Mongolian-Tuvan sector at the Communist University of the Toilers of the East, 1920s-1930s
The article examines how citizens of Tuva and Mongolia studied at the Communist University of the Toilers of the East (Kommunisticheskii Universitet Trudyashchikhsia Vostoka, KUTV, Moscow, USSR) in the 1920s and 1930s. To cover their tuition, a specialized Mongolian-Tuvan sector has been set up at the University. Mongolian students first joined the University in 1922, while their Tuvan counterparts first arrived three years later, in 1925. At first, the Mongolian students were much more numerous, but by 1930 both communities have got more equal in size, with about 200 Tuvans and 250 Mongolians. Student selection was a more or less persistent and goal-directed process, with the majority of students lacking in literacy but members of the Revolutionary Youth Union (Revsomol) or the People’s Party. The intelligentsia-to-be was supposed to appropriate the ideals and values of socialism and spread them among the people in their countries, thus becoming part of their political elites. Setting up the Momgolian-Tuvan sector was no easy task. Among the known difficulties to overcome were the discrepancies in the levels of education of the students, the absense of learning materials in both languages and the poor command of Russian. Learning plans and syllabi were built to cover 3 or 4 years of tuition - more than in any other “foreign sector” of the KUTV. Teaching days were full of tension for every student, most of whom suffered from learning fatigue and sharp drops in concentration at the end of the term. Many failed to graduate. On the whole, the sector occupied a special place within the University. The Mongolian and Tuvan students had no need to study under strict secrecy rules. On returning to their home countries after graduation, they could immediately help in state and party building. As a result, when the KUTV split in 1936, the sector remained part of the University where Tuvans and Mongolians studied together with their Soviet counterparts. When the University finally folded in 1938, the sector was subsumed by the Narimanov Institute of Oriental Studies.