2018 is rich in significant "geographical" dates. Thus, the Geographical Institute, the world's first geographical educational institution, celebrates its 100th anniversary. It was formed September 1, 1918.
The Institute consisted of two faculties: the Faculty of General Geography and the Faculty of Ethnography and they included 16 departments. First students of the Geographical Institute studied general geography and geomorphology, country studies, soil geography and soil science, geology, paleontology and other related sciences. And in 1925, the Geographical Institute joined Leningrad University and became the Faculty of Geography. Until 1930 it consisted of three departments: General Geographic, Ethnographic and Anthropological ones.
During its 100 years of history, the Geographical Institute has gone through several reorganization and its names has been changed more than once. Anyway, the oldest Geographical Institute exists today as the Institute of Earth Sciences of St. Petersburg State University, which was the first in Russia to begin training specialists with higher geographical and environmental education.
The Institute of Geography of the Russian Academy of Sciences also celebrates its 100th anniversary. The national geographical science is connected with this institution.
Its foundation was based on Russian Scientific Geographical Schools of the late XIX-early XX century and works of outstanding scientists. Among them are the works of Pyotr Petrovich Semenov-Tyan-Shansky and Dmitry Nikolaevich Anuchin, who in 1915 proposed to organize the Central Geographical Institute for the study of "internal parts of our Fatherland."