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Separation Between Higher Education and Research in the USSR: Myth or Reality?
This chapter explores the realities behind the oft-repeated notion that higher education and research were separated in the USSR. While the bulk of research was indeed performed outside higher education institutions (HEIs, in the state academies of sciences and applied research institutes), the idea that HEIs were only expected to teach was never endorsed as a matter of policy. Indeed, HEIs were encouraged to perform research: by the end of the Soviet period, the combined university research sector was comparable in size to the combined research sector of the academies of sciences, even though it lagged behind the network of applied research institutes. Far from constituting a greenfield project, measures to promote university research in post-Soviet countries had to take these diverse legacies into account.