(full name, A M Gorky Minsk Pedagogical Institute), founded in Minsk in 1922 as the department of pedagogy of the Byelorussian State University. A higher educational institution from 1931, it was known until 1935 as the Byelorussian Higher Institute of Pedagogy. It was named after Gorky in 1936.
As of 1973, the Minsk Pedagogical Institute included departments of physics and mathematics, the natural sciences, history, philology, pedagogy, music pedagogy, and librarianship. In addition, there are correspondence and preparatory divisions, a graduate program, 42 subdepartments, a laboratory for problems of higher pedagogical education, three scientific research laboratories, and 20 teaching laboratories. The library has more than 600,000 holdings.
In the 1973–74 academic year 9,000 students were enrolled at the institute, and more than 500 instructors were employed there, including three academicians and corresponding members of the Academy of Sciences of the Byelorussian SSR, 24 professors and doctors of sciences, and 220 docents and candidates of science. The institute is empowered to accept candidates’ dissertations for defense. It publishes Uchenye zapiski (Scholarly Transactions; since 1950) and intercollegiate collections of scientific works (since 1968). Since its founding the Minsk Pedagogical Institute has trained more than 26,000 specialists. It was awarded the Order of the Red Banner of Labor in 1972.