This volume provides a critical perspective on the Soviet legacy of superpower competition in the higher education systems of China and Russia. The book examines the tensions among multi-level forces that strive to advance progressive university policies and practices on the one hand, and on the other hand work to restore old-style hyper-centralization and indoctrination. It tracks the de-Sovietization of higher education, which aimed to integrate Chinese and Russian universities into global higher education, but resulted in inducing status anxiety in the global hierarchies of knowledge development.