Institute of History and Ethnology at ANAS

Abstract

This paper focuses on the higher education reforms carried out in the Soviet Azerbaijan in the 1920s and 1930s and their impact on Baku State University. Beginning from the first years of the Soviet rule, the People’s Commissariat of Education in the Azerbaijan SSR concentrated the authority to lead all cultural and educational affairs. The main areas of the spiritual life of the newly established Soviet republic, its education, science, literature, and art, were actually brought under the control of the party and state leadership. The conducted research shows that by putting an end to the existence of the Azerbaijan Democratic Republic with the April invasion of 1920 and establishing their regime in Azerbaijan, the new authorities radically changed the conditions for the operation of Baku State University. Party and state bodies of the Azerbaijan SSR initiated immediate reorganization of the university's work in accordance with the new ideological and political realities. The main directions of education and scientific activity at the university began to be restructured on the principles of class and party affiliation. All these issues, related to the development of the university, are considered on the basis of archival documents in order to reveal the historical realities of the period under study.