Proceedings of the Tomsk Polytechnic Institute named after S. M. Kirov, holder of the Order of the October Revolution and the Order of the Red Banner of Labor

Volume 286
1973

PARTY ORGANIZATIONS AND THE TRAINING OF HIGHLY QUALIFIED TEACHING STAFF FOR HIGHER TECHNICAL EDUCATION IN WESTERN SIBERIA (1966–1970)

L. I. KISELEV

(Presented by the scientific seminar of the Department of Scientific Communism)

Education in a higher educational institution is a purposeful process, carried out above all through the system of classes, where a systematic influence is exerted on all components of the student’s psychology and the future leader of production and educator of the labor collective is formed. Therefore, successes or costs in the training of personnel depend primarily on the composition of those who ensure the educational process—the teachers. “You understand perfectly well, comrades,” V. I. Lenin wrote to the students of the Capri School in 1909, “that any ‘control,’ any ‘leadership,’ any ‘programs,’ ‘statutes,’ and so forth—all this is an empty sound in relation to the composition of the lecturers. No control, no programs, etc., are in any position to change the direction of the classes, which is determined by the composition of the lecturers”¹).

All this makes the problem of reproducing teaching personnel one of the central issues in carrying out the tasks of communist education and requires a generalization of the positive experience accumulated in this field. The subject of the present article is to show the activity of party organizations in solving it in the higher technical school of Western Siberia.

The legally established criterion for determining the level of qualification of teachers is an academic degree—an indicator of their erudition in one or another field of science. However, this alone is insufficient for effective work in higher education. Research experience by itself cannot ensure the quality of teaching. What is needed is the ability to transmit accumulated knowledge to others, i.e., knowledge of pedagogy—the science of education, instruction, and upbringing—and of its component parts: didactics and psychology. The success of a teacher is based on this organic unity of the qualities of researcher and pedagogue, on the foundation of a scientific worldview and a generally high culture²).

In the 1964/65 academic year, in 159 higher educational institutions, 8 factory-higher technical colleges, and the Institute for the Advanced Training of Teachers at Moscow State University of the Ministry of Higher and Secondary Specialized Education of the RSFSR, 63,303 people were employed in full-time work. Of these, 2,422 people (3.8%) held the academic degree of Doctor of Sciences and 18,416 (29%) that of Candidate of Sciences. However

¹) V. I. Lenin. Collected Works, vol. 47, p. 194.
²) P. A. Berezina. Ethical Norms of Relationships between Teachers and Students of a Higher Educational Institution. Pedagogy of Higher Education, Voronezh, 1969, p. 123.

their territorial distribution was extremely uneven. The higher educational institutions of the central regions of the republic were most fully provided with highly qualified personnel. Thus, at Leningrad University the share of doctors of sciences was 12.3%, and of candidates—44.4% of the total number of instructors; at Moscow State University, respectively, 11.8 and 49.2%; at the Leningrad Engineering-Economic Institute—8.1 and 46.0%, etc.

Overall, in 55 higher educational institutions of the Central Economic Region, more than 50% of all doctors of sciences and almost half of all candidates of sciences were employed. If to this are added 22 higher educational institutions of the Northwestern Economic Region, these figures rise, respectively, to 80 and 70%.

At the same time, the saturation with highly qualified personnel of many peripheral higher educational institutions of the RSFSR was extremely insufficient: in the Volga region the proportion of doctors was 1.8%, and of candidates—22.7%; in the Urals—1.8 and 21%; in Western Siberia—1.1 and 17.6% (53 and 825 persons out of 4,686)^3).

The contingent of this category of workers was also insignificant in the West Siberian higher technical school (see Table 1)^4).

This situation was explained by the following circumstances: first, the rates of reproduction of highly qualified scientific-pedagogical personnel (candidates and doctors of sciences) lagged behind the general rates of increase in the number of teaching staff, caused by the significant growth in the student body, especially during the years of the seven-year plan; second, because of the absence of a full range of living conditions and of conditions necessary for scientific work, the contradiction between the assigned and the actual state of affairs was here partially resolved in the form of the migration of scholars to other geographical parts of the country.

Thus, from the Tomsk Polytechnic Institute over five years (1959–1964), 111 associate professors, candidates of sciences, and 14 professors left (including planned transfers to TIRIET). During the same period, 100 candidates and 7 doctors of sciences were trained^5). For this reason, other technical higher educational institutions also lost scientific-pedagogical personnel.

Moreover, the overwhelming majority of them had been opened during the years of Soviet power, and therefore not all of them had managed to develop scientific schools and large-scale fields around which the process of concentrating the forces of researchers could proceed. The resulting vacuum was therefore filled by persons who did not possess the necessary scientific qualifications or experience in teaching work. In 1965, instructors with up to three years of work experience in a higher educational institution constituted: at the Tomsk Civil Engineering Institute—44%; at the Institute of Radio Electronics and Electronic Engineering—41%; at the Siberian Automobile and Highway Institute—35.5%; at the Tomsk Polytechnic Institute—54% with up to five years’ experience; at the Omsk Polytechnic Institute—70% (in 1968)^6).

Attempts by the administration and Party organizations to strengthen the institutes by transferring specialists from other cities were ineffective because of the absence of sufficiently effective moral incentives in this respect. The announced competitions to fill vacant

^3) Current Archive of the Ministry of Higher and Secondary Specialized Education of the RSFSR, op. 1, file 2412, fols. 8–14. Report on the consolidated number and composition of scientific-pedagogical workers of higher educational institutions of the Ministry as of November 1, 1964.

^4) The table was compiled on the basis of materials from the Current Archive of the Ministry of Higher and Secondary Specialized Education of the RSFSR, op. 1, file 2412, fols. 8–14.

^5) Party Archive of the Tomsk Regional Committee of the CPSU (PATO), fond 320, op. 10, file 92, fol. 31.

