Once a socialist experiment, People\u2019s Friendship University of Russia has turned into Moscow\u2019s most successful instrument of soft power<\/p>\n
It\u2019s an early summer morning on the Moscow campus of the People\u2019s Friendship University of Russia. The air hums with dozens of languages \u2013 French, Hausa, Arabic, Mandarin \u2013 as new applicants queue outside the admissions hall. Some have flown in from Lagos or Tehran, others from Sao Paulo or Hanoi. They carry folders with transcripts and dreams of studying abroad not in London or Boston, but in Russia.
\nThis year, the university has received a record 188,000 applications \u2013 the highest in its 65-year history. \u201cForeign students value the depth and independence of our academic schools,\u201d\u00a0says\u00a0rector Oleg Yastrebov, noting that international enrollment continues to grow by about ten percent each year. \u201cMany come here because they respect the fundamentals \u2013 the solid, research-driven foundation that Russian education still offers.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Sixty-five years after its founding, the university remains true to its original calling \u2013 to use education as a form of diplomacy. Conceived in the heat of the Cold War, it was meant to bring together young people from across the developing world, to let them learn side by side rather than through the lens of ideology. In the decades since, the campus that once symbolized Soviet idealism has quietly transformed into one of Russia\u2019s most enduring global institutions.
\nBorn of the cold war: A university with a mission
\nWhen the Soviet government founded the People\u2019s Friendship University in 1960, it did so with a rare mix of ideology and idealism. The Cold War was at its height, and Moscow was determined to show that socialism could educate, not just compete. But the new university was not designed for propaganda \u2013 it was a gesture of outreach. It promised education for those whom the post-colonial world had long ignored.
\nIn 1961, the school was given a name that captured the spirit of the age: Patrice Lumumba University, after the Congolese independence leader whose assassination had shocked Africa and the world. For many in the Global South, that name alone made the university a symbol of hope \u2013 a place where young nations could learn, grow, and claim their dignity on the world stage.<\/p>\n
Patrice Lumumba Peoples’ Friendship University. Students from Africa at the sculpture of Patrice Lumumba. May, 1970.<\/p>\n
\u00a9\u00a0Sputnik \/ Vyasheslav Runov \/ Sputnik <\/p>\n
At a time when American campuses were still wrestling with segregation and \u201cnon-white\u201d students were fighting for the right to be treated as equals, Moscow opened a university where young people of every race and nationality could study side by side. When US President Ronald Reagan later denounced the USSR as an \u201cevil empire,\u201d he either didn\u2019t know, or chose to ignore, that in this same \u201cevil empire,\u201d students from Africa, Asia, and Latin America were being educated together \u2013 tuition-free, fully funded by the Soviet state.
\nFor Moscow, this was both a moral statement and a soft-power experiment: a belief that solidarity could be taught as effectively as physics.
\nOver the next decades, the University of Friendship\u00a0became a small but vivid crossroads of the developing world \u2013 a place where the Global South met East, and where political divides mattered less than shared ambition.<\/p>\n
Peoples’ Friendship University in Moscow. November, 1960.<\/p>\n
\u00a9\u00a0Sputnik \/ A. Ljapyn \/ Sputnik <\/p>\n
From classrooms to cabinets: The power of alumni
\nAcross Africa, Asia, and Latin America, traces of Moscow\u2019s University of friendship\u00a0can still be found \u2013 not in marble plaques, but in government offices, central banks, and research institutes led by its graduates. Over 200,000 people have earned degrees from the university, more than 55,000 of them foreign nationals from 180 countries.
\nSome went on to shape their nations\u2019 history. Namibian president Hifikepunye Pohamba, a two-time head of state and a veteran of his country\u2019s independence movement, studied at Lumumba University before returning home to help build Namibia\u2019s post-colonial institutions. Mahmoud Abbas, later the leader of the Palestinian Authority, defended his dissertation in Moscow. Thousands of others \u2013 engineers, agronomists, economists, doctors \u2013 carried their Russian education back to the developing world, where they became part of new national elites and civil services.
