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Soviet students‐some
sociological perspectives
a
Mervyn Matthews
a
University of Surrey
Published online: 06 Nov 2007.
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SOVIET S T U D E N T S -
SOME SOCIOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES
By MERVYN MATTHEWS
IN the course of the last decade students of many lands have attracted
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Social Backgrounds
By international standards young people in the Soviet Union have a
good chance of getting to college. Of the major nations, the USSR holds
second place in the provision of full- and part-time higher education,
with a ratio of 186 students per 10,000 of the population. The USA has
87
1
by this count 269, and the United Kingdom 83- As in so many other
countries, however, the demand for places exceeds supply. In the USSR
there are probably on average three or four applications for each place.
This means that higher education is still a relatively scarce commodity,
and raises the familiar problems of selection.2
The drive to recruit specialists on a massive scale got under way in
the USSR at the beginning of the thirties. The official stance was always
that there could be no inborn differences of educability between social
groups. The children of the former exploiting classes were discriminated
against until the mid-thirties, but not on grounds of educability. Subse-
quently, higher educational institutions (VUZy) were in theory open to
all, regardless of social background. The presumption was that in the
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event of there being more applications than places the most able young
people would be accepted. The Soviet intelligentsia, being a 'people's'
intelligentsia, would be drawn from the main social groups—-workers,
peasants and intelligentsia—in proportion to their size. Equality of
opportunity for the sexes was also envisaged, as were a fair balance of
students of urban and rural origin and adequate representation for the •
nationalities.
In practice there is a close relationship between a Soviet citizen's
chances of getting into a VUZ and his social background, very much as
in other advanced societies. Children from richer, better educated, or
more secure families find the task easier than their less favoured con-
temporaries. The fact of this social discrepancy was completely taboo
under Stalin, but since Khrushchev's public condemnation in September
1958 of the inequality involved, it has received increasing attention from
Soviet scholars.3 These have not gone quite so far as to correlate
opportunities for higher education with social status, but they have
provided a lot of data which point to a significant relationship. Moreover,
we are now in possession of a few sets of figures for the social composition
of the Soviet student body. But before presenting them let us look at the
formal process of selection.
Would-be students have to complete ten years of general schooling,
i.e. middle school, with good marks, and then, in most cases, pass a
competitive entrance examination or 'concourse' for the institution of
their choice. (We say 'in most cases' because pupils who finish school
particularly well gain a gold or silver medal which may fully or partially
1
We have for convenience taken the figures from Narodnoe khozyaistvo SSSR v
1972 godu (M., 1973), p. 120. Other and perhaps better estimates are available, but the
validity of this kind of statistic is in any case questionable, as much depends on part-
time study, the proportion of part-time students, the incomparability of standards,
age2 groups, etc.
This proportion is arrived at by estimating the number of general school graduates
who3 would probably apply for a VUZ place and the number of acceptances as published.
The name of V. N. Shubkin is probably best known in this respect.
88 SOVIET STUDENTS:
exempt them from concourses.) A pupil with reasonable marks in his
school-leaving certificate may thus fail the VUZ entrance examination
if competition is great. There is no national clearing house for applica-
tions, and since every VUZ application has to be accompanied by the
candidate's personal documents only one application can be made at a
time. It has become usual, when the entrance examination results are
published at the end of August, for unsuccessful candidates to make
second or, exceptionally, third applications, to VUZy which are known
to have unfilled places. Obviously, these are less sought-after insti-
tutions—for the VUZy vary considerably in their attractiveness.
A great deal has been published on the selective role of the general
school in the sixties. A famous study conducted in Gorky showed a clear
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Social Group
Employees 25
Workers S
Peasants 0
Educational Level
Higher 36
Middle special 17-2
Middle general (10 classes) 12-9
4-7 classes n.a.
Up to 4 classes 2"5
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TABLE 2
SOCIAL GROUPS AND THE VUZ STUDENT BODY (%)
graduates is, in all probability, even less equitable than that of the
student body in its entirety. Some analyses of academic failure suggest
that the students from 'lower-class' families suffer most. Witness the
figures of another Gorky study (Table 3). This is by no means a simple
relationship, of course. Polish studies have suggested that working-class
or rural children who enter higher education adapt to student life much
more slowly, and on thewhole do less well. Someof themsucceed, perhaps
7
because their motivation is stronger than average. Yet the trend of
7
The Poles have advanced far beyond the Russians in investigations of this kind.
See M. Gulda, Proces przystosowania do roli studenta (na przykladzie WSP w Gdańsku
9
o SOVIET STUDENTS:
TABLE 3
DISTRIBUTION OF OUTSTANDING AND WEAK STUDENTS BY SOCIAL ORIGIN (%)
sometimes gives rise to complaint. 1.1. Belyaev noted with concern that
only 60% of the students in his sample took care to eat regularly.
