The establishment of the Kharkiv Practical Technological Institute in the context of modernization

The article examines the history of establishment of the Kharkiv Practical Technological Institute in the broad context of modernization processes. The history of the Practical Technological Institute in Kharkiv is considered in the context of socio-economic changes in the South of the Russian Empire, primarily in the "Ukrainian provinces", in the last third of XIX – early XX centuries. The methodological basis of the article is the modernization approach. Changes that took place in the Russian Empire in the last third of the XIX – early XX century are considered as a modernization movement. Modernization is understood as a complex number of transformations that society is undergoing on the path of development from traditional agricultural to urban and industrial. We proceed from the fact that modern society of that time was aware of the speed of industrial production, the need for qualified engineering personnel. The training of such personnel required the opening of local higher education institutions. The processes of industrialization, migration and urbanization, due to the modernization theory, were the main components of social development in the XIX century. The approach chosen by the authors allowed to analyze the formation of higher technical institutions in the Russian Empire, on the example of the Kharkiv Practical Institute of Technology, within these changes. The approach within the new imperial history enabled us to take into account the socio-political subtext of the situation and the decisions that contributed to the establishment of technical universities in the south of the empire. An important aspect of our article is the European context. We investigated the general tendencies of opening similar to Kharkiv educational institutions. We can see certain commonalities, which allows us to explore the problem more deeply. We came to the conclusion that, the emergence of a higher technical educational institution ‒ Kharkiv Practical Technological Institute, in Kharkiv was due to the demand of local elites, which was met by the highest bureaucracy of St. Petersburg, as well as the situation in the city itself. This compromise did not cancel the rivalry, both at the highest bureaucratic level – the Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of National Education, and at the regional level, in particular Kharkiv university elite and the inspirers of the idea of a separate technical institution.