TOMSK TECHNOLOGICAL INSTITUTE AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF SIBERIA IN 1900–1917

I. T. Lozovskii

Founded in 1896 and opened in 1900, Tomsk Technological Institute was the only higher technical educational institution in all of Asiatic Russia.

The establishment of the Tomsk Technological Institute of Practical Engineers was closely connected with the development of capitalism in Siberia and with the construction of the Great Siberian Railway.

During the years of the rapid development of capitalism in Russia and its penetration into Siberia and the Far East, the Russian bourgeoisie felt a great need for cadres of highly qualified specialists capable of surveying the natural resources of this region, placing them at the service of Russian capital, ensuring the normal operation of the Siberian railways, and resolving a whole series of other questions connected with the development of capitalism.

The decision adopted by the State Council in March 1896 on the establishment of the Technological Institute of Practical Engineers in the city of Tomsk fully reflected the interests of the Russian bourgeoisie and contributed to its plans for the exploitation of Siberia. The history of the establishment and development of the institute is closely connected with the work of the Siberian Railway. From the moment of its opening and up to the revolution of 1917, the technological institute trained engineering cadres chiefly for the Siberian Railway and the mining industry.

In the first decades of our century the institute was a center of technical science, a focus of technical thought and knowledge in Siberia. Naturally, owing to this position, the institute, together with Tomsk University, exerted a great influence on the development of the economy, science, and culture of Siberia.

This influence was exercised mainly in two directions. First, in the pre-revolutionary years a whole galaxy of major scholars worked at the institute; through their works they exerted a great influence on the development of the economy, science, and culture of Siberia.

V. A. Obruchev, M. A. Usov, N. M. Kizhner, N. P. Chizhevskii, and other scholars of the institute were not only prominent specialists in the field of applied sciences, but also major theoreticians, and through their works made a large contribution to the development of national and world science¹).

At the beginning of the twentieth century Siberia lagged considerably behind European Russia in economic development. However, already in those years the gold-mining industry in Irkutsk Province, Za-

¹) Prof. I. I. Kartashov, “A Brief Biographical Dictionary of Professors of TTI,” p. 155. TTI over 25 Years, Tomsk, 1928.

in the Transbaikal and Amur regions, the coal industry arose in the Kuznetsk, Cheremkhovo, and Minusinsk basins, and in the Far East. The industry for processing agricultural products and fish grew considerably. A whole series of small enterprises for the production of flour, butter, leather, alcohol, and beer arose; these were organized on capitalist principles. Of the utmost importance for the development of Siberia’s economy was the construction of the Siberian Railway, which promoted an increase in peasant resettlement to Siberia and the further development of the Siberian market by Russian capital.

Under these conditions, the participation of scholars of the Technological Institute in the development of Siberia’s economy took the form of scientific-consultative activity at a number of enterprises, organizations, and societies.

Tomsk technologists also took practical part in the construction of a number of buildings and structures, in solving purely practical problems in the operation of industrial enterprises, and in prospecting for and studying individual deposits of gold, coal, metallic ores, etc.

Secondly, the institute’s influence on the development of the economy and culture of Siberia was manifested in the training of specialists. In the pre-revolutionary years the institute trained 880 engineers²), the majority of whom remained to work in Siberia. Among these engineers there graduated: 389 mechanical engineers, 218 mining engineers and geologists, 169 civil engineers, and 114 chemical engineers³).

In those years, when 78.8% of the population (according to the 1897 census) was illiterate, eight hundred eighty engineers constituted an entire army of specialists. There is no doubt that the graduates of the Tomsk Technological Institute, going to work in transport and in the mining industry of Siberia, contributed through their knowledge to the technical progress of production and exerted a definite influence on the development of transport and industry in this region.

With the beginning of classes in 1900, a group of major specialists in the field of railway transport worked at the institute; they dealt with questions of the design and operation of locomotives and rolling stock, the surveying and construction of railway lines and structures, etc. Professors N. I. Kartashov, S. A. Vvedensky, N. A. Koshkarev, S. P. Pomelya, and a number of other scholars, through their works, made a major contribution to the development and technical improvement of railway transport.