No coherent sociological data are to hand on student reactions to
these difficulties. Most students no doubt regard them as normal and
believe that capitalist countries are similar or worse. A few figures are,
however, available on the response to hostel conditions. A sample of
525 hostel students drawn from all nine VUZy in Gorky (but apparently
conducted without preserving anonymity) revealed that 97% of them
were in general satisfied. Perhaps part of the explanation for this
extraordinarily high figure lies in the fact that most persons who
disliked communal living would have chosen a VUZ in their home
town, or found themselves a 'corner' in a private flat. The proportion of
hostel-dwellers who were satisfied with the conditions for study, how-
ever, averaged only 60%. This figure varied from 69% in the hostel of
the Construction Institute to 13% at the Conservatory.28 The fact that
hostel accommodation is offered virtually free of charge is in itself very
disarming.
mostly vague and inconclusive (like much other Soviet political data) but
worth perhaps quick consideration. Rubin and Kolesnikov claimed on
the basis of large samples that, while 90% of all students participated in
some socio-political activities during their years at the VUZ, the
proportion at any given moment was about half. These activities were
loosely defined as 'educative work, giving public lectures, running
circles and groups, membership of voluntary societies, work with
adolescents and active involvement in external VUZ assistance projects',
but the writers provided no definition of 'participation'. The figures for
510 students of Rostov University who participated 'continuously' are,
however, revealing:
Before entering VUZ—57*2% 3rd year of study—240%
1st year of study —39"4% 4 t n y e a r of study—12'6%
2nd year of study —33'°% 5th year of study— 2 8 %
These figures suggest that candidates for VUZ places were particularly
'active'—probably in order to increase their chances of admission.
British sixth-formers may be prompted to broaden their interests for
similar reasons. There was evidently an immediate fall in interest once
the VUZ threshold had been crossed, and a steady deterioration there-
after. In the final year of study hardly any students were heavily engaged
in Komsomol activities, preoccupied as they were with their diploma
dissertations and examinations.
The reasons which, according to the same authors, prompted 600
students of Rostov University to engage in 'social activities' were, in
descending order of rectitude:
J
1. Moral and ideological motives 5'4%
2. Desire to adapt to the collective 300%
3. To promote personal cultural development
and growth iIO%
4. Personality limitations, habit 8x>%
2
5. Obligations imposed 3'4%
6. Other motives 127%
SOCIOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES 103
This breakdown is obviously intended to hide as much as it reveals, but
it admits a surprisingly low level of 'orthodox' motivation and reflects
some compulsion (point 5). No figures were provided to show how the
students rated 'social activities' as opposed to other ways of spending
their time, though data were apparently collected on this. Many other
surveys, however, have shown that these Komsomol-sponsored
activities have a low popularity rating.
According to N. M. Morozov's sample of 1,500 fourth- and fifth-year
students at an unnamed technological institute in the Moscow oblast,
social activities were by far the least popular choice for spending extra
free time (see Table 6).
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TABLE 6
INVOLVEMENT IN 'SOCIAL ACTIVITIES' (%) AND PARTY-KOMSOMOL MEMBERSHIP
excluded. This was not done because, he believed, the KGB wished
to avoid an exclusion scandal at that time. However, in May of his final
year the KGB called Dubrov to Lefortovo prison for questioning. At
the institute his dissertation consultant began to raise difficulties about
his work, though in Dubrov's view this was quite satisfactory. It became
obvious that the consultant had been told not to approve his technical
drawings in order to impede his graduation. Dubrov managed to finish
them alone, but to no avail. Three days before he was due to present
his work he was expelled from the institute, which led to a new series of
difficulties.
This case illustrates the ways in which administrative and political
controls over dissident students are interlinked, and how they function.
The KGB (helped by informers, the Komsomol and the partkom) can
evidently distort the normal function of academic administration to the
extent of reducing a student's marks, depriving him of proper tuition
and even causing his expulsion. If the Soviet student body is passive in
political matters, as the above-mentioned surveys suggest, this is an
obvious explanation. Officially approved activities are uninteresting,
but the student is afraid of indulging in others. The other reasons
plausibly suggested for political indifference are the inscrutability of
Soviet politics, ignorance of the freedom enjoyed by students in the
West, and the fact that most Soviet students think themselves lucky to
have a 'free' education anyway. Dubrov thought that a third of the
students knew about oppositionist tendencies in the USSR, but only
1-2% were involved in them. Some observers might consider this to be
too low an estimate, but there seems to be no way of knowing.
TABLE 7
PLACEMENT DESIRES OF FIRST-YEAR STUDENTS COMPARED WITH PLACEMENT
OF GRADUATES IN SAME YEAR (GORKY UNIVERSITY, 1968, %)
University of Surrey
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