^6) PATO, fond 607, op. 115, file 127, fol. 13; fond 320, op. 10, file 88, fol. 203; Current Archive of SibADI, file 453, fol. 84; Current Archive of the Educational Department of OMPI.

Table 1

Number and composition of research-and-teaching personnel by groups of higher educational institutions of the Ministry of Higher and Secondary Specialized Education of the RSFSR, and by the higher educational institutions of Western Siberia included in them, in the 1964/65 academic year

positions, as a rule, did not attract major scholars from other higher educational institutions or research establishments. Let us take the six most significant technical higher educational institutions, of which three were polytechnical (Tomsk, Kuzbass, and Altai) and three were specialized institutes (the Siberian Metallurgical Institute, the Novosibirsk Engineering-Construction Institute, and the Electrotechnical Institute); these represented various administrative-territorial units of Western Siberia. In 1967, 44 teachers with an academic degree or academic title left them, while 19 fewer entered; in the following year the negative balance of such movements had already reached 28 persons, in 1969 it amounted to 27, and in 1970 to 16 persons¹. Therefore party organizations devoted their main attention to increasing the effectiveness of the internal sources for reproducing scientific-pedagogical personnel. These included:

a) various forms of postgraduate study,
b) candidacy for a degree,
c) the system of senior research associates.

The training of Candidates of Sciences through postgraduate study was carried out, with the exception of the Novosibirsk Electrotechnical Institute of Communications, at all higher educational institutions. True, in June 1967 admissions to postgraduate study at the Tomsk Engineering-Construction Institute were closed because of the extremely low effectiveness of its work, and in the period under consideration its output was due to enrollments from previous years. But in quantitative and qualitative characteristics the differences among individual higher educational institutions were very substantial. The largest contingent of postgraduate students was at the Tomsk Polytechnical Institute, where in 1966, 392 persons were studying². At the same time, in a number of higher educational institutions this form of reproducing teaching personnel did not receive much development. Training was conducted in only a few specialties, and the admission and graduation of postgraduate students was insignificant (the Omsk Polytechnical Institute, the Siberian Automobile and Highway Institute, the Novosibirsk Institute of Water Transport Engineers, and others). This situation was due to a complex of objective reasons. It is known that science is characterized by a certain self-motion and self-development, the source of which is the immanent contradiction between the levels of evolution of one or another of its branches and the degree to which new scientific personnel are recruited and trained. For the reproduction of specialists in science it is not enough merely to allocate funds; it is necessary first of all to take into account the presence of the conditions required for this: a highly qualified professorial-teaching staff, a material base for research, etc.³ In this respect, many technical higher educational institutions of Western Siberia were not ready for a significant reproduction of Candidates of Sciences through their own postgraduate programs. However, the continuous increase in the student body, accompanied by the growth of teaching staffs, and the shortage of highly qualified specialists, along with the weak replenishment of their ranks through postgraduate students sent to central institutions (the latter often did not return to the institutes after completing their training at the country’s central higher educational institutions⁴), compelled them to open and expand it. Thus the low effectiveness of its work was in many respects—

was predetermined in advance. This was also facilitated by the absence of competition in the admission of postgraduate students in many specialties, and by weak control on the part of the administration and Party and public organizations over the course of postgraduate training. In 1965, for 252 full-time places at the Tomsk, Omsk, Kuzbass, and Altai polytechnic institutes, the Siberian Metallurgical Institute, the Novosibirsk and Tomsk Civil Engineering institutes, the Omsk Institute of Railway Transport Engineers, and the Tomsk Institute of Radioelectronics and Electronic Engineering, only 256 applications were submitted⁵. The absence of qualitative selection led to the fact that persons who did not possess the necessary knowledge, research skills, or even aptitudes were being drawn into scientific work. Weak control gave rise to a formal attitude toward the matter on the part of some postgraduate students and their scientific advisers. For these reasons, in 1965 the proportion of those who completed successfully was 0% at the Siberian Metallurgical and Altai Polytechnic institutes; 11.1% at the Kuzbass Polytechnic; 25.0% at the Novosibirsk Electrotechnical Institute, and so on⁶.

Under such conditions, the only way out of the situation that had developed was to intensify postgraduate study. And the regional and city Party bodies, correctly understanding this, repeatedly indicated in their decisions to the rectorates and Party committees of higher educational institutions the need to take effective measures to increase the efficiency of postgraduate training and to ensure the timely defense of all candidate dissertations⁷. The basis for this, as has already been noted, had to be the overall development of scientific research in higher educational institutions. This idea ran like a red thread through many Party documents on higher education. Thus, in the resolution of the bureau of the Kemerovo Regional Committee of the CPSU “On the Work of the Siberian Metallurgical Institute,” it was stated: “The rectorate, deans, and heads of departments are to exercise systematic control over the fulfillment of plans for scientific research work, to concentrate the efforts of the teaching staff on the development of urgent comprehensive topics... To pay special attention to establishing close ties between the institute and the country’s industrial enterprises and scientific institutions”⁸.

In the decisions of the Second Plenum of the Omsk City Committee of the CPSU, the need was emphasized to concentrate the attention of the scientists of the Polytechnic Institute

“to strengthening ties with production and to a broader development of current problems in the technical and economic life of enterprises”^15), and so on. In carrying out these instructions, rectorates, party committees, and party bureaus undertook considerable work to involve every teacher in scientific activity and in the development of complex scientific problems and technical tasks, which made it possible to raise the overall level of scientific research. If in 1966 the total volume of contract and state-budget work per teacher and researcher amounted at Tomsk Polytechnic Institute to 1.63 thousand rubles, then in 1970 it was 4.48; for other higher educational institutions the dynamics of these changes looked as follows: Altai Polytechnic Institute—0.88 and 1.2 (1969); Siberian Metallurgical Institute—0.9 and 1.26; Kuzbass Polytechnic Institute—1.3 (1967) and 1.8; Novosibirsk Electrotechnical Institute—1.09 and 2.4; Novosibirsk Civil Engineering Institute—0.8 and 1.1^16).

