1724–1821 It is disputed by the university administration whether Saint Petersburg State University or
Moscow State University is the
oldest higher education institution in Russia. While the latter was established in 1755, the former, which has been in continuous operation since 1819, claims to be the successor of the university established along with the
Academic Gymnasium and the
Saint Petersburg Academy of Sciences on 24 January 1724, by a decree of
Peter the Great. Between 1804 and 1819, Saint Petersburg University officially did not exist; the institution founded by Peter the Great, the Saint Petersburg Academy, had been disbanded, because the new 1803 charter of the Academy of Sciences stipulated that there should not be any educational institutions affiliated with it. The
Petersburg Pedagogical Institute, renamed the Main Pedagogical Institute in 1814, was established in 1804 and resided in a part of the
Twelve Collegia building. On 8 February 1819 (O.S.),
Alexander I of Russia reorganized the Main Pedagogical Institute into Saint Petersburg University, which at that time consisted of three faculties: Faculty of Philosophy and Law, Faculty of History and Philology and Faculty of Physics and Mathematics.
1821–1917 In 1821, the university was renamed
Saint Petersburg Imperial University. In 1859–61, female part-time students could attend lectures in the university. In 1861, there were 1,270 full-time and 167 part-time students in the university, of them 498 were in the Faculty of Law, the largest subdivision. But this subdivision had the
cameral studies department, where students learnt safety, occupational health and environmental engineering management and science, including chemistry, biology, agronomy along with law and philosophy. Many Russian, Georgian etc. managers, engineers and scientists studied at the Faculty of law therefore. During 1861–62, there was
student unrest in the university, and it was temporarily closed twice during the year. The students were denied freedom of assembly and placed under police surveillance, and public lectures were forbidden. Many students were expelled. After the unrest, in 1865 only 524 students remained. A decree of the Emperor
Alexander II of Russia adopted on 18 February 1863, restored the right of the university assembly to elect the rector. It also formed the new faculty of the theory and history of art as part of the faculty of history and philology. In March 1869, student unrest shook the university again, but on a smaller scale. By 1869, 2,588 students had graduated from the university. In 1880, the Ministry of National Enlightenment forbade students to marry and married persons could not be admitted. In 1882, another student unrest took place in the university. In 1884, a new Charter of the Imperial Russian Universities was adopted, which granted the right to appoint the rector to the
minister of national enlightenment again. On 1 March 1887 (O.S.),
a group of the university students was arrested while planning an attempt on the life of
Alexander III of Russia. As a result, new admission rules to gymnasiums and universities were approved by the minister of national enlightenment
Ivan Delyanov in 1887, which barred persons of non-noble origin from admission to the university, unless they were extraordinarily talented. By 1894, 9,212 students had graduated from the university. Among the scholars of the second half of the 19th century, affiliated with the university were mathematician
Pafnuty Chebyshev, physicist
Heinrich Lenz, chemists
Dmitri Mendeleev and
Aleksandr Butlerov, embryologist
Alexander Kovalevsky, physiologist
Ivan Sechenov and pedologist
Vasily Dokuchaev. On 24 March 1896 (O.S.), on the campus of the university,
Alexander Popov publicly demonstrated transmission of
radio waves for the first time in history. As of 1 January 1900 (O.S.), there were nearly 2,100 students enrolled in the Faculty of Law, 1,149 students in the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics, 212 students in the Faculty of Oriental Languages and 171 students in the Faculty of History and Philology. In 1902, the first student
dining hall in Russia was opened in the university. Since about 1897, regular strikes and student unrest shook the university and spread to other institutions of higher education across Russia. During the
Revolution of 1905, the charter of the Russian universities was amended once more; the autonomy of the universities was partially restored and the right to elect the rector was returned to the academic board for the first time since 1884. In 1905–06, the university was temporarily closed due to student unrest. Its autonomy was revoked again in 1911. In the same year, the university was once again temporarily closed. In 1914, with the start of the
First World War, the university was renamed Petrograd Imperial University after its namesake city. During the War, the university was the center of mobilization of Russian intellectual resources and scholarship for the war effort. In 1915, a branch of the university was opened in
Perm, which later became
Perm State University.
