In British Columbia, the province where I obtained my undergraduate and graduate degrees, tuition fee increases are capped at two percent annually under the tuition limit policy. Considering the extremely high cost of living in cities like Victoria, where rent has increased by over 30 percent for a one-bedroom apartment since last year, this is certainly nothing to sneeze at. However, tuition fees for international students in B.C. are not regulated under this legislation, can be raised at any time, and have increased by 64 percent since 2006 and by 594 percent since 1991. International students only account for one fifth of enrollment, but provide half the revenue or more for many B.C. institutions. This predatory attitude toward international students is the direct result of decades of underfunding, with post-secondary institutions using international students to make up the difference. The consequence is that many international students, faced with sudden increases in already criminally inflated education costs, are forced to terminate their studies without even completing their programs.
It is perhaps difficult for some to imagine a system in which it could be any other way, but there was a time and a place where international students were treated far differently. In the Soviet Union, international students were not valued for their wallets — in fact, quite the opposite. They were treated as highly respected guests who brought with them local knowledge of their home countries, enriching Soviet institutions for students and professors alike, who benefited from intercultural exchange and linguistic immersion. Two particularly fascinating examples illustrate the history of international students in the USSR: the University of Toilers of the East (KUTV), and the Patrice Lumumba University (UDN).
At the outset of World War I, social democratic parties, lambasted by Lenin as social-chauvinists, sided with “their own” bourgeoisie and supported the imperialist war, leading to the collapse of the Second International. Following this, dedicated communists from numerous countries established a new Communist International in 1919, known as the Comintern. The Comintern set its goal as the liberation of working people of the entire world, and unanimously expressed that “the ranks of the Communist International unite people whose skins are white, yellow, and black in a fraternal union,” firmly establishing anti-colonial and anti-racist unity. By the Comintern’s Second Congress in 1920, delegates from around the globe had come to Russia to debate the tactics and strategy to be carried out in advancing the anti-imperialist and anti-capitalist cause internationally. Among them was Indian revolutionary Manabendra Nath Roy, who would make significant theoretical contributions throughout the course of the discussion.
The results of the Second Congress would go on to determine both Comintern policy and Soviet international policy towards the colonized and semi-colonized countries for years to come. One of those policies was the creation of the Communist University of the Toilers of the East, open completely free of charge to international students, as well as to minorities from within the countries that would become constituent republics of the USSR. The university was founded in Moscow by M. N. Roy along with 21 Indian Muhajirs in May 1921, and by the following year had branches in Baku, Tashkent, and Irkutsk.
Students who had studied at bourgeois universities were not allowed, and ‘toilers’ were preferred to students from families possessing significant amounts of land. While initially created under the Commissariat of Nationalities — then under the leadership of Stalin, with whom Roy worked extremely closely — the distinctly internationalist mission of KUTV and the growing number of foreign students led the Comintern’s recently formed Eastern Section to seek greater input and oversight, eventually taking complete control of its administration in 1923.
In its first year, 713 students of 44 different nationalities were enrolled. Although Chinese students most frequently attended the more specialized Communist University of Toilers of China, or Sun Yat-sen University, some went to KUTV. More often, KUTV hosted students and teachers from other Eastern countries or minorities from these countries living abroad. African students were generally divided between the International Lenin School and KUTV, though they were in close contact with KUTV one way or another, since it was KUTV that had developed a specialized African Studies Department. KUTV was one of only a handful of institutions anywhere that were accessible to Africans from British territories at this time. Black students from the Americas were also welcomed.
The historic significance of the African Studies Department should not be taken for granted, as it offered the first class-based approaches to African history in an academic setting anywhere in the world — an approach that would not be seen outside the USSR for many years to come. In the post-war years this would be looked back on as incredibly innovative, having laid the foundations for a school of thought that would come to play a leading role in anti-imperialist education in former colonies. Even students who would come to veer from or outright reject communist ideology in later years — and indeed, some who had never adopted it — clearly retained the tools utilized by the class approach taught at KUTV, not to mention increased assertiveness and self-respect. Despite their limitations at that time, instructors at KUTV had indisputably greater knowledge of the labour movement in Africa “than historians and political scientists elsewhere cared to know,” according to author Irina Filatova. Indeed, the study of many of the most significant problems of modern history can be traced back to KUTV, though it rarely receives such credit — in part due to the deliberate destruction of Communist Party archives in various countries by forces wishing to repress this history for political and ideological reasons.
