Education is free and compulsory for children between the ages of 6 and 15. Higher education institutions include three universities, the largest of which is the Belarusian State University (founded in 1921) in Minsk. There also are a number of specialized academies and institutes for studies in technical arts, agriculture, medicine, economics, and other fields. The literacy rate is 100 percent. While the current literacy rate is high, only about 30 percent of the population was literate in 1919. The Soviet regime emphasized compulsory education and claimed to have eliminated illiteracy by the 1950s. At the same time, after the 1920s there was little provision for education in the Belarusian language. In the post-World War II years, and especially in the 1960s and 1970s, the culture of the republic was thoroughly Russified through government policies that emphasized the Russian language. Schools that taught in the Belarusian language were closed, primarily in rural areas. The process of Russification was reversed somewhat between 1985 and 1991, when Mikhail Gorbachev was leader of the USSR, and in the early 1990s.