Transformation of professional space and the position of the scientific intelligentsia of Tatarstan in the 1920s

The paper analyzes the problem of forming a new system of organizational and administrative procedures and the rules in Tatarstan higher education in the 1920s. In particular, problems of introducing a new “Soviet” system of elected boards in the Kazan high schools are considered. The system approach in studying organizational procedures and rules in the Kazan higher educational institutions made it possible to reveal not only the attitudes of professors and teachers to them, but also the processes that occured inside the professorial corporation. The mechanisms of “ transition ” to new Soviet rules and rituals are analyzed. With the purpose of studying reaction of scientific intelligentsia on occurring metamorphoses in professional space, the detailed analysis of the election system, taking place in the Kazan university, was undertaken. Based on archival documents, the reaction of scientific intelligentsia to occuring deformations of management structure in the Kazan high school is demonstrated, as well as the attempts of scientists to resist the “Soviet” procedures and rules and to keep pre revolutionary ones. The author states that the intelligentsia introduced new rules and rituals and generated new behavioural practices, unusual for pre-revolutionary period. The transformation of the professional space of the scientific intelligentsia had a decisive effect on the emergence of a new identity, which began to take shape during the period under study.