A guide to anti-colonial action
KUTV was not simply intended for the education of students, but also to push forward innovative research around questions of colonialism and anti-colonialism. The university’s first rector, Grigory Broydo, an ethnic Tajik who had headed the Tashkent Soviet and former Deputy Commissar of Nationalities, emphasized that the goal must be to “chart untrodden paths” and advance Marxist theory for the benefit of real-world struggles. Indeed, for Broydo, the expertise of the students was arguably more important to the construction of socialism than that of Soviet and Comintern staff members, with students providing invaluable information about their homelands. Many senior students worked as researchers with the Scientific Research Association for the Study of National and Colonial Problems, frequently having their research published in its journal, Revolutionary East. Others provided information to the Comintern directly regarding local social movements or the strength and capacities of colonial military forces.
As historian Masha Kirasirova skillfully articulated, students were thereby transformed from the objects of history into its subjects, into “toilers for the East” and active participants and leaders in this unprecedented pedagogical experiment, in many cases playing defining roles in shaping Soviet and Comintern policy. For example, Hami Selam, a KUTV student from Egypt, would translate the works of Lenin, Stalin, Bukharin, and Zinoviev into Arabic — a significant intellectual feat and a notable responsibility, considering the political importance placed on the Arab world by Soviet leaders — and would write a treatise on the dialectical history of Islam. Through their interpretations provided to Soviet and Comintern leadership, their published research, and the roles they would come to play in various scholarly and political institutions in the USSR, students were able to play a decisive role in the way Soviet and Comintern leaders approached theoretical and political questions in regard to “the East.”
In 1925, Stalin, now General Secretary of the CPSU, would be invited to speak at KUTV which had been renamed in his honour. This was a result of his extraordinary commitment to the creation of national republics, the growth of national cultures, and unyielding advocacy on behalf of the Eastern nationalities and oppressed peoples, despite significant political risks that earned him many enemies, even within his own party. Indeed, one of his first articles published as Commissar of Nationalities had been entitled “Do Not Forget the East!” In his speech “The Political Tasks of the University of the Peoples of the East,” Stalin would draw an important distinction between the tasks of the “Soviet East,” in which socialist construction was already underway, and those of the many oppressed nations that formed the “colonized East.” KUTV, he asserted, had “one foot in each.”
In addition to the researchers and staff, the Soviet state, and the Comintern, the anti-colonial movement also benefited greatly from KUTV. “Theory was regarded not as dogma but as a guide to action,” stated Harry Haywood, who admired the emphasis on practical skills. Students were not simply “indoctrinated,” as western critics have claimed, but provided with legitimate and practical educations that opened countless opportunities for upward mobility both in the USSR and in their homelands. The methods and contents of these educations were arguably more advanced than in many other universities, even in the most economically developed countries. The lengthy and impressive list of KUTV’s famous alumni stands as strong evidence of this, the university having trained countless future national liberation leaders, prime ministers, presidents, Communist Party general secretaries, Central Committee members, and many of the 20th century’s most remarkable pan-African, anti-imperialist, and anti-racist scholars. Hồ Chí Minh graduated from KUTV in 1923 later to return as a teacher. Other notable alumni include Deng Xiaoping, Liu Shaoqi, Nâzım Hikmet, Jomo Kenyatta, George Padmore, and many more.
KUTV, through the actions of its many well-known students and staff, and through its dedicated efforts in bringing the problems of colonialism to the world stage in its research and widely read scholarly publications, would come to play a decisive role in the outcome of numerous national liberation and anti-colonial struggles until its closure in the late 1930s, when its role was transferred to a number of smaller universities throughout the USSR.
Peoples’ friendship during the Cold War
At no time was the USSR the closed-off society that Western critics have too often misrepresented it to be. Rather, it offered what some authors have referred to as an alternative globalization, in which mobility and intercultural exchange reached a highpoint for students in countries who otherwise might never have dreamed of studying abroad, if at all. The existence of the USSR offered socialist mobilities, and indeed, the movement of people and information were essential to the construction of socialism. This would not change during the heightened tensions of the Cold War, as is further evidenced by another distinctly internationalist institution, the Patrice Lumumba University.
