The story
History
Bauman University is the second oldest educational institution in Russia after Lomonosov Moscow State University (1755). In 1763, the Russian Empress Catherine II founded the Educational Imperial House. On October 5, 1826, the dowager Empress Maria Feodorovna issued a decree to establish "great workshops for different crafts with bedrooms, a dining room, etc." as a part of the Moscow Foundling Home in the German Quarter. All craft pupils were moved from an Orphanage there. On July 1, 1830, Emperor Nicholas I approved the Statute of Moscow Craft School.
Russia's developing industry needed skilled labor in many trades with the aim of the new school being to train artisans with a theoretical background to improve and spread skills in various trades all over Russia. New schools were created to teach crafts as well as basic sciences. In 1868 MCS was reorganized into the Imperial Moscow Technical School (IMTS) under the directorship of Victor Della-Vos. The main purpose of IMTS was to "educate construction engineers, mechanical engineers and industrial technologists".
The IMTS was financially supported by the Government and industrialists. Its management was democratic. A key feature of the new institution was its educational system called the "Russian method", which unifies a broad and intensive theoretical preparation with a deep practical education closely connected with industries. The school participated in the Universal Exposition in 1873 in Vienna and the Philadelphia Centennial Exhibition of 1876. It proved to be influential on John Daniel Runkle when he introduced manual training alongside theoretical training at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. It was also applied to other American technical universities. Many scientists taught in IMTS, such as D. Mendeleev, N. Jukovsky, P. Chebychev, S. Chaplygin, A. Yershov, D. Sovetkin, F. Dmitriev, A. Letnikov, A. Gavrilenko.
In the Soviet period IMTS was renamed Bauman Moscow Higher Technical School (BMHTS), after revolutionary Nikolay Bauman, who was killed near the building of this university. BMHTS continued education of engineers for machine and instrument building. In 1938, new military departments were created in MHTS such as tank, artillery, and ammunition. In 1948 a rocket department was added.
During the first half of the 20th century, Bauman University formed and founded more than 70 technical universities in the USSR. Some of them are now well known institutions, such as Moscow Aviation Institute, Moscow Power Engineering Institute, Moscow University of Civil Engineering, Moscow Chemical Institute, Moscow Communication and Informatics University, Central Aerohydrodynamics Institute TSAGI, and the Military Academy of Aviation Engineering Joukovski.
On 27 July 1989 USSR State committee for peoples education conferred on Moscow Higher Technical School a name of Bauman Moscow Technical University (BMSTU). BMSTU was honored to be the first Russian technical university. Nearly 200,000 students graduated from the university. Most of them chose to become scientists or engineers in leading research centers, universities, private and government owned companies. Many of government officials, chief designers, CEOs of big enterprises, and cosmonauts are Bauman graduates, as noted below in the alumni section.
Many Bauman University graduates are world-renowned: Sergei Korolev for the first satellite in space and first man and woman in space, Andrey Tupolev for the world first supersonic passenger plane, Nikolay Dollezhal for the world first civil nuclear plant, Vladimir Shukhov for the first method and the world first petrol cracking plant as well as for the first hyperboloid structures in architecture, Nikolay Zhukovsky for the foundation of aerodynamics and hydrodynamics sciences, Pavel Sukhoi for the foundation of Sukhoi Aerospace Design Bureau.
Some of the specialized departments of BMSTU are located outside Moscow in cities of Moscow Oblast: Krasnogorsk (Russian: Красногорск), Reutov (Russian: Реутов), Korolyov (Russian: Королёв). There is also a large branch of the university in Kaluga (Russian: Калуга).
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School of hacking and disinformation
Bauman has long been, openly, associated with Russian military research and development (R&D). It carries out more R&D than any other higher education institution in Russia, over 40% of which is in the interests of the ministry of defence.
In 2026 a consortium of journalists from the Guardian, Der Spiegel, Le Monde, the Insider, Delfi and VSquare obtained a cache of 2,000 internal Bauman documents covering years of activity until 2025. They reveal the existence of a secret facility known as Department 4, or Special Training. Students are trained here for work in Russia's military intelligence directorate, the GRU. According to the documents, Department 4 has three specialist streams; the most prominent is called the "Special Reconnaissance Service", coded 093400.
The files include syllabuses and staff contracts, and cover career assignments of graduates, who are taught computer hacking and disinformation, and are then posted to notorious Russian military intelligence cyber-units. The GRU has control over recruitment and grading, and supplies officers involved in the academic process, examining and approving candidates and arranging overseas placements. Subjects taught include electronic eavesdropping and covert surveillance.
The department was led from 2022 to 2025 by GRU signals intelligence lieutenant colonel Kirill Stupakov. Another teacher was major general Viktor Netyksho, who had commanded a hacking group known as Fancy Bear (GRU Unit 26165), whose personnel were indicted by the US Department of Justice for interfering in the 2016 US presidential election.
In the two-semester, 144-hour course "Defence against technical reconnaissance" students are taught hacking techniques including password attacks, software vulnerabilities and computer trojans and viruses. They learn the workings of US and British military intelligence agencies, the use of western intelligence in the Russo-Ukrainian war, and about reconnaissance and strike drones there. They also study information warfare, and as an assignment must develop a disinformation campaign and make a social media video using "manipulation, pressure and hidden propaganda".
Students are taught about mechanisms of psychological manipulation, and how to impose a desired perception of information on an audience.
From Wikipedia’s article on Bauman Moscow State Technical University, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.3