He was Ismagil Tasimov, a mining industrialist from Bashkiria, who convinced senators and officials of the urgency of training their own engineering staff and his colleagues of the need to finance a new educational institution.
On Tuesday, May 16, representatives of the kurultais (congresses) of the Bashkirs of St. Petersburg and Moscow laid flowers at the memorial plaque to Ismagil Tasimov, who stood at the origins of higher technical education in our country. In 1771 he presented a petition to the Berg Collegium with a request to open a school of mining that will become the current St. Petersburg Mining University. The decree on its establishment two years later was signed by Empress Catherine II, inscribing on the document "So be it".
The seventies of the eighteenth century were not easy times for the Russian Empire. In the south, a victorious but incredibly difficult war with the Ottoman Empire had been going on for five years. And in the east began an increasingly dangerous for the state Pugachev's rebellion. The country, primarily due to the demand from the army and navy, increased consumption of iron, copper and other ores, which required breakthrough solutions to intensify the development of industry.
"In the second half of the 18th century, the Ural metallurgical enterprises experienced an enormous shortage of qualified engineers capable of optimizing production and thus increasing their quantitative and qualitative indicators. Foreign specialists were not eager to travel to remote regions of Russia and deprive themselves of the basic amenities of civilization, they preferred to work in the central part of the country, closer to Moscow and St. Petersburg. There was a catastrophic shortage of ore scientists who had received higher education abroad. Ismagil Tasimov who was engaged in mining copper ore and was well aware of the situation was the first to call attention to the need to create his own educational institution for training engineers," said Director of the Mining Museum Mikhail Shabalov.
The finances of the Mining School were taken care of by the Bashkir miners themselves. They pledged to "give half a kopeck (one eighth of a kopeck - ed.) of the price they received from each pood of ore." The result was a very impressive sum of about two and a half thousand rubles.
"Ismagil Tasimov was a great man who had strategic thinking. He understood perfectly well that we cannot rely solely on foreign specialists. He was sure of the necessity to build up our own personnel potential and to train Russian qualified engineers", said Yuldash Yusupov, Chairman of the World Kurultai of Bashkirs.
It is to be noted that the main purpose of the delegations of the Bashkir Kurultai of St. Petersburg and Moscow visiting the St. Petersburg State Mining University was to sign a cooperation agreement as well as to set up an entrepreneurship council.
