The article examines the course of the formation of ideas about the history of St. Petersburg University in the context of the development of commemorative practices and historiography in the period between the university anniversaries of 1919 and 1939.In particular, it shows the evolution of the social order for texts on the history of Leningrad State University, the influence on this process of state policy in the field of higher education and the politics of memory. Special attention is paid to the process of constructing the history of the revolutionary movement at the university, as well as the history of its Sovietization. The article shows how the process of mastering and appropriating the history of the “old university” took place within the framework of the new Soviet historical narrative. According to the author's observations, the formation of the main attitudes of the Soviet historiography of the history of St. Petersburg/Petrograd/Leningrad University was largely due to the discourses of the “liberation version” of the historical memory of Russian society and the university corporation that emerged in the late 19th – early 20th centuries. As shown in the article, in the late 1930s. under the influence of commemorative practices, the formation of a new program of collective scientific research on the history of Leningrad State University begins, the implementation of which fell on the war and post-war times.