University and Eastern European Modernity: Role of the 'Governmental University' in the Modernization of Russian Empire, USSR and Post-Soviet Nations

Abstract In this short overview of the university’s history in Eastern Europe I tried to demonstrate the way traditional societies of this region transited into a condition of ambivalent modernity. Being in direct communication and under influence of modernization in the Western Europe, societies that were part of imperial Russia in the 19th century developed a highly ambivalent model of education and scientific institutions responsible for the rationalization of their cultures. A witness of this process, Aleksander Griboiedov call this modernity a «Drum Enlightenment» stressing upon the fact that the modernization was going on as an imperial policy imposed over traditional national cultures. The Eastern European modernities have had their own dialectics of struggle of instrumental rationality of the system and ambiguous communicational rationality of life-world. In this struggle university has played a role of a leading institute that was weak in promotion of critical rationalization in traditional societies and strong in institutionalization of power that was undermining modernity goals of individual’s emancipation.