Soviet Student Olympiads

The main difference between two Olympiads was that the school one had separate threads for every grade, while the university one was for all students.

For instance, the Republican round of University Olympiads on physics could have three parts: theory, lab and computer modeling.

They would work on solutions strictly individually - no teamwork was allowed - and then they were scored by judges.

Contests were conducted on many subject of Soviet school curriculum such as Mathematics, Physics, Chemistry, Biology, and others.

These Olympiads had several levels based on Soviet Union's administrative structure.

These were: School, District (Raion), City, Regional (Oblast), Republican and All-Union contests.

In addition, at certain time Moscow carried out joint "Olympiads in Linguistics and Mathematics" (Олимпиада по языкознанию и математике).

There were numerous other Olympiads in Moscow including interdisciplinary "Lomonosov tour".

Its winners were admitted to the Republican round of the All-Union Physics and Mathematics Olympiads.

Also, there were team contests organized for schools to compete for District, City or Regional honors.

In maths, there were contests organized for cities to compete for Republican and All-Union honors.

Area rounds were organized by RaiONOs (Russian abbreviation for "District Department of People's Education").

The winners form teams representing their areas, consisting of 3-4 students from every grade.

Again, the winners would form a team and take part in the next round representing their region (Oblast).

They were joined by the winners of the Kvant magazine competition and of the republican and All-Union olympiads of the previous year.

Material prizes were minor and usually included scientific books that were otherwise difficult to obtain.

Yuri Matiyasevich who solved the 10th Hilbert problem in 1970 was the absolute winner of the 1964 Olympiad.

Contests were conducted on several subject of Soviet higher education curriculum such as Math, Physics, Programming.

An interesting experiment was olympiads in linguistics and mathematics, at which students were challenged to solve problems in both seemingly non-related domains.