Higher Party School Under the Central Committee of the Communist Party

the highest Party-political educational institution in the USSR; located in Moscow. The forerunners of this school were the la. M. Sverdlov Communist University, the courses for agitators and instructors set up in June 1918 and affiliated with the All-Russian Central Executive Committee, and the la. M. Sverdlov Higher School of Propagandists. In its present form the school has been in existence since 1939. The Higher Party School (VPSh) provides ideological and theoretical training and retraining of Party and Soviet state personnel; its division of press, radio, and television provides instruction to officials of the mass information media.

The school has the following departments: the history of the CPSU; Marxist-Leninist philosophy; scientific communism; political economy; party development; the contemporary international communist, workers’, and national-liberation movement; the Soviet economy; the economics of agriculture; state law and the development of Soviet institutions; journalism and literature; the Russian language; and foreign languages. Along with educational and methodological work, these departments conduct scholarly research, prepare monographs, and work out programs, textbooks, and studies and methods aids. The departments of the Higher Party School (not counting the language departments) have a total staff of 120 instructors, including 21 doctors of science and professors and 99 candidates of science and assistant professors. The VPSh accepts dissertations for defense for the scholarly degrees of candidate and doctor of science. The VPSh admits Party members to higher education if they are not older than 40 and have at least five years of Party service. The admission of students is conducted by the Central Committee of the CPSU upon the recommendation of the central committees of the Communist parties of the Union republics or krai or oblast committees of the party. The term of study is two years. Within the VPSh there are permanent courses for the retraining of party and Soviet leaders. The VPSh helps the countries of socialism in the training of personnel for party and state work. The VPSh has graduated about 10,000 party and state officials and given retraining to more than 14,500 people. In 1970 it had 720 students.