The impact of ideology on the institutionalization of correspondence accounting education in Soviet Russia (1929–1939)

Abstract

The article discusses the case of the All-Russian State Distance Learning Institute of Finance and Economics (VZFEI), a Russian educational organization, where the methodology of correspondence accounting education was developed in the 1930s. Later, this methodology was actively used by many universities in the USSR that had a strong influence on the competence model of Soviet accountants. Mobilization of state resources made it possible in a short time to train a large number of financial specialists necessary for the implementation of ambitious plans for the country’s industrialization.The VZFEI was not only a successful educational organization but also a pioneer in the process of institutionalization of correspondence accounting education in the USSR. The new institutional form of accounting education was created during the struggle of the new Soviet ideology with the old bourgeois ideology. Based on Louis Althusser's sociology of education and Hardy's framework of power, the authors explain the role of correspondence accounting education as an ideological apparatus of the Soviet state from 1929 to 1939.