Faculty of History and Political Studies was one of the four faculties: History and Philology, Physics and Mathematics, Legal and Medical when 16 (28) May 1878 Emperor Alexander II signed a decree on opening Siberian University in Tomsk.

Structure of the Faculty:

Direction History

• Department of Russian History
• Department of Modern Russian History
• Department of Archeology and Local History
• Department of Modern, Contemporary History and International Relations
• Department of History of the Ancient World, the Middle Ages and the Methodology of History

Direction International Relations

• Department of World Politics
• Department of European Languages
• Department of Oriental Studies

Direction Documentation and Archival

• Department of History and Documentation

Direction Russia Regional Studies

Faculty of History has Laboratory for Social and Anthropological Research. It was established in the framework of the project “Man in a Changing World. Problems of Identity and Social Adaptation in History and at Present” as a result of long-standing efforts of TSU historians and ethnologists to develop such lines of research and educational subjects as history, ethnography, ethnology, anthropology, and archaeology.

Today, the disciplines of social anthropology and ethnology are actively being developed at Tomsk State University in close collaboration with well-established Russian and international research and educational centres.

Tomsk State University holds the largest craniological collection in Russia. Currently TSU Cabinet of Anthropology is not just a place to store collections, but permanent centre of scientific processing. It produces demolition, restoration, certification of collections, archaeologists make a preliminary determination of sex and age and advisory work. One of the most important tasks for the staff at this stage is a processing and an introduction of previously collected and entering new craniological and osteological materials to the scientific research. Cabinet contains paleoanthropological sources from cemeteries from the Urals to the Far East, and their chronological period is from the Neolithic period to the present. Currently, there are 5,500 craniums from ancient and late burials, which are a fundamental source base for the study of ethnic and racial genesis peoples of Siberia.

Specialities:

• History
• International Relations
• Document and Archive Science
• International Area Studies
• Russian Area Studies