THE EXPENDITURES OF THE CITIES BUDGETS OF THE UKRAINIAN SSR ON THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE EDUCATIONAL AND CULTURAL INSTITUTIONS (1923–1928)

Abstract

The searching for new ways to finance Ukrainian education, science and culture leads to the studying of the historical experience of the previous years. These lessons could be very helpful. Nevertheless, this topic is still less researched in the Ukrainian historiography.
The article deals with the problems of the material support of the educational and cultural institutions in the cities of the Ukrainian SSR during the 1920s. The main attention is paid to the highlighting of the role of the cities budgets to the problem mentioned above. The process of the legislative regulation of the financing of the educational and cultural spheres and in particular – the division of the funding for the institutions of the social education, the vocational education and the political literacy between the state and local budgets is traced on the basis of the analysis of the normative legal acts of the Ukrainian Soviet authorities. The working out the operational and reporting documentation of the different departments, statistical data and the materials of the periodicals make it possible to reveal the practical consequences of transferring a large part of education spending to the local finances. In the early 20’s XX century this decision led to the reducing of the educational institutions, the number of teachers and, of course, the number of children covered with education.
Studying the expenditure part of the cities budgets allows us to determine how much money was allocated to the development of the educational and cultural institutions in 1923–1928, to outline the priority of the financing of the certain spheres and to highlight the specific appointment of the educational expenditures.
The research showed that budget spending on education had been steadily increasing. Ukrainian cities spent more than 80 million rubles on the item during that period. Most of these funds were absorbed by social education institutions. The institutions of the political literacy were on the second place and the institutions of the vocational education were the last. At the same time, more than half of all the educational expenditures were spent on the salary of the pedagogical and technical workers. The Ukrainian cities directed the average 19.5 % of the total cities budgets to the development of the education and culture at the end of the 1920s. However, it was not enough to satisfy all the needs of the urban citizens. This problem was
partly solved by the transferring of some institutions on the system of patronage, partly – by the introduction of tuition fees, but mainly – by self-taxation of the population of the Ukrainian SSR.