Skip to main content

Mining University celebrates Victory Day

день победы
© Форпост Северо-Запад

On the eve of Victory Day, a wreath-laying ceremony took place at the oldest technical university in Russia. Wreaths and flowers were laid at the foot of the memorial to the students and professors who died during the Great Patriotic War.

During the mourning ceremony, veterans, students, and university staff honored the memory of soldiers, officers, and civilians who gave their lives for their homeland.

день победы
© Форпост Северо-Запад

Military training of students at Mining University has been going on for more than 90 years. It began in 1926 and has never stopped in the course of the Armed Forces reform in different years. Over the years more than 35,000 qualified officers have been trained at the educational institution.

Employees, students, and graduates of the university have made an invaluable contribution to our victory. They fought in the ranks of the people's militia and in partisan detachments.

Alexander Khanukaev's name was included in the lists of the foremost enemies of Nazi Germany. The graduate of faculty of mines of 1937 in the most terrible time for our country became the deputy chief of explosive works in the system of antiaircraft defense of Leningrad. The young specialist personally cleared 80 bombs of various calibers. One case was noted in our and foreign press - he alone secured an unexploded 250-kilogram bomb with several detonators and clockwork in the center of the city on the Neva. Prior to that, all such objects in all countries had been ordered to be blown up on the spot. After the war, Alexander Khanukaev defended his candidate and doctoral dissertations and became professor of chair of blasting operations in his alma mater.

Within the walls of the Leningrad Mining Institute in the hardest conditions of the besieged city, the scientific work did not cease. The scientists invented and produced for the Leningrad front the unparalleled explosive Sinal - AK. Every tenth grenade went to the front line from here. All in all during the war more than 330 thousand hand grenades and several tens of thousands of mines were made here.

день победы
© Форпост Северо-Запад

This invention, as well as other most significant scientific developments and researches of the university, which were conducted during the Great Patriotic War, is devoted to the exposition opened in the Mining Museum. The collective of the Leningrad Mining Institute "Nickel Group" created technologies of extraction of molybdenum, nickel, copper, cobalt, and platinoids by their efforts and within the shortest period. Moreover, cobalt and molybdenum production appeared for the first time in the history of our country. Non-ferrous metals became indispensable for the production of shells and high-strength armor steel. The leadership of the scientific association - Nikolai Aseyev, Naum Greiver, and Konstantin Beloglazov - received the Stalin Prize for the whole complex of works on obtaining “defense metals.”

The same award was given to Dmitry Nalivkin for geological work, which provided a raw material base for the aluminum industry in the Urals, and Sergei Smirnov for the discovery and study of tin ore deposits in the east and southeast of the USSR.

день победы
© Форпост Северо-Запад

In parallel with scientific activities, educational activities did not cease. Dozens of professors and teachers in 1944 were awarded medals and orders for their outstanding services in training personnel for the strategically important mining industry.

The exhibition features awards of the university’s employees and students, photographs of Synal’s production shops and samples of constituent elements of explosives, a “scheme” of molybdenum extraction, and many other memorable exhibits.

день победы
© Форпост Северо-Запад

The university student community also contributed to the celebration of Victory Day. During the three days from April 28 to 30, there was a military-patriotic exhibition of items found by the university search team at the sites of past battles.

день победы
© Форпост Северо-Запад