The book is devoted to the political struggle in the higher school of Petrograd of Leningrad in the 1920s and early 1930s. On the materials of the OGPU archive, documents of the party cells of the CPSU (b), the author talks about the participation of university students and teachers in resisting authoritarian tendencies in the Soviet state. The material analyzed in the book allows us to point out the fallacy of the widespread idea that many left-wing parties (Mensheviks, Socialist Revolutionaries, anarchists, etc.) left the political arena after the end of the Civil War. In fact, they continued their work in the USSR until the mid-1920s, using both legal methods of struggle and resorting to conspiracy. Another main topic of the study was the participation of university students in the work of the left opposition in the CPSU (b). The process of building parallel political structures by supporters of G. E. Zinoviev, L. D. Trotsky and T. V. Sapronov, which, after the formal defeat of the opposition, continued to work underground, was considered.