Professor without education: social lifts of the Russian society during the first half of the XX century in the D.I. Rosenberg's career

The aims of this study are to trace a path of a marginal to the elite and to identify factors of social ascent in a particular case of David Rosenberg (1879-1950). The goals can be achieved by studying representative sources - a compendium of personal and office documents, journalistic, educational and scientific literature. Social discrimination against the Jews in the Russian Empire pushed the Jewish youth to political radicalism. Like many others, Rosenberg could not get an education and a prestigious profession. In 1904 he joined the Bund, led the anti-government agitation among workers and in 1914 he was exiled to Siberia. In the years of the Revolution and the Civil War Rosenberg was a Menshevik, the party publicist and editor of political newspapers in Tomsk. In 1920 Rosenberg changed political orientation and joined RCP(b), the Russian Communist Party of the Bolsheviks. He was in the personnel reserve of the Siberian Bureau of the RCP(b). However as a former Menshevik he could not make a political career. During the New Economic Policy (NEP) Rosenberg-communist had a wide range of other possibilities. The transformation of educational system, an acute shortage of staff allowed him, a dropout in the «past life», to begin scientific and teaching career. In the 1920s Rosenberg taught political economy, he became a communist professor and wrote "A commentary on Marx's 'Capital'". It successfully fit into the political situation and helped with a widespread introduction of Marxism into higher education and science. In the 1930s Rosenberg continued successful scientific and teaching career at institutes and universities in Moscow. As a very valuable specialist who strengthened ideological foundations of the regime he escaped the Great Terror. In 1939 Rosenberg was awarded the title of Corresponding Member of the USSR Academy of Sciences. In 1945-1948 he worked as a senior researcher at the Marx-Engels-Lenin (MEL) Institute of the Central Committee of the ACP(b), All-Union Communist Party of the Bolsheviks. An underlined dedication to the Communist Party, the choice of specific profession of "political propagandist in science" and extraordinary abilities were key to Rosenberg's survival and successful career in the Soviet society. However, because of the formation of a new ideological paradigm based on antisemitism in the Soviet Union in 19481953 Rosenberg was unable to publish his new book and lost his job at the MEL Institute. In 1950 the seventy-year-old expert on Marxism-Leninism could not bear a new round of struggle for survival and social status. The author of the article concluded, that a successful individual mobility during the revolutionary age is of particular interest. It highlights an emergence of the higher levels of the new social hierarchy on the ruins of the old society. During wars, revolutions and radical transformations in Russia in the first half of the XX century this process was extremely controversial and rapid.

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