Abstract

This paper describes the construction and academic organisation of the new Lomonosov Moscow State University during Stalin’s rule. It highlights the architectural, aesthetic and construction features as well as the working processes employed to build this new university. The university contributed to providing Moscow a new image as «world capital of the proletariat» during Stalin’s leadership and then of «real socialism» in the years of Khrushchev and Brezhnev and to preparing the future communist and post-communist ruling class. The paper includes eyewitness accounts of foreign observers who visited the new university and recalls the organisational, political and academic issues surrounding the university. It concludes by remembering the most illustrious graduates from its founding and the consequences for the university of Khrushchev’s «thaw» and perestroika promoted by former student Mikhail Gorbachev.