Filimonchik, S. N. FORMATION OF A HIGHER SCHOOL IN KARELIA IN THE 1930S. Proceedings of Petrozavodsk State University. 2021;43(8):46–55. DOI: 10.15393/uchz.art.2021.692


Russian history

FORMATION OF A HIGHER SCHOOL IN KARELIA IN THE 1930S

Filimonchik
S. N. 		Petrozavodsk State University
Keywords:
Karelian State Pedagogical Institute
Teachers’ Institute
Karelian-Finnish State University
studentship
higher education		 Summary: This article analyzes the organizational, educational, and scientific activities of the Karelian State Pedagogical Institute and the Karelian-Finnish State University during the Stalinist modernization of the 1930s. Using Karelian regional material, the article demonstrates the change of priorities in higher education’s organization: a transition from the accelerated development of industry-specific institutions to the university model of education. The article investigates the sources of formation, number, and composition of new social groups of the Karelian urban population: university lecturers and students. Basing on archival documents, it supplements the biographical database of higher education workers. The article shows that the university activities in Karelia significantly increased the availability of higher education for rural youth and the Finno-Ugric peoples’ representatives in the 1930s. The authorities of Karelia, a border republic, tried to use universities as instruments of socialist influence in Finland and, at the same time, strengthened political control over them. Accusations of concealing social origin, suspicions of loyalty to bourgeois ideology or nationalism, the fact of arriving in Karelia from Western countries became the reason for dismissals, arrests, and unjust trials. The article uses genetic, problem-based, and biographical methods, as well as contextual and systemic approaches.



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