Implementation of Party-Ideological Campaign against the «Sycophancy towards the West» in Tomsk Higher Education Institutions (1947-1948)

Abstract

The article describes the process of implementing a campaign against «sycophancy towards the West» in higher education institutions of the largest university and scientific center of Siberia — Tomsk. The role of central and regional party bodies in the organization of the campaign, the mechanism of its implementation, and the consequences for the higher school of the region are shown.
 The campaign was generated by the desire of the Stalinist regime to protect the Soviet intelligentsia from the influence of liberal ideas in the face of increasing confrontation with the West in connection with the beginning of the Cold War. It included ideological measures aimed at strengthening the propaganda of «Soviet patriotism» and criticism of professors and researchers accused of "blind worship" of the culture and scientific authorities of the bourgeois West. "Moral repression" was combined with the dismissal of some professors, at the same time, due to the lack of scientific personnel, highly qualified scientists from the European part of the country who arrived in Tomsk as a result of persecution were hired at local universities.
 This campaign aimed at isolating domestic science and education and more intensive use of the mobilization resources of the socialist system, on the one hand, contributed to the intensification of scientific research in areas that were considered critical for military-technological confrontation with the West and demonstrating the superiority of socialism, and on the other hand, contributed to the deepening of the backlog of most scientific areas forced to develop in isolation from the achievements of world science.