Volgo-Vyatskaya Academy of Public Administration (VVAGS) was a Nizhny Novgorod state university that trained specialists in state and municipal administration, law, and management and remained the main supplier of personnel for the bodies of state power and local self-government in the Volga-Vyatka region [4][6]. The academy existed under this name from April 1995 to September 1, 2011, but its roots went much deeper: the building, property, and some of its departments came to it from the Gorky Higher Party School, which had operated since 1946 [2][18]. Since September 1, 2011, the university has been called the Nizhny Novgorod Institute of Management, a branch of the Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration; as a legal entity, the academy ceased to exist on February 13, 2012 [6][10].

The Party School: 1946–1990

The university traces its history to 1946, when a regional party school opened in Gorky. The country was rebuilding an economy ravaged by the war, and the school began training managers for seven regions and four autonomous republics in two-year courses; for many who had returned from the front, it was the only chance to complete an education. The party school became a full-fledged university ten years later, when it switched to a four-year program [8].

The students here were not recent schoolchildren but serving officials — factory directors and district committee secretaries from Mordovia and Chuvashia. The school served the party apparatus — the regional committee, city committees, and district committees — and one could enter it only on a referral from the Central Committee of the CPSU [8].

The core of the teaching staff took shape from the very first year. In 1946, the school established a Department of Economic Sciences, headed by Candidate of Economic Sciences Matryona Terentyevna Zimina; a year later the department was renamed the Department of Economic Sciences and Geography, and it taught political economy, the fundamentals of the Soviet economy, and economic geography. From 1951 the department was headed by Candidate of Economic Sciences Nikolay Petrovich Rybakov, and from 1965, for thirty years running, by Doctor of Economic Sciences and Honored Scientist Vladimir Matveyevich Koltunov; in 1995–1999, by then under the name Department of Economic Theory, it was led by Professor Gennady Nikolayevich Vlasov [18].

In 1990, the Gorky Higher Party School was renamed the Nizhny Novgorod Socio-Political Institute [2]. A year later, its advanced training faculty merged with the interregional courses and became the advanced training faculty of the new institute [9].

Being sent to study was akin to a reward. You had to prove that you were worthy of studying at the party school, which became a second home for everyone

— Alla Tatarchenko, Candidate of Sciences, associate professor, "Argumenty i Fakty — Nizhny Novgorod," 2016 [8]

The Personnel Center and the Academy: 1992–1995

The school's new purpose was set by Russian Government Resolution No. 18 of January 4, 1992, "On the Creation in the City of N. Novgorod of a Personnel Center under the Main Directorate for the Training of Personnel for the Civil Service under the Government of the Russian Federation." It ordered the creation of the Volgo-Vyatsky Personnel Center for the training and retraining of personnel for state and municipal government and administrative bodies and of specialists for a market economy, the transfer to its balance sheet of all fixed and working assets of the former Nizhny Novgorod Socio-Political Institute, and the appointment of Maltsev Vladimir Andreyevich as director [2].

The legal entity was registered on March 24, 1992, at the address Gagarin Avenue — the same place where the party school had previously operated [10].

From then on, the university moved in step with the entire system of civil servant training. Presidential Decree No. 1140 of June 6, 1994, placed the system of retraining and advanced training of civil servants under the Russian Academy of Public Service under the President of the Russian Federation, and Presidential Order No. 197-rp of April 26, 1995, directed that the personnel centers subordinate to it be transformed into academies of public service [2]. Thus, in April 1995, the Volgo-Vyatsky Personnel Center became the Volgo-Vyatskaya Academy of Public Service [6].

The Academy belonged to a unified federal system of continuing education for civil servants, headed by the Russian Academy of Public Service in Moscow [4]. Decisions made in 2006–2007 equated the status of the regional academies with that of federal educational institutions training civil servants: their charters, reorganization, and the appointment of rectors had to be approved by the Presidential Administration [2].

