Organization of the educational process in the post-blockade time in Leningrad

Prishchepa Aleksandr Sergeevich ORCID: 0000-0001-7063-8067 PhD in History Associate professor, Peter the Great St. Petersburg Polytechnic University; Researcher at the Department of the Institute for the History of Defense and Siege of Leningrad, GMMOBL, St. Petersburg 195251, Russia, Saint Petersburg, Politechnicheskaya str., 29b a.prischepa@list.ru Other publications by this author

Khazov Vladimir Konstantinovich ORCID: 0000-0001-7194-738X PhD in Philosophy Associate professor, Peter the Great St. Petersburg Polytechnic University; Researcher of Institute of history of Defense and Blockade of Leningrad (St. Petersburg State Memorial Museum of Defense and Blockade of Leningrad) 195251, Russia, Saint Petersburg, Politechnchiyeska str., 29b; 191028, Russia, Saint Petersburg, State Memorial Museum of Defense and Blockade of Leningrad, Solyanoi str., 9. vla1698@yandex.ru

Introduction

The purpose of this work is to study the processes of restoring the system of training highly qualified personnel in Leningrad after the lifting of the blockade. The object is the process of personnel training itself, the subjects are school graduates, students and postgraduates who continued the educational process after the lifting of the blockade of the city and the end of the Great Patriotic War, and the subject of study is the managerial relations that arose in the system of training qualified specialists in Leningrad.

The territorial framework is limited to the city of Leningrad, and the chronological framework of the study is limited to the second half of the 1940s – the end of the 1950s. The choice of this particular chronological interval is not accidental. Due to the need to restore the economy as quickly as possible in Leningrad, which was destroyed after the siege, the activities of educational centers for personnel training were widely expanded during this period. First of all, this is due to the fact that most graduates aspired to take engineering and technical positions, continuing to grow professionally and participate in scientific and technical transformations in certain areas.

The purpose of this undertaking is also clear – to increase labor activity in the city, to replenish the personnel reserve of Leningrad, which was almost eliminated by famine and war. However, with a general, almost intuitive understanding of the essence of this phenomenon, its details are still poorly understood.

The research methodology is based on the principles of objectivism, historicism, and a systematic scientific approach. The systematic approach helped the authors to study the main components influencing the process of restoring the system of training highly qualified personnel and professional development of a specialist within the University in Leningrad by studying the high-quality teaching staff.

The use of the principle of historicism made it possible to determine the cause-and-effect relationships of events and phenomena in society that took place at the time described, including the study of the period and the specific working conditions in which teachers and students who worked in higher educational institutions of the city were located.

The principle of objectivity helped to approach the study of the problem from the point of view of a holistic and integrated approach, including consideration of the mechanisms of functioning and dynamic properties. In the course of solving the research tasks, a set of general scientific methods was used: analysis (demonstration of important features), synthesis (evaluation of phenomena based on combining the properties of its constituent parts).

For a long time, this topic was on the periphery of the scientific interests of Soviet historians. In the USSR, due to ideological and methodological traditions, the main emphasis was on identifying the organizing and guiding line of the party. One of the first systematic works in which the study of the everyday and social context of the life and work of Leningrad scientists was conducted was the collective work "Essays on the History of Leningrad". In 1967, the fifth volume of this work was published, in which, in particular, G.L. Sobolev presented a detailed concept of the history of Leningrad science, focusing on the study of the achievements of Higher Education in Leningrad in the first post-war decade (chapter "Higher School and research work" ^[1]. In the 1990s, A.V. Koltsov made a number of attempts to study the state of the organization system of scientific institutions ^[5] and institutions of the Academy of Sciences in Leningrad after the blockade ^[4]. In particular, he manages to establish the number of scientific and educational institutions that developed in Leningrad as autonomous institutions in the post-war years. A.A. Smolkina presented in the 1970s the institutional concept of the development of Leningrad science ^[3]. A group of researchers consisting of E.E. Krasnozhenova, S.V. Kulik and S.V. Kulink already in the 2020s presented an analysis of the daily life of Leningrad students.