“A major scholar in the field of steam-locomotive engineering” of the first half of the twentieth century was Professor N. I. Kartashov (1867–1943), who began his scholarly activity at TTI in 1901 (in 1903 he defended at TPI a dissertation for the right to occupy a chair⁴)).

A great expert on locomotives of all designs, Professor N. I. Kartashov was considered the foremost specialist in the field of railway transport.

After the October Revolution he was a personal consultant to the People’s Commissariat of Railways and, for his great services in the development of railway transport, was awarded the titles of Laureate of the State Prize and Honored Worker of Science and Technology of the RSFSR, and was decorated with orders.

Scholars of the Technological Institute took direct part in the construction of a number of new railway lines, bridges, depots, stations, etc.⁵). Many stations, depots, and other structures in Si—

²) Reports of TTI for 1906–1917.
³) Reports of TTI for 1906–1917.
⁴) BSE. 2nd ed., vol. 20, p. 263.
⁵) Reports of TTI for 1902, 1904, 1910.

the first buildings were constructed according to designs by institute instructors K. K. Lygin and V. F. Orzheshko, who combined service at the institute with work on the Siberian Railway¹.

Staff members of the institute also took practical part in the construction of the Siberian Railway². Thus, in 1911, a professor’s fellow (postgraduate), a graduate of TTI, civil engineer A. B. Bernstein, carried out technical supervision over the construction of the railway bridge across the Ushaika River in Tomsk and over the construction of the second track of the railway in the area of Taiga Station³.

The institute’s graduates, who had received good theoretical and practical training and were well acquainted with the specific nature of work in Siberia, were desirable candidates for filling engineering posts on the Siberian railways. This is evidenced by correspondence between railway administrators and the institute. Thus, in June 1914, the head of the Omsk Railway appealed to the institute administration with a request to assign four engineers from among those completing the course at TTI to occupy managerial positions in traction service on the Omsk Railway⁴.

The great contribution of the scholars of the technological institute to the development of railway transport in Siberia, and the extensive practical work performed by graduates of the institute who worked on the Siberian railways, received universal recognition and high appraisal. Particularly resounding was the high appraisal of the institute’s activity and of its assistance to the Siberian railways on the day of the celebration of the institute’s twenty-fifth anniversary. In their congratulations to the institute, the administrations of the Ussuri, Transbaikal, Tomsk, Omsk, and Perm railways noted the institute’s exceptionally great merits in the work of these railways⁵.

The scholars of the institute’s mining department made a substantial contribution to the study of the geological structure of Siberia, the investigation of its natural riches, the development of the gold-mining and mining-and-ore industries, and the development of geological science.

The founder of the Siberian geological school, the creator and organizer of the institute’s mining department and its first dean for many years, the major scholar and researcher V. A. Obruchev, was able to select for work in the mining department a number of talented professors and instructors: A. M. Zaitsev, L. L. Tove, M. E. Yanishevsky, A. V. Lavrsky, and later P. P. Gudkov, M. A. Usov, and others, who were major scholars and prominent researchers of Siberia, Mongolia, and Central Asia.

In the first decades of our century, the geologists of the technological institute concentrated their main attention on questions of the search for and development of gold deposits.

V. A. Obruchev, A. M. Zaitsev, M. A. Usov, and P. P. Gudkov investigated the gold-bearing regions of the Urals, Siberia, and the Far East, and conducted geological examinations of a number of mines and placer fields. Geological maps of gold-bearing regions, conclusions based on examinations of mines, and other works by the Tomsk geologists contributed to an increase in gold production in Siberia and the Far East.

The largest specialist in mining was Prof. L. L. Tove, who taught students “Gold Mining,” an entirely new subject separated from the general course of mining engineering because of its special importance for the Siberian placer mines. This course included a general outline of gold-bearing

placer mines and ore mines of Siberia and the Urals, prospecting and development of gold-bearing placers and vein deposits, washing of sands and processing of ores, sampling and evaluation of placers and ores, beneficiation, and mining management.¹¹)

Professor L. L. Tovе for a number of years served as a scientific consultant to the Russian Gold-Industrial Society and, on instructions from this society, inspected the mines of Salair, the Urals, Altai, and the placer mines of the South Yenisei, Lena, and Amur systems. He did much to introduce the mechanical method of developing gold-bearing placers with the aid of dredges, excavators, and drilling.¹²) Professor L. L. Tovе authored a three-volume statistical and economic study of gold placer mines and ore mines in Tomsk and Yenisei gubernias and in Primorskaya Oblast.

