Kiev, University of

(full name, T. G. Shevchenko University of Kiev), established in Kiev in 1834 as the successor to the Kiev Mogila Academy. It consisted of a faculty of philosophy, subdivided into history-philology and physics-mathematics sections, which later developed into independent departments. A law faculty was established in 1835, and a medical faculty was added in 1841. Thus, until 1920, the university had four faculties.

Many famous scholars taught at the university in the pre-revolutionary period, including N. I. Kostomarov, M. V. Dovnar-Zapol’skii, M. A. Maksimovich, V. N. Peretts, A. F. Kistiakovskii, K. P. Nevolin, M. F. Vladimirskii-Budanov, V. P. Ermakov, D. A. Grave, M. P. Avenarius, N. N. Shiller, P. P. Alekseev, M. A. Bunge, S. N. Reformatskii, K. M. Feofilaktov, N. I. Andrusov, P. A. Tutkovskii, K. F. Kesler, and A. O. Kovalevskii. The poet T. G. Shevchenko was also on the faculty, as was N. I. Ziber, one of the first disseminators of Marxism in Russia. I. S. Turgenev, D. I. Mendeleev, N. E. Zhukovskii, and P. P. Semenov-Tian-Shanskii were honorary members of the university. Ten scientific societies functioned under the auspices of the university, and the monthly Universitetskie izvestiia was published from 1861 to 1917. About 20,000 students had graduated from the university by 1917.

Between 1920 and 1933 the university was replaced by institutes of public education, social upbringing, and professional training. The University of Kiev was reorganized in 1933 with six departments, and in 1939 it was named the T. G. Shevchenko University of Kiev. During the Great Patriotic War the university was evacuated to Kzyl-Orda, where together with the University of Kharkov it formed the United Ukrainian University in 1942—43. It was reopened in Kiev in 1944.

The university has (1972) departments of biology, geology, geography, economics, cybernetics, mechanics and mathematics, physics, radiophysics, chemistry, journalism, Romance and Germanic languages and literatures, philology, history, philosophy, law, and international relations and international law; a department for the advanced training of teachers of the natural sciences; a preparatory department for foreign students; evening and correspondence divisions; and a graduate school. Classes are conducted in both Ukrainian and Russian.

The university also has 135 subdepartments, an institute for the advanced training of teachers of the social sciences, a research institute of physiology, a computer center, a research sector, laboratories for studying special problems, an astronomical observatory, the Kanev instructional-research farm, an instructional experimental center, botanical gardens, museums, a film studio for making educational films, and a physics and mathematics boarding school. The university’s research library contains 1.5 million holdings.

In 1972 the university had an enrollment of about 22,000 students and a faculty of more than 1,500 instructors, including 29 academicians and corresponding members of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR, 164 professors and doctors of sciences, and more than 700 docents and candidates of sciences. Many prominent scholars have worked at the university, including A. E. Krymskii, L. A. Bulakhovskii, A. I. Beletskii, A. V. Palladin, N. M. Krylov, N. N. Bogoliubov, M. A. Lavrent’ev, A. I. Kipriianov, and I. I. Shmal’gauzen.

More than 50,000 specialists have received their training at the university during the years of Soviet power.

The university publishes the Ukrainian-language Nauchnye zapiski (Scholarly Transactions, since 1935), Nauchnyi ezhegodnik (Scholarly Yearbook, since 1957), and Vestnik Kievskogo universiteta (Journal of the University of Kiev, since 1958). The University of Kiev was awarded the Order of Lenin in 1959.