At present, professional educational organizations are the main source of training educated, intellectually and professionally developed, competitive workforce in demand on the labor market. In order to increase the efficiency of this process, it is necessary to carry out an analysis, a scientific comprehension and generalization of the historical experience of vocational education of the Mari ASSR in 1940-1960. The necessity of scientific reflection on the theory and practice of professional technical education of the Mari ASSR in this period of time determines the study of historical and socio-economic prerequisites, theoretical and methodological issues – the general concept of the development of vocational education in its dialectical connections with the socioeconomic and political development of society in general, with the development of general education, scientific and technological progress. The evacuation of industrial enterprises to the east during the Great Patriotic War, in particular, to the republic, served as the basis for the development of new branches of industrial production. The influx of young people into the production necessitated the urgent preparation of skilled workers who were able to deploy the evacuated enterprises in the shortest possible time. Individual tutoring, courses, vocational and factory schools were actively used in their training. Thus, the centralized planned system of providing the industry with working staff, created on the eve of the war, had fully justified itself and had proved its viability in extreme conditions. Historical and socio-economic features of the development of the republic were an important factor in the formation and development of vocational education, as well as an incentive for changing it. Qualitative changes in production entailed corresponding changes in the content and methods of training. Scientific and technological progress created new branches of production, deepening its specialization. This, in turn, conditioned the emergence and development of new professions and, at the same time, led to the removal of professions associated with the disappearing types of production. The postwar reconstruction of the national economy required skilled workers and involved broader classes of young people in vocational education. One of the priorities in the post-war period was the need to involve young people in production, the transfer of appropriate skills. Consequently, the historical and pedagogical analysis of the formation and development of the vocational education of the Mari ASSR in the 1940s–1960s makes it possible to determine the specific features of vocational education as an integral, dynamically complex system in which pedagogical, economic, social and production processes are carried out, as well as to reflect their interrelationship and interdependence.