On the basis of archival materials and periodicals the article traces the course of the purge of students at Tomsk State University during the university proletarization campaign of the late 1920s. By that time the university had only two faculties: Mathematics and Physics and Medical. The number of students declined sharply. If in 1920 Tomsk State University had 4910 students, in 1929 it had only 1409. This was due to both the outflow of students who found themselves in Tomsk during the Civil War, the closure of a number of faculties, the changed conditions of admission to universities, as well as purging and checks of students by academic and class principles. A way to university proletarization, in addition to the admission of graduates of worker faculties, was enrollment of students sent by the Party, Komsomol and trade union organizations until the 1925/26 academic year. It is noted that at this time there was no radical change in the social composition of TSU students, despite the measures taken. Senior students were mostly (46 %) children of civil employees and the intelligentsia. The qualitative composition of the worker-peasant stratum was not homogeneous. The Party and government bodies urged to radically change the attitude to the admission of students, emphasizing the "sequential class selection of new entrants, on the one hand, and the fight against the attrition of proletarian and peasant entrants, especially farm laborers and the poor, on the other". A General Directorate of Vocational Education Decree (1929) proposed to expel "elements clearly corrupting these institutions when they are found in the daily work of student organizations, boards of higher education institutions and of worker faculties and colleges". However, it was recommended to be particularly cautious in deciding to expel final year students. The article shows how this procedure was implemented by describing the fate of a number of university students who were purged in late 1928 and in 1929. The conclusion is that the purge of the late 1920s. was the last in a series of this kind of measures taken during the proletarization of higher education. It was no longer as broad as the purges in 1922, 1924, 1925. A thorough check of all the circumstances of a particular student preceded the decision to expel. The purged had an opportunity to appeal the decision of the University Board at higher bodies of public education or at persons authorized by the People's Commissariat of Education at universities. At the same time a requirement appeared to identify more closely the social and economic status of persons admitted to universities.
