Petrograd Polytechnical Institute

Peter the Great St. Petersburg Polytechnic University, abbreviated as SPbPU, is a public technical university located in Saint Petersburg, Russia. Over the decades, it established itself as a cornerstone of technical education and research, ultimately becoming part of the informal “Big Five” — a prestigious group of the Soviet Union’s most elite engineering institutions. The university houses one of the country's most advanced research labs in hydro–aerodynamics. The university's alumni include Nobel Prize winners, such as Pyotr Kapitsa and Zhores Alferov, physicists and atomic weapon designers such as Yulii Khariton, Nikolay Dukhov, Abram Ioffe, Aleksandr Leipunskii, and Yakov Zeldovich, aircraft designers and aerospace engineers, such as Yulii Khariton, Oleg Antonov, Nikolai Polikarpov, and Georgy Beriev, and chess grandmasters, such as David Bronstein. The university offers academic programs at the Bachelor, Master's, and Doctorate degree levels. SPbSPU consists of structural units called Institutes divided into three categories: Engineering Institutes, Physical Institutes, and Economics and Humanities Institutes. In 2025, the university was ranked among top 300 in the world across Engineering and Technology subjects.

History

Imperial Russia

Saint Petersburg Polytechnic Institute was founded in 1899 as an engineering school in Russia. The main person promoting the creation of this university was the Finance Minister Count Sergei Witte. Witte viewed establishing an engineering school loosely modeled by the French École Polytechnique as an important step towards the industrialization of Russia.

The first director of the institute became Prince Andrey Gagarin. Unlike the French École Polytechnique, the Saint Petersburg Polytechnic Institute was always considered to be a civilian establishment. In tsarist Russia it was subordinated to the Ministry of Finance; its students and faculty wore the uniform of the ministry.

The main campus was built on the rural lands beyond the dacha settlement ''Lesnoye''. The location was intended to provide some separation between the campus and the capital city of Saint Petersburg. The institute was opened to students on October 1, 1902. Originally there were four departments: Economics, Shipbuilding, Electro-mechanics and Metallurgy.

Its work was interrupted by the Russian Revolution of 1905. One student, M. Savinkov, was killed during the Bloody Sunday events of . The reaction of the student body was so strong that classes only resumed in September 1906, almost two years later. Among the polytechnic students who participated in the Revolutionary events were the future Bolshevik leader Mikhail Frunze and the future writer Yevgeny Zamyatin. Among the deputies of the First Duma were four Polytechnic Institute's faculties: N.A. Gredeskul (Н.А. Гредескул), N.I. Kareev (Н.И. Кареев), A.S. Lomshakov (А.С. Ломшаков) and L.N. Yasnopolsky (Л.Н. Яснопольский). In 1910 the institute was named Peter the Great Polytechnic Institute after Peter I of Russia. In 1914 the number of students reached 6,000.

With the onset of World War I many students found themselves in the Army and soon the number of students decreased to 3,000. Some students, like future Soviet military commander Leonid Govorov studied at the institute for one month. Part of the institute's buildings were transferred into the Maria Fyodorovna Hospital. Despite the war the institute did not stop its work.

In 1916 Abram Ioffe opened his Physics Seminar at the Polytechnic Institute. The seminar prepared three Nobel Prize-winners and many other prominent Russian physicists. Eventually, this seminar became the core of the Ioffe Physico-Technical Institute.

Revolution

On June 5, 1918 the institute was renamed to First Polytechnic Institute (with the ''Second Polytechnic Institute'' being the former ''Women's Polytechnic Institute''). In November 1918 Sovnarkom abolished all forms of scientific decrees, licenses and certifications. There remained only two positions for the faculty: ''Professor'' (that required three years of engineering experience) and ''instructor'' (with no formal requirements at all). ''Departments'' were renamed ''Faculties'' (факультеты), and the director became rector. A ''Soviet'' (Council) of 11 professors and 15 students was given the main authority in the Institute. One of these 15 students in the ''Soviet'' was Pyotr Kapitsa, a future Nobel-Prize winner in physics. The Faculty of Physics and Mechanics, headed at that time by Abram Ioffe, focused on atomic and the solid state physics.

In winter of 1918/1919 there were food shortages and no heating on campus due to fuel shortages; many students and faculty members died of starvation and freezing temperatures. In the beginning 1919 there were only around 500 students at the university. In August 1919 the new semester started but on August 24 all the students were mobilized to fight Yudenich army. The Institute itself was encircled by stanchions and barbed wire and transformed into a Red Army fortification. After December 1919 the Institute was completely empty.

Soviet era

The Institute started working again in April 1920 when it became a part of the planning team for the GOELRO plan. Professor of the Institute, A. V. Wulf was the chairman of the group working on the electrification of the Northern Region of RSFSR. The Institute developed projects of the Volkhov hydroelectric dam on the Volkhov River and the Dnieper Hydroelectric Station on the Dnieper River. In autumn 1920, due to the cold weather and the absence of heating some lectures were only attended by one or two students. At that difficult time Nikolay Semyonov and Pyotr Kapitsa discovered a way to measure the magnetic field of an atomic nucleus. Later the experimental setup was improved by Otto Stern and Walther Gerlach and became known as Stern–Gerlach experiment. In another laboratory another student of the Institute, Léon Theremin worked on the development of electronic musical instruments. His first demonstration of the ''theremin'' was held in Polytechnic Institute in November 1920.