The work of Tomsk geologists in the field of gold mining was of great importance, since at the beginning of the twentieth century Siberia and the Far East produced three quarters of all the gold mined in Russia.

Great credit for the exploration of gold deposits and for improving the methods and techniques of its extraction in Asiatic Russia belongs to the scholars and graduates of the institute, who by their labor contributed to the growth of gold mining.

Geologists of the Technological Institute also made a major contribution to the study of the ore and mineral wealth of Siberia.

In August 1913 P. P. Gudkov inspected the Telbes deposit of magnetic iron ore and drew up a plan for its exploration and study.¹³)

As a result of the detailed exploration of iron-ore deposits at Telbes and Timir-Tau, carried out under the direction of Prof. P. P. Gudkov in 1913–1915, deposits of high-quality iron ores were identified, amounting, by minimum estimates, to 800 million poods. On the basis of the data obtained by Prof. P. P. Gudkov, the “Joint-Stock Company of the Kuznetsk Coal Mines” petitioned the government with a “Memorandum on the construction of a rail-rolling, iron-making, and iron-smelting plant in the Kuznetsk coal basin on the Telbes ores.”¹⁴)

M. A. Usov in 1917 studied the Abakan iron-ore deposits and began a thorough study of the mineral resources of Kuzbass.¹⁵)

Geologists of the Technological Institute have priority in predicting the presence of oil in the depths of Siberia and the possibility of its industrial exploitation.

The institute’s senior laboratory assistant, mining engineer V. D. Ryazanov, from 1904 to 1907 carried out geological surveys and searches for oil in the area of Lake Baikal. However, the expedition’s weak material and technical equipment for the search for oil, and V. D. Ryazanov’s dismissal from the institute in 1907, brought the work of the Tomsk geologists in this direction to a halt for a long time.

Economically weak Russian capitalism, entangled in survivals of feudalism, was not in a position fully to make use of the discoveries of the Tomsk geologists and to develop the richest deposits of coal, iron ore, and other minerals they had discovered.

The problem of the industrial development of Siberia’s mineral resources was solved only after the October Socialist Revolution.

¹¹) V. A. Obruchev, “Biography of L. L. Tovе,” Izvestiya TTI, vol. 39, p. 17.
¹²) Ibid.
¹³) Report of the TTI for 1913, Izvestiya TTI, vol. 35, p. 20.
¹⁴) Archive of the Department of General Geology, TTI, file 15.
¹⁵) Report of the TTI for 1912–1917.

The scholars of the Institute’s mining department made a major contribution to the development of geological science, enriching it with a whole series of new and valuable works.

Prof. V. A. Obruchev deserves great credit for developing the theoretical foundations of geology and for establishing the priority of Russian geologists on a number of questions. During the Tomsk period of his activity he created an exceptionally bold theory of the aeolian origin of the Chinese loess and published, in volume 33 of the Proceedings of the Tomsk Technological Institute, the article “In Defense of the Aeolian Hypothesis.” Subsequently this brilliant hypothesis was confirmed by numerous studies and became generally accepted.

The results of journeys undertaken with TTI funds in 1905, 1906, and 1909 for the purpose of studying Asia were summarized by V. A. Obruchev in the book Borderland Dzungaria, published in three volumes as supplements to the Proceedings of the Tomsk Technological Institute in 1912, 1914, and 1915. This work by V. A. Obruchev introduced much that was new into geological science. Later, the research materials collected by V. A. Obruchev during his work at the Tomsk Technological Institute were used and summarized in the three-volume monograph Geology of Siberia, published in 1935–1938. During his years at the Institute, V. A. Obruchev created a number of textbooks on geology that became indispensable books for students of the mining department and have not lost their significance to this day. These are Field Geology in two volumes, Ore Deposits, Fundamentals of Geology, and a number of others.