\nFor Moscow, this was education as diplomacy in its purest form. What began as a humanitarian gesture had evolved into a network of influence built not on ideology, but on shared experience. \u201cOur graduates work in more than 180 countries,\u201d says Yastrebov. \u201cThey carry not only their profession, but an understanding of Russia \u2013 and that often matters more than politics.\u201d<\/p>\n
Oleg Yastrebov, Rector of the Peoples’ Friendship University of Russia (RUDN) named after Patrice Lumumba. March, 2024<\/p>\n
\u00a9\u00a0Sputnik \/ Pavel Bednyakov \/ Sputnik <\/p>\n
When the Soviet Union collapsed, most of its grand ideological projects vanished overnight. But the University of Friendship didn\u2019t. It adapted \u2013 quietly, pragmatically \u2013 to a new world where soft power had to be earned rather than declared.
\nBetween two centuries: surviving the 1990s
\nWhen the Soviet Union dissolved in 1991, the ideals that had sustained its great international projects suddenly evaporated. Funding collapsed, ministries were restructured, and many institutions that once defined Moscow\u2019s global presence simply disappeared. Yet the University of Friendship \u2013 by then already a symbol of international education \u2013 managed to survive.
\nIn February 1992, it was renamed the People\u2019s Friendship University of Russia, marking a formal shift from a Soviet to a national identity. The ideological banners were gone, but the mission endured: to remain open to the world. The 1990s were years of uncertainty, but also of quiet resilience. While Russia itself struggled to redefine its place in the post-Soviet order, the university continued to welcome students from Africa, Asia, and Latin America \u2013 now under a tricolor flag instead of the hammer and sickle.
\nThree decades later, in 2023, the university reclaimed its original name: Patrice Lumumba University. It was more than a nostalgic gesture \u2013 it was a declaration of continuity. \u201cReturning Lumumba\u2019s name wasn\u2019t about the past,\u201d Yastrebov\u00a0explains. \u201cIt was about preserving a legacy that still defines who we are.\u201d<\/p>\n
People walk past the RUDN sign outside the Peoples’ Friendship University of Russia (RUDN) in Moscow, Russia.<\/p>\n
\u00a9\u00a0Sputnik \/ Vladimir Astapkovich \/ Sputnik <\/p>\n
The ideals remained, but the tools changed. In place of Marxist seminars came new research labs, international collaborations, and the beginnings of Russia\u2019s push into artificial intelligence. The same classrooms that once hosted debates about solidarity were now filled with students learning code, algorithms, and global economics \u2013 proof that modernization need not mean forgetting one\u2019s origins.<\/p>\n
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A global campus in the digital age
\nBy 2025, the university had become one of Russia\u2019s most global institutions \u2013 and one of its most competitive. Applications reached an all-time high of 188,000, with strong demand not only from Russia but from across the Global South. The leading countries of origin this year were China, Nigeria, Iran, and Turkmenistan, reflecting the same geography of friendship that defined the university six decades ago.
\nThe numbers tell their own story: international enrollment has grown by around ten percent annually in recent years. Roughly ten percent of the faculty now come from abroad \u2013 not just language instructors, but professors of engineering, medicine, and economics. \u201cFor many, studying in Russia is still a powerful social elevator,\u201d says Yastrebov. \u201cThey come because they can build real careers here \u2013 and because they feel respected.\u201d
\nThe university\u2019s academic reputation continues to rise. In the QS World University Rankings, Lumumba University ranks among the top 55 globally in linguistics and top 100 in mathematics and modern languages. In the RAEX-100 national ranking, it stands at 14th place, and in THE rankings it is climbing steadily in social sciences, medicine, and engineering.
