and children of workers who had left school to enroll in preparatory courses. Workers and cadres who enrolled in such courses were to be given time to attend classes without deductions from their wages or salaries.148

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Due to the measures indicated above, students of worker and peasant origins constituted 55.28 percent of the first-year students admitted to HEIs in 1958.149 The Chinese government did not publish data on the social composition of the students at HEIs on a regular basis. Therefore, national data for the proportion of students of worker and peasant origins in admissions to HEIs in 1959 and 1960 could not be found. But data from the Shanghai Municipal Archives indicated that while the proportion of the students of worker and peasant origins among the first-year students admitted in 1959 was about same as that in 1958, it further rose in 1960.150 Moreover, as in the Soviet Union during the First Five-Year Plan period, the strong effort to raise the proportion of students of worker and peasant origins at HEIs in China during the Great Leap period was accompanied by the rapid expansion of higher education. The yearly number of students admitted to HEIs increased from 105,581 in 1957 to 323,161 in 1960.151 Thus, as in the Soviet Union during the First Five-Year Plan period, the intensified effort to make a proletarian intelligentsia in China during the Great Leap period created educational opportunities for many who otherwise would not have been able to be students at HEIs. However, most of the students recruited from among workers, peasants, and cadres of worker and peasant origins lacked strong academic preparation. After 1961, as academic standards were enforced more rigorously at Chinese HEIs, many of these students were dismissed because of their poor academic performance. For example, 48 students from among workers, peasants, and cadres of worker and peasant origins were admitted to the Department of Mathematics at Beijing University in 1958, but ten of them were dismissed in the early 1960s.152 Indirect evidence also shows that the graduation rate of the students admitted to HEIs during the Great Leap period was extremely low. The course of study at all the Chinese engineering schools (specialized engineering institutes as well as polytechnics) was extended to five years in 1955, and it did not change during the Great Leap period. Therefore, a comparison between the total annual number of first-year students enrolled in engineering schools in 1958, 1959, and 1960 and the annual overall number of graduates from these schools in 1963, 1964, and 1965 could give a rough picture of the graduation rate of the students admitted during the Great Leap period (Table 3.1). Even if we consider that some students took more than five years to graduate, this does not change the large picture, because their number should be reflected in the number of graduations of the next year’s class.

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Table 3.1  Engineering schools: First-year students enrolled and students graduated Year

First-year students enrolled

Year

Students graduated

1958 1959 1960

101,551 103,051 124,053

1963 1964 1965

76,359 80,917 80,294

Source: Zhonguo jiaoyu nianjian, 1949–1981, 969, 971

The proletarian intelligentsia in China was not defined by the social origins of its members alone; to a large extent, it was also defined by the ideological outlook and behavior of its members. As a matter of fact, when Mao called for creating a vast army of working-class intelligentsia, he also stated that the working-class intelligentsia would include the members of the old intelligentsia who successfully remolded themselves.153 This definition of the proletarian intelligentsia reflected the stronger emphasis on malleability of human beings embodied in Maoism. Therefore, purges aimed to expel students of certain social categories from HEIs, which had occurred in the Soviet Union, were not undertaken in China. Instead, as will be seen in the following chapter, with the intensified effort to create a proletarian intelligentsia, stronger emphasis was placed on the ideological reform of students whose families belonged to social groups that the Communist Party defined as exploiting classes. The Maoist definition of the proletarian intelligentsia was also demonstrated in the procedure in which graduates of the senior secondary schools were selected for higher education. As has been seen, policy for admissions to HEIs in the Soviet Union gave an explicit preferential status to workers’ children and peasants’ children (the category of peasants included farm laborers, poor peasants, and middle peasants, but did not include kulaks). By contrast, in China, even during the Great Leap period, the preferential status given to workers, peasants, and cadres of worker and peasant origins in admissions to HEIs was not extended to children of workers and peasants who graduated from the senior secondary schools. The political credentials of these students were evaluated in a political screening process. The rationale of political screening was that while family origins of the students were an important part of their political credentials, their own political performance or behavior was also important. It had become part

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of the process of selecting students for HEIs in 1952, when the system of unified enrollment for higher education was instituted. Before 1949, each HEI administered its own entrance examinations. Starting in 1952, the subject-based national entrance examinations were given, and all the examinees took the same examination at the same time. Enrollment committees were established each summer at the national level, at the level of the greater administrative regions,154 and at the provincial level to administer entrance examinations and manage the student selection. Political screening for graduates of senior secondary schools began at their schools. Each school sent to the Provincial Enrollment Committee a report of political screening for each student who took entrance examinations for higher education. The report included information about the family background of the student as well as an evaluation of the student’s political performance. This report, along with the scored entrance examinations, a health examination report, and a completed application form, constituted the dossier of a candidate, which was forwarded by the Provincial Enrollment Committee to that of the greater administrative region. The latter reviewed the political screening reports of the candidates whose examination scores reached the acceptable level and decided their political eligibility for admissions to HEIs. During the Great Leap period, the final decision about candidates’ political eligibility for admissions was made by the Provincial Enrollment Committee. This does not mean that discrimination on the basis of students’ family origins did not exist in China. As a matter of fact, such discrimination was intensified immediately after Mao’s call for creating a vast army of working-­ class intelligentsia. In early August 1957, the National Enrollment Committee called for stricter political screening and changed the criteria for political screening.155 In the East China Greater Administrative Region, original political screening done before August 1957 only made 300 candidates ineligible for admissions to HEIs. After the change of criteria in early August, the number of politically ineligible candidates rose to 3476; 1628 among them were children of landlords, rich peasants, and the bourgeoisie.156 Moreover, in 1958, some specialties were defined as secret specialties, which only accepted students who met higher political qualifications. According to the 1958 criteria of political screening, the candidates having direct or close relatives who were executed, imprisoned or placed under political control, candidates having direct or close relatives who lived in Taiwan, Hong Kong, or a capitalist country, and candidates who had been

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born in families of exploiting classes could not be admitted into secret specialties regardless of their own political performance (but candidates from some of these social categories could be accepted into other specialties if their own political performance was considered as good and their examination scores reached the acceptance level). Secret specialties were specialties in engineering and science whose graduates would have access to information about advanced technology, specialties whose graduates might be working in diplomacy or international trade, and specialties whose graduates might be assigned to jobs considered as politically sensitive. Therefore, most of the secret specialties were at prestigious or popular institutions.157 At the same time, the graduates of senior secondary schools who were children of workers and peasants clearly had a greater advantage during the Great Leap period than before 1958. Their family background was part of their political credentials. Higher political qualifications required for secret specialties also meant that workers’ and peasants’ children had a better chance to be accepted into prestigious or popular HEIs. Workers, peasants, and their children constituted 61 percent of the students admitted in 1958 to Jiaotong University in Shanghai, a prestigious polytechnic.158 Children of workers and peasants made up 61 percent of students admitted to Beijing University in 1960.159 However, unlike the Soviet government, the Chinese government did not explicitly deny any social group the right to receive higher education even during the Great Leap period. Even during this period, although the door to higher education for students born in families belonging to the “exploiting classes” became narrow, they were still allowed to “earn” their right to higher education by their own political behavior. Such students constituted 25 percent of all the students admitted from Shanghai to HEIs (both HEIs in Shanghai and those in other provinces) in 1958, 26 percent in 1959, and 25 percent in 1960.160 In 1961 the party group in the Ministry of Education submitted a proposal to the party center, suggesting that when political qualifications of children of bourgeois families were evaluated, priority should be given to their own personal performance, not to their family background. This proposal was approved by the party center.161 After that, children of the bourgeois families whose political performance received a high rating were eligible for admissions into secret specialties.162 More importantly, open hostility toward children of white-collar employees as competitors for opportunities of higher education, which

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was demonstrated by the Central Committee of Komsomol and TsBPS in the Soviet Union, was absent and politically unacceptable in China. Senior secondary schools were still the main source of students for HEIs in China during the Great Leap period. But the number of graduates of the senior secondary schools did not grow as fast as the number of students admitted to HEIs each year.163 Students from the white-collar families usually had some advantage over those of working-class or peasant origins on entrance examinations. Therefore, the door to higher education for children of white-collar employees at least did not become narrower than before.

Concluding Comparative Analysis The class war against professors and the intensified effort to create a proletarian intelligentsia were two common features of Soviet higher education policy during the First Five-Year Plan period and Chinese policy on higher learning during the Great Leap period. These common features were manifestations of the historical convergence between Stalinism and Maoism. The class war against professors was partially punitive and partially reformative. Maoist policy carried a stronger reformative aspect, as the class war against professors in China took the form of criticizing the bourgeois ideas. However, in the actual implementation of the class war policy, there were tensions between the punitive and reformative aspects. From professors’ perspective, they only experienced the punitive aspect, because even in China the criticism of professors’ bourgeois ideas often became verbal attacks. Therefore, the class war clearly did not achieve the intended reformative goal. The most important actual effect of the class war against professors was the functional role it played. First of all, it silenced a group who otherwise would have had an influential voice in defending academic standards and educational conventions and in objecting to radical reforms in higher education. Secondly, the class war, along with the change of the system of internal governance, completely eliminated the role that professors had played in internal governance at HEIs in both the Soviet Union and China. The radical reforms in the process of education, examined in the following chapter, would not have been possible without the political environment created by the class war against professors. In both the Soviet Union and China, the intensified effort to create a proletarian intelligentsia was accompanied by a stronger emphasis on recruiting adult workers and Communists to HEIs as students. This was

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because the intensified effort to create a proletarian intelligentsia was a political project, and the adult workers and Communists were regarded as even more politically valuable than children of workers and peasants. To be sure, this program created educational opportunities for many workers who otherwise would not have become students at HEIs. But workers with poor academic preparation did not receive the actual benefits of higher education even after they had become students at HEIs. The largest number of workers was admitted to HEIs in the Soviet Union in 1930, 1931, and 1932, but more rigorous academic standards were enforced at HEIs after 1932. As a result, most of the workers who were admitted to HEIs during these three years did not graduate. Many workers and cadres of worker and peasant origins admitted to HEIs in China during the Great Leap period also did not graduate. The Maoist concept of the proletarian intelligentsia differed significantly from the Stalinist concept. In the Soviet Union, the proletarian intelligentsia essentially meant a new intelligentsia of working class and (to a lesser extent) peasant origins. By contrast, the proletarian intelligentsia in China was only partially defined by the social origins of its members, and to a large extent was also defined by the political performance or behavior of its members. This definition of the proletarian intelligentsia clearly embodied some influence of Confucianism, which viewed education as a means of cultivating the moral character of those who were educated. To be sure, political performance in the Maoist definition was different from Confucian moral principles. Moreover, as will be seen in the following chapter, an important objective sought in Chinese education during the Great Leap period was to eliminate the distinction between physical and mental labor. Therefore, the Maoist definition of the proletarian intelligentsia also meant a new intelligentsia that did not have a separate social identity different from those of workers and peasants. The Soviet effort to create a proletarian intelligentsia had its own contradictions. In actual policy implementation, white-collar employees who were members of the Communist Party were also given preference in admissions to HEIs, and children of white-collar employees who had worked in industry for three or more years could be treated as workers in admissions to HEIs. More importantly, workers could become white-­ collar employees. There was a historical irony with Soviet higher education policy during the First Five-Year Plan period: most of the workers admitted to HEIs from 1930 to 1932 were not able to graduate; by contrast, the working-class students who had been admitted to HEIs before 1928

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were given easy opportunities to graduate, because, as will be seen in the following chapter, the course of study at HEIs was reduced in 1930 and radical reforms in the process of education undertaken during the First Five-Year Plan period essentially removed any enforcement of academic standards.164 According to a Soviet historian, former workers and worker’s children already constituted 55 percent of the engineering-technical cadres in 1933.165 The engineering-technical cadres of working-class origins included former workers and workers’ children who graduated from HEIs or technicums as well as former workers who were directly promoted to be technicians or engineers. Moreover, a larger number of workers were directly promoted to administrative and other white-collar positions during the First Five-Year Plan period.166 When Stalin declared in 1936 that 80 to 90 percent of the members of the Soviet intelligentsia came from the working class, the peasantry, and other strata of the working population, he perhaps was not exaggerating, because it had become common practice by that time in the Soviet Union that the term “intelligentsia” no longer referred to educated specialists only, but also included administrators and other office workers. Thus, the new Soviet class of administrators, technical specialists, and other white-collar employees that came into being during the First Five-­ Year Plan period and in the years immediately after could not be defined as a petty bourgeoisie according to the ideology of the Soviet government, because a majority of them came from the working class. However, after the senior division of general secondary schools was restored in 1932, children of these new administrators, technical specialists, and office workers who graduated from secondary schools would be considered as children of white-collar employees in admissions to HEIs. As will be seen in Chap. 5 this social change could not but have an impact on policy for selection for higher education. The Maoist definition of the proletarian intelligentsia could not but be fluid, because criteria for judging political performance or behavior could not but be subjective and changeable. The Great Leap period was a time of optimism, and therefore one of the assumptions in Chinese higher education policy was that even students from families of the “exploiting classes” could be transformed into members of the proletarian intelligentsia. However, as will be seen in Chap. 6, in the late 1960s and early 1970s, as a more pessimist view on the ideological effect of higher education on young people prevailed in a new political environment, the definition of the bourgeois intelligentsia was expanded to include all those who

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had received higher education before 1966 (in addition to the educated professionals who had started their careers before 1949). This new definition meant that even the children of workers and peasants who had received higher education before 1966 became members of the bourgeois intelligentsia; the whole effort to create a proletarian intelligentsia before 1966 achieved an opposite result; and a new effort had to start from scratch.

Notes 1. Some large industrial enterprises that had been managed by ministries of the central government were placed under the jurisdiction of the provincial governments. See Bo, Ruogan, 2: 716. The decentralization of higher education management is discussed in Chap. 4. 2. All private businesses were closed by 1930. Alan M. Ball, Russia’s Last Capitalists: The Nepmen, 1921–1929 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987), 79. By the end of 1931, 52.7 percent of peasant households and 67.8 percent of crop area were collectivized. Martin Malia, The Soviet Tragedy: A History of Socialism in Russia, 1917–1991 (New York: The Free Press, 1994), 198. 3. J.  V. Stalin, Works, 13 vols. (Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1954), 11: 179. 4. Ibid. 5. V.  N. Malin and A.  V. Korobov, eds. Direktivy KPSS i Sovetskogo pravitel’stva po khoziaistvennym voprosam, 1917–1957 gody, 4 vols. (Moscow: Gosudarstvennoe izdatel’stvo politicheskoi literatury, 1957–1958), 1: 552–553. 6. Some historians suggested that Stalin played a role in fabricating this case. See, for example, Tucker, Stalin in Power, 77. 7. The plenum was held from July 4 to 12. 8. Stalin, Works, 11: 225. 9. 155 professors and associate professors at HEIs in Shanghai and senior scientists at the Shanghai branch of the Academy of Sciences became members of the Communist Party in 1956. SMA, A23-2-179, ss. 28–29. 10. Mao, Wengao, 6: 544, 548. 11. Bo, Ruogan, 2: 627. 12. Tang Baolin, Huang Daoxuan, and Huang Lingjun, Ma ke si zhuyi zai zhongguo yibai nian (Hefei: Anhui renmin chubanshe, 1997), 499–500. 13. Zhou’s speech at the National Gathering of the Young Activists of Socialist Construction in December 1958. Zhongguo qingnian, no. 23 (1958): 35.

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14. Stalin, Works, 11: 224. 15. Mao, Wengao, 6: 550. 16. Sheila Fitzpatrick, “Cultural Revolution as Class War,” in Cultural Revolution in Russia, 8–40. 17. Pravda, 26 November 1936. 18. Nauchnyi rabotnik, no. 4 (1929): 63. 19. See Chap. 4 for a discussion of the new scheme of engineering education. 20. Nauchnyi rabotnik, no. 2 (1929): 41. 21. For Lunacharsky’s resignation, see Sheila Fitzpatrick, Education and Social Mobility in the Soviet Union, 1921–1934 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979), 190. 22. Krasnoe studenchestvo, no. 5 (1929–1930): the unnumbered page before page 1. 23. Professors who had served in their positions for ten or more years and other teachers who had served in their positions for seven or more years were to be reelected. Ezhenedel’nik NKP, nos. 20–21 (1929): 37–39; Krasnoe studenchestvo, no. 16 (1928–1929): 5. 24. Ekonomicheskaia zhizn’, 1 October 1929. 25. GARF, f. 5574, op. 8, d. 1, l. 53. 26. Pravda, 20 September 1929. 27. Krasnoe studenchestvo, no. 11 (1929–1930): 10. 28. GARF, f. 5574, op. 7, d. 18, l. 117. 29. Pravda, 12 June 1929. 30. Ezhenedel’nik NKP, no. 43 (1929): 5. 31. GARF, f. 5574, op. 8, d. 1, l. 55. 32. GARF, f. 5574, op. 8, d. 1, l. 58. 33. Ekonomicheskaia zhizn’, 22 February 1930. 34. Za promyshlennye kadry, no. 5 (1931): 34. 35. Ezhenedel’nik NKP, no. 4 (1930): 22; GARF, f. 2307, op. 15, d. 100, ll. 5–7; Ekonomicheskaia zhizn’, 1 February 1930. 36. A. S. Bubnov, Stat’i i rechi o narodnom obrazovanii, (Moscow: Izdatel’stvo Akademii pedagogicheskikh nauk RSFSR, 1959), 52. 37. GARF, f. 2306, op. 70, d. 3540, ll. 57–58. 38. GARF, f. 5574, op. 8, d. 51, ll. 1–2. According to this document, the production conference, run by a production commission of three to five members, was to be organized only at the level of the lowest administrative unit (specialty or division). 39. In the fall of 1930, a student from Tomsk reported to a plenum of TsBPS that in the HEIs at Tomsk professors were appointed chairmen of production conferences; he called this deviation, since in Moscow and Leningrad the production conferences were led by students. Krasnoe studenchestvo, no. 4 (1930–1931): 7.

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40. GARF, f. 8060, op. 1. d. 37, l. 7. For Nekrasov’ position in Glavprobobr, see  I.  Kraval’s article “Esche o podgotovke inzhenerno-tekhnicheskikh kadrov,” Pravda, 12 July 1928. In 1929, Vyshinsky, new director of Glavprofobr, called him one of the legacies of the old regime. GARF, f. 5574, op. 7, d. 14, l. 13. 41. For this new orthodox view, see Chen Qiwu’s article, “Chedi paoqi zichan jieji geren zhuyi,” Wenhui bao, 31 May 1958. (Chen was the director of the Shanghai Municipal Party Committee’s Department of Education and Health, which was created in June 1956. The former Department of School Affairs was merged into this new department). Newspaper reports on the discussions on the question of the intelligentsia also endorsed the view that the bourgeois intelligentsia belonged to the exploiting classes. See, for example, Guangming ribao, 22 June 1958; Wenhui bao, 26 June 1958. 42. For Mao’s doctrine of “new democracy,” see Mao Tse-tung, Selected Works of Mao Tse-tung, 5 vols. (Beijing: Foreign Languages Press, 1961–1965, 1977), 2: 339–382. 43. Chen Qiwu’s article in Wenhui bao, 31 May 1958. 44. BMA, 1-22-357, ss. 27–29. 45. Ibid. 46. At HEIs, those who were punished as “rightists” included faculty members of every rank as well as students, but proportionally more professors were punished than any other group. For example, 10.9 percent of full and associate professors in Shanghai were labeled as “rightists,” while 4.5 percent of the lecturers, 3.4 percent of the teaching assistants, and 3.4 percent of students were so labeled. SMA, A23-2-335, s. 29. 47. BMA, 1-22-649, ss. 35-36; 1-22-695, s. 6. 48. BMA, 1-22-150, s. 16; 1-22-67, ss. 44–46. 49. SMA, A23-2-339, ss. 30–33. 50. Guangming ribao, 25 June 1958, 12 January 1959. 51. Guangming ribao, 12 January 1959. 52. SMA, A23-2-484, s. 3. 53. BMA, 1-22-439, ss. 1-2; Guangming ribao, 15 August 1958. 54. BMA, 1-22-695, s. 6. 55. SMA, A23-2-484, s. 34. 56. BMA 1-22-403, ss. 6–7. 57. BMA, 1-22-695, ss. 46–47. 58. Ibid. 59. BMA, 1-22-403, ss. 6–7. 60. None of the documents in SMA (A23-2-338, ss.1–9; A23-2-383, ss. 98–108; A23-2-484, ss.1–6) describing various campaigns in 1958 mentions a campaign for removing “white banners.”

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61. Guangming ribao, 21 July, 10 October 1958. 62. Mao, Wengao, 7: 654–655 (footnote 2). 63. Mao, Wengao, 7: 654. 64. BMA, 1-22-424, s. 5. 65. BMA, 1-22-439, ss. 1, 5–6. 66. See Bo, Ruogan, 2: 845–882 67. BMA, 1-22-649, s. 30. 68. Renmin ribao, 20 September 1958. 69. BMA, 1-22-416, ss. 2–3. 70. Ibid. 71. SMA, B243-1-147, ss. 52, 55. 72. Mao, Wengao, 7: 200. 73. BMA, 1-22-732, s. 5. For Zhou’s admission into the party, see Zhou Peiyuan’s article “Wei shixian renlei zuigao lixiang gongxian chu yiqie liliang,” Guangming ribao, 23 March 1959. 74. SMA, B243-1-149, s. 19. 75. BMA, 1-22-654, ss. 14–15. 76. SMA, B 243-1-243, s. 45. 77. Safraz’ian, Bor’ba, 71. 78. Krasnoe studenchestvo, no. 5 (1926): 9–12. 79. Narodnoe prosveshchenie, nos. 18-19-20 (1920): 87. 80. Pravda, 26 April 1921. 81. Krasnoe studenchestvo, no. 5 (1926): 9–10; no. 4 (1927): 6-7; GARF, f. 2306, op. 69, d. 1269, l. 3. 82. Direktivy VKP (b) po voprosam prosveshcheniia, 3d ed. (Moscow: OGIZ, 1931): 144. 83. Ibid., 150. 84. Boldyrev, Direktivy o narodnom obrazovanii, 2: 61; Ezhenedel’nik NKP, no. 26 (1929): 28; GARF, f. 5574, op. 7, d. 18, l. 181. 85. Biulleten’ NKP, no. 3 (1930): 16–17. 86. In 1927, the working-class students constituted 55.2 percent of first-year students at institutions of higher technical education (the proportion of the working-class students at institutions of higher technical education was higher than at other HEIs). Safraz’ian, Bor’ba, 74. Therefore, fulfilling the working-class quota established by the Central Committee in 1928 meant immediately raising the proportion of working-class students in admissions to institutions of higher technical education by 10 percent. 87. The yearly numbers of students admitted to HEIs during the First Five-­ Year Plan period were 42.8 thousand in 1928, 56.2 thousand in 1929, 144.2 thousand in 1930, 184.9 thousand in 1931, 245.8 thousand in 1932. Nicholas De Witt, Education and Professional Employment in the USSR (Washington, D.C.: National Science Foundation, 1961), 636.

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88. Children of workers and peasants constituted less than 3 percent of the students in the senior division of the secondary schools before 1926. Safraz’ian, Bor’ba, 70. Although the working-class students increased in subsequent years, they only constituted 11.5 percent of the students of the last grade in the general secondary schools in 1930. Piatiletnii plan inzhenerno-­ tekhnicheskikh i ekonomicheskikh kadrov v promyshlennosti: Materialy k dokladu VSNKh SSSR, part 2 (Moscow: Gosudarstvennoe tekhnicheskoe izdatel’stvo, 1930): 48. 89. Direktivy VKP (b) po voprosam prosveshcheniia, 144. In Russia during the 1920s, primary education took four years, secondary education took five years. Secondary education itself was divided into two levels: the first three grades (grades V to VII) constituted the junior division, and the last two grades (grades VIII and IX) constituted the senior division. 90. Krasnoe studenchestvo, no. 1 (1928–1929): 15. 91. The stipend for single students in the “party thousand” studying at institutions of higher technical education in Moscow, Leningrad, and Kharkov (Kharkiv) was 90 rubles a month; for those studying at such institutions in other cities was 75 rubles. Students with families received 125 rubles a month, and those with large families received 150 rubles a month. GARF, f. 2306, op. 69, d. 1737, l. 125. RGAE, f. 3429, op. 3, d. 2640, l. 16. For stipends for other stipendiary students, see note 93 for this chapter. 92. Direktivy VKP (b) po voprosam prosveshcheniia, 150. 93. In the 1928–1929 academic year, the monthly stipend for a stipendiary student of a lower class (the first-year, second-year, or third-year student) at institutions of higher technical education for industry was 31 or 35 rubles depending on the geographic location of the school; for a student of an upper class (the fourth-year or fifth-year student) it was 40 or 45 rubles. GARF, f. 2306, op. 69, d. 1737, l. 5. Starting in 1930, the first-year stipendiary students at such institutions were paid 55, 65 or 75 rubles a month, depending on the number of years they had worked in production and on their family situation; the fourth-year students received 110, 120, or 130 rubles a month (the course of study was reduced to three years at most HEIs and to four years at others). Biulleten’ NKP, no. 28 (1930): 3. 94. Ezhenedel’nik NKP, no. 15 (1929): 32; GARF, f. 2306, op. 69, d. 1875, l. 98. 95. Ezhenedel’nik NKP, no. 46 (1928): 14–15; no. 48 (1928): 13–14. 96. Ezhenedel’nik NKP, nos. 20–21 (1929): 41. 97. Biulleten’ NKP, no. 3 (1930): 16–17. 98. Pravda, 24 May, 18 July 1930. 99. Pravda, 5 September 1930. 100. Boldyrev, Direktivy o narodnom obrazovanii, 2: 78. 101. De Witt, Education and Professional Employment, 342.

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102. For an argument about social mobility created by educational policy during the First Five-Year Plan period, see Fitzpatrick, Education and Social Mobility, chapters 9 and 11. 103. GARF, f. 2306, op. 69, d. 1878, l. 72. 104. Istoriia Sovetskoi konstitutsii (v dokumentakh), 1917–1956 (Moscow: Gosudarstvennoe izdatel’stvo iuridicheskoi literatury,1957), 155, 543–544. 105. Ball, Russia’s Last Capitalists, 75–76. 106. Ibid., 77. 107. Ezhenedel’nik NKP, no. 19 (1929): 15. Because of the objection from the Commissariat of Internal Affairs and the City Election Committee in Moscow, Narkompros withdrew this stipulation in 1929, but added an item in the application form, which required that the applicants, with full personal responsibility, provide information on whether they or their parents were deprived of the voting right. GARF, f. 2306, op. 69, d. 1878, l. 100. But the rules for admissions in 1930 again included the stipulation that Narkompros had withdrawn in 1929. Biulleten’ NKP, no. 3 (1930): 19. 108. Fitzpatrick, Everyday Stalinism, 249 (note 9). 109. Nearly 400,000 households (more than 1.8 million individuals) were exiled as kulaks in 1930 and 1931. They were all disfranchised. According to a law of 1933, children of the exiled kulaks were given the voting right when they became adults. Most kulaks were not given the voting right until 1935. V. N. Zemskov, “Sud’ba ‘kulatskoi ssylki’ (1930–1954 gg.),” Otechestvennaia istoriia, no. 1 (1994): 118, 128. The right of the children of the disfranchised parents to receive higher education was restored in 1935. Boldyrev, Direktivy o narodnom obrazovanii, 89. 110. Ezhenedel’nik NKP, no. 12 (1928): 11–12; no. 19 (1929): 15–16. 111. Krasnoe studenchestvo, no. 2 (1928–1929): 25. 112. GARF, f. 5574, op. 6, d. 12, l. 239. 113. Nauchnyi rabotnik, no. 12 (1928): 42 (footnote), 43. 114. Ibid., 42; RGAE, f. 3429, op. 3. d. 2624, l. 38. 115. Nauchnyi rabotnik, no. 12 (1928): 42. 116. GARF, f. 5574, op. 7, d. 18, l. 180. 117. This was possible because the entrance examinations included both written and oral examinations. 118. Ekonomicheskaia zhizn’, 5 October 1929. 119. Ibid. 120. Ezhenedel’nik NKP, no. 15 (1929): 32; GARF, f. 2306, op. 69, d. 1875, l. 98. 121. GARF, f. 2306, op. 69, d. 1984, l. 2. 122. Ezhenedel’nik NKP, nos. 20–21 (1929): 4.

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123. Krasnoe studenchestvo, no. 15 (1928–1929): 19. 124. Quoted in Krasnoe studenchestvo, no. 16 (1928–1929): 20–21. 125. Ezhenedel’nik NKP, nos. 20–21 (1929): 4. 126. Biulleten’ NKP, no. 3 (1930): 18. 127. Holmes, The Kremlin and the School House, 122. 128. Ibid., 86; Fitzpatrick, Education and Social Mobility, 144, 148–149. 129. This requirement was instituted because industry needed technicians as well as engineers. 130. For example, while graduates of rabfaks, nine-year schools, and technicums who applied for admissions to HEIs under the jurisdiction of Narkompros were still exempted from examinations, all other candidates, including those who completed short-term preparatory courses, were required to take entrance examinations on four subjects. GARF, f. 2306, op. 70, d. 3395, l. 58. 131. GARF, f. 8060, op. 1, d. 29, ll. 43, 44. 132. The rules for admissions to HEIs never stipulated the length of employment in industry required for a candidate to be qualified as a worker. However, to be qualified as a worker in admissions to the rabfak and short-­term preparatory course, one had to have worked at least for three years in industry. Ezhenedel’nik NKP, no. 46 (1928): 17. Therefore, it can be assumed that one had to have worked in industry for at least three years in order to be treated as a worker in admissions to HEIs, because most worker-­students arrived at HEIs through rabfaks or short-term preparatory courses. 133. Wenbu gaige gaodeng jiaoyu, 7, 45–46. 134. Guangming ribao, 8 July 1950; 13 June 1953. 135. Zhongguo jiaoyu nianjian, 1949–1981, 338; Guangming ribao, 25 May 1954. Students of national minorities and overseas Chinese students were given similar preference. 136. SMA, B243-1-46, s. 14. The highest score on each subject-based examination was 100 points. 137. Ibid. 138. SMA, B243-1-82, ss. 23–24. 139. Renmin jiaoyu, no. 10 (1957): 6 140. Guangming ribao, 10 January 1958. 141. SMA, A23-2-337, s. 88. 142. Wenhui bao, 27 January 1958. 143. Renmin ribao, 3 July 1958. 144. SMA, A23-2-375, ss. 3–4. 145. Renmin ribao, 10 June 1959. 146. Guangming ribao, 10, 18, 31 January 1958.

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147. See rules for admissions to HEIs for 1958, 1959, and 1960, Renmin ribao, 3 July 1958, 10 June 1959, 4 June 1960. 148. SMA, A23-2-375, s. 23. 149. Zhongguo jiaoyu nianjian, 1949–1981, 338. 150. Students of worker and peasant origins constituted 29 percent of the firstyear students admitted in Shanghai (including students admitted to HEIs in Shanghai as well as those admitted to HEIs in other provinces) in 1958 and 1959, but this proportion rose to 35 percent in 1960. SMA, A23-2-607, s. 137. The proportion of students of worker and peasant origins among the students admitted in Shanghai was always lower than the national average because of two reasons. First, there was a large number of educated professionals in Shanghai, and those who were defined by the Communist government as members of the exploiting classes also constituted a significant proportion of this city’s population. Second, Shanghai was and still is one of the directly administered cities. Although the municipality of Shanghai included some suburban counties, the proportion of peasants in the population of Shanghai municipality was small. 151. Zhongguo jiaoyu nianjian, 1949–1981, 969. 152. Zhongguo qingnia bao, 16 August 1966. 153. Mao, Wengao, 6: 550. 154. From 1949 to 1954, the PRC was divided into six greater administrative regions, each of which included several provinces. From 1955 to 1957, although the greater administrative regions had been abolished, the enrollment committee for each greater region was still established each summer. 155. SMA, B243-1-121, s. 46. 156. SMA, B243-1-121, ss. 45–46. 157. Secret specialties were designated by HEIs offering such specialties. For the initial list of secret specialties designated in 1958, see SMA, A23-2-367, s. 16. 158. SMA, B243-1-155, s. 106. 159. Zhongguo qingnia bao, 16 August 1966. 160. SMA, A23-2-607, s. 137. The exploiting classes also included small business owners, who were not classified as the bourgeoisie. The available data for 1962 and 1963 indicate that of the candidates from families of exploiting classes who took entrance examinations in Shanghai, about 60 percent were from bourgeois families, about 10 percent from families of landlords and rich peasants, and about 30 percent from families of other exploiting classes (the last group mainly consisted of small business owners.) 161. SMA, A23-2-855, ss. 15–16. 162. See SMA, B243-1-263, s. 99.

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163. The annual number of graduates of the senior secondary schools and that of students admitted to HEIs during the Great Leap period respectively were: 197,000 (rounded to thousands) and 265,553 in 1958, 299,000 and 274,143 in 1959, 288,000 and 323,161 in 1960. Zhongguo jiaoyu nianjian, 1949–1981, 969, 1001. 164. Workers and their children constituted 30.6 percent of those who graduated from all Soviet HEIs during the First Five-Year Plan period, and 41.4 percent of those who graduated from institutions of higher technical education for industry. Vysshaia tekhnicheskaia shkola, no 2 (1934): 93. 165. A. I. Lutchenko, “Rukovodstvo KPSS formirovaniem kadrov tekhnicheskoi intelligentsii (1926–1933 gg.),” Voprosy istorii KPSS, no 2 (1966): 41. 166. According to one estimate, the total number of worker Communists who were promoted into the administrative and educational apparatus between 1930 and 1933 was about 660,000. This amounted to between 10 and 15 percent of the industrial workers in 1930. Donald Filtzer, Soviet Workers and Stalinist Industrialization: The Formation of Modern Soviet Production Relations, 1928–1941 (Armonk, New  York: M.  E. Sharpe, 1986), 48.

References Archives BMA—Beijing Municipal Archives (Beijing shi danganguan). GARF—State Archives of the Russian Federation (Gosudarstvennyi arkhiv Rossiiskoi Federatsii). RGAE—Russian State Archives of the Economy (Rossiiskii gosudarstvennyi arkhiv ekonomiki). SMA—Shanghai Municipal Archives (Shanghai shi danganguan).

Russian Newspapers

and

Journals

Biulleten’ Narkomprosa (NKP). Ekonomicheskaia zhizn’. Ezhenedel’nik Narkomprosa (NKP). Krasnoe studenchestvo. Narodnoe prosveshchenie. Nauchnyi rabotnik. Pravda. Vysshaia tekhnicheskaia shkola. Za promyshlennye kadry.

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Chinese Newspapers

and

99

Journals

Guangming ribao. Renmin jiaoyu. Renmin ribao. Wenhui bao. Zhongguo qingnian. Zhongguo qingnian bao.

Books

and

Articles

in

Russian

Boldyrev, N.I., ed. 1947. Direktivy VKP(b) i postanovleniia Sovetskogo pravitel’stva o narodnom obrazovanii: Sbornik dokumentov za 1917–1947 gg. 2 vols. Moscow: Izdatel’stvo Akademii pedagogicheskikh nauk RSFSR. Bubnov, A.S. 1959. Stat’i i rechi o narodnom obrazovanii. Moscow: Izdatel’stvo Akademii pedagogicheskikh nauk RSFSR. Direktivy VKP (b) po voprosam prosveshcheniia. 1931. 3d ed. Moscow: OGIZ. Istoriia Sovetskoi konstitutsii (v dokumentakh), 1917–1956. 1957. Moscow: Gosudarstvennoe izdatel’stvo iuridicheskoi literatury. Lutchenko, A.I. 1966. Rukovodstvo KPSS formirovaniem kadrov tekhnicheskoi intelligentsii (1926–1933 gg.). Voprosy istorii KPSS 2: 29–42. Malin, V.  N., and A.  V. Korobov, eds. 1957–1958. Direktivy KPSS i Sovetskogo pravitel’stva po khoziaistvennym voprosam, 1917–1957 gody. 4 vols. Moscow: Gosudarstvennoe izdatel’stvo politicheskoi literatury. Piatiletnii plan inzhenerno-tekhnicheskikh i ekonomicheskikh kadrov v promyshlennosti: Materialy k dokladu VSNKh SSSR. 1930. Moscow: Gosudarstvennoe tekhnicheskoe izdatel’stvo. Safraz’ian, N.L. 1977. Bor’ba KPSS za stroitel’stvo sovetskoi vysshei shkoly (1921–1927 gg.). Moscow: Izdatel’stvo Moskovskogo universiteta. Zemskov, V.N. 1994. Sud’ba ‘kulatskoi ssylki’ (1930–1954 gg.). Otechestvennaia istoriia 1: 118–147.

Books

in

Chinese

Bo Yibo. 1991 and 1993. Ruogan zhongda juece yu shijian de huigu. 2 vols. Beijing: Zhonggong zhongyang dangxiao chubanshe. Mao Zedong. 1987–1996. Jianguo yilai Mao Zedong wengao. 11 vols. Beijing: Zhongyang wenxian chubanshe. Tang Baolin, Huang Daoxuan, and Huang Lingjun. 1997. Ma ke si zhuyi zai zhongguo yibai nian. Anhui renmin chubanshe: Hefei.

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Wenbu gaige gaodeng jiaoyu: Jiaoyu gongzuo cankao ziliao. 1950. Shanghai: Xin jiaoyu she. Zhongguo jiaoyu nianjian, 1949–1981. 1984. Beijing: Zhongguo dabaike quanshu chubanshe.

Books

and

Articles

in

English

Ball, Alan M. 1987. Russia’s Last Capitalists: The Nepmen, 1921–1929. Berkeley: University of California Press. De Witt, Nicholas. 1961. Education and Professional Employment in the USSR. Washington, DC: National Science Foundation. Filtzer, Donald. 1986. Soviet Workers and Stalinist Industrialization: The Formation of Modern Soviet Production Relations, 1928–1941. Armonk, New York: M. E. Sharpe. Fitzpatrick, Sheila. 1978. Cultural Revolution as Class War. In Cultural Revolution in Russia, 1928–1931, ed. Sheila Fitzpatrick, 8–40. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. ———. 1979. Education and Social Mobility in the Soviet Union, 1921–1934. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ———. 1999. Everyday Stalinism: Ordinary Life in Extraordinary Times: Soviet Russia in the 1930s. New York: Oxford University Press. Holmes, Larry E. 1991. The Kremlin and the Schoolhouse: Reforming Education in Soviet Russia, 1917–1931. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Malia, Martin. 1994. The Soviet Tragedy: A History of Socialism in Russia, 1917–1991. New York: The Free Press. Mao Tse-tung. 1961–1965, 1977. Selected Works of Mao Tse-tung. 5 vols. Beijing: Foreign Languages Press. Stalin, J.V. 1954. Works. 13 vols. Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House. Tucker, Robert C. 1990. Stalin in Power: The Revolution from Above, 1928–1941. New York: W. W. Norton.

CHAPTER 4

The Outburst of Utopianism and Reforms in the Process of Education

The outburst of utopianism, which even permeated higher education, was another manifestation of the historical convergence between Stalinism and Maoism. Both the First Five-Year Plan in the Soviet Union and the Great Leap Forward in China pursued an unrealistically high speed in economic development. This great leap mentality derived from the utopian belief in the potential of the socialist system, which was particularly strong during these respective periods precisely because the full socialist economic system was being established (in the Soviet Union) or had been established just recently (in China). The quest for a high speed also infected higher education. As has been seen in Chap. 3, the number of annual admissions to HEIs was more than quintupled in the Soviet Union from 1928 to 1932, and was tripled in China from 1957 to 1960. Such a rapid expansion of higher education proved to be unsustainable.1 Reforms in the process of education at HEIs in the Soviet Union during the First Five-Year Plan period and in China during the Great Leap period also demonstrated the outburst of utopianism in higher education. The most important innovation in the process of education at Soviet HEIs during the First Five-Year Plan period was continuous production practice, which eventually required most students to spend about half of their time on experiential learning in industrial or agricultural production each academic year. A comparable innovation in the process of education at Chinese HEIs during the Great Leap period was the effort to combine © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 L. S. Zhu, Stalinism, Maoism, and Socialism in Higher Education, Global Histories of Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-88777-3_4

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education with productive labor. A common utopian objective sought in these innovations was to integrate academic learning with experiential learning in industrial or agricultural production. The curriculum and methods of teaching and learning at HEIs also underwent radical reforms in both the Soviet Union during the First Five-­ Year Plan period and China during the Great Leap period. One of the common features shared by the curricular reforms in the Soviet Union and China was the new emphasis placed on teaching immediately applicable knowledge, although the catalysts for this emphasis were different in these two countries. This trend, which was particularly salient in engineering and science education, was transformed into a combination of practical orientation with the accentuation of political relevance in social science and humanities. The quest for an unrealistically high speed in Stalin’s industrialization drive during the First Five-Year Plan period and in Mao’s Great Leap Forward also had its influence on the reforms in the curriculum and methods of teaching and learning at the Soviet and Chinese HEIs. The most important utopian goal sought in the curricular reform and the adoption of the active methods of teaching and learning at Soviet HEIs was to produce highly qualified engineers and other educated specialists at a high speed. A high speed in learning was also sought in the curricular reform at Chinese HEIs, but the reported unbelievably high productivity in scholarly activities conducted by students and faculty members even more clearly showed how the sense of reality was lost because of the outburst of utopianism. Reforms in the process of education at HEIs in the Soviet Union during the First Five-Year Plan period and in China during the Great Leap period also evinced differences between Stalinism and Maoism. Stephen Kotkin contended that it was impossible to comprehend Stalinism without reference to a worldview born in the eighteenth-century European Enlightenment, which was to apply science or scientific rationality to society and thereby to create an explicitly rational social order.2 This worldview also influenced Soviet higher education policy, as the idea of applying scientific rationality to the organization of higher education (meaning the way in which higher education was organized) informed the Soviet effort to seek a seamless integration of higher technical education and industrial production and prompted the endeavor to create a “scientific” scheme for designing curricula for various specialties (which became the basic academic units at Soviet HEIs during the First Five-Year Plan period).

