Saint Petersburg Mining University (Russian: Санкт-Петербургский горный университет), is Russia's oldest technical university, and one of the oldest technical colleges in Europe. It was founded on October 21, 1773, by Empress Catherine the Great, who realised an idea proposed by Peter the Great and Mikhail Lomonosov for training engineers for the mining and metals industries. Having a strong engineering profession was seen by many Russian rulers as a vital means of maintaining Russia's status as a great power. As historian Alfred J. Rieber wrote, "The marriage of technology and central state power had a natural attraction for Peter the Great and his successors, particularly Paul I, Alexander I, and Nicholas I". All three had had a military education and seen the achievements of the engineers of revolutionary and imperial France, who had reconstructed the great highways, unified the waterways and erected buildings throughout Europe in a more lasting tribute to the French than all of Napoleon's victories. More information...
According to PR-model, spmi.ru is ranked 141,177th in multilingual Wikipedia, in particular this website is ranked 16,777th in Russian Wikipedia.
The website is placed before premiya-strzhelchika.ru and after hindiaudionotes.in in the BestRef global ranking of the most important sources of Wikipedia.
