Peoples’ Friendship University of Russia

Peoples’ Friendship University of Russia (PFUR), state institution of higher learning in Moscow, founded in 1960 as Peoples’ Friendship University “to give an education to people who had liberated themselves from colonialist oppression.” It was renamed Patrice Lumumba Peoples’ Friendship University (Universitet druzhby narodov imeni Patrisa Lumumby) for the Congolese premier Patrice Lumumba after his death in 1961. Patrice Lumumba Peoples’ Friendship University drew students from developing countries throughout the world.

As at all Soviet universities, education at Patrice Lumumba Peoples’ Friendship University was fully financed by the government, which also paid for the students’ initial transportation to the Soviet Union and their return after graduation. There were six departments: engineering; agriculture; medicine; physics, mathematics, and general science; economics and international law; and history and philosophy. There was a strong emphasis on the first three subjects; only about 30 percent of the students were in the humanities. All programs required six years for completion, the first year being preparatory, during which students learned Russian, the language of instruction. Following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the university was renamed the Peoples’ Friendship University of Russia (1992).