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By contrast, such scientific utopianism was absent in the reforms in the process of education at the Chinese HEIs. However, during the Great Leap period, Mao and other leaders of the CCP came to believe that communism, with the disappearance of the distinction between mental and physical labor as one of its features, would be realized soon in China. Therefore, the elimination of the differences between mental and physical labor became a utopian goal sought in the effort to combine education with productive labor. In addition, the tenet of “mass line,” which stemmed from a populist strain of Maoism, served as another source of utopian visions. The first half of this chapter examines the Soviet experiment with continuous production practice and the Chinese endeavor to combine education with productive labor in comparative perspective. The second half develops a comparative analysis of the reforms in the curriculum and methods of teaching and learning at Soviet and Chinese HEIs.

Continuous Production Practice and Soviet Higher Education Before 1928, students at Soviet HEIs conducted production practice in summer. In some ways, it was similar to summer internship. Most of the students went to industrial enterprises for their production practice; but some students, especially those studying social science or humanities, conducted production practice in government agencies. However, production practice was also different from summer internships that many American college students do, because it was centrally organized by Glavprofobr. HEIs sent their requests for places of production practice to the Central Commission of Production Practice in Glavprofobr, which obtained such places from different commissariats and then distributed them to HEIs. Each enterprise and institution were obligated to accept a certain number of students to production practice and pay them.3 Seen from the ideological point of view, production practice reflected an advantage of the Soviet system: as the Soviet government controlled both industry and higher education, it could require the industrial enterprises to accept students to production practice and achieve coordination between industrial enterprises and HEIs in this matter. In reality, it was always difficult for HEIs to obtain enough opportunities of production practice for their students.4 As an official of the Supreme Council of the

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National Economy (VSNKh), a government agency supervising industry, stated, students saw production practice as an opportunity to earn an additional income, but industrial enterprises regarded it as something that was imposed on them from above and that did not serve their interests at all.5 Partially in order to solve this problem, starting in 1925, VSNKh repeatedly suggested that instead of sending their students to production practice in summer, HEIs should send them out at alternative periods all year round.6 VSNKh contended that this method of production practice, which it called “permanent production practice,” had two advantages. First, the enterprises would not be inundated by a large number of students in summer, but would have a smaller but constant number of students all year round. Second, when production practice was conducted on a permanent basis, it would become an integral part of the curriculum.7 But Narkompros was cautious about VSNKh’s suggestion, as it would interrupt the continuity of academic learning at HEIs.8 In 1928 and 1929, as the Central Committee of the Communist Party radicalized the effort to create a proletarian intelligentsia, it also took a radical approach on many other issues in higher education. At its July 1928 plenum, it accepted the VSNKh’s idea of permanent production practice, but renamed it “continuous production practice.” The resolution on training technical personnel, adopted at this plenum, called for organizing production practice in such a way that there would be students at enterprises all year round, and it also specified that the students should spend ten months on production practice during the whole course of study.9 The follow-up resolution, adopted at the November 1929 plenum, dramatically increased the time devoted to production practice: henceforth continuous production practice and academic learning would become two equal parts in the curriculum, each taking about half of the time.10 The decision of the Central Committee on production practice, of course, corresponded with Stalin’s position. There were two reasons for the elevation of the importance of production practice. First, at least in 1928 and 1929, Stalin attached greater value to experiential learning than to academic learning in engineering education. In April 1928, immediately after the engineers accused of sabotage in the Shakhty Affair had been arrested, Stalin commented that one of the lessons to be drawn was that young engineers were not as competent as the old specialists who were hostile to the Soviet cause; the reason was that the young specialists learned only from books, while the old specialists had been steeled by

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practical experience.11 Second, the Central Committee embraced the utopian view that production practice or experiential learning could be seamlessly integrated with academic study at the HEIs, and such integration would miraculously transform higher education. The July 1928 resolution of the Central Committee even used the term “production education” (proizvodstvennoe obuchenie), and it called upon Narkompros to “establish such a connection between production education and theoretical education, so that production education will consolidate acquired theoretical knowledge and at the same time give the possibility of immediately applying such knowledge to lively practice.”12 Implementing the directive from the Central Committee, Glavprofobr issued instructions to rectors of engineering institutes on July 15, 1929, which specified its new expectations for syllabi for courses taught at such institutions: academic learning and production education should be two integral and inseparable parts of the syllabus for each course; the section of the syllabus concerning production education should identify enterprises at which students should work and working positions to which they should be assigned in accordance with the learning objectives indicated in the syllabus; the syllabus should also indicate the amount of time that a student would spend at each working position (this meant that a student would move from one working position to another during each period of production practice).13 Although the resolutions of both the July 1928 and November 1929 plenums of the Central Committee only concerned higher technical education, production practice for students at other HEIs also became continuous after the summer of 1928; starting in 1930, they also spent about half of their time on production practice. Students studying science at universities, like engineering students, conducted their production practice at industrial enterprises.14 Production practice of the students at pedagogic institutes consisted of two parts. The major part was conducted at schools.15 Because elementary and secondary schools after 1917 were supposed to be polytechnic schools, and the junior division of the secondary schools was expected to provide occupational training from 1930 to 1932,16 teachers at urban schools were expected to have some knowledge of industrial production, and those at rural schools were expected to have some knowledge of agricultural production. Therefore, another part of production practice of students at pedagogic institutes was conducted at industrial enterprises or farms.17

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Since continuous production practice took place during the academic year, an important question was how frequent the alternation between production practice and academic learning should be. At first, there was no central guidance, and each HEI or academic department made its own plan. Plans made by most academic departments in late 1928 and early 1929 called for an alternation by weeks: students would study at HEIs for two weeks and go to production practice for one week.18 Those who were responsible for formulating these plans seemed to believe that such a frequent alternation was a precondition for establishing any connection between academic learning and production practice. But such a frequent alternation was impossible for HEIs that had to send their students to industrial enterprises in other cities for production practice. More importantly, the industrial enterprises would have been unwilling to accept students if they were to come for one week at a time. Therefore, the resolution of the November 1929 plenum of the Central Committee called for the extension of each period of production practice to one, two, or three months.19 However, the gap between expectations and reality was enormous. After production practice became continuous, the industrial enterprise no longer had to pay students it accepted to production practice. This removed a disincentive that discouraged the industrial enterprise from accepting students. However, few students conducting production practice at factories were actually assigned to the working positions that their syllabi required. In most cases, students were either used as unskilled workers doing jobs that had no relations with their specialties, or were not assigned to any working duties and became superfluous people wandering from one corner to another in the factory.20 After a factory accepted students, they were divided among different workshops. But the head of a workshop had a good reason for not assigning students to actual working positions. Putting words in the mouth of a fictitious workshop manager, an article about continuous production practice explained this reason in such a way: Sidorov or Petrov worked on a particular working position. I know his potential very well, and can always count on him to fulfill tasks assigned to him. Now on this working position are put students Ivanov and Kozlov for sixty days. I cannot personally work with them (the economic target to be achieved does not leave me time for that). Moreover, it does not matter whether I work with them or not, because Ivanov will be replaced by

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Fedorov after sixty days.… In the end, the section occupied by students will inevitably slack.21

TsBPS called a conference on continuous production practice in October 1930. The resolution adopted at the conference complained: “An overwhelming majority of examples of negative nature ... testify that 50 percent of the study time devoted to continuous production practice is to a great extent wasted, because students are either used irrationally, not in accordance with their specialties, or deprived altogether of the possibility of participating in the production process.”22 On May 3, 1931, the All-Union Central Executive Committee (which executed the power of the Congress of Soviets when the latter was not in session) and Sovnarkom adopted a joint resolution, calling for giving students conducting production practice an obligation to work toward the fulfillment of the production quota of the enterprise, and stipulating that henceforth stipendiary students would no longer receive stipends during their production practice and enterprises would pay them according to their contributions to the fulfillment of the production quota. This resolution was acclaimed as a measure that would turn students from observers into active participants in production at enterprises.23 In reality, managements at some industrial enterprises now regarded the students as a financial burden, and even declared that they would have to stop accepting students unless they were given money to cover wages to be paid to students.24 At many other enterprises, the managements indeed assigned as many students as possible to actual working positions and allowed them to earn their own pay. But this was often done in a way that did not actually serve the purpose of production practice. The wage of a Soviet worker was determined by the amount of work accomplished by the work team or workshop in which the worker was working. Therefore, when students were expected to earn their own pay, this meant that if they were attached to regular teams of workers, these teams would have to pay students from the wage funds they earned. Most workers believed that this responsibility would reduce their own wages. For example, at the  Dinamo Plant in Moscow, when the management proposed to foremen of work teams that they pay two rubles a day to each student attached to their teams, all these foremen considered this as an unacceptable proposition: “We will spend time on training students, and will pay them as well. The student will not earn even a ruble. Finally, we

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don’t have extra equipment.”25 Eventually, some enterprises organized students into their own work teams and paid them according to the amount of work they had completed. However, when there were not enough parts (this often happened), the workshop managers always gave available parts to teams of regular workers, and student teams were assigned temporary tasks that would not give them the opportunity to be involved in industrial production.26 Moreover, from the viewpoint of the officials at HEIs and in Narkompros, organizing students in their own work teams deprived them of the opportunity to learn from workers’ accumulated experience.27 Some officials in Narkompros attached political value to continuous production practice, viewing it as a measure that would maintain the working-class students’ connections with workers. In 1931, an editorial in the journal of Narkompros asserted that “continuous production practice is an effective tool for creating such a commanding and engineering-­ technical force that is ‘able to understand the policy of the working class of our country, and able to master this policy and implement it conscienti ously’(Stalin).”28 Because of the political value attached to production practice, the editorial declared that for the purpose of “realizing the political objectives of continuous production practice” it was “especially necessary” to include students in the workers’ teams.29 However, this point of view was not shared by many other Communist officials. VSNKh had most actively advocated continuous production practice before 1928. But neither before nor after 1928 did VSNKh support its position on continuous production practice by rationalizing it as a means of political-ideological education. Even within Narkompros, it did not seem that all the leading officials attached political value to production practice. In an article published in 1930, Vyshinsky rejected the suggestion from professors that production practice at workshops set up at institutions of higher technical education would better serve educational purposes. If he had attached political value to production practice, this would have been the most powerful argument to support his rejection of professors’ suggestion. But Vyshinsky did not make such an argument. Instead, he contended that if students conducted production practice at workshops set up for that purpose, they would work on worst equipment, and their production practice would have very little in common with real industrial production.30 Political objectives in higher education were, of course, important to the Central Committee of the Communist Party, as its decision to expedite the creation of a proletarian intelligentsia

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demonstrated. However, while the Central Committee upheld continuous production practice as a key measure for transforming higher technical education, it did not attach political value to it.31 Moreover, not all the students conducted continuous production practice at industrial enterprises. For students studying social science or humanities, the word “production” in production practice was defined loosely or metaphorically. In the name of production practice, students in the Department of Ethnology at Moscow University periodically sat and “shook the dust of centuries” in archives and museums; for students in the Department of Literature, the ideal place of production practice was editorial offices.32 As will be seen in the following section, this was one of the differences between the Soviet experiment with continuous production practice and the Chinese endeavor to combine education with productive labor, although these were comparable innovations.

Combination of Education with Productive Labor and Utopianism in Chinese Higher Learning The effort to combine education with productive labor in China began with the promotion of work-study at HEIs and secondary schools. Before 1958, only a small number of students engaged in work-study activities. In May 1957, Liu Shaoqi, the second-ranking leader of the CCP, wrote an article in response to a newspaper report on work-study activities at some secondary schools and HEIs. In this article, he praised the students involved in work-study and called upon the leaders of secondary schools and HEIs as well as organizations of the Young Communist League to promote work-study. Liu argued that when students took part-time jobs in physical labor, they would acquire skills and habit of physical labor and appreciate the importance of physical labor in human society. He also contended that in order to help children of workers and peasants at secondary schools and HEIs, the state offered financial assistance; but it could not increase the fund for financial aid without limit. When students had earnings from work-study, they were able to complete their education even if financial assistance from the government could not cover all their living expenses and costs of education. 33 This article eventually inspired the Central Committee of the Young Communist League to adopt a special resolution on January 27, 1958 to promote work-study, but this

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resolution stressed that students should participate in work-study on a voluntary basis and they should work only during their spare time.34 At the end of January 1958, Mao endorsed work-study, but his endorsement soon transformed the traditional view of work-study as a form of financial self-help into a new and utopian notion that it was a means through which educational institutions could achieve financial self-­ sufficiency or at least partial self-sufficiency. In an internal party document Mao wrote at the end of January, titled “Sixty Articles of Working Methods,” he stated that all secondary technical schools and all schools training skilled workers should establish factories and farms, produce goods, and achieve financial self-sufficiency or partial self-sufficiency; all laboratories and experimental workshops at institutions of higher technical education should conduct production in addition to serving as educational and research facilities; all secondary and elementary schools in the countryside should sign contracts with agricultural producers’ cooperatives for participating in labor; all HEIs and urban secondary schools should, when conditions allowed, establish factories or sign contracts with factories, construction sites, and service establishments for participating in labor. 35 On February 3, in his speech on the annual plan of the national economy for 1958 delivered on behalf of the State Council at the fifth session of the First National People’s Congress, Bo Yibo, a deputy premier, declared that secondary and higher education institutions that could establish factories or farms were expected to attain full or partial financial self-sufficiency in the near future.36 This new purpose of work-study should be understood in the context of the Great Leap Forward. In order to achieve the proclaimed high targets in economic development, all resources had to be mobilized. By participating in production in industry and agriculture, and especially in production at the factories and farms established at educational institutions, students as well as faculty members could directly contribute to the Great Leap in economic development. Moreover, if educational institutions achieved full or partial financial self-sufficiency, education could expand even with reduced state funding. The new purpose of work-study implied that all students, not just those who had financial needs, were expected to participate in productive labor. The intensified effort to create a proletarian intelligentsia generated another motivation for making it mandatory for all students at HEIs to participate in productive labor. To a large extent, the proletarian intelligentsia in China was defined by the outlook and political performance or

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behavior of its members. Therefore, in addition to measures intended to increase the proportion of students of worker and peasant origins at HEIs, the Communist officials on the higher education front believed that in order to create a proletarian intelligentsia, the HEIs should place special emphasis on the ideological reform of the students who did not come from worker or peasant families. Physical labor was regarded as the main means through which these students would remold themselves ideologically. In an article published in a newspaper in January 1958, the party committee secretary of Shandong Institute of Agriculture stated that about 60 percent of the students at his institute came from families of landlords and bourgeoisie. He contended that in order to transform these students into members of the proletarian intelligentsia, a significant portion of the time during their course of study must be spent in the countryside, so that they could temper themselves in physical labor, learn from peasants, and develop a positive attitude toward physical labor.37 In February 1958, the Shanghai Municipal Party Committee’s Department of Education and Health, in a document about measures to be undertaken to create a proletarian intelligentsia, declared that the ideological reform of the students who did not come from worker or peasant families should be strengthened and these students should be tempered in labor, so that they would regard physical labor as honorable.38 In actual implementation, however, it was impractical and politically unacceptable to only require a portion of students to participate in physical labor. Eventually, participation in physical labor was viewed as a means of ideological reform for all students. Starting in February 1958, polytechnic universities and engineering institutes first converted their workshops and even laboratories into production facilities, and then established new factories.39 In the early summer of 1958, the endeavor to establish factories at HEIs reached a high tide, as it encompassed all kinds of HEIs and was infected by the great leap mentality. As many as 26 factories were reportedly established at Beijing University between June 24 and July 1.40 Beijing Pedagogic Institute claimed that about 20 factories had been established on its campus by the beginning of July.41 By early August, 74 factories had been reportedly established at Beijing Normal University; People’s University of China, an institution of social science, boasted that 130 factories had been established on its campus, and 41 of them had begun production. 42 As other numbers about economic activities reported during the Great Leap period,

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these numbers should not be taken at their face value, but they did indicate the frenzy with which production facilities were established at HEIs. By the early summer of 1958, many HEIs had also formulated plans for their students’ and faculty’s participation in labor off campus. For example, the Departments of Chinese, History, and Mathematics at Beijing Pedagogic Institute declared that students’ participation in productive labor at off-campus factories and in agricultural cooperatives would become part of their academic plans, and the first group of students would be sent out in mid-July; the institute decided that henceforth students in their third year of study would participate in agricultural labor for a year.43 As students at regular HEIs were participating in productive labor, the creation of part-time and spare-time secondary and tertiary educational institutions became part of China’s new strategy for educational development. In his speech at the expanded meeting of the Politburo on May 30, 1958, Liu Shaoqi called for developing two kinds of educational institutions: full-time and half-time schools.44 In his vision, the second kind of schools could be created at the secondary as well as tertiary levels, and they could be created in rural areas as well as in cities. Along with two educational systems, Liu also envisioned two systems of labor: while some factory workers would work for eight hours a day, others would work for half a day and study for half a day. He contended that with the development of two kinds of educational institutions and two systems of labor, most of the young workers and peasants who wanted to continue their education would have the opportunity to do so.45 Many of the part-time or spare-time  schools were called universities, although most of their students were workers or peasants who had not even completed elementary school. At universities established at factories, engineers served as instructors.46 Universities established in rural areas varied a great deal, but a long report, published in a national newspaper, about the university at Ququan Agricultural Producers’ Cooperative in Mengjin County, Henan Province gave a rough picture about such adult schools. This university claimed to have 17 departments and 604 students studying in these departments during their spare time. One of these students had graduated from senior high school, and 50 had completed or attended junior high school; the rest had only attended elementary school. Party officials served as instructors of ideological courses; other courses were taught by teachers of secondary and elementary schools and skilled farmers of the cooperative.47

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In 1958, the CCP leaders believed that China would enter communism in the foreseeable future. This utopian vision started with Mao. In late April, when he held a meeting in Guangzhou with Liu Shaoqi, Zhou Enlai, Lu Dingyi, and Deng Liqun (director of the Political Research Office of the Central Committee) about the preparatory work for the second session of the Eighth National Congress of the CCP,48 he talked about the transition (from socialism) to communism, and even declared that communist communes envisioned by European utopian socialists could become reality in China during their lifetime49 Many other leaders were also infected with utopianism. According to Liu Shaoqi himself, on the train from Beijing to Guangzhou to meet with Mao in late April 1958 (that is, before Mao talked about the transition to communism and about communist communes), Liu, Zhou, Lu, and Deng passionately talked about the communist communes and the transition to communism.50 As the people’s communes began to emerge in the summer of 1958, Mao envisioned them as organizations that would combine agriculture, industry, and commerce and that would take peasants to communism.51 Mao also envisioned that as productivity increased, the time that peasants devoted to labor would be reduced, and they would have more time to study at universities established within the people’s communes; it was, therefore, possible for all the young peasants to receive higher education in the future.52 The transition from socialism to communism that the CCP leaders envisioned should be understood in the context of Marx’s description of communist society. In Critique of the Gotha Program, Marx identified two phases of communism. In the lower phase, while private ownership of means of production is abolished, what each producer receives from society is still determined by the amount of labor he contributes, and therefore individuals with different abilities receive different amounts from the society’s stock of consumer goods. In the higher phase of communism, the subordination of the individual to the division of labor and the antithesis between mental and physical labor will vanish, and productive forces will increase with the all-round development of the individual; consequently, consumer goods will no longer be distributed according to the amount of labor each producer contributes, but according to a new principle: “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs!”53 The Soviet Communists later defined Marx’s lower phase of communism as socialism and his higher phase as communism per se.

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The Chinese Communist officials on the education front were infected by the utopian visions of Mao and other party leaders, and believed that the seeds of communism had already appeared in Chinese society. In particular, they believed that as students participated in physical labor, while workers and peasants were studying at part-time or spare-time schools, the distinction between mental and physical labor would soon disappear in China. This was the sentiment shared by Communist officials who attended the two conferences on education convened by the party center in April and June 1958. On the basis of this sentiment, Lu Dingyi wrote an article titled “Education Must Be Combined with Productive Labor,” which was published in Red Flag (Hong qi), the journal of the CCP’s Central Committee. It includes the following statement: … industry has appeared in the countryside. Workers are also peasants, and peasants are also workers. This is a sprouting seed of communism. Because of the implementation of the policy of combining education with productive labor, educational institutions have established factories and farms, and factories and agricultural cooperatives have set up many schools. A new phenomenon begins to appear, in which students are also workers and peasants, and workers and peasants are also students. This phenomenon is also a sprouting seed of communism.54

Lu Dingyi declared that while Chinese schools at the current stage could not yet create individuals who were able to work in any occupation, they should create individuals who were capable of mental work as well as physical labor.55 Thus, creating such new men and women became a new political objective sought in the combination of education with productive labor. Before the end of 1958, there were no guidelines from the party center or the central government on the amount of time that students should devote to productive labor. At the end of 1958, the party group in the Ministry of Education submitted to the party center a proposal, titled “a Few Suggestions about Education.” This proposal, approved by the party center on December 22, noticed that educational institutions devoted too much time to productive labor at the expense of academic learning. In order to redress this trend, it stipulated the amount of time that should be allotted to productive labor at different level of schools. In regard to HEIs, the proposal suggested three formulas for apportioning time: 1-2-9 (one month for vacation, two months for labor, and nine months for

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academic study), 1-3-8, or 1-4-7. The proposal also instructed that in arranging productive labor for students, the HEIs should pay attention to the connection between productive labor and academic learning.56 In early 1959, most HEIs adopted the middle formula suggested by the Ministry of Education’s party group: three months for productive labor, eight months for academic learning, and one month for vacation.57 However, because students in all specialties were required to participate in labor, the connection between productive labor and academic learning had to be interpreted broadly or loosely. Moreover, the students for whom the connection between productive labor and academic learning was impossible by any stretch of the imagination also had to participate in labor. In early 1959, the party committee at Beijing University identified four ways of connecting productive labor with academic learning. First, productive labor was connected with the study of a course (an example given was the physics students who worked at factories making semi-­ conductor products while they were taking the course on theory of semi-­ conductor). Second, productive labor was linked with students’ specialty, but not with any course (the example given was the lower-division students in physics working at metal factories). Third, productive labor was indirectly linked with academic learning (the example given was students in social science and humanities who participated in productive labor in industry and agriculture, where they could supposedly learn practical knowledge of industrial and agricultural production as well as of class struggle, and thereby could deepen their understanding of theories learned in the classroom). Fourth, for the students whose participation in productive labor could not be linked with their specialties in anyway (such as students of foreign languages), the main objectives of their productive labor were to remold themselves ideologically and learn some practical knowledge of agricultural and industrial production.58 With the new emphasis on the connection between productive labor and academic learning, the notion that students’ participation in productive labor was a means for eliminating the distinction between mental and physical labor was not abandoned. As a matter of fact, this notion was emphasized again in 1960. For example, in its instructions for revising curricula at HEIs, issued on September 1, 1960, the Higher Education Department of the Shanghai Municipal Government stated that the main objectives of students’ participation in productive labor were to reform their ideological outlook and to enable them to be intellectuals as well as physical laborers; linking labor with academic learning should not be

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stressed at the expense of these main objectives; students should participate in various kinds of labor, including labor in agriculture, industry, and service, so that they would develop skills for more than one kind of physical labor.59 Like the Soviet effort to integrate academic study at the institutions of higher technical education with experiential learning in industrial production, the Chinese effort to combine education with productive labor fell far short of the proclaimed policy objectives. First of all, none of the HEIs was able to achieve financial self-sufficiency through production activities at on-campus factories. As a matter of fact, a majority of the factories established at HEIs in 1958 lacked solid foundation in terms of equipment, supply of raw materials, long-term planning, and managerial structure. They disappeared as quickly as they had been established. For example, about twenty factories were set up at Fudan University during 1958,60 but only nine were still in operation by September 1960.61 The factories that were still in operation in 1959 and 1960 employed full-time workers, although they also used students as part-time workers. These factories were found to be poorly managed, they were only occasionally supplied with raw materials, and the productivity of their full-time workers was much lower than that of workers at other factories. As a result, these factories often fell far short of the production quotas assigned to them, and their contributions to economic development were meager.62 These remaining factories at HEIs were not closed because they were still considered as one of the means for combining education with productive labor (the other means was students’ participation in productive labor at off-­ campus factories and in people’s communes). Connecting productive labor with academic learning was an elusive objective. Some tensions were even created between HEIs and factories to which they sent their students. Factory managers were, of course, unable to help HEIs achieve the connection between students’ productive labor and their academic learning; but leaders and some faculty members at HEIs, who were eager to achieve such a connection, put part of the blame on the factory managers who they believed used students simply as labor force.63

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Radical Reforms in the Curriculum and Methods of Teaching and Learning at Soviet Institutions of Higher Learning The radical curricular reform in Soviet higher learning during the First Five-Year Plan period began at institutions of higher technical education. The curricular reform in other areas of higher learning was inspired by the ideas that were first applied to engineering education. The curricular reform in engineering education in turn was preceded by changes in higher education management and the reorganization of HEIs. Following the educational tradition of Tsarist Russia, higher technical education in the Soviet Union was not included in universities, but was offered in separate institutions. Before 1928, there were both polytechnic institutes and institutes producing engineers for a particular branch of economy, such as Moscow Mining Academy. But all these institutions, along with other HEIs (with the exception of the military schools), were administered by the Commissariats of Enlightenment of the Union republics; and most HEIs were in the jurisdiction of Narkompros of the Russian Republic. VSNKh had argued even before 1928 that institutions of higher technical education should be placed in its jurisdiction. At its July 1928 and November 1929 plenums, the Central Committee of the Communist Party decided to transfer institutions of higher technical education to VSNKh and the Commissariat of Railroads and to transfer institutions of higher agricultural education to the Commissariat of Agriculture.64 Sheila Fitzpatrick examined in greater detail the conflict between VSNKh and Narkompos over the control of institutions of higher technical education, and she portrayed the Central Committee’s decision as a political solution of the conflict between Narkompros and VSNKh.65 But this decision was also inspired by the notion that the “production” of the technical personnel for industry should not be separated from industrial production itself. An article published in the journal of the Union of Academic Workers in 1930 contended: The problem of production of technical cadres of high qualifications in the period of the planned socialist reconstruction of the whole national economy cannot be solved independently of the problem of the development of production itself. On the contrary, it has become clearer and clearer that the production of these cadres, as well as technical cadres in general (meaning technical cadres produced by all levels of schools), is one of the organic

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f­actors of the branch of production that needs these cadres and that cannot develop without such cadres.66

This notion, which was a new idea in the Soviet endeavor to create a socialist system of higher learning, prompted another and more drastic change in higher education management and the reorganization of HEIs that accompanied it. In the summer of 1930, all the multi-departmental institutions of higher technical education were divided into specialized institutes.67 In this process, Moscow Higher Technical School was divided into five specialized institutes on the basis of the existing departments.68 Leningrad Polytechnic Institute was divided into 15 institutes.69 These specialized institutes of engineering education were placed in the direct jurisdiction of the 24 industrial associations (each of which oversaw an industrial sector) under VSNKh.70 As the rationale behind this institutional reorganization was that each government agency and each industrial branch would be responsible for creating educated specialists it employed, all the existing medical institutes as well as new medical institutes formed on the basic of medical departments separated from universities were placed under the jurisdiction of the Commissariats of Health of various republics.71 Even the State Planning Committee (Gosplan) received its own institutes. Narkompros only retained the pedagogic institutes, which trained teachers for general secondary schools, and universities, which were truncated as many of their academic departments also became independent institutes. Each republic’s Commissariat of Enlightenment was also given a new duty of “program-methodological leadership” over all HEIs located on its territory,72 which meant that Narkompros retained some residual power to oversee academic affairs in HEIs that had been removed from its jurisdiction. Glavprofobr was reorganized into the Academic-Methodological Department accordingly.73 The institutional reorganization of higher education was followed by the change of the curricular structure. Before 1930, the basic academic units at HEIs were academic departments or divisions (a large department, such as the department of mathematics and physics at a university, was divided into several divisions). When Narkompros supervised all the HEIs, it issued model academic plans (curricula), and the HEIs reconfigured them into actually operational curricula. The Soviet government had undertaken the first reform of higher technical education in the early 1920s with the purpose of training engineers in narrower specializations at an accelerated speed. The course of study at HEIs was reduced from five

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years to three years (but was extended to three and a half years in 1923 and to four and a half years in 1925).74 Narrow specialties, many of which aimed to produce engineering specialists for particular industrial products (such as steam engine, aircraft engine, automobile, and tractor), were created at institutions of higher technical education.75 However, both the model academic plans issued by Narkompros and the actual curricula used at institutions of higher technical education were formulated for academic departments, each of which offered several specialties.76 Students chose a narrow specialty in their last year of study, and academic plans allocated only a small proportion of academic hours to the courses directly related to such narrow specialties. The proportion of academic hours for such courses further declined after the duration of study at HEIs was extended in 1925.77 After the institutional reorganization in 1930, specialties became the basic academic units, and an academic plan was formulated for each specialty.78 The significance of this change should be understood in the context of the new scheme of engineering education that had been promoted by VSNKh. VSNKh had suggested before 1928 that engineering education could be improved if institutions of higher technical education trained most of their students as engineers of narrow profile. Part of the reasoning behind VSNKh’s notion of engineers of narrow profile was that students should start their specialization as early as possible, and more academic hours in the curriculum should be allocated to courses teaching applicable knowledge directly related to their narrow specialties.79 In 1928, with the beginning of the First Five-Year Plan that sought a high speed in economic development, the speed in engineering education also became an important issue. Therefore, the VSNKh officials made a new argument to support the notion of engineers of narrow profile. Before 1928, while the nominal course of study at HEIs was four and a half years, a majority of engineering students actually took more than six years to complete their study.80 Lunacharsky and other Narkompros officials contended that most students at Soviet HEIs lacked adequate academic preparation, and the low stipends that students from among workers and peasants received forced them to take part time jobs; even before the First World War, when students at institutions of higher technical education had better academic preparation, it took seven years on average for them to graduate.81 But the VSNKh officials argued that the curricula, which were loaded with numerous courses not related to the specialties that students eventually chose,

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were to blame for the low productivity of higher technical education; and their notion of engineers of narrow profile would raise the productivity.82 VSNKh’s new argument was apparently appealing to Stalin. The resolution of the July 1928 plenum of the Central Committee of the Communist Party called for establishing new type institutions of higher technical education with a shortened course of study of three or four years.83 The resolution of the November 1929 plenum defined the new type institutions with a shortened course of study (which was now fixed at three years) as schools with “sharply defined specialization.” It called for increasing the number of such institutions and for reducing the course of study in other HEIs to four years.84 As specialties became the basic academic units after institutional reorganization in 1930, all institutions of higher technical education actually educated their students in “sharply defined specialties.” Starting in 1930, most HEIs reduced their course of study to three years.85 Another implication of the VSNKh’s notion of engineers of narrow profile was that the government agencies that managed the economy should specify types of educated specialists they needed, and the HEIs should produce such specialists according to the specifications given to them. Therefore, the resolution of Sovnarkom on the reorganization of HEIs, adopted on July 30, 1930, stated that industrial-managerial agencies and other government organs that had been given the new duty to administer HEIs were required to specify the types of specialists their HEIs should produce.86 None of these organs and agencies was able to complete this task by the deadline given by Sovnarkom, August 15, 1930. But a new term “profiles of specialists” was used very soon. So-called profiles of specialists would not only define exact types of specialists needed by various economic sectors or industrial branches, but would also specify knowledge, theoretical as well as applicable, and skills needed by each type of specialists; each profile would then serve as a guidance for formulating the academic plan for a particular specialty.87 In order to help industrial associations formulate profiles of specialists, VSNKh’s Main Administration of Industrial Cadres (Glavpromkadr) and its successor, the Department of Cadres, took a serious effort to devise a scientific methodology for constructing profiles of specialists.88 At the end of 1930, Glavpromkadr claimed to have worked out such a methodology. It was approved by the Academic-Methodological Department of Narkompros in January 1931, and therefore became a methodology recommended not only for the industrial associations under VSNKh, but also for all other government agencies that were required to construct profiles

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of specialists.89 According to this methodology, the first step in constructing the profile of a specialist was to segregate an engineer’s job into various functions, and then specify general and special theoretical knowledge as well as the “production-technical skills” needed for performing each of these functions.90 In the spring of 1931, the Academic-Methodological Group of VSNKh’s Department of Cadres declared that merely listing functions an engineer performed was not a good methodology, and it claimed that its new methodology applied Marxism to the formulation of profiles of specialists and therefore was scientific.91 Narkompros approved this methodology and recommended it to leaders of all HEIs in the Russian Republic in May.92 A profile of an engineer constructed according to the new methodology would start with the description of an engineer’s job or position; then it would indicate equipment that workers under this engineer’s supervision operated, raw materials they used, and the product they produced; finally it would describe functions this engineer performed and define the knowledge about the equipment, raw materials, and product that was needed for performing these functions.93 The Academic-­ Methodological Group also constructed sample profiles of specialists according to its methodology. But its methodology and sample profiles were criticized by many, including David Petrovsky, who had served as director of Glavpromkadr. A.  Podgornyi, head of the Academic-­ Methodological Group, had to admit that sample profiles of specialists were not real profiles, and they were published in haste for illustrative purposes only.94 Later, VSNKh’s Scientific-Research Institute of Industrial Cadres further elaborated on the Academic-Methodological Group’s methodology and produced a thick book, titled Methodology, Methods, and Sample Profiles of Specialties of Socialist Industry of the USSR (the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics).95 However, in the fall of 1932, this book was criticized as “hare-brained scheming” and was withdrawn from circulation by the Commissariat of Heavy Industry, the successor to VSNKh.96 The effort to construct scientifically formulated profiles of specialists was scientific utopianism. Therefore, none of the industrial associations or other government agencies was able to complete its work on profiles of specialists.97 However, whereas the academic plans in institutions of higher technical education before 1928 had aimed to create specialists for particular industrial products, the endeavor to construct the profiles of specialists embodied a new notion that institutions of higher technical education should educate students in specialties corresponding with the

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working positions or jobs in the economy. The result was that students were educated in increasingly narrow specialties. The number of specialties at institutions of higher technical education increased to 900 by 1932.98 The list of specialties at Moscow Mendeleev Institute of Chemical Engineering included technology of oil varnish and oil paints, technology of non-oil varnish and paints, and technology of painting. A. M. Berkengeim, a professor of chemistry, later commented sarcastically that the last specialty apparently trained engineer-house painters.99 The reorganization of institutions of higher technical education and the proliferation of extremely narrow specialties in them prompted similar changes at universities. In 1930, many new universities, established after 1917, were dissolved into separate special institutes.100 Universities with longer history survived in name, but lost medical departments and programs in social science and humanities, and became institutions of mathematics and science. Extremely narrow specialties were also created at truncated universities. The total number of specialties in mathematics, physics, biology, and geography reached 39 at Moscow University and 44 at Leningrad University by 1931. Some of these specialties had only three or four students.101 The attack on academic traditions and abstract book learning inherent in the reform of higher technical education generated two seemingly conflicting but actually logically connected trends in the curriculum in social science and humanities, which were illustrated by changes in economics education. Before 1928, departments of economics at universities were somewhat different from their counterparts at institutes of the national economy. The former offered education that was more academic-oriented, while the latter were oriented toward training specialists working in a particular economic sector.102 In 1931, economics departments of universities were reorganized into independent institutes (some departments were divided into two or three institutes) and placed in the jurisdiction of various government agencies, including Gosplan.103 This reorganization was accompanied by the development of extremely narrow specialties. The institutes of planning in the jurisdiction of Gosplan, for instance, educated students as planners of an economic sector (such as industry, agriculture, or transportation) or as planners of an industrial branch (such as machine building, energy, or metallurgy).104 As an economics professor, V. I. Lavrov, indicated later, the curricula for such narrow specialties were heavily loaded with courses on immediately applicable knowledge at the expense of the broad academic foundation.105 At the same time, the courses that

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were supposed to lay down the broad academic foundation of economics education amounted to no more than the reiteration of ideological dogmas and the explication of the Communist Party’s current policies. Lenin’s theory of imperialism and the Soviet official doctrine of socialist industrialization became the most important themes in the course on economic geography.106 The course on the economics of socialist industry focused on “denouncing the theories of bourgeois wreckers, the rightist and leftist opportunism,” and on explicating “Marxist and Leninist economics of industry.”107 Methods of teaching and learning also underwent radical reforms during the First Five-Year Plan period. These reforms were partially inspired by the progressive education philosophy. In December 1929, Narkompros abolished examinations, having declared that “examinations, in whatever form, were always condemned by progressive pedagogic thought.”108 Narkompros also called for replacing lectures with active methods of teaching.109 The active methods of teaching could be seminars, but could also be the so-called “laboratory method,” an ill-defined term that meant not only experiments in laboratories, but also various methods of instruction that embodied the “learning by doing” approach. The quest for an unrealistically high speed, a feature of Stalin’s program of industrialization during the First Five-Year Plan period, and the spirit of collectivity, inspired by the collectivization of agriculture, also influenced the reform of the methods of teaching and learning. These spirits, combined with the progressive education philosophy, eventually produced a new method of teaching and learning, called the “laboratory-brigade method.” With this method, students studied course materials on their own in a brigade or team of three to six members. This new method was first introduced into institutions of higher technical education in Leningrad in the spring of 1931 under the auspices of the Academic-Methodological Department of the Council of the National Economy of the Leningrad Region (LOSNKh); later it spread to Moscow and other cities and became the most widely used method of teaching and learning at HEIs throughout the Soviet Union. According to LOSNKh, in the laboratory-brigade method, as a small team of students became the basic unit of teaching and learning, every student could be an active learner. It suggested that the brigade should be composed of students with the same level of academic preparation and ability, so that each brigade would be able to move ahead in learning at its own speed, independently of other students. With brigades organized according to this principle, the laboratory-brigade

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method would raise both the quality and speed of students’ academic study.110 However, LOSNKh’s notion of homogeneous brigades met a strong opposition from a large proportion of students. Several students at Leningrad Institute of Transportation Engineering wrote to the journal of TsBPS that “comradely mutual help was the essence of the brigade work,” but the homogeneous brigades would make this mutual help impossible.111 The student newspaper of Moscow Institute of Meat and Milk argued that the homogeneous brigades would lead to non-socialist competition; “while some brigades will break one record after another in reducing the duration of study, the majority of students, deprived of their strongest comrades, will progress even slower than at a normal speed.”112 The student leaders at Moscow Mining Institute contended that separating strong students from the weak ones would disgrace the latter and deprive them of energy.113 Because of the objection from a large proportion of students, the brigades at many HEIs were not formed according to LOSNKh’s suggestion.114 The real problems with the laboratory-brigade method, however, had nothing to do with the composition of the brigades. As the AcademicMethodological Department of LOSNKh claimed, in the laboratory-brigade method, “the teacher’s systematic teaching of a course” was “replaced by the systematic and independent study of course materials by students in a brigade.”115 To be sure, students with a strong ability for independent study could succeed even with very little guidance from teachers. But most students admitted during the First Five-Year Plan period, and especially in 1930 and 1931, lacked adequate academic preparation. The laboratory-brigade method did not serve these students well. Moreover, under the cover of collective study in brigades, some students no longer spent any time on study, but were still able to get credits for all courses.116 Even Narkompros, which had promoted active methods of teaching in 1929 and 1930, became critical of the laboratory-­brigade method in the spring of 1932. At the end of May, the  State Academic Council’s Section of Professional-Technical Education charged that the universal adoption of the laboratory-brigade method was a distortion of the principle of active teaching.117 K. A. Mal’tsev, a deputy Commissar of Enlightenment, made a sweeping criticism of the laboratory-­brigade method in an published article, and even stated that it was cherished only by the students who wanted to hide in a brigade and pass their courses without their own efforts and by teachers who wanted to conceal their own ignorance.118

