“Mission of Serving the Homeland”: Review of the Monograph “At the Crossroads of Times and Destinies”

Abstract

The article analyzes a new monograph about Moscow Pedagogical State University, which celebrated its 150th anniversary in 2022. The authors state the uniqueness of this university, which initiated higher education for women in Russia, became the first pedagogical university in the USSR, the flagship of pedagogical science development and alma mater for prominent representatives of national science and culture. The creative goal set by the team of authors in the book is to compose a collective biography of the University as a social institution and as a living academic community, examining its history at several levels (sociopolitical, discursive, institutional, material, sociocultural and spatial) has been quite successfully realized. The fundamentality of the analyzed sources and literature, the thoroughness of the chronologically problematic method of presentation, the multilateral coverage of the history of the university make it possible to refer the new monograph to the best examples of university studies in our country.