These measures, together with intensified party and administrative oversight of the recruitment of postgraduate students and the organization of their studies, helped to increase the efficiency coefficient of this form of reproduction of teaching personnel^17).

Especially tangible results began to appear after the issuance of the resolution of the Central Committee of the CPSU and the Council of Ministers of the USSR “On Improving the Training of Scientific and Scientific-Pedagogical Personnel” (1967), which, first, introduced partial changes into the rules for admission to postgraduate study: it permitted the enrollment of persons who had shown aptitude for research work immediately after graduating from a higher educational institution^18); second, it drew the attention of the administrations and party organizations of higher educational institutions to the need for a more rational use of the study time of postgraduate students. As Table 2^19) shows, in the absolute majority of higher educational institutions the percentage of those who successfully completed postgraduate study increased (with the defense of a dissertation or submission of it for defense). The greatest successes were achieved by the party organizations of the Omsk Institute of Railway Transport Engineers, Tomsk Polytechnic Institute, Novosibirsk Electrotechnical Institute, and Siberian Metallurgical Institute.

^15) Current Archive of the Omsk City Committee of the CPSU, protocol of the 11th Plenum of the City Committee of the CPSU, “On the Implementation of the Resolution of the Central Committee of the CPSU and the Council of Ministers of the USSR of September 3, 1966, ‘On Measures to Improve the Training of Specialists and to Improve the Management of Higher and Secondary Specialized Education in the Country’ by the Polytechnic Institute and the Chemical-Mechanical Technical School,” February 27, 1968.

^16) Current archives of the academic departments of API, TPI, SMI, KuzPI, NETI, NISI, OMII; annual reports of higher educational institutions for 1966–1970.

^17) Moreover, contract work (in 1967 it accounted for more than 75% of the cost of all scientific research of the higher educational institutions of the Ministry of Higher and Secondary Specialized Education of the RSFSR) brings great benefit to educational institutions not only because a significant number of students and postgraduate students are involved in it, but also gives, in particular, a large material effect. In contracts concluded with various organizations, the acquisition, at the customer’s expense, of various equipment is stipulated; after completion of the work, this equipment remains at the disposal of the higher educational institution. In addition, higher educational institutions retain at their disposal, for expanding their material and technical base, 50% of the amount by which income exceeds expenditures for contract research. To give a fuller idea of the significance of these sources, let us note that in 1964/65 the Ministry of Higher and Secondary Specialized Education of the RSFSR received from the budget 26.4 million rubles for the purchase of equipment and inventory for higher educational institutions, while from contract work the higher educational institutions received about 37 million rubles for these purposes. Current Archive of the Ministry of Higher and Secondary Specialized Education of the RSFSR, fond 1, file 219.

^18) According to the resolution of the Central Committee of the CPSU and the Council of Ministers of the USSR “On Measures to Improve the Training and Certification of Scientific and Scientific-Pedagogical Personnel” of August 20, 1956, only persons having practical work experience of at least two years in the field of the chosen scientific specialty were admitted to postgraduate study. An exception was made for those specializing in theoretical disciplines (mathematics, theoretical mechanics, etc.). See: Postgraduate Study. Moscow, 1971, p. 9.

^19) The table was compiled on the basis of materials from the current archives of postgraduate study offices of higher educational institutions, statistical reports for 1966–1970, form 1-NK.

At OMIIT, until 1962/63 a very limited number of persons were admitted to postgraduate study, but with the relocation of the higher educational institution from Tomsk to Omsk, closer to its material base, opportunities arose both for increasing the contingent of postgraduate students and for increasing the number of specialties in which they were trained. At the same time, the Party committee and the rectorate, on the instruction of the bureau of the Omsk Regional Committee of the CPSU, turned their attention to the qualitative aspect of reproducing teaching personnel⁹. The measures they developed in 1968 were clarified in accordance with the resolution of the CPSU Central Committee and the USSR Council of Ministers “On Improving the Training of Scientific and Scientific-Pedagogical Personnel.” The plan approved by the Party committee provided, first, for improving the qualitative composition of those entering postgraduate study; for this purpose, in addition to mandatory interviews of prospective postgraduate students with their intended scientific supervisors and giving preference to specialists who had passed candidate examinations, in accordance with the resolution of the CPSU Central Committee and the USSR Council of Ministers, the practice was introduced of enrolling only those persons who had demonstrated good and excellent knowledge of their specialty in the entrance examinations; second, for strengthening control by the Party organization over the further process of their training¹⁰.

The implementation of these measures, and assistance from the department of science and educational institutions of the CPSU regional committee—in particular, in October 1968 the latter held a special seminar with the secretaries of Party committees of the city’s higher educational institutions on the problem “The Role of the Party Committee in Organizing the Training of Scientific-Pedagogical Personnel”—enabled the Party organization of OMIIT successfully to solve the tasks facing it in this area¹¹.

The proportion of those entering postgraduate study with candidate examinations partially or fully passed increased significantly. If in 1966 it was 60%, then in 1968 it was 80%, and in 1970, 100%. The effectiveness of its work increased. Over the five-year period, 73 people were graduated, of whom 60 defended or submitted their dissertations for defense within the established deadlines (82.2%); moreover, in the last three years (1968–1970) the percentage of those who successfully completed postgraduate study reached the absolute figure of 100¹². The training of highly qualified personnel proceeded most fruitfully in the departments of “Theoretical Electromechanics,” “Electrical Machines,” and “Transport Communications,” under Professors R. A. Voronov, M. F. Karasev, and P. A. Azbukin¹³. Interesting experience in the reproduction of scientific-pedagogical workers through postgraduate study had also been accumulated at the Tomsk Polytechnic Institute. In the work of TPI’s postgraduate program at the end of the 1950s there were shortcomings characteristic of other higher educational institutions as well: only a few defended their candidate dissertations on time. Then, in 1963, the bureau of the Tomsk Regional Committee of the CPSU specifically considered this question and obliged the Party committee and rectorate to increase the responsibility of deans and heads of departments for the scientific and pedagogical training of postgrad—

Table 2

Effectiveness of the work of postgraduate study in the Ministry of Higher and Secondary Specialized Education of the RSFSR and in technical higher educational institutions of Western Siberia (1966–1970)

grant-holders, and exacting standards for the latter as regards the completion of dissertations within the prescribed time limits^25).