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Radical Reforms in the Curriculum and the Methods of Teaching and Learning at Chinese Institutions of Higher Education The Chinese system of higher education existing before 1958 already embodied the principle that had prompted the reorganization of Soviet HEIs in 1930: each government ministry was responsible for producing educated specialists it employed. After the institutional reorganization in 1952, most HEIs in China were institutions serving a particular profession (such as secondary education or healthcare) or economic sector. Such institutions were administered by different ministries of the central government. The Ministry of Higher Education directly administered the comprehensive universities and polytechnics, and was also responsible for formulating national uniform policies in academic affairs and overseeing their implementation at all HEIs.119 Higher education reforms in China during the Great Leap period did not involve a reorganization of HEIs, but included a change in higher education management. In April 1958, 187 of the 229 HEIs that had been administered by the ministries of the central government were placed in the jurisdiction of the provincial governments.120 In regard to HEIs whose mission was to produce educated professionals for a particular profession or economic sector, this change meant that they were transferred from a ministry of the central government to a corresponding department of a provincial government. In August 1958, the party center and the State Council also gave the provincial governments the power to establish new HEIs without approval from the central government.121 This change in higher education management represented China’s breakaway from Soviet tutelage, because the centralized administration of higher education had been imported from the Soviet Union in the early 1950s (in the Soviet Union itself, as will be seen in the following chapter, higher education management was centralized after 1932). One of the reasons for this change was the argument made by some provincial party organs that as a result of the centralized administration of higher education, local needs and conditions were overlooked. For example, after Mao’s criticism of the mechanical copying of Soviet experience in 1956, the Shanghai Municipal Party Committee’s Department of Propaganda and Department of School Affairs used examples to demonstrate how the centralized administration of higher education resulted in the overlooking of local needs and conditions. One of such examples was Jiaotong

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University. Seven universities in Shanghai had departments of mechanical and electrical engineering before 1949, but all these departments were merged into Jiaotong University in the institutional reorganization in 1952; then the central government decided to move Jiaotong University to Xian despite the fact that a quarter of electrical equipment and machines for the whole country was made in Shanghai (this decision was eventually reversed in 1957).122 Another reason stemmed from a point that Mao made in 1956 when he criticized the mechanical copying of the Soviet method of industrial management. According to Mao, the Soviet way of administering industrial enterprises, which concentrated all the power in the central government, did not allow room for local initiatives.123 With the decentralization of higher education management, the Ministry of Higher Education was merged into the Ministry of Education.124 During the Great Leap period, the Ministry of Education did not issue any guidelines on curricula, and there was no government agency in China that advocated the concept of engineers of narrow profile. However, despite the fact that the curricular reform at Chinese HEIs during the Great Leap period was undertaken at the local initiative (mainly by the party officials who assumed all the power in administering HEIs and academic departments), and did not follow an articulated scheme promoted by any powerful government agency, it bore some strong similarities with the curricular reform undertaken at Soviet HEIs during the First Five-Year Plan period. One of such similarities was the proliferation of extremely narrow specialties in engineering and science education. For example, Jiaotong University in Shanghai offered a specialty in power equipment for ships before 1958, but in 1958 new specialties in the engine of internal combustion for ships, turbine engine for ships, and boiler for ships were created.125 At Shanghai University of Science and Technology—a new institution established in 1958—students studying biology were educated in such narrow specialties as physiology of microorganisms, physiology of animals, physiology of plants, and entomology.126 As a result of the proliferation of such narrow specialties, the total number of specialties offered at Chinese HEIs increased from 363 in early 1958 to 627 in 1962.127 Such narrow specialization seemingly conflicted with a political objective sought in the effort to combine education with productive labor, as the elimination of the distinction between mental and physical labor should have encouraged the de-emphasizing of specialization in education. But it was in accord with another objective sought in the effort to

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combine education with productive labor, which was to establish a direct link between higher education and industrial or agricultural production. This purpose prompted a focus on teaching immediately applicable knowledge and skills to be used in a specific job, which in turn encouraged the creation of narrow specialties. However, because the creation of narrow specialties at Chinese HEIs was not prompted by any articulated scheme, it was not systematic as it had been in the Soviet Union during the First Five-Year Plan period: newly created extremely narrow specialties coexisted with the specialties that had been in existence before 1958.128 The new emphasis on teaching immediately applicable knowledge and skills in engineering and science education was transformed into the accentuation of political relevance in humanities and social science. According to a report from the party committee at Fudan University about reforms in the departments of humanities and social science, written in April 1960, new curricula for these departments allocated one fifth to one third of the time to courses devoted to the study of Mao’s works; moreover, in addition to the time assigned to productive labor, these curricula also allocated one year to experiential learning, during which time students would work as low-level cadres in people’s communes, factories, and other organizations.129 The accentuation of political relevance had an additional impact on the curricula for the departments of history and Chinese at comprehensive universities as well as at normal universities and pedagogic institutes. Since China has a long history, curricula for these departments before 1958 included many courses on pre-modern Chinese history and literature. For example, in the pre-1958 academic plan for history at comprehensive universities, courses on pre-modern China constituted two thirds of all the course on Chinese history.130 Moreover, students in the departments of history and Chinese were expected to be able to read historical sources and literary works written in classic Chinese, and therefore they spent a significant amount of time on studying ancient Chinese language. In early 1958, Chen Boda, a member of the Politburo of the CCP, declared that “the contemporary should be stressed at the expense of the ancient” in historical studies.131 This soon became a motto in the curricular reform in the departments of history and Chinese.132 This motto also prompted the change of content in some courses. For example, before 1958, the course on Chinese literature devoted 85 percent of the time to pre-twentieth-­ century literary works and 15 percent of hours to twentieth-century

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literary works; from 1958 to 1960, this course devoted half of the time to the twentieth-century literary works.133 Unlike the Russian Commissariat of Enlightenment, the Chinese Ministry of Education did not promote the progressive education philosophy and did not proclaim any plan for reforming the methods of teaching and learning at HEIs. However, the objective of establishing a close connection between higher education and industrial or agricultural production encouraged locally initiated reforms in the methods of teaching and learning. A pedagogic approach promoted by the party officials at many HEIs was to encourage students to participate in actual research projects (which were not assignments within any course). For example, mathematics students at some normal universities and pedagogic institutes reportedly undertook research projects that were intended to solve mathematical problems arising in industrial production.134 Since participation in such research projects was considered as the most effective way of learning, it replaced coursework for many students. In December 1958, Beijing University and People’s University of China sent 107 students along with 60 faculty members to two provinces to conduct research on people’s communes that had just been established. These students did not return to the university campus until May 1959. During these five months, they did not attend any class.135 The students in social science and humanities at Beijing University who remained on campus during the spring semester of 1959 were also given research projects, which consumed so much of their time that they were not able to work on assignments from classes they were taking; and the Departments of History and Economics even canceled classes in order to give students time to complete research projects.136 The pursuit of a high speed—the common spirit of the First Five-Year Plan in the Soviet Union and the Great Leap Forward in China—also had its influence on Chinese higher education. In 1958, many HEIs proclaimed their plans to reduce the course of study. Tongji University in Shanghai declared that it would reduce the five-year course of study to four years, and the two medical institutes in Shanghai declared that they would reduce the duration of study from six years to five. Fudan University declared that its students would complete their five-year course of study in three years.137 Eventually the central government did not permit HEIs to reduce their course of study. However, various harebrained experiments were still undertaken at many HEIs with the purpose of raising the speed in teaching and learning.

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At Jiaotong University in Shanghai, a new method, called “advance along a single subject,” in teaching foundational courses was adopted in 1958: students would complete all the required courses in one academic discipline (such as physics) before taking courses in another discipline (such as mathematics or chemistry). Eventually the Department of Higher Education of the Shanghai Municipal Government expressed its disapproval of this method, declaring that it neglected interconnections between different academic disciplines.138 In the Department of Pharmacology at Shanghai First Medical Institute, 24 courses were merged into 18 in an effort to accelerate the educational process. This department’s combined party cell considered this as an achievement in the education revolution. But the Department of Higher Education of the Shanghai Municipal Government viewed this as a rash experiment in medical education.139 A more notorious manifestation of the great leap mentality at HEIs was the quest for a high speed in the research projects undertaken by students and faculty members, which prompted many reports that apparently inflated achievements. For example, newspaper reports stated that in less than 40 days the students and faculty in the Department of Mathematics at Beijing Normal University completed research projects that solved 110 mathematical problems in industrial production, and those in the Mathematics Department at Tianjin Normal University solved 93 mathematical problems in industrial production in two months; students and the faculty in the Department of Geography at East China Normal University, while surveying the delta of the  Yangzi River, completed within three months the tasks that would have normally taken four years to accomplish.140 Students and the faculty in the Department of Chinese at Fudan University reportedly completed more than 200 monographs and scholarly articles in the second half of 1958.141 “Mass line” was one of the doctrines promoted in economic development as well as in education by the party center during the Great Leap period. This doctrine stemmed from a populist strain of Maoism. Mao repeatedly declared that masses were endowered with unlimited creative power.142 During the Great Leap Forward, the “mass line” also meant an emphasis on relying on masses or common people rather than educated experts in economic development. Making steel at backyard furnaces by people who did not have any experience in steel production epitomized this aspect of the “mass line.” The reported high speed achieved in the collective research projects completed by students and faculty members at HEIs was also an expression of the “mass line”. The “mass line” was even

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more notoriously manifested in the creation of course outlines and the writing of textbooks. As has been indicated in Chap. 2, the Ministry of Higher Education ceased to enforce uniform curricula and course outlines in 1957, and the HEIs were allowed to formulate their own curricula and create their own course outlines. Because of the effort to combine education with productive labor and the curricular reform undertaken at HEIs, course outlines that had been used before 1958 appeared outdated. Most textbooks used at Chinese HEIs during the early 1950s were translated from Russian. In 1956, the Ministry of Higher Education launched an effort to replace these textbooks with those written by Chinese scholars. But only a small number of new textbooks was published before 1958.143 The “mass line” in the creation of course outlines and the writing of textbooks was epitomized by a new method called “the combination of three forces” (the three forces were the combined party cell in the academic department, students, and faculty members). This method was first adopted at Beijing Normal University, where the party officials let students play a more prominent role than faculty members in the creation of course outlines. The third-year and fourth-year students at this university formed 256 educational reform groups, which completed 159 course outlines in half a month; in addition, they also created 47 course outlines jointly with faculty members.144 A newspaper report claimed that while professors only wanted to make minor revisions to existing course outlines, students were determined to “break up the existing scheme, disregard the restrictions of conventions, and make complete changes (to existing course outlines) according to socialist educational policy.”145 Other HEIs soon adopted this method not only in the creation of course outlines, but also in the writing of textbooks.146 At many institutions, students and faculty members were placed in the joint textbook-writing groups, but the leaders of these groups were Communist students, and they assigned duties to faculty members.147 Some textbooks were written by students alone. Fifty-nine third-year students in the Department of Chinese at Beijing University collectively wrote A History of Chinese Literature; 60 third-year students in the Department of History at Hebei Pedagogic Institute collectively wrote A History of the People’s Republic of China.148 A high speed was also sought in the writing of the textbooks. More than 2200 textbooks were reportedly written at 23 HEIs in Beijing in less than one and a half years.149 In the Department of Chinese at Fudan

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University, all its textbooks were written within one month.150 But these textbooks were either used for a short period of time or not used at all, as was demonstrated by a new textbook project launched by the Ministry of Education after the end of the Great Leap Forward. The textbooks published in this new project were written by professors.151

Concluding Comparative Analysis Richard Stites found that revolutionary utopianism flourished in Russia from 1917 to 1928, but he regarded the First Five-Year Plan period as a transitional period that was full of contradictions. On the one hand, he argued that the First Five-Year Plan brought about a burst of enthusiasm for construction and transformation, which resembled the revolutionary euphoria of 1917 in the number of people it infected. On the other hand, he contended that the First Five-Year Plan was the beginning of a process in which “all the varied, autonomous revolutionary utopian strivings” were abandoned “in favor of the single utopia of Stalinism,” “a single utopian vision and plan, drawn up at the pinnacle of power and imposed on an entire society.”152 Many scholars regarded the Great Leap Forward in China as a period that witnessed the most prominent manifestation of Mao’s utopianism. John Bryan Starr contended that the Great Leap Forward was one of the two brief periods in which “utopianism figured prominently in Mao’s writings.”153 Stuart Schram spoke of Mao’s “rural utopian dreams” (because Mao saw sprouts of communism in the people’s communes).154 Maurice Meisner discussed Mao’s utopianism during the Great Leap period more extensively than other scholars.155 Explaining Mao’s utopianism of the Great Leap period, scholars either looked at its historical roots or pointed to Mao’s intellectual dispositions. Schram suggested that the historical root of Mao’s rural utopian dreams of the Great Leap period was the free supply system that the CCP had used during the war years.156 Meisner argued that “many of the populist and ‘utopian socialist’ features of Mao’s thought that went into the making of the Chinese communist revolutionary strategy in decades before 1949 reappeared during the Great Leap, often in exaggerated form.”157 This chapter has demonstrated how the outburst of utopianism, a manifestation of the historical convergence between Stalinism of the First Five-­ Year Plan period and Maoism of the Great Leap period, was evidenced in reforms in the process of education at Soviet and Chinese HEIs. At the

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same time, this chapter has also shown that utopian visions that emanated from the pinnacle of power were only one of the expressions of utopianism in both the Soviet Union and China. In the Soviet Union, the main purpose of continuous production practice was to seamlessly integrate academic learning with experiential learning in industrial production or in other fields of students’ future employment. This utopian vision came from the pinnacle of power, the  Central Committee of the Communist Party headed by Stalin. In China, the effort to combine education with productive labor aimed to achieve multiple utopian goals, which, in addition to seamlessly integrating academic and experiential learning, also included the achievement of financial self-sufficiency of educational institutions and the elimination of the distinction between mental and physical labor. These utopian visions came from Mao and other top leaders of the CCP. There were also utopian ideas that did not emanate from the pinnacle of power, but came from Communists at lower levels who were infected by the utopian spirit of the times. Such utopian ideas were most clearly evidenced in the reforms in the curriculum and methods of teaching and learning at both the Soviet and Chinese HEIs. Neither in the Soviet Union nor in China did the party leaders give a clear guidance on how to reform the curriculum or methods of teaching and learning. Even the Russian Commissariat of Enlightenment, which actively promoted the progressive education philosophy during the First Five-Year Plan period, and the Chinese Ministry of Education did not become the fountains of the most utopian ideas regarding reforms in the curriculum and methods of teaching and learning. In the Soviet Union, the most utopian ideas came from unexpected sources, such as the Academic-Methodological Group of VSNKh’s Department of Cadres and the Council of the National Economy of the Leningrad Region. In China, the most utopian experiments were initiated by the Communist officials at HEIs. While the outburst of utopianism in higher education was a manifestation of the historical convergence between Stalinism of the First Five-Year Plan period and Maoism of the Great Leap period, it also demonstrated the differences between Stalinism and Maoism. The idea of applying scientific rationality to the organization of higher education, which stemmed from the worldview that science or scientific rationality should be applied to society, informed the effort to integrate academic study with experiential learning and the curricular reform in the Soviet Union. This idea prompted the effort to devise a scientific methodology for constructing profiles of specialists. By contrast, although the integration of academic

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and experiential learning was also a goal sought in the Chinese experiment with combining education and productive labor, students’ participation in productive labor was viewed in China as a means of ideological reform. Eventually the most important objective sought in this experiment was the elimination of the distinction between mental and physical labor, which derived from Marx’s description of communist society. As has been indicated in the preceding chapter, the Maoist concept of the proletarian intelligentsia differed from the Stalinist concept. The utopian goal of eliminating the distinction between mental and physical labor added another dimension to the Maoist definition of the proletarian intelligentsia: the proletarian intelligentsia was a new intelligentsia whose members would be able and willing to work as both educated specialists and physical laborers. Such a new intelligentsia would not have a distinct social identity different from those of workers and peasants. This definition of the proletarian intelligentsia differed even more significantly from the Stalinist definition of the proletarian intelligentsia as a new educated elite of the working-class origins. Moreover, while the quest for an unrealistically high speed in economic development—the common feature of the First Five-Year Plan in the Soviet Union and the Great Leap Forward in China—influenced higher education in both countries, the expressions of this influence were different. In the Soviet Union, the pursuit of a high speed in higher education mainly derived from the assumption that the application of scientific rationality to the organization of higher education could greatly accelerate the production of educated specialists. By contrast, the quest for a high speed at Chinese HEIs was most notoriously expressed in the research projects conducted by students and faculty members and in the writing of textbooks, and it was closely associated with the Maoist tenet of “mass line.” When implemented at HEIs, this tenet generated a notion that the collective effort of the masses could achieve a miraculously high level of productivity even in scholarly activities. The gap between the utopian objectives sought in reforms in the process of education at the HEIs and the actual results was large. This was why these reforms were either modified or rejected in the Soviet Union after the end of the First Five-Year Plan and in China after the end of the Great Leap Forward. But reforms in the process of education at Soviet and Chinese HEIs during these respective periods had long-term legacies. During the First Five-Year Plan period, specialties became the basic academic units for which curricula were formulated and in which students at

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Soviet HEIs were educated. This was one of the important features of the Soviet system of higher education thereafter. The elimination of the distinction between mental and physical labor was abandoned as a goal in Chinese higher education in the early 1960s. However, as will be seen in the following chapter, this goal was resurrected in 1964  in a different political environment.

Notes 1. The number of students admitted to HEIs in the Soviet Union dropped to 163.6 thousand in 1933 from 245.8 thousand in 1932. De Witt, Education and Professional Employment, 636. It dropped in China from 323,161 in 1960 to 169,047 in 1961 and to 106,777 in 1962. Zhongguo jiaoyu nianjian, 1949–1981, 969. 2. Kotkin, Magnetic Mountain, 6–7. 3. GARF, f. 2306, op. 69, d. 1202, ll. 3–4. 4. See GARF, f. 2306, op. 69, d. 696, ll. 1–5. 5. GARF, f. 5574, op. 4, d. 6, l. 81. 6. Krasnoe studenchestvo, no. 6 (1926): 7. 7. GARF, f. 5574, op. 4, d. 6, ll. 85, 92, 96. 8. Starting in the 1925–1926 academic year, a small number of institutions of higher technical education in Moscow and Leningrad experimented with permanent production practice. Part of their students studied on campus for two thirds of the time during the academic year, and spent one third of the time on production practice at industrial enterprises. GARF, f. 2306, op. 69, d. 696, l. 26. 9. Direktivy VKP (b) po voprosam prosveshcheniia, 142. 10. Ibid., 148. 11. Stalin, Works, 11: 63–64. 12. Direktivy VKP (b) po voprosam prosveshcheniia, 143. 13. Ezhenedel’nik NKP, no. 52 (1929): 13. 14. Not until 1932 did Narkompros propose that students studying science at universities should not conduct their production practice in the same way as engineering students. GARF, f. 2306, op. 70, d. 3401, ll. 29–30. 15. Ezhenedel’nik NKP, no. 32 (1929): 16–18. 16. Holmes, The Kremlin and the Schoolhouse, 122. 17. Kommunisticheskoe prosveshchenie, no. 2 (1931): 42; GARF, f. 2306, op. 70, d. 3401, l. 24. 18. Krasnoe studenchestvo, no. 10 (1928–1929): 4; no. 13 (1928–1929): 27. 19. Direktivy VKP (b) po voprosam prosveshcheniia, 148.

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20. GARF, f. 5574, op. 8, d. 36, l. 36; Nauchnyi rabotnik, nos. 8–9 (1930): 34; Za promyshlennye kadry, no. 1 (1931): 32–33. 21. Za promyshlennye kadry, no. 6 (1931): 44. 22. GARF, f. 5574, op. 8, d. 36, l. 68. 23. Kommunisticheskoe prosveshchenie, no. 14 (1931): 6–7; Za promyshlennye kadry, nos. 7–8 (1931): 39. 24. Za promyshlennye kadry, nos. 7–8 (1931): 46. 25. Ibid., 47. 26. Ibid., 48. 27. Ibid. 28. Kommunisticheskoe prosveshchenie, no. 14 (1931): 6. 29. Ibid., 9. 30. Nauchnyi rabotnik, nos. 8–9 (1930): 38. 31. See articles on continuous production practice in the resolutions of the July 1928 plenum and the November 1929 plenum of the Central Committee. Direktivy VKP (b) po voprosam prosveshcheniia, 142–143, 148. 32. Krasnoe studenchestvo, no. 13 (1928–1929): 27; no. 14 (1928–1929): 25 33. Mao Zedong, Zhou Enlai, Liu Shaoqi, Deng Xiaoping lun jiaoyu (Beijing: Renmin jiaoyu chubanshe, 1994), 80–85. 34. Zhongguo qingnian bao, 28 January 1958. 35. Mao, Wengao, 7: 62–63. 36. Renmin ribao, 13 February 1958. 37. Wenhui bao, 17 January 1958. 38. SMA, A23-2-337, s. 86. 39. Guangming ribao, 11 February, 3 March 1958; Zhongguo qingnian bao, 9 February, 20, 27 March 1958. 40. Wang Xuezhen et al., Beijing daxue jishi (1898–1997), 2 vols. (Beijing: Beijing daxue chubanshe, 1998), 1: 534. 41. Guangming ribao, 7 July 1958. 42. Guangming ribao, 14 August 1958. 43. Guangming ribao, 7 July 1958. 44. Zhongguo jiaoyu nianjian, 1949–1981, 940. 45. Mao Zedong, Zhou Enlai, Liu Shaoqi, Deng Xiaoping lun jiaoyu, 357–360. 46. See, for example, Hong qi, no. 8 (1958): 28–30. 47. Guangming ribao, 28 August 1958. 48. The first session of the Eighth National Congress of the CCP was held in September 1956; its second session was held in May 1958. 49. Tang, Huang, and Huang, Ma ke si zhuyi, 436–437. 50. Lu Tong and Feng Laigang, Liu Shaoqi zai jianguo hou de 20 nian, (Shenyang: Liaoning renmin chubanshe, 2007), 188. 51. Mao, Wengao, 7: 317; Tang, Huang, and Huang, Ma ke si zhuyi, 438. 52. Mao, Wengao, 7: 345–346.

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53. Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, Selected Works in Two Volumes (Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1958), 2: 23–24. 54. Hong qi, no. 7 (1958): 10. 55. Ibid., 7. 56. Zhonghua renmin gongheguo jiaoyu dashiji, 1949–1982 (Beijing: Jiaoyu kexue chubanshe, 1983), 237 (hereafter cited as Zhonghua jiaoyu dashiji). 57. Renmin ribao, 26 January 1959; Guagming ribao, 30 January 1959; Zhongguo qingnian bao, 23 February 1959. 58. Guangming ribao, 16 April 1959; Zhongguo qingnian bao, 16 April 1959. 59. SMA B242-1-184, s. 43. 60. Renmin ribao, 24 January 1959. 61. SMA, B243-1-202, s. 48. 62. SMA, B243-1-164, ss. 17–20; B243-1-202, ss. 44–47, 52–55. There were at least two reasons that factories at HEIs were occasionally supplied with raw materials. First, most raw materials were in shortage during the Great Leap period; second, the factories at HEIs were not given high priority by the government agency responsible for allocating raw materials. 63. SMA, B243-1-202, s. 118. 64. Direktivy VKP (b) po voprosam prosveshcheniia, 143, 149. 65. Fitzpatrick, Education and Social Mobility, 133–135. 66. Nauchnyi rabotnik, nos. 5–6 (1930): 4–5. 67. Materialy po reorganizatsii vuzov, vtuzov, tekhnikumov i rabfakov SSSR (Moscow: Gosudarstvennoe izdatel’stvo RSFSR, 1930): 14–15. 68. Sbornik postanovlenii i prikazov po promyshlennosti, no. 27 (1930): 225. 69. Nauchnyi rabotnik, nos. 8–9 (1930): 58. 70. For the 24 industrial associations under VSNKh and their new duties in higher technical education, see Za promyshlennye kadry, no. 1 (1930): 15–17, 65–71. 71. Materialy po reorganizatsii vuzov, 15. The All-Union Commissariat of Health was established in 1936. 72. Ibid., 19–21. 73. GARF, f. 2306, op. 69, d. 2107, l. 54. 74. Kupaigorodskaia, Vysshaia shkola Leningrada, 72, 185. 75. Krasnoe studenchestvo, no. 16 (1927–1928): 45. 76. See, for example, Materialy po vysshemu obrazovaniiu v RSFSR, vol. v: Uchebnye plany khimicheskikh fakul’tetov i vuzov (Moscow: Admin-Org. Unp. NKP, 1927): 6–10 (hereafter cited as Uchebnye plany khimicheskikh fakul’tetov). 77. For example, there were 15 specialties in chemical engineering in 1923. The model academic plans for departments of chemical engineering at institutions of higher technical education allocated 50 percent of the aca-

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demic hours to “general courses” (which included ideological courses and courses in mathematics and science), 30 percent to courses in “general technology” (foundational courses in chemical engineering), and 20 percent to courses directly related to narrow specialties. After the revision in 1925, the model academic plans only allocated 14 percent of academic hours to the last group of courses. Uchebnye plany khimicheskikh fakul’tetov, 4–6. 78. Nauchnyi rabotnik, no. 10 (1930): 28–30. 79. In February 1926, G. B. Ioffe, an official of VSNKh, suggested that students’ specialization should start in their first year of study. GARF, f. 5574, op. 4, d. 10. l. 28. In April 1928, I. Kraval, another VSNKh official, suggested that at least half of the academic hours in the curriculum should be allocated to courses directly related to students’ specialties. GARF, f. 5574, op. 6, d. 4, l. 47. 80. For example, of the students who graduated in the 1927–1928 academic year from Moscow Higher Technical School, 31.3 percent had studied for seven years, and 39.8 percent had studied for eight or  more years. Krasnoe studenchestvo, no 17 (1928–1929): 7. 81. Pravda, 12 July 1928; GARF, f. 5574, op. 6, d. 1, l. 14. 82. See, for example, I. Kraval’s article in Pravda, 22 June 1928. 83. Direktivy VKP (b) po voprosam prosveshcheniia, 142. 84. Ibid., 148. 85. GARF, f. 8080, op. 1, d. 6, l. 1. 86. Materialy po reorganizatsii vuzov, 16. 87. For the utmost importance attached to the profiles of specialists, see Nauchnyi rabotnik, no. 10 (1930): 31; GARF, f. 8060, op. 1, d.11, ll. 38–40. 88. In 1928, when six institutions of higher technical education and some technicums were transferred from Narkompros to VSNKh, Glavtuz (Main Administration of Technical Schools) was created within VSNKh to administer these schools. Glavtuz was reorganized into Glavpromkadr in April 1930. The latter’s main responsibility was to oversee the industrial associations’ administration of educational institutions. RGAE, f. 3249, op. 3, d. 2655, l. 196. In November 1930, Glavpromkadr was merged with another department of VSNKh and reorganized into the Department of Cadres, whose duties were to plan, train, and allocate industrial cadres. Za promyshlennye kadry, no. 1 (1931): 89. 89. Za promyshlennye kadry, nos. 9–10 (1931): 5. 90. Za promyshlennye kadry, no. 1 (1931): 45–47. 91. Za promyshlennye kadry, no. 5 (1931): 42. 92. Za promyshlennye kadry, nos. 9–10 (1931): 5. 93. Za promyshlennye kadry, no. 5 (1931): 43–44.

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94. Za promyshlennye kadry, nos. 9–10 (1931): 6. 95. G. Ia. Smyshliaev, ed., Metodologiia, metody i obraztsy profilei spetsial’nostei sotsialisticheskoi promyshlennosti SSSR (Moscow: Izdatel’stvo NKTP, 1932). 96. Za promyshlennye kadry, nos. 15–16 (1932): 89–93. 97. GARF, f. 8060, op. 1, d. 11, l. 41. 98. GARF, f. 8060, op. 1, d. 39, l. 23. 99. Vysshaia tekhnicheskaia shkola, no. 1 (1934): 18. 100. For example, Nizhny Novgorod University was reorganized into six institutes. GARF, f. 2306, op. 69, d. 2107, l. 44. 101. Kommunisticheskoe prosveshchenie, no. 9 (1931): 27, 28. Chemistry Departments of both Leningrad and Moscow Universities became independent institutes in 1930. Ibid. 102. An institute of the national economy included the department of economics as well as departments of engineering before 1930. The department of economics was divided into several divisions, such as divisions of industry, trade, finance, transportation, planning, statistics, cooperatives, and labor. Nauchnyi rabotnik, no. 12 (1929): 53–54. 103. GARF, f. 2306, op. 69, d. 2130, l. 118. 104. Vysshaia shkola, no. 4 (1938): 31. 105. Vysshaia tekhnicheckaia shkola, no. 8 (1935): 34. 106. Biulleten’ VKVTO, no. 14 (1934): 4. 107. GARF, f. 8060, op. 1, d. 23, ll. 3–5. 108. Ezhenedel’nik NKP, nos. 20–21 (1929): 4; no. 52 (1929): 17. 109. In December 1930 a resolution of the State Academic Council (an organization within Narkompros) called for a “resolute breakthrough” in the transition from lectures to active methods of teaching. Kommunisticheskoe prosveshchenie, no. 2 (1931): 10. 110. Za promyshlennye kadry, nos. 7–8 (1931): 70–73. 111. Krasnoe studenchestvo, no. 31 (1930-31): 20. 112. Quoted in Krasnoe studenchestvo, nos. 43–44 (1930–1931): 18. 113. Krasnoe studenchestvo, no. 39 (1930–1931): 14. 114. Krasnoe studenchestvo, no. 43-44 (1930–1931): 18. 115. Za promyshlennye kadry, nos. 7–8 (1931): 72. 116. Even before the introduction of the laboratory-brigade method, some students completed their assignments in brigades. A student reported that the collective work of a brigade was actually done by the brigade head alone. Krasnoe studenchestvo, no. 13 (1930–1931): 20–21. 117. Metodika v vuzakh i tekhnikumakh, no. 6 (1932): 10. 118. Metodika v vuzakh i tekhnikumakh, nos. 7–8 (1932): 20. 119. Zhongguo jiaoyu nianjian, 1949–1981, 236. 120. Ibid., 939.

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121. Zhonghua jiaoyu da shiji, 228. 122. SMA, A23-2-155, ss. 1–4, 23–28. For the central government’s reversal of the decision to move Jiaotong University from Shanghai to Xian, see Wenhui bao, 18 June 1957. When this decision was reversed, part of Jiaotong University had already moved to Xian. Eventually the decision was to found a new institution in Xian, Xian Jiaotong University. 123. Mao, Wengao, 6: 90–91. 124. Zhonghua jiaoyu da shiji, 214. 125. SMA, B243-1-154, s. 67. 126. Ibid. 127. Zhongguo jiaoyu nianjian, 1949–1981, 239. 128. For example, at Harbin Industrial Institute, 16 new specialties created in 1958 and 1959 coexisted along with specialties that had been in existence before 1958. Guangming ribao, 15 December 1959. Broad specialties, such as physics and chemistry, were still offered at older comprehensive universities that had been in existence before 1958. SMA, B243-1-154, s. 67. 129. SMA, A 23-2-616, ss. 78, 79. 130. Guangming ribao, 1 April 1958. 131. Quoted in Guo Moruo’s article in Guangming ribao, 10 June 1958. 132. SMA, A23-2-619, ss. 37–46. 133. Zhongguo jiaoyu nianjian, 1949–1981, 255. 134. Guangming ribao, 10 October 1958; 17 February 1959. 135. BMA, 1-22-802, ss. 30–31. 136. BMA, 1-22-395, ss. 98–103. 137. SMA, A23-2-372, ss. 14–15. 138. SMA, B243-1-154, s. 90. 139. SMA, B243-1-154, ss. 1–4. 140. Guangming ribao, 10 October 1958, 17 February 1959; Wenhui bao, 8 January 1959. 141. Wenhui bao, 7 January 1959. 142. See, for example, Mao, Selected Works, 3: 158; Mao, Wengao, 5: 513. 143. Zhongguo jiaoyu nianjian, 1949–1981, 528. 144. Zhongguo qingnian bao, 16 July 1958. 145. Guangming ribao, 17 July 1958. 146. Guangming ribao, 18 February, 1 March 1959. 147. SMA, A23-2-338, s. 5. 148. Zhonghua jiaoyu da shiji, 230. 149. Guangming ribao, 21 November 1959. 150. Wenhui bao, 7 January 1959. 151. Zhongguo jiaoyu nianjian, 1949–1981, 528–531.

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152. Richard Stites, Revolutionary Dreams: Utopian Vision and Experimental Life in the Russian Revolution (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989), 226–227. 153. John B.  Starr, “Maoism and Marxist Utopianism,” Problems of Communism 26, no. 4 (1977): 58. According to Starr, another brief period in which Mao gave vent to a utopian strain was 1919. Ibid., 56. 154. Stuart Schram, The Thought of Mao Tse-tung (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 130. 155. Maurice Meisner, Marxism, Maoism, and Utopianism: Eight Essays (Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press, 1982), 190–195; Mao Zedong: A Political and Intellectual Portrait, (Malden, Massachusetts: Policy Press, 2007), 140–145. 156. Stuart Schram, Thought of Mao Tse-Tung, 129. During the war years, the officers in the Communist army and officials in the governments in the Communist-controlled areas were not paid salaries, but were supplied with what they needed for living. 157. Meisner, Mao Zedong, 145.

References Archives BMA—Beijing Municipal Archives (Beijing shi danganguan) GARF—State Archives of the Russian Federation (Gosudarstvennyi arkhiv Rossiiskoi Federatsii) RGAE—Russian State Archives of the Economy (Rossiiskii gosudarstvennyi arkhiv ekonomiki) SMA—Shanghai Municipal Archives (Shanghai shi danganguan)

Russian Newspapers

and

Journals

Biulleten’ Narkomprosa (NKP) Biulleten’ Vsesoiuznogo komiteta po vysshemu tekhnicheskomu obrazovaniiu (VKVTO) Ezhenedel’nik Narkomprosa (NKP) Kommunisticheskoe prosveshchenie Krasnoe studenchestvo Metodika v vuzakh i tekhnikumakh Nauchnyi rabotnik Pravda Sbornik postanovlenii i prikazov po promyshlennosti

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Vysshaia shkola Vysshaia tekhnicheskaia shkola Za promyshlennye kadry

Chinese Newspapers

and

Journals

Guangming ribao Hong qi Renmin ribao Wenhui bao, Zhongguo qingnian bao

Books

in

Russian

Direktivy VKP (b) po voprosam prosveshcheniia. 1931. 3rd ed. Moscow: OGIZ. Kupaigorodskaia, A.P. 1984. Vysshaia shkola Leningrada v pervye gody Sovetskoi vlasti (1917–1925 gg.) Leningrad: Nauka. Materialy po reorganizatsii vuzov, vtuzov, tekhnikumov i rabfakov SSSR. 1930. Moscow: Gosudarstvennoe izdatel’stvo RSFSR. Materialy po vysshemu obrazovaniiu v RSFSR, vol. v: Uchebnye plany khimicheskikh fakul’tetov i vuzov. 1927. Moscow: Admin-Org. Unp. NKP. Smyshliaev, G.Ia., ed. 1932. Metodologiia, metody i obraztsy profilei spetsial’nostei sotsialisticheskoi promyshlennosti SSSR. Moscow: Izdatel’stvo NKTP.

Books

in

Chinese

Lu Tong and Feng Laigang. 2007. Liu Shaoqi zai jianguo hou de 20 nian. Shenyang: Liaoning renmin chubanshe. Mao Zedong. 1987–1996. Jianguo yilai Mao Zedong wengao. 11 vols. Beijing: Zhongyang wenxian chubanshe. Mao Zedong, Zhou Enlai, Liu Shaoqi, Deng Xiaoping lun jiaoyu. 1994. Beijing: Renmin jiaoyu chubanshe. Tang Baolin, Huang Daoxuan, and Huang Lingjun. 1997. Ma ke si zhuyi zai zhongguo yibai nian. Hefei: Anhui renmin chubanshe. Wang Xuezhen, Wang Xiaoting, Huang Wenyi, and Guo Jianrong. 1998. Beijing daxue jishi (1898–1997). 2 vols. Beijing: Beijing daxue chubanshe. Zhongguo jiaoyu nianjian, 1949–1981. 1984. Beijing: Zhongguo dabaike quanshu chubanshe. Zhonghua renmin gongheguo jiaoyu dashiji, 1949–1982. 1983. Beijing: Jiaoyu kexue chubanshe.

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Books

and

Articles in English

De Witt, Nicholas. 1961. Education and Professional Employment in the USSR. Washington, DC: National Science Foundation. Fitzpatrick, Sheila. 1979. Education and Social Mobility in the Soviet Union, 1921–1934. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kotkin, Stephen. 1995. Magnetic Mountain: Stalinism as a Civilization. Berkeley: University of California Press. Mao Tse-tung. 1961-1965, 1977. Selected Works of Mao Tse-tung. 5 vols. Beijing: Foreign Languages Press. Marx, Karl, and Frederick Engels. 1958. Selected Works in Two Volumes. Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House. Meisner, Maurice. 1982. Marxism, Maoism, and Utopianism: Eight Essays. Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press. ———. 2007. Mao Zedong: A Political and Intellectual Portrait. Malden, Massachusetts: Policy Press. Schram, Stuart. 1989. The Thought of Mao Tse-tung. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Starr, John B. 1977. Maoism and Marxist Utopianism. Problems of Communism 26 (4): 56–62. Stalin, J.V. 1954. Works. 13 vols. Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House. Stites, Richard. 1989. Revolutionary Dreams: Utopian Vision and Experimental Life in the Russian Revolution. New York: Oxford University Press.