The institution first opened in 1960 under the name of Peoples’ Friendship University (UDN), with a mission to help developing countries that urgently needed educated professionals to replace colonial administrators, teachers, engineers, and others. Following the assassination of Patrice Lumumba, the university was renamed in his honour in February 1961, signaling an embrace of anti-imperialist struggles not necessarily led by communists. The university provided free education and benefits including free medical care, round-trip plane tickets, and one faculty member for every four students. In addition to an allowance for the purchase of warm clothing, foreign students received a 90-ruble monthly allowance — an extremely generous sum, considering Soviet students received just 30, and even recipients of the prestigious Lenin Scholarship received only 80 rubles.
Enrolment was strictly limited to students from colonized and formerly colonized countries, in addition to those from the USSR. Applications from those desiring to study at UDN were many times greater than the actual capacity, with over 43,000 applicants for the first 600 places available. The competitive admission process was therefore largely dependent not simply on high school grades, but also on recommendations from various communist parties and progressive organizations in the students’ home countries. The university implemented a policy of affirmative action based on both class and nationality, prioritizing students who had no chance of studying elsewhere due to racist and economic obstacles, as well as students from working-class and peasant backgrounds. While the U.S. doubled tuition fees for international students and reduced the number of scholarships during the global economic crisis of the 1970s, the USSR did the opposite, doubling the number of scholarships for foreign students from 1979 to 1989.
Unlike imperialist countries, the USSR emphasized training students to bring knowledge back to the benefit of their home countries, which resulted in a cascading effect. By 1988, 30 percent of professors in Hanoi’s three largest universities had been trained in the USSR. Vietnamese students trained in the USSR and the socialist bloc went on to become Vietnamese experts in Africa, passing on the benefits of their training to other countries struggling against colonialism and neo-colonialism. In contrast, the U.S., Canada, and Western Europe practiced a policy of brain drain, aiming to siphon off the most promising students from poor countries desperately in need of professionals, often deliberately undermining the sovereignty of these countries.
Certain hostile commentators from imperialist countries hypocritically attempted to depict UDN as an institution intended to segregate racialized students. This allegation is untenable, as even in 1951, there were already over 13,000 Asian, African, and Latin American students studying across the USSR. This claim is further contradicted by the growing number of Soviet students who studied alongside international students at UDN. Far from being a second-rate university, many students preferred Patrice Lumumba University to mainstream Soviet institutions by the 1970s. In an interview with historian Ruth J. Prince, one Kenyan student who went on to become a doctor described his time in the USSR as something that left a deep impression on him — a time of solidarity, anti-imperialism, and close friendships made with Russian and other Soviet students. The Soviets were “on our side,” he stated, much in contrast to the British and Americans. A student from Equatorial Guinea, in an interview with the Waterloo Record, described his life as a student in the USSR as “almost paradise.” Many students recall not only not experiencing racism, but argue that it could not be found anywhere in the USSR. One Quechua Bolivian recalled being “treated like any other Soviet guy.” Today, however, the situation is much different, and foreign students in Moscow are faced with financial hardships and second-class treatment, not to mention fear of skinheads and racist gangs.
Other critics of UDN claimed that the institution was an ideological training ground to indoctrinate communists, or even to promote terrorism. Ironically, university administrators were similarly concerned about Maoists and ultra-leftist terrorists in their ranks, and valued discipline rather than adventurist violence. Most students state unambiguously that they never experienced any attempts at political influence. Rather, the only influence was that which came naturally from living in a socialist society without unemployment, with free education, healthcare, and housing.
Their travels throughout the entirety of the USSR were cheap and without restrictions. Students were provided free tickets home for the summer, while some preferred to pick up extra cash working in Swedish factories and return to the USSR with valuable currency. In many cases, students took advantage of summer programs offered through UDN, including agricultural internships, sporting and cultural excursions, and events throughout Moldova, in the Caucasus, near the Black Sea, and elsewhere. Many students remember these times as the best memories of their lives, a stark contrast with the poverty, overwork, and isolation many international students are faced with today.
As these historical cases studies demonstrate, international students are worth much more than their tuition fees. The USSR left a powerful and inspiring example for an alternative system of educating and valuing international students that should be remembered and learned from.