Moscow Moving toward Restoration of Soviet-Style System of Assigning Graduates to First Jobs, Novichkov Says

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Feb. 19 – Yet another feature of Soviet life, the assignment of graduates of higher educational institutions, is in the process of returning to the Russian Federation, according to Nikolay Novichkov, a Just Russia-For Truth Duma deputy, says. Indeed, he suggests, the Russian government has already made several steps in that direction.
    While that system had “many minuses” – including being extremely unpopular among Moscow graduates sent to the periphery – it had “pluses too” ensuring that workers appeared where they were needed and that higher schools focused on the economy (mk.ru/social/2025/02/19/sovetskaya-sistema-raspredeleniya-posle-instituta-vozrozhdaetsya.html).
    After the Soviet system of distribution of graduates was disbanded in the 1990s, Novichkov continues, the positive role it played has become ever more obvious and the Russian government has moved to restore it step by step, first by rating universities in terms of how well they meet economic needs and then by working to send graduates to where they are need.
    For three reasons, the economist says, Moscow will be compelled to more further toward the restoration of something like the Soviet system of distribution of graduates: the rate of economic change, the size of the country, and the need to bring higher educational institutions into closer alignment with Russia’s economic needs.
    With talk now about “a Gosplan 2.0,” this restoration will likely become ever more rapid and take the form of a tripartite “agreement among the government, employers and graduates which will allow each of the sies to feel confident they will be able to cope with immediate and long-term developmental needs.”
    Novichkov is likely right about the direction the Putin regime is moving, but he is also right to note that this won’t be an entirely happy development for many Russians who will see this as a more significant infringement of the rights they thought they were acquiring with the establishment of a free market economy.