PART III

Higher Education in the Soviet Union Under High Stalinism and in China Under Late Maoism

CHAPTER 5

Socialism and Goals of Higher Education in the Soviet Union Under High Stalinism and in China Under Late Maoism

As has been seen in the introduction to this book, other historians have used the term “high Stalinism,” but they attached different meanings to it. I use this term to refer to a new phase of the Stalin era in the history of the Soviet Union, which began in 1934, the year in which the Seventeenth Congress of the Communist Party proclaimed the victory of socialism. According to Stalin’s report to the Seventeenth Congress, by the end of 1933, 65 percent of peasant farms had been collectivized, and 84.5 percent of the grain crop area was in the state and collective farms.1 Stalin declared that capitalism had been eliminated in the Soviet Union; the Soviet Union had been transformed from “a country of small individual agriculture” into “a country of collectivized, large-scale mechanized agriculture” and from “an agrarian country” into “an industrialized country.”2 Soviet agriculture was, of course, far from fully mechanized. However, despite the enormous economic and social prices, which included a great famine in the early 1930s, the socialization of agriculture in the Soviet Union had been largely completed by 1934. Therefore, the term “high Stalinism” as is used in this book means Stalinism after the complete socialization of the economy. Used in this sense, high Stalinism lasted until Stalin’s death in 1953. However, the Soviet system of higher education, which lasted until the collapse of the Soviet Union with little modifications, had come into its final shape by 1941, the year in which Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union; hence the first two sections of © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 L. S. Zhu, Stalinism, Maoism, and Socialism in Higher Education, Global Histories of Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-88777-3_5

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this chapter and the first and third sections of the following chapter only examine Soviet higher education from 1934 to 1941. The end of the First Five-Year Plan in 1932 and the beginning of the Second Five-Year Plan, with a lower projection of economic growth than the first one, in 1933 created a political environment conducive to a reset of higher education policy. The course of study for most specialties at Soviet HEIs was extended to five years in 1932,3 and the number of students admitted to HEIs was reduced to 163,600 in 1933 from 245,800 in 1932.4 Such a rethinking of the relations between the speed in the production of educated specialists and qualifications of such specialists as well as the relations between quantity and quality prompted other measures for raising academic standards in higher education. However, the creation of a proletarian intelligentsia remained an important objective in Soviet higher education. The proclaimed victory of socialism in 1934 induced a more fundamental redefining of the goals of higher education. Before 1934, the would-be members of the proletarian intelligentsia were expected to be red specialists in their own fields of study, but they were not expected to have general knowledge not related to their fields of study. However, starting in 1934, the expected traits of the Soviet educated elite were redefined. At first, the students at Soviet HEIs, including engineering and science students, were expected to become culturally refined; then the Central Committee of the Communist Party declared in 1936 that HEIs should produce “roundly educated and cultured cadres.”5 The term “high Stalinism” as used in this book does not connote a putative theory. But high Stalinism did include the Stalinist definition of socialist society. According to this definition, as the exploiting classes disappeared after the complete socialization of the economy, the Soviet Union became a classless society. However, the Stalinist definition of socialist society also accepted differentials in remuneration according to occupation and the degree of qualification and stratified society as a legitimate feature of socialism. The first section of this chapter demonstrates how the combination of the Stalinist definition of socialist society and the new expectation that the Soviet educated elite should be cultured brought an end to the effort to create a proletarian intelligentsia. I also argue that the Stalinist definition of socialist society and the emergence of the new Soviet class of administrators, educated specialists, and other office workers were the reasons that when the effort to create a proletarian intelligentsia was ended, the Soviet state did not retain any policy measure that

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would have created a level playing field between children from worker and peasant families and children of the educated or otherwise privileged parents in access to higher education. The second section of this chapter demonstrates a shift of emphasis in political education for students at HEIs from nurturing social activism to cultivating ideological literacy. This shift was caused by another redefining of the expected traits of the Soviet educated elite and represented another change in the goals of higher education. Political education that emphasized the cultivation of social activism no longer corresponded with the ethos of the Stalinist regime after the victory of socialism, as its main objective was no longer to make revolutionary changes, but was to consolidate what had been achieved. The term “late Maoism” is used in this book to refer to the new and last phase of the Mao era in the history of the PRC. Late Maoism was symbolized by the new Maoist doctrine of socialism, which diverged from the Stalinist definition of socialism and socialist society in many ways. First of all, rejecting the Stalinist notion that socialist society was a classless society, the new Maoist doctrine held that not only the ideological influence of the old bourgeoisie would exist for a long time after the socialization of the economy, but a new bourgeoisie could emerge in socialist society. The new bourgeoisie included “power-holders taking the capitalist road,” the Communist bureaucrats who betrayed the socialist ideal. Since Mao used the concept “power-holders taking the capitalist road” for the first time in 1964,6 it could be argued that late Maoism fully emerged by that year. This concept eventually induced the Great Cultural Revolution, whose first phase (1966–1968) was mainly a political campaign against the “power-holders taking the capitalist road.” Second, the new Maoist doctrine of socialism rejected pay differentials and especially stratified society as a legitimate feature of socialism. After the split between China and the Soviet Union, the CCP defined the Soviet Union as a revisionist country. In 1963 and 1964, the theoretical journal of the CCP’s Central Committee published nine essays, expounding its position in its ideological dispute with the CPSU.  Offering the CCP’s official interpretation why the Soviet Union had become a revisionist country, the last of these essays, published in July 1964, contended that starting in the Stalin era, high salaries were paid to some people in the Soviet Union; eventually many party and government officials, managers of state enterprises, and the high echelon of the educated professionals became a privileged stratum or a new bourgeoisie.7 Thus, from the Maoist

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perspective, the existence of a high-salaried stratum not only conflicted with the socialist ideal, but could create social conditions that would eventually transform a socialist country into a revisionist one. Mao’s use of the concept “power-holders taking the capitalist road” did not mean that in his judgment the whole bureaucratic class in China had become a new bourgeoisie. In the Maoist definition, only those Communist officials who fell under the influence of the bourgeois ideology and demonstrated the ideological proclivity and political behavior that conflicted with the socialist ideal had become “power-holders taking the capitalist road.” But Mao also believed that the privileges enjoyed by the Communist officials could encourage them to develop bourgeois ideological proclivities and behavior.8 To be sure, pay differentials as well as high-salaried stratum actually existed in China, partially because in the early 1950s the CCP viewed the Soviet Union as a model to follow. However, eventually Mao defined pay differentials as a remnant of capitalism rather than a legitimate feature of socialist society. He made this point most clearly in late 1974, when he stated that although China had become a socialist country, there were still pay differentials and the merchandise system,9 and in this respect socialist society was not different from old (capitalist) society; he called for restricting these remnants of capitalism.10 Third, the new Maoist doctrine of socialism also sought the elimination of the distinction between mental and physical labor in socialist society. In some ways, this was a revival of the utopian objective sought during the Great Leap period. However, during the Great Leap period, the disappearance of the distinction between mental and physical labor was viewed as a feature of Communist society, and it was sought as a goal because the CCP leaders believed that the transition from socialism to communism could be achieved in China soon. After the end of the Great Leap Forward, the transition from socialism to Communism was postponed into the indefinite future. But now the new Maoist doctrine of socialism revived the elimination of the distinction between mental and physical labor as an objective partially because Mao envisioned socialist society as an egalitarian society. More importantly, as Mao became increasingly concerned that a new bourgeoisie could be born in socialist society, an intellectual or educated elite with its distinct social identity and mentality derived from their educational experience and occupations was also viewed as a threat to socialism.

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Thus, whereas the expected traits of the educated elite were redefined in the Soviet Union under high Stalinism, preventing the emergence of an educated elite became a new political objective in China under late Maoism. The third section of this chapter examines how this new political goal changed policy for selection for higher education. It demonstrates that after the end of the Great Leap Forward, as the number of students admitted to Chinese HEIs was reduced, new emphasis was placed on raising academic standards, which induced a rebalancing of the political credentials and academic criteria in admissions to HEIs. I argue that the radical change of policy for selection for higher education in the early 1970s was not needed if the objective was to raise the proportion of children of workers and peasants in the student body at HEIs, but it was induced by the new objective of preventing the emergence of a new educated elite. The fourth section demonstrates that as indoctrination through ideological courses (which became the main form of political education for students at Soviet HEIs in the second half of the 1930s) could not achieve this new political objective, a radical plan for converting educational programs in social science and humanities at all HEIs into half-time work and half-time study programs was proclaimed at the end of 1965. This plan was not implemented because of the beginning of the Great Cultural Revolution in 1966, but was revived in the mid-1970s. A comparison between higher education policies in the Soviet Union under high Stalinism and in China under late Maoism is legitimate. First of all, while the redefining of goals of higher education in the Soviet Union was induced by the proclaimed victory of socialism and was connected with the Stalinist definition of socialist society, the new Maoist doctrine of socialist society involved Mao’s rethinking of socialism and constituted the rejection of the Stalinist definition of socialist society. Second, the years from 1934 to 1941 constituted the last phase of the endeavor to create a socialist system of higher education in the Soviet Union under Stalin. The years from 1964 to 1976 also constituted the last phase of the Maoist endeavor to create a socialist system of higher education in China, which ended with Mao’s death. Therefore, this and the following chapters also examine how and why the endeavors to create a socialist system of higher education in the Soviet Union under Stalin and in China under Mao ended with sharply different outcomes.

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The End of the Effort to Create a Proletarian Intelligentsia and Policy for Selection for Higher Education in the Soviet Union In 1932, the year in which the First Five-Year Plan was completed, raising academic standards became a new priority in Soviet higher education. A resolution of the Central Executive Committee (TsIK) on higher education and secondary professional education, dated September 19, declared that many of those who had graduated from institutions of higher technical education in recent years were not qualified engineers, but only had technological qualifications of technicians. In addition to extending the course of study at HEIs, this resolution also specified measures for raising academic standards in higher education: the time devoted to production practice was reduced significantly, the laboratory-brigade method was banned, examinations and the use of grades in learning assessment were restored.11 The effort to raise academic standards was accompanied by new changes in higher education management. In July 1931, 46 largest engineering institutes had already been removed from the jurisdiction of industrial associations and placed in the direct jurisdiction of VSNKh’s Department of Cadres.12 After 1932, industrial associations were no longer administered HEIs.13 More importantly, a new government agency, called All-Union Committee of Higher Technical Education (VKVTO), was created in 1932 to oversee academic affairs and enforce academic standards at institutions of higher technical education.14 However, the creation of a proletarian intelligentsia remained a political objective in higher education. As a matter of fact, in his speech to industrial executives on June 23, 1931, Stalin reiterated his point that “the working class must create its own industrial and technological intelligentsia.”15 The September 1932 resolution of TsIK did not abolish the working-­class quota for admissions to institutions of higher technical education established by the Central Committee of the Communist Party in November 1929; it actually declared the increase of the proportion of working-class students in the student body at HEIs as one of the achievements of the First Five-Year Plan period.16 But policy for selection for higher education was changed in 1933  in order to raise academic standards. Starting that year, all applicants were required to take entrance examinations; but among those who passed the examinations, workers, members of collective farms, and their children were given preference in admissions.17 This was largely a return to the policy adopted in 1926 (the

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only difference was that whereas from 1926 to 1928 the graduates of rabfaks were required to take graduation examinations given at the rabfaks, now they were required to take entrance examinations given at HEIs). The restoration of entrance examinations and more rigorous enforcement of academic standards resulted in a decline of the proportion of working-class students in the admissions to HEIs.18 But many Communist officials still viewed this decline as politically unacceptable. The Central Committee of Komsomol even charged that this decline was caused by the deliberate failing of the working-class examinees by the professors on the examination commissions, and it suggested that those commissions should be formed in such a way that they would not fail the working-class examinees.19 The commissariats that administered HEIs were not willing to go that far, but the Commissariat of Railroads instructed its HEIs to take extra care in the formation of the admissions commissions (which were separate from the examination commissions) so that they would admit students according to the class-based criteria.20 A more fundamental change of the goals of higher education was induced by the victory of socialism, proclaimed at the Seventeenth Congress of the Communist Party in 1934. Back in the 1920s, the would­be members of the proletarian intelligentsia were expected to be red specialists in their own fields of study, but were not expected to acquire general knowledge unrelated to their fields of study. The rabfaks were created on the assumption that young workers with elementary education could be prepared for higher education at an accelerated speed with a curriculum that was purged of nonessential academic subjects. During the First Five-Year Plan period, the notion of engineers of narrow profile was not only accepted in higher technical education, but also influenced other areas of higher learning. However, starting in 1934, all students at HEIs, including engineering and science students, were expected to become culturally refined by reading literary works, attending lectures on arts, literature, and history, visiting museums, and going to theaters and concerts.21 In early 1935, in a conversation with a group of professors at Moscow University, Mikhail Kalinin, chairperson of TsIK, said that the notion that institutions of higher technical education should produce specialists of narrow profile was wrong; the Soviet engineers should be highly cultured and well-educated and should have refined musical as well as literary tastes. As an example of such engineers, he praised Leonid Krasin (who was an engineer by training, but served as the Commissar of Foreign Trade in the early 1920s and then as the Soviet ambassador to France), stating that the

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latter was a good engineer, an outstanding political figure, and an excellent diplomat.22 In January 1936, Pravda published an article criticizing students’ lack of general knowledge: “They don’t know geography. History they know very badly. How about literature, about belles-lettres? They also know very little.”23 It soon became clear that Kalinin’s remark and Pravda’s article presaged the party leaders’ redefining of the expected characteristics of the Soviet educated elite. In 1935, the Central Committee of the Communist Party created a special commission, headed by Andrei Zhdanov, to review the state of higher education. The result of its work was a new resolution on higher education, adopted by the Central Committee and Sovnarkom on June 23, 1936, which declared that “in the condition of victory of socialism,” HEIs should meet higher requirements and “ensure the cultivation of highly-qualified, politically-literate, roundly-educated, and cultured cadres.”24 This new expectation did not induce the incorporation of the concept of liberal arts education in Soviet higher learning, but it inevitably prompted a reconsideration of the ladders to higher education. Rabfaks became the main source of students for HEIs after 1932. Their graduates constituted 43 percent of all the students admitted to HEIs in 1933 and 44.8 percent in 1934.25 The senior division of general secondary schools was restored and the total length of elementary and secondary education was extended from nine years to ten years in the academic year 1932–1933 according to a resolution of the Central Committee of the Communist Party.26 This meant that the direct path from general secondary schools to HEIs was restored. But the ten-year schools did not graduate their first class until 1935, and this class was small, equal only to 15 percent of the total number of admissions to HEIs in that year.27 Therefore, all commissariats that administered HEIs still organized short-term preparatory courses, which accepted workers and members of collective farms with at least seven years of formal education.28 However, the June 1936 resolution of the Central Committee and Sovnarkom included a special section on admissions to HEIs, which stated that only those who had a certificate of complete secondary education could take entrance examinations.29 Explaining the implication of this new requirement, a special circular of VKVTO stated that those who completed a preparatory course had to pass qualification examinations at a ten-year school or rabfak and obtain a certificate of complete secondary education before they could take entrance

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examinations for higher education.30 This decision put an end to the short-term preparatory courses as a ladder to higher education.31 A more important decision included in the resolution of the Central Committee and Sovnarkom was that straight “A” graduates (otlichniki) of ten-year schools, who had received the grade “excellent” on all the main academic subjects and the grade “good” or “excellent” on secondary subjects (drawing, singing, music, and physical education), were to be admitted to HEIs without entrance examinations.32 Rabfaks were surprised to find that their straight “A” students were not mentioned, and made an inquiry to the All-Union Committee for Higher School Affairs (VKVSh), which was established to replace VKVTO in 1936. They received the response that the straight “A” graduates of rabfaks were not given the privilege of being admitted to HEIs without entrance examinations.33 This amounted to an official declaration that rabfaks became an inferior source of students for HEIs because their graduates were not roundly educated and cultured. In August 1937, even Kosomol’skaia pravda, the newspaper of the Central Committee of Komsomol, which had been hostile to the general secondary schools in the 1920s, published an article titled “Rabfaks Graduate Semi-literate Students.” It declared that the entrance examinations in that year demonstrated that graduates of the ten-­ year schools were much more literate and cultured than before, but the level of literacy of rabfak graduates remained extremely low.34 Moreover, because of the privilege given to the straight “A” graduates of the ten-year schools, seats at the most popular or prestigious HEIs were almost all taken by these students,35 and doors of these schools were closed to the graduates of rabfaks. After 1936, most rabfaks stopped admitting students, and the proportion of their graduates in the student body at Soviet HEIs rapidly declined.36 Thus, the new expectation that HEIs should produce roundly educated and cultured cadres was one of the reasons for ending the Soviet effort to create a proletarian intelligentsia. Another reason was Stalin’s definition of socialist society as a classless society. Speaking about the new constitution of the Soviet Union at  the Extraordinary Congress of Soviets on November 25, 1936, Stalin stated that exploiting classes disappeared in the Soviet Union after the complete socialization of the economy. He also declared: “Our Soviet intelligentsia is an entirely new intelligentsia, bound up by its very roots with the working class and the peasantry. … 80 to 90 per cent of the Soviet intelligentsia are people who have come from the working class, from the peasantry, or from some other strata of the

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working population.”37 If there were no more classes and class conflict in the Soviet Union, the ideological rationale for creating a proletarian intelligentsia also disappeared. Starting in 1936, workers, peasants, and their children were no longer given preference in admissions to HEIs.38 With this change, more rigorous academic standards were also enforced in admissions to HEIs. Before 1935, applicants who took entrance examinations were given either “pass” or failure” on each examination. In 1935, some HEIs used a four-grade system to grade entrance examinations.39 Starting in 1936, the examinee was given one of the five grades on each subject examination: “very bad,” “bad,” “medium,” “good,” and “excellent.”40 Only the applicants who received grades no lower than “medium” were eligible for admissions, and HEIs were required to admit those who received the highest grades among the eligible applicants.41 Nadezhda Krupskaia, Lenin’s wife, wrote in the early 1920s that “because a son of any engineer is situated in incomparably more advantageous conditions than a son of a worker or a peasant with respect to academic preparation, equal access to higher education would actually mean privilege for the former.”42 Viewed from such a perspective, some preference given to the children of workers and peasants who graduated from general secondary schools would create a more level playing field in admissions to HEIs even when there was no more ideological rationale for continuing the effort to create a proletarian intelligentsia. However, Krupskaia’s point of view was no longer politically acceptable in the Soviet Union under high Stalinism for two reasons. First of all, as has been indicated in Chap. 3, a large number of workers were promoted to managerial and other white-collar positions during the First Five-Year plan period. When Stalin declared that 80 to 90 percent of the members of the Soviet intelligentsia came from the working class, the peasantry, and other strata of the working population, he perhaps was not exaggerating, because it had become common practice in the Soviet Union by 1936 that the term “intelligentsia” was used to refer to administrators and other office workers as well as educated specialists. As N. N. Kuz’min, an official of VKVTO, pointed out in an article written in early 1935, when children of the workers who had been promoted into managerial or other whitecollar positions were admitted into HEIs, they were classified as children of white-collar employees.43 This was, of course, also true of the children of the former workers who had been admitted to HEIs and managed to graduate. As the preferential treatment of children of workers and peasants inevitably removed or at least reduced advantage that children from better

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positioned families enjoyed in the competition for higher education opportunities, such policy now conflicted with the interests of the new class of Soviet administrators, educated professionals, and other whitecollar employees that had been created under Stalin. Secondly, in his speech to industrial executives on June 23,1931, Stalin described the wage scale that limited the pay differential between skilled and unskilled labor and between heavy and light work as a leftist practice and called for ending “this evil.” He also labeled the industrial executives and trade-union officials who defended such a wage scale as “egalitarians.”44 After 1934, as will be seen in the following chapter, this anti-­ egalitarian philosophy of Stalinism was also used to justify increasingly high salaries paid to the upper echelon of the educated professionals (as well as Communist functionaries). Therefore, any policy measure that aimed to create de facto equality in access to higher education also conflicted with the new ethos of the Stalinist regime, which now rejected egalitarianism as a legitimate ideological principle and accepted stratified society as a legitimate feature of socialism.

Political Education for Students at Soviet Institutions of Higher Learning: A Shift from Nurturing Social Activism to Cultivating Ideological Literacy From the early 1920s, students at Soviet HEIs were required to take a number of ideological courses. These courses evolved during the 1920s.45 During the First Five-Year Plan period, Dialectical and Historical Materialism (a course on Marxist philosophy), Leninism, and Political Economy became three standard ideological courses.46 However, as will be seen later in this section, students did not take ideological courses seriously. There was another form of political education for students at HEIs, which was in many ways more important than ideological courses until the mid-1930s. In the 1920s, the term “specialists-obshchestvenniki (social activists)” was often used to describe one of the expected characteristics of the proletarian intelligentsia. This term indicated that the members of the proletarian intelligentsia were expected to be specialists in their own fields of study as well as social activists. Participation in various kinds of social work—extracurricular activities that supposedly served the common

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good—was considered as the means for creating new specialists-social activists, and therefore was viewed as the most important form of political education. Students could involve themselves in social work inside as well as outside HEIs. But the party officials considered social work outside HEIs as the more valuable means for creating specialists-social activists. In 1927, L. Milkh, an official in the Central Committee of the Communist Party with special responsibility for students at HEIs, wrote that “of all types of social work, work outside HEIs is most important for the education of the specialist-social activist.”47 The July 1928 resolution of the Central Committee about training technical specialists did not include any word on ideological courses at HEIs, but it included a special section on students’ “social-political education,” which called upon student organizations to involve more students in social work outside HEIs.48 After 1934, however, the emphasis in students’ political education shifted, and this shift constituted another transformation of the objectives of higher education in the Soviet Union. The downplaying of the significance of social work as a means of political education constituted the first part of this policy change, which was clearly manifested in the conflict between the position of the Central Committee of Komsomol and VTsSPS,49 on the one hand, and the stance of the student leaders at HEIs, on the other, about the criteria to be used in selecting recipients of the honorary titles of shock student and student of excellence (otlichnik). The title of shock student originally derived from the shock movement, which was a form of socialist competition and an imitation of the shock work movement in industry, whose principal feature was the over-­ fulfillment of production norms. The shock movement at HEIs began during the First Five-Year Plan period. It continued after 1932, but underwent important changes. First, the shock movement among students during the First Five-Year Plan period was a competition between different brigades of students for speed in study. The September 1932 resolution of TsIK declared that collective socialist competition should not replace individual competition, and called for the full development of individual socialist competition at HEIs.50 Thereafter, although collective competition was still conducted among different groups of students in the same department, among different departments at the same institution, and among different HEIs, individual competition became the most important part of socialist competition. Secondly, in the competition for speed during the First Five-Year Plan period, students endeavored to complete

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their course of study as quickly as possible and graduate as early as possible. After 1932, such competition was no longer allowed, and raising the “quality” of study, which was measured by the grades students earned, became the most important objective of socialist competition. In 1935, socialist competition at HEIs underwent another transformation. Before that year, students who entered the socialist competition set their own goals, which were proclaimed to other students in a written contract. The goals could include grades to be attained and objectives to be achieved in social work.51 The students who achieved the goals they had established were given the title of shock student.52 However, according to E.  Leshchiner, head of the Division of Higher Educational Institutions and Secondary Schools within the Central Committee of Konsomol, some students set easily-achievable goals in their contracts. If they knew that they could achieve the grade “good” on five courses, they set the goal of achieving the grade “good” on three courses, so that they could easily win the title of shock student.53 In 1935, the new title of student of excellence was introduced. As the title implied and as the Central Committee of Komsomol explained, only students who earned the grade “excellent” on all the courses could be students of excellence.54 The title of shock student was henceforth retained as a secondary honor, awarded to the students whose academic performance was good, but not good enough for the title of student of excellence. However, the student leaders—the troika consisting of proforg (student union leader), partorg (party organizer or head of Communist students), Komsorg (Komsomol organizer or head of Komsomol students)—in each academic group55 still had the power to nominate students for the honorary title of student of excellence or shock student.56 Student leaders in academic groups as well as those in the trade union committees of the academic department and the higher education institution,57 which were responsible for organizing socialist competition in each department and at each HEI, insisted that students who had outstanding academic records but did not have strong records of social work should not be given the honorary title of student of excellence or shock student. But VTsSPS and the Central Committee of Komsomol began to criticize this position in 1936. In May 1936, Sovetskoe studenchestvo (Soviet Students), a journal that superseded Krasnoe studenchestvo and now was jointly published by the Central Committee of Komsomol and VTsSPS, published a letter from A.  Vorontsov, a third-year student at Bryansk Institute of Forest Science. This student received the grade “excellent” on

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fourteen of the 24 courses he had taken, “good” on six courses, and “satisfactory” on four. Moreover, the grade “satisfactory” was earned only on the courses he took in his first semester at the institute, and he received grade “excellent” on all the courses he took in the second semester of the second year. He also led an extracurricular scientific-technical group for three years.58 Yet he was not a student of excellence, not even a shock student. As for the reason, he was told by student leaders: “You have not done any social work. Work in the scientific-technical group is not social work. It is for your own satisfaction.”59 Publishing Vorontsov’s letter, Sovetskoe studenchestvo attached an editorial note: “Comrades at Bryansk Institute of Forest Science commit the crudest mistake when they regard work in the scientific-technical group as a private matter. Work in the scientific-­technical group is now the most important socially-beneficial work.”60 By characterizing participation in an academically oriented extracurricular group as the most important socially beneficial work, this editorial note redefined social work. On other occasions, the Central Committee of Komsomol made it even clearer that involvement or noninvolvement in social work should not be a factor in determining whether a student deserved the title of student of excellence, and it also implicitly rejected the value of social work as a means for political education. In early 1936, M.  Tsentsiper, an official of the Central Committee of Komsomol, declared in an article, published in the journal of VKVTO, that only academic records should determine who would be students of excellence. He criticized two deviations from this criterion. One was the argument made by some student leaders that social activeness should be used to offset less than perfect grades, so that students who did not earn the grade “excellent” on all the courses but actively engaged in social work could be qualified as students of excellence. Another was to attach all sorts of conditions or requirements, including participation in social work, in addition to the grade “excellent,” as qualifications for the title of student of excellence.61 In late 1936, in an article published in Sovetskoe studenchestvo, Tsentsiper declared: “A student of excellence earns his title by the academic grade ‘excellent’. Any assessment of his social work or participation in various groups should serve neither as an obstacle to nor as a cause for receiving the title of student of excellence.” He also contended that the question about social work should be put differently now. As for social work inside HEIs, he wrote: “If a student holds an elected position inside an institute in one of the social organizations, this only gives him honor, and he should be responsible to his

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electors and the above-mentioned organizations for his work.” In regard to social work outside HEIs, he wrote: “If we assign (students) to this or that work outside the higher education institutions, which sometimes brings little benefit or was even unnecessary, one should ask whether such work makes any sense?”62 The Central Committee of Komsomol and VTsSPS did not change their position during the years of the mass terror (1937 and 1938), when student leaders at many HEIs believed that the new political environment justified their position that active involvement in social work should be one of the criteria for the title of student of excellence. In the academic year 1937–1938, Moscow University’s trade union committee sent to academic departments a special directive, stating that when the troika in each academic group nominated students for the title of student of excellence, they should consider students’ fulfillment of their obligations regarding grades, political study, social work, and participation in a scientific research group. As a result, of the 1229 students who received the grade “excellent” on all courses in the fall semester of 1937, 505 were excluded from the list of students of excellence because of their noninvolvement in social work. However, speaking at a meeting of members of Komsomol at that university, Aleksandr Kosarev, First Secretary of the Central Committee of Komsomol, criticized such an approach as a distortion of principles of socialist competition. Under the pressure from the Central Committee of Komsomol and VTsSPS, Moscow University was forced to correct this “distortion.”63 As the Central Committee of Komsomol and VTsSPS downplayed social work as a form of political education, greater importance was attached to ideological courses during the years of the  mass terror. In Stalin’s speech at a plenum of the Central Committee of the Communist Party in early March 1937, he declared that the old slogan of the mastery of technology “must be supplemented by the new slogan of political training of cadres, the mastery of Bolshevism and abandonment of our political trustfulness.”64 Immediately after this speech, the Soviet press began to criticize the neglect of political education at HEIs, but political education was equalized with ideological courses. From 1934 to 1937, academic hours allocated to these courses were gradually reduced.65 But the trend was reversed in 1938.66 After History of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks): Short Course, which represented Stalin’s rendition of Marxism and the history of the Bolshevik party, had been published in 1938, VKVSh restructured ideological courses. In the restructured scheme,

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which took effect in the second semester of the academic year 1938–1939, a new course, titled “Foundations of Marxism-Leninism” and based on Short Course, replaced both Leninism and Dialectical and Historical Materialism; Political Economy was taught after this new course; the course on Dialectical and Historical Materialism was required only of students studying history, literature, and philosophy.67 Although the number of ideological courses for most students was reduced from three to two, the total number of academic hours allocated to these courses increased.68 Most students, including members of Komsomol (the number of Communist students became very small after general secondary schools became the main source of students at HEIs), gave a very low priority to ideological courses. For example, at the end of the fall semester of the academic year 1936–1937, 35 percent of the first-year Komsomol students and 48 percent of the first-year non-Komsomol students in the Physics Department of Moscow University did not take the examination on Political Economy, choosing to carry a “debt” on this course into the following semester.69 When students took examinations on ideological courses, their grades were not as good as grades they earned on other courses. Comparing grades on ideological courses earned by students at Moscow Mining Institute with the grades they earned on other courses in the first semester of the academic year 1937–1938, an official of the Central Committee of Komsomol found that the grade “excellent” constituted 23.1 percent and the grade “unsatisfactory” made up 9.6 percent of all the grades given on ideological courses; by contrast, the grade “excellent” and the grade “unsatisfactory” constituted 46.4 percent and 1.5 percent respectively of all the grades given on courses related to students’ specialties.70 Starting in 1937, the Central Committee of Komsomol called upon students to change their attitude to ideological courses. An editorial of Komsomol’skaia pravda on May 16, 1937, after citing the data about students at Moscow University who did not take the examination on Political Economy, warned: “The Komsomol organization cannot disregard such unhealthy phenomena. For a student, for a member of Lenin’s Komsomol, there is nothing more shameful than bad grades on social-economic courses.”71 At the same time, VKVSh took a special measure to elevate the importance of the ideological courses and compel students to take these courses more seriously. As will be elaborated in the following chapter, before 1936 students at all HEIs were required to complete a diploma project (senior

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research project) as the final requirement for graduation. However, while retaining the diploma project as the final requirement for students at institutions of higher technical education, the June 1936 resolution of the Central Committee of the Communist Party and Sovnarkom required that students at all other HEIs take oral state examinations on designated academic subjects, given by special examination commissions at the end of their whole course of study. The same resolution also stipulated two kinds of diploma for graduates of HEIs. The diploma of the first class was awarded to the students who earned the grade “excellent” on 75 percent of the courses they took during their whole course of study and on all the state examinations.72 When the ideological courses were restructured, VKVSh designated the “Foundations of Marxism-Leninism” as one of the subjects for state examinations at the institutions where students were required to take such examinations.73 This meant that students had to earn the grade “excellent” on the state examination for this ideological course in order to receive the diploma of the first class. According to Sergei Kaftanov, who became chairperson of VKVSh in 1937, 70 to 80 percent of the students at many HEIs received the grades “excellent” or “good” on the new course “Foundations of Marxism-­ Leninism” at the end of the academic year 1938–1939.74 But evidence did not show that students were actually interested in this course. An article, published in Pravda in April 1939, described what the author saw during a lecture in the course “Foundations of Marxism-Leninism” for the third-­ year students of physics at Moscow University: Lecturing, the instructor somehow always looks below, and only occasionally raises his head, looking at students in the front rows. A majority of students do not listen to his lecture. The instructor is by himself, and the audience is on its own; there is no communication or contact between them. I sit in one of the back rows, which are on a floor that slopes upwards to the rear. It can be seen what students above me are doing: some are reading newspapers, others are reading novels, and still others are looking at notebooks with formulas, obviously notes from lectures on physics …. Many students are simply sitting there and talking to each other.75

But the good grades that many students received on this course indicated that because of the pressure from above, they took the examination on this course more seriously.

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Nicholas Timasheff suggested that after 1934, the Soviet regime retreated from revolutionary ideology; as a part of this retreat, political education at HEIs was curtailed in the late 1930s.76 Kendall Bailes argued that the Soviet government intensified political education at HEIs after the Great Purge.77 This section has demonstrated that emphasis in political education for students shifted from nurturing social activism to cultivating ideological literacy. This shift did not mean a retreat from the Marxist ideology. However, as consolidating what had been achieved, rather than making new revolutionary changes, became the main objective of the Stalinist regime, political education that emphasized the cultivation of social activism no longer corresponded with its ethos.

Policy for Selection for Higher Education in China and the New Maoist Doctrine of Socialism The end of the Great Leap Forward in 1961, which was compelled by a great famine, brought about a sobering effect on Chinese Communist leaders. Gone was the utopian vision that communism with the disappearance of the distinction between physical and mental labor as one of its features would be realized soon in China. The quest for a high speed in economic development was replaced by a policy of retrenchment aimed to reduce the scale of the urban sector, so that more resources could be allocated to the development of agriculture and the urban population (whose food was supplied by the state) could be reduced. The retrenchment in the economy had its effect on higher education. In July 1961, a conference convened by the Ministry of Education and attended by the heads of provincial governments’ departments of education and departments of higher education decided to reduce the number of students admitted to HEIs, and to keep this number at a low level in the following three years. The actual numbers of students admitted to HEIs from 1962 to 1964 were even lower than anticipated at this conference.78 As in the Soviet Union after the end of the First Five-Year Plan, the reduction of admissions to HEIs in China after the end of the Great Leap Forward was accompanied by a rebalancing of political objectives and academic standards. In 1962, the ranking system in admissions to HEIs was reestablished.79 As in the years from 1955 to 1957, the applicants were placed in different ranks according to the scores they earned on entrance examinations. When each HEI selected students from the pool of the

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candidates that had chosen it as one of the intended schools, it was required to consider candidates in a higher rank before those in a lower rank. However, while the HEIs were expected to admit the best students in the available pool, the “best” was not defined in terms of academic credentials only, but still in terms of political credentials, examination scores, and health conditions.80 However, the criteria for determining political credentials also changed. In 1962, the party center approved a proposal on political screening in admissions to HEIs, submitted by Nie Rongzhen, a deputy premier with the responsibility of overseeing science and technology. This proposal declared that class relations in China as well as students’ families had changed; while the political status of their families was one of the important factors that influenced students’ political view, it was not the determining factor; political screening should focus on candidates’ own political performance, and no one should be deprived of the opportunity of higher education simply because of their family origins.81 To be sure, this change did not make family origins irrelevant in political screening. But a greater weight was now placed on the candidates’ own behavior, and this affected the result of political screening. As has been seen, starting in 1958, some specialties were designated as secret specialties. The list of secret specialties was expanded in the subsequent years. Therefore, a new category of strictly secret specialties was added in 1960.82 As students to be admitted into secret specialties had to meet higher political standards, those who had been born in the families of “exploiting classes” were not eligible during the Great Leap period. However, starting in 1962, such students whose own political performance or behavior was considered as good were no longer deprived of the right to be admitted into secret specialties. For example, 1989 students from bourgeois families and 60 students from the families of landlords and rich peasants in Shanghai were considered as eligible for admissions to secret specialties in political screening in 1962, and their numbers increased to 2064 and 78 respectively in 1963.83 A small number of students born in the bourgeois families or families of landlords and rich peasants were even considered as eligible for admissions into strictly secret specialties.84 It has to be pointed out that not all the students who were eligible for admissions into secret specialties were actually accepted, because the number of eligible candidates was always larger than the number of the students actually accepted into such specialties. Despite the enforcement of more rigorous academic standards in admissions to HEIs, the proportion of students from worker and peasant

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families actually rose. The students of worker and peasant origins constituted 71.2 percent of the students admitted to HEIs in 1965, significantly higher than 55.28 percent in 1958.85 Suzanne Pepper suggested that the official data on the proportion of the students of worker and peasant origins at HEIs were probably distorted because children of the Communist cadres may have been merged with the children of workers and peasants.86 But there is no reason to deny the trend of growth in the proportion of the students of worker and peasant origins indicated by the official data. It was impossible that this growth was only caused by the increase of the children of Communist cadres among the students admitted to HEIs. There were at least two reasons for the increase of students of worker and peasant origins in admissions to HEIs. First of all, in most years from 1950 to 1960 the number of admissions to HEIs roughly equaled or even exceeded the number of graduates of senior high schools. However, from 1961 to 1965 more than two senior high school graduates were competing for one place at HEIs.87 At the same time, the proportion of children of workers and peasants in the student body in the secondary schools increased, reaching 77.9 percent by the eve of the Great Cultural Revolution.88 Second, political credentials were still considered in admissions to HEIs, and family background was still part of a student’s political credentials. Therefore, those from worker or peasant families still had an advantage over candidates of other family origins when other variables (such as examination scores and the rating of personal political performance students received in political screening) were equal. If we accept Krupskaia’s point of view that admissions to HEIs based on the academic criteria alone actually gave an advantage to children of the well-educated parents, it can be argued that China’s policy for selection for higher education in the first half of the 1960s, which balanced political credentials with the academic criteria and balanced students’ family backgrounds with their own political performance in determining their political credentials, created a largely level playing field between the children of workers and peasants who managed to graduate from senior high school and those of the well-educated parents. This can be seen from the acceptance rate in Shanghai (Table 5.1). The candidates of the third category in Table 5.1 included children of educated professionals and other white-collar employees. Before the acceptance rates of the first and third categories can be compared, a factor that affected the fluctuation of the acceptance rates of both categories needs to be explained. Students who were not admitted to HEIs could

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Table 5.1  Acceptance rates of the candidates of different social categories in Shanghai (in percentage) Year

Candidates from worker and peasant families and those who were workers and peasants themselves

Candidates from families of “exploiting classes”

Candidates from other families

1961 1962 1963 1964 1965

59 31.7 34 44.1 39.2

36 19.2 16.8 14.1 19.3

60 36.5 29 34 61.3

Sources: Percentages for 1961 are indicated in SMA, B243-1-231, s. 31. Percentages for 1962, 1963, 1964, and 1965 are calculated according to data given in SMA, B243-1-263, ss. 69-70, 98; B243-1-288, ss. 86-87, 94; B243-1-318, ss. 29, 31; B243-1-400, ss. 19, 21

take entrance examinations again in the following year. In 1963 and 1964, when the acceptance rate of the third category was lower than that of the first category, there was a large number of candidates in the third category who had graduated from senior high school in previous years and took entrance examinations for the second or third time.89 In 1965, when the acceptance rate of the first category was significantly lower than that of the third category, there was a large number of candidates in the first category who took entrance examinations for the second or third time, while the number of such candidates in the third category was small.90 Because the candidates who took entrance examinations for the second or third time were those who had not been admitted to HEIs on their first attempt, their acceptance rate was lower than that of the current graduates of senior high schools who took entrance examinations for the first time. With the candidates who took entrance examinations for the second or third time excluded, the acceptance rates of the first and third categories were similar. Whereas “white-collar employees and their children” constituted a separate category in Soviet statistical data on the social composition of students at HEIs, even the data used in the Chinese government’s internal documents did not include such a category. Suzanne Pepper is apparently correct that the children of the Communist cadres were merged with children of workers and peasants, because they were unlikely to be placed among “the candidates from other families.” However, unlike the First Five-Year Plan in the Soviet Union, the Great Leap Forward in China did not result in a sustained and rapid expansion of modern industry (which

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would have created a large number of managerial and other white-collar positions), and it was not accompanied by a large-scale promotion of worker Communists to managerial and other white-collar positions. Therefore, the number of children of the Communist white-collar cadres91 was small, and their merger with the children of workers and peasants in statistical data did not invalidate the argument that the children of workers and peasants who managed to graduate from senior high school were on a largely level playing field with children of educated professionals and other white-collar employees in the competition for higher education opportunities during the first half of the 1960s. The experiences of students from families of “exploiting classes” were paradoxical. On the one hand, because the criteria used to determine a student’s political credentials shifted toward greater emphasis on personal behavior, it became possible for some of them to be admitted to prestigious and popular institutions. For example, in 1964, 919 students from families of “exploiting classes” in Shanghai were admitted into key-point HEIs, which were most prestigious institutions.92 On the other hand, the proportion of the children of the families of “exploiting classes” among students admitted to HEIs from 1962 to 1965 was actually lower than that during the Great Leap period.93 One of the reasons for this result was that there was a much larger number of high school graduates who were children of workers and peasants than during the Great Leap period, while the total number of admissions to HEIs was reduced. Another reason was the way in which students were actually selected. The final decisions for admissions were made by the admissions representatives that each HEI sent to the provincial committee of enrollment, where the files of all the candidates were kept. Faced with the difficult task of attaining the delicate balance between academic and political qualifications in selecting students, the admissions representatives usually preferred candidates with higher political credentials to those whose examination scores were higher but whose political qualifications were considered lower than the former. The reports from the Shanghai Municipal Committee of Enrollment from 1962 to 1965 often included a complaint that HEIs failed to maintain the correct balance between political and academic qualifications in selecting students, and overvalued the candidates’ family origins at the expense of their own performance in considering their political qualifications.94 Judged on its own merits, China’s policy for selection for higher education in the first half of the 1960s was successful. The proportion of children of workers and peasants among students admitted to HEIs increased

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despite the more rigorous enforcement of academic standards. While it became more difficult for students from families of “exploiting classes” to get access to higher education than before, they did not see doors to higher education completely closed to them, and some of them were even admitted to prestigious schools. Therefore, even many students of this social category had a motivation to study hard and to conduct themselves according to the new social-political code. However, the increase of the proportion of students from worker and peasant families at HEIs could not prevent the emergence of an educated elite. As late Maoism appeared on the historical scene and the new Maoist doctrine of socialism no longer allowed legitimate space for an educated elite, new policy measures were adopted in 1964 and 1965 for the purpose of preventing the emergence of educated professionals with a distinct social identity derived from their educational experience. One of such measures required that graduates of HEIs participate in physical labor for one year before they were assigned to jobs. This measure began in 1964, when about 50 percent of the graduates were sent to factories or people’s communes to participate in physical labor for one year. According to the plan of the party center and the State Council, all those who graduated in 1965 would be required to participate in physical labor for one year.95 Another measure affected policy for selection for higher education. In 1964 and 1965, according to a directive from the party center, local party organizations were asked to recommend candidates from among the educated youths who had participated in physical labor in industry or agriculture for some years, veterans, and cadres; these recommended candidates were required to take entrance examinations, but were given preference in admissions into specialties in social science, humanities, and law at HEIs.96 This policy measure was based on the notion that those who had participated in physical labor were less likely to become elite-minded educated professionals. It was also derived from the view that students studying social science, humanities, and law should have higher political credentials, because many of them would work in government agencies or on the ideological front. But this measure also reflected a cautious approach of the Communist bureaucrats who were responsible for formulating higher education policy and who had learned lessons from the Great Leap period. The number of candidates recommended by local party organizations and admitted to HEIs was small.97 They were not admitted into specialties in science and engineering, and therefore academic standards in these fields of study did not have to be sacrificed for the new political objective.

