Leningrad Institute of Railroad Transport Engineering

(full name, V. N. Obraztsov Leningrad Institute of Railroad Transport Engineering; LIIZhT), one of the oldest technical institutes in the USSR.

The Leningrad Institute of Railroad Transport Engineering was started in 1809 as the Communications Institute of the Corps of Engineers (initially it was a boarding school of the military type), and in 1864 it was converted into a civilian institute. In 1930 it became the LIIZhT (in the same year independent institutes for water, air, and highways were created from its departments). In 1946 the scientific research institute of bridges was organized in the LIIZhT, and in 1949 the institute was named after Academician V. N. Obraztsov.

The establishment and development of the scientific schools in the institute are associated with the names of such scientists as M. S. Volkov, N. A. Beleliubskii, N. M. Beliaev, Ia. M. Gak-kel’, G. D. Dubelir, D. I. Zhuravskii, S. V. Kerbedz, P. P. Mel’nikov, V. E. Timonov, and Academicians B. E. Vedeneev, G. O. Graftio, S. Ia. Zhuk, V. N. Obraztsov, A. N. Frolov, E. O. Paton, and G. P. Perederii. D. I. Mendeleev, M. V. Ostrogradskii, A. N. Krylov, V. I. Smirnov, and the French scientists B. Clapeyron, G. Lame, and P. D. Bazaine taught there. The students of the institute have included the Decembrist S. I. Murav’ev-Apostol, N. I. Kibal’chich (a member of People’s Will), the writer M. G. Garin-Mikhailovskii, and the high-altitude flyer A. B. Vasenko.

As of 1973 the institute had departments for civil engineering, bridges and tunnels, maintenance, and electromechanical, mechanical, and electrical engineering, as well as an evening department, a correspondence department, and branches in Riga and Velikie Luki. It has a graduate school, 48 subdepartments, 12 sectorial laboratories, and a railroad transport museum. The library has about 1.2 million books. During the 1972–73 academic year there were more than 12,000 students and about 800 instructors, including 59 professors and doctors of science and 337 docents and candidates of science. The institute offers doctor’s and candidate’s degrees. It has published Sbornik trudov since 1884. Since LIIZhT has been in existence, it has trained more than 42,000 engineers. It was awarded the Order of Lenin in 1945.