TRAINING MARXIAN ECONOMISTS AT THE INSTITUTE OF RED PROFESSORS OF THE ALL-UNION COMMUNIST PARTY IN THE 1920s
The article discusses the process of Professorial staff training in the economic department of the Institute of Red Professors of the All-Union Communist Party in the 1920s. The Institute of Red Professors was created to prepare Marxian economists, the so-called Red Professors, in Soviet Russia. The Red Professors were expected to differ from pre-revolutionary Professorial staff in their knowledge of Marxian economy and their active participation in the political strategy of the country. Therefore, the Institute of Red Professors was not only a research center, but also a political (pro-Communist) one. The author focuses on the Professorial staff teaching in the department of Economics and students attending the Institute. She deals with the curriculum and teaching strategies, focuses on students’ academic and applied work, student-conducted research in the field of theoretical economics, their participation in the intra-party struggle, and methodological discussions on theoretical economy at the end of the 1920s. The article provides some biographical data on certain Professors and students, including I.A. Trakhtenberg, I.I. Rubin, P.I. Lyashchenko, S.A. Bessonov, A.S. Mendelssohn and others. The article maintains that the 1920s witnessed an increase in bigotry and intolerance towards members of other parties and people sharing different views, as well as an increase in overall supervision of scientific and scholarly research by official bodies.