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The first phase of the Great Cultural Revolution, which lasted from 1966 to 1968, was mainly a political campaign against the “power-holders taking the capitalist road.” Because of the chaos created by this campaign and the factional struggle between different groups of the Red Guards (new organizations that appeared among students at HEIs and secondary schools), Chinese HEIs did not admit students from 1966 to 1969. During these years, the political scene in Beijing changed dramatically. Liu Shaoqi, the second ranking party leader, and Deng Xiaoping, head of the Secretariat of the Central Committee of the CCP, were removed from their positions as the “power-holders taking the capitalist road” (Liu died in 1969).98 Below them, the officials who played an important role in actually formulating higher education policy, including Lu Dingyi, director of the Central Committee’s Department of Propaganda, and Jiang Nanxiang, Minister of Higher Education (the Ministry of Higher Education was restored in 1964), had also been removed from their positions.99 The prominent cultural revolutionaries (those who played an active role in the Great Cultural Revolution) were promoted into positions that allowed them to play a dominant role in shaping educational policy.100 Although the Great Cultural Revolution began as a political campaign against the “power-holders taking the capitalist road,” it indeed had a cultural component. The resolution of the Central Committee of the CCP on the Great Cultural Revolution, adopted on August 8, 1966, known as the “Sixteen Articles,” included an article on education, which declared that schools were still dominated by the bourgeois intelligentsia, and called for “reforming the old educational system, old educational policy and methods,” and for ending the bourgeois intelligentsia’s domination over the schools.101 The “Sixteen Articles” induced a redefining of socialism in higher education. In the early 1950s, the CCP viewed the Soviet system of higher education as socialist. Viewed from this perspective, after its reorganization along Soviet lines in the early 1950s, the Chinese system of higher education became socialist. Although reforms in higher education during the Great Leap period represented China’s breakaway from Soviet tutelage, they were not accompanied by the redefining of the Chinese system of higher education prior to 1958 as bourgeois or non-socialist. However, after the “Sixteen Articles” had been proclaimed, the publications of the Red Guards created a new grand narrative of the history of Chinese higher education from 1949 to 1966. According to this narrative, the Soviet

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system of higher education was not different from the system in Tsarist Russia, and therefore the Sovietization of Chinese higher learning in the early 1950s only reinforced the bourgeois nature of the higher education system that the Communist government inherited from the Nationalist regime. While the Great Leap period was a glorious period of an educational revolution, the revolution was reversed by the policies promoted by Liu Shaoqi and Lu Dingyi and implemented by the “power-holders taking the capitalist road” on the higher education front in the first half of the 1960s.102 In March 1968, an article by the authoritative “commentators” of the People’s Daily and Red Flag used the term “schools of the old type” to refer to HEIs existing prior 1966.103 Between 1949 and 1966, the term “schools of the old type” was used to refer to educational institutions existing under the Nationalist regime. By using this term to refer to HEIs existing prior to the beginning of the Great Cultural Revolution, the “commentators” of the People’s Daily and Red Flag endorsed the grand narrative created by the publications of the Red Guards and declared that the pre-1966 Chinese system of higher education was not socialist. In 1971, a national conference on education was held in Beijing, and the summary report about this conference, which was approved by the party center, declared that the majority of the educated professionals produced by the Chinese educational system prior to the Great Cultural Revolution were the bourgeois intelligentsia.104 This authoritative document thus officially declared that the pre-1966 Chinese HEIs were bourgeois schools that produced bourgeois intelligentsia. This also meant that the endeavor to create a socialist system of higher education had to start anew. Reflecting this point of view, the People’s Daily ran a special column titled “How the Socialist Universities Should be Operated” from March 1969 to July 1976.105 An important part of this new endeavor to create a socialist system of higher learning was new criteria and a new procedure for selecting students for higher education, which were created according to Mao’s “Directive of July 21.” This directive was actually a short comment Mao made on July 21, 1968 on an article about higher education in science and engineering, which was published in the People’s Daily. It stated that “students should be selected from among workers and peasants with practical experience, and they should return to production after a few years’ study.”106 The new criteria called for selecting students from among young workers, peasants, and soldiers who had completed at least the junior level of secondary education and had at least three years of practical experience

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in industry, agriculture, or military service. The new procedure of selecting students consisted of three steps: the recommendation of candidates from among eligible applicants by the masses, approval of candidates by local leaders, and the final selection by the HEIs.107 The actual procedure usually worked as follows: the number of students to be admitted to HEIs in any particular year was apportioned through various administrative levels; at the end of this apportionment, a people’s commune, a factory, or a military unit (such as a battalion) was asked to select one, two, or three students; after eligible applicants had submitted their applications, they were first evaluated by low-level officials and common people (the masses) in the small work units (such as a production brigade in a people’s commune, a workshop within a factory, or a platoon in the military), who decided whether they wanted to recommend any particular applicant; then the party committee in a people’s commune, factory, or battalion selected the final candidates from among those recommended by the lower-level work units and sent their names to a higher authority; finally the HEIs selected the students from among these candidates.108 It was hard to say how much influence the masses or common people actually had in this process, but it definitely gave the local officials the real power to recommend and select students for HEIs. The new criteria and procedure for selecting students for HEIs, which were implemented in 1970 when HEIs began to admit students after a hiatus of four years, meant that there was no more direct path from secondary schools to HEIs. Some of the graduates of the urban high schools were assigned to jobs in cities. However, because industry was not expanding during the Great Cultural Revolution, a majority of these graduates were sent to rural areas. The high school graduates from rural families, of course, all returned to rural areas. After three years of working as workers or peasants, these graduates became eligible for admissions to HEIs. Thus, selecting students from among workers and peasants actually meant selecting students from among  the “educated youths” (a term used during these years to refer to those who had completed the junior level or senior level of secondary education) who had worked as workers or peasants for three or more years. Explaining causes of reforms in Chinese higher education during the Great Cultural Revolution, Suzanne Pepper contended that the Chinese educational system in the first half of the 1960s created inequality and disadvantaged students from the working-class and peasant families in the competition for higher education opportunities.109 However, as this

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section has demonstrated, reforms were not needed if the purpose was to raise the proportion of children of workers and peasants in the student body at HEIs or to create a level playing field between children of workers and peasants who managed to graduate from senior high school and those of educated professionals and other white-collar employees. The real cause for reforms in higher education during the Great Cultural Revolution was the new Maoist doctrine of socialism, which conflicted with the existing educational system and especially the higher education system. As has been indicated, the new Maoist doctrine not only rejected the Stalinist notion that pay differentials and stratified society were a legitimate feature of socialism, but no longer allowed legitimate space for an educated elite. However, in the first half of the 1960s, HEIs admitted only a small number of students and selected them through competitive entrance examinations. Secondary education was not universalized in China during the first half of the 1960s. The sole purpose of the senior high schools was to prepare their students for higher education, and almost all their graduates took entrance examinations for higher education. When less than half of them were admitted to HEIs, the rejection rate was high. At the same time, rigorous academic standards were enforced in the process of education at HEIs. Such a system of higher education could not but be elitist. The new procedure for selecting students for higher education not only cut off the direct path from secondary schools to HEIs, but also abolished entrance examinations. One of the reasons for excluding examinations was the argument Mao made in 1964 against examinations. Mao contended that examinations suppressed creativity, and high scores achieved on examinations did not represent real ability.110 In 1973, the cultural revolutionaries attempted to prove this point with a dramatic action: they gathered professors and associate professors from various HEIs in Beijing without previous notice and gave them an examination on high school mathematics, physics, and chemistry.111 There was also a political argument against the competitive entrance examinations for higher education, which was first made by those who advocated the abolition of such examinations at the beginning of the Great Cultural Revolution and later by the cultural revolutionaries who gained power after the first phase of the Great Cultural Revolution. In June 1966, some high school students in Beijing wrote letters to the Central Committee of the CCP or Mao, proposing the abolition of the entrance examinations for higher education. One of the arguments they

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made was that entrance examinations encouraged high school students to immerse themselves in book learning in order to achieve the highest possible examination scores, and hampered their moral development and the revolution of their minds.112 An editorial of the People’s Daily on June 18, 1966 reiterated this point.113 In the spring of 1973, in response to suggestions from HEIs,114 the State Council’s Group of Science and Education (which was created in 1970 to take over duties that previously had belonged to the Ministry of Education, Ministry of Higher Education, and the State Council’s Committee of Science)115 instructed that academic examinations should be one of the steps in selecting students for HEIs, but it let each province decide upon the content and method of such examinations.116 Such examinations did not negate Mao’s directive that students should be selected from among workers and peasants, because only recommended candidates could take these examinations, and they were all educated youths who had worked as workers or peasants or served as soldiers at least for three years. But the cultural revolutionaries soon launched a campaign against the entrance examinations. One of the arguments they made was that the entrance examinations would encourage the educated youths to focus their energy on book learning in order to improve their chance of being admitted to HEIs, thereby discouraging them from behaving like real peasants or workers.117 Because of their objection, entrance examinations were not included in the procedure for selecting students for HEIs from 1974 to 1976, the year in which Mao passed away. As has been seen, the Maoist concept of the proletarian intelligentsia did not define the proletarian nature of the new intelligentsia by social origins of its members alone, but also considered ideological proclivity and behavior. The new procedure for selection for higher education represented a new endeavor to create a proletarian intelligentsia. This procedure not only required experience in industrial or agricultural labor or in  military service as a precondition for admissions to HEIs, but also placed special emphasis on the moral character and political performance of the candidates in the process of selection. However, with the abolition of the entrance examinations, this procedure also excluded any impersonal factor (scores on entrance examinations might not be an accurate indicator of ability, but they were impersonal). Chinese higher education was not expanded in the early and mid-1970s. Therefore, the new procedure for selecting students for HEIs did not reduce competition for higher education opportunities, but only changed the rules for competition. As

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the measurement of the moral character and political performance of the candidates could not but be subjective, new rules for competition gave an unprecedented advantage to those who had political  connections. According to a Chinese scholar, many high-level officials were not only able to use their political influence to have their children admitted into HEIs, but also have them placed in the most desirable specialties. At some HEIs, the most desirable specialties had the highest concentration of children of high-level officials. For example, eight of the twelve students admitted into the English language specialty at a university in the northeast region in one year (which was not specified) were children of high-­ level officials, and twelve of the fourteen students admitted into a specialty in the Department of Automation at a polytechnic institute were children of high-level officials.118 Western scholars also found that a large proportion of the students admitted to HEIs in the new procedure were children of the Communist officials.119 The gap between the Maoist ideological objective and social reality was large.

The Experiment with Half-Time Work and Half-Time Study in Chinese Higher Education It has been a consensus among the historians of modern Chinese education that it was the Great Cultural Revolution that brought about the last wave of radical reforms in Chinese higher learning during the Mao era. This section demonstrates that the experiment with half-time study and half-time work in higher education, which began in 1964, actually presaged a reform undertaken at Chinese HEIs in the mid-1970s. As has been seen, emphasis in political education for students at Soviet HEIs shifted from nurturing social activism to cultivating ideological literacy in the second half of the 1930s. By contrast, as preventing the emergence of a new educated elite became a new objective in Chinese higher education, cultivating ideological literacy through ideological courses could not achieve this objective. The experiment with half-time work and half-time study was a new measure for reducing and eliminating the differences between mental and physical labor, which was now regarded as a means for preventing the emergence of an educated elite or educated professionals with a distinctive social identity. After the end of the Great Leap Forward, although students at HEIs were still required to participate in productive labor, the time devoted to

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it was reduced to one and a half months a year.120 In September 1961, the Central Committee of the CCP issued “Provisional Regulations for Higher Education Institutions Directly Administered by the Ministry of Education,” which was actually applied to all HEIs, including those that were not directly administered by the Ministry of Education. This document, which delineated the guiding principles for higher education after the Great Leap Forward, declared that the objectives of students’ participation in productive labor were to develop a habit of physical labor, to learn from workers and peasants, and to achieve the integration of theories and practice; but the elimination of the distinction between mental and physical labor or between the intelligentsia and physical laborers was no longer one of the goals.121 However, the elimination of the differences between the intelligentsia and physical laborers again became an objective of Chinese higher education policy in 1964. As has been seen, starting in 1964, the graduates of HEIs were required to participate in physical labor for one year. A more important measure for achieving this political objective was the experiment with half-time work and half-time study in higher education. Initially, this experiment was driven by the need for teachers teaching at half-time secondary schools. By 1963, the Chinese economy had recovered from the disastrous aftermath of the Great Leap Forward, and therefore development of education could again be considered. Speaking about half-time study and half-time work schools on August 1, 1964, Liu Shaoqi said that data he received from provinces indicated that about half of the school-age children still did not attend school, and in rural areas of some provinces nearly 80 percent of school-age children did not attend school. He contended that it was impossible for all children to attend full-time schools, but half-time schools would lower the cost of education for both the state and the parents of the students. Liu also declared that half-time secondary schools would be different from their full-time counterparts; in addition to academic subjects that were taught at full-time secondary schools, students at half-time schools should also study technical subjects related to agriculture or industry.122 Therefore, special pedagogic institutes were needed to train teachers for half-time secondary schools. These future teachers would study in half-time work and half-time study programs, which were designed to teach them academic subjects as well as skills needed for industrial or agricultural production. According to Liu’s directive, one of the first new pedagogic institutes training teachers for half-time secondary schools was established in

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Shanghai in 1964, which was called Shanghai Half-Time Work and HalfTime Study Pedagogic Institute. Because its students devoted half of their time to work, its course of study was five years, one year more than that at the full-time pedagogic institutes. This new institute did not have its own campus. It was first founded on the campus of East China Normal University.123 But it was relocated to Shanghai Pedagogic Institute and merged with the latter in the summer of 1965. As a result, Shanghai Pedagogic Institute became an institution with two tracks. While most of its students remained in the full-time track, part of them were enrolled in the half-time work and half-time study track.124 The experiment with half-time work and half-time study in higher education was also prompted by a political objective. In 1964 and 1965, Mao criticized Chinese education on several occasions. Most of Mao’s critiques were nonpolitical. For example, he complained that the curriculum was too heavy at both the secondary schools and HEIs, and the methods of teaching focused on imparting knowledge rather than encouraging students to develop skills for analyzing and solving problems.125 But Mao also made a political point, contending that because the curriculum was heavy and the course of study at both secondary schools and HEIs was too long, students lost touch with real society and with workers and peasants, and such students could easily become revisionists.126 This point corresponded with the notion that educated professionals who developed a distinct social identity from their educational experience could become bourgeois elements in socialist society. For the Communist bureaucrats who were responsible for designing policy measures, developing half-time work and half-time study programs in higher education seemed to be a practical method for preventing the emergence of such an educated elite. Therefore, the experiment with half-time work and half-time study in higher education soon went far beyond teacher-training education. At the end of 1965, the Ministry of Higher Education invited directors of the provincial departments of higher education, heads of the sections of education within the ministries of the central government, and officials from some HEIs to a conference on half-time work and half-time study. At this conference, the Ministry of Higher Education proclaimed a plan for the further development of half-time HEIs and programs, and declared that by the end of the Third Five-Year Plan (1966–1970), half-time HEIs and programs and spare-time HEIs would have more students than full-time HEIs and programs. The growth of the half-time HEIs and programs

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would be achieved both by establishing new schools and by creating half-­ time programs at existing schools.127 More importantly, the plan for the further development of half-time HEIs and programs included the conversion of all programs in social science and humanities into half-time status. Deng Xiaoping met with Jiang Nanxiang, Minister of Higher Education, during the conference on half-­ time work and half-time study in higher education, and he suggested to Jiang that all programs in social science and humanities could be transformed into half-time status during the Third Five-Year Plan.128 In his speech at this conference, Lu Dingyi suggested that once the programs in social science and humanities were converted into half-time status, the content of education should also be changed from esoteric knowledge and abstract theories to matters of practicality and political relevance.129 The envisioned conversion of programs in humanities and social science into half-time work and half-time study status was accompanied by a plan to reduce the course of study in such programs. Before the national conference on half-time work and half-time study, the Beijing Municipal Party Committee held its own conference on half-time work and half-time study in higher education. Jiang Nanxiang suggested at this conference that all the five-year programs in humanities and social science should be converted to four-year programs; and during the four years, students should participate in labor for one and a half years and study for two and a half years.130 The party committee at Beijing University decided to create experimental half-time work and half-time study programs with three-year course of study. Students in these programs would reside on a campus to be created in a rural area.131 There were at least three reasons for the plan to convert programs in social science and humanities into half-time work and half-time study programs. First, when Mao criticized Chinese education in 1964 and 1965, he reserved the most severe criticism for programs in social science and humanities at HEIs. From Mao’s point of view, students of social science and humanities studied society, but one should not study society only from books. Second, explaining the political significance of the plan for converting programs in social science and humanities into half-time work and half-time status, Lu Dingyi stated that students in programs in social science and humanities would control the “superstructure” in the future.132 This, of course, meant that the revisionists or new bourgeois elements produced by such programs were more dangerous to the cause of socialism. Third, from the viewpoint of the Communist bureaucrats who learned

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lessons from educational reforms undertaken during the Great Leap period, even if the experiment with half-time work and half-time study in social science and humanities programs resulted in the declining of academic standards, it would not jeopardize the HEIs’ mission to produce qualified scientists and engineers, who were more important for economic development. Therefore, while supporting the conversion of programs in humanities and social science into half-time work and half-time study programs, both Deng Xiaoping and Lu Dingyi advised caution in regard to reforming education in science and engineering. Lu instructed that the experiment with half-time work and half-time study as well as the related curricular reform in science and engineering should go slowly; only institutions or academic departments that were given permission by the Ministry of Higher Education could start such experimental reforms; even in these institutions or academic departments only a small number of students and faculty members should be involved in the experiment.133 Deng instructed that the approach toward the experiment with half-time work and half-­ time study in engineering should be even more cautious than that toward the experiment in science.134 The plan for converting all programs in social science and humanities at HEIs into half-time work and half-time study programs was not implemented because the Great Cultural Revolution began in 1966. As will be seen in the following chapter, preventing the rebirth of an educated elite was one of the goals sought in the reforms in the process of education at HEIs after they had resumed the admission of students in 1970. After Mao’s remark about socialism, made in late 1974 (which has been indicated in the introduction for this chapter), a new attempt to convert all programs at HEIs—not just programs in social science and humanities— was undertaken. In some ways, Mao’s remark about socialism in late 1974 corresponded with Marx’s description of the first stage of communism (which the Soviet as well as Chinese Communists defined as socialism), but Mao differed from Marx in that he believed that remnants of capitalism could produce a new bourgeoisie in socialist society, and therefore he called for restricting these remnants. Although Mao did not directly mention it, the distinction between mental and physical labor was, of course, one of the remnants of the old society. As the rationale behind the plan to convert programs in social science and humanities at HEIs into half-time work and half-time study programs demonstrated, the elimination of the distinction between

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mental and physical labor (or the distinction between the intelligentsia and physical laborers) was also a means for preventing the rebirth of an educated elite. Therefore, this plan was not only revived by the cultural revolutionaries, but they no longer restricted it to programs in social science and humanities. In February 1975, the first-year students in the departments of history and philosophy and in the two departments of foreign languages (the Department of Western Languages and the Department of Eastern Languages) at Beijing University were sent to a rural campus, where they would split their time between academic study and agricultural labor; and the party committee at Beijing University called upon other academic departments to place their students on half-­ time work and half-time study footing as soon as possible. In April 1975, the party committee at this university decided to send more students in social science and humanities to another rural campus and place them on half-time work and half-time study footing. Students of science were not sent to rural campuses. But part of them were also immediately placed on half-time work and half-time study footing, and they would devote half of their time to labor at factories that were still in operation on the campus of the university or to be created.135

Concluding Comparative Analysis After the proclaimed victory of socialism in the Soviet Union, the expected traits of the educated elite were redefined. Before that, the would-be members of the proletarian intelligentsia were only expected to be red specialists in their fields of study. However, starting in 1934, students at HEIs were expected to be culturally refined and roundly educated. This new expectation for the Soviet educated elite induced a reconsideration of the ladders to HEIs. The rabfaks, which prepared young workers and peasants for higher education at an accelerated pace by narrowing the curriculum, were now viewed as an inferior source of students for HEIs. At the same time, Stalin’s view that the Soviet Union had become a classless society after the complete socialization of the economy removed the ideological rationale for the effort to create a proletarian intelligentsia. As the children of well-educated parents and those from otherwise privileged families had some built-in advantage in the competition for higher education opportunities, the ending of the effort to create a proletarian intelligentsia could have been accompanied by the retention of some mild policy measures that would create a level playing field for the children of

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workers and peasants who graduated from secondary schools. However, a new Soviet class of administrators, educated professionals, and other white-collar employees had emerged after the First Five-Year Plan period. According to the ideology of the Soviet government, this class could not be defined as bourgeois because a majority of them came from among workers and peasants. But who can argue that this class did not have its self-interest and it would advocate or support policy measures that would reduce the built-in advantage the children of its members enjoyed in the competition for higher education opportunities? Moreover, as the Stalinist definition of socialist society rejected egalitarianism as a legitimate ideological principle of socialism and accepted stratified society as a legitimate feature of socialism, policy measures designed to create a de facto level playing field in the competition for higher education opportunities did not correspond with the ethos of the Stalinist regime. The conflict between the student leaders and higher authorities regarding the political value of social work and the Soviet government’s new effort to elevate the importance of ideological courses indicated another redefining of the expected traits of the Soviet educated elite and the goals of higher education. In the 1920s and First Five-Year Plan period, the members of the proletarian intelligentsia were expected to be social activists, and therefore social work was considered as the most important form of political education for students of HEIs. However, in the second half of the 1930s, the Central Committee of Komsomol and VTsSPS downplayed social work as a means for political education, and VKVSh elevated the importance of the ideological courses in the curriculum. These changes indicated a shift of emphasis in political education from nurturing social activism to cultivating ideological literacy. Late Maoism was symbolized by the new Maoist doctrine of socialism, which diverged from the Stalinist definition of socialist society in many ways. Therefore, the last phase of the endeavors to create a socialist system of higher education in the Soviet Union under Stalin and in China under Mao ended with sharply different outcomes. The expectation that students at Soviet HEIs should be culturally refined and roundly educated meant that the Soviet educated elite was encouraged to develop more elitist traits than before. By contrast, the new Maoist doctrine of socialism no longer allowed legitimate space for an educated elite. Even before the beginning of the Great Cultural Revolution, the effort to prevent the emergence of a new educated elite induced the requirement that the graduates of HEIs participate in physical labor for one year and a new policy

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measure for recruiting educated youths with experience in agricultural or industrial production to HEIs as students. After the first phase of the Great Cultural Revolution, the new criteria and procedure for selecting students for higher education cut off the direct path from secondary schools to HEIs, and required experience in agricultural or industrial production or in military service as a precondition for admissions to HEIs. As has been indicated in Chap. 3, unlike the Soviet definition of the proletarian intelligentsia, the Maoist definition did not define the proletarian intelligentsia by social origins of its members alone, but placed great weight on ideological proclivity and behavior, which, of course, could only be measured by subjective criteria. The new procedure for selecting students for HEIs instituted after the first phase of the Great Cultural Revolution represented a new endeavor to create a proletarian intelligentsia. As this endeavor was now combined with the effort to prevent the emergence of an educated elite, even a greater emphasis was placed on behavior in selecting students for higher education. The entrance examinations were excluded from this procedure not only because Mao and the cultural revolutionaries believed that examinations could not measure actual ability, but also because the cultural revolutionaries believed that competitive entrance examinations would encourage wrong behavior on the part of the educated youths. Indoctrination through ideological courses (which became the main form of political education for students at Soviet HEIs in the second half of the 1930s) could not achieve the new Maoist objective of preventing the birth of a new educated elite. Therefore, a radical plan for converting all programs in social science and humanities into half-time work and half-­ time study programs was proclaimed in 1965. When the cultural revolutionaries revived this plan in the mid-1970s, they expanded it to include programs in science and engineering. The gap between the Maoist ideological objectives and social reality was large. Despite all the efforts to eliminate differences between mental and physical labor or between the intelligentsia and physical laborers, the graduates of HEIs in the 1970s were still assigned to white-collar jobs in government agencies, in educational or other cultural institutions, or in offices at industrial enterprises. Therefore, young people still viewed higher education as a ladder for upward social mobility. This was especially true of rural educated youths and the urban educated youths who were sent to rural areas to work as peasants. For them, higher education was an opportunity to leave hard rural life and get an urban white-collar job.

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Moreover, because higher education was not expanded in the early and mid-1970s, excluding entrance examinations from the procedure for selecting students for HEIs did not reduce the competition for high education opportunities, but only removed an impersonal factor. The new procedure, therefore, was easily abused by those who had political power.

Notes 1. Stalin, Works, 13: 329. 2. Ibid., 313, 316. 3. Boldyrev, Direktivy o narodnom obrazovanii, 2: 81, 83. 4. De Witt, Education and Professional Employment, 636. 5. See section 1 of this chapter. 6. Bo, Ruogan, 2: 1129, 1131. 7. Hong qi, 13 (1964): 11–15. 8. The Communists who were promoted to high leadership positions during the Great Cultural Revolution were not paid high salaries corresponding to their positions. Of course, this did not mean that these new officials did not have other privileges. They were usually assigned spacious apartments that were not obtainable by common people. But they were less privileged than the Communist officials who had occupied these positions before the Great Cultural Revolution. For example, there was a well-known anecdote about Wu Guixian, a textile worker who served as a deputy premier from 1975 to 1977: those who attended meetings in the State Council were required to pay 20 cents if they drunk tea; this price was too high for her because she still received her original monthly wage (76 yuan); therefore, she always asked for plain water. 9. The term “merchandise system” here means that goods are merchandise: they are not distributed to people for free, but have to be bought with money. 10. Wang Nianyi, Da dongluan de niandai (Beijing: Renmin chubanshe, 2009), 397–398. 11. Boldyrev, Direktivy o narodnom obrazovanii, 2: 78, 82–85. 12. Sbornik postanovlenii i prikazov po promyshlennosti, no. 3 (1931): 498–499. 13. After 1932, government documents and published articles on higher technical education no longer included any reference to industrial associations’ role in administering institutions of higher technical education. 14. Boldyrev, Direktivy o narodnom obrazovanii, 2: 89. 15. Stalin, Works, 13: 69. 16. Boldyrev, Direktivy o narodnom obrazovanii, 2: 78.

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17. Biulleten’ VKVTO, no. 5 (1933): 12. 18. While the working-class students constituted about 70 percent of the student body at institutions of higher technical education for industry in 1932, their proportion among the students admitted to these institutions declined to 65.1 percent in 1933 and 59.5 percent in 1934. The proportion of working-class students in admissions to all HEIs declined from 47.2 percent in 1933 to 44.1 percent in 1934. Vysshaia tekhnicheskaia shkola, no. 2 (1935): 15–16. 19. GARF, f. 8060, op. 1, d. 53, ll. 1–2. 20. Ibid. 21. GARF, f. 8060, op. 1, d. 23, l. 100; f. 2306, op. 69, d. 2166, l. 151; Krasnoe studenchetvo, no. 1 (1934): 4. 22. Arkhiv MGU, f. 1, op. 10, d. 301, l. 20. 23. Pravda, 9 January 1936. 24. Boldyrev, Direktivy o narodnom obrazovanii, 2: 93. 25. GARF, f. 8060, op. 1, d. 29, l. 44; Vysshaia tekhnicheskaia shkola, no. 2 (1935): 15. 26. Pravda, 28 August 1932. 27. Vysshaia tekhnicheskaia shkola, no. 2 (1935): 15. 28. GARF, f. 8060, op. 1, d. 5, ll. 52–53. 29. Boldyrev, Direktivy o narodnom obrazovanii, 2: 94. 30. Biulleten’ VKVTO, no. 6 (1936): 6. 31. In 1936, many commissariats still organized short-term preparatory courses to prepare workers for entrance examinations. However, the secondary schools were closed on June 1 for the summer vacation and could not give examinations to anyone. As a result, many workers who had completed preparatory courses were not allowed to take the entrance examinations, while some obtained certificates from rabfaks. Vysshaia shkola, no. 2 (1936): 7. The commissariats no longer organized shortterm preparatory courses after 1936. 32. Boldyrev, Direktivy o narodnom obrazovanii, 2: 94. 33. Biulleten’ VKVSh, no. 2 (1936): 7; GARF, f. 8060, op. 1, d. 73, l. 4. 34. Komsomol’skaia pravda, 12 August 1937. 35. For example, in 1936 the straight “A” graduates of ten-year schools who applied to Moscow University and Moscow Institute of Power Engineering exceeded the available seats. Vysshaia shkola, no. 2 (1936): 8. 36. The graduates of rabfaks constituted 36.4 percent of the student body at Soviet HEIs in 1935–1936; their percentage dropped to 22.9  in 1938–1939. Fredrika Tandler, “The Workers’ Faculty (Rabfak) System in the USSR” (Ph. D. diss., Columbia University, 1955): 298. 37. Pravda, 26 November 1936. 38. Biulleten’ VKVTO, no. 5 (1936): 2.

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39. The four grades used were “unsatisfactory,” “satisfactory,” “good,” “excellent.” Vysshaia shkola, no. 5 (1937): 35. 40. Vysshaia shkola, no. 2 (1936): 15–16. From 1938, applicants took entrance examinations on six subjects: Russian language, political literacy, mathematics, physics, chemistry, and a foreign language (English, German, or French). At HEIs where classes were not taught in Russian, the applicants were also given an examination on the language of instruction. Biulleten’ VKVSh, no. 4 (1938): 22–23. 41. Biulleten’ VKVTO, no. 5 (1936): 2; Biulleten’ VKVSh, no. 4 (1938): 23. 42. Pravda, 15 August 1923. 43. Vysshaia tekhnicheskaia shkola, no. 2 (1935): 16. 44. Stalin, Works, 13: 58–59. 45. See Kunaigorodskaia, Vysshaia shkola Leningrada, 155, 163. 46. Za kachestvo kadrov, nos. 10–11 (1931): 40. 47. Krasnoe studenchestvo, no. 1 (1927–1928): 48–49. 48. Direktivy VKP(b) po voprosam prosveshcheniia, 143–144. 49. Students at HEIs became younger when most of them came directly from general secondary schools. Therefore, the Central Committee of Komsomol became an important organization in overseeing student affairs. VTsSPS also played a role in supervising student affairs because the student union was considered as a trade union. 50. Boldyrev, Direktivy o narodnom obrazovanii, 2: 88–89. 51. After 1932, students’ academic performance was ranked in a four-grade system: excellent, good, satisfactory, and unsatisfactory. Biulleten’ VKVTO, no. 4 (1933): 5; no. 15 (1934): 11. 52. For the socialist competition between 1932 and 1935, see Krasnoe studenchestvo, no. 25 (1932): 1; no. 2 (1934): 9; nos. 3–4 (1934): 10–11; no. 13 (1934): 7; no. 3 (1935): 2. 53. Krasnoe studenchestvo, no. 7 (1934): 5. 54. The explanation of the Central Committee of Komsomol was quoted in an editorial of its newspaper. Komsoml’skaia pravda, 10 March 1936. 55. Students at Soviet HEIs were organized into academic groups. The number of students in each academic group varied from 1932 to 1937, when academic groups of a similar size (20 to 25 students) were created. Biulleten’ VKVSh, no. 9 (1937): 2; Vysshaia shkola, no. 2 (1937): 12. 56. Because socialist competition was organized by the trade union committee (profkom) at each HEI, the proforg was the most important leader of the socialist competition in each academic group. Sovetskoe studenchestvo, no. 5 (1938): 38–39. 57. The student union was considered as a trade union. 58. The scientific-technical group was an extracurricular group working on research projects.

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59. Sovetskoe studenchestvo, no. 5 (1936): 42–43. 60. Ibid., 43. 61. Vysshaia tekhnicheskaia shkola, no. 4 (1936): 13–14. 62. Sovetskoe studenchestvo, no. 10 (1936): 52. 63. Sovetskoe studenchestvo, no. 5 (1938): 38–39. 64. Stalin, Works, vol. 14 (London: Red Star Press, 1978), 262. 65. For example, in the academic plans for institutes and departments of mechanical engineering, the academic hours for Political Economy were reduced from 209 to 131, for Dialectical Materialism from 90 to 70, and for Leninism from 69 to 64. Vysshaia shokla, no. 2 (1938): 59. 66. At the institutions of higher technical education for industry, academic hours for Political Economy increased to 160, those for Leninism increased to 90, and those for the third course, now again called Dialectical and Historical Materialism, increased to 132. Sovetskoe studenchestvo, no. 4 (1938): 7. 67. Sovetskaia nauka, no. 2 (1939): 139–140. 68. 220 academic hours were allocated to Foundations of Marxism-Leninism, and 160 to Political Economy. For students studying economics and law, the number of hours was increased to 270 for the first course, and to 280 for the second course. Ibid. 69. Komsomol’skaia pravda, 16 May 1937. If students did not take the examination on any course, they carried a “debt” into the next semester and could remove it by taking the examination during the examination season of the following semester. 70. Sovetskoe studenchestvo, no. 9 (1938): 32. 71. Komsomol’skaia pravda, 16 May 1937. 72. Boldyrev, Direktivy o narodnom obrazovanii, 2: 97. 73. Sovetskaia nauka, no. 2 (1939): 140. 74. Sovetskaia nauka, no. 8 (1939): 6. 75. Pravda, 26 April 1939. 76. Nicholas S.  Timasheff, The Great Retreat: The Growth and Decline of Communism in Russia, (New York: E. P. Dutton & Company, 1946), 220. 77. Kendall E. Bailes, Technology and Society under Lenin and Stalin: Origins of the Soviet Technical Intelligentsia, 1917–1941 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1978), 228–229. 78. The conference decided to limit the number of admissions to HEIs from 1962 to 1964 to the range from 160,000 to 180,000. SMA, B243-1-213, ss. 25-35. But only 106,777, 132,820, and 147,037 students were actually admitted to HEIs in 1962, 1963, and 1964 respectively. Zhongguo jiaoyu nianjian, 1949–1981, 969. 79. Zhongguo jiaoyu nianjian, 1949–1981, 338.

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80. See rules for admissions to HEIs in 1962 and 1963, Renmin ribao, 23 June 1962; Guangming ribao, 31 May 1963. 81. Zhongguo jiaoyu nianjian, 1949–1981, 337–338. 82. SMA, B243-1-191, s. 36. 83. SMA, B243-1-263, s. 100; B243-1-288, s. 96. 84. SMA, B243-1-263, s. 99; B243-1-288, s. 95. 85. Zhongguo jiaoyu nianjian, 1949–1981, 338. 86. Pepper, Radicalism, 348. 87. For annual numbers of admissions to HEIs and annual numbers of high school graduates from 1961 to 1965, see Zhongguo jiaoyu nianjian, 1949–1981, 969, 1001. 88. Hong qi, no. 12 (1977): 8 89. In statistical data, those who graduated from high school in previous years were defined as other educated youths. In 1963, 10,148 candidates who took entrance examinations in Shanghai were other educated youths. Among them, 1924 were in the first category, 4167 in the second category, and 4057 in the third category. In 1964, 8594 candidates who took entrance examinations in Shanghai were other educated youths. Among them 1595 were in the first category, and 3940 and 3059 in the second and third categories respectively. SMA, B243-1-288, s. 94; B243-1-318, s. 29. 90. 3779 candidates who took entrance examinations in Shanghai in 1965 were other educated youths. Among them 1744 were in the first category, 1681 in the second category, and 354 in the third category. SMA, B243-1-400, s.19. 91. White-collar Communist cadres did not include Communists who held low-level leadership positions in rural areas and in factories. 92. SMA, B243-1-318, s. 31. 93. For example, among students admitted in Shanghai, those who had been born in the families of the “exploiting classes” constituted 25 percent in 1958, 21.1 percent in 1962, and 13.4 percent in 1965. SMA, A23-2-607, s. 137; B243-1-263, s. 70; B243-1-400, s. 21. The percentages for 1958 and 1962 are indicated in the first two sources; the percentage for 1965 is calculated according to data given in the third source. 94. See, for  example, SMA, B243-1-288, s. 88; B243-1-399, ss. 20-22; B243-1-399, ss. 67–68. 95. SMA, B243-1-333, ss. 31-34; B243-1-335, ss. 21–26, 42–49. 96. SMA, B 243-1-307, ss. 31–35. 97. Only 253 recommended candidates in Shanghai were accepted into HEIs in 1965. SMA, B243-1-400, s. 23. 98. Lu and Feng, Liu Shaoqi, 371. 99. Wang, Da dongluan, 17; Zhonghua jiaoyu da shiji, 403.

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100. Three most prominent cultural revolutionaries, Jiang Qing (Mao’s wife), Zhang Chunqiao, and Yao Wenyuan, became members of the politburo in 1969. Wang, Da dongluan, 238. 101. Hong qi, no. 10 (1966): 7. 102. See, for example, “A Record of the Great Events in the Struggle between the Two Lines in the Field of Higher Education” (an English translation of a publication of the Red Guards organizations), Chinese Sociology and Anthropology 2, nos. 1–2 (Fall–Winter 1969–1970): 26–27, 50–57. 103. Hong qi, no. 3 (1968): 3. 104. Zhonghua jiaoyu da shiji, 439. 105. Ibid., 426. The first issue of this column was published on March 29, 1969. The English translation of the two articles in this first issue of the column can be found in Chinese Education 2, no. 4 (Winter 1969–1970): 14–23. 106. Renmin ribao, 22 July 1968. Mao’s comment was conveyed to the public in the People’s Daily editor’s note on the article. Mao read the article and wrote his comment before the article was published in the People’s Daily. 107. Zhonghua jiaoyu da shiji, 433. 108. For this procedure, see Renmin ribao, 4, 22 March 1972. 109. Pepper, Radicalism, 336–351, 382–385. 110. Mao, Wengao, 11: 22, 96. 111. Wang et al., Beijing daxue jishi, 2: 747; Wang, Da dongluan, 359; Shi Jiping, Yang Jiashi, and Tao Zhongyuan, eds., Jia zai Qinghua (Jinan: Shandong huabao chubanshe, 2008), 48. 112. Peking Review, no. 26 (1966): 18–21 113. Renmin ribao, 18 June 1966. 114. Such suggestions came not only from faculty members, but also from Communist officials who had been removed from their positions in the first phase of the Great Cultural Revolution, but were reappointed to leadership positions at HEIs at the end of the 1960s or the beginning of the 1970s. Liu Bing, Feng yu suiyue: 1964–1976 nian de Qinghua (Beijing: Dangdai zhongguo chubanshe, 2008), 152. 115. Zhonghua jiaoyu dashi ji, 435. 116. Ibid., 450. The Science and Education Group included many staff members of the former Education Ministry. It cautiously responded to the concerns about academic standards expressed by many faculty members and officials at HEIs in 1973. However, one of the deputy directors of the Science and Education Group was Chi Qun, who was an ally of the top cultural revolutionaries, Jiang Qing and Zhang Chunqiao. Therefore, at many other times, this government agency sponsored radical policy measures. 117. Renmin ribao, 10 August 1973.

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118. Zheng Qian, Bei geming de jiaoyu: wenhua da geming zhong de “jiaoyu geming” (Beijing: Zhongguo qingnian chubanshe, 1999), 86. 119. Pepper, Radicalism, 456–465; Jonathan Unger, Education under Mao: Class and Competition in Canton Schools, 1960–1980 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1982), 192–194; Jonathan Unger, “The Chinese Controversy over Higher Education,” Pacific Affairs 53, no. 1 (1980): 33–35. Pepper’s discussion centered on the question of who in the rural communities benefited from the new policy for selection for higher education. The categories she used in her analysis were rural youths, urban educated youths resettled in rural areas, and children of officials. She concluded that while some ordinary rural educated youths also benefited from the new policy, children of Communist officials appeared to be the main beneficiaries. The categories Unger used were young factory employees, rusticated urban youths, peasant youths, soldiers, and others. He also concluded that a large proportion of the students admitted to HEIs were children of Communist officials. 120. Zhongguo jiaoyu nianjian 1949–1981, 695. 121. Ibid. 122. Mao Zendong, Zhou Enlai, Liu Shaoqi, and Deng Xiaoping lun jiaoyu, 360–365. 123. SMA, B243-1-312, ss. 8–9. 124. SMA, B243-1-376, ss. 12–13. One of the reasons for this relocation was that East China Normal University was funded by the Ministry of Education. Both the Half-Time Work and Half-Time Study Pedagogic Institute and Shanghai Pedagogic Institute were funded by the Shanghai Municipal Government. 125. Mao, Wengao, 11: 22–23, 34, 96–97, 391. 126. Mao, Wengao, 11: 23; Bo, Ruogan, 2: 1164–1165. 127. SMA, B243-1-424, s. 4. 128. Ibid., s. 9. 129. Ibid., ss. 10–11. 130. BMA, 1-22-1281, s. 10. The course of study in the social science and humanities programs at comprehensive universities and at some other HEIs was extended to five years in the mid-1950s. 131. Ibid., ss. 78–79. 132. Ibid., ss. 10–11. 133. SMA, B243-1-424, s. 12. 134. Ibid. 135. Wang et al., Beijing daxue jishi, 2: 765, 767.

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References Archives Arkhiv MGU (Moskovskogo gosudarstvennogo universiteta)—Archives of Moscow State University. BMA—Beijing Municipal Archives (Beijing shi danganguan). GARF—State Archives of the Russian Federation (Gosudarstvennyi arkhiv Rossiiskoi Federatsii). SMA—Shanghai Municipal Archives (Shanghai shi danganguan).

Russian Newspapers

and

Journals

Biulleten’ Vsesoiuznogo komiteta po delam vysshei shkoly (VKVSh). Biulleten’ Vsesoiuznogo komiteta po vysshemu tekhnicheskomu obrazovaniiu (VKVTO). Komsomol’skaia pravda. Krasnoe studenchestvo. Pravda. Sbornik postanovlenii i prikazov po promyshlennosti. Sovetskaia nauka. Sovetskoe studenchestvo. Vysshaia shkola. Vysshaia tekhnicheskaia shkola. Za kachestvo kadrov.

Chinese Newspaper

and

Journal

Hong qi. Renmin ribao.

