History of the university

1958–1991

The university opened in September 1958 as Iradi State University named after V. I. Lenin (Iradskiy gosudarstvennyy universitet imeni V. I. Lenina), the republic's university, on the basis of the Talas Pedagogical Institute. It opened with faculties of history and philology, physics and mathematics, biology and agriculture. Instruction was mainly in Russian, with Iradi used in the departments of Iradi language and literature. Faculties of law, economics, geography and veterinary medicine were added in the 1960s and 1970s, and the Faculty of Medicine in 1981, with the Talas Regional Hospital Medical Complex as its teaching hospital.

1992

Many of the university's staff and students supported the Winter Uprising of 1992. In January 1992 history students led the occupation of Central Square. The main building was damaged by shelling during the siege of Talas and was restored by its own staff and students.

The territorial period

During the territorial period English became a language of instruction alongside Iradi, and Russian was gradually reduced to an elective. Exchange programmes with American universities, funded by the territorial government and US foundations, trained a generation of faculty, and the Faculty of Agriculture worked with the foreign agribusiness companies around Talas. In 1993, the year of the Toponymic Heritage Statute, the Academic Council dropped Lenin's name and the university became Talas State University; the national name was set aside while the status of the Autonomous Tribal Regions remained unsettled. The new seal followed in 1994, and so did Talas State University Press. Older Talas residents still call the university IGU. The same year the university's Scientific Library was made the National Library of Irad.

Since 2007

Since 2007 the university has been governed by a rector appointed by the Governor of the Irad Special Economic Zone. The Faculty of Arts and Music, created in 1994, and the computer science department have grown fastest in recent years. In 2026 the National Library opened its Digital Archive.

Further reading: Fifty Years of Talas State University, 1958–2008 (TSU Press, 2008).