Moscow Agricultural Academy

(full name, K. A. Timiriazev Moscow Agricultural Academy; TSKh A), one of the oldest and largest educational and scientific research centers in the field of agriculture. The academy was founded in 1865 near Moscow, in Petrovsko-Razumovskoe. It was known as the Petrovskoe Farming and Forestry Academy until 1889 and as the Petrovskoe Agricultural Academy from 1890 to 1894. It was renamed the Moscow Agricultural Institute in 1894 and the Petrovskoe Agricultural Academy in 1917. Since 1923 it has been known as the Timiriazev Agricultural Academy.

The establishment and development of various schools of scientific thought at the academy are associated with such scientists as I. A. Stebut, K. A. Timiriazev, V. R. Vil’iams, D. N. Prianishnikov, V. P. Goriachkin, D. L. Rudzinskii, M. K. Turskii, N. S. Nesterov, R. I. Shreder, K. Z. Lindeman, N. M. Kulagin, P. N. Kuleshov, N. P. Chervinskii, E. A. Bogdanov, M. F. Pridorogin, M. F. Ivanov, P. A. Il’enkov, G. G. Gustavson, I. A. Kablukov, N. Ia. Dem’ianov, E. S. Fedorov, and la. V. Samoilov.

As of 1973 the Moscow Agricultural Academy had departments of agronomy, economy, zootechny, fruit and vegetable growing, agricultural chemistry, and pedagogy. There is also a department for the advanced training of specialists. The academy has a preparatory division, a graduate division, 61 subdepartments, a special problem laboratory, eight branch laboratories, four museums, ten experimental stations, six experimental-training farms, a botanical garden, and a library housing 1.5 million volumes.

In the 1972–73 academic year the academy had an enrollment of 3, 500 students and a teaching staff of approximately 500 instructors, including seven academicians of the Lenin All-Union Academy of Agricultural Sciences, 73 professors and doctors of sciences, and about 350 docents and candidates of sciences. The academy is accredited to confer doctoral and candidate’s degrees. It publishes Doklady TSKhA (in five series, since 1945) and Izvestiia TSKhA (intermittently from 1878 to 1952; regularly since 1952). Since the advent of Soviet power, the academy has trained more than 30, 000 specialists. It was awarded the Order of Lenin in 1940 and the Order of the Red Banner of Labor in 1965.

The academy’s main building, which was constructed between 1861 and 1864 according to the design of N. L. Benois, is a major architectural work and is maintained by the government.