Reform of higher education and technical universities of Belarus in 1930–1936

Abstract

The article presents the results of the analysis of the main directions of the reform of higher technical education of the USSR in the 1930s and their features in Belarus. On the basis of archival materials introduced into scientific circulation for the first time, the specifics of the development of the higher technical school of Belarus are revealed on the example of the Belarusian State Polytechnic Institute (Minsk) and the Belarusian State Mechanical Engineering Institute (Gomel). It is noted that the short period of restructuring of higher education on the principles of Western European approaches soon showed its inconsistency in the USSR. Huge territories, large-scale projects of industrialisation and collectivisation required not a narrow specialist, but an engineer capable of solving complex problems. Agricultural engineering already in 1930 began to abandon the use of Western European models of equipment, which, due to their orientation to the farmer in conditions of the huge size of collective farms and state farms, were unproductive and ineffective. These circumstances contributed to the change in the concept of higher education, which was oriented in 1932 to the consolidation of universities and specialties. The reforms carried out were enshrined in the USSR Constitution of 1936, which allowed the higher school to acquire those features that distinguished it in a favorable light in the world – accessibility, democracy and fundamentality. The liquidation of the All-Union Committee on Higher Technical Education in the same year and the creation of the All-Union Committee onHigher Education meant the completion of the process of building a higher school in the USSR.