THE PROFESSORIAL CORPS OF THE HIGHER SCHOOL IN THE CONTEXT OF SOVIET MODERNIZATION

In this article the problem of participation of representatives of higher school science in the designing of the new Soviet society and extent of their influence on the proceeding modernization processes is considered. The main tendencies of the formation of social roles of Soviet scholars and teachers, strategies of their relationship with the party and state system in the period of the end of the 1920s - the beginning of the 1950s are described. Mechanisms of forming social identity of the Soviet academic and pedagogical community are analyzed. On the basis of the brightest plots from the life of the Siberian academic and pedagogical community, the development of this social corporation as one of the leading factors of the Soviet modernization is reconstructed. The main feature of the development is that under the influence of the changing environment the academic and higher school elite gradually changes its values and purposes. Over time, it is more and more involved in the large-scale social and economic transformations initiated by the Soviet state. As a result, the overwhelming part of representatives of higher school science turns from the object of social changes into their subject. In other words, modernization processes became the leading social function of the Soviet academic and pedagogical community. Thus, the process of the Soviet modernization can be considered as interaction of two subjects, the state and the academic and pedagogical community, in parallel solving their own problems (on the one hand, retention of power; on the other, realization of the intellectual potential and satisfaction of personal career ambitions). In turn, high social functionality of a considerable part of the faculty allowed it to be incorporated, finally, in ranks of the new Soviet elite. The final formation of standards and values of this social group, with a conscious need to serve to the state as its basic element, was another result of the faculty' participation in the Soviet modernization, which testifies to the fundamental relationship between the imperial and the Soviet sociocultural traditions. All this can be treated as a certain social mobilization of the Soviet science and higher education which, in turn, became the most important element of premilitary consolidation of the Soviet society in general. The highest point of relationship between the Soviet power and the intellectuals are the years of the war which became not only the hardest durability test for the Soviet state system, but also a check for the new Soviet science (as a social and state institution) on its ability to the fast adaptation to extreme conditions which allowed the academic and pedagogical community to fully show its social and state functionality.