A similar idea was also supported in the decisions of the Eighth Plenum of the Regional Committee of the CPSU^26). In carrying out these instructions, the rector’s office and the party committee developed and introduced into practice a coherent system for the reproduction of scientific-pedagogical personnel. Recruitment for postgraduate study was improved. Candidates began to be selected more carefully from among the staff of departments, research institutes, and laboratories, while at the same time strengthening ties with those enterprises and institutions where there might be persons inclined toward scientific research. When necessary, applicants were assigned a preparatory period, the time limits of which ranged from 3 to 12 months. During this period the scientific adviser helped the future postgraduate student master the program for the entrance examinations. The examinations were preceded by two interviews—with the rector of the institute or the vice-rector for scientific work and at a meeting of the admissions committee—in order to determine whether applicants had real possibilities for completing dissertations on time. All this made it possible to raise the quality of those admitted: in 1968, specialists with candidate examinations partially or fully passed accounted for 83%; in 1970, 93.8%^27).

Their subsequent work was under strict but flexible control on the part of the administration and the party organization. A postgraduate student who successfully fulfilled the obligations undertaken was permitted, for additional pay, to work under economic contracts, provided that this did not run counter to his scientific interests. After the timely defense of the dissertation and its approval by the Higher Attestation Commission, he was rewarded with a cash bonus or a valuable gift. The scientific adviser was commended. If, however, the plan for postgraduate training was not fulfilled, penalties were imposed on the postgraduate student, up to and including expulsion from postgraduate study. The adviser was also punished^28).

At the same time, attention was directed to socio-political activity, the raising of knowledge in the social sciences, and pedagogical mastery. By a special order of the rector, young research workers were required to write papers on philosophy, attend classes conducted by leading instructors, and listen to cycles of lectures on didactics and psychology, etc.^29). Thus, the problem of reproducing highly qualified personnel was solved in a comprehensive and systematic way; a specialist was formed who possessed not only scientific erudition, but also pedagogical training and experience in public work.

^25) PATO, fond 607, inventory 115, file 83, sheet 26, bureau of the regional committee of the CPSU, “On the state of training of scientific-pedagogical personnel through postgraduate study at TPI.”

^26) PATO, fond 607, inventory 115, file 127, sheet 85, protocol of the Eighth Plenum of the Tomsk Regional Committee of the CPSU of November 26, 1965, “On measures to improve instruction and the ideological-political education of students of higher educational institutions of the city of Tomsk.”

^27) For comparison, it may be noted that among those admitted to postgraduate study at higher educational institutions of the Ministry of Higher and Secondary Specialized Education of the RSFSR in 1970, persons with candidate examinations partially or fully passed accounted for 72%. Current archive of the postgraduate studies department of TPI. Report on the fulfillment by higher educational institutions of the Ministry of the plan for admission, graduation, and placement of postgraduate students in 1970.

^28) L. I. Kiselev. From the experience of the technical higher educational institutions of Tomsk in training scientific-pedagogical personnel through postgraduate study. Collection of Works of Postgraduate Students of the Department of History of the CPSU, Tomsk, 1971, issue 8, p. 288.

^29) Current archive of the postgraduate studies department of TPI. Institute order No. 45 of April 12, 1965, “On the establishment of a mandatory systematic pedagogical internship for all postgraduate students of the institute during their postgraduate study with leave from production.”

The most effective supervision was carried out by professors A. A. Vorob’ev, V. I. Gorbunov, V. F. Gorbunov, A. N. Didenko, V. V. Ivashin, I. A. Tikhomirov, G. A. Sipailov, and others^30).

However, some technical higher educational institutions, in terms of their results, continued in 1970 to lag behind the ministry-wide indicators; cadre training was characterized by fluctuations and irregularity in the results from year to year (see Table 2).

Part-time postgraduate study worked less effectively. Postgraduates in this form of study accounted for the highest percentage of dissertations not defended on time^31).

One-year postgraduate study also did not develop. As a rule, only a few completed it. Yet the latter was the most effective means of reproducing pedagogical cadres, since persons with already established scholarly interests were sent into it for the completion of their research^32).

The second channel through which candidates of sciences were reproduced was their independent work (outside postgraduate study) on dissertations—degree-seeking. This source, in fact, was weakly managed, since conducting research did not release them from performing the obligatory functions of a higher-school teacher^33). But in connection with the opening in the country of a network of faculties and institutes for advanced training, and the development of internships at leading enterprises and in scientific institutions in accordance with the resolution of the CPSU Central Committee and the USSR Council of Ministers “On Measures to Improve the Training of Specialists and to Improve the Management of Higher and Secondary Specialized Education in the Country” (1966), party organizations and the administrations of higher educational institutions, by sending persons with established scholarly interests for study, were able to increase the effectiveness of this form of training scholars. Over the five-year period, degree-seekers at the Novosibirsk Civil Engineering Institute defended 41 dissertations; at the Electrotechnical Institute, 138; at the Tomsk Civil Engineering Institute, 35; at the Siberian Metallurgical Institute, 84; at the Altai Polytechnic Institute, 77; and so on^34). In individual years this amounted to from 2 to 6% of the teaching staff without an academic degree.

The training of the higher tier of specialists was carried out mainly through the system of transferring associate professors working on doctoral dissertations to the positions of senior research associates. It is true that the results of this practice could not always be considered satisfactory. This was explained by several reasons. Above all, the party organization and the administration here encountered limited possibilities of selection, since by no means every candidate of sciences aspired to or could become a doctor.

^30) Current archive of the postgraduate studies department of TPI.

