Saint Petersburg State University (SPbU; Russian: Санкт-Петербургский государственный университет, romanized: Sankt-Peterburgskiy gosudarstvennyy universitet) is a public research university in Saint Petersburg, Russia. Founded in 1724 by a decree of Peter the Great, it is one of the oldest universities in Russia and has had a focus on fundamental research in science and engineering since its creation.
It is made up of 24 distinct departments and institutes, the Academic Gymnasium, the Medical College, the College of Physical Culture and Sports, Economics and Technology. The university has two primary campuses: one on Vasilievsky Island and the other one in Peterhof. During the Soviet period, it was known as Leningrad State University (Russian: Ленинградский государственный университет). It was renamed after Andrei Zhdanov in 1948 and was officially called "Leningrad State University, named after A. A. Zhdanov and decorated with the Order of Lenin and the Order of the Red Banner of Labour." Zhdanov was removed in 1989, and Leningrad in the name was officially replaced with Saint Petersburg in 1992.
History
1724–1821
It is disputed by the university administration whether Saint Petersburg State University or Moscow State University is the oldest higher education institution in Russia. While the latter was established in 1755, the former, which has been in continuous operation since 1819, claims to be the successor of the university established along with the Academic Gymnasium and the Saint Petersburg Academy of Sciences on 24 January 1724, by a decree of Peter the Great.
Between 1804 and 1819, Saint Petersburg University officially did not exist; the institution founded by Peter the Great, the Saint Petersburg Academy, had been disbanded, because the new 1803 charter of the Academy of Sciences stipulated that there should not be any educational institutions affiliated with it.
The Petersburg Pedagogical Institute, renamed the Main Pedagogical Institute in 1814, was established in 1804 and resided in a part of the Twelve Collegia building. On 8 February 1819 (O.S.), Alexander I of Russia reorganized the Main Pedagogical Institute into Saint Petersburg University, which at that time consisted of three faculties: Faculty of Philosophy and Law, Faculty of History and Philology and Faculty of Physics and Mathematics. The Main Pedagogical Institute (where Dmitri Mendeleev studied) was restored in 1828 as an educational institution independent of Saint Petersburg University, and trained teachers until it was finally closed in 1859.
1821–1917
In 1821, the university was renamed Saint Petersburg Imperial University. In 1823, most of the university moved from the Twelve Collegia to the southern part of the city. In 1824, a modified version of the charter of Moscow University was adopted as the first charter of the Saint Petersburg Imperial University. In 1829, there were 19 full professors and 169 full-time and part-time students at the university. In 1830, Tsar Nicholas returned the entire building of the Twelve Collegia to the university, and courses resumed there.
In 1835, a new Charter of the Imperial Universities of Russia was approved. It provided for the establishment of the Faculty of Law, the Faculty of History and Philology, and the Faculties of Physics and Mathematics, which were merged into the Faculty of Philosophy as the 1st and 2nd Departments, respectively.
In 1849, after the Spring of Nations, the Senate of the Russian Empire decreed the rector should be appointed by the minister of national enlightenment rather than elected by the Assembly of the university. However, Pyotr Pletnyov was reappointed rector and ultimately became the longest-serving rector of Saint Petersburg University (1840–61).
In 1855, Oriental studies were separated from the Faculty of History and Philology, and the fourth faculty, Faculty of Oriental Languages, was formally inaugurated on 27 August 1855.
In 1859–61, female part-time students could attend lectures in the university. In 1861, there were 1,270 full-time and 167 part-time students in the university, of them 498 were in the Faculty of Law, the largest subdivision. But this subdivision had the cameral studies department, where students learnt safety, occupational health and environmental engineering management and science, including chemistry, biology, agronomy along with law and philosophy. Many Russian, Georgian etc. managers, engineers and scientists studied at the Faculty of law therefore. During 1861–62, there was student unrest in the university, and it was temporarily closed twice during the year. The students were denied freedom of assembly and placed under police surveillance, and public lectures were forbidden. Many students were expelled. After the unrest, in 1865 only 524 students remained.
A decree of the Emperor Alexander II of Russia adopted on 18 February 1863, restored the right of the university assembly to elect the rector. It also formed the new faculty of the theory and history of art as part of the faculty of history and philology.
In March 1869, student unrest shook the university again, but on a smaller scale. By 1869, 2,588 students had graduated from the university.
In 1880, the Ministry of National Enlightenment forbade students to marry and married persons could not be admitted. In 1882, another student unrest took place in the university. In 1884, a new Charter of the Imperial Russian Universities was adopted, which granted the right to appoint the rector to the minister of national enlightenment again. On 1 March 1887 (O.S.), a group of the university students was arrested while planning an attempt on the life of Alexander III of Russia. As a result, new admission rules to gymnasiums and universities were approved by the minister of national enlightenment Ivan Delyanov in 1887, which barred persons of non-noble origin from admission to the university, unless they were extraordinarily talented.
By 1894, 9,212 students had graduated from the university. Among the scholars of the second half of the 19th century, affiliated with the university were mathematician Pafnuty Chebyshev, physicist Heinrich Lenz, chemists Dmitri Mendeleev and Aleksandr Butlerov, embryologist Alexander Kovalevsky, physiologist Ivan Sechenov and pedologist Vasily Dokuchaev. On 24 March 1896 (O.S.), on the campus of the university, Alexander Popov publicly demonstrated transmission of radio waves for the first time in history.
