This contribution is dealing with issues of internationalization of higher education and its implications for academic careers and the academic system in Russian Federation. The opening of boundaries in this country at the beginning of the 1990s coincided with the deepening globalization and internationalization of academic systems across the world. As Philip Altbach and Jane Knight put it, these two notions should be distinguished for analytical purpose: while globalization represents a scope of specific phenomena and trends redefining boundaries between local and global systems, internationalization may be understood as a set of policy measures aiming at the adaptation of local institutions to this new context (Altbach & Knight 2007).

Though it is not a new phenomenon in Europe and elsewhere, the “internationalization” has been largely integrated in the dominant academic and political discourses during the last decades (e.g. Altbach 1996; de Wit 1995; de Wit & Greenwood 2009; Knight 1995; Welch 2002; Yang 2002). Firstly, a higher level of internationalization is supposed to imply a better quality of education (de Wit & Greenwood 2009:153 sq), though in reality a high percentage of foreign professors doesn't always guarantee an excellent quality of teaching, as well as numerous foreign students may have a rather low level (Gemelli & de Saint-Martin 1998:164). Secondly, and most importantly, the new politics promoting academic mobility is concerned with issues of competitiveness and efficiency: a successful national educational system is defined by its capacity to produce and to attract highly skilled staff from a more competitive globalized market (de Wit & Greenwood 2009:29).

For developing countries, trying to “catch up” with core countries, this issue represents an additional dimension of “westernization”, “liberalization”, or “modernization” of the educational system (Yang 2002: 71 sq). Some of them stake on recruiting professors and researchers with a doctorate degree earned in European or American universities. These specialists are supposed to have knowledge and skills absent in a receiving country, but also a social capital accumulated during the years of education (and/or of work) abroad which may be useful for the development of international cooperation (Welch 1997). Besides, a foreign experience is welcomed for it raises the chances of publishing papers in high impact-factor international journals which are increasingly used to evaluate a personal performance as well as to rank institutions.

This research represents an attempt to evaluate a dynamics, patterns and difficulties of the internationalization of the academic labour market in Russia compared to other European and developing countries. Though crucial for the Russian educational system, this topic hasn't been explored in a scholarly literature up to this day. More specifically, I'm trying to address the following questions: what are the factors which foster or, conversely, hinder the internationalization of the Russian system of higher education? What is a geographical and disciplinary structure of the Russian labour market for the holders of foreign degrees? Finally, what specificities do present practices and careers of foreign doctorate holders compared with the staff having a “local” degree?

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