Russian Studies (Boris Nemtsov’s Study Program) / Российские исследования (образовательная программа имени Бориса Немцова) is a new follow-up master’s (two-year) full-time study programme conceived as territorial studies, taught in Russian with a wide range of lectures and seminars in English. The programme focuses on the study of Russia, emphasizing the period after the collapse of the Soviet Union. It is open to all applicants with at least a bachelor’s degree.
The programme will be taught by experts from the Faculty of Arts, Charles University, mainly members of the Department of East European Studies at CU FA, which is a guarantor of the programme, associates of the Boris Nemtsov Academic Centre for the Study of Russia at CU FA, members of departments and institutes at CU FA (in particular the Institute of Economic and Social History and the Department of Political Science) and the Faculty of Humanities, Charles University. The strategic partner will be the Faculty of Social Sciences, Charles University, especially the Institute of International Studies. Timothy Frye, professor of politics at Columbia University, and Andrej Richter, professor of journalism at Comenius University in Bratislava, are directly involved in the professional and personnel guaranteeing of programme’s structure. The programme was created in close cooperation with the Stanford U.S.-Russia Forum (SURF), which strives to facilitate research and cooperation between the U.S. and Russia. The founders signed a partnership on student exchanges with Sciences Po, an international university in Paris.
Since the predominant language of instruction is Russian with a focus on the versatile, interdisciplinary study of modern Russia, the new programme represents a unique project outside the Russian Federation itself, where the administrative pressure and subordination to the state gradually increased in similarly focused programmes. One of the key objectives is, on the one hand, to preserve the freedom of critical and ideologically charged research on Russia in Russian and, on the other hand, to integrate Russian studies into a wider international context. The scale of the field and the fact that a considerable part of the studies will be in English open the possibility of intensive cooperation with similar foreign centres in Western Europe and the United States.
A graduate of the programme Russian Studies (Boris Nemtsov’s Study Program) / Российские иследования (образовательная програм имени Бориса Немцова) will acquire advanced knowledge of the development of modern Russian history and foreign policy, will be oriented in the current sociocultural and socioeconomic Russian topics, and at the same time, will be familiar with the current methodology and theoretical approaches in the research disciplines. The graduate will be able to work critically with information sources and make independent analyses of the changes in Russian society, foreign policy, economy, journalism, media, and the political-constitutional system from 1991 to the present in international contexts. In addition, they will be ready to continue in postgraduate study of the foreign-language (Russian, English) PhD study programs focused on studying Russia and Eastern Europe with a relevant methodological basis (in particular history, political science, sociology).
The general objective of the follow-up master study program Russian Studies (Boris Nemtsov’s Study Program) / Российследования (образовательная программа имени Бориса Немцова) is the education of qualified professionals who can work both in the commercial sphere focused on Russia and post-Soviet space, in the governments of democratic countries, non-governmental organizations, and the media focused on Russian-language environments outside Russia.
You may find more detailed information about the study programme and the entrance examination here.
