Leningrad Agricultural Institute

(town of Pushkin, Leningrad Oblast), founded in 1922 by merging the Stebut, Kamennyi Ostrov, and Petrograd institutes of agronomy, which had been established in the early 20th century in Petrograd. Academicians K. D. Glinka, N. I. Vavilov, and M. N. Letoshnev and Professor M. I. D’iakov worked in the institute. I. G. Eikhvel’d, I. I. Samoilov, N. G. Belen’kii, and A. P. Dmitrochenko, who later became well-known Soviet scientists, studied here.

The institute has (1973) departments of agricultural chemistry and soil science, agronomy, zootechnics, fruit and vegetable growing, plant protection, economics, electrification of agriculture, and mechanization of agriculture. It also has a correspondence division, programs for the advanced training of specialists, a department of public professions which trains lecturers in different subjects for work in villages, a preparatory division, branches in Novgorod and Polessk in Kaliningrad Oblast, graduate courses, 56 subdepartments, six special problems and sectorial laboratories, a teaching and experimental farm, and experimental and production shops. There is a library with more than 550,000 volumes.

In the 1972–73 academic year, more than 10,000 students were in attendance. There were about 500 teachers, including two academicians of the V. I. Lenin All-Union Academy of Agricultural Sciences, 41 professors and doctors of sciences, and more than 270 docents and candidates of sciences. The institute is empowered to accept doctoral and candidate’s dissertations for defense. The Zapiski (Transactions) of the institute have been published since 1919. The institute trained more than 30,000 specialists from 1922 to 1970. It was awarded the Order of the Red Banner of Labor in 1971.