| Communist Academy | |
| Native Name: | Коммунистическая академия |
| Native Name Lang: | ru |
| Abbreviation: | Комакадемия |
| Merged: | Academy of Sciences of the Soviet Union |
| Formation: | 1918 |
| Dissolved: | 1936 |
| Type: | Scientific institution |
| Vat Id: | (for European organizations) --> |
| Headquarters: | Moscow |
| Language: | Russian |
| Owners: | --> |
| Leader Title: | Chairman of the Presidium |
| Formerly: | Socialist Academy of Social Sciences |
The Communist Academy (Russian: Коммунистическая академия, transliterated Kommunisticheskaya akademiya) was a higher educational establishment and research institute based in Moscow. It included scientific institutes of philosophy, history, literature, art and language, Soviet construction and law, world economy and world politics, economics, agrarian research as well as institutes of natural and social science. It was intended to allow Marxists to research problems independent of, and implicitly in rivalry with, the Academy of Sciences which long pre-existed the October Revolution and the subsequent formation of the Soviet Union.[1]
See main article: Socialist Academy of Social Sciences.
The Communist Academy was preceded by the Socialist Academy of Social Sciences when it was founded on June 25, 1918, by decree of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee. The chairman of the academy was Mikhail Pokrovsky.[2] On 15 April 1919, the name of the academy was shortened to the Socialist Academy.
From April 17, 1924, the Socialist Academy was finally transformed into the Communist Academy. On November 26, 1926, the Central Executive Committee of the Soviet Union (ЦИК СССР) confirmed the charter of the CA. The academy acquired some success and influence in the 1920s, especially in the social sciences and law under the direction of Evgeny Pashukanis. The academy included approximately 100 active members and a number of corresponding members. The goals of the CA were research in social sciences, history, theory and practice of socialism. In December 1929, a Leningrad branch was opened.
The Communist Academy included the following institutes: philosophy, history, literature, art and language, contemporary development and law, world economy and world politics, economics, agrarian studies, natural sciences, and a series of special commissions on specific topics. After reorganization in 1932, the Communist Academy's main focus shifted to socialist development and world economy.
However, the very independence that originally inspired the new academy caused it to run afoul of Joseph Stalin, and he abolished it in 1936, an early manifestation of his rapidly developing purges. According to a decree published on February 8, 1936, the Communist Academy was subsumed within the Soviet Academy of Sciences.
From 1924 the academy published the Вестник Коммунистической академии (Bulletin of the Communist Academy). For many years, the Communist Academy was a leading centre in the social sciences and played a leading role in the promulgation of Marxist–Leninist ideology. Initially the issues were numbered in continuity with the six previous issues of the Вестник Социалистической академии (Bulletin of the Socialist Academy).[3]
| Year | 1st issue | 2nd issue | 3rd issue | 4th issue | 5th issue | 6th issue | 7th issue | 8th issue | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1924 | No. 7 | No. 8 | No. 9 | ||||||
| 1925 | No. 10 | No. 11 | No. 12 | No. 13 | |||||
| 1926 | No. 14 | No. 15 | No. 16 | No. 17 | No. 18 | ||||
| 1927 | No. 19 | No. 20 | No. 21 | No. 22 | No. 23 | No. 24 | |||
| 1928 | No. 25, (1) | No. 26, (2) | No. 27, (3) | No. 28, (4) | No. 29, (5) | ||||
| 1929 | No. 30, (6) | No. 31, (1) | No. 32, (2) | No. 33, (3) | No. 34, (4) | No. 35-36 | |||
| 1930 | No. 37-38 | No. 39 | No. 40-41 | No. 42 | |||||
| 1931 | No.1 (Jan) | No.2-3 (Feb-March) | No.4 (April) | No.5-6 (April) | No.7 (July) | No.8-9 (Aug-Sept) | No.10-11 (Sept-Oct) | No.12 (Dec) |
The academy's library was preserved as the Fundamental Library of the Social Sciences, which itself became an important part of the still-extant library of the Institute of Scientific Information of the Social Sciences.
The structure of the Communist Academy changed several times. In 1931, the Communist Academy included 9 separate institutes, the Natural Science Association, 9 scientific journals and 16 Marxist societies. By the beginning of 1934, the following institutions were part of the system of the Communist Academy:[4]
And also the Society of Historians-Marxists, the Society of Agrarian-Marxists, the Society of Marxist-statists and others operated. The General Academic Library operated under the Presidium.