Irkutsk, University of

(full name, A. A. Zhdanov University of Irkutsk), the first higher educational institution in Eastern Siberia. Founded in 1918, the university in 1920–21 comprised the departments of medicine, veterinary science, physics and mathematics, pedagogy, and social sciences (since 1924 the department of law and local economy) as well as a workers’ school (rabfak). In 1930–31 independent, branch institutes were organized on the basis of the university’s departments of medicine, finance and economics, pedagogy, and Soviet construction.

The university now comprises (1971) the departments of physics, mathematics, applied mathematics, geology, geography, chemistry, biology and soil science, history, philology (with a Buriat division), and law and a department (for citizens of the People’s Republic of Mongolia) preparing students for study in the USSR. There are also evening and correspondence courses and a graduate program. The university has 61 subdepartments. It also has scientific research institutes (biology and geography, applied physics, petroleum, and carbon chemical synthesis) as well as a computer center, a laboratory where important problems in microbiology are solved, an astronomical observatory, the Baikal and Angara biological stations, and a botanical garden. Its library has 2.5 million storage units.

During the 1970–71 academic year the University of Irkutsk had an enrollment of approximately 10,000 students and a teaching staff of 730, including 34 doctors of sciences and professors and 229 candidates of sciences and docents. The university has been publishing Trudy since 1932. Over the years, the university has trained 13,600 specialists.