Document 50

Memorandum "Concerning the Moral and Political State of Pedagogical Institutes," 23 March 1935

RGASPI, f. 17, op. 114, d. 695, ll. 83-92. Typed original.

To the Bureau of the Party Control Commission, TsK VKP(b),

Comrade N. I. Yezhov

Comrade M. F. Shkiriatov

Memorandum Concerning the Moral and Political State of Pedagogical Institutes

Anti-Soviet elements in the student body of Moscow pedagogical institutes.

At the end of January of this year, the KPK's Subcommittee on Education and Public Health received the following letter which had been sent to Comrade Germogenov, Director of the Moscow Oblast Pedagogical Institute, by second-year student Zavalishin:

"I ask that you make it possible for me to leave the Pedagogical Institute painlessly. I promise to pay back the money spent on me. . . .

I ask this because, as a result of intense study of the natural sciences--especially physics, astronomy, and biology--in particular, from acquainting myself with the works of Einstein, Mises, Eddington, Jeans, Gans, Driesch, Berg, Chelpanov, and also from studying the philosophy of Spinoza, Hegel, Bergson, Husserl, W. James, Vladimir Solovev, S. Frank, and others, I seem finally to have become an objective idealist. To be sure, I am far from thinking that my Weltanschauung is completely defined. . . , but nonetheless I have good reason to believe that it will continue to develop in this direction, that of intensified idealistic convictions. . . .

For all practical purposes I think it will be difficult for me to work as a pedagogue with this philosophy. I want to leave the Institute while there is still time to do so."

Upon receipt of this letter, we ascertained that Zavalishin is a priest who wormed his way into the Institute with counterfeit documents. Zavalishin's noble and humble demeanor had attracted the attention of faculty and students earlier, but no one had questioned his idealistic utterances. Even after the letter was received, Kuprenina, the director of the office of academic affairs, kept repeating to the students that Zavalishin was an original thinker and that Communists could learn a thing or two from him. A month and a half later he was still a student at the Institute. He was expelled without any public announcement.

Our inspection revealed that three Moscow higher educational institutions administered by Narkompros (The History and Philosophy Institute, the Moscow Oblast Institute, and the Bubnov Institute) are infested with alien and anti-Soviet elements and that their activity has increased greatly since the murder of Comrade Kirov. Dozens of students in the classes and in the dormitories of these institutes have carried on counterrevolutionary conversations ranging from an open defense of bourgeois theories to direct threats against Comrade STALIN. At the History and Philosophy Institute fifty percent of the students in the literature department did not participate in Comrade Kirov's funeral. In this department an anti-Soviet group consisting of twelve persons was formed at the end of October 1934 by a first-year student and Trotskyite named Tager and a non-party member named Rudiakova,. The group gathered several times as if for a party at the apartment of Rudiakova and of someone named Nikulina. In the Bubnov Pedagogical Institute after the murder of Comrade Kirov some twenty students with an anti-Soviet orientation were exposed. The reasons that such a political situation exists at the institutes are (1) infestation of the institutes due to admissions practices, (2) the presence of anti-party and anti-Soviet elements among members of the institutes' faculty, and (3) the absence of Bolshevik vigilance on the part of the institutes' party organizations and weak mass-party work.

II. Admissions Practices

. . . . In the Bubnov Institute the admissions committee managed to consider 2500 applications in ten days. No wonder then that the majority of students turned out to be children of disenfranchised persons and counterrevolutionaries while those who were workers and the children of workers constituted as little as 27.4%. Komsomol member Zaks, the son of a rich merchant who was disenfranchised, managed to stay until his last year of graduate work. Party member Inozemtsev and Komsomol member Abakumov studied in the Institute for several years before it was revealed that they were sons of disenfranchised persons. Ex-Komsomol organizer Shemelina was found to be the daughter of a White Guard officer. The non-Party student Vagner was found to be the son of a rich merchant who had been deprived of his voting rights, etc.

A timely purge of alien and anti-Soviet elements from the institutes was not conducted due to weak party committee work and to infestation of the institutes' administration by anti-party Trotskyite elements.

