Guys, the registration for 2023 HSE International Olympiad finished last weekend. We hope some of you have registered and are now getting ready to win 💥

Today we share a video motivation about the INTO winners. They share their feeling about the Olympiad and studying at the HSE.

Watch and find your inspiration!

A tiny spoiler: it’s 100% sure that after you’ve viewed the video you’ll feel the urge to log onto our website and find out every detail on how to get accepted to the HSE.

😌 Just in case, here is the link: https://admissions.hse.ru/

📚This week in our literature column we look at two of the major epic novels in Russian literature.

An epic is a large story based on a narrative of major historical events. The classic epic has always been considered a poetic work (e.g. Homer's Iliad). But in the 19th century with the development of the historical novel this genre became associated with prose. The main innovator in this form was Tolstoy with his novel War and Peace. Later this work inspired Sholokhov to create The Quiet Don.

If you're taking part in the INTO HSE in History, don't forget that tests will take place on Wednesday

25/01/2023
For a link to the INTO HSE 2023 test schedule, see our stories at https://olymp.hse.ru/inter/timetable/2023.

“WAR AND PEACE” Leо Tolstoy, 1869

The work is a vast saga which recounts, with equal depth, events on different scales, from the personal lives of a few families and the particular battles of 1812 to the movement of nations and history in general. Tolstoy began writing the novel in February 1863 and finished it in 1869. The title of the work was originally 1805. Before writing the novel, Tolstoy long studied the archives, communicated with the participants of the Patriotic War.
Working on “War and Peace”, the writer used different sources: the historical works about 1812 with which he polemicized, and memoirs of Russian nobles and foreigners of the early 19th century. Tolstoy was also aided in his writing by his combat experience in the Crimean War, which he captured in The Tales of Sevastopol: for the first time in Russian literature, the war was described through the chaos known to its direct participants.
In his coverage of historical events, Tolstoy shifts the emphasis from the activities of rulers and heroes to the “homogeneous attraction of people”. The writer criticizes the traditional interpretation, in which the real causes of large-scale events are considered to be the moods and orders of a single individual. In his view, Russia's victory over France was brought about by the unification of many forces and souls of the Russian people, which individually can be interpreted as selfish — but they had in common an unwillingness to surrender to the enemy.

“THE SILENT DON”. M. A. Sholokhov, 1940.

This is a work about the Don Cossacks during the First World War and the Civil War. The main character - Grigory Melekhov — is in the centre of the narration: he has an affair with his married neighbour Aksinya, he is forced to marry another woman and run away from his native village. Grigory is fighting, searching for the truth, striving between the Reds and the

Whites, his wife, and his beloved, losing everyone close to him. In the finale the hero is left all alone with a small son in his arms.
Sholokhov initially wanted to create a novel about the participation of the Cossacks in General Krasnov's march on Petrograd, but he later abandoned that idea. The writer began work on a new version of The Quiet Don on November 6, 1926. The next two years he collected materials in libraries and archives, studied the history of the Don Cossacks, the memoirs of generals Krasnov and Denikin, communicated with the real participants of the Civil War on the Don, in particular with a Cavalier of St. George Kharlampy Yermakov. The Quiet Don turned out to be almost the only source of the real history of the wars for Soviet readers. The events of the First World War were most often suppressed in literature, history textbooks and everyday life. Sholokhov himself recounts in detail in his chapters on the Civil War, not the events glorified by ideology, but, for example, the Ice Campaign of the Volunteer Army in Yekaterinodar. He reliably describes the Vyoshenskaya rebellion of the Cossacks against the Red Army: the Bolshevik terror, violence and counter-insurgency.

🚀AMBASSADORS WANTED!

HSE University has traditionally had a reputation for being one of the most popular study destinations for foreign students. To prove that we have applications from nearly every country of the world received over the last five years.

That’s not least because of our students who give positive feedback and, what is more, recommend HSE and its programmes to their friends, relatives, colleagues, and people they know.

We value the contribution our students make to the international development of the university and bringing talents to HSE University from all over the globe. To foster such a commitment, we’ve come up with the Student Ambassador programme.

Ambassadors are the HSE students who know the university inside and out. They are open-hearted and friendly communicators, always ready to help and share their experience with prospective applicants.

Ambassadors can give advice on how to get accepted, tell what studying at HSE University and living in Russia are like, and cover every piece of the student life.

As part of the programme, the ambassadors will learn more about how HSE attracts talents worldwide, meet new people, and get a nice, reputed point to add to their CV. The best ambassadors are entitled to special programme bonuses!

More details at studamb.hse.ru/en

HSE is you!

Festive season is always the time to cook something delicious and traditional. Our foreign students tell about the festive cooking traditions and treats in their countries.

Read and choose the recipes to use on the upcoming New Year’s eve📝

ATTENTION ‼️ Here is the HSE University New Year address 🎄☃️

As you are counting hours until the New Year, we would love to send out most sincere festive greetings! Switch on the video with our warmers wishes from the HSE family 🥰🔻