The impact of the blockade on the industrial potential of Leningrad

On January 27, 1944, a joyful event took place, the citizens of the USSR, together with the residents of Leningrad, met the news of the complete liberation of the city from the Nazi invaders. Congratulatory telegrams and letters were sent to the city from all sides. Many of them contained wishes for the speedy and complete restoration of the hero city and its enterprises. Indeed, the defeat of German troops near Leningrad and the liberation of the Leningrad region created conditions for a significant increase in the industrial and production potential of the city.

However, there was a problem that directly hindered the process of rebuilding Leningrad. Leningrad was experiencing an acute shortage of personnel, which, coupled with the destruction of industrial equipment and buildings during the blockade, became a significant deterrent to the restoration of the city ^[6]. The Soviet leadership (both at the city and all-Union levels) understood perfectly well that the restoration of the Leningrad economy was impossible without attracting a sufficient number of highly qualified professional personnel. It was also taken into account that the blockade, which entailed numerous human casualties, could not but affect the education and training system.

The impact of the blockade in this sense can be assessed in two ways. Firstly, the terrible living conditions in the city and the deaths at the front (both in the ranks of the regular army and in the ranks of the militia) of many young people led to a significant decrease in the number of potential applicants. Many underachieving students never returned to the classroom.

On the other hand, all the same processes have led to the death of many highly qualified teachers and scientists who are able to pass on their experience to the next generations. The latter was only partially limited to the evacuation of employees of research institutes and universities. Nevertheless, even the employees who survived the evacuation had to be returned to Leningrad.

Considering the above, it can be considered literally incredible that in such a difficult situation, in 1945, 50 higher educational institutions (85% of the pre-war number) resumed their work in Leningrad. The number of students enrolled in institutes (even taking into account those who returned from the front) was significantly lower than before the war. The same applied to the number of teachers. Many of those who received higher education before or in the first year of the War gave their lives in the fight against the enemies of the Motherland. Many of those who remained in the city died during its heroic defense against shelling, bombing, starvation, frostbite or disease ^{[1, p. 332.]}.

The resumption of normal activities of educational institutions was difficult for a number of reasons. Firstly, the premises and dormitories were still occupied for hospitals or other "blockade" needs. The return of these buildings to research institutes was delayed for several years, and the lack of educational and residential infrastructure in many of them was felt in subsequent years, despite the gradual expansion of the necessary fund. Due to the lack of facilities, classes in most buildings in the first years after the lifting of the blockade, and in some institutes in subsequent years, were conducted in two and three shifts. In many classrooms and dormitories in the 1945-1946 academic year, the winter temperature dropped below 10 °C. There was a clear lack of furniture, inventory, bedding and dishes.

Secondly, the issue of financing the work of higher education institutions was a significant problem. The Soviet system of the Stalin era seems to the modern layman to be a single, well-established and tuned mechanism, strictly subordinated to a single plan and a single will. But in reality, this was not quite the case. The degree of centralization in the USSR in the 1940s - 1950s was indeed extremely high. However, it is very important to understand that any management system, even in a totalitarian state, functions at the level of a specific leader, a specific person with his ambitions, tasks, ideas about priorities and methods of solving them. By and large, it was exactly like that. Already at this time, the ability of heads of enterprises and scientific associations to receive additional funding, to prove their special usefulness and importance for the general public affairs, began to play a special role. In many ways, this state of affairs is explained by the need for rational use of resources that have become very scarce during the war years and have not yet been restored.

Government spending was not expected to be small. For example, in 1947, the State Institute for the Design of Heavy Machinery Plants (Giprotyazhmash) developed plans for the reconstruction of such plants as the Nevsky Machine-Building Plant named after V.I. Lenin, factories of Metal, Lifting and Transport equipment named after S. M. Kirov, Russian Diesel and many others ^[5]. The Department of Mechanical Engineering Technology of the Leningrad Polytechnic Institute (LPI named after M.I. Kalinin), the Department of Instrument Engineering Technology of the Leningrad Institute of Precision Mechanics and Optics (LITMO), together with the Research Institute of Abrasives and Grinding, developed a fundamentally new technology for processing parts used at a number of enterprises in Leningrad (Lentrublite, Linotype) ^{[13, pp. 132-133]}. This example clearly shows what the priorities were for the restoration of the country's industry, what the main efforts and resources (including intellectual ones) were directed at. However, the same example also shows that the City's leadership could solve a number of priority problems with the available (or recruited from other regions) scientific and professional personnel.

