Education for Social Transformation: Soviet University Education Aid in the Cold War Capitalist World-System

Abstract

International education is seen as an effective form of soft power. This article reviews one of history’s largest and most ambitious attempts to achieve global influence through university education, and to reshape the world—the Soviet university aid program, 1956–91. Drawing on existing research and Soviet archival materials, we lay out and contextualize characteristic features of the Soviet education aid program. Specifically, we identify its focus on students from “developing” and newly independent countries, and its ambition to form graduates who would return home to become national leaders sympathetic to Soviet socialism. We conclude by approaching the program from a world-systems perspective. Here, we highlight the intended catch-up style modernization and national economic development for countries through their participation in the Soviet university aid program as well as the intended development of the human capital of participant countries. The complex impacts on participants throughout the world and their subsequent worldview are the subject of ongoing research by the authors.

Notes

¹Our focus here is on university education aid provided in the Soviet Union, with international students travelling to and living in the USSR to undertake their university studies. This program, however, was complemented by extensive bilateral agreements in which the Soviet Union provided physical and human resources for the establishment of educational institutions within partner countries (see, for example, Galagan, 1988). It is unclear whether Tsvetkova’s (2008; p. 208) figure of over 500,000 foreign students includes those educated at home with Soviet assistance or aid. Further archival work by the authors will clarify this.

²The Peoples’ Friendship University was planned to only enroll foreign students, but policy was quickly amended to include a proportion of places being made available for Soviet students. This change occurred both as a response to some foreign criticism of the University as a second-class institution built only for foreign students, isolated from their Soviet counterparts (Krasovitskaia, 2013, p.161), and in response to large numbers of Soviet citizens submitting applications to enroll in the University, having not found a place within regular Soviet Universities (Krasovitskaia, 2013, p. 160).

³In addition to Rosen, see for example the Soviet publications about the University, with extensive testimonials from international students and graduates (e.g., Fradkin, 1973; NA, 1966).

⁴The authors are undertaking further archival research to fully determine the total number of Soviet educational aid recipients from developing countries from 1956 until the collapse of the Soviet Union.

⁵The formal “non-aligned movement” formed in Belgrade in 1961, including Indonesia, India, Egypt, Yugoslavia, Ghana, and Burma. It included states that were allies of super powers, for example Cuba was admitted in 1961 but by the early 1970s was very closely aligned to Soviet foreign policy, having for example publicly supported the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968.

⁶See for example Leddy’s (2013) account of El Salvador.

⁷In the case of Australia, Auletta (2000) also notes the politics of accusations of racism from its regional neighbors for Australia’s White Australia (immigration) Policy, and the hope that educational aid to countries discriminated against by the White Australia Policy might counter “adverse reactions by the international community” (p. 50).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Tom G. Griffiths

Tom G. Griffiths is a senior lecturer in comparative and international education at the University of Newcastle, Australia. His recent books include a 2013 co-authored volume, Mass Education, Global Capital, and the World: The Theoretical Lenses of István Mészáros and Immanuel Wallerstein, and co-edited Logics of Socialist Education: Engaging with Crisis, Insecurity and Uncertainty. Tom’s research is driven by an interest in education’s potential contribution to the creation of a more democratic, equal, peaceful, and just world-system.

Euridice Charon Cardona

Euridice Charon Cardona is a senior research associate in the School of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Newcastle, Australia. Her historical and anthropological research includes the co-authored 2012 volume, Soviet Women on the Frontline in the Second World War, and associated studies of life under historical socialism in the Soviet Union and Cuba.