^31) Current archive of the postgraduate studies departments of higher educational institutions of Western Siberia, statistical reports on the work of postgraduate studies for 1966–1970, Form 1-NK.

^32) In 1969, 107 persons were sent to one-year postgraduate study in higher educational institutions of the Ministry of Higher and Secondary Specialized Education of the RSFSR, including 37 teachers of Siberia and the Far East. Current archive of the postgraduate studies department of TPI. Report on the fulfillment by higher educational institutions of the Ministry of the plan for admission, graduation, and placement of postgraduates in 1969.

^33) Degree-seekers who successfully combine production or teaching activity with scholarly work, by resolution of the CPSU Central Committee and the USSR Council of Ministers of 20 August 1965, are granted only creative leaves with retention of pay for a period of up to three months for completion of the dissertation. See: Postgraduate Study, Moscow, 1971, p. 81.

^34) Calculated on the basis of materials from the current archives of the academic departments of NISI, NETI, TISI, SMI, API, and annual reports of higher educational institutions for 1966–1970.

Second, the very process of reproducing them was more prolonged in time. It covered not 3–5 years, but decades. Exceptions to this rule only confirmed the truth of the latter. Thus, the average age of doctors of science in the higher educational institutions of the Ministry of Higher and Secondary Specialized Education of the RSFSR as of January 1, 1969, was 56.8 years. Moreover, persons under the age of 40 accounted for 5.55%; from 41 to 50—19.1%; from 51 to 60—31.9%; from 61 to 65—22.1%; and over 65—21.3%³⁵).

These circumstances made it difficult to carry out qualitative selection. Therefore, even prospective plans for the defense of doctoral dissertations, drawn up in technical higher educational institutions, were often not fulfilled. In fact, positive experience in party leadership of the training of doctors of science was accumulated mainly at the Tomsk Polytechnic Institute, where 29 dissertations were defended over the five-year period³⁶).

These successes were achieved above all thanks to systematic party control over the general level of development of scientific research, the scale of which could be judged by the aggregate volume of contract and state-budget work. Over the five-year period it increased from 2,580 thousand to 8,828 thousand rubles³⁷). In other words, all the necessary prerequisites for training personnel were present. But the realization of these possibilities does not come about automatically. Active, purposeful actions by party organizations are needed.

Thus, at the same Tomsk Polytechnic Institute in the first half of the 1960s, on average one doctoral dissertation was defended per year. The effectiveness of the work of the doctoral program was low. Shifts began after the Eighth Plenum of the CPSU Regional Committee, which drew the special attention of rectors and secretaries of party committees of the city’s higher educational institutions to the need to strengthen scientific-pedagogical cadres above all with doctors of science, and obliged them to develop and implement specific plans for the defense of doctoral dissertations for 1966–1970³⁸).

Carrying out these directives, the rectorate and the party committee of the polytechnic institute focused their efforts on solving two main problems: a) the careful selection of persons for the position of senior research associates (those enrolled were persons who had the necessary prerequisites for completing dissertation manuscripts on schedule); b) control over their subsequent activity, both in order to provide assistance and to increase the responsibility of the latter for fulfilling the obligations they had assumed.

To this end, questions of the training of doctors of science and of making the necessary corrections in this process were repeatedly discussed at meetings of the party committee, the academic council, report-and-election party meetings, and conferences³⁹). The party regional committee, for its part, in order to regulate the ta—

³⁵) Current Archive of the Ministry of Higher and Secondary Specialized Education of the RSFSR, op. 1, file 11–41, fol. 24. Consolidated report on the number and composition of scientific-pedagogical workers.

³⁶) Calculated on the basis of materials from the current archive of the educational division of TPI, annual reports of the higher educational institution for 1966–1970. For comparison it may be noted that in such large higher educational institutions as the Siberian Metallurgical Institute, Novosibirsk Electrotechnical Institute, and the Altai and Kuzbass Polytechnic Institutes, a total of 16 doctoral dissertations were defended over the same period. (Calculated from the materials of the current archives of the educational divisions of SMI, NETI, API, KuzPI, annual reports of the higher educational institutions for 1966–1970.)

³⁷) Current archive of the educational division of TPI, annual reports of the higher educational institution for 1966–1970.

³⁸) PATO, fond 607, op. 115, file 127, fol. 85, protocol of the Eighth Plenum of the Tomsk Regional Committee of the CPSU of November 26, 1965, “On Measures to Improve Instruction and the Ideological-Political Education of Students of Higher Educational Institutions in the City of Tomsk.”

³⁹) PATO, fond 320, op. 10, file 94, fol. 41, Third report-and-election party conference of TPI of June 2, 1967; current archive of the TPI party committee, protocols of the Fourth–Sixth conferences for 1968–1970; party committee of January 23, 1968, “On Improving the Training of Scientific and Pedagogical Cadres at the Institute,” etc.

…given growth rates, in 1967 once again considered the question of reproducing highly qualified personnel at TPI^40).

These measures yielded positive results. Whereas in 1961–1965 six doctoral dissertations were defended by the institute’s scholars, in 1966–1970 there were 29. However, despite the known shifts in the training of doctors and especially candidates of science (it should be noted that this was achieved not only by increasing the effectiveness of the institute’s own postgraduate program, but also by developing targeted postgraduate study^41), many technical higher educational institutions of Western Siberia, in terms of provision with such specialists in accordance with the norms of higher education, continued to lag behind analogous institutions in the European part of the country. The Novosibirsk Civil Engineering Institute, the Omsk Institute of Railway Transport Engineers, and some other higher educational institutions were in the most favorable position. Significant territorial (intra-urban) unevenness in the distribution of scholars persisted. Thus, at the Novosibirsk Civil Engineering Institute, persons with an academic degree and academic title in 1970 made up 40% of the teaching staff, while at the Electrotechnical Institute—25.5%; at the Tomsk Institute of Radio Electronics and Electronic Engineering—35.1; and at the Civil Engineering Institute—23%; at the Omsk Institute of Railway Transport Engineers—40, while at the Polytechnic Institute—22.7; at the Automobile and Highway Institute—18.8%^42).