After the end of the Russian Civil War many students returned to the Institute. By the spring of 1922 there were 2800 students on the campus. In 1926, Sovnarkom re-established the title ''Engineer'' and allowed "children of working intelligentsia" to enter the tertiary schools; prior to this only workers and children of workers were allowed. The number of students enrolled at the Polytechnic Institute reached the 1914 level of 6,000. By 1928 there were 8,000 students.

In 1930, Sovnarkom decided to create a network of highly specialized Engineering schools. On June 30 Polytechnic Institute was closed and a number of independent institutes were created instead:
*Hydrotechnical (),
*Industrial Civil Engineering (), now the Military engineering-technical university (),
*Shipbuilding (),
*Aviation (),
*Electrotechnical (),
*Chemical Technology (),
*Metallurgy (),
*Machine Building (),
*Industrial Agriculture (),
*Physics and mechanics (),
*Finances and Economics () and
*Boilers and Turbines ().
Soon another ''Institute of Military Mechanics'' forked from the ''Machine Building'' Institute.

In April 1934, most of these institutes were merged back into the Leningrad Industrial Institute. In November 1940, the Institute almost got its original name back. Now it was named the Kalinin Politechnical Institute (Leningradskij Politekhnicheskij Institut imeni Kalinina) after the President of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet Mikhail Kalinin.

With the onset of the eastern front of World War II, 3500 students went to the army and hundreds were involved in constructing fortifications to the university itself. The main building was transformed into a hospital and another building was used as a tank school. Institute shops filled military contracts. On September 8, 1941 the Siege of Leningrad began. Research on the strength of ice by employees S. S. Golushkevich, P. P. Kobeko, N. M. Reyman and A. R. Shulman proved the feasibility of transporting vital materials across ice. The researchers selected the safest route for the Road of Life - the transport route across the frozen Lake Ladoga, which provided the only access to the besieged city. Some faculties and students were evacuated to Tashkent in January 1943 where they were able to hold classes. In November 1943 they restarted classes in Leningrad as well. In 1943 in Leningrad there were 250 students and 90 teachers at the Institute. The Polytechnic Institute was the only school in the besieged city that had the authority to evaluate the Kandidat (Ph.D) and Doctor of Science dissertations. Before the end of the siege the Polytechnic Institute evaluated 19 dissertations, many related to military defense.

In 1952, ''Radio-physics'' Department was created. In 1988, the new ''Physics-Technical'' (Fiziko-Tekhnichesky) Department (faculty) of the Institute was created. The department was modeled on the Ioffe Physico-Technical Institute and headed by the director of the Ioffe Institute Zhores Ivanovich Alferov, recipient of the 2000 Nobel Prize in physics.

SPbPU was part of the informal “Big Five” Soviet engineering universities — an elite group that included:

* Bauman Moscow State Technical University (BMSTU) – Leading in mechanical and aerospace engineering, central to Soviet defence and space sectors.
* Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology (MIPT) – Focused on theoretical physics and advanced science; a feeder to top research institutes.
* Moscow Power Engineering Institute (MPEI) – The USSR’s centre for power systems, electrical engineering, and energy science.
* Moscow Aviation Institute (MAI) – Specialised in aviation, rocketry, and aerospace control systems.
* Leningrad Polytechnic Institute (SPbPU) – Known for materials science, civil, and thermal engineering.

Additional institutions rounding out the top ten included MISIS (metallurgy), Tomsk Polytechnic (nuclear/petroleum), NSU (science-intensive), and KAI (aviation).

Reputation and Legacy

According to a 1972 CIA report on Soviet science and technology, the USSR outperformed the West in several critical sectors during the mid-20th century—particularly those aligned with national security and industrial expansion. These included nuclear power, aerospace and missile technology, electrical engineering, radio electronics, and laser physics. The Soviet Union, for instance, trained twice as many aviation engineers as the United States by 1970 (CIA, 1972, p. 7) and achieved nuclear arms parity by the early 1970s, supported by intensive research in plasma physics and missile guidance systems (pp. 6, 14–15).

SPbPU played a pivotal role in this advancement. It was a primary training centre for specialists in hydro-aerodynamics used in defense systems (CIA, p. 18), supporting the development of rockets and guided weapons technologies.

These contributions placed SPbPU at the forefront of Soviet scientific and engineering education, reinforcing its status among the “Big Five” elite technical universities of the USSR. While the Soviet Union lagged behind in areas such as consumer goods and microelectronics, institutions like LII sustained technological dominance in the aerospace technology.

Current status and Rankings

In September 1991 Leningrad returned its historical name Saint Petersburg and the Institute was renamed St. Petersburg State Technical University (the word "Technical" was changed to "Polytechnic" in 2002). Finally, in 2015, the institute took its current name Peter the Great St. Petersburg Polytechnic University.

