Latvian University

(full name, P. Stučka Latvian University), founded in Riga on Feb. 8, 1919, by a decree of the government of the Latvian Soviet Socialist Republic. After the restoration of Soviet power in 1940, it became the republic’s largest educational and scientific center. In 1958 it was named after P. I. Stučka, one of the organizers of the Communist Party of Latvia. Among the famous scholars who have taught at the university are J. M. Endzeliņš, A. M. Kirhenšteins, P. J. Stradiņš, and F. J. Blumbahs.

As of 1973, the Latvian University had departments of physics and mathematics, biology, chemistry, history and philosophy, philology, foreign languages, law, geography, and economics; correspondence, evening, and preparatory divisions; and a graduate school. The university has 54 subdepartments, four special-problems laboratories, a computer center, a botanical garden, a zoological museum, and an astronomical observatory. The library contains more than 1.5 million holdings. The university publishes Uchenye zapiski (Scholarly Proceedings; since 1949), as well as Trudy (Transactions) of the university botanical garden (since 1926); both are published in Latvian and Russian.

During the 1972–73 academic year the Latvian University had an enrollment of more than 9,500 students and a staff of about 920 instructors and scientific workers, including 27 professors and doctors of sciences and 320 docents and candidates of sciences. During the period 1944–72 the university trained more than 17,000 specialists. In 1967 it was awarded the Order of the Red Banner of Labor.