Eighth Creative Union of MEPhI
The Eighth Creative Union (ECU) of Moscow Engineering Physics Institute (MEPhI) () is a creative and interdisciplinary team unifying students, graduates, postgraduate students and the university lecturers and professors. The ECU implies a variety of activities including a student theatre of pop sketches, arrangement of concerts and performances, scriptwriting, arrangement of night entertainment events and conventions, issuing of wall newspapers along with prose, poetry and playwriting almanacs, participating in Singer-Songwriter Club and Club of the Funny and Inventive People and Sharp-witted activities and taking part in different shows and competitions. History of the ECU . The Union was founded at Physics and Power Engineering Faculty of Moscow National Research Nuclear University MEPhI in accordance with the Faculty Komsomol (Young Communist League) Committee decree. Its stage debut was on 13 December 1969. That particular day is considered to be the official date of the ECU foundation. Its first President was Oleg Yurievich Fyodorov, a former captain of 1962 Institute CCS (Club of the Cheerful and Sharp-witted. ) team. Traditions. First-year Student's Day is celebrated annually on 1 September. The ECU have conducted a theatrical performance for the first-year students of all faculties since  1 September 1974. Although the content of the performance changed throughout its history starting from parting words of ‘Scholar Elders’ to the first-year students, Higher Education game and amusement arcades to a concert of all on-stage performance groups of National Research Nuclear University MEPhI the ECU have constantly taken part in that important event. Propaganda teams. They are small creative ECU teams which used to go on tour to remote areas of the country in the Soviet times. The first propaganda team went to Naberezhnye Chelny in 1974 when Kamaz was being erected. The team members showed sketches , declared poems and sang hiking songs for the construction site workers. Afterwards, there had been a series of trips to different border military districts with concerts conducted for border patrol soldiers with the following agitation for entering the institute. The final trip of that sort was made in July 1989. We hope to breath a new life to that tradition. MEPhI Club of the Funny and Inventive People. It is an integral part of the ECU which was finally formed at the end of the 1990s. V. Shambarov remembers that "In 1969 when the ECU was established there were several  groups of the guys. One group which included Kolya Artem’ev and Nina Gulova wanted to establish a theatre. The guys from the other group headed by Khutsiev wanted to take part in Club of the Funny and Inventive People (KVN) competition. As they had come to an agreement they established something in between, a theatre of KVN style." Film and video production. In 1990 the ECU shot an introduction video of MEPhI KVN team required for participation in the First All-Union KVN Festival in Dnipropetrovsk (script by A. Selin, directed by A. Yazlovsky). It was a parody of The  Government Inspector by Nikolai Gogol. The action took place in the National Opera of Ukraine and Alexander Maslyakov was thought to have been the Governor of the Town.