M. A. Usov made a major contribution to the development of geological science. His pen produced a large number of valuable scientific works on various questions of geology. Among them are “The Fedorov, or Universal-Optical, Method for the Study of Rock-Forming Minerals, Especially Feldspars” (printed in volumes 21 and 22 of the Proceedings of the Tomsk Technological Institute), Historical Geology (1914), Structural Geology, and others.

M. A. Usov is rightly regarded, together with V. A. Obruchev, as the creator of the Siberian school of geologists.

A major researcher of Siberia and the Urals, and the founder of the department of paleontology at the Institute, was Professor M. E. Yanishevsky. He was the author of many scientific works on historical geology, published in Russian and German.

Prof. M. E. Yanishevsky represented Russian geologists at international geological congresses in Vienna in 1903, in Mexico in 1907, and in Stockholm in 1912.^16

The great services of the Institute’s scholars in prospecting Siberia’s subsoil resources and in discovering enormous deposits of natural wealth became generally recognized. These services of the Institute were emphasized in an address from the Siberian Bureau of the Supreme Council of the National Economy on the occasion of the Institute’s twenty-fifth anniversary: “Having become the center and focus of scientific and technical thought in Siberia and taking the closest part in resolving questions raised by local industrial life, the Tomsk Technological Institute, through its fruitful work, has fully justified the hopes placed upon it by Siberian society on the path toward identifying and using those colossal natural resources with which our Siberia is so rich.”^17

The Leningrad scholars also highly valued the work of the Tomsk technologists; congratulating the Institute on its twenty-fifth anniversary, they wrote: “Mno—

^16 Reports of TTI for 1903–1912.
^17 TPI in 25 Years, p. 29.

... the natural productive forces of Siberia entered into the fabric of our life thanks to the work of the institute’s leaders and graduates⁶.

The scholars of the institute’s mining department, while studying the geological structure of Siberia, did a great deal of work in studying the geography of the vast expanses of Siberia, the Far East, Central Asia, and the countries adjacent to them. Tomsk geologists described the fauna and flora, the climate, and the economic life of the polar tundra; the mountain ranges of Mongolia and Dzungaria; the deserts of Central Asia; and the virgin expanses of the Far East.

A major role in the study of the geography of Siberia and adjacent countries belongs to V. A. Obruchev and M. E. Yanishevsky and other employees of the institute, who devoted much effort to the study of little-known and unknown parts of our great country⁷.

The scientists of the institute’s chemical department also made a major contribution to the development of science and the economy of Siberia.

In the pre-revolutionary years, major scholars worked in the institute’s chemical department: Professors N. M. Kizhner and N. P. Chizhevsky (later academicians), E. L. Zubashev, S. V. Lebedev, Ya. I. Mikhailenko, and others. A major specialist in the field of organic chemistry, Prof. N. M. Kizhner, developed in 1910 a new method for obtaining hydrocarbons, which entered chemistry under the name of the “Kizhner method.”

Professor of the chemical technology of nutrients S. V. Lebedev advanced the idea of the possibility of developing sugar production in the South and then proved this possibility.

Professors E. L. Zubashev and S. V. Lebedev developed a new, more advanced technology for production processes for distillery-yeast plants, which was of great importance for Siberia, since almost half of all Siberian industrial output (in monetary terms) consisted of distillery-yeast production.

The introduction of the new production technology developed by Tomsk chemists significantly reduced production costs, increased the productivity of the plants, and improved product quality.

In 1905 the owners of distillery-yeast plants in Tomsk Province proposed, at their own expense, to build an experimental distilling plant at the institute and to create courses for distillers and brewers. The Ministry of Public Education officially sanctioned this, requiring that a number of plans, estimates, etc., first be submitted. Correspondence with the Ministry of Public Education concerning permission to build the experimental plant continued until 1916, and the final resolution of the question was postponed until the end of the war⁸.

A major metallurgist of that time, whose scientific works exerted a great influence on the development of the metallurgical industry, was Professor of chemical technology and metallurgy N. P. Chizhevsky, who worked at the institute from 1909 to 1923.