What the university was called over the years
YearsNameLegal basis
1946–1990Gorky (Regional, later Higher) Party SchoolOpened in 1946 as a regional party school; ten years later it moved to a four-year program [8]
1990–1992Nizhny Novgorod Institute of Social and Political StudiesRenaming of the party school [2]
1992–1995Volga-Vyatka Personnel CenterResolution of the Government of the Russian Federation of January 4, 1992, No. 18 [2]
1995–2011Volgo-Vyatskaya Gosudarstvennoy Sluzhby AcademyOrder of the President of the Russian Federation of April 26, 1995, No. 197-rp [2]
since 2011Nizhny Novgorod Institute of Management — a branch of RANEPADecree of the President of the Russian Federation of September 20, 2010, No. 1140 [1]

Faculties and Departments

By the early 2000s, the academy rested on three faculties. The Faculty of State and Municipal Administration taught students full-time (five years) and part-time (six years) in the specializations "State and Municipal Administration", "Finance and Credit", "Jurisprudence", and "Organizational Management". The Retraining Faculty offered the same specializations in accelerated programs of three to three and a half years for people with higher or specialized secondary education, as well as a one-year professional retraining program awarding a qualification that made it possible to advance in the state and municipal service. The Advanced Training Faculty brought together managers and specialists of federal, regional, and municipal authorities for short seminars [4].

In 2002 there were fourteen departments [5]:

  • Civil and Social Law;
  • Foreign Languages;
  • History and Political Science;
  • Constitutional and Municipal Law;
  • Psychology;
  • Systems Analysis and Mathematics;
  • Social Informatics;
  • Sociology;
  • Management and Marketing;
  • Physical Education;
  • Philosophy;
  • Finance and Credit;
  • Economic Theory;
  • Economics.

Who Headed the Departments

Vladimir Maltsev, the academy's rector, not only ran the institution but also headed the Department of Social Informatics, which taught informatics, management information technologies, records management and business correspondence, and information support systems for regional administration [19].

The Department of Management and Marketing, established in 1992, was headed by Doctor of Economic Sciences, Professor, and Honored Worker of Higher Education Galina Alekseevna Morozova. The department trained specialists in state and municipal administration, management, and regional administration, with specializations in project management and marketing [20]. The Department of Sociology was headed by Doctor of Sociological Sciences and Professor Chernova Irina Ivanovna; her courses ranged from general sociology and demography to the analysis and forecasting of socio-psychological processes in the region [21].

The Department of Foreign Languages, under the leadership of Natalya Lvovna Uvarova, created its own scholarly school, "Theory and Methodology of Professional Linguistic Education" [22].

The economics block was divided between two departments. The Department of Economic Theory grew out of that same 1946 Department of Economic Sciences, and in the 2000s it was headed by Doctor of Economic Sciences and Professor Albina Mikhaylovna Ozina [18]. The Department of Economics appeared in 1996 on the basis of the Department of Economic Systems, which had been operating since 1992; it was headed by Doctor of Economic Sciences and Honored Transport Worker Zhmachinsky Viktor Ivanovich, and from 2010 by Doctor of Economic Sciences Aleksandr Nikolayevich Golubtsov, a graduate of Gorky Lobachevsky University and for many years the head of the regional state statistics committee [17].

The academy also had a postgraduate program, and the list of departments grew over time: by 2014, by then at the institute, there were nineteen of them, ranging from administrative, financial, and information law to the management of social and economic processes [14].

A Second Degree for Managers

The accelerated programs of the Retraining Faculty and the one-year professional retraining made the academy a familiar place for serving officials, deputies, and entrepreneurs to earn a second higher education: the diploma conferred a qualification that allowed one to advance in state and municipal service [4].

A separate door was open to the military. The academy housed the Institute of Applied Economics and Conversion of Military Personnel, which in three months provided professional retraining in seven specialties for officers retiring into the reserve, their family members, and other interested people. Another unit, the interregional training center "Zemlya" ("Land"), taught seminars on land resource management to managers and specialists of the Federal Land Cadastre Service of Russia and other agencies [4].

In April 2003, by decision of the academic council, the Faculty of Advanced Training was transformed into the Institute of Advanced Training. For twenty years, from 1991 to 2011, the faculty, and later the institute, was headed by Candidate of Sociological Sciences Tatyana Vasilyevna Moshkova. It was also here that the academy first tried out distance learning: the first program using distance educational technologies ran in the 2003/04 academic year, and the first advanced training program using them in January 2005 [9].

The scale of this work is visible in the academy's last full year: in 2010, 136 people completed professional retraining at the VVAGS Institute of Advanced Training on the basis of the specialty "State and Municipal Administration," and 2,015 state and municipal employees, senior and mid-level managers, and specialists improved their qualifications [6].

Buildings, Branches, and Representative Offices

The academy's main building stood at 46 Gagarin Avenue. It is a four-story building in the Stalinist neoclassical style, built, according to the building's passport, in 1953 from a design for specialized secondary and higher educational institutions; in city directories it is still listed under the name "Gorky Higher Party School" [16]. The second and third buildings were located at 8 and 10 Pushkina Street [3]; the Faculty of Advanced Training moved into the new building at 8 Pushkina Street in 2000 [9].

