The author, one of the oldest mining engineers in Russia, gives a very vivid picture of our institute. He briefly and vividly describes the organization of training and, in particular, the life and customs of the “wards” or “cadets” of that time. The article contains a lot of convincing and interesting autobiographical material . His stay at the Mining Institute was limited to the period from the end of the summer of 1858 to the beginning of the summer of 1866. The Institute, as is known, until the fall of 1865 was a closed educational institution for many years. During a significant part of this period, the Institute experienced a transitional state, which led to its transformation into an exclusively higher open educational institution.
