Russian State University for the Humanities

History

The Moscow Urban University of the People also known as the Shanyavsky People's University was founded in 1908 on the initiative of the Russian patron of the arts, Alfons Shanyavsky, and played a role in Russian higher education from its inception.

The Moscow State Institute for History and Archives, founded in 1930 as a center for the preparation of archivists, became over the years a focus of scientific research. In its archival pursuits in areas of history and such auxiliary realms as the study of primary sources, archaeology and palaeography, it managed to preserve Russian research. By the beginning of the 1990s, this institution had achieved university level which enabled it to become the organizational heart of the RSUH, founded in 1991.

The university, has established a connection to international scientific community and has ties with universities abroad, including Université Laval, Trinity College, Helwan University, Cairo University, University of Freiburg and University of Vienna.

Alexander Borisovich Bezborodov, Rector of the university, was suspended by the European University Association (EUA) following support for the Russian invasion of Ukraine by the Russian Union of Rectors (RUR) in March 2022, for being "diametrically opposed to the European values that they committed to when joining EUA".

University structure

RSUH currently comprises eleven institutes, eighteen faculties, eight laboratories, and fifty departments. There are five university-wide faculties:

Faculty of Philosophy

Faculty of History of Art

Faculty of Sociology

Faculty of Cultural Studies

Faculty of PR and Advertising

The eleven institutes are:

Historical and Archival Institute

This consists of Faculty of Archiving, Faculty of Documentation And Technotronic Archives, Faculty of History, Political Science, and Law and Faculty of International Relations and Foreign Regional Studies.

Institute of Economics, Management and Law

Including of Faculty of Economics, Faculty of Management and Faculty of Law

L. S. Vygotsky Institute of Psychology

Including Faculty of Psychology and Faculty of Psychology of the Education

Institute of Mass Media and Advertising

Including Faculty of Journalism

Institute of Linguistics (Russian Wikipedia)

Including of Faculty of Theory and Practice Of Linguistics

Institute of Information Sciences and Security Technologies

Campus

The main campus of the university is located near the Novoslobodskaya Metro Station in the North-Western part of Moscow. It is a closed campus consisting of 7 corpuses, 6 being used for the educational purposes and one (Corpus 4) used as a dormitory for the international students. The main corpus is the corpus 6, which, among other things, consists of the main University library and the University Museum. The university scientific library has a physical, as well as digital collection, providing scientific works and fiction. The libraries reading room, also located in the main corpus, consists of 3 big halls (2 of which have a second tier). Corpus 6 is connected to the corpus 7, which was the first building in the main campus to enter the new university in 1991. Corpus 7 used to serve as Moscow Urban University Of the People (in the name of A. Shanyavskiy).

There are 2 other smaller separate campuses in the different parts of the city, one serving as a home for Institute of Information Sciences and Security Technologies, and the other one as a home for Historical and Archival Institute. The latter is located in Kitay-gorod in the city center. It used to be a main campus for Moscow State University of History And Archives, which later became a base for newly established Russian State University for the Humanities. The institute occupies a network of historic buildings along the Nikolskaya Street, including the former Moscow Print Yard and the cells of the Zaikonospassky Monastery.

Ratings

In 2014, the Expert RA agency included the university in the list of higher educational institutions of the Commonwealth of Independent States, where it was assigned a rating class of "D" (acceptable level of graduate training). Already in 2017, at a meeting of the public council of the United Russia party project "Modernization of Education", according to the rector of Moscow State University, Viktor Sadovnichiy, RSUH, among other universities, entered the top ten "leaders of the Russian segment" of education.

Notable alumni

Anna Nemzer (born 1980), journalist.

Yael Eilan, business executive, anthropologist, and academic researcher.