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Historical informatics
Reference:

Social structure of post-war students: experience in processing data from personal files from the archive of the Pskov Pedagogical Institute

Shtatskaya Angelina Mikhailovna

ORCID: 0000-0002-7120-070X

Assistant; Department of National and Universal History; Pskov State University

180000, Russia, Pskov region, Pskov, Lenin Square, 2, room 121

a.shtatskaya@pskgu.ru

DOI:

10.7256/2585-7797.2024.2.71215

EDN:

XZMERS

Received:

08-07-2024


Published:

17-07-2024


Abstract: The article is a review of data on the social structure of the post-war students of the historical and literary faculties of the Pskov State Pedagogical Institute (graduated in 1948–1953). The source of the data presented in the article was documents from 282 students’ personal files stored in the archives of Pskov State University. First of all, these are documents such as autobiographies, personal cards, questionnaires, characteristics and statements. Information from students' personal files was processed using the method of quantitative data analysis, produced using the Microsoft Access database management system, as well as special scientific methods of historical research. Data processing and analysis were carried out according to four categories generally accepted in Soviet period: “employees”, “peasants”, “workers”, “priests”. In addition, the article provides information about the social mobility of students’ parents, their party affiliation, the level of positions held, as well as cases of political repression. The research demonstrates the scientific perspective of university archives, their value, volume and role in the reconstruction of sociocultural transformations through which generations of students of the 20th century went. Despite the fact that the current level of development of information technology makes it possible to compile, store and analyze databases based on socio-demographic characteristics presented in student personal files, such scientific work has not become a widespread practice in Russian historiography. The article compares the results of this study with a study of the collective portrait of students at the Faculty of History of Moscow State University, based on the analysis of socio-demographic data from the personal files of students of the post-war period.


Keywords:

personal files, autobiographies, Soviet students, social origin, social structure, post-war period, Pskov Pedagogical Institute, database, frequency of occurrence, prosopography

This article is automatically translated.

Introduction

In the conditions of the accelerated post-war restoration of the national economy of the USSR in 1945-1953, the state's need for qualified personnel in all sectors of the economy and in the social sphere was especially great, therefore, the country's leadership resumed the course of developing greater accessibility to higher education. Relative to the pre-war 1939, the number of universities in the USSR increased by 18% by 1951, and the number of students doubled to 1.3 million people [1, p. 162]. With the increase in the number of people with higher education, the social and cultural status of the intelligentsia began to increase, the term "intelligentsia" itself returned to use [2, p. 37]. The study of the social composition of the post-war students allows us to get closer to understanding what "material" the post-war Soviet intelligentsia was formed from and how it was transformed by the events of the Great Patriotic War. In modern Russian historiography, historians L. V. Silina [3], E. O. Yagodkina [4] and Yu.A. Rusina [5,6] have addressed this topic in one way or another, but the potential for revealing this topic continues to be high.

As part of the study of the social composition of post-war students, the experience of pedagogical universities is interesting, which solved the problem of staff shortages in post-war schools and trained teachers for the education and training of the next generation. An example of such a university is the Pskov State Pedagogical Institute (PSPI), which resumed work and admission of applicants in 1945. The source of information about the social composition of students of the PSPI of the first post-war years are documents from the personal files of students, formed into volumes by year of graduation (from 1948 to 1953). To work on the study, data were collected from 282 personal files of all full-time students of the historical and literary faculties of the PSPI. Based on the collected information, a prosopographic relational database was built in the Microsoft Access 2016 DBMS, containing socio-demographic indicators of students, including information about their social origin. For ease of use of the database, the collected information about students is structured in the form of seven tables connected by a one-to-many relationship from the key field "Code" (student code) (See Fig. 1).

Fig. 1. Data schema of the database "Students of the Historical and literary faculty of the PSPI 1948-1953 year of graduation"

The data was entered into the "Social origin" column in four fixed variants using the "Substitution Wizard" tool: "employees", "workers", "peasants", "priests". Further, all the information was calculated and the percentages for each year and for each faculty were determined.

The social origin of the post-war students of the PSPI: the results of the analysis of data from personal files

Of the 282 students, 245 people provided information about their social origin. The sources of information about social origin are personal cards from personal files, in the form of which a separate column "Social origin" was provided, and students' autobiographies, where they indicated specific professions or even the place of work of their parents, which made it possible to determine social origin. In the Soviet years, the "workers" group included all those who were engaged in hired, mainly physical, labor. The second group consisted of peasants. This group included those who were engaged in agricultural activities. Finally, the third group consisted of employees. This group included doctors, lawyers, teachers, administrative staff, etc. [7, pp. 11-12].

A frequency analysis of the presented data showed the following data (See Table 1):

Table 1. The social origin of students of the historical and literary faculties of the PSPI 1948-1953.