Books

in

Russian

Boldyrev, N.I., ed. 1947. Direktivy VKP(b) i postanovleniia Sovetskogo pravitel’stva o narodnom obrazovanii: Sbornik dokumentov za 1917–1947 gg. 2 vols. Moscow: Izdatel’stvo Akademii pedagogicheskikh nauk RSFSR. Direktivy VKP (b) po voprosam prosveshcheniia. 1931. 3d ed. Moscow: OGIZ. Kupaigorodskaia, A.P. 1984. Vysshaia shkola Leningrada v pervye gody Sovetskoi vlasti (1917–1925 gg.). Leningrad: Nauka.

5  SOCIALISM AND GOALS OF HIGHER EDUCATION IN THE SOVIET UNION… 

Books

in

189

Chinese

Bo Yibo. 1991 and 1993. Ruogan zhongda juece yu shijian de huigu. 2 vols. Beijing: Zhonggong zhongyang dangxiao chubanshe. Liu Bing. 2008. Feng yu suiyue: 1964–1976 nian de Qinghua. Beijing: Dangdai zhongguo chubanshe. Lu Tong and Feng Laigang. 2007. Liu Shaoqi zai jianguo hou de 20 nian. Shenyang: Liaoning renmin chubanshe. Mao Zedong. 1987–1996. Jianguo yilai Mao Zedong wengao. 11 vols. Beijing: Zhongyang wenxian chubanshe. Mao Zedong, Zhou Enlai, Liu Shaoqi, Deng Xiaoping lun jiaoyu. 1994. Beijing: Renmin jiaoyu chubanshe. Shi Jiping, Yang Jiashi, and Tao Zhongyuan, eds. 2008. Jia zai Qinghua. Jinan: Shandong huabao chubanshe. Wang Nianyi. 2009. Da dongluan de niandai. Beijing: Renmin chubanshe. Wang Xuezhen, Wang Xiaoting, Huang Wenyi, and Guo Jianrong. 1998. Beijing daxue jishi (1898–1997). 2 vols. Beijing: Beijing daxue chubanshe. Zheng Qian. 1999. Bei geming de jiaoyu: wenhua da geming zhong de “jiaoyu geming”. Beijing: Zhongguo qingnian chubanshe. Zhongguo jiaoyu nianjian, 1949–1981. 1984. Beijing: Zhongguo dabaike quanshu chubanshe. Zhonghua renmin gongheguo jiaoyu dashiji, 1949–1982. 1983. Beijing: Jiaoyu kexue chubanshe.

Books, Articles,

and

Unpublished Material

in

English

“A Record of the Great Events in the Struggle between the Two Lines in the Field of Higher Education” (an English translation of a publication of the Red Guards organizations). 1969–1970. Chinese Sociology and Anthropology 2 (1–2, Fall–Winter): 17–76. Bailes, Kendall E. 1978. Technology and Society under Lenin and Stalin: Origins of the Soviet Technical Intelligentsia, 1917–1941. Princeton: Princeton University Press. De Witt, Nicholas. 1961. Education and Professional Employment in the USSR. Washington, DC: National Science Foundation. Pepper, Suzanne. 1996. Radicalism and Education Reform in Twentieth-Century China: The Search for an Ideal Development Model. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Stalin, J.V. 1954. Works. 13 vols. Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House. ———. 1978. Works. Vol. 14. London: Red Star Press. Tandler, Fredrika. 1955. The Workers’ Faculty (Rabfak) System in the USSR. Ph. D. dissertation. Columbia University.

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Timasheff, Nicholas S. 1946. The Great Retreat: The Growth and Decline of Communism in Russia. New York: E. P. Dutton & Company. Unger, Jonathan. 1980. The Chinese Controversy over Higher Education. Pacific Affairs 53 (1): 29–47. ———. 1982. Education under Mao: Class and Competition in Canton Schools, 1960–1980. New York: Columbia University Press.

CHAPTER 6

Transformations in Higher Education Institutions Under High Stalinism and Late Maoism

One of the transformations in Soviet and Chinese HEIs examined in this chapter concerned the dichotomy between the old and new intelligentsia. As has been seen, the old intelligentsia was defined as bourgeois in Russia right after the Bolshevik revolution and in China starting in 1957. Professors who had begun their careers before the Communists came to power belonged to the old intelligentsia, and they became the targets of the class war both in the Soviet Union during the First Five-Year Plan period and in China during the Great Leap period. This class war was brought to an end in the Soviet Union toward the end of the First Five-­ Year Plan and in China after the end of the Great Leap Forward. However, whereas the dichotomy between the old and new intelligentsia eventually disappeared in the Soviet Union under high Stalinism, it was replaced by new dichotomies in China under late Maoism. In the Soviet Union, although the epithet “bourgeois intelligentsia” was no longer used after 1931, many Communists still dichotomized the old and new intelligentsia and regarded the old professors (who had begun their careers in Tsarist Russia) as a conservative cohort until 1937. The Great Purge began in the year when Stalin declared that the Soviet Union had become a classless society. The victims of the Great Purge were defined as “enemies of the people” rather than class enemies. Many professors were arrested or dismissed from their jobs, but many Communists, including Communist officials on the higher education front, were also arrested © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 L. S. Zhu, Stalinism, Maoism, and Socialism in Higher Education, Global Histories of Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-88777-3_6

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as people’s enemies. A paradoxical consequence of the Great Purge was that the old ideological view that dichotomized the old and new intelligentsia became irrelevant, and the old professors who did not become victims of the Great Purge were fully integrated into the Soviet elite. The first phase of the Great Cultural Revolution in China shared a common feature with the Great Purge in the Soviet Union: in both cases, a large number of Communist officials were victimized by the Communist government. But the ideological source of the Great Cultural Revolution in China was the new Maoist doctrine of socialism, which held that class struggle would continue in socialist society for a long time not only because the ideological influence of the old bourgeoisie would persist, but also because a new bourgeoisie could emerge. In the first phase of the Great Cultural Revolution, the attack on the “power-holders taking the capitalist road” was accompanied by a new and brutal class war against the bourgeois intelligentsia. Moreover, as the cultural revolutionaries defined the Chinese system of higher education prior to 1966 as a bourgeois system, the definition of the bourgeois intelligentsia was eventually expanded to include educated professionals who had begun their careers before 1949 as well as those who received higher education between 1949 and 1966. As a result, two new ideological dichotomies were created. First of all, because Mao called for reeducating the intelligentsia by workers, peasants, and soldiers, there was now a dichotomy between the intelligentsia, on the one hand, and workers, peasants, and soldiers, on the other. Second, there was also a dichotomy between the redefined old intelligentsia, which now included all the existing educated professionals, and the new intelligentsia that would be produced by a reformed system of higher learning. These new ideological dichotomies played an important role in shaping the power structure at Chinese HEIs after the first phase of the Great Cultural Revolution. The divergence of late Maoism from high Stalinism was also manifested in the process of education at HEIs. In the Soviet Union, educational conventions such as examinations were accepted after 1932 in the endeavor to raise academic standards in higher learning. After 1934, the Soviet state even selectively restored the educational traditions of Tsarist Russia. More importantly, the centralization of higher education management, which began in 1932, was further strengthened in 1936. From the mid-1930s, the centralization of higher education management was accompanied by the increasingly rigorous enforcement of uniform academic plans and course outlines. Thus, whereas the idea of applying scientific rationality to

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the organization of higher education had propelled radical experimentations in the process of education at Soviet HEIs during the First Five-Year Plan period, it reinforced the authoritarian nature of the Soviet system of higher learning under high Stalinism. In China, the short-lived endeavor to raise academic standards after the end of the Great Leap Forward was also accompanied by a recentralization of higher education management. However, after the first phase of the Great Cultural Revolution, higher education management was again decentralized. Moreover, from 1970 to 1976, although students were admitted into various specialties, they were no longer educated according to predesigned curricula. Thus, although the reforms in the process of education at Chinese HEIs during the era of late Maoism aimed to create a new and socialist system of higher education, they not only rejected the idea of applying scientific rationality to the organization of higher learning, but even precluded any systematic approach to education.

The Status of Professors and the Dichotomy Between the Old and New Intelligentsia at Soviet Institutions of Higher Education Under High Stalinism During the First Five-Year Plan period, the old, bourgeois professors not only became targets of the class war, but their title also lost the previous meaning. With the expansion of higher education, the number of faculty members at HEIs almost tripled.1 Before 1928, professorial appointments (the appointment of any faculty member as a professor) had to be approved by Narkompros. From 1930 to 1932, the economic organizations and other government agencies that oversaw HEIs as well as directors of HEIs conferred the professorial tittle on many new faculty members they appointed, without regard to the academic qualifications and teaching experience of the latter.2 S.  B. Volynsky, an official of VKVTO, wrote in 1934: World famous old professors with decades of working experience in higher education institutions and dozens of major works, engineers-praktiki3 (who came) from industry, young people fresh from the benches of college classrooms, teachers of secondary schools lured (to HEIs) by better material

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conditions … stood in the same rank, had the same title of professor or docent, occupied the same position in society, and enjoyed the same material compensation.4

The class war against the bourgeois intelligentsia was destructive to Stalin’s industrialization program. This was clearly the reason that Stalin toned down the class-war rhetoric in his speech to the industrial executives on June 23, 1931. Stalin declared that a few years ago, the militant section of the old, bourgeois technical intelligentsia engaged in wrecking as a form of resistance to the Soviet government’s offensive against capitalist elements in the economy; but now there were “signs of a change of attitude” in favor of the Soviet government on the part of the old intelligentsia because the Soviet government had defeated the capitalist elements. He called for changing the policy toward the old intelligentsia in this new circumstance.5 This can hardly be seen as a rehabilitation of the old intelligentsia, but the class war against the bourgeois intelligentsia, including the class war against the professors at HEIs, was brought to an end after Stalin’s speech. The September 1932 resolution of TsIK on higher education and secondary professional education called for the restoration of academic degrees, which had been abolished in 1918; it also declared that titles such as professor, docent, and assistant should be conferred on faculty members according to their academic qualifications, indicated by their scholarly works.6 But this directive was not implemented until after January 1934, when Sovnarkom issued a decree, which established two academic degrees (doctoral degree and Candidate degree) and connected academic degrees with academic titles. Henceforth the title of professor was awarded to those who had earned a doctoral degree, the title of docent was awarded to those who had earned a Candidate degree, and the title of assistant was granted to those who had graduated from an HEI (who was not awarded a degree). Moreover, while the decision to award the Candidate degree and the title of docent could be made by an HEI, it had to be ratified by the Qualifications Committee in a commissariat that oversaw HEIs; the decision to award the doctoral degree and the title of professor was to be made by the Highest Attestation Committee in VKVTO or by the Qualifications Committee in a republic’s Commissariat of Enlightenment or Commissariat of Health (whose HEIs were not subject to the authority of VKVTO).7

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The academic qualifications of the existing docents and professors had to be reevaluated by an appropriate Qualifications Committee.8 Although they were not required to earn an academic degree in order to retain their current titles, they had to have scholarly works at least equivalent to a Candidate or doctoral dissertation.9 By the end of 1936, when this academic reevaluation had been completed, one quarter to one third of the existing professors had lost their professorial title.10 As a result, old professors, although a small minority in the whole academic profession, dominated its top rank. More than half of the reconfirmed professors in the institutions of higher technical education under the Commissariat of Heavy Industry and the Commissariat of Railroads started their academic careers before the Bolshevik revolution.11 The proportion of old professors among the faculty members of the highest rank at universities was even higher. For example, at the beginning of 1937, 33 out of the 42 professors at Kazan University started their careers before or during 1917;12 out of the 122 professors at Leningrad University, 95 started their careers before or during 1917.13 After 1932, the kafedry were restored at all HEIs. According to the September 1932 resolution of TsIK, chairpersons of the kafedry were to be selected from among professors.14 In reality, because most of the new faculty members appointed during the First Five-Year Plan period lacked academic credentials to be professors, a large number of kafedry were not chaired by professors throughout the 1930s. For instance, at the end of 1936, there was a shortage of 630 professors just for the purpose of staffing each kafedra (single form of kafedry) with one professor in the institutions of higher technical education under the Commissariat of Heavy Industry.15 This meant that the number of kafedry without any professor in these institutions was larger than 630, because some kafedry might have more than one professor. As the kafedry that were not chaired by a professor were considered as weak kafedry, many HEIs tried to recruit professors from other schools by all possible means. Professors who were willing to be recruited to another institution became hot commodities; they were often offered high salaries and other attractive material compensations by the recruiting institution. This was clearly demonstrated in the competition between Saratov State University and the Institute of Physics of the Academy of Sciences in recruiting a professor of physics by the name of Blokhintsev from Moscow University. In February 1937, the acting director of Saratov University, Khvorostin, wrote a letter regarding Professor Blokhintsev to Bubnov, Commissar of

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Enlightenment of the Russian Republic. After long negotiations, Saratov University, offering an attractive salary (1000 rubles a month), persuaded Professor Blokhintsev to accept its invitation to serve as chairperson of the Kafedra of Theoretical Physics, and his new position and salary were approved by Narkompros. However, at the beginning of 1937, Professor Blokhintsev was invited to work at the Institute of Physics of the Academy of Sciences, which promised to provide him with an apartment in Moscow and other favorable material conditions. In his letter to Bubnov, Khvorostin requested the Commissar of Enlightenment to contact leaders of the Academy of Sciences and let them know that what the Institute of Physics did would deprive Saratov University of a valuable academic.16 Student organizations and Communist students finally lost their power to intervene in internal governance and academic affairs at HEIs in the era of high Stalinism. The September 1932 resolution of TsIK declared that the principle of one-person management should be extended to the chairperson of the kafedra, and the student organizations (including the party organizations) had no power to interfere with the decisions of the HEI director, the department dean, and the kafedra chairperson.17 Moreover, starting in 1934, the principle of one-person management was enforced more rigorously. Speaking at a conference of activists from HEIs in Kyiv at the beginning of the academic year 1934–1935, David Petrovsky, director of the Commissariat of Heavy Industry’s Main Administration of Educational Institutions, told student leaders that they had no power to discuss orders issued by the directors of HEIs, including orders that concerned students.18 However, many Communist officials at HEIs as well as in the government agencies overseeing higher education still dichotomized the old and new intelligentsia and regarded the old professors as a conservative cohort until 1937. This point of view was clearly demonstrated in the letter to Narkompros from the Communist director of the Institute of Botany at Moscow University about his conflict with a group of old professors in 1934 and in the letter from the director of Moscow University about the same conflict. The source of this conflict seems to have been the relationship between the institute, which did not even have its own laboratories, and the Department of Biology, which controlled all the laboratories. While the newly appointed Communist director of the institute, Bosse, was determined to have the authority to decide the direction of the research work in the institute, professors, who served both as the chairpersons of the kafedry in the Department of Biology and heads of the sections

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in the institute, thought that they did not have an obligation to take orders from him. Nevertheless, in his letter to Narkompros, Bosse depicted this conflict as a political war between him and social aliens, and made a special effort to point out social origins of his opponents: son of a great ship-­ owner, son of a priest, son of a great financier, son of a merchant, and son of a prerevolutionary foreman.19 The director of Moscow University, Aleksei Butiagin, did not take any heavy-handed measures against the old professors involved. However, in his letter to Narkompros at the beginning of 1935, Butiagin characterized this conflict as a confrontation between the practical orientation of the new director of the institute and “the organizational close-mindedness of the old professors, reactionary in their essence, and theoretical direction of their research work.”20 The Great Purge initially reinforced the Communist officials’ prejudice against old professors. A report on the state of higher technical education, submitted by VKVSh to Sovnarkom at the beginning of 1937, asserted that “relying on their tight corporative solidarity,” the old professors “resist the new Soviet force’s penetration into their circle.” It argued that “the main and decisive difficulty in fighting against the conservative part of the professoriate is the lack or the slow growth of Soviet scientific-­ technical cadres of comparable qualifications.” Therefore, the report expressed concerns over the poor academic performance of the Communist graduate students and used Moscow Mendeleev  Institute of Chemical Engineering to illustrate the problem: there the Communists constituted a third of the graduate students, but they made up 50 percent of those who dropped out, and 54 percent of those who extended the duration of their graduate studies. Explaining the cause of this problem, the report contended that the poor academic performance of the Communist graduate students was a result of the “passive resistance, approaching sabotage, that the old professors offered to the growth of these cadres.”21 The years of the Great Purge were the most difficult time for professors and other faculty members (as well as students) at HEIs. Robert Conquest’s book Great Terror includes a special chapter on the cultural front, which lists the big names in the academic world who were arrested during the Great Purge and the academic fields that were devastated by arrests.22 In addition, even a larger number of faculty members were dismissed from their jobs. A document in the archives of Moscow University, titled “Lists of the Students and Professorial-Teaching Staff of Moscow State University Dismissed in 1936” (which lists dismissed faculty members by department), provides some indication of how large a proportion of the faculty

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members was dismissed from their jobs during the Great Purge. 23 There was a total of 623 faculty members at Moscow University in 1936.24 This document lists 132 dismissed faculty members, thus indicating that about 20 percent of the faculty were dismissed in one year. There were 42 professors and 65 docents among the dismissed faculty members. Although the document does not indicate the reasons for dismissals, it provides some evidence to support the conclusion that most of these faculty members were dismissed for political reasons. Fifty-three faculty members (15 professors, 15 docents, and 23 assistants) were dismissed from the Department of Biology. As Robert Conquest indicated, because of the rise of Trofim Lysenko in the 1930s, biology became the most politicized scientific discipline, and many prominent biologists were arrested from 1936 to 1938. Some of them were executed, and more died in prison.25 Other two large cohorts of dismissed faculty members belonged to the Department of History (nine professors and seven docents) and the university Kafedra26 of Dialectical Materialism (three professors and eleven docents). Information about faculty members dismissed from pedagogic institutes in the Russian Republic in 1935 indicates that a large proportion of those dismissed for political reasons were instructors of ideological courses and professors and docents of history.27 These faculty members could be easily accused of expressing Trotskyist or other politically unacceptable views. The Great Purge in the Soviet Union and the first phase of the Great Cultural Revolution in China shared a common feature: in both cases, a large number of Communist officials became victims of the Communist government. Many Communist officials on the higher education front in the Soviet Union were arrested during the Great Purge. In August 1936, the first show trial of the Purge era (the trial of Zinoviev, Kamenev, and some other ex-Trotskyists and ex-Zinovievists) took place. In the same year, many directors of HEIs were arrested as Trotskyists. There were 72 directors of institutions of higher technical education under the jurisdiction of the Commissariat of Heavy Industry in 1936; 15 of them were arrested as Trotskyists.28 1937, when the second show trial of the Purge era (the trial of Piatakov, Radek, and other 15 defendants) took place, and 1938, the year in which the third show trial (the trial of Bukharin, Rykov, and other 19 defendants) was held, also witnessed the escalation of the terror. During these years, not only were directors of HEIs arrested,29 but chief officials in the government agencies supervising educational institutions also became victims of the terror machine. The latter group included

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Andrei Bubnov, Commissar of Enlightenment of the Russian Republic;30 Ivan Mezhlauk, chairperson of VKVSh; David Petrovsky, director of the Main Administration of Educational Institutions within the Commissariat of Heavy Industry; and M. P. Orakhelashvili, director of the Administration of Higher Schools within Narkompros. The Great Purge was also different from the first phase of China’s Great Cultural Revolution in significant ways. The Chinese Communist officials who were removed from their positions in the first phase of the Great Cultural Revolution were labeled as “power-holders taking the capitalist road,” and they were deemed to have fallen under the influence of the bourgeois ideology. By contrast, the Great Purge began in the year in which Stalin declared that the Soviet Union had become a classless society. The victims of the Great Purge were defined as “enemies of the people” rather than class enemies. A common accusation against most Communist officials who became victims of the Great Purge was sabotage, but  the Stalinist regime never offered an explanation why so many Communist officials decided to sabotage the Soviet cause. All sorts of problems in higher education or policy measures that were negated later were regarded as a result of the sabotage by the Communist officials who had been arrested. In 1930, when institutions of higher technical education were divided into specialized institutes, a large number of tiny institutes (without libraries and laboratories) were created, and many institutes shared one campus. This now was regarded as a result of Petrovsky’s sabotage.31 As has been seen, academic hours allocated to the ideological courses were reduced from 1934 to 1937. After Mezhlauk’s arrest, this was regarded as part of his sabotaging activities,32 although the major reduction of academic hours for ideological courses had taken place before VKVSh was created and Mezhlauk became its chairperson. Orakhelashvili’s alleged sabotaging activities included the budget misallocation that increased funds for pedagogic institutes at the expense of universities.33 As a large number of Communist officials became “enemies of the people” and were accused of sabotage, an incidental and paradoxical consequence of the Great Purge was that the old ideological view that dichotomized the  old and new intelligentsia became irrelevant. After Petrovsky had been arrested, an article written by the director of Moscow Geological Prospecting Institute and published in the journal of VKVSh made the following point concerning Petrovsky’s alleged sabotage in academic affairs:

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The heads of program-methodological commissions (in the Main Administration of Educational Institutions of the Commissariat of Heavy Industry) were usually well-known professors. But a majority of them implemented Petrovsky’s will without complaint. Many leaders of program-­ methodological commissions regarded their duties as mere formality, but Petrovsky was happy with this. In order to protect himself while pursuing his double-dealing and counter-revolutionary line, he always hid himself behind the “broad” shoulders of one or another professor.34

This was a complete reversal of the rhetoric of the First Five-Year Plan period, when the Communist managers of industrial enterprises were said to be duped by the wreckers, who were bourgeois specialists. Old professors who had begun their careers before 1917 were even upheld as models for students after 1937. This was the message conveyed by an article published in the national journal for students in 1938. This article argued that Soviet students who studied at the same HEI during the same years did not develop strong friendship among them. Contrasting Soviet students with professors who started their careers before 1917, the article asserted: “If you have a talk with our professors and academicians, whose names and knowledge are prides of Soviet science, you’ll find that although decades separate them from their youth of the student years, even now they still remember every single student of their class (at their alma mater), and they have maintained friendship with many of them until today and help each other in work and life.”35 This view on friendship among old professors contrasted sharply with the point of view conveyed in the above-cited report of early 1937 from VKVSh, which condemned the alleged “corporative solidarity” of old professors. It could be argued that old professors who had not become victims of the Great Purge were fully integrated into the Soviet elite in the aftermath of the Great Purge. Moreover, the privileged status of professors was further enhanced in 1937 with the change of the pay system for faculty members at HEIs. Before 1937, only a small number of faculty members, which included the chairpersons of kafedry, were paid according to their position, while most of the faculty members were paid by hours of teaching.36 Starting in the academic year 1937–1938, all faculty members were paid according to their position and academic rank. In this change, the salaries for most faculty members increased.37 But salaries for the top-ranking faculty members increased more significantly than those for their mid-­ranking and low-ranking colleagues. According to the salary schedule established

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by Sovnarkom in 1937, the monthly salary for a professor who served as chairperson of a kafedra and who had been in the rank of professor for more than ten years was 1500 rubles (contrast this with the salary that Saratov University offered to Professor Blokhintsev in order to recruit him from Moscow University). By contrast, the monthly salary for a faculty member with a Candidate degree who had served as a docent for more than ten years was 900; an assistant who had worked for less than five years was paid 500 rubles a month. The laboratory assistants who had completed secondary professional education were paid 350 rubles a month in their first five years of employment, and their monthly salary would be increased only to 450 rubles after ten years of employment.38 Thus, professors as a group were one of the main beneficiaries of Stalin’s justification of pay differentials according to the degree of qualification as a legitimate feature of socialist society.

The Transformation of the Dichotomy Between the Old and New Intelligentsia at Chinese Institutions of Higher Learning Under Late Maoism As in the Soviet Union during the First Five-Year Plan period, the expansion of higher education in China during the Great Leap period resulted in an enormous increase of faculty members: from 1957 to 1961, as can be seen in Table  6.1, the total number of faculty members at Chinese HEIs was more than doubled. The new faculty members at Chinese HEIs, most of whom were selected from among graduates of HEIs each year, were appointed as teaching assistants. According to the salary schedule established by the Ministry of Higher Education in 1956, the monthly salary for a highest-paid professor was between 327 and 390 yuan, Table 6.1  Number of faculty members by ranks at Chinese HEIs Year

Total

1957 70,018 1958 84,993 1961 158,736 1965 138,116

Full professors

Associate professors

Lecturers

Teachers without ranks

Teaching assistants

4165 4315 3871 3506

3453 3215 3529 4382

17,464 13,025 24,358 29,200

0 17,084 28,878 11,611

44,486 47,354 98,100 89,417

Source: Zhongguo jiaoyu nianjian, 1949–1981, 973

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depending on regions; but the monthly  salary for a beginning teaching assistant was only between 53 and 63 yuan.39 It was assumed at that time that junior faculty members could move up on the ladder when they met qualifications for a higher rank. However, as Table  6.1 indicates, while some teaching assistants were promoted to the rank of lecturer from 1958 to 1965, only a small number of lecturers was promoted to the rank of associate professor during these years, and the number of full professors decreased. There were both practical and ideological reasons for the small number of promotions during these years. The practical reason was the chaos of the Great Leap period and the economic retrenchment in the urban sector that followed the end of the Great Leap Forward. The ideological reason was the ideology of late Maoism. As has been seen, after the Sino-Soviet split, the CCP defined the Soviet Union as a revisionist country, and the Maoist interpretation was that revisionism prevailed in the Soviet Union because a high-salaried stratum, made up of bureaucrats and the high echelon of the intelligentsia, had emerged there and had become a new bourgeoisie. Therefore, preventing the emergence of a new high-salaried stratum in China became a new political objective. Mao himself remarked in June 1964: “In accordance with our policy, bourgeois intellectuals may be bought when necessary, but why should we buy proletarian intellectuals?”40 Thus, the relatively well-paid full and associate professors were like a small aristocracy in the vast sea of academic lower classes in the years after the Great Leap Forward. With the end of the Great Leap Forward in 1961, the class war against the bourgeois intelligentsia was also brought to an end. From February to May 1961, the State Council’s Office of Education and Culture, the Office of Culture and Education of the CCP’s North China Bureau, and the Beijing Municipal Party Committee’s Department of Universities and Science sent their staff members to some universities in Beijing to ascertain the state of affairs in HEIs. Their inquiry in the Department of Chinese at Beijing University found that the professors who had been verbally attacked during the Great Leap period were still haunted by the unpleasant memory of mistreatment and cautiously kept distance from young faculty members and students, because the latter had been active in criticizing them.41 Consequently, in late 1961 and early 1962, the party officials at HEIs were called upon to reexamine the accusations made against professors during the Great Leap period and clear them of the wrong accusations.42

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As raising academic standards became a new priority in 1961, the system of internal governance at HEIs was also modified. While the principle of party committee leadership was preserved, the party committee was called upon to refrain from assuming duties that should be executed by the president and vice presidents.43 Both as a gesture symbolizing the party’s new conciliatory policy toward the old intelligentsia and as a measure for encouraging input from professors in the management of academic affairs, additional vice presidents were appointed from among professors at many HEIs. For example, four professors, including Fu Ying, a chemistry professor who had been criticized many times during the Great Leap period, were appointed as vice presidents at Beijing University in 1961.44 More importantly, the power of the combined party cells in academic departments was restricted. The “Provisional Regulations for Higher Education Institutions Directly Administered by the Ministry of Education,” issued by the Central Committee of the CCP in 1961, included articles about internal governance at HEIs. These articles declared that the power of the party in directing the HEI should be concentrated in the party committee, but should not be dispersed to the lower-level party organizations; the dean of the academic department was the “responsible administrator” of the department; the combined party cell should concentrate on political and ideological work and on party-­ building activities.45 However, when party meetings discussing the “Provisional Regulations” were held at HEIs, many party officials expressed their concern that if the combined party cells took a hands-off approach, the party’s role in leading academic departments would be weakened; the nonparty deans of the departments, given their new status as responsible administrators, would disregard the leaders of combined party cells. Some party officials even expressed a  worry that once the nonparty deans became responsible administrators of the academic departments, they would have to be given access to confidential information that should have been accessible only to the party members.46 With such strong opposition from the party officials, it was impossible for nonparty deans to receive any real power. But the Communist professors who served as deans were given real power. Moreover, because more lecturers than professors had been admitted into the CCP after the mid-1950s, it was now possible to find Communist lecturers of senior standing to serve as associate deans and function as de facto administrators in the departments where the deans were nonparty professors.47

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In 1964, as the era of late Maoism began, some policy measures were undertaken for the purpose of preventing the emergence of a new educated elite, as has been seen in Chap. 5. In 1964 and 1965, the state of higher education was reassessed as the Socialist Education Movement began to encompass HEIs. The Socialist Education Movement started in the rural areas in 1963 as both an ideological education campaign and a campaign against corruption among Communist officials. In 1964, with Mao’s insistence, the goal of the Socialist Education Movement was redefined, as exposing and fighting against the “power-holders taking the capitalist road” became its main objective.48 As elsewhere, the Socialist Education Movement at an HEI was led by a work team sent there by a  higher-level party organization. In late 1964, some HEIs in Beijing, including Beijing University and Beijing Normal University, received work teams sent by the Central Committee’s Department of Propaganda and the Beijing Municipal Party Committee. In its report to the Beijing Municipal Party Committee, submitted in January 1965, the work team at Beijing Normal University asserted that the Great Leap period was a glorious period of educational revolution in the history of this university, but the revolutionary spirit was lost after 1961, and the bourgeois intelligentsia regained influence at the university.49 The work team at Beijing University came to an even bolder conclusion. In its report to the Central Committee’s Department of Propaganda and the Beijing Municipal Party Committee, it declared that Beijing University’s party committee took the capitalist road.50 This meant that main officials of this party committee, including its first secretary, Lu Ping, became “power-holders taking the capitalist road.” However, this verdict was rejected by the Secretariat of the Central Committee of the CCP.51 One of the reasons for its rejection of the work team’s verdict was that the policy measures undertaken at Beijing University after 1961 for the purpose of raising academic standards were not different from those adopted at other HEIs. As Peng Zhen, the first secretary of the Beijing Municipal Party Committee and a member of both the Politburo and Secretariat of the CCP’s Central Committee, made it clear in his speech on June 29, 1965 to Beijing University’s Communist officials and the members of the work team sent to this university, if the party committee at Beijing University could be accused of taking the capitalist road, the party committees at other HEIs would face the same accusation.52

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Although the reassessment of the state of higher education in 1964 and 1965 did not result in removing any important Communist official in HEIs as a “power-holder taking the capitalist road,” it induced a new harsh view on professors. The epithets “bourgeois intelligentsia” and “bourgeois professors,” which had not been used after 1961, were again used frequently in the internal party documents. There seemed to be a new consensus among the Communist officials on the higher education front that after 1961, as the party was making policy adjustments, the bourgeois intelligentsia exaggerated the shortcomings of the educational reforms undertaken during the Great Leap period and attempted to completely reverse the party’s educational policy. This was a point made by the Socialist-Education work team at Beijing Normal University in the above-­ mentioned report. The same report even contended that after 1961 most academic departments at Beijing Normal University were controlled by the bourgeois specialists and by the professors and lecturers who had become members of the Communist Party but still retained strong bourgeois ideas.53 In its self-assessment, the party committee at Beijing University defended itself against the accusations made by the work team; however, as a self-criticism, this party committee stated that it had sometimes yielded to the pressure from the bourgeois intelligentsia after 1961.54 In 1964, the Beijing Municipal Party Committee’s Department of Universities and Science began to compile newsletters intended to inform Beijing’s high-level party officials of the state of affairs at HEIs. Many of these newsletters consisted of articles criticizing professors for their past “reactionary” political positions and current bourgeois ideas.55 One of the newsletters contended that although the dean of the Department of History at Beijing Normal University was a Communist professor, he and other professors were leading the young faculty members in the department in the path toward being bourgeois specialists.56 The radical position taken by the Socialist-Education work team sent to Beijing University actually presaged what would happen at HEIs during the first phase of the Great Cultural Revolution. Lu Ping was attacked in a wall poster by the radicals at Beijing University on May 25, 1966. Because of Mao’s support, the content of this wall poster was broadcast by the national radio station on June 1.57 Lu Ping was soon removed from his position as the first secretary of the party committee at Beijing University, becoming the first high-level party official on the higher education front to fall from power as a “power-holder taking the capitalist road.”58

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As Peng Zhen (who had fallen from power before Lu Ping)59 had predicted in 1965, if the party committee at Beijing University could be accused of taking the capitalist road, the party committees at other HEIs would face the same accusation. After Lu Ping’s fall, the leaders of the party committees at most HEIs were attacked by Red Guards and lost their positions. As has been seen in Chap. 5, according to a new grand narrative of the history of Chinese higher education, the Chinese system of higher learning prior to 1966 was not socialist. Consequently, most Communist officials on the higher education front could be accused of implementing bourgeois educational policy. Even Jiang Nanxiang, the Minister of Higher Education, was soon removed from his position after Lu Ping’s fall.60 With the beginning of the Great Cultural Revolution, the new hostile and harsh rhetoric about the bourgeois intelligentsia that had been used in the internal party documents in 1964 and 1965 appeared in published party documents. The first party document about the Great Cultural Revolution, the “Communique of May 16” (a Communique regarding the Great Cultural Revolution that the Central Committee of the CCP issued on May 16, 1966), called for “exposing the bourgeois reactionary position of the so-called ‘academic authorities’ who were opposed to the party and socialism.”61 As has been seen in Chap. 5, the resolution of the Central Committee of the CCP on the Great Cultural Revolution, adopted on August 8, 1966, called for ending the bourgeois intelligentsia’s domination over the schools. Therefore, the campaign against the “power-­ holders taking the capitalist road” during the first phase of the Great Cultural Revolution was accompanied by a new wave of class war against the bourgeois intelligentsia. Encouraged by the rhetoric used in the “Communique of May 16,” Red Guards at HEIs attacked professors as “bourgeois reactionary academic authorities.” In some ways, the attack on the “bourgeois reactionary academic authorities” was a repetition of the class war against the bourgeois intelligentsia during the Great Leap period. But there were also significant differences. First of all, the “bourgeois reactionary academic authorities” were demonized in the way that the bourgeois intelligentsia had never been before. The editorial of the People’s Daily on June 1, 1966 was titled “Down with Bulls, Ghosts, Snakes, and Monsters,” and these words were used to refer to “bourgeois experts, scholars, and authorities.”62 Therefore, while the class war against the bourgeois intelligentsia during the Great Leap period had both the punitive and reformative aspects, the latter

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aspect was absent in the attack on the “bourgeois reactionary academic authorities.” Many professors, along with the Communist officials who were labeled as “power-holders taking the capitalist road,” were physically tortured and imprisoned by the Red Guards.63 From the perspective of the Red Guards, attacking the “bourgeois reactionary academic authorities” was also an attack on privileges. Families of some professors were forced to move out of their spacious apartments, and some professors had to share their apartments with strangers who were assigned to their apartments.64 Moreover, before the Great Cultural Revolution (both during the Great Leap period and in 1964 and 1965), the term “bourgeois intelligentsia” had been used to refer to the old educated professionals who were not members of the Communist Party. As has been seen, the report of the Socialist-Education work team at Beijing Normal University asserted that professors and lecturers who had been admitted into the CCP still retained bourgeois ideas. But it applied the epithet “bourgeois specialists” only to nonparty professors. However, during the Great Cultural Revolution, even Communist professors were attacked as “bourgeois reactionary academic authorities.” Such professors included Liang Sicheng, professor of architecture and dean of the Department of Architecture and Civil Engineering at Qinghua University; Liu Xianzhou, professor of mechanical engineering and a vice president of Qinghua University before 1966; 65 and Jian Bozan, professor of history and a vice president of Beijing University before 1966 (who committed suicide in 1968).66 Mao initially supported the Red Guards. However, after the party committees at HEIs had been paralyzed (because their officials were removed from their positions), different factions of the Red Guards fell into violent factional fighting. In the summer of 1968, according to Mao’s instructions, workers and soldiers were sent to HEIs to take over power. They were called Mao Zedong Thought propaganda teams of workers and soldiers. The sending of propaganda teams of workers and soldiers to educational institutions ended the Red Guards’ power. This did not end the criticism and repudiation of the “bourgeois reactionary academic authorities.” But the criticism and repudiation were now conducted with the methods similar to those that had been used in the class war against the bourgeois intelligentsia during the Great Leap period, and again contained both the punitive and reformative aspects. The physical torture of the victims was stopped. But every professor was required to make a self-­ criticism. The professors labeled by the propaganda teams as “bourgeois

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reactionary academic authorities” were subjected to criticisms from others at meetings.67 The attack on the “bourgeois reactionary academic authorities” still derived from the old dichotomy between the old and new intelligentsia. While those who were labeled as “bourgeois reactionary academic authorities” were old professors who had begun their careers before 1949, the Red Guards at HEIs were mainly students, but also included some young faculty members. But the Great Cultural Revolution eventually changed this dichotomy. As has been seen, in 1971, the summary report about the national conference on education expanded the definition of the bourgeois intelligentsia to include not only the educated professionals who had begun their careers before 1949, but also those who received higher education from 1949 to 1966. There were two reasons for this expansion. First, Mao’s disappointment with the unruly Red Guards led him to doubt the political reliability or worthiness of the whole existing intelligentsia. Therefore, in 1968, when the propaganda teams of workers and soldiers were sent to educational institutions (propaganda teams were also sent to secondary schools), Mao called for reeducating graduates of HEIs and secondary schools by workers, peasants, and soldiers.68 Second, as has been indicated, the Great Cultural Revolution induced a redefining of socialism in higher education. The HEIs that had existed before 1966 were recharacterized as bourgeois schools. Bourgeois schools, of course, produced the bourgeois intelligentsia. Thus, two new dichotomies were created. One was between the intelligentsia, on the one hand, and workers, peasants, and soldiers, on the other; and another was between the redefined old intelligentsia, which now included all the existing educated professionals, and the new intelligentsia that would be produced by a reformed system of higher learning. These new dichotomies played an important role in shaping the new power structure at HEIs. By 1970, when HEIs began admitting students again, the party committee had been recreated. In addition, a new administrative body, called the revolutionary committee, was also created. As during the Great Leap period, the party committee now assumed all the power. The secretary of the party committee usually also served as chairperson of the revolutionary committee. By the early 1970s, most of the old cadres at HEIs, who had been removed from their positions as “powerholders taking the capitalist road” in the first phase of the Great Cultural Revolution, were “liberated”69 and reappointed to leadership positions. The most powerful members of the party committees70 at HEIs were

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members of the propaganda teams of workers and soldiers and the “liberated” old cadres.71 Thus, as during the Great Leap period, even Communist faculty members were excluded from the decision-making process. The new dichotomies had an even greater impact on the power structure in the academic departments. First of all, the Communist professors and lecturers who had served as deans or associate deans in the early 1960s lost their positions. As during the Great Leap period, the combined party cells again assumed all the power in the academic departments. Second, the secretaries of the combined party cells were no longer the same people who had occupied these positions before the Great Cultural Revolution. In the 1950s, most secretaries of the combined party cells were old cadres with little formal education. However, among the secretaries of the combined party cells appointed in the early 1960s, the proportion of the graduates of HEIs (who had been admitted into the CCP) increased significantly. For example, all the secretaries of the combined party cells at Fudan University in the early 1960s were graduates of HEIs;72 at Jiaotong University in Shanghai, 60 percent of the secretaries of the combined party cells in academic departments were graduates of HEIs.73 These party officials were also considered as members of the bourgeois intelligentsia in the early 1970s. Almost all the new secretaries of the combined party cells appointed in early and mid-1970s were members of the propaganda teams of workers and soldiers.74 By contrast, when the first class of the students selected in the new procedure graduated from HEIs, they were considered as members of the new intelligentsia. Some party members among these new graduates were immediately appointed to important leadership positions at HEIs. At Beijing University, five new graduates were appointed as deputy secretaries of the combined party cells in academic departments, and one was appointed as deputy director of the Office of Academic Affairs.75

Changes in Higher Education Management and in the Process of Education at Institutions of Higher Learning in the Soviet Union Under High Stalinism As has been indicated in Chap. 5, some pragmatic measures were undertaken in order to raise academic standards at HEIs after 1932. One of such measures was the reduction of time devoted to production practice. After

