Training Oil Industry Personnel in the Post-War Period (Caspian Oil-and-Gas Province)

Abstract

Training skilled workmen and engineers was fundamental to restoring the production potential of key industries in the first years after the end of the Great Patriotic War. This article analyses the state policy on training specialists for oil enterprises in the USSR in the second half of the 1940s. Based on the materials of the Caspian oil-and-gas province, the article examines such strands of Soviet education policy as optimization of the vocational and qualification structure, formal evaluation of workers, practice-oriented training of young oil industry workers, as well as professional development and vocational retraining of specialists with working experience. The author utilized a wide range of sources from central and regional archives (legal, regulatory and statistical documents), some of which had not been introduced into scientific discourse. As a result, it was concluded that the main personnel problem for enterprises in the oil sector was the shortage of employees with industry-specific education. The training of the required number of new workers was supposed to take several years, while the production capacity of oil fields and processing plants had to be restored to pre-war levels within a limited time frame. To quickly fill vacant positions, short-term retraining courses, on-the-job second profession training, and professional development courses were provided. The author notes that the low level of general education and the lack of vocational training, especially among workmen, shifted the emphasis in training to the practical component and did not guarantee a successful acquisition of a new profession.