Contact information • History • Access & Facilities • Bibliography
ArcheoBiblioBase: Archives in Russia: E-75Last update of repository: 15 March 2020Sankt-Peterburgskii gosudarstvennyi universitet (SPbGU)Previous names
Established in 1819 and officially opened in 1820 on the basis of the Main Pedagogical Institute, which had been operating since 1816, the Imperial St. Petersburg University had been preceded by a series of academic endeavors starting with the first secular higher educational institution—the Academic University (Akademicheskii universitet), based on a project of Peter I (1724) within the structure of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences, together with the Academic Gymnasia (dating from 1726 with some gaps through the second half of the 18th c.). In 1919 it absorbed the Second (former Higher [Bestuzhev] Courses for Women) and Third (former university under the Psycho-Neurological Institute) Petrograd Universities. During 1932–1937 it bore the name of the Bolshevik leader Andrei Sergeevich Bubnov (1884–1938), and during 1948–1988—the Soviet CP leader Andrei Aleksandrovich Zhdanov (1896–1948). During the Second World War, LGU was evacuated to Saratov (1942–1944). During different years several other institutions of higher learning were incorporated into the University as faculties. Having dropped the honorific name of Zhdanov in 1988, the University became St. Petersburg State University with the city’s change of name in the fall of 1991. In December of that year, it was added to the register as one of the most valuable monuments of the cultural heritage of the peoples of the Russian Federation. The Museum of the History of the A.A. Zhdanov Leningrad State University was founded in 1945 on the basis of collections brought together for the 1944 exhibition to mark the 125th anniversary of the founding of the University. Until 1955 the museum was considered part of the LGU M. Gor'kii Scientific Library, and later part of the Faculty of History (as a separate kafedra). Since 1995 it has been a separate administrative subdivision of SPbGU. The Mendeleev Memorial Cabinet was opened in 1911 in the university apartment which the eminent chemist Dmitrii Ivanovich Mendeleev (1834–1907) occupied from 1866 to 1890. Today the Museum-Archive has the richest collection of documents in Russia on the life and work of Mendeleev and remains under the auspices of St. Petersburg State University. |