Irkutsk Polytechnic Institute in the light of the development of the national economy of the USSR in the 1960s and 1970s
https://doi.org/10.21285/2415-8739-2024-4-175-185
EDN: LAWGSY
Abstract
The article presents the history of the development of Irkutsk Polytechnic University in the period from 1960 to the mid-1970s - the period of the formal entry of the Soviet Union (USSR) into the era of scientific and technological progress and scientific and technical revolution. The main task of this study is to find an answer to the question: how much did the structural changes of the university meet the new demands of the time. The main attention is paid to the changes associated with the transformation of the Irkutsk Mining and Metallurgical Institute into a polytechnic institute. The authors emphasized that the reform of the University took place against the general background of the development of the national economy in terms of expanding the country's resource and technical base and developing the natural resources of Siberia. This required a large number of engineering personnel, whose specialization would meet the new demands of the industrial sector, and the Polytechnic successfully coped with this difficult task. As new industries and technologies developed, the structure of education at the polytechnic was consistently transformed, new specialties, departments, and laboratories were opened. To create the most comfortable environment for students, numerous creative and sports sections functioned on the basis of the educational institution, and a mass student movement developed. The main source base for the authors were archival documents: orders of the rector, various decisions of the institute's bodies, certificates and reports stored in the State Archive of Irkutsk Oblast’ (SAIO) and the Irkutsk National Research Technical University’s (INRTU) archive. Information from publications devoted to research in the field of economic development of Eastern Siberia, Irkutsk and the Irkutsk region was also used. The article concludes that during this period, the structural transformations of Irkutsk Polytechnic University are an accurate reflection of the algorithm of economic development of the Soviet state.