И. А. Курбасова Е. И. Силантьева

TEXT I. FROM THE HISTORY OF RAILWAY TRANSPORT INSTITUTES
(1) Before the Great October Socialist Revolution Russia had only 105 higher educational institutions with 127,000 students. At that time higher education was the privilege of the rich classes. Only 4.5 per cent of the students came from the families of workers, peasants and professional people.

(2) The first higher engineering schools were founded at the beginning of the 18th century. Earlier, engineers were brought to Russia from Western Europe but very soon it became clear that the country needed its own special­ists who knew the local working conditions.

(3) Many technological problems arose with the begin­ning of railway construction. The first public railway was constructed in 1838. In 1842, the construction of an im­portant railway between St. Petersburg and Moscow was started. This work progressed under very hard physical and climatic conditions. But all the engineering problems were successfully solved by specialists from the Railway Transport Institute (or the Institute of Ways of Communi­cation, as it w'as called at that time) founded in St. Peters­burg in 1809. This institute is the oldest of all the rail­way transport institutes in our country.

(4) Then follows the Moscow Railway Transport Insti­tute which was founded in 1896. Under the Soviet power it has become one of the largest higher educational insti­tutions of the country.

(5) If we take this institute as an example and follow its evolution we shall be able to follow the historical development of all the higher schools in the country before and after the Great October Socialist Revolution.