Hardly more than five years ago there was no Nazarbayev University in Astana, but now Eurasian Higher Education Leaders’ Forum is being held there. That shows that some magnitude has changed recently. At the same time I am taking away two things today. One of them is the strange phenomenon of nostalgia and a questioning about the essence of the Soviet legacy in higher education. I have to admit that during the last two years our group in Moscow really tried to understand what this legacy is about. When it is said that the Soviet Union had a great education system, what is meant by that precisely? I think that I am not going to give all answers but for sure I can present a few observations.