History

Foundation and Development Stages 

Start: 1917 - 1935

1917 Organization of language courses in Nizhny Novgorod by Max Landau 

1922 Language courses advance to State language courses

 

Before the World War II: 1935 - 1941

1935 Alexander Berezin becomes Director of the courses

1937 Gorky State Pedagogical Institute of Foreign Languages is founded on the basis of the language courses (at the time Nizhny Novgorod has the name Gorky after Maxim Gorky, the famous Soviet writer)

1940 Construction of a new building begins (31a, Minin street)

1940/1941 New chairs are founded: Pedagogics and Psychology, Latin, Teaching Methods, Literature 

 

World War II: 1941 - 1945

1941 The war begins. Many students and professors go to the front as volunteers, among them the director Mikhail Sharkov

1941 Petr Shulpin is assigned as a director. The Institute works without vacations to intensively train interpreters, intelligence officers, and school teachers. Students and professors go to the front, take part in constructing the city’s fortification, donate money for the armaments

1942 Translators and interpreters department is founded as a prototype of the future Translation and Interpreting School

 

After the war: 1946-1960    

1949 New building in Minin street is commissioned

1955 Pavel Kargopoltsev takes the director’s position. The Institute starts publishing its scientific journal

1956 Postgraduate studies are offered at the chairs of English, German, and French Philology

1960s Refresher courses for other institutes’ professors are offered, the Institute gets its own PhDs. Partner relationship is established to the universities of German Democratic Republic, Hungary, Czechoslovakia

1950s-1960s The audiovisual techniques for language training intensively develop at the Institute with the respective laboratory. A new language training approach is developed, the complex method to replace the former method of divided training in phonetics, grammar, and lexis

 

New developments 1961-1975

1961 The name of the Russian literature critic Nikolai Dobrolyubov is given to the Institute

1962 The Military chair is founded to train military translators and interpreters. 8000 officers have graduated from it in its whole active period

1962 The department of translation and interpreters is launched at the schools of English and French to become the School of Translation and Interpreting in 1964. However, 1962 is officially considered the foundation year of the School

1963 The first students’ residence building is commissioned

1964 Anatoly Domashnev becomes the Rector (the rector’s position having replaced that of the director in the Soviet Union in 1961). He is the first institute’s head to be a linguist, beside that a famous scientist. Such famous linguists as Yuri Skrebnev and Ravil Kaspransky are invited to the Institute to create their scientific schools here and to acquire an international reputation for scientific leadership

1966 A building in Bolshaya Pecherskaya street at the opposite side of the campus (former secondary school) is assigned to the Institute

         

1968 Kuzma Sizov becomes the rector

1971 the rector is first time invited to the USA to exchange experience with the National Education Association

1975 new students’ residence building near the campus is commissioned

 

End of the Soviet period 1976-1987

1981 new institute’s building is commissioned

The institute’s scientific schools intensively develop: description of colloquial speech (Yuri Skrebnev), experimental study of speech sounds (Ravil Kaspransky), semantics of grammar units (Vladimir Schetinkin), lexical semantics (Vladimir Vashunin), lexis stratification for language teaching (Mikhail Ivashkin), functional approach in studying language units (Alexandra Kukushkina), poetics and stylistics of foreign literature in XIX-XX (Zoya Kirnoze).

 

The turn of the century 1988-2009

1988 Gennady Ryabov is the first rector to be elected by the staff

1994 the institute is given the status of the university

1990s the computerization of the university starts and successfully develops. Admission options are considerably widened by studies against payment (previously, only studies with budgetary funding were possible) 

Many new majors are offered, such as Journalism, International Relations, Management, Finance and Credit, Tourism, new languages diversify the university’s program, new schools and departments are created

Partnership agreements are signed with universities of the USA, Great Britain, Germany, Austria, France, Italy, Belgium, Sweden, Denmark, Japan, China, South Korea, Turkey, Cyprus

2007 new, the fourth building adjoining the campus is commissioned

2009 Boris Zhigalev becomes the rector, Gennady Ryabov the president

2019 Zhanna Nikonova is the first woman to become the rector. Boris Zhigalev becomes the president