Lvov, University of

(full name, Ivan Franko University of L’vov), one of the oldest and largest Soviet institutions of higher learning. It was established in 1661 as an academy with the rights and privileges of a university and had faculties of philosophy, law, medicine, and theology. The university developed and changed under feudal Poland (to 1772), the Austro-Hungarian monarchy (to 1918), and bourgeois Poland (to 1939). Eminent scholars who worked at the university include S. Banakh, R. Ganshinets, B. Dybovskii, E. Kurilovich, P. Lodii, Iu. Puzina, M. Smolukhovskii, and R. TsirkeF. Among the university’s students were A. Zhabitskii (subsequently a member of the General Council of the First International), the Ukrainian writers I. Franko, O. Makovei, M. Pavlik, S. Tudor (pseudonym Oleksiuk), and Ia. Golovatskii, the Polish poet B. Cherven’skii, and the Byelorussian poet E. Pashkevich (pseudonym Tetka).

After the western regions of the Ukraine were reunited with the Ukrainian SSR in 1939, the university was reorganized into five departments: physics and mathematics, philology, history, law, and natural sciences. The medical department became a separate institution. In 1940 the university was renamed the Ivan Franko University of L’vov.

As of 1973 the university had departments of history, philology, journalism, foreign languages, law, economics, physics, mechanics and mathematics, chemistry, geology, geography, biology, and teacher training. There are evening, correspondence, and preparatory divisions, a graduate school, 69 subdepartments, 46 research laboratories, an astronomical observatory (established in 1744), a botanical garden, two biology stations, a geography station, museums of zoology, mineralogy, geology, and archaeology, a museum devoted to the history of the university, a press, and a library containing approximately 2.5 million volumes. Members of the faculty who have contributed to the development of Soviet scientific schools include professors M. Vozniak, K. I. Gerenchuk, E. I. Gladyshevskii, B. M. Zadorozhnyi, A. S. Zashkil’niak, I. I. Kovalik, G. V. Kozii, F. Kolessa, A. N. Kostovskii, B. G. Kublanov, E. M. Laz’ko, Ia. B. Lopatinskii, D. L. Pokhilevich, D. P. Rezvoi, G. N. Savin, M. I. Sventsitskii, I. T. Ts’okh, P. M. Tsis’, and V. Shchurat.

During the 1972-73 academic year the university had an enrollment of about 12,000 students and a staff of 700 instructors, including 53 professors and doctors of sciences and 326 docents and candidates of sciences. Among the university’s graduates are the academicians of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR R. V. Kucher, O. S. Parasiuk, and Ia. S. Pidstrigach and the corresponding members of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR M. S. Brodin, I. I. Daniliuk, V. Panasiuk, and I. R. lukhnovskii. The university has published the journal Uchenye zapiski since 1946. During the Soviet period it has trained more than 30,000 specialists. In 1961 the university was awarded the Order of Lenin.