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