Kharkov Polytechnic Institute

(full name, V. I. Lenin Kharkov Polytechnic Institute), a major higher technical school in the USSR, founded in 1885 as the Kharkov Practical Technological Institute. From the outset the institute’s progressive students and instructors spoke out against tsarism and reaction, and in 1917 a Red Guard detachment was formed at the institute. Two of its alumni, L. B. Krasin and I. E. Iakir, became party and government leaders of the USSR. In 1923 the institute was named in honor of V. I. Lenin. The first workers’ school (rabfak) in the Ukraine was organized at the institute in August 1921. In 1929 the institute was renamed the Kharkov Polytechnic Institute.

In 1930 the institute was reorganized into five independent institutes: mechanics and machine building, electrical engineering, aviation, chemical engineering, and civil engineering. In 1949 the institute was reestablished through the merger of Kharkov’s institutes of mechanics and machine building, electrical engineering, chemical engineering, and cement-industry engineering. The institute’s branch in Voroshilovgrad became an independent machine-building institute in 1961, and its branch in Kirovograd was transformed into an agricultural machine-building institute in 1968. Substantial contributions to Russian and world science have been made by scientists working at the institute, among them V. L. Kirpichev, N. N. Beketov, A. M. Liapunov, V. A. Steklov, G. F. Proskura, I. M. Babakov, P. P. Budnikov, V. M. Khrushchev, P. P. Karpukhin, E. I. Orlov, I. I. Strelkov, S. S. Urazovskii, L. D. Landau, and A. K. Val’ter.

The institute comprises (1977) departments of mechanics and metallurgy, machine building, power machine building, transport machine building, electrical machine building, physical engineering, engineering physics, electric power, automation and instrument-making, inorganic substance technology, organic substance technology, and chemical machine building. The institute has evening, correspondence, and preparatory divisions, a graduate school, a department for improving the qualifications of technicum instructors, and courses for the advanced training of engineers and technicians. It also has a general engineering department and branches in Kremenchug and Sumy. The institute includes 72 subdepartments, about 100 laboratories, a research division consisting of four special-problems and 18 sectorial laboratories, training and experimental workshops, a computer center, and a research library with more than a million volumes. The institute conducts scientific work at some of Kharkov’s largest enterprises, notably the S. Ordzhonikidze Tractor Plant, the S. M. Kirov Turbine Plant, and the V. A. Malyshev Transport Machine Building Plant.

Scientific schools have been founded at the institute to study the properties and production technology of nitric acid, to work on theoretical problems of contemporary turbine building, to study the structure of thin films of semiconductor materials, to create new surfactants and detergents, and to investigate the dynamics and strength of machines. The institute publishes the periodical Vestnik (since 1952) and collections of scientific and technical articles.

In the 1976–77 academic year the institute had an enrollment of about 23,000 students and a faculty of more than 1,300 instructors, including 56 professors and doctors of sciences, 549 docents and candidates of sciences, and four academicians and corresponding members of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR. The institute confers doctoral and candidate’s degrees. During the years of Soviet power some 72,000 specialists (1977) have been trained by the institute. It was awarded the Order of Lenin in 1967.