Russia and The Former Soviet Union
During the Soviet Union, the Higher Attestation Commission under the USSR Council of Ministers (also abbreviated as VAK) oversaw and controlled the awarding of advanced academic degrees and academic ranks in all of the USSR. With the fall and break up of the Soviet Union, separate Higher Attestation Commissions arose in the newly independent nations. For example, the Russian agency became the Higher Attestation Commission of the Russian Ministry of Education and Science, taking similar duties in the Russian Federation.
The responsibilities of the Russian Commission include:
- coordinating Dissertation Councils in Russian universities and research institutes;
- promulgating regulations concerning awarding of academic degrees;
- awarding the degrees of Candidate of Sciences and Doctor of Sciences, upon the recommendation of the Dissertation Council in the university or research institute where the defense of the dissertation took place;
- awarding the academic rank of Professor;
- making decisions on equivalence of foreign degrees awarded to Russian citizens.
The Higher Attestation Commissions in other nations have similar responsibilities.
Read more about this topic: Higher Attestation Commission
Famous quotes containing the words soviet union, russia, soviet and/or union:
“There is no Soviet domination of Eastern Europe and there never will be under a Ford administration.... The United States does not concede that those countries are under the domination of the Soviet Union.”
—Gerald R. Ford (b. 1913)
“In Russia there is an emigration of intelligence: émigrés cross the frontier in order to read and to write good books. But in doing so they contribute to making their fatherland, abandoned by spirit, into the gaping jaws of Asia that would like to swallow our little Europe.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“In the Soviet Union everything happens slowly. Always remember that.”
—A.N. (Arkady N.)
“What should concern Massachusetts is not the Nebraska Bill, nor the Fugitive Slave Bill, but her own slaveholding and servility. Let the State dissolve her union with the slaveholder.... Let each inhabitant of the State dissolve his union with her, as long as she delays to do her duty.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)