Before becoming a government-funded USSR-wide system for skilled school graduates, professional technical schools were once vocational schools.
In 1940, they were reorganized to "vocational schools" (Russian:" "  "Remeslennoye uchilishche"), and in 1959 to PTUs. PTUs, increasingly standardized through the 1960s, formed a government-funded USSR-wide system for school graduates who didn't intend to receive a university degree. 