Concerning the scientific works of Prof. N. I. Chizhevsky in those years, the Great Soviet Encyclopedia writes: “He studied (1910–1914) the influence of nitrogen, carbon, manganese, and silicon on the mechanical properties of iron and steel. He was the first to discover the property of nitrogen-saturated iron to accept hardening, laid the foundation for the metallography of nitrided iron, and proposed a method of cementing steel with boron. N. I. Chizhevsky developed a method for using a vacuum in the process of steel production (1914) and proposed a method for determining gases in steel”⁹.

The works of Professors V. Ya. Mostovich, V. A. Vanyukov, and N. V. Gutovsky had a great influence on the development of non-ferrous metallurgy.

The works of Prof. V. Ya. Mostovich on the processes of flotation of non-ferrous metals, and the methods he developed for using gold-bearing ores, contributed to an increase in the production of non-ferrous metals in the country.

A graduate of the Tomsk Technological Institute (1906), and later a professorial scholarship holder, V. A. Vanyukov, who worked at the institute from 1906 to 1913, developed a process for fire refining of copper, proved the advisability of replacing charcoal with coke in metal smelting, which led to the conversion of mine copper smelting in the Urals from wood fuel to coke. His studies of copper smelting aimed at reducing the copper content in dump slags gained worldwide recognition. The practical conclusions from these studies and the recommendations that followed from them were used at a number of plants in the Urals and the United States.

The prominent metallurgical scientist N. V. Gutovsky, through his works, contributed to the study of the Telbes iron-ore deposit and took part in the design of metallurgical plants based on this deposit. After the October Revolution, Prof. N. V. Gutovsky was personal consultant to the People’s Commissar of Heavy Industry, Sergo Ordzhonikidze, and headed the Telbes Bureau, which directed the study and development of iron ores in Kuzbass.

The chemists of the Tomsk Technological Institute laid the foundation for the development of the iodine industry in Russia. The country’s first iodine production plant was built in 1916 according to the design and under the direction of the Tomsk technologists A. I. Kalichev and Lyasota. The scholars of the Tomsk Technological Institute made a major contribution to the development of physics, mathematics, civil engineering, and other sciences, enriching them with a significant number of scientific works and studies, and with the elaboration of individual problems and questions.

Within the walls of the Technological Institute were laid the foundations of the future Siberian Scientific Research Institute of Physics and Technology, which has now received universal recognition. The founder of this institute, Academician V. D. Kuznetsov, began his path in science in 1912 as a laboratory assistant in the Department of Physics of the Technological Institute. Here his scientific interests and the main direction of his future activity took shape.

The institute’s scientists made a major contribution to the study of meteorology and geophysics in Siberia. Created in 1909 at the physics laboratory under the direction of Prof. B. I. Weinberg, the institute’s meteorological station carried out extensive work on the study of geophysical phenomena, climate, and terrestrial magnetism in Siberia. Working in close contact with the Main Geophysical Observatory of the Academy of Sciences, the institute’s meteorological station rendered it great assistance in the study of meteorological and geophysical data in Siberia¹⁰. Subsequently, the work of the institute’s geophysical station was highly valued by the USSR Academy of Sciences, and its founder and director, Prof. B. I. Weinberg, was invited in 1924 to serve as director of the Main Geophysical Observatory in Leningrad.

In 1917 a decision was made to open a Faculty of Physics and Mathematics at Tomsk University. The opening of this faculty became possible only thanks to the assistance provided by the Technological Institute. A number of disciplines in the university’s new faculty were taught by professors of the Technological Institute. In the first years, classes

students of the university’s Faculty of Physics and Mathematics were conducted in the laboratories and classrooms of the Technological Institute. The Technological Institute’s extensive assistance helped the university’s new faculty to gain strength and create its own instructional base.23)

The institute’s scientific personnel exerted a major influence on the development of specialized and general secondary education in Siberia. Together with university professors, they initiated the establishment and opening of the Siberian Higher Women’s Courses in Tomsk and carried out teaching work there.

