Byelorussian Agricultural Academy

the oldest agricultural institution of higher education in the USSR, located in the city of Gorki, Mogilev Oblast. It was founded in 1840 near the small town of Gorki, in the former Mogilev Province, as the Gory-Goretsk Agricultural School, consisting of upper and lower divisions (classes). The upper class was the first state agricultural institution of higher education of its kind in Russia. It was made the Gory-Goretsk Agricultural Institute in 1848, and in 1864 it was transferred to St. Petersburg. In 1919 it was reestablished in Gorki, and in 1925 it was renamed the Byelorussian Agricultural Academy. Prominent figures of Russian agricultural science worked in the academy, including A. V. Sovetov, I. A. Stebut, and M. V. Rytov. In 1970 the academy had 10 departments: the agrochemistry and soil science department, the department of agronomy, the zootechnics department, the department of land exploitation, the department of mechanization of agriculture, the department of water improvement, the department of mechanization of water improvement processes, the department of economics, the department of agricultural accounting, and an advanced department for agricultural specialists. The academy has a correspondence division and a graduate program. Associated with the academy are a large, mechanized teaching and experimental farm, a museum of the academy’s history, a problems laboratory, and an experimental livestock-raising station. There are about 840,000 volumes in the library.

During the 1969–70 academic year, more than 10,000 students were studying at the academy; there were 499 teachers working in 57 subdepartments, including 13 doctors of science and professors and 172 docents and candidates of science. The academy is empowered to accept the defense of doctoral and candidates’ dissertations on agricultural and technical sciences. Between 1919 and 1970 it trained 17,500 specialists. The academy publishes Trudy (since 1935), text-books, and manuals. In 1940 it was awarded the Order of the Red Banner of Labor.