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Cultural connections between the Soviet Union and the Third World have attracted attention in a number of works recently, perhaps most notably Tobias Rupprecht’s excellent new book. 1 Among other topics, Rupprecht highlights how educational aid strengthened Soviet relations with Third World countries. Students from the Third World formed a large and growing contingent at Soviet institutions of higher education from the 1960s to the 1980s, and, in contrast to the typical Western view of the Soviet Union as a dreary, technologically backward and politically repressive place, many Asian, African, Latin American and Middle Eastern students came away impressed by the USSR’s free university education, generous stipends and unlimited hot showers. In interviews with Rupprecht, Latin American alumni of Soviet educational institutions again and again described their studies in the USSR as the “best time of their life.” 2

The purpose of this chapter is to examine some of the institutional means by which Soviet universities and institutes accommodated international students. With the influx of students from the Third World, Soviet vuzy (a helpful shorthand for institutions of higher education) had to develop techniques to provide for these students’ special academic needs. Soviet officials wanted their country’s universities and institutes to be perceived as world-class educational institutions, particularly in the technical fields, but they faced some serious challenges when it came to educating international students from the Third World. Some of these challenges will be familiar to educators at Western uni-