Restoration of the scientific research and educational system as the foundation of the industrial restoration of Leningrad

Nevertheless, the restoration of Leningrad's industrial potential could not be complete without the revival of the scientific base (both in material and human terms). Measures to restore scientific potential, taken immediately after the liberation of the Leningrad territory from the blockade, led to the fact that in 1946 22 academic institutions of physics, mathematics, biology and humanities were already operating in the city. By the end of the 40s of the XX century, almost all higher education institutions of the city, including research institutes and PKTO, were working as usual.

In this case, we can consider one of the most important problems of management theory: the choice between long-term and short-term projects. This choice is always determined by the configuration of the management strategy. Ultimately, it is a choice between what gives a "return" here and now, but does not create prospects, and what determines the possibility of success in a strategic perspective, but with a loss of effectiveness in the current moment. The complexity of this choice in post-war Leningrad was further enhanced by the terrible shortage of resources.

The Soviet government is choosing a specific hybrid path. The essence of this strategy was to direct the main resources to the restoration of the material and technical base, allocating some balanced minimum for the maintenance and revival of scientific and research potential. With the exception of a number of relatively large institutes and design bureaus, research organizations were the smallest and low in technical equipment. Nevertheless, the number of scientific institutions and scientists in the first post-war five-year period is beginning to grow steadily.

In the first years after the liberation of the region from the blockade of the war in 1946, members of the USSR Academy of Sciences chose a strategy aimed at significantly increasing the number of scientific and research works and projects. At that time, more than 700 problems of a fundamental and applied nature were identified to solve practical problems of the national economy and provide a foundation in the development of science for the future. In terms of the number of institutions, the volume of research and the number of personnel in Leningrad, about a sixth of the USSR Academy of Sciences was located, 9 out of 37 (or 25%) academic scientific journals were published ^[5]. There were over 180 doctors of sciences working in the city (if you look at the total number of doctors of sciences of the entire Academy). A total of 5,800 researchers worked in Leningrad at that time, about two thousand of them with academic degrees, including 96 academicians and corresponding members of the USSR Academy of Sciences (23% of the total number of members of the Academy of Sciences) working in academic institutions, universities and branch research institutes ^{[9, p. 232]}.

A very comprehensive information on the role of the USSR Academy of Sciences in the restoration of Soviet higher education in the post-war period is presented in the work of Koltsov A.V. "Leningrad institutions of the USSR Academy of Sciences in 1934-1945" ^[4]. After the end of the Second World War in 1945 and 1946. graduation from secondary schools in the Soviet Union, and especially in Leningrad, was smaller than the contingent of the planned admission to universities, therefore, to fulfill the admission plan, the directors of some universities enrolled in specially open preparatory courses and those who had not yet graduated from grades 9. By the end of the 1945/46 academic year, Leningrad educational centers had only 60% of the pre-war number of students, while in the USSR, on average, this figure reached 90% ^{[8, p.126]}.

The peculiarity of admission in the period 1945-1947 was also the fact that it was carried out throughout the academic year for all courses from among potential students who were demobilized or returning from evacuation. Until the second half of the 1950s, female students made up the majority of students in universities ^{[2, p.86]}.

Plans for admission to Leningrad universities began to be fulfilled, starting only in 1947. In the first post-war years, the number of newcomers among first-year students critically exceeded the number of Leningraders. This increase persisted in the following post-blockade years. It was only since 1948 that most of the Leningrad universities began to accept students on the basis of a competition, but in a number of universities the first year is often completed by those who were not accepted to other universities. Those awarded gold and silver medals were enrolled in universities without exams until 1955, when this right was abolished for some universities (in Leningrad - for 13), and since 1959, the admission of medalists to universities without exams was abolished everywhere.

