Socio Cultural Role of Higher Education in USSR and Contemporary Russia: Common Trends and Contradictions

In modern scientific, political, economic and civil social discourse, the permanent higher education reforms are still the topic of much discussion. Despite the various viewpoints of the opponents, the discussion is rather critical (the criticism is prevailing in the discussion). References to the Soviet educational tradition, the necessity of its resuscitation for modern higher education are increasingly used in this criticism. However, a certain romanticization of the recent past in the aspect that interests us requires a historically reliable understanding, considering not only the best experience, but also the mistakes made. The article provides a general overview of the trends in the transformation of the social role of the institute of higher education in the Soviet period in correlation with the latest stage of scientific and educational reform. The main conclusion of the research is that not only the crisis of the 1990s is the main cause of a certain unbalanced current state of higher education. Although the events of the 1990s have been a powerful catalyst for the transformation of higher education, general trends in the formation of individual mass problems date back to the 1970s.