In its early days the emphasis at Moscow University was on the humanities. Many teachers had studied in Germany or France, and raised the banner of the avant-garde in literary criticism and thought. During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries it gave much nourishment to great literary figures such as Gogol and Turgenev.
早期莫大以人文科學為重點，教師均曾留學德、法，思想活躍，在文學評論、思想界標舉「前進」旗幟，十八至十九世紀更孕育了果戈里、屠格涅夫、赫爾岑、別林斯基等多位偉大文人。