Saint Petersburg State Electrotechnical University

Saint Petersburg Electrotechnical University "LETI" (ETU, ETU "LETI", Russian: ?????-????????????? ??????????????? ?????????????????? ??????????? «????» ??. ?.?. ???????? (??????), ??????? «????») is one of the oldest Russian higher education institutions.

It was founded in 1886 as a Technical College. LETI, as it is popularly called, received the status of a higher education institution in 1899 and became known as Electrotechnical Institute. ETU was the first higher educational institution in Europe to specialize in electrical engineering. In August 2016 ETU “LETI” became the part of the Project 5-100,[1] a Russian academic excellence program.

The University has training programs in fields of radio engineering, telecommunications, control processes, computer engineering and IT, electronics, biomedical engineering, management, and linguistics.

The need to establish a specialized educational institution focused on electrical engineering arose in Russia in 1884. At the time, application of electrical phenomena in telegraph devices was widespread, so the main task for the new Technical College was to teach subjects dealing only with the oldest branch of electrical engineering. The Chief of the Administration of Posts and Telegraphs made a statement about the need for specialists with higher education in the State Council of the Russian Empire. Count Dmitry Tolstoy, Minister of Interior, submitted a draft of Provisional Regulations to the State Council and the staff of the Technical College. On June 3, 1886, Emperor Alexander III approved of the Provisional Regulations on the Technical College with a three-year term of study.

On September 4, 1886, Technical College of the Postal and Telegraph Department, the first civilian electrotechnical educational Institution in Russia, was opened. Nikolai Pisarevsky, an outstanding engineer in the field of electrical communications, became the director of the school. The building of the former Telegraph Department (Novo-Isaakievskaya 18, now Yakubovicha Street) was allocated for the needs of the college.