The Academy operated far beyond the city. In 2002 it had branches in Saransk (Republic of Mordovia) and Cheboksary (Chuvash Republic), and representative offices in Bor, Dzerzhinsk, Kstovo, Lukoyanov, and Perevoz in Nizhny Novgorod Region, as well as in Rybinsk in Yaroslavl Region [4]. The network changed: according to the register of legal entities, the Bor representative office later moved to the selo of Ulyanovo in Lukoyanovsky District [10].

Rector and faculty

Vladimir Andreyevich Maltsev was appointed director of the Volga-Vyatka Personnel Center by the same 1992 resolution that created the center. He remained at the head of the institution for all twenty years of its independent existence and, after its transformation, headed the Nizhny Novgorod Institute of Management [2][3][13]. In terms of titles and degrees, he was a Doctor of Sociology and a Candidate of Technical Sciences, a professor, an Honored Worker of Higher Education of the Russian Federation, and a laureate of the Government of the Russian Federation Prize in Education [3][13].

The Academy's administration in the late 2000s included Svetlana Alekseyevna Tikhonina, vice-rector for research; Eduard Nikolayevich Buravlev, vice-rector for capital construction; Mikhail Valeryevich Kruchinkin, vice-rector for administrative and operational affairs; Yashin Viktor Vasilyevich, vice-rector for work with the regions; and Nadezhda Nikolayevna Maslyaeva, chief accountant [11]. By that time the Academy had state accreditation and offered programs in law, economics, world economics, finance and credit, marketing, management, state and municipal administration, organizational management, and applied informatics [11].

Alumni

The academy turned out to be a forge of regional officialdom. Its graduates are said to include State Duma deputy Artyom Kavinov, Deputy Chair of the Legislative Assembly Olga Shchetinina, Nizhny Novgorod Region Minister of Education Sergey Naumov, the region's Commissioner for the Protection of Entrepreneurs' Rights Pavel Solodky, and Deputy Governor and Deputy Chair of the regional government Dmitry Svatkovsky [8].

The academy's last graduating class was in 2011: 278 people received diplomas, 58 of them with honors. Nine graduates of that year immediately found jobs in state and local government bodies of Nizhny Novgorod Region: six in the staff of the regional government, and one each in the Office of the Federal Treasury, the Nizhny Novgorod city administration, and the Office of the Federal Tax Service [6].

At a meeting with graduates on June 28, 2011, Deputy Governor Vadim Ivanov announced that the regional government intended to form a personnel reserve from among them, and remarked that Governor Valery Shantsev had been very impressed by the diploma defenses at the academy. According to Ivanov, the university "trains not bureaucrats, but competent managers," and a quarter of the staff of the regional government are young specialists under the age of thirty [7].

We will have to think about creating a regional reserve. There is the Presidential Hundred, and we will have a gubernatorial Fifty. The idea will be considered in the near future. We need new, smart, fresh personnel

Merger into the presidential academy

By Decree of the President of the Russian Federation No. 1140 of September 20, 2010, the Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration was established: the Russian Academy of Public Administration and twelve federal educational institutions named in a separate list were merged into the Moscow Academy of National Economy under the Government. The Volgo-Vyatskaya Academy of Public Administration stands first on that list [1].

The merger procedure was determined by Government Orders No. 1562-r of September 23, 2010, and No. 2387-r of December 27, 2010 [2][13]. The academy posted on its website the decree, both orders, and the addresses of both rectors, Vladimir Mau and Vladimir Maltsev, and at the same time explained to readers that within the new academy the Volgo-Vyatskaya Academy would function as the Nizhny Novgorod Institute of Management, retaining all of its educational programs at every level of training [13].

Maltsev announced the upcoming transformation on June 28, 2011, at the graduation ceremony, noting that it would significantly raise the university's legal status [6].

The transition took place on September 1, 2011: from that day the academy became the Nizhny Novgorod Institute of Management, a branch of RANEPA, and graduates, after their final assessment, began to receive a diploma from the Russian Academy of National Economy and Public Administration under the President of the Russian Federation [6]. As a legal entity, the academy was dissolved on February 13, 2012, through reorganization in the form of a merger [10].

Although we will be called an institute, we will still be a branch of the academy. We need to keep moving forward and improve the quality of education. In a word, we understand what needs to be done.