The first director of the SHWC, opened on October 26, 1910, was Prof. A. V. Lavrskii of TTI. Among the instructors of the Higher Women’s Courses were institute professors B. P. Veinberg, M. A. Usov, V. L. Maleev, P. P. Gudkov, and others.

Many of the institute’s scientific personnel taught chemistry, physics, and mathematics in secondary educational institutions of the city of Tomsk and exerted a great influence on the organization of instruction in these subjects in the city’s schools. Among them were M. A. Usov, S. V. Lebedev, A. V. Ugarov, and others. In January 1915, the Society of Professors and Teachers of Tomsk created three-year Siberian Technical Courses, which trained technicians for industry and municipal services. The principal role in creating and directing the work of the STC belonged to the scholars of TTI. The institute also influenced the development of urban construction in Siberia. Institute instructors K. K. Lygin, V. F. Orzheshko, and A. D. Kryachkov were the authors of designs and the builders of many buildings and structures which even now adorn many Siberian cities and are landmarks of old Tomsk.

According to K. K. Lygin’s design, the district court building (now the Electromechanical Technical School), the commercial school (the red building of TISI), the diocesan school, the military-medical faculty, the public assembly building (the House of Officers), the commercial bank (the city executive committee building), School No. 1 on Pirogov Street, the stone bridge over the Ushaika River, and many other buildings and structures were built in Tomsk.

V. F. Orzheshko was the author of the design for the Makushin House of Science in Tomsk, the shopping arcades in Omsk, and so on. A. D. Kryachkov was the author of designs for a number of buildings and structures that became landmarks of Omsk, Novosibirsk, Barnaul, and Biisk. Instructor Ya. I. Nikolin was chairman of the commission for accepting the Tomsk city water supply system (from the company that built it—I. L.) and for several years supervised it without compensation. He was the first to develop a plan for a sewerage network in Tomsk. Instructor V. M. Khrushchev in 1910 developed a project for building a tramway in Tomsk. However, most projects for the improvement of the city of Tomsk, developed by Tomsk technologists, were not and could not be implemented under those social conditions.

In their political views, the majority of the institute’s professors and instructors belonged to the advanced, progressive part of the Russian intelligentsia and came out sharply against the existing order. At its meetings, the Institute Council adopted a number of resolutions condemning the existing order and demanding its change. Among them were resolutions on the need to abolish privileges for nobles studying in higher education, on admitting women to the institute, on abolishing the teaching of the law of God at the institute, on abolishing the percentage quota for admitting Jews to the institute, on abolishing the inspection for supervising students, and so on. In the prerevolutionary years, Tomsk Technological Institute was one of the centers of the revolutionary movement in Siberia.

23) GATO, f., inv., chr., file.

The students of the Technological Institute were active participants in the Revolution of 1905 and in the subsequent revolutionary battles, and they played a major role in the development of the revolutionary movement in Siberia. The institute’s professorial and teaching staff, for the most part, did not take direct part in revolutionary demonstrations, but by their actions they assisted the revolutionary struggle of the student body, for which they were often subjected to repression by the tsarist authorities.

An ardent monarchist and reactionary, the trustee of the West Siberian educational district Lavrent’ev, characterized the institute as follows: “From the very first days of its existence, the Tomsk Technological Institute became a veritable nest of local revolutionary activists.”^24)

After the October Revolution, the majority of the institute’s professors, teachers, and graduates devoted their knowledge and energies to serving the people and, through their work, made a great contribution to the building of socialism in the USSR.

^24) GATO, f. 126, op. 2, chr. 2740.

1. Report of TTI for 1909. ↩

2. Report of TTI for 1901. “Izvestiya TTI,” vol. 2, p. 23. ↩

3. GATO, fond 194, inventory 1, file 110, sheet 39. ↩

4. GATO, fond 194, inventory 1, file 110, sheet 40. ↩

5. “TTI in 25 Years,” pp. 71–75. ↩

6. Ibid., p. 53. ↩

7. GATO, fond, inventory, storage unit, file. ↩

8. TPI in 25 Years, p. 54. ↩

9. GSE, 2nd ed., vol. 47, p. 362. ↩

10. “TTI in 25 Years,” p. 51. ↩