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St. Petersburg Mining University presented a stamp dedicated to the 250th anniversary of the university

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It depicts the facade of the historic building of the country's first institution of higher technical education, which was built by the great Russian architect Andrey Voronikhin.

On Tuesday January 24 the St. Petersburg Mining University held a special ceremony of stamp redemption of 50 rubles par value which was issued specially for the 250th anniversary of the university. It was attended by the rector Vladimir Litvinenko and Dmitry Serebrennikov, the head of the North-West region of the Russian Post.

They stamped the first day stamps and envelopes with a special artistic stamp. Such items are considered to be especially valuable by philatelists and often are the pride of a collection. However, as was noted during the event, the release on the market of another rarity was not the main goal of the parties.

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© Форпост Северо-Запад

"Mining engineers have always been the elite of society. Their image was associated with progress. Their uniform, upbringing, broad education - these were people one wanted to look up to, their high social status could not be questioned in any way. Unfortunately, with the collapse of the Soviet Union much has changed in our country, so I take this stamp not as just another collectible item, but as a symbol of the attitude to the mining industry, the mineral complex, which is the backbone of the domestic economy. It is a symbol of understanding the importance of the specialists who have been graduating from our university for a quarter of a millennium. I am sure that the further social and economic development of Russia is directly connected with the revival of the former prestige of such professions as military, teacher, doctor, engineer," stressed Vladimir Litvinenko.

He recalled that in the second half of the 18th century our state was experiencing, in fact, a turning point. In the south there was a victorious, but incredibly difficult war with the Ottoman Empire for five years. The Barsk confederation in Poland was raging. In the east, the Pugachev rebellion, which many historians call the first civil war, was beginning to be more and more dangerous for the state.

There was a growing demand for iron, copper, and other ore, mainly for the needs of the army, and there was an acute shortage of engineers who would be able to increase the output of the Ural metallurgical plants and organize their uninterrupted operation. Foreigners were not eager to go far away and preferred to work in central Russia, closer to Moscow and St. Petersburg. Their own competent personnel, who had been educated abroad, was in short supply. And so, Catherine II makes the only right decision in this situation - to engage in import substitution, that is, to start training engineers inside the country, and opens for this purpose the Mining School - the future St. Petersburg Mining University.

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"For two and a half centuries, the university has been fulfilling its most important mission: to represent the main design bureau of Russia. Its graduates and staff have played a leading role in the Russian scientific community all this time. It is a great honor for us to be involved in the anniversary and to immortalize the university building on philately products", - emphasized Dmitry Serebrennikov, the director of the North-West macro region of the Russian Post.

Indeed, graduates and employees of the Mining University have always been at the forefront of Russia's innovative development. For example, Pavel Anosov invented the gold panning machine and deduced the formula for domestic mace steel. His disciple Pavel Obukhov, after the defeat in the Crimean War, reformed the whole metallurgical industry of the country and created cannons superior in quality to the German Krupp factories, which initially seemed impossible. The Commander-in-Chief of the Russian Army Pyotr Wrangel, the first president of the Russian Academy of Sciences Alexander Karpinsky, the organizer of the Soviet oil industry Ivan Gubkin, the discoverer of the Volga-Urals oil and gas province Pavel Preobrazhensky - this is only a minimal list of famous graduates of the university.

"Even now we are not standing still. The scientists of the Mining University have thousands of patents, hundreds of medals at the most prestigious international exhibitions, and dozens of government prizes and awards. This is the result of scientific activity that has wide practical application. We rank among the top one hundred institutions of higher education worldwide in terms of revenues from research and development activities. Such conjuncture is due to our high demand on the part of large companies that build new production facilities in the country. For example, scientists of St. Petersburg Mining University provided scientific support for Titan-Polymer plant, which was opened by our President Vladimir Putin at the end of last year," said Vladimir Litvinenko.

It should be noted that the oldest technical university in Russia, according to the authoritative international rating agency QS (Great Britain), ranks 3rd among all engineering universities in the world in its training profile.

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