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of scholarship, but in practice it aimed to limit the influence of professors who were anti-Bolshevik and non-Marxist (68). Apparently, in defending “Enlightenment,” “autonomy,” and “progressive education,” the Commissariat had become adept at using euphemisms to conceal its growing domination of intellectual life.

      In actuality, the regime viewed academic freedom as a “bourgeois prejudice” (Sorokin [1924] 1950, 246–47). Private publishing houses were closing, hurt primarily by paper shortages. Initially, Petrograd seemed to escape the more severe censorship measures being implemented in Moscow. Despite its intention to preserve the utility of the “old guard,” while promoting the values of the new, the regime began to destroy a whole generation of intellectuals.

      With the coming of the New Economic Policy (NEP) in 1921, the state simultaneously acted to check any revival of “bourgeois” values. The sovietization of Russian intellectual life meant greater administrative control over the universities through Narkompros, the trade unions, and the Communist Party organs (McClelland 1989, 261). During the early 1920s, however, academic institutions “underwent a period of wild experimentation and extreme anarchy.” Many of the older professors could not adapt to progressive methods; many of the newer professors lacked academic expertise. Indeed, the effects were disastrous for both instructors and pupils.²¹

      In a far-reaching reorganization of university structure, Narkompros united the existing schools of history, philology, and law under a social science college, or fakul’tet obshchestvennykh nauk, within each university (Fitzpatrick 1979, 68). The new social science program aimed to introduce concepts of Marxist methodology and scientific socialism. Though the non-Marxist professors resented these innovations, they were not required to demonstrate proficiency in Marxist studies. In fact, many of them continued to teach courses that had a subtle anti-Soviet bias. A continued shortage of Marxist teachers led the Central Committee to abolish many of the social science colleges that had been established, though Petrograd University was unaffected by this policy change (69–71).

      The Narkompros policy innovations fundamentally altered the organization of the university. The original university structure contained three major colleges (Kline, 20 October 1992C):

      1. The istoriko-filologicheskii fakul’tet, or College of History and Philology, broadly defined to include philosophy.

      2. The fiziko-matematicheskii fakul’tet, or College of Mathematics and Physics, which included geology, chemistry, and other hard sciences.

      3. The iuridicheskii fakul’tet, or law school.

      The new university structure placed the College of History and Philology under the social science banner. A leftist academician, N. Ya. Marr, brought to the newly organized social science college a greater emphasis on ethnology and linguistics studies. Archaeology and anthropology were also included. The law school was officially dissolved since it lacked Marxist professors. It continued to function unofficially, under the title of “former law department,” until its reestablishment in the autumn of 1926. Later, the economics department was absorbed by the Leningrad Polytechnical Institute, and the social-pedagogical department was made part of the Herzen Pedagogical Institute (Fitzpatrick 1979, 72–73).

      Within the social science colleges, the regime did not require the teaching of atheism, but instruction did have to be nonreligious. Marxist studies and politically correct textbooks were hastily introduced in the early 1920s. There was an emphasis within these Marxist courses on political economy and historical materialism. Students in the engineering schools and universities were required to spend four hours per week on these subjects.²² Petrograd University did not establish an official course on Party history and Leninism until the mid-1920s, when it was renamed Leningrad University.

      There were other innovations. Lunacharsky required that students of proletarian descent graduate without examination. Special classes were organized for their instruction, but many of these pupils were ridiculed by established academics as “zero students” (Sorokin [1924] 1950, 226–27). The Soviets also lifted admission restrictions on women and Jews as early as 1918, and abolished tuition, all in an effort to democratize the student body.²³ There was less emphasis on scheduled classes, periodic examinations, homework, and discipline. Without preparation or proper orientation to new pedagogical techniques, teachers were encouraged to adopt the “laboratory” and “project” methods (Shteppa 1962, 29). The chaotic results were predictable. In any event, most changes in academic policy were somewhat beside the point; the cataclysmic conditions throughout Petrograd had dramatically affected the quality of university life. As James McClelland (1989) writes:

      The period from the fall of 1918 to the spring of 1921 was one of terrible material deprivation in central Russia and chaos, bloodshed, and fighting on the periphery. Universities and institutes remained open, but despite an initial flood on students taking advantage of the new open admissions policy, the number of those actively attending lectures soon dwindled to an abnormally low level. Some professors remained at their posts throughout the period, while many others fled, either in search of warmth and food or out of political sympathy for the Whites. (258)

      There was one final innovation introduced into Petrograd University. Effective at the beginning of the academic year 1920–21, the length of a university education was reduced from five years to three.

      As a young woman of sixteen, Alissa Rosenbaum took advantage of the new educational reforms. She did not have to face the institutional bias against women and Jews. She entered the university on 2 October 1921, in the three-year course of the obshchestvenno-pedagogicheskoe otdelenie, the Department of Social Pedagogy, which contained the historical and philosophical disciplines and was designed presumably to prepare students for careers as teachers of the social sciences.²⁴

      Nearly three years later, in May 1924, and two months prior to her graduation, the student purges began. The authorities began ruthlessly to expel and exile those students who could not prove their proletarian class background. A regime that had ostensibly dedicated itself to the democratization of education was now creating new distinctions and privileges. But the purge commission decided to pass over those students who were on the verge of graduating. Had the traditional five-year program still been in effect, Alissa would not have been a graduating senior, and as the daughter of a “petit-bourgeois” pharmacist, she would have been expelled, or worse. She later remarked that it was “sheer accident that I escaped that purge.”²⁵

      MAJORING IN HISTORY

      Alissa was disgusted by the “mystical chaos” of Russian academic philosophy. She was uninterested in the study of Russian literature. She decided to major in history.²⁶ She later wrote that her systematic study of history in college was crucial “in order to have a factual knowledge of men’s past.” She minored in philosophy, “in order to achieve an objective definition of my values.” Ultimately, Alissa discovered that she could learn history, but that philosophy “had to be done by me.”²⁷

      University life in those years was primitive. The school lacked heat and light. Reports of death by starvation, disease, and suicide proliferated. Students and professors met for lectures and discussions in cold classrooms, dormitories, and auditoriums illuminated by flickering candles (McClelland 1989, 260–61). For a period, some lectures were scheduled in the evening because professors were engaged in compulsory manual labor during the day, and students were struggling to earn a living (Sorokin [1924] 1950, 223).

      Alissa’s university had become an intellectual battleground between the “old guard” and their Soviet antagonists. The social science college was, by far, the most conflict-ridden of the newly established schools. Older professors were the targets of growing academic repression (Fitzpatrick 1979, 68). The Party had allowed many of these professors to continue with their “bourgeois-objectivist” scholarship, but this period of coexistence between these groups ended once and for all in 1928–29, when many established scholars were purged from the Academy of Science for attempting to block the election of communist scholars. Many historians were arrested, exiled, or executed.²⁸

      In the early 1920s, the study of history was slowly supplemented by courses designed to

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