Transformation of the corporate identity and image of Tomsk University in the 1920s

In the article, based on the use of archival materials, periodicals and sources of personal origin, the transformation of the corporate identity and image of Tomsk University in the 1920s is being investigated. The main theoretical approaches to the concepts "corporate identity" and "corporate image" are considered. This allowed the authors to determine the state of Tomsk University in the period under review as a crisis of corporate identity. It is noted that the emergence of this crisis occurred as a result of the practical implementation of the decrees of the Council of People's Commissars of the RSFSR and provisions on higher education at Tomsk University. The fall in the status and privileges of professors, the deterioration of their financial situation, the introduction of student representation in the administrative and academic structures of the university, the liquidation of academic degrees and attestations - all this caused a protest of professors throughout Russia, including representatives of the university community of Tomsk. Forms of confrontation between the old professors and the representatives of the Soviet government, supported by part of the faculty and students, are analyzed. This confrontation was manifested in the criticism of the representatives of the old university professors in the local press, in the ignoring of their opinion in solving important issues of the internal life of the university (liquidation of the Faculty of Social Sciences, the order of admission of new faculty and researchers to the departments, etc.), in the attempt to grow a new "red professorship" and replace the old one with it. In turn, the old professors, using their influence, often resorted to ultimatums, manipulated the leadership of the university, retained the old traditions and ethics of relationships in the informal sphere. The rapprochement of the conflicting parties and the formation of a new mixed corporate identity on the basis of the convergence of pre-revolutionary academic values, ideals, traditions and new trends of the Soviet era were manifested in the resumption of the cult of venerable scholars of the university and the technological institute, in the tradition of solemn celebration of anniversaries (individual scholars, the university and its structures), in demonstrating respect for deceased professors. For the emerging corporate culture it was also characteristic to recognize the university as the cultural core of Tomsk, to introduce the practice of social egalitarianism within the university community (all are comrades to each other), to involve scholars in socialist construction. It is noted that the new corporate identity was formed simultaneously with the transformation of the image. It was created on the basis of the changed social mission of the university, the significance of which as a "forge of the cadres" in the Asian part of the USSR expanded and increased in the era of socialist construction. It is concluded that the new status of Tomsk State University was also formed on the basis of recreating its educational function in the Soviet era, which manifested itself in public lectures of university professors, popularization of their research achievements in the local press and the organization of the People's University in Tomsk.

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