“Proletarianizing” the Soviet Higher School: A Case Study of Tomsk University

The article examines the boundaries between the subgroups within the Tomsk University community in the context of the policy of “Proletarianization” in the Soviet Higher School during the 1920s. The project of “Proletarianization” was mainly aimed at changing the social composition of students and professoriate as well. The social modernization of the professors’ subgroup required a longer time, therefore, the “proletarian” students were thought of as not only the upcoming change of professoriate, but also as a tool of pressure “from below” on the “starye” (“old”) professors. The contraposition of these categories within the universities spaces is also typical for historiography. The exception is made mainly in connection with the revision of the specific qualities of particular groups (for example, the revisionist characterization of the “vydvizhentsy” as agents of the reassertion of traditional values in the 1930s). However, the democratic traditions of the “old” professors, who at Tomsk University were characterized by the estate composition not quite standard for classical universities in pre-revolutionary Russia, largely determined the tolerant attitude of a considerable part of them to the “proletarian” students. It is emphasized that the “proletarian” students often recognized the “old” professors as “ours”. The boundaries between the “old” professors and the “red” students turned out to be plastic, and the role models of behavior chosen by them were unstable and often did not meet the expected standards. Actually, the models of “professoriate” and “studentship” imagined by the party members turned out to be substantialized. The repressive imposition of these models on the actual identity map of the University community generated a perception failure and an atmosphere of distrust in the community, which became one of the prerequisites for the anxious realities of the Stalin era.