Firstly, this is a long period, and as you say, a broad question, so I’m just going to draw your attention towards what I see as the key features of higher education. I’m also better on the early Soviet stuff, so if someone knows more about anything, please feel free to chime in. While there is no specific focus on your questions, the answers are covered.

Basically, higher educational institutions included degree-level facilities: universities, “institutes” and military academies. "Institute" refers here to a specialised "microuniversity" (mostly technical), usually subordinate to the ministry associated with their field of study. The largest network "institutes" were medical, pedagogic (for the training of schoolteachers), construction and various transport (automotive and road, railroad, civil aviation) institutes. Some of those institutes were present in the capital of every oblast, while others were unique and situated in big cities (like the Literature Institute and the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology ). Colloquially, these universities and institutes were all referred to by the acronym VUZ (higher educational institution). There were also VTUZ, which are similar, but were more technically orientated. Students who wanted admission to a VUZ had to have graduated from either a general secondary school (10 or 11 years) or a specialized secondary school or a tekhnikum. Numerous military and police schools ) were on the same higher level, and were often compulsory for high-ranking army jobs. The KGB also had some education institutes for training intelligence officers.

In the 1920s, there was still a sense of openness academically. Most universities were still run by the same ‘bourgeois’ professors, or in the early years other socialist groups, and little changed immediately after the revolution for obvious reasons. While there were some restrictions, intellectuals could still publish abroad and they could order foreign journals. Schools were still focused on Marxist social sciences, such as the Institute of Red Professors (1929-1931) which was created to address the shortage of Marxist professors (although the majority of those educated here became activists of the party as opposed to professors). There was also the lacuna of history, which had been abolished as a subject post-revolution, on the basis that it was irrelevant to contemporary studies, and used to cement class divisions by inculcating patriotism and justifying the status of the elite was also an issue in the 1920s. Scholars generally regard the key figure of this decade as Mikhail Pokrovsky, who played a large part in aggressive attacks on non-Marxist historical tradition.

This focus on the social sciences began to change with the advent of the first FYP (five year plan), with changes to the admissions system as well. Stalin launched an intensive campaign to send workers/communists into higher education and 150,000 of them did so, mostly studying engineering. This was because industrial qualification was now regarded as a better qualification for leadership than the Marxist social sciences, as the Soviet leaders agreed that rapid industrialisation was required (one of the few things Trotsky begrudgingly agreed with Stalin). This was where many future Soviet leaders came from, and the likes of Nikita Khrushchev, Leonid Brezhnev and Aleksei Kosygin all benefitted greatly from this program. History was re-introduced, ironically to do just what it had been abolished for; it has been suggested that Pokrovsky’s works for example, lost favour because their opposition to "great men" history contradicted Stalin's cult of personality. Posthumously, the Communist Party accused Pokrovsky of "vulgar sociologism", and his books were banned. In terms of the program of universities during the first five year plan, there was a focus on shorter courses, narrower specialisation and greater practical work on production. Schools were required to attach themselves to industrial enterprises, which would provide facilities for practical work, for which the students received pay.

As the 1930s wore on however, the balance between the social sciences and engineering-esque subjects became more equitable. Whereas at the beginning of the decade Communists had been sent to higher s to “master technology”, implying a purely utilitarian approach, the end of the decade saw a doctrine more focused around a complete education. The country needed “cultured cadres with an all-round education” who have mastered “the knowledge of all riches which mankind has fashioned” (quote from Lenin). This required the old institutions to return, and it was this change that brought writers like Solzhenitsyn to the fore. There was also generous financial support for these institutions, which seems to be one of the great paradoxes of the Stalinist era, given their natural lack of contribution to productivity increases that were Stalin's fascination.

In terms of literary criticism in teaching however, there was limited room. Stalin closely supervised the publishing of Short Course in the history of the Soviet Communist Party (1938) which laid down the Communist orthodoxy on all aspects of Soviet history. This covered the Tsarist class system, the reasons for the victory in the Civil war, the evil nature of "Judas Trotsky". This left little room for new historical interpretations, and in brief, strict censorship was the order of the day. Historical laws (zakonomernosti) covered everything, and although they were ill-defined, they in practice meant that every political decision made was right (excepting of course, those made by Judas Trotsky). No real political history was made, because almost every political leader except Lenin and Stalin had become "non-persons". Criticisms of any Communist history was restricted to specially selected subjects (mainly decisions made by Judas Trotsky), at least during the time of Stalin. Soviet history was written in class terms, with the working classes, the intelligentsia and the bourgeoisie as the sole actors.

Khrushchev did not change this system that much, but he did seem to have a fascination with the location of schools. While visiting the United States in 1959, Khrushchev was greatly impressed by the agricultural education program at Iowa State University, and sought to imitate it in the Soviet Union. At the time, the main agricultural college in the USSR was in Moscow, and students did not do the manual labour of farming, and thus Khrushchev proposed to move the programs to rural areas. He was unsuccessful, due to resistance from professors and students, who never actually disagreed with the premier, but who did not carry out his proposals. Khrushchev recalled in his memoirs, "It's nice to live in Moscow and work at the Timiryazev Agricultural Academy. It's a venerable old institution, a large economic unit, with skilled instructors, but it's in the city! Its students aren't yearning to work on the collective farms because to do that they'd have to go out in the provinces and live in the sticks." Khrushchev also founded several academic towns, such as Akademgorodok. The premier believed that Western science flourished because many scientists lived in university towns such as Oxford, isolated from big city distractions, and had pleasant living conditions and good pay. He sought to duplicate those conditions in the Soviet Union. Khrushchev's attempt was generally successful, though his new towns and scientific centres tended to attract younger scientists, with older ones unwilling to leave Moscow or Leningrad.

Thus, Russian educational approaches were generally categorised by scientific and cultural boundaries. It was believed that the thought process of a person was strictly designated toward one particular social class. These distinctions were removed during perestroika (this sounds drastic, but merely refers to a less clear-cut distinction between the two fields), but they defined higher education in for the majority of the 70 years of the USSR.

Further Reading

Education and Social Mobility in the Soviet Union 1921-1934 - Sheila Fitzpatrick

The Great Retreat: The Growth and Decline of Communism in Russia - Nicholas Timasheff

Also, there's some basic coverage in The Russian Revolution - Fitzpatrick

There’s some interesting stuff to be read about the Pasternak affair as well, if you haven’t read about that, I recommend checking out some stuff about it. Edward Crankshaw has a more contemporary Western perspective on it in Khrushchev’s Russia. Here’s the wiki.

^I'm ^sorry, ^I ^love ^the ^name ^Judas ^Trotsky ^too ^much. ^^^I ^^^have ^^^a ^^^problem.