The emergence of seminars at the Faculty of History and Philology at Moscow University was a response to discussions of higher education reform in the era of the Great Reforms, when the education of students at universities was found too passive. At this time, ideologues of higher education reform demanded that monologue lectures be supplemented with written students’ papers, which should develop their research skills and serve as a basis for communication with their professors. After 1862, when over a hundred young scholars were sent abroad for several years under the program of Minister of Public Instruction A.V. Golovnin, a new generation of researchers and teachers was introduced to practical studies at German universities. Those who had been abroad started to actively use the term seminar to refer to a new kind of practical training. By the mid-1860s, seminars appeared at Moscow University as teaching units for philologists to train grammar school teachers of classical languages, and as a type of practical classes for historians, the purpose of which was to write research papers. Philologist P.M. Leontiev was one of the originators of philological seminars at Moscow University. He developed such forms of classes at the faculty as were practiced by S.P. Shevyrev in the 1850s, while V.I. Guerrier established the seminar as a new form of research activity for historians. It was important for him that students who chose to major in history should write papers on this discipline. While students received scholarships for their work in the philological seminars, participation in historical seminars was their personal initiative. Further development of the new form of classes was associated with attempts to divide the Faculty of History and Philology into two specializations. Officially, historians’ seminars became part of the faculty’s curriculum only after implementation of the charter of 1884.