— Vladimir Maltsev, rector of VVAGS, NIA "Nizhny Novgorod", June 28, 2011 [6]

What remains

The academy's successor, the Nizhny Novgorod Institute of Management, operates at the same address, 46 Gagarin Avenue, and considers itself the heir to both the Gorky Higher Party School and the Volga-Vyatka Academy of Public Administration, counting its years from 1946 [12]. Today it has three faculties and a college, enrolls more than 4,800 students, and runs over thirty core and a hundred and fifty supplementary educational programs; by student numbers it is one of the largest Universities in Nizhny Novgorod [15].

In 2016 the institute celebrated its seventieth anniversary. Its director at the time, Mikhail Marasov, said that the university was beginning the crossing anew [8].

Figuratively speaking, we began the crossing in a new place, under new conditions, with refined goals and objectives.

— Mikhail Marasov, director of the Nizhny Novgorod Institute of Management, "Argumenty i Fakty — Nizhny Novgorod", 2016 [8]

Sources

  1. kremlin.ru — President of Russia — decree on the establishment of RANEPA; the Volgo-Vyatskaya Gosudarstvennoy Sluzhby Academy is listed first among the institutions being merged (archive)
  2. web.archive.org — Nizhny Novgorod Institute of Management, a branch of RANEPA (web archive copy) — official chronology: 1946, 1990, Resolution No. 18, Order No. 197-rp, Decree No. 1140 — History (archive)
  3. web.archive.org — Nizhny Novgorod Institute of Management, a branch of RANEPA (web archive copy) — buildings, faculties, leadership, founder — Basic Information (archive)
  4. web.archive.org — Official website of the Volgo-Vyatskaya Gosudarstvennoy Sluzhby Academy, 2002 (web archive copy) (archive)
  5. web.archive.org — Official website of VVAGS (web archive copy) — list of the academy's fourteen departments — Our Departments (archive)
  6. NIA "Nizhny Novgorod" — transfer of VVAGS into RANEPA, the rector's remarks, background on the academy and the 2011 graduation figures — From September 1, 2011, VVAGS Will Become the Nizhny Novgorod Institute of Management (archive)
  7. NIA "Nizhny Novgorod" — meeting with the class of 2011 graduates, remarks by the deputy governor on the personnel reserve
  8. nn.aif.ru — "Argumenty i Fakty — Nizhny Novgorod" — the university's beginnings in 1946, recollections of a Party school student, list of notable graduates (archive)
  9. web.archive.org — Center for Continuing Education of the Nizhny Novgorod Institute of Management (web archive copy) (archive)
  10. rusprofile.ru — Extract from the Unified State Register of Legal Entities — registration date of March 24, 1992, legal address, termination of activity by merger on February 13, 2012, branch offices (archive)
  11. famous-scientists.ru — Directory of universities from the database of the Informika State Research Institute of Information Technologies and Telecommunications — the academy's address, rectorate staff, accreditation, and list of specialties — Volgo-Vyatskaya Gosudarstvennoy Sluzhby Academy (archive)
  12. V gorode N — background on the Nizhny Novgorod Institute of Management as the successor of the Gorky Higher Party School and VVAGS, faculties — RANEPA — Nizhny Novgorod Institute of Management (archive)
  13. web.archive.org — Official website of VVAGS, 2011 (web archive copy) — the academy's explanation of its entry into RANEPA as the Nizhny Novgorod Institute of Management — About the Academy. History (archive)
  14. web.archive.org — Nizhny Novgorod Institute of Management (web archive copy) — list of departments as of 2014 — Departments (archive)
  15. vuzopedia.com — the institute's current figures: year of founding, number of students, three faculties and a college, number of programs — Nizhny Novgorod Institute of Management
  16. prawdom.ru — Building Passport — 46 Gagarin Avenue: year of construction, number of floors, architectural style, historical name "Gorky Higher Party School"
  17. web.archive.org — Nizhny Novgorod Institute of Management (web archive copy) — history of the Department of Economics and a biography of its head — Department of Economics (archive)
  18. web.archive.org — Nizhny Novgorod Institute of Management (web archive copy) — chronicle of the Department of Economic Theory since 1946 and its heads — Department of Economic Theory (archive)
  19. web.archive.org — Official website of VVAGS (web archive copy) — Department of Social Informatics and its head (archive)
  20. web.archive.org — Official website of VVAGS (web archive copy) — Department of Management and Marketing, its objectives and its head (archive)
  21. web.archive.org — Official website of VVAGS (web archive copy) — Department of Sociology, its head and courses (archive)
  22. web.archive.org — Official website of VVAGS (web archive copy) — Department of Foreign Languages and its scientific school (archive)