Identical fluctuations were also observed in the characterization of structural subdivisions within higher educational institutions. Departments of physical education, foreign languages, graphics and drafting, higher mathematics, and general physics were very poorly staffed with highly qualified personnel.

Let us consider the second part of the problem. It is known that for effective work in higher education it is not enough merely to possess deep knowledge, skills, and research experience; one must also be able to transmit them to students, i.e., possess pedagogical mastery. Only under the condition of the organic unity of these qualities in the activity of educating the subject is the successful solution of the tasks of reproducing engineering personnel possible. Meanwhile, at one time it was believed that improving a teacher’s scientific and pedagogical qualifications was determined by his individual work, carried out in a number of cases through correspondence and annual postgraduate study. There were no permanent organizational forms for this purpose^43).

Therefore the CPSU Central Committee and the Council of Ministers of the USSR, in the resolution “On Measures to Improve the Training of Specialists and to Perfect the Management of Higher and Secondary Specialized Education in the Country” (1966), planned, in addition to the existing ones, the opening of new institutes for advanced training at Leningrad, Ural, Tashkent, and Rostov universities; the establishment of faculties; and, beginning in 1967, internships for teachers of special disciplines at leading enter—

^40) Current archive of the Tomsk Regional Committee of the CPSU, bureau protocol of March 10, 1967, “On the work of the party committee of the Polytechnic Institute.”

^41) Of the West Siberian technical higher educational institutions, API, NETI used targeted postgraduate study most effectively. (Current archive of the TPI postgraduate department. Certificates on the fulfillment of the Ministry’s plan for admission, graduation, and placement of postgraduate students in 1969–1970.) The phenomenon is undoubtedly the most promising, and the future belongs to it. It is a scientifically managed source: each educational institution can plan the increase of specialists in the quantitative and qualitative dimensions it needs, with a prospect extending several years.

^42) Current archives of the academic departments of NISI, NETI, TIRET, TISI, OMIIT, SibADI, OMPI; annual reports of higher educational institutions for 1970.

^43) D. I. Vasiliev. “A System for Improving the Qualifications of Teachers Is Being Created.” Vestnik vysshei shkoly, 1966, No. 11, p. 4.

enterprises, at leading higher educational institutions, and in research organizations¹⁴. In essence, this was an entire program, the implementation of which made it possible in our country to create the world’s only coherent system for the systematic growth of the scientific and pedagogical mastery of higher-school mentors¹⁵.

In accordance with this resolution, a faculty for advanced training (FAT) for instructors of higher educational institutions of the Urals, Siberia, the Far East, and Central Asia was opened in 1967 at the Tomsk Polytechnic Institute, with an enrollment of 100 trainees. The faculty became an effective form for raising the theoretical and methodological level of training of specialists in physics and chemistry, and later—in strength of materials and descriptive geometry, for generalizing and disseminating their advanced experience, and for developing and introducing scientific methods into instructional work. Teaching was carried out by the largest, leading scholars not only of the polytechnic institute but also of other Tomsk higher educational institutions, among whom more than 30% were professors and doctors of sciences. From 1967 through 1970, 332 people completed the FAT¹⁶. In 1969 a FAT was opened at the Novosibirsk Civil Engineering Institute. All this enabled the administrations and Party organizations of higher educational institutions to send 15–20% of instructors for study in 1969–1970 alone (taking into account internships and FATs in other cities)¹⁷.

Second, the main channel for the growth of pedagogical mastery was the various intra-institutional forms, which, depending on the scale of their influence, were divided into three groups: departmental, faculty-wide, and institute-wide.

The center was the department. It was here, above all, that the formation of the pedagogue took place. This follows from the fundamental proposition concerning the dependence of teaching methods on the content of the academic discipline. The content determines: a) the specific nature of the methods used; b) their role in the educational process; c) their relative weight and place in the study of a given subject¹⁸. Since the only structural subdivision that carries out the presentation of a subject as a whole and, consequently, determines the corresponding methods is the department, their mastery (the acquisition of the necessary skills of pedagogical mastery) is possible above all there. Therefore, higher-education Party organizations, proceeding from repeated instructions of the oblast and city committees of the CPSU on the need to develop and improve methodological work¹⁹, used the most varied means to intensify it, first of all in the departments. Most often these problems were raised at meetings of the Party bureaus of faculties and Party committees when discussing reports by departments and Party groups on the organization of the educational and upbringing process. Moreover, discus—

...was often preceded by attendance at lectures and seminar sessions specially organized for this purpose by commissions, which in itself served as an impetus for the further anticipated leap forward.

At the same time, the Party committees and Party bureaus, together with the administrations of the higher educational institutions, devoted considerable attention to improving the work of faculty-wide and institute-wide organizational forms for raising the pedagogical qualifications of instructors. Their necessity was dictated by the limited capacities of departments to solve all aspects of this problem, owing to the absence of conditions for mutual exchange of information in this area with other identical structural subdivisions both within their own higher educational institution and in other higher educational institutions, and for organizing various kinds of measures aimed at understanding general issues of pedagogy and psychology in the educational process. These tasks were carried out by methodological commissions and methodological offices. Moreover, Party organizations concentrated their efforts chiefly on solving three problems: first, the organization of cycles of lectures, seminars, and scientific-methodological conferences for instructors and postgraduate students on questions of methodology, pedagogy, and psychology. Thus, at the Altai Polytechnic Institute, after sharp criticism by Communists at the reporting-and-election Party meeting in October 1966 of the state of educational-methodological work,^[50]^ a methodological seminar for instructors was created; from 1967 to 1970 it discussed the following problems: NOT in the higher educational institution, criteria for evaluating students’ knowledge, the lecturer and the audience, elements of programmed monitoring of academic performance, the general cultural and philosophical culture of instructors, their pedagogical mastery, and the methodology of lecturing in technical disciplines.^[51]^

At the Kuzbass Polytechnic Institute, on the initiative of the Party organization,^[52]^ in 1969–1970 the methodological office organized a cycle of lectures. Experienced staff members of KuzPI and of the pedagogical institute—V. E. Popov, M. Ya. Giro, V. D. Sokolov, and K. L. Pavlovsky—spoke before young instructors and postgraduate students. Questions were examined concerning the basic regularities of the process of assimilating knowledge, the basic requirements for various forms and methods of work in higher education, the methodology of conducting seminar and laboratory classes, and so forth.^[53]^ Similar forms of improving pedagogical mastery can also be traced in other higher educational institutions.^[54]^

Second, the generalization and dissemination of the experience of the best instructors and departments, the publication of methodological literature, and its exchange with institutions of higher education of the same profile.

