Role of Zhumabay Shayakhmetov in development of education system in the Kazakh SSR

Abstract

The article elucidates the role of Zhumabay Shayakhmetov in education system development during his leadership of the Kazakh SSR. Filling the shortages of the qualified specialists in various spheres in the republic during the war and post-war times, and especially their training out of ethnic Kazakhs turned to be one of the priorities in his activities as a statesman. The education system in the Kazakh SSR demanded radical restructuring and the Great Patriotic war sharpened the lack of specialists. In the post-war period, Kazakhstan turned into the military-technical base of the USSR but there was not enough number +of Kazakhs as qualified specialists in major production spheres (engineering, agronomy, veterinary, medicine, etc.), and one of the reasons was absence of higher educational institutions for training specialists of those profiles. The activities of Zhumabay Shayakhmetov to reinforce training of specialists in the republic and the center should be interpreted via the prism of ethnic mobilization theory as the emphasis was made on upgrading the education level of the Kazakh young people.