DIRECTOR Y.D. PETROV AND THE SVERDLOVSK PEDAGOGICAL INSTITUTE IN 1945-1953

Abstract

Based on the new, previously unknown materials received by the authors in the archival institutions of the Sverdlovsk region, this publication provides information about the official activities of Yakov Denisovich Petrov as the director of one of the largest pedagogical universities in the Ural region in the post-war years. The brief biographical information about the director of the Sverdlovsk Pedagogical Institute presented in the article supplements the information available in previously published sources. The article examines the contradictory trends in the development of the system of higher pedagogical education in the last years of Stalin’s rule. The authors present the features of the work of the Sverdlovsk Pedagogical Institute in the second half of the 1940s – early 1950s: lack of allocated funds, material and everyday problems, command and administrative methods of leadership, control and interference of party bodies in the activities of the administration. The characteristic of Y. D. Petrov as an effective administrator, teacher, propagandist of pedagogical knowledge is given. In conditions when the party leadership demanded from the management of the university to consider the ideological and political education of students as the main direction in the activities of the institute, Yakov Denisovich quite rightly saw professional, primarily methodological training of teachers as the main task of education. The authors draw the readers’ attention to the fact that in the post-war years, in the conditions of widespread shifting of responsibility by party officials for their own mistakes onto the heads of the institutions under their jurisdiction, up to political accusations against them, Y. D. Petrov quite skillfully applied the experience he gained during the Great Patriotic War in managing an educational institution, combining the unconditional fulfillment of the directives of the leadership with a certain independence in decision-making. This allowed by the early 1950s to achieve certain success in the work of the institution headed by him: the material base was strengthened and the study areas of the Sverdlovsk Pedagogical Institute were expanded, the activities of postgraduate studies were improved, the system of methodological training of future teachers was improved.