The creation of the Kursk Polytechnic Institute: problems of material and technical support

Relevance. The study of the process of establishing higher education institutions in the USSR in the 1960s is of significant scientific and practical value. This period was characterized by the country's large-scale industrialization, which required a significant increase in the number of qualified engineering personnel. The analysis of the experience of establishing and developing the Kursk Polytechnic Institute allows us to assess the role of interdepartmental cooperation and industrial support in the organization of universities in the regions, particularly in the Kursk region, and to understand the specifics of overcoming material, technical, and personnel difficulties in launching the educational process

The purpose of the study is to identify and analyze the key factors, problems and mechanisms of the formation of the material, technical and infrastructural base of the Kursk Polytechnic Institute (KPI) in the early years of its activity.

Objectives: to assess the material and technical base of the institute at the initial stage of its operation, to reconstruct the process of forming the initial infrastructure of the KPI, to analyze the institute's system of external interactions (with higher authorities, other universities, industrial enterprises) to solve resource problems and identify logistical problems that prevented the full launch of the educational process.

Methodology. The methodological basis of the research is based on the fundamental principles of objectivity and historicism. The research tasks were solved using the historical-system method, the comparative-historical method, the retrospective method, and the statistical method.

Results. The conducted research on the basis of archival documents that had not previously been put into scientific circulation made it possible to assess the process of forming the material and technical base of the Kursk Polytechnic Institute as a newly created educational institution. The chronology of the creation and initial development of the KPI was reconstructed, taking into account regulatory legal acts and official documentation, and the main problems faced by the institute at the formative stage (lack of premises, equipment, and housing for employees) were identified.

Conclusions. The establishment of the Kursk Polytechnic Institute in 1964 took place in conditions of an acute shortage of the material and technical base, premises and housing for employees. Despite the systemic supply problems and organizational difficulties, thanks to interdepartmental cooperation, support from industrial enterprises and targeted government funding, the institute was able to gradually develop the infrastructure – from the first laboratories to the new academic building.

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