Підготовка афганських студентів у навчальних закладах Української РСР у 1980-х рр. (на прикладі м. Кіровограда)

Abstract

Introduction. Within the framework of the “socialist orientation” policy, pursued by the USSR in the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan in the 1980s, an important place was given to the reorganization of the system of education due to the Soviet model. An important role in the education of Afghan youth in the spirit of the “ideals of the April Revolution” was given to the education of Afghans in educational institutions of the Soviet Union. The purpose of this article is to study the issue of training Afghan students in the Ukrainian SSR on the example of educational institutions in Kirovograd and to clarify its place in the structure of the socialist transformation of Afghanistan in the 1980-s. The research methodology is based on content analysis of historical sources, problem-chronological, typological, retrospective methods. Main results and conclusions. During the Cold War the education of citizens of “third world” countries in Soviet educational institutions was an effective element of policy aimed at promoting the interests of the USSR in the world. During the years of such purposeful work, thousands of qualified specialists of various specialties for Afghanistan have been trained in Soviet higher and vocational schools. At the same time, a whole generation of Afghans had been brought up and who, after studying in the Soviet Union, became the bearers of the “Marxist-Leninist worldview,” sincerely admired the Soviet reality and wanted to transfer at least some elements of it to their homeland. Studying in the USSR in the 1960’s and 1970’s contributed to the spread of Marxist ideas in Afghanistan, which was embodied in the “April Revolution” of 1978. In the next decade the training of Afghans in the USSR was a means of forming a large pro-Soviet stratum of Afghan society under Soviet occupation, Scientific novelty of research results. For the first time in Ukrainian historiography, the problem of educating the citizens of Afghanistan in educational institutions of the Ukrainian SSR in the 1980s as a component of the policy of “socialist orientation” has been studied. Based on a study of a wide documentary base, it was established that ideological and political education, instilling in them “Marxist-Leninist worldview” and “ideals of the April Revolution” was the main component of working with Afghan students.