The University has been visited by a delegation from the Ho Chi Minh National Academy of Politics. The guests were received by the Rector of St Petersburg University Nikolay Kropachev. He expressed hope for continued joint work on the launching of new academic programmes with the Vietnamese component.

‘The University is the centre of Vietnamese culture in St Petersburg. It is here at St Petersburg University that the first school of teaching the Vietnamese language in Russia was established. The only monument to Ho Chi Minh in St Petersburg is located in the University grounds. We seek to expand educational and scientific cooperation with Vietnamese organisations, including the Ho Chi Minh National Academy of Politics,’ said Nikolay Kropachev, Rector of St Petersburg University.

The head of the Vietnamese delegation, Secretary of the Communist Party of Vietnam Central Committee, Dr Nguyễn Xuân Thắng thanked the Rector for the warm welcome. He congratulated him on being recently awarded the Order of St Alexander Nevsky by Russian President Vladimir Putin. Dr Nguyễn Xuân Thắng noted that St Petersburg University and the Ho Chi Minh National Academy of Politics have been developing cooperation since 2010, when the first worldwide ‘Ho Chi Minh Institute’ was opened at the University.

Nikolay Kropachev pointed out that the first stage of cooperation with the Ho Chi Minh National Academy of Politics has been successfully accomplished. St Petersburg University has fulfilled all the requirements as stipulated in the cooperation agreement between the two educational institutions.

During the second stage of cooperation, I propose that we prioritise efforts to ensure that new publications on Vietnamese studies are available to our students. These include not only books to study the Vietnamese language, but also publications on Vietnam’s economy, politics, law, international relations, psychology, philosophy, sociology, and history.
Nikolay Kropachev, Rector of St Petersburg University

‘It is important that the University’s students should gain access to information sources so that they could learn about the achievements of scientists and scholars from Vietnam. This will, indeed, facilitate the penetration of the Vietnamese component into various academic programmes and enable the creation of new academic programmes with the Vietnamese component,’ explained Nikolay Kropachev.

Cooperation projects between the University and universities from China, Korea, and Hungary were cited as example models.

In the framework of international cooperation, the University implements academic programmes that have Japanese, Korean, Thai, Chinese and other components. Foreign experts are full council members of these academic programmes. They contribute to the content of the programme, participate in the selection of the teaching staff and the final assessment, and determine the list of relevant literature, teaching methods and approaches.

In addition, other initiatives that outline new areas of cooperation between the two universities and the development of Russian–Vietnamese relations were voiced at the meeting.

The head of the Vietnamese delegation, Nguyễn Xuân Thắng, expressed hope that St Petersburg University would agree to participate in an international conference and several other key events dedicated to three important dates in the political history of Vietnam. Next year marks the 130th anniversary of the birth of Ho Chi Minh, the 150th anniversary of the birth of Vladimir Lenin, and the 90th anniversary of the founding of the Communist Party of Vietnam. The Rector of St Petersburg University expressed the University’s willingness to participate in the celebrations.