As of 1 January 1900 (O.S.), there were nearly 2,100 students enrolled in the Faculty of Law, 1,149 students in the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics, 212 students in the Faculty of Oriental Languages and 171 students in the Faculty of History and Philology. In 1902, the first student dining hall in Russia was opened in the university.
Since about 1897, regular strikes and student unrest shook the university and spread to other institutions of higher education across Russia. During the Revolution of 1905, the charter of the Russian universities was amended once more; the autonomy of the universities was partially restored and the right to elect the rector was returned to the academic board for the first time since 1884. In 1905–06, the university was temporarily closed due to student unrest. Its autonomy was revoked again in 1911. In the same year, the university was once again temporarily closed.
In 1914, with the start of the First World War, the university was renamed Petrograd Imperial University after its namesake city. During the War, the university was the center of mobilization of Russian intellectual resources and scholarship for the war effort. In 1915, a branch of the university was opened in Perm, which later became Perm State University.
1918–1939
The Assembly of Petrograd Imperial University openly welcomed the February Revolution of 1917, which put an end to the Russian monarchy, and the university came to be known as Petrograd University. However, after the October Revolution of 1917, the university's staff and administration were initially vocally opposed to the Bolshevik takeover of power and reluctant to cooperate with the Narkompros. Later in 1917–22, during the Russian Civil War, some of the staff suspected of counter-revolutionary sympathies suffered imprisonment (e.g., Lev Shcherba in 1919), execution, or exile abroad on the so-called Philosophers' ships in 1922 (e.g., Nikolai Lossky). Furthermore, the entire staff suffered from hunger and extreme poverty during those years.
In 1918, the university was renamed 1st Petrograd State University, and in 1919 the Narkompros merged it with the 2nd PSU (former Psychoneurological Institute) and 3rd PSU (former Bestuzhev Higher Courses for Women) into Petrograd State University. In 1919, the Faculty of Social Science was established by the Narkompros instead of the Faculty of History and Philology, Faculty of Oriental Languages and Faculty of Law. Nicholas Marr became the first Dean of the new faculty. Chemist Alexey Favorsky became the dean of the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics. Rabfaks and free university courses were opened on the basis of the university to provide mass education.
In the fall of 1920, as observed by freshman student Alice Rosenbaum (Ayn Rand), enrollment was open and the majority of the students were anti-communist including, until removed, a few vocal opponents of the regime. Seeing they were educating "class enemies", a purge was conducted in 1922 based on the class background of the students, and all students, other than seniors, with a bourgeois background were expelled.
In 1924, the university was renamed Leningrad State University after its namesake city. In order to suppress intellectual opposition to Soviet power, a number of historians working in the university, including Sergey Platonov, Yevgeny Tarle, and Boris Grekov, were imprisoned in the so-called Academic Affair of 1929–30 on fabricated charges of participating in a counter-revolutionary conspiracy aimed at overthrowing the government. Some other members of the staff were repressed in 1937–38 during the Great Purge.
1940–1999
During the 1941–44 Siege of Leningrad in World War II, many students and staff died from starvation, in battles, or from repressions. The university evacuated to Saratov in 1942–44. A branch of the university was in Yelabuga during the war. In 1944, the Presidium of the Supreme Council of the Soviet Union awarded the university the Order of Lenin. In 1948, the Soviet Council of Ministers named the university after Andrei Zhdanov, a deceased Communist official. This decision was revoked in 1989 during Perestroika.
In 1949–50, several professors died in prison during the investigation of the Leningrad Affair fabricated by the central Soviet leadership, and the minister of education of the RSFSR, former rector Alexander Voznesensky, was executed.
In 1966, the Council of Ministers decided to build a suburban campus in Petrodvorets for most of the mathematics and natural science faculties. The relocation of the faculties was completed by the 1990s. In 1969, the Presidium of the Supreme Council of the Soviet Union awarded the university the Order of the Red Banner of Labour. In 1991, the university was renamed back to Saint Petersburg State University after its namesake city. The university educated Russian presidents Vladimir Putin and Dimitry Medvedev, both of whom studied law at the university.
2000–present
Rector Nikolay Kropachev has signed a letter of support for the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
In early 2022, the university expelled 13 students who had protested against the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine.
In response to the Russian invasion, in March 2022 the Hamburg University of Applied Sciences and University of Bremen suspended their longstanding relationships with the university, Dartmouth College stopped running its Russian language study abroad program in the university, and CEMS - The Global Alliance in Management Education suspended its partnership with the Graduate School of Management in St Petersburg. In addition, the European Coimbra Group expelled the university, and the European University Association suspended the school. The Council on International Educational Exchange stopped its programs at the university, and relocated students to other non-Russian universities.
Admissions
Admission to Saint Petersburg State University is competitive. Undergraduate admissions for domestic state funded students are decided through the Unified State Exam. The average Unified State Examination score of applicants to the university in 2023 was 90 points (out of a possible 100). In the 2023 admission campaign, more than 106,000 domestic students applied to the university for bachelor's and specialist programs, with only 4,617 being accepted. The same year, over 21,000 international students from 100 different countries applied to the university for state-funded scholarship programs, with only 1,000 being accepted. This reflects an overall acceptance rate of around 4% for both domestic students and international students studying on scholarships.