The wild side of a russian education

For those who have never been inside the Moscow State University (MSU) main building, it is simply another of Moscow’s Seven Sister skyscrapers. For visitors who have managed to bargain their way past the militsia at the entrance without a student ID card, it must seem like just a collection of un­comfortable dormitories, Soviet-era lecture halls and run-down canteens.

But for the hundreds of young people who come from all over the world to study and live in the MSU, as I did, the main building can be a place to party.

I think it would be fair to say that Russian universities do not have a fun reputation in the West. The only idea most of us westerners have about this area of Russian life is based on what we read of the student Raskolnikov in Crime and Punishment: all fevers, cramped rooms and bedbugs. While this is not actually too far from the truth – the average dormitory room in the MSU is tiny, many do have bedbugs and, if you’re a non-Russian, you are unlikely to leave without picking up some sort of illness. But there is a whole other side to student life in Russia.

A party or gathering (vecherinka) can be found somewhere in the building almost every evening. These are normally either held in the kitchen (of which there is one per floor) or in a student’s room. There are potential hazards with either.

Students’ rooms are so small that a party of more than five people soon starts to resemble a game of sardines, and if there are a number of smokers – as there invariably are – the party starts to resemble a game of sardines in a burnin’ cigarette factory. Parties in kitchens are liable to be broken up by dezhur­naya – usually a middle-aged woman whose duties include watching tele­vision, staring disapprovingly at what you’re cooking for dinner and stopp­ing anything that could be considered fun.

As in England, there is a widespread binge-drinking culture, with large amounts of vodka and beer at every gathering as a matter of course. Tellingly, some of the first vocabulary I learned from my roommate, an Uzbek physics stu­dent, was the Russian for “to be drunk,” “to vomit” and “hangover.”

Drugs are also in evidence, as my often bleary-eyed and giggling neighbour confided. However, a Russian undergraduate I spoke to told me that members of the physics and geography departments are – for reasons unexplained – noto­ri­ous for their higher levels of substance abuse. She went on to say that she had personally “never seen an MSU student taking drugs,” and it is certainly true to say that they are not so much of a problem as in most western universities. 

Which leaves sex and rock and roll. The small and squeaky beds that are to be found in the majority of the rooms, and can barely take one person, let alone two, would seem to rule out the possibility of any sexual activity between the Moscow students. But through the thin walls in the dormitories and often-open windows it is made clear that the MSU has its fair share of it.

Rock and roll, though, is entirely off the agenda. The only question I was ever asked by students wanting to know my musical tastes was, ‘R&B’ or ‘Electro?’

The area around the MSU – metro Universityet – is strangely devoid of any nightclubs and has hardly any bars, so any student looking for a night’s partying away from the watchful eye of their dezhurnaya has to venture into the city center. However, most choose to stay inside the main building for their evening’s activities. In many ways, the students at the MSU main building play just as hard as their counterparts in the west.

The principle difference seems to be that they work much, much harder. Depending on their timetable, students can have lectures and lessons from nine until six, up to six days out of seven (whereas arts students in England can expect as little as 10 hours teaching time per week). If you ever find yourself a student in Russia, you will quickly discover that there’s not much time for lying in bed with a hangover feeling sorry for yourself. 

So if you’re up for a couple of months’ partying and feel young enough, you could do worse than enrolling for a course at the MSU. Just be ready to face the consequences in your lessons the morning after the night before.

Theodore Merz

Moscow News 27/09/2007