Opposite Stalin's monolith is this new building, completed in 2005 for the 250th anniversary of the founding of Moscow University, the first in Russia. In the foreground of the last picture is the back of the statue that is in front of the door of this, the new library for the University.The statue is of Ivan Shuvalov, Empress Elizabeth's Minster of Education, whose idea it was to allow Mikhail Lomonosov--who is said to have walked from Archangel to Moscow (600 miles)--to carry out his proposal to found a university within the Russian Empire. Previously higher education could be got only abroad, which ruled it out for almost everyone because, until the 1790s, the Tsar's permission was needed even for nobles to travel outside the country, and it was rarely given. The original institution was located in the centre of Moscow, moving out here to the Sparrow Hills--renamed the Lenin Hills--when the neboscrebi (see above) was completed in 1953. This building is amazingly lavishly specified. And the plans for further building are vast, some of it already started. The idea is that the whole area will become one of the world's largest and greatest centres of academic work in the world in the not too distant future. It already has 50,000 students and a million square metres of interior space. The conception is almost Stalinist in scale.Thursday, 24 May 2007
Moscow University
Opposite Stalin's monolith is this new building, completed in 2005 for the 250th anniversary of the founding of Moscow University, the first in Russia. In the foreground of the last picture is the back of the statue that is in front of the door of this, the new library for the University.The statue is of Ivan Shuvalov, Empress Elizabeth's Minster of Education, whose idea it was to allow Mikhail Lomonosov--who is said to have walked from Archangel to Moscow (600 miles)--to carry out his proposal to found a university within the Russian Empire. Previously higher education could be got only abroad, which ruled it out for almost everyone because, until the 1790s, the Tsar's permission was needed even for nobles to travel outside the country, and it was rarely given. The original institution was located in the centre of Moscow, moving out here to the Sparrow Hills--renamed the Lenin Hills--when the neboscrebi (see above) was completed in 1953. This building is amazingly lavishly specified. And the plans for further building are vast, some of it already started. The idea is that the whole area will become one of the world's largest and greatest centres of academic work in the world in the not too distant future. It already has 50,000 students and a million square metres of interior space. The conception is almost Stalinist in scale.
