The Communist Academy was an independent institution that predated the Russian Revolution of 1917. Its curriculum included philosophy, history, literature, the arts, language and law, in addition to other fields of study. While the Academy distanced itself from the Imperial Russian Academy of Sciences, it also benefited from it as the alternative to traditional higher education. In 1932, the Communist Academy was reorganized and its educational focus shifted to international socialist development and world economics. During the Stalinist era, the government investigated the Academy in part because of its “opposition to Sovietization”. In the end, groups of its professors were fired or arrested and its classes were relocated to the Soviet Academy of Sciences.