Leningrad Pedagogical Institute

(full name, A. I. Herzen Leningrad Pedagogical Institute), founded in 1918 as the Third Petrograd Pedagogical Institute A. V. Lunacharskii and M. Gorky, with the help of V. A. Desnitskii and A. P. Pinkevich. In 1920 the institute was renamed the A. I. Herzen Third Petrograd Pedagogical Institute. In 1922–23 the First, Second, and Third Pedagogical Institutes merged to form the A. I. Herzen Leningrad State Pedagogical Institute. Eminent Soviet scholars who have worked at the institute include S. P. Arzhanov, K. M. Bykov, V. N. Verkhovskii, B. D. Grekov, V. L. Komarov, N. A. Maksimov, N. A. Rozhkov, V. V. Struve, E. V. Tarle, I. I. Tolstoi, A. I. Tiumenov, and Iu. M. Shokal’skii.

As of 1973 the institute had departments of pedagogy, history, Russian language and literature, foreign languages, mathematics, physics, natural sciences, chemistry, geography, defectology, physical education, and drawing. Secondary-school teachers receive training in 36 specialties. There is also a department for the advanced training of teachers at pedagogical institutes and vocational schools. Between 1920 and 1950 the institute’s Division of Peoples of the Far North issued the first textbooks and primers in Evenki, Nanai, Chukchi, Eskimo, Nenets, and other languages of the peoples of the north, who did not have a written language before the October Revolution. The institute also has evening and correspondence divisions, a graduate school, advanced courses for training foreign language teachers in higher educational institutions, and 69 subdepartments. Its library contains more than 1,700,000 volumes.

In the 1972–73 academic year the institute had an enrollment of 11,300 students and a faculty of more than 800 teachers, including 82 professors and doctors of sciences and 429 docents and candidates of sciences. It accepts for defense dissertations for the degrees of doctor and candidate of sciences. Since 1935 it has been publishing Uchenye zapiski. The institute has trained 62,500 teachers and research workers in education since its foundation. In 1967 it was awarded the Order of the Red Banner of Labor.

The institute’s main building is the former Razumovskii Palace (1762–66; architects, A. F. Kokorinov and J. B. Vallin de la Mothe), and classes are held in the former Shtegel’man House (1750–53; architect, V. V. Rastrelli) and in the former Foundling Hospital (first half of the 19th century).