Criticism of Student Behavior

L. Piradov, Constant Concern Must Be Shown for the Upbringing of Youth. On Grave Shortcomings in Party Political Work at I. V. Stalin State University In Tbilisi. March 24, 1956

Original Source: Zarya vostoka, 24 March 1956, p. 3.

Anyone who has visited the State University in Tbilisi in recent days has been struck by an order of the rector, handwritten on a large sheet of paper, that is posted at the entrance to the vestibule. The order concerns the expulsion of Zinaida Shiukashvili and Ketevana Arabidze, fifth-year chemistry students, from the university.

We did not succeed in seeing these students. It is said that they are making the rounds of the authorities trying to be reinstated. They may succeed, but anyone who is aware of the reasons for the girls' expulsion is forced to the conclusion that their conduct was unworthy of students.

How could it happen that two members of the Young Communist League, students who have studied in a higher educational institution for more than four years, could have violated public order in the crudest way and manifested a lack of discipline?

Not only the administration and the Party committee of the university but also the Young Communists, professors and the teachers have had to ponder these questions. And only one conclusion suggests itself to each one: it is the result of weak ideological and upbringing work, which in the course of many years has gradually lost its purposeful character and has finally ceased to be militant and resolute.

The officials of the university have had sufficient indications of the unsatisfactory state of upbringing work recently. But the fact is that at times these facts were winked at, instead of being made matters of principle and being given a political emphasis, and serious conclusions were not drawn from them.

The Tbilisi State University is one of the republic's outstanding higher educational institutions; it trains highly qualified specialists, who form cadres of the young Soviet intelligentsia. About 5000 students study here. There are 630 Communists and 4469 Young Communists in the university.' It would appear that the influence of Party and Komsomol organizations should be exceptionally great. In actual fact, this is not so ...

In none of the plans and minutes of meetings, gatherings and conferences is the necessary organizational work with people felt; there is no deep interest in serious upbringing work among the youth. A great many lectures on various "lines"-the Party line, the Komsomol, the student scientific society-are delivered at the university. But it is rarely possible to hear an actual down-to-earth, sincere talk on the moral make-up of the young Soviet person, the make-up of the Soviet student. Yet the necessity for serious talk about the principles of communist morality has been obvious for a long time.

It is frequently said at gatherings and meetings that students display a lack of discipline and often do not attend lectures. I. Gverdtsiteli, prorector for studies, will even cite exact figures for you: from Sept. I through Dec. 31 (there are over-all figures only for the first term), 94,083 "man-hours" were missed for unimportant reasons, including 2682 man-hours in Marxism-Leninism, 2231 man-hours in dialectical materialism and 1665 man-hours in political economy.

Sometimes lectures are cut not by individual students but by whole groups, who go off during lecture hours for a "collective viewing" of a new film while the teacher holds the lecture in an almost empty auditorium.

Groups from the West European Languages and Literature Department display special "organizing ability" in this respect. Unfortunately, ..they found followers in the Physics Department: the 42nd group of the second year, led by its group organizer, L. Kobaidze, collectively cut lectures and acted at the beck and call of the undisciplined students. A. Mkheidze and M. Dzimistarishvili, Komsomol members and students in the History Department, attended lectures so seldom that comrades in the group did not even know their faces.

About half the total number of students cut seminars on dialectical materialism. It sometimes happens that only one of two students from the entire group are present, and once the entire fifth group of the fourth year of the Philology Department failed to show up for the seminar.

Absences from work increased considerably in the second term.

The liberalism of the rectorate is known in the university: students are expelled for lack of discipline, for absence from lectures, for academic inefficiency, but they are reinstated later. That is why one sometimes hears it said here, "Why worry? After all, you'll be reinstated." ...

Sometimes entire groups do not take examinations, and the department heads give in to the undisciplined students and postpone the examination times. Moreover, the students master subjects by last-minute cramming, and do not acquire profound and durable knowledge. It is clear that this practice not only lowers the quality of study but also undermines the bases of discipline.

There are serious shortcomings in the teaching of social sciences at the university, though the percentage of failure in such subjects as the bases of Marxism-Leninism, political economy and dialectical materialism is quite low.

It was noted at the 20th Party Congress that divorce of theory from the practice of communist construction and dogmatism and scholasticism are still widespread in social science teaching, and have an adverse effect on the state of scientific and educational work, on the ideological upbringing of students.