Year of release

Number of students

Social background

1948

7

Employees: 5 (71.4%)

Workers: 2 (28.6%)

1949

29

Employees: 13 (44.9%)

Peasants: 7 (24.1%)

Workers: 7 (24.1%)

Priests: 2 (6.9%)

1950

45

Employees: 19 (42.2%)

Peasants: 13 (28.9%)

Workers: 13 (28.9%)

1951

45

Employees: 22 (48.9%)

Peasants: 15 (33.3%)

Workers: 8 (17.8%)

1952

61

Employees: 41 (67.2%)

Peasants: 15 (24.6%)

Workers: 5 (8.2%)

1953

58

Employees: 37 (63.8%)

Peasants: 12 (20.7%)

Workers: 9 (15.5%)

Total:

245

Employees: 137 (55.9%)

Peasants: 62 (25.3%)

Workers: 44 (18%)

Priests: 2 (0.8%)

The ratio of the social groups to which the students referred themselves changed insignificantly from year to year. We see a clear predominance of young people from the families of employees. We also notice an approximately equal number of immigrants from working-class and peasant families in the first post-war graduates (1948-1950) and, since the 1951 graduation, a decrease in the number of students of working-class origin "in favor" of employees. And despite the disgraced position of the servants of the Orthodox Church, two students indicated that their fathers were church deacons [8, L. 32, 87]. If we talk about the difference in the resulting indicators of the social origin of graduates between faculties, the only noticeable difference is that in the Faculty of Literature as a whole, the proportion of immigrants from peasant families is 5.5% higher for all the studied years.

From the leading position of the category of employees in the social composition of the studied students, it can be concluded that children who grew up in families in which their parents were engaged in intellectual work looked at obtaining higher education and, accordingly, a profession similar to their parents, as an obligatory part of their life path. The massization of Soviet higher education will reach its peak by the mid-1980s, but so far it has only been gaining momentum, so the proportion of immigrants from working-class and peasant families is not yet so high. In addition, tuition at universities in 1940-1956 was paid and amounted to 300 rubles per year. Such expenses were feasible for many families, but for some (especially for peasants) they could become a factor influencing the refusal of admission to university.

It is also interesting that, unlike nationality, which the students indicated infrequently, on the origin, on the profession of their parents, the students themselves, talking about themselves in questionnaires and autobiographies, made a noticeable emphasis. Despite the fact that the USSR Constitution adopted in 1936 declared the granting of equal rights to all citizens of the country, regardless of "social origin, property status and past activities" (Article 135), in practice great attention was paid to social origin and it is not surprising that students separately emphasized the "correct" origin or indicated it automatically having got used to the fact that social origin is an integral part of Soviet civic identification, such as place of birth or surname.

Other information about students' families provided in personal files

Analyzing the information from the students' autobiography, one can note the high social mobility of their parents, who moved from one social class to another during their lives. Fifteen autobiographies indicate that the parents were peasants before the October Revolution, but later they retrained into working professions and professions from the category of "employees". This is an interesting sign of the times, reflecting the level and pace of social mobility and urbanization in the first decades of Soviet power. For example, one of the students pointed out that his father was a peasant before the revolution, but later changed his field of activity and (as of 1948) rose to deputy head of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Pskov region. Thus, it often turned out that if the parents were peasants by origin, then their children were already born into a family of workers or employees and indicated the corresponding social origin. This also reflects the fact that despite the resolution adopted in March 1926 by the Central Committee of the RCP (b) "On determining the social status of Communists and those accepted into the Party", which clarified the criteria of social affiliation and stated that social status should now be determined by the main occupation at the time of determination [7, p. 19], in practice, in one way or another, the pre-revolutionary labor biography continued to be taken into account.

In those autobiographies, where students also clarified the professions of their parents, they most often indicated the profession of their father. The following professions were represented: a teacher, a doctor, a railway worker, a church deacon, a zootechnician, an accountant, a land surveyor, an electrician, a motorist, a civil engineer, a factory worker, a hairdresser, a lawyer, a soldier, a party worker and others.

Among the official positions of parents of students of the Faculty of History of the PSPI, senior positions were widely represented, especially from Pskov: chairman of the City Executive Committee of Pskov, deputy head of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Pskov region, head of the border post (Pskov), head of the planning department of the plant "Nominee" (Pskov), head of transport at the Pskov station, as well as the manager of the regional office of supply and sales in Novgorod, Chairman of the Klyatninsky Village Council of the Mogilev region of the BSSR. There are noticeably fewer people holding senior positions, especially at the regional level, among the parents of students of another faculty of PSPI — literary. If we also correlate this with the above data that there were 5.5% more people from peasant families at the Faculty of Literature than at the Faculty of History, then we can conclude that historical education has a higher prestige relative to philological education due to its characteristic political orientation.

