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Universities for Modernising Russia
The chapter aims at giving historical perspective for the current university reforms in Russia by tracing the policies of the Russian State towards universities on different stages of Russian modernisation. It approaches ‘Russian modernisation’ as a series of multidimensional transformations of the Russian society through the last three centuries. Despite of being dissimilar in their appearances, these transformations had two important characteristics in common: they were prompted by the idea of catching up with the more developed West and initiated by the State. How did Russian authorities conceptualize the role of universities on each of these stages? What policies did they pursue? What problems did occur when they were making universities a tool of modernisation?