Institute of Red Professors as a “state” project (1921–1938)

Abstract

The article describes the scope and potentialities of state regulation of such a specific social institution as a science. Through materials of the history of the Institute of the Red Professors (an educational institution founded after the Revolution of 1917 to prepare teaching and scientific personnel in social and economic disciplines for higher educational institutions) an example of the practical realization of one of the state projects in the 1920–1930s is explored. Investigating a wide range of unpublished documents, the author turns to the analysis of the staff of the Institute of Red Professors, clarifies the composition and specifics of the students and characterizes the financial and infrastructural support of its work. The research is based on the methods of social statistics, such as a unilinear statistic analysis of the teaching personnel of the Institute of Red Professors in 1937, using the «Statistical Package for the Social Sciences»; dynamic analysis of the academic movement of students of the Institute of the Red Professors in History for 1931–1937. The author comes to a conclusion that the state’s regulatory functions came into conflict with the everyday realities of the 1920s–1930s. So, the Institute of Red Professors did not become a successfully implemented state project.