Tartu, University of

one of the oldest higher educational institutions in the USSR. Its history goes back to 1632, when the Academia Gustaviana was founded in Tartu; it existed—with interruptions—until 1710 and was reopened in 1802 as the University of Dorpat, becoming the University of Iur’ev in 1893 in connection with the renaming of the city, and receiving its present name in 1918. The Professorial Institute, which trained professors for Russia’s higher educational institutions, existed at the university from 1828 to 1839.

Many scholars and scientists have worked at the University of Tartu. Among them are the astronomer V. Ia. Struve and the botanists K. F. Ledebour, E. Russow, and N. I. Kuznetsov, the biologists K. M. Ber, Kh. I. Pander, and A. N. Severtsov, and the physiologists H. F. Bidder and F. V. Ovsiannikov. Also associated with the university have been the geologist F. Iu. Levinson Lessing, the pharmacologist J. G. Dragendorff, and the chemists C. E. H. Schmidt, G. I. Gess, K. K. Klaus, G. H. Tammann, I. L. Kondakov, W. F. Ostwald, L. V. Pisarzhevskii, and P. N. Kogerman. In physics, the university’s scholars have included G. F. Parrot, H. F. E. Lenz, B. S. Iakobi, B. B. Golitsyn, and J. Vilip. The surgeons N. I. Pirogov, N. N. Burdenko, and L. Puusepp, along with N. I. Lunin, the founder of the study of vitamins, also worked there, as did the mathematicians M. I. Bartel’s, G. V. Kolosov, and L. S. Leibenzon, the philologists F. I. Videman (F. J. Wiedemann), M. Veske, I. A. Baudouin de Courtenay, J. M. Endzelīns, and J. V. Veski, the historians J. P. G. Evers and E. V. Tarle, and the jurist V. E. Grabar’. Among those who have studied at the university have been the well-known literary scholars and critics V. A. Desnitskii and N. K. Piksanov, the Estonian cultural figures F. R. Faehlmann, F. R. Kreutzwald, A. H. Tammsaare, and A. Jakobson, the Armenian educator Kh. Abovian, the Latvian progressive figures K. Barons, K. Valdemārs, E. Veidenbaums, and F. Roziņš, the Lithuanian revolutionary K. Požela, and V. I. Lenin’s younger brother, D. I. Ul’ianov. In 1918, part of the University of Tartu (then called the University of Iur’ev) that had been evacuated to Voronezh served as the basis for the establishment of the University of Voronezh. In 1946 a number of scientific research institutes of the Academy of Sciences of the Estonian SSR, and in 1951 the Estonian Agricultural Academy, were formed from subdivisions of the university.

In 1975 the University of Tartu included faculties of biology and geography, history, mathematics, medicine, physical chemistry, philology, economics, law, and physical education. It also had two departments for the advanced training of specialists, a correspondence division, and a graduate school. There were 76 subdepartments, a scientific research division, a computer center, 14 special-problems and sectorial laboratories, a botanical garden, and three museums. The university library has more than 3 million volumes. In the 1975–1976 academic year there were approximately 6,500 students and 900 teachers and research workers, including ten academicians and corresponding members of the Academy of Sciences of the Estonian SSR and the Academy of Pedagogical Sciences and Academy of Medical Sciences of the USSR, 74 professors and doctors of sciences, and more than 350 docents and candidates of sciences. The university has published its Uchenye zapiski (Transactions) since 1893 and a number of topical collections of scholarly works including Skandinavskii sbornik (Scandinavian Collection, since 1956) and Sovetskaia pe-dagogika i shkola (Soviet Pedagogy and School, since 1968). Between 1945 and 1975 more than 18,000 specialists were trained at the university.

The University of Tartu was awarded the Order of the Red Banner of Labor in 1967.