“Would You Be So Kind Not to Withhold My Application”. The 1920-S Rabfak Students' Problems Reflected in Their Appeals to the Authorities

Abstract

Workers’ faculties (rabfak) began their work to help the workers and the poorest countrymen in gaining necessary knowledge for admission to higher educational institutions. The article examines the moment of the rabfak establishment from the point of view of students who wrote to the authorities. The analysis of letters helps us trace milestones in students’ lives, such as entering workers’ faculties, studies, graduation, along with the related problems. Most of the letters to the authorities dealt with the students’ personal problems and their involvement into getting proper education, without considering systemic issues, such as inefficient learning in some institutions or the lack of students with a certain specialization. Students’ letters also help us look more closely at the problems of rabfak students, especially since those letters are rarely allocated into individual cases; much more often they are mixed with the appeals of students and/or other citizens to certain authorities. Partially, the topics contained in the letters were the subject of a wide public discussion of the 1920s (overload of educational and social work, difficult living conditions, the need to work additionally, etc.); others concerned the individual situation of a particular student: transfer to another university for family reasons, disappointment in the profession, etc. The letters give an idea not only about the peculiarities of studying at the workers’ faculty, but also about the student life of that time, relations between students, and the perception of the higher education system by young people as well