After the war against Ukraine started, education in Russia had to adapt to new conditions. Former lecturers are now leaving the country to work abroad, creating online courses and new educational programs in other countries.
Groza spoke with professors and course authors who strive to uphold academic freedom about the new programs that they’ve created.
“University teachers are leaving Russia for various reasons: personal, political, and economic. In our case, we were prohibited from teaching the programs that we wanted to teach. This primarily concerns the emigration of university staff, and, secondarily, students,” says Andrey Fetisov, former Deputy Dean of Shaninka’s Faculty of Media Communications.
He highlights that educational programs built on a liberal arts model are the primary subject of state pressure and censorship. At the same time, some professors are able to adapt to the new conditions dictated by the state, so a part of these programs will remain in Russia, according to Fetisov.
“Any closure of educational programs is bad. The worst thing is that the programs that are under attack are the most modern ones. It’s not even their content that’s so important, but the model itself. It embodies freedom of choice and a general change in the educational trajectory for the country. Of course, this is a loss for Russian education,” says Fetisov.
“When headlines like ‘liberal education model’ or ‘the American model’ appear on the pages of the ultra-conservative outlet Tsargrad, they take on a political connotation. Although this model dates back to antiquity and the concept of ‘liberal’ here refers to freedom from practical interests, and not to the ideology of liberalism,” explains Ilya Kalinin, a former lecturer at the Faculty of Liberal Arts and Sciences (also known as Smolny College) at Saint Petersburg State University.
“Our opponents deliberately distorted the language and the terms that we used in order to politicize them. Manipulative politicization is their weapon of choice when fighting against our programs and the liberal arts education as a whole, even though it could have been implemented in Russia to great success.”
According to Philip Fedchin, another former lecturer from Smolny, the outbreak of the war has destroyed any room for dialogue within Russian universities.
He believes that even though a lot of esteemed scholars still remain at Smolny, none of them are free to publicly express their opinion, while some have been thoroughly brainwashed. Meanwhile, Ilya Kalinin says that several key elements of the liberal arts system are still present in some Russian universities.
“Russia is a country where a lot of the time things happen not because, but in spite of state policy. It is hard to explain how that works. It is likely that certain programs and initiatives have managed to slip under the government’s radar. These programs are not as well-known as Shaninka or Smolny. Due to this lack of publicity, they might be able to quietly carry on with their work. Thus, I believe that the Russian society still has some opportunities and resources to resist, if not openly, then by subtly counteracting state propaganda and minimizing anti-Ukrainian sentiment,” explains Kalinin.
Sergei Chernyshov, a director of a private college from Novosibirsk called Novocollege, is of the same opinion. In his college, there are no “conversations about important things,” and students who oppose the war are not punished in any way. According to Chernyshov, this year the college has plans to create a new independent liberal arts university in Novosibirsk while opening five more branches, one of which will be located in Kazakhstan. Their main goal is to scale up the college while establishing a branch in Kazakhstan that would have the same amount of resources as the ones in Russia.
The Arts and Humanities Bachelor’s program was established at Saint Petersburg State University in 1999. In 2011, it was transformed into the Faculty of Liberal Arts and Sciences. It was created in partnership with the US’ Bard College. It was the first faculty in Russia built on the principles of liberal arts education. Its students were regularly offered internship opportunities in the US, while graduates of the faculty received a Bachelor’s degree in liberal arts both from Bard College and from Saint Petersburg State University.
In the summer of 2021, Bard College was declared an “undesirable organization” by the office of the Prosecutor-General of Russia. It meant that all the cooperation with Bard College was now banned under the threat of prosecution. At that time, it was the only educational organization designated as such.
In October, it was announced by Saint Petersburg State University that the Liberal Arts and Sciences program is to be discontinued. Instead, students will be admitted to the Arts and Humanities Bachelor’s program, which will have a different curriculum.
Former staff of the faculty have launched the Smolny Beyond Borders project, which contains online courses and recordings of public lectures.
“Our name is Smolny Beyond Borders. It does not refer to relocation or emigration, but rather to simply ignoring boundaries which, in recent months, have become harder and harder to overcome. We emphasize this notion of transcending national borders. This initiative welcomes listeners and students regardless of where they are located,” says Ilya Kalinin.
He highlights that the online format lets them live and work in a context where borders become “transparent and surmountable.” As of the latest fall semester, Ilya Kalinin’s public lectures are also part of the Smolny Beyond Borders project.
Since November 2022, the project has already conducted six short-term courses. Its graduates would receive course credits from Bard College. Only those teachers who are located outside of Russia participate in the project. Correspondingly, Smolny Beyond Borders is designed for students who have left the country.
Philip Fedchin, coordinator of the project, explains that the model of liberal arts education implies constant close interaction between lecturers and small groups of up to twenty students. But even during the launch of their first courses last fall, they received up to 200 applications per course, so they had to create a selection process.
Smolny Beyond Borders was created as a Russo-American collaborative project. Fedchin also notes that Bard College already has a sizable group of displaced Ukrainian students, and in September it will welcome Russian students who fled the country due to war.
In the fall of 2021, the Moscow School of Social and Economic Sciences (MSSES or Shaninka) became the subject of an investigation by Moscow’s Prosecutor’s Office. As a result of this inspection, officials expressed concerns about Shaninka’s various liberal arts programs. They stated that the contents of such courses were aimed at the “destruction of traditional values of Russian society and distortion of history.” A similar thing had previously happened to the Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration (RANEPA), but in the case of Shaninka, the Ministry of Internal Affairs also confiscated some documents regarding several staff members.
Andrey Fetisov, former Vice Dean of Shaninka’ Faculty of Media Communications explains that journalism programs at the university also came under scrutiny. As a result, the management decided to close down these programs.
