Cultural-Educational Training

in the USSR, the system of training specialists with higher and intermediate qualifications for cultural-educational institutions, club personnel, including organizers of club work and leaders of amateur art groups, and librarians and bibliographers.

The training of personnel for cultural-educational work began in the first years of Soviet rule on the initiative of V. I. Lenin and N. K. Krupskaia in connection with the cultural revolution being carried out in the country at the time. In 1918 the Institute of Extrascholastic Education was established in Petrograd to train personnel for work in culture and education; it was reorganized as the Communist Political Education Institute in 1925 and is now called the N. K. Krupskaia Leningrad Institute of Culture. In 1924 the Academy of Communist Education in Moscow established a department of culture and education. The political education institutes and Soviet party schools organized throughout the country in the 1920’s and 1930’s had departments for training cultural-educational personnel, and pedagogical technicums had similar departments. From 1937 political education technicums were established on the basis of the Soviet party schools. In 1938 these technicums were reorganized into three-year political education schools, which admitted those with seven years of education.

The present system of training cultural-educational personnel arose in the late 1940’s and early 1950’s. Library institutes and technicums established departments of cultural-educational work, and in 1959 the departments at the Leningrad, Moscow, and Kharkov library institutes introduced specialization in the arts. In 1964 the library institutes were reorganized as institutes of culture, and cultural-educational schools became the basic type of secondary school for training personnel for work in culture and education. Such training was also made available at a number of library technicums, schools of music education, and pedagogical schools; at several art institutes, conservatories, and theatrical and pedagogical higher educational institutions; and at higher trade union schools in Moscow and Leningrad. In 1972–73, 73,400 persons were specializing in cultural-educational work at higher and secondary specialized schools, including 18,800 students at institutions of higher learning. In that year 24,500 students enrolled in the first-year course (4,900 at higher schools) and 15,700 specialists (2,700 from higher schools) were graduated. Specialists are trained at 11 institutes of culture, 14 departments at other institutions of higher learning, and 129 secondary specialized schools.

The present system of training cultural-educational personnel provides general and specialized training of future specialists. The specialized subjects include the history and theory of culture, the history of cultural-educational work, the theory of club management, the techniques of organizing club work, and practical training in using equipment for club work and in visual agitation and propaganda. The curriculum also includes courses in the student’s chosen field of artistic specialization—chorus, orchestra, choreography, or theater. Scholars and teachers specializing in cultural-educational work are trained in the graduate schools of the Leningrad, Moscow, and Kharkov institutes of culture.

In the other socialist countries persons engaged in cultural-educational work are trained in specialized departments at universities, for instance, the universities of Prague, Bratislava, Warsaw, Budapest, and Sofia, as well as in departments of library schools.

In the capitalist countries cultural-educational training does not exist as a separate branch of education.