Higher party school under the central committee of the communist party as a source of post–war party personnel (1946-1991)

Abstract

The purpose of the article is to analyze the development of the organizational foundations of the Higher Party School under the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, which became the source of post-war party personnel (1946 1991). The author introduces new archival materials from the Russian State Archive of Socio-Political History. The archival documents show the development of the Higher Party School under the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks), the Communist Party of the Soviet Union after 1952, and the higher party schools in the USSR in the post-war period. This system was the result of a long and chaotic formation in the early stages, when educational institutions for the propagandists and agitators training were created and disbanded, and then reappeared. In the late 1930s, the former communist universities were incorporated into the Higher Party School and then the School became a central place for the Soviet party personnel training, and started to supervise the schools of Marxism-Leninism. The analysis of the system development helps to identify the goals, methods and principles of personnel policy in the USSR, and shows the social technologies making from a party worker a representative of a responsible and prestigious profession. Historicism and comparative analysis are used to identify the main features of the higher party schools system in 1918-1921 like a combi nation of long–term forms of personnel training with thorough theoretical training and short term courses that gave students the opportunity to update their knowledge. The author examines the development of the higher party schools system after the Great Patriotic War. They were significantly updated after 1946 and then changed their structure over more than three decades to reflect changes in the Party's political course. the Higher Party School under the Central Committee of the Communist Party in Moscow ceased to exist in 1978, and was integrated into the Academy of Social Sciences under the Central Committee of the Communist Party.