This serious shortcoming applies fully to the university of Tbilisi ...

A communist attitude toward labor is one of the basic moral qualities of Soviet man. The labor of the student is study. This means that students who do not study or who study poorly display their unwillingness to work ...

Suffice it to say that of the 953 graduates of the university in 1955, the appearance of only 260 at their appointed jobs could be confirmed. (Incidentally, the personnel department is not absolutely certain of this figure.) And what are the remaining 693 young specialists doing?

Young Communists M. Asatiani, E. Mikava, A. Khakhutashvili, V. Toria and N. Davlianidze refused to go to the districts to which they had been assigned. Young Communists Ketevana Korsava and Yeremia Tsertsvadze did not want to go to the places to which they had been appointed. However, what can one expect of Komsomol members if a Party member and honor student, Tsiala Maisuradze, refused an appointment that she received for pedagogical work in Akhaltsikhe District? ...

The university Party committee also disregards instances of amoral conduct on the part of individual students, the violation of norms of social behavior and cases of hoodlumism. How is it possible to reconcile oneself to the fact that in 1955 there were 176 recorded instances of breaking the rules of the socialist communal life by students of the university and that several of these students were convicted, or that in two and a half months of this year 41 students were arrested by the militia? ...

Unfortunately, the majority of professors and teachers at the university see their sole obligation to be conducting academic work, and decline all responsibility for the upbringing of youth, for forming their moral outlook. Professors and teachers are not interested in the lives of the youth, their needs and aspirations; they do not visit student hostels; they do not attend Komsomol and student meetings. But after all, our professors should not only transmit their knowledge to the youth but should also exert an influence on them by their moral authority, should bring up the youth.

Many professors and teachers say they have no time to occupy themselves with the upbringing of youth. And, in truth, how can they find time to help form the moral outlook of students if they are working in several places at once and do not even have time to deliver their lectures properly? The unfortunate practice of holding more than one job is widespread in the university. A hundred thirty people are holding down more than one job ...

However, it must be noted that it is still necessary to carry on laborious upbringing work even among those people at the university who are themselves called on to bring up the youth.

Don't these facts testify to the neglect of ideological work at the university?

The work plan of the scientific circle of the History Department is characterized by a concentration on the distant past, an admiration of antiquity, a working out principally of questions of Georgia's ancient history. In it one can, for example, meet such themes as "The Ritual Representation of the Horse in Georgian Art of the Ancient Period, 'I "The Megrelian House," "The Mill in Megrelia," "The Wooden Plow in Megrelia," "The Millet Grinder in Megrelia" and many other such "scholarly" questions.

Little attention is devoted in the university to bringing up the youth in the spirit of Soviet patriotism and proletarian internationalism, to which racist and national exclusiveness, nationalism and chauvinism and disrespect for other peoples and nations are alien.

The Party committee of the university should have paid more attention to training young people in the spirit of friendship of peoples, in the spirit of love of the working people of all nationalities, and should have resolutely cut short the slightest manifestations of elements of nationalism.

Serious shortcomings in the political and ideological training of the university's students have resulted from the neglect of ideological work by this important Party organization, from the absence of criticism and self-criticism, which was heard only faintly even in the Party committee's report and the speeches of the participants in the discussion at the Party conference held at the university at the end of 1955.

By decision of the Tbilisi City Party Committee, S. Dzhorbenadze, secretary of the university Party committee, was reprimanded for the failure of Party-political work and was removed from his post.

But all members of the university Party committee, and also of the Ordzhonikidze District and the Tbilisi City Party Committees, bear responsibility for the failure of Party-political work. The Tbilisi City Party Committee and the Georgia Komsomol Central Committee, which failed to detect, hidden behind the university's ostentatious stream of "measures," shortcomings in the ideological training of youth, should have devoted more and deeper attention to the students' upbringing.

It is, naturally, impossible to rest content with the decision of the city Party committee. Party and Komsomol agencies, all the university's Communists and Young Communists, should examine the situation in this, the republic's outstanding educational institution, and should conduct a decisive struggle to eliminate the consequences of neglect in Party-political work. This struggle must include long and serious work in strengthening the Party in mobilizing all Communists and Young Communists for a fundamental Improvement in the quality of training young specialists, for a decisive raising of the level of educational and ideological work, directed toward the daily upbringing of youth in the communist spirit.

Source: Current Soviet Policies (New York: F. A. Praeger, 1957), Vol. II, pp. 206-208.