Reform of the system of national party education in the 1930s. Based on the materials of the Communist University of the National Minorities of the West.

The subject of this article is the gradual dismantling of the higher communist education system that took place in the USSR in the 1930s. During the period of profound reorganization (and liquidation), the vast majority of leading centers of "Marxist science" underwent changes: the Communist University of the Toiling East (KUTV), the International Lenin School (MLS), the University of the Toiling People of China, and others. The Communist University of National Minorities of the West (KUNMZ), which provided educational training for Soviet and foreign students in 17 European languages, was no exception in this regard. In 1936, according to a resolution of the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR, the university was disbanded. In this article, relying on significant archival materials (funds 529 and 531 of the Russian State Archive of Socio-Political History), the author examines the circumstances preceding the liquidation of national communist universities. Methodologically, the work is based on the comparison of various types of historical sources (office documentation, party documents, personal origin sources) with the aim of a comprehensive reconstruction of objective historical reality. The author's main contribution to the study of the topic is the reconstruction of specific historical events that affected the activities of communist educational institutions in the second half of the 1930s: the transformation of communist universities into higher agricultural schools in 1932, the exclusion of national communist universities from the list of all-Union educational institutions, university audits by the Central Control Commission, and so on. The author has thoroughly analyzed the preconditions that led the Soviet leadership to the decision to reorganize the process of training national personnel: changes in the vector of foreign policy, the desire for unification of the educational process, deep changes in the national policy of the communist party. The scientific novelty of the work lies in the reconstruction of poorly studied aspects of the activities of communist universities and the introduction of a significant body of unpublished materials into circulation.