The reform of higher education became the subject of sharp debate and public concern in Russia during the current decade. The controversy still exists even if the reforms had been initiated in the early 1990s. By the mid-1990s, their most painful aspects had already become manifest: severe cuts in state funding; deteriorating working conditions of academic staff; a new private sector in education with possibly dubious licensing, accreditation, and diploma value; dismantling of the Soviet system of job assignment and the ensuing unprecedented problem of unemployment among university graduates; and the commercialization of higher education. This article provides perspective by surveying the history of reform in Russian higher education from the first steps undertaken by Peter the Great in establishing the first Russian university in the early eighteenth century through the educational reform enacted during the last years of the Soviet regime. The article identifies three distinct periods; examines the aims and characteristics of reform and their impact on Russian tertiary education; and discusses the issue of continuity from past to current reforms in Russia. (Contains 12 notes.)