Thirteen students indicated their fathers' membership in the CPSU (b). Twenty-two students made separate notes in their autobiographies that none of their relatives had been repressed and were not abroad. But two students did not hide information about their convicted parents. One of the girls wrote about her father, who was arrested in 1938, and as of the year of writing his autobiography (1947), he was still imprisoned in Vyatlag (Kirov region) [9, l. 110]. Another student, born in 1924 in Leningrad, wrote that in 1937 her father was convicted, and she and her whole family followed him to a place of exile – Yolotan, Turkmen SSR [8, l. 51]. Also in one of the autobiographies there is an indirect indication that relatives were subjected to repression: one of the graduates of 1952, who was born in 1930 in the village of Leningradskaya in the Krasnodar Territory, wrote: "In 1932, together with her family, she came to the Kazakh SSR, Akmola region. Shortadinsky district settlement of Novo-Kubanka" [10, l. 138]. The settlement of Novo-Kubanka was established in 1933 as one of the 292 productive camp sites of Karlag. The lists of the "special category" were formed, including from the village of Leningradskaya [11]. Perhaps it did not make much sense to withhold information about convicted relatives, since in the case of verification it could raise additional questions.

The colossal human losses during the Great Patriotic War were not spared by the families of the students of the PSPI. Of the 282 personal files of graduates of the Faculty of History and Literature of the PSPI 1948-1953 studied, 240 cases (85.1%) contain information about the fate of students and/or their family members during the war years. Of these, 30 (12.5%) personal files, namely autobiographies, contain references to relatives who died in the war: 24 students lost their fathers, 5 brothers, 2 stepfathers.

Comparison of indicators of Pskov and Moscow post-war students

The topic of the social composition of post-war students was also addressed at the Lomonosov Moscow State University. In 2008, a study by E.O. Yagodkina on the collective portrait of students of the Moscow State University Faculty of History for 1945-1953 was published, based on socio-demographic data from students' personal files [12]. This study showed that the majority of students of the Moscow State University Faculty of History were also from families of employees (45%) and among their parents there were also quite a lot of people who held senior positions (13%) – positions of party workers, heads of enterprises and large departments, employees of ministries, military personnel of the highest rank. We note a similar thing about the Faculty of Economics of the PSPI, but there is a difference in the level of leadership positions held by parents, which is quite understandable, given the different status of the two cities and the level of employment opportunities. It should be noted another difference in the social origin of students from Pskov and Moscow: among the post—war recruitment of the Moscow State University Faculty of History, young people from peasant families were only 6%, whereas historical education in Pskov was more accessible to villagers and many more people from peasant families studied at the PSPI - 22.4%. There was a significant difference in gender the ratio of students of the two universities. More than 40% of the students of the Moscow State University Faculty of History were male, 70% of the students at the PSPI were female, 30% were male.

Conclusion

Based on the results of the analysis of information from the database compiled on the basis of information from the personal files of students of two faculties of the PSPI of the first post-war years of graduation, a lively collective portrait of educated youth of the late 1940s — early 1950s turned out, whose social orientation and life plans are to some extent determined by the social status and level of education of parents. This trend was observed in the following decades. For example, according to a sociological study conducted in the early 1970s, among those wishing to enter a university immediately after graduation, the children of workers made up 36.7%, the children of collective farmers - 7.2%, the children of employees and specialists — 54.6% [13, p. 166]. But the resulting social portrait of students was influenced not only by this, but also by two other circumstances. Firstly, it is the formal termination of the "class principle" of the selection of applicants since the mid-1930s [13, p. 159], when preference was given to immigrants from workers and peasants. Secondly, there was a massive shortage of applicants in the late 1940s in regional universities and a shortage of staff, including teachers. The admission committee of the PSPI was loyal to applicants and accepted all those who passed the entrance exams, despite, for example, the fact that several female students did not hide the fact of political repression against their relatives, and 86 students calmly mentioned that during the war they were forced to live in territories occupied by Nazi Germany. Perhaps this is due to the fact that, as can be seen from the general results of our research, about half of the post-war applicants of the PSPI were residents of the Pskov region, which was completely occupied within its modern borders in 1941-1944. Of course, if not the applicant himself, then one of his relatives could very likely be a resident of the occupied area, and it would be inappropriate to refuse such a large number of applicants to the institute.

In general, the analysis allows us to conclude that the information potential of the materials of the personal files of the university archive is sufficient to study the social portrait of students of the post-war period.

