On instability of conservative systems with gyroscopic forces

Theorems on equilibrium instability of conservative systems with gyroscopic forces are proved. The theorems obtained are nonlinear analogs of the Kelvin theorem. The equilibrium instability of the Chaplygin nonholonomic systems is considered. Institute of Mathematics, Ukrainian Academy of Sciences, Kiev. Translated from Ukrainskii Matematicheskii Zhurnal, Vol. 49, No. 10, pp. 1422–1428, October, 1997.