The history of Awarding Academic Degrees in Higher Education Instiutions in the Russian Empire

Abstract

The article reviews the monograph “Academic degrees in the Russian Empire. XVIII — the beginning of the XX century” (Moscow, 2016) by A. E. Ivanov, a well-known modern historian of the Russian higher education institutions. The monograph is devoted to the formation of a system of academic degrees and procedures for a thesis defense in Russia, as well as to the institution, closely connected with this system, aimed at training young graduates of universities and other higher education institutions for professorate. A. E. Ivanov focuses on the features of the existent academic degrees in Moscow University in the 18th century without a clear regulatory framework; analyzes the development of legislation on academic degrees in the Russian Empire since the beginning of the XIX century and the issues concerning their further reforming up to 1917. The undoubted merit of the book is the periodization in the evolution of procedures for “rising to a professor”: from all-Russian institutions funded by the Ministry of Public Education to a new system of “Professorial fellowship”, which was shaped in the second half of the 19th century and proved its effectiveness. The critical remarks of the review emphasize that it might have been worth shedding more light on “European context” for the emergence and development of Russian academic degrees, which would have enabled to explain the difference in the nomenclature and the very understanding of individual ranks formed in the nineteenth century, which affects the difference between the Russian and European understanding of academic degrees up to the present days.