Education for Decline: Soviet Vocational and Technical Schooling from Khrushchev to Gorbachev

Rolf Hellebust is a professor of Russian language and literature at the
University of Calgary.

The narrow focus of this short book (as well as its meticulous structure
and ample reference matter) betrays its Ph.D.-thesis origins. However,
Soltys clearly succeeds in establishing the significance of his topic
for those interested in understanding the causes of the failure of the
Soviet system and, more specifically, the fate of its final incarnation
under Gorbachev. The author’s observations regarding the development
of educational policy over the last decade of the Soviet Union also have
pertinence for the study of current social changes in Russia and the
other Soviet successor states.

Secondary vocational and technical education in the Soviet Union
consisted of two major streams. The first was that of the
vocational–technical school (PTU), which trained students for
lower-skilled mass trades such as those involving the resource and
commodity industries. The second was that of the secondary specialized
instructional institution (SSUZ), or technicum, which offered
preparation for the more complex trades. Soltys’s main argument is
that by not shifting sufficient emphasis to the latter type of
schooling, Soviet educational policy failed to address the crucial need
for an evolution away from a resource- and commodities-based economy, to
one oriented more toward services and knowledge. In this area,
Gorbachev’s “perestroika” proved itself much more conservative
than many Western observers have been led to believe. As the author
concludes, in 1991, technical and vocational schools were still
fundamentally operating on principles inherited from Khrushchev’s
time.