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Shortages of space and shoddy construction were the least of the Insti¬tute's problems. While the brochure as well as the Institute's annual reports to regional authorities and to Narkompros spoke of optimal conditions, sessions of the Institute's union local, academic council, and party cell pre¬sented a far different and depressing assessment. The party cell's sessions, in particular, featured blunt commentary. Faculty members and students emphasized over and again a shortage of firewood. The main academic facility and dorms were cold and students huddled in their overcoats when in class and sleeping. In the middle of the 1938-1939 academic year, some of the faculty's apartments were barely above freezing. The academic facil¬ity lacked a sufficient number of chairs and tables, the dorms were with¬out desks, lamps, teapots, mattresses, linen, and blankets.10 The cafeteria provided inadequate food that was poorly prepared. In February 1939, it offered students only 200 to 300 grams of bread a day. Two years later, a teacher of Russian literature, Sergei Makarovich Tarasenkov, caustically commented that "the Institute's cafeteria is not a cafeteria but a parody of one/'11 More than a few books, laboratory instruments, and pieces of furniture disappeared, inadvertently lost or, it was alleged, stolen by the In¬stitute's own personnel.12 It was of little or no consolation that most other higher educational institutions in the Soviet Union experienced the same poor conditions. They lacked adequate classroom space, laboratory equip¬ment, and books. Their students and faculty suffered from cold and hunger. Five even fifteen students occupied a single dorm room. Perhaps they were fortunate for some of their compatriots slept at night on dissecting tables or in the aisles of the library.