“When a bunch of media resources, social media, and foreign outlets were banned, they could no longer be cited. Many of our staff were declared ’foreign agents’ or left the country along with their editorial teams. In other words, the faculty staff was essentially reduced to none. All our plans have collapsed. Working in media education in Russia is uncomfortable, inconvenient, and dangerous for both teachers and students,” explains Fetisov.
Former professors of MSSES are creating a Liberal Arts & Science Bachelor’s program based in Montenegro. The country’s legislation allows for the registration of separate faculties that aren’t tied to any university.
In March, the Bachelor’s program “Fakultet slobodnih umjetnosti i nauka” was included by the Ministry of Education of Montenegro in its qualification lists. Now, staff members are preparing to submit their documents for government accreditation. They expect to receive it in May, after which they will be able to begin admitting students.
The program’s staff are planning to begin classes in fall of 2023, with anywhere from 80 to 100 students enrolled at the faculty. Andrey Fetisov explains that there are many advantages to registering the program in Montenegro, such as visa-free entry for Russian citizens, relatively low cost of living, and an already established Russian diaspora. According to Fetisov, some of the staff members have already lived there for quite a while prior to the founding of the faculty.
“University teachers have left Russia in great numbers, so we have a lot of people who want to work with us. Among them are lecturers from MSSES, the Higher School of Economics, and the European University at Saint Petersburg. There are even some teachers who remain in Russia, but want to work with us regardless,” says Fetisov.
More than half of all classes in the program will be taught in English because the program is aimed at an international audience, including local Montenegrins. Fetisov said, “We understand that most of our future students will be Ukrainians, Russians, and Belarusians who already live in Montenegro. But former MSSES staff members still have significant international connections, which we plan to use and invite applicants from many different countries. Recently, we were contacted by a group of Americans who are studying Russian culture, and we discussed setting up a semester-long program with them.”
Fetisov notes that the government of Montenegro supports their initiative, but cannot directly finance the project. Currently, the organizers are looking for grants or private donations, "In Russia, we had donors, sponsors, and a ready-made financing scheme. Here we have to make it up as we go along. The plan is to cover part of the expenses from tuition fees. Fetisov says that it will be comparable to fees in Moscow universities.
The Free University is a non-governmental association of professors and students. Existing since 2020, it aims to provide education “without censorship or government interference.”
On March 31, 2023, the Prosecutor General’s Office of Russia declared the Free University an “undesirable organization”, banning all cooperation with them for Russian citizens. Government officials claimed that university’s course materials have a “distinctive anti-Russian character,” and that during the education process the students are “forced to develop a persistent dislike towards Russia and to accept an imposed ultra-liberal model of European democracy.”
The Free University hosted online courses on more than 150 subjects in humanities and natural sciences. The university has also developed its own educational programs, such as the Media School Master’s degree, the School of Natural Sciences, the School of Business Management, and several workshops on various subjects.
After the University was declared “undesirable organization,” Kirill Martynov, the university’s co-founder, stated that it will continue its work.
“Of course, this will be a challenge for us. We have been building this University for almost 3 years, and many of our students remain in Russia. We will begin implementing a safety protocol that we developed in advance, anticipating that the Russian government might have something to say about our work,” said Martynov.
Before the Free University was declared an “undesirable organization”, one of its professors told Groza that the main target audience of the project was “students from small Russian towns who won’t be able to leave Russia and study abroad in the near future.” He said then that the Free University couldn’t not relocate per se because “it doesn’t actually have a campus or a fixed location”
However, after it became an “undesirable organization,” that same professor said that the Free University will have to change. Exactly what these changes will look like will become apparent in the future.
At the same time, he thinks that the Free University has, by its very existence, proved several things:
Currently, the Free University does not have an official European accreditation, but the professor we talked to notes that it may get on soon.
The Boris Nemtsov Foundation for Freedom is a non-profit organization based in Germany. The foundation conducts educational programs, supports Russian-language independent media, and offers scholarships to journalists, activists, researchers, human rights activists, and students who cannot continue their education in Russia or Ukraine. The Foundation hosts an annual summer school of investigative journalism and cultural studies.
The Boris Nemtsov Foundation is working on developing a 2-year Master’s program in Russian studies at Charles University, Prague. The program was accredited by the Charles University (Prague) and now is in the process of enrolling students.
Zhanna Nemtsova, a journalist and the founder of the Boris Nemtsov Foundation, shared that this program has been in development for two years already, but it wasn’t until the start of the war when she realized that a Russian studies program is going to be in high demand. “I expect a large number of applicants, to the extent that we may need to organize a second admissions committee. This is a problem because we can’t afford to enroll more than 20 people.”
The students of the program will become participants in the international student mobility program Erasmus+. Nemtsova noted that they have already signed an agreement to enable student exchange programs with the Paris Institute of Political Studies (Sciences Po).
70% of the course material will be taught in Russian and the remaining 30% in English. To apply, a candidate needs to pass oral English and Russian language tests, as well as a test on Russian history and the political and social realities of contemporary Russia. Nemtsova also mentioned that the program is not intended just for students from Russia and Belarus.
“By opening a Russian-language Master’s program, I’m not trying to say ‘Guys, do not learn Czech, let’s just speak Russian here.’ I am not creating a ghetto because the program requires knowledge of English. It’s a common problem for many students because many of them have a very poor command of English. Some professors also struggle to teach in English,” says Zhanna.
Zhanna Nemtsova is also considering the possibility of opening a Russian-language Bachelor’s program, but she plans on assessing the outcome of the Master’s program first. She says, “No one wants you to create a Russian-language educational program in a foreign country. But that doesn’t mean it’s impossible, you just need to be prepared for some hardship along the way. If my program proves successful, it will serve as a basis for expanding academic cooperation.”
