Olga Vasilieva (politician)


Olga Yurevna Vasilieva is a Russian Doctor of Historical science, professor, the Minister of Education and Science of the Russian Federation, and former Minister of Education of the Russian Federation from May 2018 to January 2020.

Early years

Vasilieva was born in 1960 in Bugulma.
In 1979 she graduated with a degree in Choir and Conducting from Moscow State Institute of Culture. Later in the mid-1980s she studied history at Moscow State University for Humanities. For several years she was a singing-master and a history teacher.
Afterwards she switched to research work as a historian. In 1987 she was admitted to the Ph.D. program in the Institute of History of the USSR Academy of Sciences. In 1990 she defended her Ph.D. dissertation “The Soviet State and Patriotic Activities of the Russian Orthodox Church during the Years of the Great Patriotic War.”

In the state service

In 2007 Vasilieva finished a study at the Diplomatic Academy of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation. Her career as a person in the state service began in the Department for Culture of the Russian Government. She was responsible, among other items, for school programs, particularly in history and in religious education.
On 19 August 2016 she was appointed a Minister of Education and Science of the Russian Federation, preceded by Dmitry Livanov. This Ministry was divided in May 2018 into the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Science and Higher Education. On 18 May 2018, Dr. Vasilieva became a Minister of Education of the Russian Federation. On 15 January 2020, she resigned as part of the cabinet, after President Vladimir Putin delivered the Presidential Address to the Federal Assembly, in which he proposed several amendments to the constitution.

Publications

She has written over 160 articles and 8 books.