Education is not only a set of knowledge but also a way of thinking. With Swiss School for International Relations, we have developed a joint-degree program in “International and Comparative Law” which offers a unique opportunity to prepare lawyers who will bring a broad understanding and analytical thinking to the field of international and comparative law.

Our goal is to train specialists capable of working at the highest international level. Swiss School today is a platform on the basis of which various educational and innovative programs and projects are being developed, involving leading universities and multinational companies from Switzerland, Europe and Russia.

The advantages here are very serious. A modern specialist certainly needs a foreign language, or better yet, two. And even better, three. Here you have the opportunity to learn languages with immersion in a foreign environment. You can experiment, put in new special courses and attract very strong teachers. And from this point of view, it is possible to create unique programs and excellent specialists. In Moscow, unfortunately, such conditions do not exist, and it is much harder to do this in Moscow.

The influx of Russian students into Switzerland in the early 20th century was amazing. At one time they constituted two-thirds of the student body in Geneva! You are their heirs at the beginning of the 21st century. But you are also the first graduates of a Russian university abroad. This is a great difference and a great honor. You are an outpost of Russia in the West, but you also have to be an outpost of the West in Russia, building bridges between the two banks of Europe.
I hope that the Republic and Canton of Geneva will remain in your memory forever, not only as a pleasant memory, but also as some miniature model of Europe, to which you will want to return from time to time, and then you will exclaim as the hero of Nabokov - a Montreux resident - "Back, levers of time! For each and every one of you will now have to become a European, either in the West or in Russia. I heartily congratulate you on receiving your diploma. Go resolutely into the world!