Institutional continuity and societal adaptation in Soviet domestic politics: Vocational education, 1981-1991

The overarching question this dissertation seeks to answer is whether an important area of Soviet domestic politics was characterized by stasis or adaptation during the transition from the Brezhnev to the Gorbachev era. The analysis occurs on both the policy and institutional levels.;The thematic focus of this study is the adjacent segments of vocational and technical education. These segments were connected to different spheres of industry, and had different implications for economic modernization and institutional capacity.;The first of four sections is historical and contextual, while the next three sections--comprising the years 1981-84, 1984-88, and 1988-91--deal respectively with the role of ideas, institutions, and societal actors in the development of educational policy. Concurrently, these three sections cover the substance, implementation, and realignments within vocational-technical education.;The main finding is that there was very strong policy and institutional continuity from 1981 to 1988, and even beyond. Intellectual ferment under Gorbachevism and (weak) growth of autonomous, societal-level policy participation did not lead to significant changes to educational policy and implementation. Soviet schools remained to 1991 within a vocational-education/applied science paradigm inherited from the Khrushchev era, instead of moving to a more forward-looking technical-education/basic science model. The main argument of this study is that educational policy and administrative practice, characterized by poor conceptual design and institutional fragmentation, badly damaged all levels of Soviet education.;This dissertation illustrates both the reluctance and inability of the Gorbachev government to fundamentally change directions in educational policy. It supports the view of those Western political scientists who saw Gorbachevism not as a time of radical change, but of conservatism. This study also supports the thesis of "unreformability" of the USSR, even under new leadership, for fragmentation and continuity across a wide institutional spectrum worked against reform efforts in particular areas.