Third, control over the quality of the conduct of instructional sessions. The latter, as is known, is not only a means of stimulation—negative or positive—but also a school of instruction.

Essentially, the competitions organized in higher educational institutions by local committees for the title “best in the profession” served the same purposes.

^[50]^ Current archive of the Party committee of API, minutes of the Party meeting of October 19, 1966.

^[51]^ Current archive of the Party committee of API, report on work to improve the qualitative composition of instructors (1970).

^[52]^ Current archive of the Party committee of KuzPI, minutes of the Party meeting of May 28, 1969, “On the course of implementation of the decree of the CC CPSU and the Council of Ministers of the USSR ‘On improving the training of scientific and scientific-pedagogical personnel’” (1967).

^[53]^ Current archive of the methodological office of KuzPI, report on work for the 1969/70 academic year.

^[54]^ Current archive of the academic division of the Novosibirsk Electrotechnical Institute of Communications, annual reports on the work of the higher educational institution for 1966–1970; current archive of the Party committee of the Omsk Institute of Railway Transport Engineers, minutes of reporting-and-election Party meetings for 1968–1970; “Instructors Exchange Experience,” Za kadry (SMI), February 12, 1969, No. 5.

with differentiated criteria for evaluating their work, depending on the position held²⁰.

An important direction in the activity of party organizations to improve the pedagogical mastery of instructors during the period under consideration was the introduction of programmed instruction, which presupposed the rationalization of academic work, its scientific management, and the use of technical teaching aids. Consequently, what was involved was an entire complex of issues which, in particular, envisaged and promoted the growth of their methodological level. The party organizations of the Altai Polytechnic Institute, the Novosibirsk Civil Engineering Institute, the Electrotechnical Institute, the Tomsk Institute of Radio Electronics and Electronic Engineering, and other higher educational institutions achieved the greatest success. Especially valuable was the experience of the Novosibirsk Electrotechnical Institute. There, with the support of the party organization, as early as 1961, work began in the Department of Electric Drive and Automation of Industrial Installations on the creation of testing machines under the direction of Prof. G. P. Lyshchinsky, and from 1963 attempts were undertaken to use them in practice. It was therefore no accident that in 1964, by order of the Minister of Higher and Secondary Specialized Education of the RSFSR, a zonal laboratory for the application of technical aids in the educational process was established at NETI, whose target task included the development, introduction, and study of these teaching aids, the methodology of their use, and the coordination of practical work in higher educational institutions of Siberia and the Far East.

From 1964 to 1970 the laboratory transferred and introduced into NETI’s educational process about 200 teaching and testing machines; automated classrooms and auditoriums with feedback were installed, making it possible for the lecturer to determine how well the students understood the material being presented.

Similar work was carried out in other higher educational institutions of the city; much was also done to popularize technical teaching aids through lectures and seminars for instructors of higher educational institutions in Novosibirsk and other cities of Siberia and the Far East²¹.

The rectorate and party committee of NETI devoted great attention to the introduction of educational television, which made it possible, first, to expand the instructor’s audience (to combine lecture streams for introductory and survey lectures, meetings with outstanding scholars and major specialists in science and technology for the purposes of correspondence instruction);

second, to provide lectures with demonstration materials; it became possible to show on television screens experiments from preparatory departments, laboratories, motion pictures, etc. At the same time, for the first time, broad opportunities for lecture experiments appeared for instructors of physics, chemistry, descriptive geometry, strength of materials, and other general technical special disciplines, especially in electronics and vacuum technology and radio engineering²².

In conclusion, it should be noted that party influence on the growth of the pedagogical mastery of instructors was also exercised through the object of education—the higher-education Komsomol. To this end, from among senior students or young instructors and postgrad—

graduate students, institute-wide, faculty, and course methodological commissions. Their work was organized in a differentiated manner. Whereas the latter devoted their main attention to collecting empirical material on the quality of lectures, seminars, and student practice; studied the time budgets of students, the labor-intensiveness of homework assignments, the convenience of class schedules and classrooms, the condition of study rooms, the availability of the necessary literature, textbooks, and so on, the faculty commissions summarized and analyzed the information received and made specific recommendations to the dean’s office and to the faculty departments, or, through their representative, to the rectorate’s methodological commission. Direct oversight of their work was exercised by the corresponding bureaus of the All-Union Leninist Young Communist League (faculty and course bureaus), by means of periodic hearings of their reports at their meetings²³.

All these measures, taken together, led to the creation of experienced, authoritative teaching collectives that successfully addressed the tasks set before higher education by the Communist Party.

