It is today, March 1, that we remember the first director of the Ufa Aviation Institute, Alexander Filippovich Gusarov, who was born on February 29, 1904.

This date happens once every four years, so on the 90th anniversary of USATU we talk about the first head of the university in Bashkir soil on the first day of spring.

Alexander Filippovich began working at the age of 12 as an apprentice in a haberdashery store in Moscow. After the revolution, he worked as a laborer in an aircraft factory. In 1925, by a permit from the trade union committee of the plant, he entered the workers faculty named after V.I. Lenin and after graduating, he became a student of the aeromechanical faculty of the Bauman Moscow State Technical University, based on which the Moscow Aviation Institute was soon created.

After graduating from the Moscow Aviation Institute, A.F. Gusarov entered the graduate school of the university, and then became the dean of faculty No. 1 “Aircraft engines”, the head of the educational department of the institute. In the late 1930s, he worked in the people's commissariats of heavy and aviation industry of the USSR.

From February 5, 1942 to September 15, 1944, he was the director of the aviation institute in Ufa. One of the priority tasks was to consolidate the Rybinsk Aviation Institute in a new location, to strengthen its material and technical base. Speaking on June 27, 1942 at a meeting of the academic council of the institute, A.F. Gusarov said that

“To create an aviation institute, starting with ten auditoriums of an unsuitable school building, is a complex and difficult matter. However, this is how almost all of our aviation institutes and technical schools were created. This is how MAI began its activity, which has now become the largest university in the world in 10 years.” The director called on the staff "to fruitful, Bolshevik work, to solve the noble task of an aviation university that has a great future."

By order of the People's Commissar of the Aviation Industry of the USSR A.I. Shakhurin dated October 10, 1942, Ufa became the permanent location of the university, which was given a new name - Ufa Aviation Institute. Ordzhonikidze. A little later, the USSR State Defense Committee confirmed the earlier decision. An evening department of the institute was organized at the Ufa Motor-Building Plant.

On May 13, 1943, by a decree of the Council of People's Commissars of the Bashkir Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic, the UAI was transferred to the building of the former Palace of Pioneers on Lenin Street. As noted in the certificate of the Bashkir Regional Committee of the CPSU (b), sent to the Central Committee of the party, “this made it possible for the institute to organize a normal educational process. Before the war, the contingent of students reached 450 people, and in the coming 1944/1945 academic year it amounted to 976 people, of which 391 were new students (with a plan of 200).

The second problem was the staffing of the university with teaching staff. Only about 20 teachers arrived from Rybinsk to Ufa. A great merit of the director of the institute A.F. Gusarov, noted in his memoirs the veteran of the university S.I. Kulikov, was the involvement of scientists from the evacuated Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR in teaching work.

The management of the institute solved the issues of improving the financial situation of workers and students. In May 1943, a working supply department was organized, which had a store, a canteen, food warehouses, a hairdresser, a shoemaker's shop, and an auxiliary farm near the village of Novo-Aleksandrovka (not far from Dema). In the same year, another subsidiary farm was transferred to the institute in the Chishminsky district, which had 80 hectares of arable land, two tractors and a grain harvester. With the active participation of the entire staff of the institute, vegetables, grain crops, livestock were grown in these farms, which made it possible to organize three meals a day for teachers and students.

Non-resident students who rented housing in the private sector were given all possible assistance: they were given housing allowances (the amounts were small), as well as one cubic meter of firewood.

First director of UAI wrote:

“I am well acquainted with the educational process, I am proactive, politically literate, and cope with my work.”

 In 1944, A.F. Gusarov returned to the MAI. It is interesting that there he worked at the same department with A.N. Rakhmanovich, who in 1948 defended his doctoral dissertation, and in 1949 was sent to the UAI; where for a long time he remained the only doctor of science.

It should be noted that the sons of A.F. Gusarov also graduated from the Moscow Aviation Institute and were fond of football. Gennady became a famous forward. He played in the Moscow "Torpedo", "Dynamo". Five times, he was included in the lists of the 33 best football players of the USSR. After the end of his sports career, he worked as a coach for children's and youth teams of the Moscow Dynamo.

From Professor M. Filimonov

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