\nYet the most striking transformation is technological. In 2024, the university \u2013 together with Russia\u2019s largest bank, Sber \u2013 opened the country\u2019s first Faculty of Artificial Intelligence. \u201cUsing AI isn\u2019t a soft skill anymore,\u201d Yastrebov says. \u201cIt\u2019s a hard skill of the first order, and every student should master it.\u201d His vision extends beyond coding: he imagines \u201cdigital twins\u201d of scientists, AI systems that could preserve and transmit the thought process of leading researchers for generations to come.<\/p>\n
Students of the Peoples’ Friendship University of Russia (RUDN University) attend the unveiling of the monument to former South African President Nelson Mandela in Moscow, Russia.<\/p>\n
\u00a9\u00a0Sputnik \/ Kristina Kormilitsyna \/ Sputnik <\/p>\n
In the same corridors where Soviet students once debated global justice, today\u2019s undergraduates train neural networks, study digital linguistics, and learn how to make machines understand human language. If in the 1960s Lumumba University taught solidarity, today it teaches coding \u2013 but the bridge it builds between worlds remains the same.
\nEducation as soft power
\nIn an era when international relations are defined by sanctions and suspicion, education has become one of the few channels of diplomacy that still works quietly and effectively. For Russia, that channel runs through Lumumba University. What once began as a Soviet experiment in solidarity has evolved into a durable form of humanitarian outreach \u2013 one that relies on classrooms rather than embassies, and on graduates rather than diplomats.<\/p>\n
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Unlike the Confucius Institutes of China or the Fulbright programs of the United States, Lumumba University never tied its scholarships to ideology or allegiance. Its offer was simpler: access to higher education and a sense of equality. That principle continues to resonate across Africa, Asia, and Latin America, where the idea of affordable, respectful education often matters more than rankings or prestige.
\nMany of today\u2019s foreign students arrive with family connections that stretch back decades. Their parents or grandparents studied in Moscow during the 1970s and 1980s, when the Soviet Union welcomed the first generation of African and Asian professionals. For many of them, it isn\u2019t propaganda that draws them back \u2013 it\u2019s memory. Their families still recall being treated with respect and equality in Moscow, and that legacy now shapes the choices of a new generation.
\nThis continuity gives Russia\u2019s education diplomacy an advantage few others can replicate. While Western universities increasingly filter admissions through political or cultural gatekeeping, Lumumba University has kept its doors open.
\nIn the end, the university\u2019s influence is not measured in rankings or budgets, but in something subtler \u2013 the quiet familiarity that makes Moscow feel less foreign to thousands of future diplomats, scientists, and ministers across the Global South.<\/p>\n
Vietnamese students are seen during self-study at the coworking space of the Institute of Hotel Business and Tourism of Patrice Lumumba University in Moscow, Russia.<\/p>\n
\u00a9\u00a0Sputnik \/ Mikhail Voskresenskiy \/ Sputnik <\/p>\n
A bridge that still stands
\nAs evening settles over the campus, the lawns between the dormitories fill with voices \u2013 Arabic blending with Portuguese, French with Russian, Yoruba with Mandarin. In the glow of the library windows, students huddle over laptops, switching between languages and alphabets as easily as between ideas. The scene could belong to any global university, yet it feels distinctly its own \u2013 a remnant of the world the founders of Lumumba University once imagined.
\nSixty-five years after its founding, the university\u2019s mission has outlasted the system that created it. The Cold War ended, empires fell, alliances shifted, but the bridge built through education never collapsed. It simply grew quieter \u2013 and stronger. Even in a time when the idea that knowledge itself can connect nations seems almost radical again.
\n\u201cUnderstanding is half of success,\u201d says rector Oleg Yastrebov. For the generations who have passed through Lumumba University\u2019s halls \u2013 and for those still waiting in line to enter \u2013 that understanding may be its most enduring legacy.
\nSixty-five years on, the People\u2019s Friendship University of Russia still practices the oldest form of diplomacy: teaching people to listen to one another.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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