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17.09.2007 The main part of the main building - four auxillary wings are not pictured. Students hold a picnic in one of MGU's many communal spaces.   A typical hallway inside MGU's main building. The following story is written by Theordore Merz, an undergraduate student from England who is currently studying Russian at MGU and working as a writer/journalist while there. The story is structured to not only let students know what they can expect when moving to the MGU main campus inside Russia for an extended period, but also to give students a small Russian vocabulary for daily life while there. Hence, many words appear in Russian translation, the stress in each word is marked with a letter that is in italics and underlined. Transliteration is also provided so that beginning students can sound out the words. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Studying in One of the Seven Sisters: Student Life in the MGU Main Building by Theodore Merz The main building of the Moscow State University (Moskovskii gosudarstvennyi universitet - Московский государственный университет - also known as МГУ, MGU, or MSU) is massive and cosmopolitan. Situated in a green area in the south of the capital, it can house, at full capacity, 30,000 students – in addition to the office, classroom, and meeting hall space there. The students who call it home come from all over Russia, the former Soviet Republics, and from every continent. The building itself, one of the Stalin-commissioned Seven Sisters, is either the most striking structure in the city or a faceless monstrosity, depending on what you make of Soviet architecture. Either way, with thirty-six stories plus a two hundred and forty meter tower topped by a twelve-ton Soviet star, it's impossible not to be impressed by its scale, especially when you approach it front-on from Sparrow Hills (Vorobyovy gory - Воробьевы горы), which provides an unobstructed view of the massive building for several hundred yards to the north. Coming here as a foreign student for a short time, you're immediately struck by the similarities and differences between the Russian students and their western equivalents. I wondered what everyday life must be like for the young people who live and study here, often spending five years – the length of most standard degree programs – in a place like this. As a westerner, the first few days of my life in the dormitory (obshezhitie - общежитие; also known among students as "obshaga" - "общага") felt extremely strange under the different levels of surveillance and security that the main building (known as "glavnoe zdanie" - главное здание) features. Not only do federal police (militsiya - милиция) guard the four main entrances that can only be passed after showing your student ID (studencheskii bilet – студенческий билет), there are private security guards (okhraniki - охранники), in the lobby of each dormitory sector (sektor - сектор). These guards have to be shown a separate paper pass (propusk - пропуск). On every floor – each sector has nine – there is a "person on duty" (dezhurnaya – дежурная), whose main tasks include issuing keys to new students, issuing clean sheets and towels once a week, and coordinating the janitorial and maintenance duties needed on each floor. However, it can seem that they spend most of their time watching TV, breaking up parties, and staring disapprovingly at the food you're cooking for dinner. Coming from the quite liberal education system of my native England, these features of the university made me feel surveyed and nannied, like a child who can't be trusted to be left alone. However, the native Russian students view the set-up very differently – almost with an ingrained banality. One I talked to about the militsiya presence couldn't understand why I found this odd, telling me, "It's a common thing for Russia, we have militsiya everywhere." When I asked why there needed to be an attendant on every floor, another student explained, "That came from the Soviet Union. We're used to it, I don't even think about it." Over, the consensus was that things had always been the way they were and there was no need for further explanation. Russian oddities aside, the dormitories have the same sort of problems as most inexpensive accommodation everywhere. Heat is the main issue: the rooms are invariably too hot – either because of the lack of air conditioning in summer, or because the radiators (baterei otopleniya – батареи отопления) are turned up too high once the temperature outside drops (they are centrally controlled). Add to this is the fact that the windows have to be kept shut for most of the time - to keep flies and mosquitoes out in the summer and snow out in the winter. The interior in general, with polished wood and marble must have been wonderous in its Stalin-era heyday. But now a combination of dampness and general wear has honestly given it a run-down, tired feel. An MGU dorm room - small but liveable. Note that TV and telephone are not standard. Each floor of the MGU dorm  has a communal kitchen. Students playing soccer, volleyball, and basketball outside of MGU's main building. The Cafe Max Internet Cafe  is five-minutes from the main building and is a frequented hang-out.   The main building is one of Moscow's most recognized landmarks among locals. Like universities everywhere, the canteen (stolovaya – столовая – "cafeteria" in American English) is a focal point of social life during the day. They serve a surprisingly tasty range of food for ridiculously cheap prices, and most students, it seems, eat in them for at least one meal a day. For breakfast, I highly recommend their hot cereal (kasha – каша), hough you should get there before 9am to be in with a chance of there being any left. At lunch and dinner, the stolovi serve cold salads, soups, and hot main courses, including a range of traditional Eastern-European dishes that even most foreigners quickly grow to love – like borsch, shchi, shashlik, and plov (борщ, щи, шашлык, плов). A three course meal with a drink won't normally set you back more than 100 rubles, the equivelent of about four US dollars, so you can easily eat there for every meal of every day and stay on a tight budget. In the evening, students have several options open to them. If they're not studying, many head to bars and clubs in the city centre, as there are a limited number of night-spots in the university area (raion universiteta – район университета). However, it's not necessary to leave MSU to let your hair down: small parties (vecherinki - вечеринки) can be found somewhere on the university grounds almost every night, sometimes in rooms, communal spaces, or (in the summer) outside in the courtyard (dvor – двор). In the summer, the university also has lots of green spaces to stroll and relax. You can also walk down to the brand-new, massive shopping center on Vernadskovo Prospect, which houses a large Ramstore supermarket, coffee shops (kofeini – кофейни), countless clothes shops, as well as a food court and a multi-screen cinema. In terms of how they spend their leisure time, I've found that all that I've described here seems to take up most of their time, making students in Russia fairly similar to their counterparts in the West. The principal difference seems to be their workload and their attitude towards it. Whereas English arts students can expect as little as 10 hours of lessons a week, undergraduate students in Moscow can have lessons and lectures in a near-solid block from nine until six and they study up to six days out of seven. And while most bachelor degrees in England last three years, in Moscow the average course lasts for five; though Russians do have less time in education pre-university than American or English students. One student, who has studied in both Russia and America, told me that Russian undergraduates "have more subjects and therefore less time (to pursue non-academic interests)." What can be expected after university also seems to differ. In England, many arts students – especially of languages – find employment in careers more associated with science graduates, such as finance and banking. In America, arts students also end up practicing some aspect of business as well. However, in Russia the choice of subject or subjects seems to have a more direct influence on employment in later life, and many people I have spoken to are taking courses in subjects they have relatively little interest in because they believe that the small differences in their transcript will directly influence the type of employment they will be able to find. In many ways, the students I've come across at the MGU have a good mix, both studying hard and enjoying the free time they have, especially in the first years of their courses. I suppose that students are students everywhere, with roughly the same combination of irresponsibility and maturity, adolescence and adulthood. However, as a western student in Russia, everything here can feel new and strange and even a bit oppressive and overly-monitored even as the thousands of students that I call my neighbors are so friendly and in many ways similar to me. Study Abroad at MGU The Library: Russian Language Student's Guide to Moscow   Find Out More! More Study Abroad Programs! SRAS Travel Services Heath and Safety in Russia Internships in Russia The SRAS Newsletter Journal for Students Hate Crime in Russia, the US More Free Resources! « back to Articles and Information archive print this page email this page