Programme Overview

HSE’s Master’s Programme aspires ’Russian Studies‘ to train professionals with both a knowledge of the country’s rich history and cultural heritage, and the ability to comprehend with reason its contemporary reality, with its achievements and problems, successes and challenges.

Our programme aspires to help students coming from diverse backgrounds — Western and Oriental, and certainly Russians as well — learn to understand and analyze how Russia lives and works. We believe we have a yardstick to measure it. And together we can surely try to unwrap at least some of this country’s mysteries.

Why choose ‘Russian Studies’ at HSE?

• Study Russia in Russia’s capital at the country’s leading university (among the top 100 universities in ‘Politics and International Studies’ category, according to QS World University Rankings by Subject);
• Prepare for real-life work with and in Russia with an interdisciplinary curriculum;
• Cooperate with many of the leading Russian studies researchers, including opportunities to join research teams of well-known academics both in Russia and abroad;
• HSE’s faculty team includes renowned specialists in comparative, regional, political studies and more from around the world;
• Benefit from the programme’s comparative approach to research, which combines materials on Russian politics and society with interregional (e.g., Post-Soviet) and global trends.

What Can I Study?

Required Courses  in Political Science:

• Modern Political Science;
• Methodology and Methods of Political Research.

Required Basic Courses in Russian Studies:

• Explaining Contemporary Russian Politics: Institutions and Beyond;
• Regions of Russia and the World in Comparative Perspective;
• Russia in the Global World: International Relations and Foreign Policy of Russia;
• Business and State in Russia.

Elective Courses:

• Russian Population Structures;
• Political Economy of Public Goods in Russia;
• Culture of Modern Russian Society: Sociological Analysis;
• Russian Media System;
• China and Russia: Great Powers in an Era of Global Disorder;
• Informal Economy and Entrepreneurship in Contemporary Russia;
• Modern Russian City and Life in a Megapolis;
• Demographic Development and Migration in the Post-Soviet Space;
• Russian Criminal Justice System;
• Russia and the Muslim World;
• Gender Politics in Russia;
• Parties and Elections in Russian Regions.

And also:

• Intensive courses in Russian as a foreign language;
• Research internships at leading Russian institutions and companies.