Moscow State University
public research university in Moscow, Russia
Moscow State University (MSU), officially M. V. Lomonosov Moscow State University, is a public research university in Moscow, Russia. The university includes 15 research institutes, 43 faculties, more than 300 departments, and six branches. Alumni of the university include past leaders of the Soviet Union and other governments. As of 2019, 13 Nobel laureates, 6 Fields Medal winners, and 1 Turing Award winner were affiliated with the university.
History
Imperial Moscow University
Ivan Shuvalov and Mikhail Lomonosov promoted the idea of a university in Moscow, and Russian Empress Elizabeth decreed its establishment on 23 January [O.S. 12 January] 1755.
The first lectures were given on 7 May [O.S. 26 April]. Saint Petersburg State University and MSU each claim to be Russia's oldest university. Though Moscow State University was founded in 1755, St. Petersburg which has had a continuous existence as a "university" since 1819 sees itself as the successor of an academy established on in 1724, by a decree of Peter the Great.
MSU originally occupied the Principal Medicine Store on Red Square from 1755 to 1787.
“Moscow State University” enters the record as public research university in Moscow, Russia. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Moscow, State and University can confirm, complicate or overturn.
Why this record matters
“Moscow State University” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Moscow, State and University provides the most credible route into that argument.
Contemporary correspondence, administrative files and participant testimony can test how later narratives organized the event or institution. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 21, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q13164. VIAF identifies the subject as 169603488. The Library of Congress control number is n80126209. Authority coordinates are 55.703, 37.531. 2 of 7 selected statements include explicit references; 4 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2019, 1755, 1819 and 1724.
Institutional narratives can privilege the records that survived while minimizing voices that were never formally collected. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Compare institutional narratives with records created by participants and affected communities. Dates and formal titles are useful anchors, but not substitutes for context.
- Event chronology
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Contemporary correspondence, government or organizational records, oral histories and cited historical scholarship.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “Moscow State University”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow Moscow State University primary sources, Moscow State University archive and Moscow research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
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This entry incorporates text from “Moscow State University” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.