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1932, students at institutions of higher technical education were sent to production practice at industrial enterprises in their third, fourth, and fifth years of study, and the time devoted to production practice was reduced to 30–40 percent of the weeks of the last three academic years of their course of study.76 Another pragmatic measure was the consolidation of HEIs. As has been seen, in 1930, the exiting institutions of higher technical education were divided into specialized institutes, each serving one economic sector or industrial branch. As the new principle underlying this reorganization of higher education was that each industrial association or government agency was responsible for producing educated specialists it employed, all the economic organizations and government agencies also created many new HEIs to ensure that their own educational institutions would produce all kinds of educated specialists they needed. As a result, many small HEIs with less than 300 students and without adequate physical facilities and qualified faculty were created.77 Moreover, many new specialized institutes, created on the basis of former departments of a multi-­ departmental institution, actually remained on the same campus. But the library, laboratories, classrooms, and equipment that went to some of these institutes were no longer available to students and the faculty of other institutes.78 From 1933 to 1935, many small HEIs were either closed or merged. The number of HEIs under the jurisdiction of the Commissariat of Heavy Industry was reduced from 145 in 1932 to 84 in the summer of 1935, and the number of HEIs under the Commissariat of Agriculture was reduced from 122 to 72  in the same period. 79 In this process, new multi-departmental institutions of higher technical education were recreated. Most of them were called industrial institutes, some were called polytechnic institutes. By the summer of 1935, there were twelve industrial institutes and three polytechnic institutes. All of them were in the jurisdiction of the Commissariat of Heavy Industry.80 As the industrial associations no longer administered HEIs after 1932, all the HEIs in the jurisdiction of the Commissariat of Heavy Industry were directly overseen by its Main Administration of Educational Institutions. This centralization of higher education management in the Commissariat of Heavy Industry facilitated the creation of industrial and polytechnic institutes. The Commissariat of Heavy Industry’s decision to place all its HEIs under the direct control of the Main Administration of Educational Institutions actually was part of the large effort of the Soviet government

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to centralize higher education management. The creation of VKVTO in 1932 was an important step in that direction. Back in 1930, when institutions of higher technical education were divided into specialized institutes and were placed under the jurisdiction of industrial associations and other government agencies, Narkompros contended that some centralized leadership in academic affairs should be preserved in order to ensure that various HEIs would follow the uniform guidelines regarding academic programs and methods of teaching.81 This was the reason that the republican Commissariats of Enlightenment were given the power of program-­ methodological leadership over institutions of higher technical education. However, because industrial associations and other government agencies that administered institutions of higher technical education were not subordinate to Commissariats of Enlightenment, the latter were not able to exercise effective program-methodological leadership. Unlike Narkompros, VKVTO was an all-Union agency, and therefore it was more effective in compelling the all-Union commissariats to implement its directives regarding higher technical education. Its authority over higher technical education was also more extensive than the power given to Narkompros in 1930. VKVTO had the power to approve academic plans and course outlines; it was also given the power to approve the nomenclature (official roster) of specialties to be offered at institutions of higher technical education (the July 1930 resolution of Sovnarkom on program-mythological leadership gave this power to economic commissariats). VKVTO’s authority even went beyond program-methodological leadership, as it was also given the power to approve the system of institutions of higher technical education.82 Therefore, VKVTO could identify the HEIs that should be closed or merged. As a matter of fact, the effort to consolidate institutions of higher technical education from 1933 to 1935 was led by VKVTO.83 After the victory of socialism had been proclaimed in 1934, objectives of higher education were redefined. This also caused new changes in the process of education at Soviet HEIs and in higher education management. In 1935, the Central Committee of the Communist Party created a special commission, led by Andrei Zhdanov, to review the state of higher education. Specialties in which students were educated were reconsidered in this process. The extremely narrow specialties that had been created at institutions of higher technical education were consolidated for the first time in 1933. However, in this consolidation, the Commissariat of Heavy Industry still defended the position that industry needed engineers of both narrow

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and broad profiles. Therefore, while the total number of specialties at institutions of higher technical education was reduced, these institutions still offered “sharply defined specialties” along with specialties of broad profile.84 The Zhdanov Commission finally rejected the notion of “sharply defined specialties.” The new nomenclature of specialties, published in 1937, no longer included such specialties. 85 Soviet higher engineering education still aimed to produce specialists for specific industrial products or industrial branches (but no longer aimed to educate students according to the requirements of working positions in industry), and therefore Soviet engineering students were still educated in narrower specialties than their counterparts in other countries. But the highest authority accepted the principle that for all the engineering students at institutions of higher technical education, their final specialties should be built upon a broad academic foundation. After 1936, about two thirds of academic hours in the curricula for specialties in engineering were allocated to courses in mathematics and science and to foundational engineering courses; only about a quarter of academic hours were allocated to courses directly related to students’ specialties.86 The differences between engineering education and other areas of higher education were accepted. In the early 1930s, extremely narrow specialties were also created in other areas of higher education. As has been seen, the total number of specialties in mathematics, physics, biology, and geography reached 39 at Moscow University and 44 at Leningrad University by 1931. Even students of history were educated in five specialties: the history of the ancient world, medieval history, modern history, the history of the Soviet Union, and the history of dependent and colonial countries.87 Starting in 1937, Moscow University’s Department of History (which was restored in 1934) educated its students in one specialty: history; the Departments of Physics and Chemistry at the same university offered one specialty each: physics and chemistry. The number of specialties in the Department of Mathematics and Mechanics was reduced to three: mathematics, mechanics, and astronomy.88 Moreover, not only VKVSh, which was created in 1936 to replace VKVTO, further reduced the time for production practice, but both VKVSh and Narkompros accepted a more flexible approach to production practice. In March 1938, VKVSh completed a new set of regulations, which stipulated that for students at institutions of higher technical education, the total amount of time devoted to production practice during the whole course of study should be in the range from 24 to 36 weeks.89 This

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represented the reduction of the weeks for production practice by about one third in comparison with the years from 1933 to 1936, when academic plans at institutions of higher technical education allocated 43–46 weeks to production practice during a student’ whole course of study. 90 Mezhlauk, the first chairperson of VKVSh, argued in 1936 that students at different types of HEIs should not be required to spend the same amount of time on production practice.91 Despite his arrest in 1937, this point of view was incorporated in the new regulations, which allowed pedagogic and medical institutes to allocate only 10–15 weeks to their students’ “production practice” (teaching practice for the students at pedagogic institutes and medical internship for students at medical institutes).92 Another part of the new flexible approach to production practice concerned students of science at universities. During the First Five-Year Plan period, these students were also required to participate in production practice at industrial enterprises. In 1936, Narkompros accepted the point of view that the “production practice” of science students at universities should mainly be research practice in laboratories at universities.93 More importantly, the Zhdanov Commission’s review of the state of higher education resulted in a further centralization of higher education management. VKVSh had more extensive power than VKVTO. First of all, its authority was no longer confined to higher technical education, but was extended to all areas of higher education. Second, VKVSh’s authority was also extended in other ways, as it was given the power to examine the budgets for HEIs created by various all-Union commissariats and republics, examine the numbers of students to be admitted to HEIs proposed by all-Union commissariats and republics, and approve the appointment of directors of HEIs.94 Finally, while VKVTO was subordinate to TsIK, VKVSh was subordinate to Sovnarkom. It gradually gained the status as a new all-Union commissariat. VKVSh began to directly administer some industrial and polytechnic institutes in 1939.95 In 1946, when all commissariats were renamed ministries, VKVSh was converted into the Ministry of Higher Education, which directly administered some polytechnic institutes and universities in addition to its overall responsibility of overseeing the implementation of higher education policy in all other HEIs.96 The creation of VKVSh also represented a new milestone in enforcing uniform academic plans. The notion of uniform academic plans meant that the same specialty, even if it was offered at multiple HEIs located in different republics, should follow a uniform academic plan. This notion had been born during the First Five-Year Plan period, when model

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academic plans began to be formulated for specialties (rather than academic departments). VSNKh was its strongest advocate. One of its officials argued that because Commissariats of Enlightenment, which were republican government agencies, were unable to enforce uniformity in academic plans across the Soviet Union, VSNKh and other all-Union commissariats should be given full responsibility for higher technical education (without program-methodological leadership from Commissariats of Enlightenment), or an all-Union center of program-methodological leadership should be created.97 The creation of VKVTO in 1932 was a step toward enforcing uniform academic plans. However, during its short existence, VKVTO was busy with creating a new order in higher technical education. Its work in curricular affairs does not seem to have gone beyond examining and approving academic plans submitted by commissariats and instructing the latter how to formulate academic plans (because it found that academic plans submitted by commissariats were poorly prepared).98 In all likelihood, VKVTO simply let each commissariat do what it could do to ensure institutions of higher technical education actually followed the approved academic plans. VKVSh was created with a stronger resolve to enforce uniform academic plans. Technically, VKVSh only approved standard or model academic plans and issued instructions to commissariats on how to apply them.99 But HEIs could no longer modify the model academic plans without approval from VKVSh; therefore, the differences between model academic plans and operational curricula at HEIs essentially disappeared. In the spring of 1937, the Academic Council of Leningrad Industrial Institute (which had been created in 1934 on the campus of the former Leningrad Polytechnic Institute) decided that the teaching of mathematics, instead of being confined to three semesters, should be extended to four semesters; and it asked VKVSh for an approval. Although this change was requested by one of the most prestigious HEIs, VKVSh refused to approve it.100 Even the Central Committee of the Communist Party called upon VKVSh to strictly enforce uniform academic plans. In 1938, A. Ia. Zhukov, a deputy director of the Central Committee’s Department of Schools, declared at the First All-Union Conference of Workers of Higher Schools: Here (in the matter of curricula), the Committee for Higher School Affairs must establish strict discipline and bring Bolshevik order. It is necessary not only to forbid any higher education institution or Main Administration of

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Educational Institutions to make changes to the ratified academic plans, but to call those who have done so to account. … The academic plan should be a state document that can be ratified only by the Committee for Higher School Affairs, and no other institution can make any amendment to the academic plans.101

The rigid enforcement of uniform academic plans was frequently criticized by professors. One of the critics stated that the rigid central control over academic plans was an attempt to straitjacket the “lively and creative activity of teaching” in “the bureaucratic framework of mandatory directives, made often without consideration of the special features of the institutions of higher technical education.”102 In a speech published in the journal of VKVSh, S.  P. Tamebosov, a professor at Azerbaijan Medical Institute, gave an example on how the uniform academic plans disregarded the special conditions of HEIs. Instruction at Azerbaijan Medical Institute was conducted in both Azerbaijani and Russian. The courses taught in Russian were taken not only by the Russian- speaking students, but also by students of other nationalities who did not understand Russian very well. Therefore, according to Professor Tamebosov, the curricula for this institute should include additional hours for language courses, so that Russian-­ speaking students could study Azerbaijani, and non-Russian students could study Russian. But the model academic plans for medical institutes did not take this into account.103 (Such opinions were published in a Soviet journal because they were voiced after Mezhlauk had been arrested and expressed as a criticism of his leadership. However, as A. Ia Zhukov’s statement, quoted above, indicated, Mezhlauk’s arrest did not lead to any relaxation of the rigid enforcement of uniform academic plans.) Because of the enforcement of uniform academic plans, most HEIs did not play any role in the designing of the curricula, but had to accept the curricula imposed upon them from above. In 1940, a group of professors at Bauman Institute of Mechanics and Machine-Building, one of the most prestigious institutions of higher technical education in the Soviet Union, wrote a letter to Pravda, stating that “worst of all is the fact that the academic plans were often originated without the knowledge of institutions of higher technical education and without participation by them in this matter.” According to this letter, although professors at Bauman Institute had often been invited to participate in the formulation or revision of academic plans in preceding years, in 1940 even this institute received a

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significant number of academic plans that had been formulated without its participation.104 By the mid-1930s, the faculty members were expected to teach their courses strictly according to approved outlines. Outlines for courses that were offered at multiple HEIs administered by several commissariats had to be approved by VKVTO or its successor, VKVSh, while those for the courses taught only at HEIs under the jurisdiction of one commissariat had to be approved by that commissariat.105 In 1937, Mezhlauk, chairperson of VKVSh, stated in an article that it had become a dominant view that the instructor of any course should strictly follow the approved outline, and those who failed to do so often had to have an unpleasant conversation with the dean of the academic department. Mezhlauk suggested that the instructors should be allowed to devote more time to the sections of the course where they taught knowledge they had created through their own research. But this “definite freedom in the treatment of individual sections of the course” was the only flexibility that Mezhlauk was willing to give to faculty members.106 Part of the reasons for enforcing uniform academic plans and requiring faculty members to teach courses according to approved outlines was political, and this was especially true for specialties in humanities and social science. But a more important objective was to ensure that students of the same specialty, even if they were educated at different HEIs, would graduate with the same scope of knowledge.107 This was important for the Soviet system of higher education as students were assigned to jobs according to a plan made by the central government. Thus, whereas the idea of applying scientific rationality to the organization of higher education had propelled radical experimentations in the process of education at Soviet HEIs during the First Five-Year Plan period, it reinforced the authoritarian nature of the Soviet system of higher learning under high Stalinism. Soviet higher education policy changed in the second half of the 1930s in another important way. Whereas the Soviet government in 1932 had become willing to accept educational conventions (such as examinations) in order to raise academic standards in higher education, it selectively restored Russian educational traditions in the second half of the 1930s. For example, “rector” was restored as the title of the heads of universities at the end of the 1930s (but the heads of institutes, including polytechnic institutes, were still called directors).108 This presaged the full restoration of universities.109

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More importantly, state examinations, which had been first introduced in Russia in 1884 but abolished after 1917, were restored in 1936. Before 1936, students at all HEIs were required to complete a research project, known as a diploma project, in their last year of study.110 However, according to the June 1936 resolution of the Central Committee of the Communist Party and Sovnarkom on higher education, with the exception of students at institutions of higher technical education (who were still expected to complete a diploma project), students at all other HEIs were required to take state examinations on designated academic subjects before their graduation.111 State examinations were oral examinations given by commissions established for this purpose. Each state examination commission must include at least one member from another HEI, and its chairperson had to be approved by VKVSh. Students were given one to two months for preparing for the state examinations.112 Even before the Bolshevik revolution, state examinations had been criticized by many professors as resulting only in intellectual stultification and red tape.113 This tradition remained strong in the 1930s among professors, especially among those at universities. Eighty professors at Moscow University signed a letter to the Central Committee of the Communist Party in June 1936, arguing for retaining the diploma project as the capstone requirement for university students.114 Starting in 1941, universities were allowed to have mixed capstone requirements: their students would complete a diploma project and take state examinations on two subjects (they were required to take state examinations on four academic subjects before 1941).115

Changes in Higher Education Management and in the Process of Education at Institutions of Higher Learning in China Under Late Maoism As in the Soviet Union after the First Five-Year Plan, in China after the end of the Great Leap Forward the effort to raise academic standards was accompanied by a recentralization of higher education management. In 1963, some of the HEIs that had been administered by the provincial governments from 1958 to 1962 were placed under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Education or other ministries of the central government.116 More importantly, the Ministry of Education was given the power to control specialties to be offered by HEIs and regulate the

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content of education. During the Great Leap period, each HEI could create new specialties on its own initiative. After 1963, HEIs could only offer specialties that were included in the official list of specialties compiled jointly by the Ministry of Education and the State Planning Committee.117 During the Great Leap period, HEIs could design their own academic plans and course outlines. After 1961, the Ministry of Education issued advisory academic plans to HEIs. While HEIs did not have to adopt the advisory academic plans without any change, they were required to follow the guiding principles inherent in these documents if they decided to design their own curricula for the specialties they offered.118 The Ministry of Education also invited professors to compose course outlines, which served as guidance for the faculty members who taught various courses.119 The recentralization of higher education management eventually led to the reestablishment of the Ministry of Higher Education in March 1964.120 One of the legacies of the Great Leap period was retained and reinforced after 1961. Sixteen HEIs were designated as key-point schools in 1959. The number of HEIs that received the key-point designation was increased to 64 by the end of 1960.121 As many new HEIs were established during the Great Leap period, the institutions that received the key-point designation were expected to be pockets of excellence. The course of study at all key-point HEIs, including those that had offered four-year programs before receiving the key-point designation, was five years. 122 The course of study at Qinghua University and in the departments of science and mathematics at Beijing University (both were designated as key-point schools in 1959) was extended to six years in 1960.123 Academic standards at key-point HEIs could not actually be raised during the Great Leap period because they were not immune to radical reforms. But they became true pockets of excellence after 1961. A special measure was undertaken to ensure that these HEIs were able to admit best students. All the key-point schools admitted students nationally. The number of seats to be filled in each year’s admissions at these HEIs was distributed among various provinces before the applicants took entrance examinations. Starting in 1963, the key-point schools were allowed to move the preassigned seats between provinces: if there were not enough applicants with high examination scores in any province, they could reduce the number of admissions in this province and move the unfilled seats to other provinces.124

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With the beginning of the Great Cultural Revolution in 1966, higher education management was again decentralized. The Ministry of Higher Education was merged into the Ministry of Education in July 1966. Very soon the Ministry of Education was paralyzed as its leaders were attacked by Red Guards as “power-holders taking the capitalist road.”125 In 1969, almost all the HEIs were placed under the jurisdiction of provincial governments; only fewer than ten HEIs in Beijing were still administered by economic ministries of the central government.126 In July 1970, the State Council created a new agency called the Group of Science and Education, which took over the duties that had been executed by the Ministry of Education, Ministry of Higher Education, and the Committee of Science before 1966.127 This new agency did not directly administer any HEIs. It did not exert any control over specialties offered at HEIs, nor did it issue advisory academic plans or course outlines to HEIs. When HEIs began admitting students again in 1970, the course of study at all HEIs, including Qinghua University and Beijing University, was reduced to three years.128 With this change, the differences between the key-point schools and other HEIs disappeared. Even before the beginning of the Great Cultural Revolution, Mao suggested that the course of study at both secondary schools and HEIs should be reduced. His suggestion was not induced by the belief that students’ learning process could be expedited. Instead, it partially derived from his educational philosophy, which valued informal experiential learning more than formal academic learning. Mao also seemed to view HEIs as an ivory tower, and believed that young people who were secluded in this ivory tower for too long would lose touch with social reality and become an educated elite that had nothing in common with workers and peasants.129 After the beginning of the Great Cultural Revolution, the cultural revolutionaries placed even greater emphasis on the ideological rationale for reducing the course of study.130 As the Great Cultural Revolution induced a new endeavor to create a socialist system of higher education, reforms in the curriculum and methods of teaching and learning were part of this new endeavor. As a matter of fact, these reforms had begun even before HEIs started admitting students on a regular basis again. At the end of the 1960s, some HEIs admitted a small number of students into short-term experimental programs, which were marked by radical experiments in the curriculum and methods of teaching and learning. These experiments were undertaken at local initiatives, but cultural revolutionaries at the center of political power in

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Beijing, using the national media they controlled, promoted some ideas that had been generated in local experiments at some HEIs. One of the ideas promoted in the national media was to organize teaching and learning around a typical product or project. An experimental program in civil engineering at Tongji University in Shanghai organized students’ education around construction projects: students participated in the designing and construction of buildings, and in this process they were taught knowledge of civil engineering relevant to these projects.131 The propaganda teams of workers and soldiers at Qinghua University claimed that while organizing teaching and learning around a typical product, experimental programs at this university achieved the integration of teaching, research, and production. Both students and faculty members participated in the research and manufacturing of industrial products either at the on-campus factories or at factories outside the university, and the teaching of academic courses was linked with research and production activities in which students participated.132 Two general ideas were promoted for reforming the curriculum and methods of teaching and learning in social science and humanities. One was to use works of Mao, Marx, Engels, and Lenin as the basic or most important textbooks, and the other was to coordinate teaching and learning in classes with “great (or mass) criticism.”133 The term “great criticism” was used frequently during the Great Cultural Revolution. It meant the criticism of bourgeois or revisionist ideas or theories that were associated with “power-holders taking the capitalist road” or the “bourgeois reactionary academic authorities.” Later, a new phrase was used to express the same idea: organizing teaching and learning around a combat task.134 The combat task meant writing articles criticizing a particular idea or theory whose condemnation was called for by the current political environment. After the HEIs began admitting students on a regular basis again in 1970, “open-door education” became the most important part of the reforms in the process of education. This term was first used in an article by the propaganda teams of workers and soldiers at Qinghua University and published in the journal of the Central Committee of the CCP in 1970.135 As the idea of teaching and learning organized around a typical product or project connoted, part of the teaching and learning activities for engineering students would take place at factories or construction sites. In reality, organizing teaching and learning around a typical product or project was just wishful thinking, which could be rarely implemented.

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However, even when teaching and learning could not be organized around any typical product or project, students of engineering as well as science still spent a significant amount of time at factories. Students of social science and humanities spent an equally significant amount of time both in rural areas and at factories. In some ways, “open-door education” was similar to the effort to combine education with productive labor undertaken during the Great Leap period. But there were also significant differences. First, during the Great Leap period, the Communist officials did not attach different political values to productive labor at factories established within HEIs and productive labor outside HEIs. However, the term “open-door education” implied that its purpose was to prevent HEIs from again becoming ivory towers secluded from society and from workers and peasants, and therefore it attached greater political value to productive labor and learning activities conducted outside HEIs. The above-cited article by the propaganda teams of workers and soldiers at Qinghua University stressed that even the programs that could use factories within the university as the base for integrating academic teaching with industrial production should also build connections with factories outside the university.136 Second, as has been indicated in Chap. 4, at the end 1958, the party group in the Ministry of Education set a guideline on the amount of time that should be devoted to productive labor. However, no government or party agency set such a guideline in the early and mid-1970s. Each HEI or academic department decided how much time its students should spend on “open-door education.” Students at some HEIs spent about one third of their time on “open-door education,” while at some other HEIs “open-­ door education” took about 40 percent of the time.137 However, the amount of time that students spent on the sites of “open-door education” was not totally devoted to the participation in labor. On the days when they did not participate in labor, they attended classes taught at such sites or engaged in other learning activities. For example, while students at Sun Yat-Sen Medical Institute in Guangzhou spent about 40 percent of their time in rural areas, they were also taught how to treat diseases they encountered in the rural areas during their “open-door education.”138 When the experiment with half-time work and half-time study was revived in the mid-1970s, it was a more radical reform than “open-door education.” Before that, students still devoted the major part of their time to academic learning and stayed on the campuses of HEIs for most of their

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time. However, with the revival of the experiment with half-time work and half-time study, students were expected to devote half of their time to physical labor. Moreover, according to the plan of the party committee at Beijing University, students of social science and humanities would stay on the campus of the university only for a small proportion of the time during their course of study, as they would stay on rural campuses or at other sites of productive labor for most of their time.139 The academic plans that existed before 1966 were part of the old educational system to be destroyed. However, reforms in the process of education at Chinese HEIs undertaken after the first phase of the Great Cultural Revolution did not include any effort to create new academic plans. From 1970 to 1976, the year in which Mao passed away and the Great Cultural Revolution was ended, although students were still admitted into specialties, they were not educated according to any predesigned curriculum. In these years, the newspapers published numerous articles and reports on educational reforms at HEIs, but none of these articles and reports gave even a sketchy description of revised academic plans at any HEI. The lack of reporting on new curricula or any effort to design new curricula reflected the fact that although students attended classes, courses were offered in an ad hoc or impromptu manner, not according to any curriculum. But the cultural revolutionaries did not view this as an unintended consequence. Instead, they repudiated any striving for “regularization” in academic life at HEIs as an unacceptable attempt to restore the old educational system.140 Even ideological education carried the ad hoc and impromptu nature. The amount of time devoted to ideological education was increased in comparison with the years before the Great Cultural Revolution. But the main form of ideological education was not courses taught by faculty members, but political study sessions, in which students studied and discussed documents and newspaper or journal articles related to the current political campaign.141 As has been seen in the introduction to this book, one interpretation of the curricular reform at Chinese HEIs during the Great Cultural Revolution is that it rejected the artificial boundary among subjects and knowledge areas and represented a return to an integrative and organic view of knowledge based on Mao’s epistemology, which in turn drew on impulses from the informal pole of higher education traditions in pre-­ modern China. Reforms in the process of education at Chinese HEIs after the first phase of the Great Cultural Revolution were actually full of

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contradictions. Students were still admitted into specialties, and therefore the boundary among subjects was not completely rejected. This fact also indicated that creating educated specialists remained an implicit objective of Chinese higher education. Otherwise the government’s investment in higher education was not justified. However, this implicit objective conflicted with the political goal of preventing the emergence of an educated elite. The article by the propaganda teams of workers and soldiers at Qinghua University, cited above, stated that Qinghua University had been known as a cradle of engineers before the Great Cultural Revolution, but this cradle rocked students until they were dizzy (with seeking material gains and social status associated with being an engineer).142 Thus, even the leading polytechnic university in the nation could no longer say that its mission was to educate engineers. For the cultural revolutionaries, education offered in well-organized framework and clearly aimed to produce educated specialists was no longer acceptable. Therefore, Chinese higher education indeed became informal. The idea of applying scientific rationality to the organization of higher learning in the Soviet Union under high Stalinism reinforced the authoritarian nature of the Soviet system of higher education. By contrast, although the radical reforms in the process of education at Chinese HEIs during the era of late Maoism aimed to create a new and socialist system of higher education, they not only rejected the idea of applying scientific rationality to the organization of higher learning, but even precluded any systematic approach to education.

Concluding Comparative Analysis In the Soviet Union under high Stalinism, the academic degrees, which had been abolished in 1918, were restored; the academic titles (such as professor and docent), which had lost their original meaning during the First Five-Year Plan period, were connected with academic degrees and again became indicators of academic qualifications. As a result of this change, the old professors, who had begun their careers before 1917, regained their academic prestige and privileged status. But the Communist officials still dichotomized the old and new intelligentsia, and regarded the old professors as a conservative cohort. The Great Purge had a conflicting impact on professors. On the one hand, many of them became victims. On the other hand, in the aftermath of the Great Purge, the ideological view that dichotomized the old and new intelligentsia finally became irrelevant,

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and the old professors who had not become victims of the Great Purge were fully integrated into the Soviet elite. Moreover, professors as a group were one of the main beneficiaries of Stalin’s definition of socialist society, which accepted pay differentials according to the degree of qualification and stratified society as a legitimate feature of socialism. Their privileged status was further enhanced in 1937 with the change of pay system for the faculty at HEIs, while the gap between them and low-paid staff members at HEIs became very large. Chinese professors also enjoyed high salaries. However, Mao viewed the high salaries paid to them as a way to buy the bourgeois intelligentsia, not as a legitimate feature of socialism. The new Maoist doctrine of socialism initially revived the old dichotomy between the old and new intelligentsia. In 1964, the epithet “bourgeois intelligentsia,” which had not been used after 1961, was revived, but at HEIs this term was still used by the Communist officials to refer to the professors who had begun their careers before 1949. In the first phase of the Great Cultural Revolution, those who were attacked by the Red Guards as “bourgeois reactionary academic authorities” were also professors who had begun their careers before 1949. Eventually, as the Chinese system of higher education existing before 1966 was characterized by the cultural revolutionaries as a bourgeois system, the definition of the “bourgeois intelligentsia” was expanded to include those who had received higher education from 1949 to 1966 as well. As a result, all the existing faculty members at HEIs were considered as the bourgeois intelligentsia, and therefore were excluded from important leadership positions at every level. In the new power structure created at HEIs, even academic departments were administered by workers and soldiers sent to HEIs. By contrast, after the students who had been admitted to HEIs in the new procedure in the early 1970s graduated in the mid-1970s, some of them were immediately appointed to important leadership positions at HEIs, because they were considered as members of the new intelligentsia. The Soviet system of higher education, which lasted until the collapse of the Soviet Union with little modifications, had come into the final shape by 1941. In the second half of the 1930s, the Soviet government selectively restored educational traditions of Tsarist Russia. But the Soviet system of higher education as a whole was not a throwback to the past. It served the planned economy and the socialist state, and it was run according to the principles of the planned economy. The centralized

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management and rigorous enforcement of uniform academic plans and course outlines, which reflected the spirit of the planned economy, were important features of the Soviet system of higher education. These features also derived from the idea of applying scientific rationality to the organization of higher education. In China after the first phase of the Great Cultural Revolution, students at HEIs were still admitted into various specialties, and therefore an implicit objective of Chinese higher education was still to produce educated specialists. However, whereas the idea of applying scientific rationality to the organization of higher learning reinforced the authoritarian nature of the Soviet system of higher education under high Stalinism, the Chinese cultural revolutionaries not only rejected the idea of applying scientific rationality to the organization of higher learning, but also condemned any systematic approach to education. Their radical approach to the process of education at HEIs partially stemmed from the Maoist epistemology, which valued informal and experiential learning more than formal academic learning. But it also derived from a political consideration, as the cultural revolutionaries believed that higher education offered according to predesigned curricula, which explicitly aimed to produce educated professionals, would inevitably produce an educated elite. The Chinese cultural revolutionaries were never able to solve the conflict between the objective of producing educated specialists and the goal of preventing the emergence of an educated elite. In the last years of Mao’s life, higher education policy became a battleground between the cultural revolutionaries and their opponents, whose ranks included not only professional educators, but also the Communist officials who had been working at HEIs before the Great Cultural Revolution, were removed from their positions as “power-holders taking the capitalist road” in the first phase of the Great Cultural Revolution, and then reappointed to leadership positions in the early 1970s. The latter expressed concerns that the HEIs were not able to produce qualified specialists needed for the modernization of the Chinese economy.143 But Mao’s support of the cultural revolutionaries blocked any possibility of policy reorientation in higher education during his lifetime. The modernization of the economy was, of course, an important objective for Mao. However, from the Maoist perspective, means used to achieve the goal was equally important as the goal itself. Undoing recent reforms in higher education would be a wrong means: if HEIs returned to the pre-1966 status quo ante, they would again produce old-type educated specialists or a bourgeois intelligentsia.

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Notes 1. According to a Soviet historian, there were 58,220 faculty members at all the Soviet HEIs at the beginning of 1932; this was three times as large as the number of faculty members in 1927. Lutchenko, “Rukovodstvo KPSS,” Vorposy istorii KPSS, no. 2 (1966): 39. 2. For example, the Commissariat of Agriculture once appointed a young man who had just completed his graduate studies as a professor; a deputy director of a HEI once signed an order appointing 11 professors. Vysshaia tekhnicheskaia shkola, no. 1 (1934): 76. 3. Engineers-praktiki were engineers who had not received formal higher technical education. They were workers or technicians who were promoted to be engineers. 4. Vysshaia tekhnicheskaia shkola, no. 1 (1934): 75–76. 5. Stalin, Works, 13: 71–74. 6. Boldyrev, Direktivy o narodnom obrazovanii, 2: 86–87. 7. Biulleten' VKVTO, no. 1 (1934): 4–5. 8. The qualifications of docents were evaluated by the Qualifications Committee in any commissariat. The qualifications of professors were evaluated by the Highest Attestation Committee in VKVTO or the Qualifications Committee in a republic’s Commissariat of Enlightenment or Commissariat of Health. Ibid. 9. Vysshaia tekhnicheskaia shkola, no. 1 (1934): 78–79. 10. There had been 1800 professors in the institutions of higher technical education under the Commissariat of Heavy Industry at the end of 1934; 1422 of them remained as professors at the beginning of 1937. Of the 291 professors in the institutions of higher technical education under the Commissariat of Railroads at the end of 1934, 205 remained as professors at the beginning of 1937. GARF, f. 8080, op. 1, d. 6, l. 5. 11. Ibid. 12. Calculated according to a roster of professors and other faculty members at Kazan State University, submitted to Narkompros in January 1937, GARF, f. 2306, op. 70, d. 3623, ll. 10-16. 13. Calculated according to a roster of professors at Leningrad State University, submitted to Narkompros in January 1937, GARF, f. 2306, op. 70, d. 3624, ll. 2–21. 14. Boldyrev, Direktivy o narodnom obrazovanii, 2: 87. 15. GARF, f. 8080, op. 1, d. 6, l. 5. 16. GARF, f. 2306, op. 70, d. 3536, ll. 28–29. 17. Boldyrev, Direktivy o narodnom obrazovanii, 2: 87. 18. D. Petrovsky, Podgotovka novogo uchebnogo goda vo VTUZakh (Moscow: Izdatel’stvo NKTP, 1934), 22.

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19. GARF, f. 2306, op. 70, d. 3501, l. 17. 20. Ibid., ll. 28–29. 21. GARF, f. 8080, op. 1, d. 6, ll. 5–8. 22. Robert Conquest, The Great Terror: A Reassessment (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990), 291–297. 23. Arkhiv MGU, f. 1, op. 10, d. 44, ll. 1–6. 24. Moskovskii universitet za 50 let Sovetskoi vlasti (Moscow: Izdatel’stvo Moskovskogo universiteta, 1967), 78. 25. Conquest, The Great Terror, 295–296. 26. The university kafedra was a kafedra that did not belong to any academic department. 27. GARF, f. 2306, op. 70, d. 3400, ll. 14–19. 28. GARF, f. 8080, op. 1, d. 6. l. 11. With rare exceptions, directors of HEIs were Communists. Only one of the directors of higher technical education institutions under the jurisdiction of the Commissariats of Heavy Industry and Railroads in 1936 was not a Communist. Ibid. 29. Published materials indicated that the directors of the HEIs arrested in 1937 included those of Leningrad Industrial Institute and Moscow Mendeleev  Institute of Chemical Engineering, two of the most prestigious institutions of higher technical education. Sovetskoe studenchestvo, no. 6 (1937): 1; no. 10 (1937): 28. 30. For the arrest of Bubnov and the purge of Narkmpros, see Roy Medvedev, Let History Judge (New York: Columbia University Press, 1989), 199. 31. Vysshaia shkola, no. 4 (1937): 36–39. 32. Sovetskoe studenchestvo, no. 4 (1938): 7. 33. Vysshaia shkola, nos. 8–9 (1937): 6–10. 34. Vysshaia shkola, no. 4 (1937): 37. 35. Sovetskoe studenchestvo, no. 7 (1938): 46. 36. Vysshaia tekhnicheskaia shkola, no. 2 (1934): 28–29. 37. Vysshaia shkola, no. 1 (1938): 19. 38. Vysshaia shkola, no. 12 (1937): 31. 39. Zhongguo jiaoyu nianjian, 1949–1981, 111. 40. Schram, The Thought of Mao Tse-tung, 170. 41. BMA, 1-22-654, ss. 5–7. 42. BMA, 1-22-732, ss. 40–41, 114. 43. Zhongguo jiaoyu nianjian, 1949–1981, 697–698. 44. Gong Yuzhi, Gong Yuzhi huiyi: “Yanwang dian” jiushi (Nanchang: Jiangxi renmin chubanshe, 2008), 136. 45. Zhongguo jiaoyu nianjian, 1949–1981, 697–698. Party-building activities meant selecting and admitting new members as well as educating and supervising all the party members. 46. BMA, 1-22-732, ss. 13–14; SMA, A23-2-662, ss. 12–14.

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47. In 1961, there were 186 Communist professors and 1529 Communist lecturers in Beijing. At Qinghua University, there were 27 party members among 43 deans and associate deans of the academic departments. BMA, 1-22-632, s. 13. At all the HEIs in Shanghai, there were 76 Communists among 184 deans and associate deans of academic departments in 1960. SMA, A23-2-616, s. 13. 48. Bo, Ruogan, 2: 1129–1132. 49. BMA, 1-22-1252, ss. 1–3. 50. BMA, 1-22-1298, s. 5. 51. Wang et al, Beijing daxue jishi, 2: 624. 52. Peng Zhen’s original words were: “If Beijing University were ruled by the bourgeoisie, how many schools in the whole country are ruled by the proletariat?” Gong Yuzhi, Gong yuzi huiyi, 192. 53. BMA, 1-22-1252, ss. 2–3. 54. BMA, 1-22-1298, s. 4. 55. BMA, 1-22-1181, ss. 1–6, 12–15. 56. Ibid., ss. 28–29. 57. Wang et al., Beijing daxue jishi, 2: 642–643. 58. Ibid., 644. 59. Peng Zhen was removed from all his positions on May 23, 1966. Wang, Da dongluan, 17. 60. Zhonghua jiaoyu da shiji, 403. 61. Mao wrote several paragraphs for this document, including the paragraph that called for “exposing the bourgeois reactionary position of the socalled ‘academic authorities’ who were opposed to the party and socialism.” Wang, Da dongluan, 13. 62. Renmin ribao, 1 June 1966. 63. Liu, Feng  yu suiyue, 105–118; Chen Guangzhong, Hou Renzhi (Shenghuo, dushu, xinzhi sanlian shudian, 2005), 190–192. 64. Li Juanjuan, Tang Yijie zhuan (Beijing:  Xinhua chubanshe, 2011), 140–141; Shi, Yang, and Tao, eds., Jia zai Qinghua, 202. 65. For Liang’s experience in the Great Cultural Revolution, see Dou Zhongru, Liang Sicheng zhuan (Tianjin: Baihua wenyi chubanshe, 2007), 256–262. Liang was admitted into the CCP in 1959. Ibid., 240. For Liu’s being attacked as “bourgeois reactionary academic authority,” see ibid., 268. Liu became a member of the CCP in 1955. Zhonghua jiaoyu da shiji, 150. 66. Wang et al., Beijing daxue jishi, 2: 660, 676. For Jian’s status as a member of the CCP, see Luo Pinghan, “Wenge” qianye de zhongguo (Beijing: Renmin chubanshe, 2007): 242. 67. Shi, Yang, and Tao, eds., Jia zai Qinghua, 47, 78, 257. 68. Hong qi, no. 3 (1968): 3.

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69. Being “liberated” meant that their status as members of the CCP was restored. 70. A small number of the members of a party committee formed its standing committee. The members of the standing committee were the most powerful members of the party committee. 71. For example, the secretary of the party committee at Qinghua University was a military officer (the leader of the propaganda team of soldiers), and its deputy secretaries included three “liberated” old cadres. Liu, Feng yu suiyue, 144. 72. SMA, B243-1-254, ss. 7–11. 73. Calculated according to the roster of secretaries and deputy secretaries of the combined party cells at Jiaotong University in 1962. SMA, B243-1-254, ss. 27–29. 74. At Beijing University, secretaries of all the combined party cells appointed in 1971 were military officers who were members of the propaganda team of soldiers, and all deputy secretaries were members of the propaganda team of workers. In August 1973, the party committee at Beijing University adopted a resolution that secretaries and deputy secretaries of combined party cells in academic departments should be members of the propaganda team of workers. Wang et al, Beijing daxue jishi, 2: 710, 739. 75. Ibid., 751. 76. Boldyrev, Direktivy o narodnom obrazovanii. 2: 83. 77. Vysshaia tekhnicheskaia shkola, no. 1 (1935): 12; no. 9 (1935): 13. 78. GARF, f. 8060, op. 1, d. 11, ll. 21–26. 79. Vysshaia tekhnicheskaia shkola, no. 9 (1935): 10–11. 80. Ibid., 11. 81. Nauchnyi rabotnik, no. 7 (1930): 27. 82. Boldyrev, Direktivy o narodnom obrazovanii, 2: 89; GARF, f. 8060, op 1, d. 4, ll. 8–10. 83. Vysshaia tekhnicheskaia shkola, no. 1 (1935): 11–12. 84. For example, the total number of specialties at institutions of higher technical education for industry was reduced from 583  in 1932 to 275  in 1933, which included 103 “sharply defined specialties.” Vysshaia tekhnicheskaia shkola, no. 1 (1935): 10. 85. Biulleten' VKVSh, no. 14 (1937): 1–24. 86. For example, the curriculum for the technology of silicates (a specialty in chemical engineering), formulated in 1938, allocated 31.4 percent of academic hours to “general science courses” (mathematics, science, and  a foreign language), 31.8 percent to foundational engineering courses, and 22.4 percent to courses directly related the specialty (other 14.4 percent of academic hours were allocated to ideological courses, military training, and physical education). Nicholas De Witt, Soviet Professional Manpower:

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Its Education, Training, and Supply (Washington, DC: National Science Foundation, 1955): 319–320. 87. GARF, f. 2306, op. 69, d. 2168, l. 48 88. Vysshaia shkola, no. 1 (1937): 52, 54. 89. Biulleten’ VKVSh, no. 6 (1938): 5. 90. GARF, f. 8060, op. 1, d. 49, l. 45; Vysshaia shokla, no. 2 (1938): 60. 91. Vyssaia shkola, no. 5 (1936): 20. 92. Biulleten’ VKVSh, no. 6 (1938): 5. Students at pedagogic institutes were no longer required to conduct production practice at industrial enterprises after 1932. 93. GARF, f. 2306, op. 70, d. 3540, l. 67. 94. Biulleten VKVSh, no. 3 (1936): 8–10. 95. GARF, f. 8080, op. 1, d. 37, l. 2. 96. In various periods, 25–35 HEIs were directly administered by the All-­ Union Ministry of Higher Education. Most HEIs remained under the jurisdiction of other all-Union or republican ministries. Isak Froumin and Yaroslav Kouzminov, “Common Legacy: Evolution of the Institutional Landscape of Soviet Higher Education,” in 25 Years of Transformations of Higher Education Systems in Post-Soviet Countries: Reform and Continuity, ed. Jeroen Huisman, Anna Smolentseva, and Isak Froumin (Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018), 60. 97. Za promyshlennye kadry, no. 1 (1931): 41. 98. Biulleten’ VKVTSh (the original title of Biulleten’ VKVTO), no. 4 (1933): 8–17. 99. Biulleten’ VKVSh, no. 3 (1936): 8–9. 100. Vysshaia shkola, no. 3 (1938): 48. 101. Vysshaia shkola, nos. 6–7 (1938): 58. The Main Administration of Educational Institutions was a department of a Commissariat that supervised educational institutions. 102. Vysshaia shkola, no. 3 (1938): 50–51. 103. Vysshaia shkola, nos. 6–7 (1938): 65–66. 104. Pravda, 12 July 1940. Bauman Institute of Mechanics and Machine Building was established in 1930 on the basis of an academic department of Moscow Higher Technical School. It became Bauman Moscow Higher Technical School in 1943, and the latter was renamed Bauman Moscow State Technical University in 1989. 105. Biulleten’ VKVTO, no. 10 (1935): 3; Biulleten’ VKVSh, no. 3 (1936): 8–9. 106. Vysshaia shkola, no. 2 (1937): 13–14. 107. Za promyshlennye kadry, no. 1 (1931): 41. 108. VKVSh convened a conference of rectors in August 1939. For part of the proceedings of this conference, see GARF, f. 8080, op. 1. d. 304, ll. 1–60.

