Volga Forestry Engineering Institute named after M. Gorky during the Great Patriotic War (1941-1945)
Introduction. The article is devoted to the study of the activities of the Volga Forestry Engineering Institute named after M. Gorky (VFEI) in the difficult period of the Great Patriotic War for the country. The new tasks of VFEI before the higher school in the conditions of wartime emergency are shown. The Institute was designed to train highly qualified personnel for the forest industry and forestry. The main attention is focused on the structure of the educational activities of VFEI in the mentioned period and the research work of the teaching staff that is closest to the needs of the defense. Purpose: to study the history of the Volga Forestry Engineering Institute named after M. Gorky during the Great Patriotic War (1941-1945). Materials and methods. The article is written on the basis of the principles of historicism and objectivity using the methods of analysis, comparison, and description. Research results, discussions. The relevance of the study is associated with the extreme insufficiency of works in the modern domestic research field that consider the activities of VFEI in difficult wartime. The paper used previously unpublished documents on the activities of the technical university during the Great Patriotic War from the fund of the State Archive of the Republic of Mari El. Conclusion. It was concluded that VFEI, despite the difficulties of wartime, achieved significant success in educational and scientific work. The Volga Forestry Engineering Institute named after M. Gorky in 1941-1945 prepared 132 specialists for the forestry and woodworking industry. In 1943, a new Faculty of Engineering and Economics, the only one in the USSR, was opened on the basis of VFEI. The Institute did not reduce its teaching staff for four years, and the number of departments increased from 9 to 22.