The Mineralogical Society, founded in 1817, throughout its long existence has been closely connected with the Mining Institute, its professors and students. In the work of the Mineralogical Society from the first years took part figures of the Mining Institute, in particular Vasily M. Severgin and Dmitry I. Sokolov, who made a very valuable contribution to the development of geological and mineralogical sciences.

Before the outbreak of the First World War, the level of economic development of tsarist Russia was very low, especially in the mining industry. In 1913 coal production in Russia amounted to 29 million tons (2.4% of world production), oil 9.2 million tons (20%), iron ore 9.2 million tons (5%), copper 30 thousand tons (3%), lead 1.5 thousand tons, zinc 2.9 thousand tons (a fraction of a percent of world production).

The search for chrysotile asbestos deposits is facilitated by the constant confinement of deposits to certain rocks - to serpentinites. These rocks arise mainly by metamorphosis of ultramafic intrusive rocks and occasionally - by metamorphosis of dolomitized limestones, in both cases as a result of hydrothermal processes. Naturally, the search criteria and features for chrysotile asbestos deposits associated with serpentinized ultramafic rocks will be different than for deposits associated with serpentinized limestones. The most favorable parent rocks for industrially valuable anthophyllite-asbestos deposits are large- and coarse-grained pyroxenites, forming xenoliths within younger granite intrusions, especially those areas of pyroxenites that are cut by dikes of vein derivatives of granite magma.