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109. Departments of law, social science, and humanities were restored to universities in Ukraine, Belorussia, Azerbaijan, Armenia, and Georgia after 1932. But universities in the Russian Republic did not regain these departments until after the Second World War (only the department of history was restored to four Russian universities in the mid-1930s). GARF, f. 8080, op. 1, d. 304, l. 4. 110. Biulleten’ VKVTSh, no. 1 (1933): 19. From 1929 to 1932, students were allowed to graduate from HEIs without completing a diploma project, but they were not awarded a diploma. In 1935, they were issued retrospectively a certificate, which stated that they graduated from HEIs without completing a diploma project. Biulleten’ VKVTO, no. 7–8 (1935): 19–20. 111. Boldyrev, Direktivy o narodnom obrazovanii, 2: 97. 112. Biulleten’s VKVSh, no. 10 (1938): 8–9. 113. James McClelland, Autocrats and Academics: Education, Culture, and Society in Tsarist Russia (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1979), 26. 114. Reported by Butiagin at a meeting of Orakhelashvili with directors of universities and pedagogic institutes in Moscow on June 27, 1936. GARF, f. 2306, op. 70, d. 3539, l. 12. 115. Moskovskii universitet za 50 let  Sovetskoi vlasti, 85. For the number of academic subjects on state examinations for university students before 1941, see Biulleten’ VKVSh, no. 17 (1938): 8. 116. Zhonghua jiaoyu da shiji, 331. 117. For the official list of specialties compiled by the Ministry of Education and the State Planning Committee in 1963, see Zhongguo jiaoyu nianjian, 1949–1981, 240–246. 118. Ibid., 236, 261, 294, 320. 119. Ibid., 288, 298. Zhonghua jiaoyu da shiji, 312. 120. Zhonghua jiaoyu da shiji, 349. 121. Ibid., 247, 283–284; Zhongguo jiaoyu nianjian, 1949–1981, 330. 122. For the course of study at key-point HEIs, see Zhongguo jiaoyu nianjian, 1949–1981, 332. 123. Ibid. 124. Zhonghua jiaoyu da shiji, 333. 125. Ibid., 403. 126. Ibid., 428–429. 127. Ibid., 435. 128. Wang et al., Beijing daxue jishi, 2: 708; Liu, Feng yu suiyue, 147; Zheng, Bei geming de jiaoyu, 188. 129. Mao, Wengao, 11: 22–23, 492–493. 130. For example, an article published in the People’s Daily on January 19, 1968 contended that the long course of study (at both HEIs and second-

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ary schools) secluded students from proletarian politics, from reality, and from workers, peasants, and soldiers. 131. Hong qi, no. 6 (1971): 92–94. 132. “Strive to Build a Socialist University of Science and Engineering,” in Peter J.  Seybolt, Revolutionary Education in China: Documents and Commentary (White Plains,  New York: International Arts and Sciences Press, 1973), 283–287, 291. 133. “Liberal Arts Universities Must Carry out Revolutionary Mass Criticism,” ibid., 303–312; “Reform Liberal Arts Universities through Revolutionary Great Criticism,” ibid., 313–330; Renmin ribao, 30 July 1971. 134. Wang et al., Beijing daxue jishi, 2: 757. 135. “Strive to Build a Socialist University of Science and Engineering,” 283. 136. Ibid. 287. 137. For example, students admitted into the History Department at Beijing University in 1970 spent 37.2 percent of their time on “open-door education” at factories and in rural areas during their first two years of study. Wang et al, Beijing daxue ji shi, 2: 725. Students at Tongji University in Shanghai spent about one third of their time at factories or construction sites. Students at Sun Yat-Sen Medical Institute in Guangzhou spent about 40 percent of their time on “open-door education” in rural areas. Zhou Quanhua, “Wenhua da geming” zhong de “jiaoyu geming” (Guangzhou, Guangdong jiaoyu chubanshe, 1999), 186. 138. Ibid. 139. Wang et al, Beijing daxue ji shi, 2: 765. 140. “Liberal Arts Universities Must Carry out Revolutionary Mass Criticism,” 308. 141. Zheng, Bei geming de jiaoyu, 166. After its first phase, the Great Cultural Revolution, which lasted until Mao’s death in 1976, consisted of several political campaigns. 142. “Strive to Build a Socialist University of Science and Engineering,” 283–284. 143. See, for example, Liu, Feng yu suiyue, 147–148, 152.

References Archives Arkhiv MGU (Moskovskogo gosudarstvennogo universiteta)—Archives of Moscow State University BMA—Beijing Municipal Archives (Beijing shi danganguan) GARF—State Archives of the Russian Federation (Gosudarstvennyi arkhiv Rossiiskoi Federatsii) SMA—Shanghai Municipal Archives (Shanghai shi danganguan)

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Russian Journals Biulleten’ Vsesoiuznogo komiteta po vysshemu tekhnicheskomu obrazovaniiu (VKVTO). Biulleten’ Vsesoiuznogo komiteta po delam vysshei shkoly (VKVSh) Nauchnyi rabotnik Sovetskoe studenchestvo Vysshaia shkola Vysshaia tekhnicheskaia shkola Za promyshlennye kadry

Chinese Newspaper and Journal Hong qi Renmin ribao

Books and Articles

in

Russian

Boldyrev, N.I., ed. 1947. Direktivy VKP(b) i postanovleniia Sovetskogo pravitel’stva o narodnom obrazovanii: Sbornik dokumentov za 1917–1947 gg. 2 vols. Moscow: Izdatel’stvo Akademii pedagogicheskikh nauk RSFSR. Lutchenko, A.I. 1966. Rukovodstvo KPSS formirovaniem kadrov tekhnicheskoi intelligentsii (1926–1933 gg.). Voprosy istorii KPSS 2: 29–42. Moskovskii universitet za 50 let Sovetskoi vlasti. 1967. Moscow: Izdatel’stvo Moskovskogo universiteta. Petrovsky, D. 1934. Podgotovka novogo uchebnogo goda vo VTUZakh. Moscow: Izdatel’stvo NKTP.

Books in Chinese Bo Yibo. 1991 and 1993. Ruogan zhongda juece yu shijian de huigu, 2 vols. Beijing: Zhonggong zhongyang dangxiao chubanshe. Chen Guangzhong. 2005. Hou Renzhi. Beijing: Shenghuo, dushu, xinzhi sanlian shudian. Dou Zhongru. 2007. Liang Sicheng zhuan. Tianjin: Baihua wenyi chubanshe. Gong Yuzhi. 2008. Gong Yuzhi huiyi: “Yanwang dian” jiushi. Nanchang: Jiangxi renmin chubanshe. Li Juanjuan. 2011. Tang Yijie zhuan. Beijing: Xinhua chubanshe. Liu Bing. 2008. Feng yu suiyue: 1964–1976 nian de Qinghua. Beijing: Dangdai zhongguo chubanshe. Luo Pinghan. 2007. “Wenge” qianye de zhongguo. Beijing: Renmin chubanshe.

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Mao Zedong. 1987–1996. Jianguo yilai Mao Zedong wengao. 11 vols. Beijing: Zhongyang wenxian chubanshe. Shi Jiping, Yang Jiashi, and Tao Zhongyuan, ed. 2008. Jia zai Qinghua. Jinan: Shandong huabao chubanshe. Wang Nianyi. 2009. Da dongluan de niandai. Beijing: Renmin chubanshe. Wang Xuezhen, Wang Xiaoting, Huang Wenyi, and Guo Jianrong. 1998. Beijing daxue jishi (1898–1997). 2 vols. Beijing: Beijing daxue chubanshe. Zheng Qian. 1999. Bei geming de jiaoyu: wenhua da geming zhong de “jiaoyu geming”. Beijing: Zhongguo qingnian chubanshe. Zhongguo jiaoyu nianjian, 1949–1981. 1984. Beijing: Zhongguo dabaike quanshu chubanshe. Zhonghua renmin gongheguo jiaoyu dashiji, 1949–1982. 1983. Beijing: Jiaoyu kexue chubanshe. Zhou Quanhua. 1999. “Wenhua da geming” zhong de “jiaoyu geming”. Guangzhou: Guangdong jiaoyu chubanshe.

Books and Articles

in

English

Conquest, Robert. 1990. The Great Terror: A Reassessment. New  York: Oxford University Press. De Witt, Nicholas. 1955. Soviet Professional Manpower: Its Education, Training, and Supply. Washington, DC: National Science Foundation. Froumin, Isak, and Yaroslav Kouzminov. 2018. Common Legacy: Evolution of the Institutional Landscape of Soviet Higher Education. In 25 Years of Transformations of Higher Education Systems in Post-Soviet Countries: Reform and Continuity, ed. Jeroen Huisman, Anna Smolentseva, and Isak Froumin, 45–72. Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan. McClelland, James. 1979. Autocrats and Academics: Education, Culture, and Society in Tsarist Russia. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Medvedev, Roy. 1989. Let History Judge. New York: Columbia University Press. Schram, Stuart. 1989. The Thought of Mao Tse-tung. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Seybolt, Peter J. 1973. Revolutionary Education in China: Documents and Commentary. White Plains, New York: International Arts and Sciences Press. Stalin, J.V. 1954. Works. 13 vols. Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House.

CHAPTER 7

Afterword

Before Deng Xiaoping’s reforms in China and Mikhail Gorbachev’s reforms in the Soviet Union, both the Chinese and Soviet Communists accepted the basic definition of the socialist economic system as state and collective ownership of means of production and planned economy. However, beyond this, socialism did not have a universally accepted and unchanging meaning even for those who followed the Marxist ideology. As this book has demonstrated, the endeavors to create a socialist system of higher education in both the Soviet Union and China underwent changes not only in means for achieving goals but also in goals themselves. In the Soviet Union, the endeavor to create a socialist system of higher education began immediately after 1917. The First Five-Year Plan period was the beginning of the Stalin era in the Soviet endeavor to create a socialist system of higher education, and it witnessed the most radical reforms in higher education in the history of the Soviet Union. The reforms changed the policy for selection for higher education, the system of higher education management, the institutional structure of higher education, the system of internal governance at HEIs, the curriculum, and methods of teaching and learning. During this period, as the class war against bourgeois professors silenced a group who would otherwise have had an influential voice in defending academic standards and educational conventions, the utopian visions sought by those at the pinnacle of power also encouraged utopian experiments initiated from the unexpected © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 L. S. Zhu, Stalinism, Maoism, and Socialism in Higher Education, Global Histories of Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-88777-3_7

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corners. The outcome of these reforms fell far short of the expectations of Stalin and the Soviet government, and conflicted with the imperatives of Stalin’s industrialization program, which required educated specialists, especially engineers, with high qualifications. Therefore, pragmatic measures were undertaken to raise academic standards in 1932. Starting in 1934, when the Soviet Communist Party proclaimed the victory of socialism, goals of higher education were redefined in the Soviet Union. From that year to 1941, the Soviet system of higher education, which China would import in the early 1950s, came into its final shape. Nicholas Timasheff contended that there was a “Great Retreat” from revolutionary social and cultural values to traditional norms and values in the Soviet Union after 1934.1 Borrowing this notion, Sheila Fitzpatrick argued that the Soviet regime’s retreat in the educational sphere in the 1930s and 1940s consisted of the reassertion of traditional values in secondary and higher education.2 However, although the Soviet government in the second half of the 1930s abandoned some early political objectives sought in higher education and even selectively restored educational traditions of Tsarist Russia, another important trend in Soviet higher education policy during these years was the increasingly rigid enforcement of uniform academic plans and course outlines, which corresponded with the spirit of the planned economy. In the Soviet system of higher education, students were admitted to HEIs and graduates were placed on jobs according to the state plan. Part of the rationale for the uniform academic plans and course outlines was to ensure that the “products” of each specialty at HEIs were standardized and could be assigned to jobs according to the state plan. In this sense, the Soviet system of higher education that came into the final shape by 1941 cannot but be defined as socialist. This system lasted until the collapse of the Soviet Union with little modifications. In 1958, when Khrushchev was in power, the Soviet government launched reforms in elementary and secondary education as well as in higher learning with the purpose of “strengthening connections between school and life.” According to a law enacted in December 1958, “production candidates” (graduates of secondary schools who worked in industry or agriculture for least two years) were given special preference in admissions to HEIs, students at institutions of higher technical education would work as part-time workers in industry while taking classes as part-­ time students during their first two years of study, and universities were expected to strengthen the practical training of their students.3 But these

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reforms were undone after Khrushchev had been removed from power in 1964.4 The CCP’s endeavor to create a socialist system of higher education began in the early 1950s with the adoption of the Soviet model. Radical reforms in Chinese higher education during the Great Leap period began a few months before Khrushchev’s reforms in Soviet higher education, and the reduction of the distinction between mental and physical labor was also a goal sought in Khrushchev’s reforms. However, there was no class war against the bourgeois intelligentsia in the Soviet Union in 1958, nor did the Soviet government seek to create a proletarian intelligentsia during the Khrushchev years. Furthermore, the effort to strengthen connections between higher education and life was not accompanied by radical reforms in the curriculum and methods of teaching and learning. Viewed in historical perspective, while radical reforms in Chinese higher education during the Great Leap period were the beginning of the CCP’s effort to create a socialist system of higher learning without Soviet tutelage, they also represented a historical convergence between Maoism of the Great Leap period and Stalinism of the First Five-Year Plan period. In China after the end of the Great Leap Forward, as in the Soviet Union after the end of the First Five-Year Plan, pragmatic measures were undertaken to raise academic standards in higher education. However, starting in 1964, as late Maoism with its new doctrine of socialism emerged on the historical scene, the goals of higher education were redefined in China. Reforms in Chinese higher education undertaken from 1964 to 1976 represented the divergence of late Maoism from high Stalinism. But the last phase of the Maoist endeavor to create a socialist system of higher learning, unlike the last phase of the Stalinist endeavor, did not produce a system of higher education that was sustained for a long period of time. The radical reforms in higher education undertaken after the first phase of the Great Cultural Revolution not only caused a severe decline in academic standards but were full of self-contradictions. While the main political objective was to prevent the emergence of a new educated elite, an implicit objective of higher education was still to produce educated specialists. While the reforms sought to create a new socialist system of higher education, they precluded any systematic approach to education. Immediately after Mao’s death, higher education reforms undertaken during the Great Cultural Revolution were undone. In many ways, Chinese higher education policy in the immediate post-Mao period (from 1977 to the beginning of the 1990s) was a return to the pre-1964 status

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quo ante. The new leaders who came to power after Mao’s death were actually old Communist bureaucrats who had been removed from their positions in the first phase of the Great Cultural Revolution. The old Communist bureaucrats also regained their dominant role in decision-­ making on the higher education front.5 For these officials, return to the status quo ante of the early 1950s, when China rigidly followed the Soviet model, or to the policy of the Great Leap period was not a good option, but higher education policy of the early 1960s seemed to contain all the good elements. As some scholars have pointed out, higher education in both the Russian Federation and China underwent a wave of de-Sovietization in the 1990s.6 In the Russian Federation, higher education policy after the collapse of the Soviet Union aimed to get rid of the features of the Soviet system of higher education that appeared outdated, which included the rigid regulation of educational programs and enrollment from the center, the predominance of engineering training, and funding of higher education from a single source (the federal budget).7 In China, the return to the status quo ante of the early 1960s in the immediate post-Mao period had included a partial return to the Soviet method of higher education management. At the end of the 1970s and the beginning of the 1980s, 38 HEIs were placed under the direct administration of the Ministry of Education, and about one third of the HEIs were placed under the jurisdiction of other ministries of the central government.8 However, after 1993, with the exception of the Ministry of Education, other ministries of the central government no longer administer HEIs, and most of the formerly ministry-run HEIs have been transferred to the jurisdiction of the provincial governments.9 Moreover, the Soviet institutional structure of higher education, transplanted to China in the early 1950s, was retained until the beginning of the 1990s, although China had rejected many other aspects of the Soviet model after 1956. However, in the 1990s, polytechnics as well as many specialized technical institutes began to transform themselves into comprehensive universities by creating new educational programs in social science, humanities, and other areas of study. Russian and Chinese higher education in the early twenty-first century is sharply different from higher learning in the Stalin and Mao eras. Whereas only a small percentage of young people could receive higher education in the Soviet Union during the Stalin era and in China under Mao, higher education has become mass education in both Russia and China today.10 The planned economy has been relegated to history in

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both Russia and China, although the latter still claims to be a socialist country. As a result, graduates of HEIs in both Russia and China are no longer placed on jobs by the government, but have to find employment on the job market. With this change, HEIs in both countries can no longer just serve the interests of the state, but have to consider the marketability of their graduates as well. To a certain degree, higher education in both countries has become a service that the students have to buy.11 However, the Stalin era and the Mao era still have their legacies in Russian and Chinese higher education. Starting in the era of high Stalinism, HEIs in the Soviet Union were supervised by different Union-level and republican ministries, while the All-Union Committee for Higher School Affairs and its successor, the Ministry of Higher Education, regulated academic affairs at all HEIs and also directly administered part of them. This system of higher education management has essentially been retained in post-Soviet Russia.12 Moreover, after a decade of laissez-faire policy in the 1990s, the federal government of Russia increasingly reasserted centralized control over higher education after 2000 as it sought to raise academic standards. This policy trend is reminiscent of the centralization of higher education management in the Soviet Union after 1932, and it led some scholars to conclude that “the rigid bureaucratic model of higher education of the Soviet type managed to emerge from the crisis that was due to the shrinking of state financing in the mid-1990s without any serious, systemic, or long-term changes taking place.”13 The most important legacy of the Mao era in Chinese higher education is the system of internal governance at HEIs. The CCP officially rejected the principle of one-person management in 1956. In 1958, a new system of internal governance was created, which nominally expected the committee of school affairs to administer the HEI under the leadership of the party committee, but actually gave all the power to the latter. This system was preserved after the end of the Great Leap Forward, but the “Provisional Regulations for Higher Education Institutions Directly Administered by the Ministry of Education,” issued by the Central Committee of the CCP in 1961, demonstrated the intention to balance the principle of party committee leadership with the new effort to include professors’ input in decision-making. The current system of internal governance in Chinese HEIs still embodies the principle of the primacy of the party committee, as the president is expected to administer the HEI under the leadership of the party committee.14 A directive from the general office of the CCP’s

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Central Committee, issued in 2014, states that the party committee is the highest decision-making organ at the HEI.15 To be sure, unlike the old cadres during the Mao years, members of the party committees at Chinese HEIs today no longer lack academic qualifications. As the website of any randomly selected Chinese HEI shows, the secretary of its party committee now is a party member who has earned an advanced degree. Moreover, as a rule, the president of the HEI is a party member with a strong academic background and serves as the deputy secretary of the party committee. Most vice presidents are selected from among Communist professors, and they also serve as members of the party committee’s standing committee (a small decision-making body within the party committee).16 However, as a Chinese scholar pointed out, the primacy of the party committee in the governance system indicates that the Chinese HEIs are still organizations with both political and academic missions.17 Although the party center in the 1990s and in the first decade of the twenty-first century repeatedly indicated its intention to expand the autonomy of HEIs,18 the principle of party committee leadership conflicts with this proclaimed intention. The primacy of the party committee also conflicts with faculty participation in academic governance. According to a Chinese scholar, the academic committee, degree committee, and other specialized committees at the HEI (which are supposed to be means through which the faculty governs academic affairs) have essentially been placed under the control of the administrative power.19 This book is a systematic comparative study of the socialist experiments in the Soviet Union under Stalin and in China under Mao, although it concerns only one area of human endeavor. It demonstrates that with an appropriate methodology, it is possible to execute a rigorous comparative analysis of the historical developments that were separated by space as well as time; and such comparative analysis can shed new light on topics that have been examined by other scholars. This book examines historical topics. But policies and practices of the Stalin and Mao eras still have influence on current higher education in Russia and China. I hope that readers whose main interest is in contemporary higher education in China or Russia as well as those whose main interest is in comparative education will also get some insight from this book.

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Notes 1. Timasheff, The Great Retreat, 349–360. 2. Fitzpatrick, Education and Social Mobility, 249–251. 3. Vestnik vysshei shkoly, no. 1 (1959): 3–14; no. 7 (1959): 17–18. 4. Mervyn Matthews, Education in the Soviet Union: Policies and Institutions since Stalin (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1982), 140. 5. For example, Jiang Nanxiang, who had served as minister of higher education before the Great Cultural Revolution, became minister of education in 1979. Zhongguo jiaoyu nianjian, 1949–1981, 273. 6. Hantian Wu et al., “Policy and Implementation in the Processes of China’s Higher Education Development and De-Sovietization: Reflections from Global, Cross-National, and Institutional Perspectives,” in International Status Anxiety and Higher Education: The Soviet Legacy in China and Russia, ed. Anatoly V. Oleksiyenko et al. (Hong Kong: The University of Hong Kong, 2018), 174–177. 7. Olga B.  Bain, University Autonomy in the Russian Federation since Perestroika (New York: Routledge, 2003), 8. 8. Zhongguo jiaoyu nianjian, 1949–1981, 237. 9. Wu et al., “Policy and Implementation,” 175. 10. See Xiaoyan Wang and Jian Liu, “China’s Higher Education Expansion and the Task of Economic Revitalization,” Higher Education 62, no. 2 (2011): 215–218; Anna Smolentseva, “Universal Higher Education and Positional Advantage: Soviet Legacies and Neoliberal Transformations in Russia,” Higher Education 73, no. 2 (2017): 210–212, 215. 11. Starting in 1997, all Chinese HEIs charged tuitions, and the proportion of tuitions in the revenue of the public HEIs continuously increased in the following decade. Wang and Liu, “China’s Higher Education Expansion,” 219–220. Tuitions were introduced in Russian public HEIs in the 1990s. In the first two decades of the twenty-first century, more than half of the students at Russian public HEIs were required to pay tuitions. Smolentseva, “Universal Higher Education,” 216. 12. At the end of the Soviet era, HEIs were administered by 28 different ministries. In 2014, public HEIs in the Russian Federation were supervised by 21 government agencies. Daria Platonova and Dmitry Semyonov, “Russia: The Institutional Landscape of Russian Higher Education,” in 25 Years of Transformations, 348–349. 13. Boris Dubin and Nataliia Zorkaia, “The System of Russian Education as Assessed by the Population: The Problem of Level and Quality,” Russian Education and Society 52, no. 12 (2010): 17. 14. Guangli Zhou, “Institutional Logic of University Governance Reform in China,” Chinese Education and Society 53, no. 4 (2020): 167.

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15. Ibid. 171. 16. Fengqiao Yan and Peijun Guan, “The Configuration of Action Space in the Governance Structures of Chinese Universities: An Analysis of Interview Data,” Chinese Education and Society 53, no. 4 (2020): 177. 17. Ibid., 178. 18. Zhou, “Institutional Logic,” 168. 19. Qi Zhanyong and Du Yue, “A Study of the Practical Dilemmas and Safeguarding Strategies of Universities in Mainland China in Exercising Academic Freedom” Chinese Education and Society 53, no. 4 (2020): 216.

References Russian Journal Vestnik vysshei shkoly.

Book in Chinese Zhongguo jiaoyu nianjian, 1949–1981. 1984. Beijing: Zhongguo dabaike quanshu chubanshe.

Books

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English

Bain, Olga B. 2003. University Autonomy in the Russian Federation since Perestroika. New York: Routledge. Dubin, Boris, and Nataliia Zorkaia. 2010. The System of Russian Education as Assessed by the Population: The Problem of Level and Quality. Russian Education and Society 52 (12): 15–79. Fitzpatrick, Sheila. 1979. Education and Social Mobility in the Soviet Union, 1921–1934. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Matthews, Mervyn. 1982. Education in the Soviet Union: Policies and Institutions since Stalin. London: George Allen and Unwin. Platonova, Daria, and Dmitry Semyonov. 2018. Russia: The Institutional Landscape of Russian Higher Education. In 25 Years of Transformations of Higher Education Systems in Post-Soviet Countries: Reform and Continuity, ed. Jeroen Huisman, Anna Smolentseva, and Isak Froumin, 337–362. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan.

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Smolentseva, Anna. 2017. Universal Higher Education and Positional Advantage: Soviet Legacies and Neoliberal Transformations in Russia. Higher Education 73 (2): 209–226. Timasheff, Nicholas S. 1946. The Great Retreat: The Growth and Decline of Communism in Russia. New York: E. P. Dutton and Company. Wang, Xiaoyan, and Jian Liu. 2011. China’s Higher Education Expansion and the Task of Economic Revitalization. Higher Education 62 (2): 213–229. Wu, Hantian, Yuzhu Gu, Qiang Zha, and Qiubo Yang. 2018. Policy and Implementation in the Processes of China’s Higher Education Development and De-Sovietization: Reflections from Global, Cross-National, and Institutional Perspectives. In International Status Anxiety and Higher Education: The Soviet Legacy in China and Russia, ed. Anatoly V. Oleksiyenko, Qiang Zha, Igor Chirikov, and Jun Li, 163–189. Hong Kong: The University of Hong Kong. Yan, Fengqiao, and Peijun Guan. 2020. The Configuration of Action Space in the Governance Structures of Chinese Universities: An Analysis of Interview Data. Chinese Education and Society 53 (4): 175–186. Zhanyong, Qi, and Du Yue. 2020. A Study of the Practical Dilemmas and Safeguarding Strategies of Universities in Mainland China in Exercising Academic Freedom. Chinese Education and Society 53 (4): 212–221. Zhou, Guangli. 2020. Institutional Logic of University Governance Reform in China. Chinese Education and Society 53 (4): 163–174.

Index1

A Academic degrees, 194, 195, 223 Academic departments, 4, 14n4, 23–26, 33–36, 38, 39, 41, 46n71, 47n88, 47n100, 62, 67–69, 106, 118, 119, 126, 130, 157, 159, 177, 178, 203, 205, 209, 214, 216, 221, 224, 227n26, 228n47, 229n74, 230n104 Academic hours, 27, 30, 31, 44n38, 119, 137n77, 137n79, 159, 160, 184n65, 184n68, 199, 212, 229n86 Academic standards, 7, 9, 10, 31, 32, 35, 71, 73–75, 79, 80, 83, 87–89, 146, 149–151, 154, 162, 163, 167, 171, 177, 186n116, 192, 193, 203, 204, 209, 216–218, 235–237, 239

All-Union Central Council of the Trade Unions (VTsSPS), 74, 156, 157, 159, 179, 183n49 All-Union Committee for Higher School Affairs (VKVSh), 153, 159–161, 179, 197, 199, 200, 212–217, 230n108 All-Union Committee of Higher Technical Education (VKVTO), 2, 150, 152–154, 158, 193, 194, 211–214, 216, 226n8 Anti-rightist campaign, 55, 64 B Beijing Normal University, 111, 129, 130, 204, 205, 207 Beijing Party Committee for Higher Schools, 3, 37–38, 67

 Note: Page numbers followed by ‘n’ refer to notes.

1

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INDEX

Beijing University, 30, 36, 64, 65, 68–70, 86, 111, 115, 128, 130, 176, 178, 202–207, 209, 218, 219, 222, 228n52, 229n74, 232n137 Bourgeois intelligentsia, 5, 7, 11, 12, 33, 53–90, 168, 169, 191, 192, 194, 202, 204–209, 224, 225, 237 “Bourgeois reactionary academic authorities,” 206–208, 220, 224, 228n61, 228n65 Bubnov, Andrei, 58, 62, 195, 196, 199 Butiagin, Aleksei, 197, 231n114 C Campaign against bourgeois scholarly ideas, 64–67 Central Bureau of the Proletarian Students (TsBPS), 2, 33, 34, 61, 78, 87, 91n39, 107, 124 Central Committee (of the Communist Party), 10, 30, 47n84, 55, 71–74, 76, 79, 104, 108, 117, 120, 132, 146, 150, 152, 156, 159, 161, 211, 214, 217 Chinese system of higher education, 23, 25, 125, 168, 169, 192, 224 Class war, 5, 7, 11, 35, 53–98, 191–194, 202, 206, 207, 235, 237 Collective farms, 72, 145, 150, 152 Commissariat of Heavy Industry, 121, 195, 196, 198–200, 210, 211 Commissariat of Railroads, 117, 151, 195, 226n10 Committee of school affairs, 41, 68, 69, 239

Communism, 103, 113, 114, 131, 148, 162, 177 Communist students, 34, 35, 39, 46n67, 130, 157, 160, 196 Continuous production practice, 58, 101, 103–109, 132, 135n31 Course outlines, 12, 27–31, 40–42, 44n39, 44n44, 130, 192, 211, 218, 219, 225, 236 Curricular reform, 13, 23, 58, 102, 117, 126, 127, 130, 132, 177 D Deng Xiaoping, 168, 176, 177, 235 Department of Education and Health (of the Shanghai Municipal Party Committee), 3, 81, 92n41, 111 Department of School Affairs (of the Shanghai Municipal Party Committee), 40, 92n41, 125 Department of Universities and Science (of the Beijing Municipal Party Committee), 3, 67, 68, 202, 205 Distinction between mental and physical labor, 8, 9, 103, 114, 115, 126, 132–134, 148, 174, 177, 237 E East China Normal University, 29, 37, 129, 175, 187n124 Educated elite, 2, 9–11, 13, 133, 146–149, 152, 167, 171, 173, 175, 177–180, 204, 219, 223, 225, 237 Education and productive labor, 133 Engineering education, 22, 26, 30, 31, 72, 104, 117–119, 212 Enrollment Committee, 85, 97n54

 INDEX 

Entrance examinations, 32, 70, 71, 77–80, 82, 85, 87, 95n117, 96n130, 97n160, 150–154, 162, 165, 167, 171, 172, 180, 181, 182n31, 183n40, 185n89, 185n90, 218 F Faculty reelections, 58–61 First Five-Year Plan, 1, 5–8, 10, 12–13, 34, 35, 53, 54, 56–58, 62–64, 68, 71–74, 81, 83, 87–89, 93n87, 95n102, 98n164, 101, 102, 117, 119, 123, 124, 126–128, 131–133, 146, 150, 151, 154–156, 162, 165, 179, 191, 193, 195, 200, 201, 213, 216, 217, 223, 235, 237 Fu Ying, 68, 203 Fudan University, 65, 68, 81, 116, 127–131, 209 G General secondary schools, 10, 43n32, 73, 74, 76, 78, 79, 89, 94n88, 118, 152–154, 160, 183n49 Glavprofobr, 58, 59, 61, 63, 71, 75, 92n40, 103, 105, 118 Graduation rate, 76, 83 Great Cultural Revolution, 5, 11–13, 147, 149, 164, 168–171, 173, 177, 179, 180, 181n8, 186n114, 192, 193, 198, 199, 205–209, 219, 220, 222–225, 228n65, 232n141, 237, 238, 241n5 Great Leap Forward, 5–7, 10, 53, 67, 101, 102, 110, 128, 129, 131, 133, 148, 149, 162, 165, 173, 174, 191, 193, 202, 217, 237, 239 Great Purge, 8, 11, 12, 162, 191, 192, 197–200, 223, 224

247

H Half-time work and half-time study, 11, 149, 173–178, 180, 221 Higher education management, 2, 53, 90n1, 118, 125, 126, 150, 192, 193, 209–223, 235, 238, 239 Hundred Flowers movement, 55 I Ideological courses, 10, 30, 112, 137n77, 149, 155, 156, 159–161, 173, 179, 180, 198, 199, 229n86 Industrial associations, 118, 120, 121, 136n70, 137n88, 150, 181n13, 210, 211 Institutes of the national economy, 122 Institutions of higher technical education, 27, 30–31, 35, 72, 73, 75, 78, 81, 93n86, 94n91, 94n93, 98n164, 108, 110, 116–123, 134n8, 136n77, 137n88, 150, 151, 161, 181n13, 182n18, 184n66, 195, 198, 199, 210–215, 217, 226n10, 227n29, 229n84, 236 Intelligentsia of worker and peasant origins, 32, 80, 81 Internal governance, 2, 4, 7, 21, 32, 33, 35, 36, 39, 40, 42, 56, 58, 62–70 J Jiang Nanxiang, 168, 176, 206, 241n5 Jiaotong University, 20, 82, 86, 125–126, 129, 139n122, 209, 229n73

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INDEX

K Kafedra, 23, 33, 35, 195, 196, 198, 227n26 Kaftanov, Sergei, 161 Kalinin, Mikhail, 151, 152 Khrushchev, Nikita, 5, 39, 236, 237 Komsomol, 34, 70, 78, 79, 87, 151, 153, 156–160, 179, 183n49, 183n54 Krupskaia, Nadezhda, 154, 164 L Laboratory-brigade method, 123–124, 138n116, 150 Leningrad Polytechnic Institute, 77, 78, 118, 214 Leningrad University, 61, 77, 78, 195, 212 Liu Shaoqi, 109, 112, 113, 168, 169, 174 LOSNKh, 123, 124, 132 Lu Dingyi, 67, 113, 114, 168, 169, 176, 177 Lu Ping, 204–206 Lunacharsky, Anatoly, 58, 119 M Ma Yinchu, 30, 65 Mao Zedong, 2, 46n73, 207 Maoism, 1–13, 19, 41, 53, 54, 56, 84, 87, 101–103, 129, 131, 132, 145–181, 191–225, 237 Methods of teaching and learning, 102, 103, 117–132, 219, 220, 235, 237 Mezhlauk, Ivan, 199, 213, 215, 216 Ministry of Education, 3, 21–24, 29, 35, 43n21, 86, 114, 115, 126, 128, 131, 132, 162, 172, 174,

187n124, 203, 217–219, 231n117, 238, 239 Ministry of Higher Education, 25, 28, 29, 31, 40–42, 43n30, 44n44, 45n62, 69, 125, 130, 168, 172, 175, 177, 201, 213, 218, 219, 230n96, 239 Model academic plans, 118, 119, 136–137n77, 214, 215 Molotov, Viacheslav, 59, 73 Moscow Higher Technical School, 61, 118, 137n80, 230n104 Moscow University, 60, 109, 138n101, 151, 159–161, 182n35, 195–198, 201, 212, 217 N Narkompros, 33, 34, 45n63, 45n64, 46n71, 58–62, 72, 73, 75, 76, 78, 79, 95n107, 96n130, 104, 105, 108, 117–121, 123, 124, 134n14, 137n88, 138n109, 193, 196, 197, 199, 211–213, 226n12, 226n13 New Maoist doctrine of socialism, 147, 148, 162–173, 179, 192, 224 O Old cadres, 19, 20, 36–38, 208, 209, 229n71, 240 Old intelligentsia, 6, 12, 35, 46n73, 55, 56, 63, 69, 84, 191, 192, 194, 203, 208 One-person management, 4, 21, 32–40, 42, 62, 63, 68, 196, 239 “Open-door education,” 220, 221, 232n137 Orakhelashvili, M. P., 199, 231n114

 INDEX 

P Party center, 40, 41, 64, 69, 86, 114, 125, 129, 163, 167, 169, 240 Party committee leadership, 42, 68, 203, 239, 240 Pedagogic institutes, 70, 72, 105, 118, 127, 128, 130, 174, 175, 198, 199, 213, 230n92, 231n114 Peng Zhen, 204, 206, 228n52, 228n59 People’s communes, 6, 54, 113, 116, 127, 128, 131, 167, 170 People’s University of China, 27, 111, 128 Petrovsky, David, 121, 196, 199 Planned economy, 1, 29, 224, 225, 235, 236, 238 Policy for selection for higher education, 11, 60, 70–87, 89, 149–155, 162–173, 187n119, 235 Political education, 10, 147, 149, 155–162, 173, 179, 180 Political screening, 84, 85, 163, 164 “Power-holders taking the capitalist road,” 9, 147, 168, 169, 192, 199, 204, 206, 207, 219, 220, 225 Preobrazhensky, Evgeni, 71, 73 Professors, 4, 7, 11, 12, 14n8, 20, 22, 25, 26, 28, 30, 32–42, 45n64, 47n88, 55–70, 87, 90n9, 91n23, 91n39, 92n46, 108, 122, 130, 131, 151, 171, 191–203, 205–209, 215, 217, 218, 223, 224, 226n8, 226n10, 226n12, 226n13, 228n47, 235, 239 Profiles of specialists, 120–121, 132, 137n87 Program-methodological leadership, 118, 211, 214

249

Proletarian intelligentsia, 2, 7, 8, 10, 53–90, 104, 108, 110, 111, 133, 146, 150–155, 172, 178–180, 237 Propaganda teams of workers and soldiers, 207, 209, 220, 221, 223 Q Qian Junrui, 35 Qinghua University, 25, 36, 66, 67, 207, 218–221, 223, 228n47, 229n71 R Rabfaks, 9, 10, 32, 45n56, 70, 71, 73–75, 77, 78, 96n130, 96n132, 151–153, 178, 182n31, 182n36 Rector, 33, 45n64, 62, 105, 216, 230n108 Red Guards, 168, 169, 206–208, 219, 224 Rules for admissions, 76–79, 82, 96n132 S Shock students, 156–158 Short-term preparatory courses, 10, 74, 75, 77, 79, 96n130, 96n132, 152, 153, 182n31 Socialist competition, 156, 157, 159, 183n56 Social science and humanities, 220–222, 231n109 Socialist Education Movement, 204 Socialist society, 2, 4, 9–11, 146–149, 153, 175, 177, 179, 192, 201, 224

250 

INDEX

Socialist system of higher education, 1–6, 8, 9, 13, 19–47, 149, 169, 179, 193, 219, 223, 235, 237 Socialization of the economy, 6, 7, 9, 53, 55, 145–147, 153, 178 Soviet experts, 4, 20, 27–28 Soviet system of higher education, 1, 3, 4, 9, 12, 19–21, 23–32, 38, 41, 42, 44n43, 134, 145, 168, 223–225, 236, 238 Soviet tutelage, 3, 6, 20, 23, 53, 125, 168 Sovnarkom, 77, 107, 152, 153, 161, 194, 197, 201, 211, 213, 217 Specialties, 12, 13, 26–28, 30, 31, 44n44, 45n53, 80, 85, 86, 91n38, 97n157, 102, 106, 107, 115, 119–122, 126, 127, 133, 136–137n77, 137n79, 139n128, 146, 160, 163, 167, 173, 193, 211–214, 216–219, 222, 223, 225, 229n84, 229n86, 231n117, 236 Stalin, Joseph, 1–12, 13n2, 19, 39, 40, 54–58, 72, 73, 75, 76, 78, 89, 90n6, 102, 104, 108, 120, 123, 132, 145, 147, 149, 150, 153–155, 159, 178, 179, 191, 194, 199, 201, 224, 235, 236, 238–240 Stalinism, 1–13, 19, 41, 53, 54, 56, 87, 101, 102, 131, 132, 145–181, 191–225, 237, 239 State Council, 68, 69, 110, 125, 167, 172, 181n8, 202, 219 State examinations, 161, 217, 231n115 State Planning Committee (Gosplan), 118 Students of excellence, 156–159

Students of worker and peasant origins, 81, 83, 97n150, 111, 164 Subject committee, 33, 34, 46n68 Supreme Council of the National Economy (VSNKh), 104, 108, 117–121, 132, 136n70, 137n79, 137n88, 150, 214 T Teaching and research groups, 14n4, 23, 29, 30, 47n88, 65, 66 Thought reform campaign, 25, 35–38 Tongji University, 128, 220, 232n137 TsBPS, see Central Bureau of the Proletarian Students U Uniform academic plans, 12, 29–31, 40–42, 192, 213–216, 225, 236 Universities, 21–25, 27–29, 36, 42n6, 43n24, 45n53, 68, 69, 82, 105, 111–113, 117, 118, 122, 125–128, 130, 134n14, 139n128, 159, 173, 178, 187n130, 195, 198, 199, 202, 204, 212, 213, 216, 217, 220–223, 227n26, 231n109, 231n114, 231n115, 236, 238 V VKVSh, see All-Union Committee for Higher School Affairs VKVTO, see All-Union Committee of Higher Technical Education

 INDEX 

VSNKh, see Supreme Council of the National Economy VTsSPS, see All-Union Central Council of the Trade Unions Vyshinsky, Andrei, 58, 108 W Worker and peasant accelerated secondary schools, 32, 45n55, 80, 82

251

Working-class quota, 72, 73, 75, 81, 93n86, 150 Working-class students, 72–74, 78, 81, 88, 93n86, 94n88, 108, 150, 151, 182n18 Z Zeng Zhaolun, 26, 43n30 Zhou Peiyuan, 69, 93n73