Admission to Higher Institutions of Learning. August 2, 1918
As part of the effort to change the character of higher education, and especially to get more students of a proletarian background enrolled, the government removed all educational and other requirements for admission to universities. This did not have the desired result, although it did broaden the social base of students and contributed to the overall effort to change the universities where the professorate generally opposed the new regime, even refusing to deal with its representatives in some instances. The government also increased the number of universities and undertook an attack on the tenure of the professors.
Original Source: Sobranie uzakonenii i rasporiazhenii raboche-krestian’skogo pravitel’stva, 1918, No. 57, p. 689.
1. Any person, regardless of citizenship or sex, who is sixteen years of age may be admitted to any of the higher institutions of learning without presenting a diploma or certificate of graduation from a secondary or any other school.
2. To require that the candidate present any credentials other than an identification card is forbidden.
3. All higher institutions of learning in the Republic, on the basis of the resolution “on the introduction of obligatory coeducation7 in all educational institutions, are accessible to all, regardless of sex, in conformity with the degree on coeducation. Violators of this provision are subject to criminal prosecution by the Revolutionary Tribunal.
4. Admissions of first-year students (for 1918-1919) already made on the basis of either school certificates or competitive examinations are hereby declared void. New entrance conditions, conforming to the demands of the general statutes on higher institutions of learning which are now under consideration, will be published not later than September 1 of this year.
5. Tuition fees in higher educational institutions of the RSFSR are henceforth abolished. Tuition fees already paid for the first half of the academic year 1918-1919 shall be refunded accordingly.
Source: James Bunyan, ed., Intervention, Civil War, and Communism in Russia, April-December 1918 (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1936), pp. 534-535.