1918–1939 The Assembly of Petrograd Imperial University openly welcomed the
February Revolution of 1917, which put an end to the Russian monarchy, and the university came to be known as Petrograd University. However, after the
October Revolution of 1917, the university's staff and administration were initially vocally opposed to the
Bolshevik takeover of power and reluctant to cooperate with the
Narkompros. Later in 1917–22, during the
Russian Civil War, some of the staff suspected of counter-revolutionary sympathies suffered imprisonment (e.g.,
Lev Shcherba in 1919), execution, or exile abroad on the so-called
Philosophers' ships in 1922 (e.g.,
Nikolai Lossky). Furthermore, the entire staff suffered from hunger and extreme poverty during those years. In 1918, the university was renamed 1st Petrograd State University, and in 1919 the Narkompros merged it with the 2nd PSU (former Psychoneurological Institute) and 3rd PSU (former
Bestuzhev Higher Courses for Women) into Petrograd State University. In 1919, the Faculty of Social Science was established by the Narkompros instead of the Faculty of History and Philology, Faculty of Oriental Languages and Faculty of Law.
Nicholas Marr became the first Dean of the new faculty. Chemist
Alexey Favorsky became the dean of the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics.
Rabfaks and free university courses were opened on the basis of the university to provide mass education. In the fall of 1920, as observed by freshman student
Alice Rosenbaum (Ayn Rand), enrollment was open and the majority of the students were anti-communist including, until removed, a few vocal opponents of the regime. Seeing they were educating "class enemies", a purge was conducted in 1922 based on the class background of the students, and all students, other than seniors, with a
bourgeois background were expelled. In 1924, the university was renamed Leningrad State University after its namesake city. In order to suppress intellectual opposition to Soviet power, a number of historians working in the university, including
Sergey Platonov,
Yevgeny Tarle, and
Boris Grekov, were imprisoned in the so-called Academic Affair of 1929–30 on fabricated charges of participating in a counter-revolutionary conspiracy aimed at overthrowing the government. Some other members of the staff were repressed in 1937–38 during the
Great Purge.
1940–1999 During the 1941–44
Siege of Leningrad in World War II, many students and staff died from starvation, in battles, or from repressions. The university evacuated to
Saratov in 1942–44. A branch of the university was in
Yelabuga during the war. In 1944, the Presidium of the
Supreme Council of the Soviet Union awarded the university the
Order of Lenin. In 1948, the
Soviet Council of Ministers named the university after
Andrei Zhdanov, a deceased Communist official. This decision was revoked in 1989 during
Perestroika. In 1949–50, several professors died in prison during the investigation of the
Leningrad Affair fabricated by the central Soviet leadership, and the minister of education of the
RSFSR, former rector
Alexander Voznesensky, was executed. In 1966, the Council of Ministers decided to build a suburban campus in
Petrodvorets for most of the mathematics and natural science faculties. The relocation of the faculties was completed by the 1990s. In 1969, the Presidium of the Supreme Council of the Soviet Union awarded the university the
Order of the Red Banner of Labour. In 1991, the university was renamed back to Saint Petersburg State University after its namesake city. The university educated Russian presidents
Vladimir Putin and
Dimitry Medvedev, both of whom studied law at the university.
2000–present building on
Vasilievsky Island, the university's main building and the seat of administration Rector
Nikolay Kropachev has signed a
letter of support for the
Russian invasion of Ukraine. In early 2022, the university expelled 13 students who had protested against the
2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine. In response to the Russian invasion, in March 2022 the
Hamburg University of Applied Sciences and
University of Bremen suspended their longstanding relationships with the university,
Dartmouth College stopped running its Russian language study abroad program in the university, and
CEMS - The Global Alliance in Management Education suspended its partnership with the Graduate School of Management in St Petersburg. In addition, the European
Coimbra Group expelled the university, and the
European University Association suspended the school. The
Council on International Educational Exchange stopped its programs at the university, and relocated students to other non-Russian universities. ==Admissions==