The university maintains highly competitive admission standards, with an average Unified State Exam (USE) score of 82.7 out of 100 for government-funded places. SPbPU is also consistently ranked among the top twenty Russian universities for the number of winners and prize-winners in national academic Olympiads.

In 2022 the university was ranked #301 in the world in the ''Times Higher Education'' (THE) World University Rankings, #393 in QS World University Rankings, #679 in Best Global Universities Rankings by '' U.S. News & World Report'' (in 2023), and #1,005 by Center for World University Rankings.

In 2025 the university's overall position deteriorated and it was ranked #501-600 in the world in the ''Times Higher Education'' (THE) World University Rankings and #559 by the QS World University Rankings, however it retained the top 300 status across Engineering and Technology.

Although SPbPU does not consistently appear at the top of global university rankings, it remains widely recognised as one of Russia’s foremost technical institutions. Notably, the Department of Engineering at the University of Cambridge, based on internal admission data collected over several years, included SPbPU among the 11 most prestigious universities in Russia whose degrees were given preferential consideration for admission. This list was later expanded to 17 institutions, encompassing peers such as Bauman Moscow State Technical University, Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology, Moscow Aviation Institute and Moscow Power Engineering Institute. The composition of this list closely mirrors the informal “Big Five” Soviet engineering universities, underscoring that SPbPU has retained Tier 1 status in select in the airspace technology.

Students

More than 30,000 students are enrolled in the university. International students countries of origin include US, UK, France, Germany, Finland, Sweden and most of the CIS state members.

Department enrollment

Proportion of student body enrolled in each department, where enrollment exceeds 10%:

* Economics and Management – 23%
* Energy, Power engineering and Electrical engineering – 17%
* Metallurgy, Machinery and Materials processing – 10%

Campus

The campus consists of

* Buildings – 112; Students dormitories – 15 buildings
* Students – 30,197 (including 2,916 foreign students)
* Teaching staff – 3,300; University staff – 5,274

Structural units

Today the Polytechnic University includes 6 associated institutes outside Saint Petersburg in the cities of Pskov, Cheboksary, Cherepovets, Sosnovy Bor, Smolensk and Anadyr.

* 21 faculties and institutes
* Over 150 departments, 120 R&E laboratories, 26 research and educational centers
* 3 branches and 6 representatives
* St. Petersburg College of Information and Management

Alumni and faculty

The university has graduated over 150,000 students. Notable alumni and faculty include:

* Nobel Prize winners Pyotr Kapitsa, Nikolay Semyonov, and Zhores Alferov
* Academicians Igor Kurchatov, Anatoly Liberman, and Georgy Flyorov
* Physicists Abram Ioffe, Aleksandr Leipunskii, and Yakov Zeldovich
* Nuclear weapon designers Yulii Khariton and Nikolay Dukhov
* Aircraft designers Yulii Khariton, Oleg Antonov, Nikolai Polikarpov and Georgy Beriev
* T-34 tank designer Mikhail Koshkin
* Navy Admiral Aksel Berg
* Chess grandmasters David Bronstein and Russian-Israeli Dina Belenkaya
* Writers Boris Gavrilovich Gavrilov, Daniil Granin, and Yevgeny Zamyatin
* US journalist Matt Taibbi
* Theology lecturer Grigory Spiridonovich Petrov
* Former president of the Russian Academy of Sciences Anatoly Alexandrov
* Former Turkmenistan president Saparmurat Niyazov
* First cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin
* First female Azerbaijani professional metallurgist, Gjuvara Noerieva
* Ice hockey executive Latvian Kirovs Lipmans

Official names

The university has undergone several name changes throughout its existence. Detailed list of name changes is as following:
* 1899–1910 – Saint Petersburg Polytechnic Institute ()
* 1910–1914 – Saint Petersburg Peter the Great Polytechnic Institute ()
* 1914–1922 – Petrograd Peter the Great Polytechnic Institute ()
* 1922–1923 – First Petrograd Polytechnic Institute ()
* 1923–1924 – Petrograd Polytechnic Institute ()
* 1924–1930 – Leningrad Polytechnic Institute ()
* 1930–1934 – Divided into various colleges and branches under a variety of names.
* 1934–1940 – Leningrad Industrial Institute ()
* 1940–1990 – Leningrad Polytechnic Institute ()
* 1990–1991 – Leningrad State Technical University ()
* 1991–2002 – Saint-Petersburg State Technical University ()
* 2002–2015 – Saint Petersburg State Polytechnic University ()
* Since 2015 – Peter the Great St. Petersburg Polytechnic University ()

References

External links

Official Website of the Saint Petersburg State Polytechnic University2011 Official Academic Rankings of World UniversitiesPeter the Great St.Petersburg Polytechnic University in the project Study in Russia

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Universities and colleges established in 1899
Engineering universities and colleges in Russia
1899 establishments in the Russian Empire
National research universities in Russia
Research institutes in the Soviet Union
Universities in Saint Petersburg