It is worth pointing out the difficulties faced by educational institutions in the first post-war years. The first is the possibility of full implementation of the curriculum or educational and practical work. The fact is that most students resumed classes after a long break, including the absence of a destroyed educational infrastructure. Despite the organization of additional training sessions for those who had a break in their studies, the dropout from universities in the 1945-1946 academic year averaged 16% of the total number of students in the city, four fifths of them in terms of academic failure.

As a result of the merger of related universities, the total number of them in Leningrad decreased from 50 in 1945 to 43 in 1964. The unification in 1959 was a fundamentally important event. The Institute of Water Transport Engineers and the Scientific Research Institute of Water Transport with the transfer of a well-equipped mechanical plant. As a result, a new type of institute is being created, in which professors and teachers have the opportunity to fully and effectively join scientific work, and the results of scientific research have been used to the maximum extent in the educational process. This successful experience has indicated one of the ways to further improve higher education.

In the post-war years, six new higher education institutions appeared in Leningrad. In 1945, the B. I. Mukhina Institute of Aviation Instrumentation and the Higher School of Art and Industry were established, and in 1946 - the Hydrometeorological Institute. Later, the Higher Aviation School opens, and the work of the Leningrad Higher Party School resumes. The VTUZ plant at the Leningrad Metal Plant, which existed in the 1930s, was again organized on the basis of the evening department of the Polytechnic Institute.

It should be noted that in Leningrad from 1945 to 1956 there was a sharp change in the ratio between the number of trained specialists for industry, including industries such as construction, transport and the training system for culture, art and education. In 1945-1946, more than 50% of students in higher educational institutions of Leningrad were trained for the production sector (industry, transport, construction and communications). While from 5% -21% of all students in the universities of the city studied in the humanities and socio-cultural areas and faculties (art, healthcare and pedagogical specialties), and in 1963-1964 from 1.5% studied at the faculties of art and 15% in pedagogical areas ^{[7, pp. 95-96]}.

The relative number of graduates from Leningrad universities was higher than this average (7.2%) in such specialties as chemical technology, radio engineering, communications, mechanical engineering, instrumentation, art, in the field of electrical engineering and electrical appliances, forest engineering and wood technology, geodesy, cartography and meteorology. Leningrad universities graduated over one fifth of students from the total graduation rate of universities of the Soviet Union in these specialties.

At the same time, it should be noted that for the vast majority of technical specialties, Leningrad educational institutions did not fully ensure the fulfillment of applications from industry, research institutes and institutions of Leningrad. Since more often in the period described, graduates of the city's schools tried to be sent to other regions for admission to higher education institutions. The teaching of social sciences was aimed at forming a Marxist-Leninist worldview and communist consciousness among students. Professors and teachers of Leningrad universities sought to link the study of socio-economic disciplines with the practice of communist construction.

This installation found the most practical and even literal embodiment – scientists, graduate students and students took an active part in the restoration and modernization of the city's urban and industrial infrastructure. An important task of the physics course was to focus on new production methods, the full development of students' creative abilities, and the formation of a materialistic worldview. In solving these problems, the physics departments of Leningrad universities have gained valuable experience and achieved success.

At the same time, the main disadvantages of teaching physics were that the real experiment had not yet become sufficiently its basis, the lecture topics of laboratory work covered mainly only the problems of classical physics, laboratory equipment in many universities did not correspond to the modern technical level.

The increase in the number of useful chemical elements actively used in industry (and newly discovered), the creation of many new advanced materials with specified properties, the development of rational and economical technological processes place increased demands on the training of chemists of various profiles and on the chemical training of specialists in a variety of non-chemical specialties.

Two years after the end of the war, the number of professors and teachers in Leningrad universities exceeded pre-war figures. At the same time, the number of teachers with academic degrees and titles already in 1947 became more than before the Great Patriotic War. The total number of teachers in the period from 1947 to 1965 increased from 8.9 to 15.8 thousand. 25 (which was one and a half times the number of professors and teachers in all higher educational institutions of Russia in 1914). Since the late 1940s, higher educational centers in the country began to pay attention to solving economic and practical issues with a focus on the production and practical component ^[10].