1. Calculated on the basis of materials from the current archives of the academic affairs divisions of TPI, KuzPI, API, SMI, NISI, and NETI, and the annual reports of higher educational institutions for 1967–1970. ↩

2. Current archive of the Department of Culture of the Statistical Administration of Tomsk Oblast, reports of TPI for 1966, form 1-NK. ↩

3. B. M. Remennikov. Economic Problems of Higher Education in the USSR. Moscow, 1968, p. 61. ↩

4. K. Shutov. “Here They Are, the Personnel.” Komsomolets Kuzbassa, January 5, 1964, No. 3; S. Gutin. “The Main Problem.” Energiya (NETI), January 22, 1968, No. 3. ↩

5. Calculated from materials of the current archives of TPI, KuzPI, NETI, API, SMI, NISI, OMPI, TIRiETA, OMIIT, TISI, statistical reports on the work of postgraduate study for 1965, form 1-NK. Similar tendencies took place in many other higher educational institutions of the republic. Thus, out of 10,081 applicants admitted in 1964 to postgraduate study at higher educational institutions of the Ministry of Higher and Secondary Specialized Education of the RSFSR, 7,787 persons were accepted. The competition was 1.29. In 1966 it increased somewhat and amounted to 1.42. In other words, this was not a regional but an all-republic problem. See: Current Archive of the Ministry of Higher and Secondary Specialized Education of the RSFSR, inventory 1, file 2442, sheet 4, file 3301, sheet 1, consolidated reports on the work of postgraduate study for 1964 and 1966. ↩

6. Current archives of the postgraduate departments of SMI, API, KuzPI, NETI, statistical reports on the work of postgraduate study, form 1-NK. ↩

7. Party Archive of the Kemerovo Regional Committee of the CPSU (PAKO), fond 75, inventory 52, file 943, sheets 8–10, protocol of the bureau of the Kemerovo Regional Committee of the CPSU “On the Work of the Siberian Metallurgical Institute” of February 22, 1966; PATO, fond 607, inventory 115, file 127, sheet 85, protocol of the Eighth Plenum of the Tomsk Regional Committee of the CPSU “On Measures to Improve the Education and Ideological-Political Upbringing of Students of Higher Educational Institutions of the City of Tomsk” of November 26, 1965; current archive of the Tomsk Regional Committee of the CPSU, protocol of the bureau “On the Work of the Party Committee of the Polytechnic Institute” of March 10, 1967; current archive of the Omsk City Committee of the CPSU, protocol of the Second Plenum of the City Committee of the CPSU “On the Implementation of the Resolution of the Central Committee of the CPSU and the Council of Ministers of the USSR of September 3, 1966, ‘On Measures to Improve the Training of Specialists and to Improve the Management of Higher and Secondary Specialized Education in the Country,’ by the Polytechnic Institute and the Chemical-Mechanical Technicum” of February 27, 1968, and others. ↩

8. PAKO, fond 75, inventory 52, file 943, sheet 10. ↩

9. Party Archive of the Omsk Regional Committee of the CPSU (PAOO), fond 17, inventory 83, file 26, sheet 28, minutes of the bureau of the Regional Committee of the CPSU of January 28, 1966, “On the Leadership by the Party Committee of the Institute of Railway Transport Engineers in the Ideological-Political Education of Students.” ↩

10. Current archive of the Party committee of OMIIT, minutes of the Party committee of February 1, 1968, “Consideration of the Institute’s Measures Pursuant to the Resolution of the CPSU Central Committee and the USSR Council of Ministers ‘On Improving the Training of Scientific and Scientific-Pedagogical Personnel.’” ↩

11. Current archive of the department of science and educational institutions of the Omsk Regional Committee of the CPSU. Report on the progress of implementation of the resolution of the Regional Committee of the CPSU of February 23, 1968, “On Improving the Training of Scientific and Scientific-Pedagogical Personnel.” ↩

12. Current archive of the postgraduate studies department of OMIIT, reports on the work of postgraduate studies. ↩

13. Current archive of the Party committee of OMIIT, minutes of the Party committee of February 10, 1969, “On the Training of Scientific-Pedagogical Personnel.” ↩

14. Pravda, No. 252, September 9, 1969. ↩

15. Archive of the Central Committee of the Komsomol, fond 1, inventory 5, file 1407, fol. 15. ↩

16. Current archive of the FAT of TPI, report on the work of the faculty for 1967–1970. ↩

17. Current archives of the academic divisions of SMI, TPI, TISI, NETI, NISI, KuzPI, annual reports on the work of higher educational institutions for 1969–1970. ↩

18. I. G. Avtukhov, I. G. Ogorodnikov, I. A. Khait, Organization and Methodology of Work in Higher School, Moscow, 1934, pp. 95–96. ↩

19. PAKO, fond 75, inventory 52, file 943, fol. 7, protocol of the bureau of the Kemerovo Oblast Committee of the CPSU, “On the Work of the Siberian Metallurgical Institute,” February 22, 1966; current archive of the Kemerovo City Committee of the CPSU, protocol of the bureau “On the State of Educational Work among the Students of the Kuzbass Polytechnic Institute,” January 17, 1969; current archive of the Tomsk Oblast Committee of the CPSU, protocol of the bureau “On the Work of the Party Committee of the Polytechnic Institute,” March 10, 1967; current archive of the Omsk City Committee of the CPSU, protocol of the Second Plenum of the City Committee of the CPSU of February 27, 1968, “On the Implementation of the Resolution of the Central Committee of the CPSU and the Council of Ministers of the USSR of September 3, 1966, ‘On Measures to Improve the Training of Specialists and to Improve the Administration of Higher and Secondary Specialized Education in the Country,’ by the Polytechnic Institute and the Chemical-Mechanical Technical School,” and other documents. ↩

20. “Dedicated to the 100th Anniversary of V. I. Lenin.” Za kadry (SMI), February 12, 1970, no. 6; Regulations and conditions of socialist competition for the title “Best in the Profession,” Za kadry (TPI), April 16, 1969, no. 30. ↩

21. “On the experience of the scientific organization of labor and management at the Novosibirsk Electrotechnical Institute.” Novosibirsk, 1970. ↩

22. “Technical aids and new methods of instruction at NETI.” Novosibirsk, 1970, pp. 14–16. ↩

23. Current Archive of the Student Department of the Novosibirsk Regional Committee of the All-Union Leninist Young Communist League, information bulletin, 1970, no. 3 (13), pp. 19–21. ↩