A ceramic made from a powder of silicon nitride which is obtained by self-propagating high-temperature synthesis is investigated. Yttrium-aluminum garnet and mullite are used as sintering aids. The strength of the material obtained reaches 540 MPa.When new technical objects are created, as a rule, there also arises a need for new materials, including building materials. The world production of industrial ceramic articles, which are used in a number of sectors of industry as highperformance materials, has grown by one-third in terms of cost from 1999 to 2002 [1]. In the last 20 years new ceramic building materials based on silicon nitride and carbide have been developed and are widely used in developed countries. Investigations have shown that with respect to a complex of properties these materials are greatly superior to other types of ceramic materials. Silicon nitride and carbide and materials based on them have high working temperatures (up to 1700°C), durability, chemical inertness, and high strength and crack-resistance [2], and they have found extensive applications in aerospace, metallurgical, chemical, electronic, and other areas [3]. Materials based on silicon nitride are used in the manufacture of valves for internal combustion engines, turbosupercharger rotors, shut-off fixtures, bearings, cutting tools, seals, and other articles.At the same time intensive research on further improving the technology for obtaining materials with the objective of optimizing the phase composition and microstructure of monolithic ceramic, developing composite structures, and so on is continuing [4]. A great deal of attention is being devoted to different formation methods: cold and hot slip casting (pressure casting), sintering without applying pressure and under elevated pressure, hot pressing, and hot isostatic pressing. Mass production of articles with complex shapes, high physicochemical properties, isotropic structure, and requiring minimal mechanical working are now on the agenda [5 -7].The main problem of obtaining ceramic from silicon nitride is the difficulty of sintering the ceramic [8]. Ultrafine and nano-size silicon nitride powders [9, 10] and sintering activators, often aluminum and yttrium compounds [11,12], are used to obtain a high-density ceramic.Our work was devoted to obtaining a dense ceramic from powder of silicon nitride which is obtained by self-propagating high-temperature synthesis (SHS).Silicon nitride obtained at ISMAN by SHS with a-phase content 95%, specific surface area of the powder 7.4 m 2 /g, and average particle size 1 -2 mm served as the initial material (Fig. 1). The silicon nitride powder contained the following chemical elements besides silicon (%): 38.5 nitrogen, 1.8 oxygen, and 0.05 iron. The integral and differential curves of the grain composition of the powder are presented in Fig. 2.Silicon nitride obtained by plasma chemical synthesis, containing a mixture of a-and b-phases, with specific surface area of the powder 20 m 2 /g and average particle size less than 0.1 mm, was also...