III. Alien and anti-Soviet elements on the institutes' faculty.

The History and Philosophy Institute was headed by former "Bundist" and Troskyite, [A. G.] Prigozhin, who had been an influential participant in an illegal counterrevolutionary Trotskyite Organization until 1927. A double-dealer, he repudiated Trotskyism in the books he wrote, yet, later, in his lectures defended his Trotskyite views. When he came to the Institute, he concealed from the Institute's party organization his former struggle against the Party and thereby succeeded in becoming a member of the raion council. As the Institute's director he continued to pursue the Troskyite line, transforming the Institute into a mecca for Trotskyite faculty (twenty five in number) and of bourgeois specialists (11). These included Sten, a representative of the right-left bloc [consisting of previously loyal Stalinists, combined criticism of the excessive pace and wastefulness of industrialization with the rampant growth of bureaucratism. Its leaders were S. I. Syrtsov, a candidate member of the Politburo and premier of the RSFSR, and V. V. Lominadze, first secretary of the Transcaucasian Federation. The bloc was "exposed" in late 1930 and its leaders were removed from their posts.]; Torbin, a Trotskyite expelled from the party who introduced Trotskyism into his teaching; Burtsev, assistant professor of political economy and formerly a very active Trotskyite; [A. F.] Ryndich, instructor of the history of the peoples of the USSR, and [M. B.] Goldenberg, instructor of Leninism, both ex-Trotskyites; [N. V.] Novikov, professor of dialectical materialism, an ex-Menshevik who snuck idealist views into his teaching; Grishin, professor of Leninism, an ex-Bundist, who on January 7 of this year at the Higher School of Communist Police (Komvuz militsii) passed counterrevolutionary Trotskyite directives with regard to a Zinovievite counterrevolutionary group; [Ya. S.] Feigelson, expelled from the party in 1927 for belonging to a Zinovievite group; [S. V.] Gingor, ex-Trotskyite, exiled in 1929; [G. F.] Dakhshleger, a prominent ex-Menshevik recently fired for fascist, anti-Soviet attacks; Professor [D. P.] Kanchalovsky [sic], who in his classes drew an analogy between slavery in ancient Greece and the economy of the Soviet Union; [S. V.] Bakhrushin and [Yu. V.] Got'e, professors of ancient history from former merchant families at one time exiled from Moscow; [P. G.] Liubomirov, an ex-SR; [N. P.] Gratsiansky, at one time purged from VSNKh's staff; [V. F.] Asmus and Dynnik, ex-Menshevik sympathizers and idealists; Rubin who was connected with the anti-Soviet group in the Literature Department; [B. I.] Gorev, who from 1907 to 1920 had been an active member of the Menshevik Liquidator faction; [V. V.] Yegorov, recently fired for teaching contraband Trotskyite views; Iskrinsky, the son of a priest who graduated from the Moscow Theological Academy; and so forth. All these faculty members worked unmonitored by the office of academic affairs and their departments and could day after day freely exert their corrupting influence on the backward part of the heterogeneous student body, stirring up anti-Soviet sentiments.

Trying to make a "name" for himself, Prigozhin announced at a general student assembly that "instructors ought to give the students facts, and we'll deal with questions of methodology on our own." He approved programs which, instead of the vulgar sociology of past years, were full of fresh new bourgeois empiricism and positivism. Interpreting TsK VKP(b)'s resolution about the teaching of the historical sciences to be a repudiation of Marxist-Leninist methodology, Prigozhin legalized the counterrevolutionary bourgeois teaching of history, particularly in the Literature Department where the teaching of ancient and medieval history and the history of ancient and medieval literature and art is the monopoly of old non-party professors who in fact pursue bourgeois political directives, skillfully disguising them with "witticisms" and an"objective" exposition of the subject matter.

Thanks to such completely unmonitored work by the old professoriat and their young "pupils," like nobleman-clerk Mikhalchi, our young Literature Department students have received an erroneous orientation, one essentially alien to us.

If one takes into account the unacceptably weak social composition of the Literature Department, the absence there of party and Komsomol mass propaganda, and the presence of faculty alien to us, then it is not surprising that it was namely this faculty where the Trotskyite-Zinovievite group built its counterrevolutionary nest.

Prigozhin's policies thus meant that a department in a Soviet ideological higher educational institution was handed over to a large group of enemies of our party and of Soviet power.

Preparation of new teaching and research cadres is not ensured by the way graduate study is organized. Out of 132 graduate students, only twenty eight are children of workers, and among the others are offspring of priests and gentry.

In the Literature Department only one of twenty-nine graduate students is a Communist. There are no study plans (except individual ones), no programs, no faculty assigned to answer for the work of graduate students, nor any monitoring on the part of the administration. As a result there are instances where graduate stipends are received from two institutes, and eternal student types who have already graduated from as many as three institutes (Streletsky). Unmasked Trotskyites (Nazarov, Leibman, Krepsky, Ziubin, and others) have continued graduate study while Communists have left. The associate dean who was fired for Trotskyite views is still a graduate student. In the absence of defined courses, the faculty's work with graduate students is reduced to individual consultations and the grading of papers. Each faculty member conducts this work in any way he wishes. [Omitted is a discussion of Trotskyist and bourgeois theories propagated at the Moscow Oblast Pedagogical Institute and the Bubnov Institute and sections on the "Political Blindness of Party Organizations in the Institutes" and "The Shortcomings of Narkompros' Leadership."]

* * *

In view of our inspection it is perfectly obvious that a series of measures must be taken without delay.

These measures should be aimed at

(1) fundamentally changing the way in which admissions committees in higher educational institutions do their work;

(2) carefully verifying faculty invited to teach, especially in the social and economic sciences;

(3) organizing party propaganda and ideological education among students;

(4) reviewing and strengthening leading cadres in pedagogical institutes;

(5) making accountable a number of officials both at the pedagogical institutes and at Narkompros.

Chairman of the Subcommittee on Education and Public Health, Shokhin

Chief Controller

(Volunteer)

23 March 1935