References
1. Medynskiy, E. N. (1952). Public education in the USSR. Mosñow: Publishing house of the USSR Academy of Pedagogical Sciences.
2. Veremchuk, A. S. (2014). Intelligentsia and Soviet power. Bulletin of the Moscow State University of Culture and Arts, 5(61), 34–38.
3. Silina, L. V. (2002). The mood of Soviet students in the post-war period: 1945–1964. Kand. Diss. Moscow.
4. Yagodkina, E. O. (2009). Students of the Faculty of History of Moscow State University named after M.V. Lomonosov (1943–1953): source research. Kand. Diss. Moscow.
5. Rusina, Yu. A. (2014). Rhymes of life. History of the USU student literary circle (mid 1940s). News of the Ural State University. Series 2: Humanitarian sciences, 4(96), 269–285.
6. Rusina, Yu. A. (2014). Between repentance and confession: literary creativity of students in the last Stalinist decade. News of the Ural State University. Series 2: Humanitarian sciences, 1(124), 149–163.
7. Nikulin, V. V. (2017). The class structure of Soviet society and the socio-legal status of the individual in Soviet Russia (1920s). Sociodynamics, 2, 9–21.
8. Archives of Pskov State University. C. 77.
9. Archives of Pskov State University. C. 136.
10. Archives of Pskov State University. C. 185.
11The village of Novokubanka. History in exhibits. Retrieved from https://apgazeta.kz/2017/07/15/selo-novokubanka-istoriya-v-eksponatax/
12. Yagodkina, E. O. (2008). Collective portrait of Moscow State University students in the post-war years (based on students' personal files). Bulletin of Moscow University. Series 8. History, 3, 97–112.
13. Fursova, V. V. (2015). Social inequality in the education system of Soviet society: theory and practice. Facets of Russian education, 146–172. Moscow: Center for Sociological Research.

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Review of the article The social composition of post-war students: the experience of analyzing data from the materials of the personal files of the Pskov Pedagogical Institute archive The reviewed article is devoted to the analysis of the social composition of students on the example of the Pskov State Pedagogical Institute in the period 1945-1953, in the post-war years, when the state's need for qualified personnel was extremely great, and the task of solving the problem of shortage of applicants was acute, especially in regional universities and the shortage of teaching staff, including teachers. As part of the case study of the social composition of post-war students, the author refers to the experience of a regional university. A prosopographic approach was chosen as the methodology, which allows creating a collective portrait of future teachers, whose social orientation and life plans are to a certain extent determined by the social status and level of education of their parents. The research is conducted on the source database of documents from 282 personal files of students of two faculties of the PSPI – historical and literary. These materials were entered into a database, the analysis of which allowed the author to identify certain patterns of formation of a new generation of Soviet intelligentsia, including through the fate of parents to show the influence of such global events in national history as mass political repression and the Great Patriotic War, the author's main attention is paid to such characteristics of students as social origin. The scientific novelty of this study lies in the fact that, unlike working exclusively with graphs of personal cards, narratives – autobiographies of students were studied, in which they indicated the professions and/or place of work of their parents and other social characteristics. It should be agreed with the author that in the Soviet reality, great attention was paid to social origin, so the students emphasized the "right". The source allows us to trace the social mobility of students' parents, as well as the high rates of urbanization characteristic of the first decades of Soviet power: "if the parents were peasants by origin, then their children were already born into a family of workers or employees and indicated the corresponding social origin." The politicization of the description of social origin is also evidenced by the indications in the students' autobiographies of the parents' membership in the CPSU (b), as well as the fact that none of the relatives were repressed and were not abroad. Nevertheless, there are also references to convicted parents, and many students mention that they were in the occupied territory during the war. Perhaps it was dangerous to withhold information about this because of the possible verification of information. As for the impact of the Great Patriotic War on the biographies of students, more than 85% of personal files contain information about the fate of students and/or their family members during the war – they write about fathers, brothers, and stepfathers who died in the war. The paper analyzes the dynamics of the ratio of social groups and shows a tendency towards an increase in the proportion of students from employee families. It is hypothesized that the low proportion of students from working-class and peasant families is partly explained by the fact that education at universities in 1940-1956 was paid, and this could influence the decision to enroll in higher education. An interesting part of the study is the comparison of the social characteristics of the Pskov and Moscow post-war students with the involvement of the results of E.O. Yagodkina's research on the collective portrait of students of the Moscow State University Faculty of History for 1945-1953, also based on personal files. Taking into account the different status of both cities, an interpretation of the similarities and differences between the results of both studies is given. In general, the conclusions obtained by the author are justified, based on a good understanding of the social history of the first decades of Soviet power and the specifics of the Pskov region. The article is written in a good academic style and will arouse the interest of the readers of the magazine. Obviously, the work has the prospect of continuation. I would like to wish the author to expand the historiographical base, to make better use of the capabilities of database technology, including statistical and visual analysis tools. The article can be recommended for publication.