South Ural State University joins a project by the Russian Federation Ministry of Science and Higher Education and launches a cycle of publications about the heroes of the Great Patriotic War – academic and administrative staff members of our university.
The Ministry acted as the initiator of the “Scientific Regiment” series of publications. The project is created on the occasion of the Year of Science and Technology. The initiative of mass publications of stories from the archives of scientific and educational organisations under the #научныйполк (#scientificregiment) hashtag aims at strengthening the historical pride and protecting the historical truth about the scientists and teaching staff who worked during the years of the Great Patriotic War.
The SUSU official web-site will post stories about the people, who after returning from the war began building our educational institution, back then – the Chelyabinsk Mechanical Engineering Institute, and later the Chelyabinsk Polytechnic Institute. The academic buildings and the main laboratories were created by that war-time generation. The very same people started establishing the whole scientific schools, which are recognized well beyond the borders of our country. The materials will be published in “The SUSU Immortal Regiment”. The cycle of publications will be completed by June 22 this year.
In May, an exhibition of the same name, “The SUSU Immortal Regiment”, was held at the university on the occasion of celebrating the 76th Anniversary of the Victory in the Great Patriotic War. This unique project was fulfilled at the initiative of the Council of Veterans, Director of the Museum and Education Complex Nadezhda Ivanova, and the university’s Extracurricular Activities Office. Over the course of the year, a meticulous work had been being carried out using the archive documents in order to reconstruct the university’s history of those times. The SUSU Immortal Regiment comprises 211 names of the university staff members, who participated in the Great Patriotic War.
In addition, in 2005, a book About Fires Burning, about Our Friends and Comrades was released, which describes the fate of 162 participants of the Great Patriotic War – staff members of CMEI – CPI – CSTU – SUSU. The year of 2008 saw the publication of a book Cast of the Same Metal…, about the staff members of the Chelyabinsk Polytechnic Institute on the front line and in the rear during the Great Patriotic War years.
The series of publications opens with a story about Aleksei Sychev.
Aleksei Sychev was born to a family of a poor peasant in Irkutsk province in Siberia in 1902. In the age of 8 he began to help his family. Soon after the Great October Socialist Revolution in 1919 he enrolled in a pedagogical technical secondary school. There he joined the Leninist Young Communist League of the Soviet Union. In 1921 he became a member of the Communist party. In 1924-1925 he worked as a commissioner of the Kirensk District All-Union State Political Administration of the All-Russian Special Commission for Combating Counter-revolution, Sabotage and Speculation, and at the same time he headed a department of UKSh of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks. Since 1924 he served as a political instructor in the army and continued his studies. In 1930 he graduated from Irkutsk State University and began teaching work at the Ural Polytechnic Institute.
In 1934 Aleksei Sychev defended his candidate thesis and was confirmed in the title of an Associate Professor. In 1941 he was appointed as head of a department of the Sverdlovsk Regional Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. Having completed military courses in the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the USSR (June of 1942), he was dispatched to the active army to the Southwestern Front.
Deputy head of the political unit of the 65th army of the Don, and later of the Central Front; deputy commandant in the cities of Lublin and Warsaw; Head of Commerce and Industry in the Soviet Occupation Zone in Berlin – that is his biography in the Front.
After his demobilization from the army in 1946 he returned to the pedagogical work. From 1946 through 1951 he worked as an Associate Professor in the Ural Polytechnic Institute. In 1951 he was appointed Director of the Chelyabinsk Polytechnic Institute (CPI), and defended his doctoral thesis.
It was in his time that the building of CPI started. Working as the Institute director, from 1951 through 1962, Aleksei Sychev very actively participated in expanding of the Institute’s material base and in opening of new specialities. He was a delegate at the 22nd Communist Party Congress.
He was awarded the Medal “For the Defence of Stalingrad”, the Orders of the Great Patriotic War of the 1st and 2nd class, the Order of the Red Star, and the Medal for the Victory over Germany in the Great Patriotic War 1941-1945. For his work in CPI, he was awarded the Order of Lenin and the Badge of Honour Order.
For his great teaching and educational, scientific and research, and organizational work, and on the occasion of the 50th Anniversary of the Great October Socialist Revolution, Aleksei Sychev was included in the Institute’s Book of Honour.