This study seeks to explore the incentive factors that serve to instigate university engagement in the third-mission agenda based on evidence drawn from the Russian system of higher education. We pay special attention to how the split of natural and externally induced drivers of the third mission has changed from the Soviet era and up until the immediate modernity. Our analysis has shown that the balance of these two types of incentives never remained flat over the course of history as the Russian university system encountered and had to address different challenges and imperatives at various points in time. We have also found that, while federal initiatives have been adopted by the Russian state that have created a distinctive cohort of universities entrusted with comprehensively contributing to the socio-economic and innovative potential of their host localities as a top-priority task, the third-mission agenda is by no means reduced solely to this very group of institutions, as there are many other universities that are not directly expected to focus on the third mission, but which still favor pursuing proactive and fruitful collaborations with regional stakeholders as arguably representing one of the crucial factors in long-term university sustainability.

中文翻译：

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俄罗斯“区域旗舰”大学模式：寻找第三使命激励

本研究旨在根据从俄罗斯高等教育系统中提取的证据，探索有助于促使大学参与第三次任务议程的激励因素。我们特别关注第三次任务的自然和外部驱动因素的分裂是如何从苏联时代直到近代的变化。我们的分析表明，这两种激励措施的平衡在历史进程中从未保持平稳，因为俄罗斯大学系统在不同的时间点遇到并不得不应对不同的挑战和当务之急。我们还发现，