Founded in 1724 by a decree of Peter the Great, the university from the beginning has had a focus on fundamental research in science, engineering and humanities.

In the 2023 admission campaign, over 106,000 domestic students applied to the university for bachelor's and specialist programs, with only 4,617 being accepted.

The same year, over 21,000 international students from 100 different countries applied to the university for state-funded scholarship programs, with only 1,000 being accepted.

In 1830, Tsar Nicholas returned the entire building of the Twelve Collegia to the university, and courses resumed there.

But this subdivision had the cameral studies department, where students learnt safety, occupational health and environmental engineering management and science, including chemistry, biology, agronomy along with law and philosophy.

The students were denied freedom of assembly and placed under police surveillance, and public lectures were forbidden.

A decree of the Emperor Alexander II of Russia adopted on 18 February 1863, restored the right of the university assembly to elect the rector.

In 1884, a new Charter of the Imperial Russian Universities was adopted, which granted the right to appoint the rector to the Minister of National Enlightenment again.

), a group of the university students was arrested while planning an attempt on the life of Alexander III of Russia.

Among the scholars of the second half of the 19th century, affiliated with the university were mathematician Pafnuty Chebyshev, physicist Heinrich Lenz, chemists Dmitri Mendeleev and Aleksandr Butlerov, embryologist Alexander Kovalevsky, physiologist Ivan Sechenov and pedologist Vasily Dokuchaev.

), on the campus of the university, Alexander Popov publicly demonstrated transmission of radio waves for the first time in history.

Since about 1897, regular strikes and student unrest shook the university and spread to other institutions of higher education across Russia.

However, after the October Revolution of 1917, the university's staff and administration were initially vocally opposed to the Bolshevik takeover of power and reluctant to cooperate with the Narkompros.

Later in 1917–22, during the Russian Civil War, some of the staff suspected of counter-revolutionary sympathies suffered imprisonment (e.g., Lev Shcherba in 1919), execution, or exile abroad on the so-called Philosophers' ships in 1922 (e.g., Nikolai Lossky).

In order to suppress intellectual opposition to Soviet power, a number of historians working in the university, including Sergey Platonov, Yevgeny Tarle, and Boris Grekov, were imprisoned in the so-called Academic Affair of 1929–30 on fabricated charges of participating in a counter-revolutionary conspiracy aimed at overthrowing the government.

During the 1941–44 Siege of Leningrad in World War II, many students and staff died from starvation, in battles, or from repressions.

In 1948, the Soviet Council of Ministers named the university after Andrei Zhdanov, a deceased Communist official.

In 1949–50, several professors died in prison during the investigation of the Leningrad Affair fabricated by the central Soviet leadership, and the Minister of Education of the RSFSR, former rector Alexander Voznesensky, was executed.

In 1966, the Council of Ministers decided to build a suburban campus in Petrodvorets for most of the mathematics and natural science faculties.

In 1969, the Presidium of the Supreme Council of the Soviet Union awarded the university the Order of the Red Banner of Labour.

[citation needed] Rector Nikolay Kropachev has signed a letter of support for the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

[citation needed] The academic year in St. Petersburg State University according to the Routine Regulations normally starts on 1 September.

The main building of the university, Twelve Collegia, is on Vasilievsky Island and includes the Library, the Faculty of Biology and the Institute of Earth Sciences.

[citation needed] SPbSU is made up of 24 specialized faculties, which are: There is also a Department of Physical Culture and Sports.

Joseph Shor, a student of the School of Mathematics and Mechanics, known as the main protege of Ostap Bender.