At the same time, the requirements for the economic justification of diploma projects began to increase, i.e. the benefit of the result on a practical basis. The connection of the newly organized departments with industry and agriculture was also improved, a number of textbooks and methodological manuals were published on economics and production planning, many of which were written by Leningrad authors.

At the end of the main narrative, it is worth noting in a separate paragraph that the field of education in the post-war years was not limited only to the provision of primary education. The acute personnel shortage, which we have repeatedly written about above, required both ordinary employees and managers of enterprises to sometimes retrain, and sometimes take advanced training classes.

In this sense, for example, the situation in the Sverdlovsk district of Leningrad is very indicative (this area existed until 1960 in the western part of Vasilievsky Island (from the 12th line to the Gulf of Finland and was one of the centers of the "industrial life of the city"), which is being reconstructed according to documents of the post-war period. In the list of issues discussed at the bureau of the Sverdlovsk RK of the CPSU(b) in 1946, one of the first is "On the creation of a seminar at the Regional Department for heads of industrial enterprises of the district to study the organization and economics of production." This issue was discussed on 01/22/1946 by the CAIPD ^[11]. Another way to respond to the same challenge was the post-war schools of working-class youth. For example, the issue of the resumption of regular work of schools for working youth on Kotlin Island was raised already in the middle of 1945 ^[12].

On the basis of the industrial practice of Leningrad students, the activation of the creative community of science and production workers had a positive effect. During the training internship, students changed their view of the workflow. If at the beginning of practical training they were only observers of the process with a passive-contemplative attitude towards production, then during practice students changed their attitude and outlook towards their work activity. The heads of practical training tried to secure students in certain workplaces and places, designating their own area of responsibility. As a result, the interns morally improved their professionalism and increased their interest in job training.

In 1948, on the initiative of Komsomol members of the Leningrad Polytechnic Institute and Leningrad State University, youth construction projects of rural power plants in the Leningrad Region arose, where thousands of students of Leningrad universities worked annually. Students participated in such large-scale construction projects as Krasnoborskaya, Medvedkovskaya, Podberezhskaya, Shulginskaya and a number of other rural power plants. Thanks to student groups, electricity has become available to residents of the Leningrad region.

Starting in the second half of the 50s, Leningrad students began to take part on a regular basis in the construction of regional power plants, namely Narva and Baltic. The students performed the role of workers and worked together with engineers, technicians and representatives of working specialties. For example, in 10 years (1949-1958), members of the student team of the Lensovet Institute of Technology worked over 250 thousand working days on the construction of power plants in the Leningrad Region ^[3].

While working at construction sites, students of Leningrad universities were able not only to assist in the restoration of the city on the Neva, but also to gain valuable practical experience related to the implementation of technical solutions in practice. They had to independently solve a number of technical, organizational and even household issues related to the implementation of production activities. Moreover, they often had to work in harsh climatic conditions themselves, performing long and energy-consuming preparatory work related to unskilled labor.

Conclusion

Summing up, it is worth noting several important aspects of the organization of the learning process in post-blockade Leningrad. Firstly, for obvious reasons, the blockade has determined the specifics (both in terms of goals and methods of implementation) of the entire city's education system. The most important goal, integrating all aspects of the activities of Leningrad's educational institutions, was the restoration of its material and technical base. All efforts of the educational system were aimed at the realization of this goal. Education could contribute to solving this problem primarily by training highly qualified young specialists in order to satisfy the personnel hunger. Secondly, the forms of implementation of this goal varied significantly and included a number of different measures, from stimulating technical and natural science areas of study to the detriment of the humanities, to the actualization of such exotic forms as COE. Thirdly, the training was reoriented in a practice-oriented manner, students and even teachers actively implemented their achievements within the framework of the existing production. This means that even within the framework of natural science and technical education, priority was given to those topics and areas of training that could allow for practical results in the shortest possible time.

Gradually, in the post-blockade period, we observe a slow but steady increase in the number of students of technical universities, new higher education institutions appear and develop.

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