Institute of the Red Professors IKP

a specialized higher educational institute that trained teachers for higher educational institutions in social science as well as specialists for scientific research institutions and central party and state organs.

The institute was organized in Moscow, in accordance with a decree of the Council of People’s Commissars of the RSFSR, dated Feb. 11, 1921, and signed by V. I. Lenin. Under the auspices of the People’s Commissariat for Education, it was directed by the Agitation and Propaganda Department of the Party Central Committee. The rector of the IKP from 1921 through 1932 was M. N. Pokrovskii. Originally a single unified institute, the IKP had three divisions within a year: economics, history, and philosophy. A training division was organized in 1924, and by 1928 there were divisions of party history, law, natural sciences, and literature. In 1930 the IKP was divided into independent institutes of history, party history, economics, philosophy, and natural sciences. In 1931, after the IKP incorporated the graduate courses of the scientific research institutes of the Communist Academy, it established institutes in agriculture, world economy and world politics, Soviet administration and law, literature, technology and natural science, and personnel training (the former training division). The institute offered a three-year program.

The following were among the instructors at the IKP: V. V. Adoratskii, N. N. Baranskii, A. S. Bubnov, E. S. Varga, V. P. Volgin, A. M. Deborin, S. M. Dubrovskii, N. M. Lukin (An-tonov), A. B. Lunacharskii, J. J. Marchlewski, V. I. Nevskii, M. N. Pokrovskii, V. M. Friche, and Em. Iaroslavskii. Prominent party and Soviet officials, as well as leaders in science and culture, came from the ranks of the IKP’s students—for example, N. A. Voznesenskii, Ia. E. Kalnberzin, B. N. Ponomarev, M. A. Suslov, M. A. Kammari, I. I. Mints, M. V. Nechkina, A. M. Pankratova, P. N. Pospelov, N. L. Rubinshtein, A. L. Sidorov. A. A. Surkov, and S. P. Shchipachev. As the higher educational institutions and scientific research institutes developed, the training of scholarly personnel was concentrated in graduate work, and the institutes of the IKP began to lose their importance; they closed in the 1930’s.