After the start of the so-called «special military operation» (referring to the war in Ukraine as anything other than the «special military operation» is outlawed in Russia — Ed.), Russian higher education institutions have been trying to boost patriotic sentiments among the students. Meanwhile, the sanctions have made all official interactions with universities outside of Russia impossible which led to some staff members and students leaving the country.
Groza asked Andronik Arutyunov, a PhD who works at Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology (MIPT) and serves as a co-chairperson of the University Solidarity trade union, about where Russian higher education is headed and what we can do about it.
In recent years, it has become extremely hard to do fundamental scientific research in Russia. It’s still possible — but only if you work with a good doctoral advisor, who has already guided many other students that you can then get into contact with. This makes doing science in Russia sort of like Star Wars: you first need to be an apprentice to a Sith Lord in order to become one yourself. And If you want to study physics or biology, then you most likely need to look for an advisor who heads a laboratory with a well-established research process.
If you don’t get into such a cluster, then you won’t be able to work inscience. You will have a lame research subject, no equipment, and a lack of knowledge. Graduates rarely get into these clusters simply because they had no opportunities to acquire the necessary skills at their university. Unless you somehow manage to be seen and discovered by someone, your only options are to either go abroad or pursue a different career.
Education in general was a lot better in Russia ten years ago. Future students need to understand that in ten years’ time, the skills that one would be able to acquire at Russian universities will be horribly outdated. That means that going abroad to pursue a Master’s degree will cease being an option.
Russian higher education institutions still can provide a good foundation, but there is no way to actually transition from studying to doing scientific research. And both university and government officials keep contributing to this decline. They divide something that should be taught as part of a single Specialist program into a pair of half-baked Bachelor’s and Master’s programs.
The Bologna process has never taken root in Russia, and it never could have. The reason is that the Bologna system is based on universities being free to make their own decisions when it comes to internal matters. This kind of independence simply doesn’t exist in Russian educational establishments.
The second basic principle of the process is the mutual recognition of academic degrees and credit hours. So far, Russian degrees are recognized in Europe or vice versa. But the recognition of credit hours between universities never came to fruition.
University teachers in Russia aren’t different from the Russian society at large. Some of my colleagues have gone mad. Some are in denial, subscribing to the narrative that both sides of the conflict are equally bad. Some understand just how bad things are, but they keep their mouth shut in fear of losing their jobs.
So, we see the same groups represented in academia as in the rest of Russia: about 10% have gone off the rails with patriotic fervor, another 10% have left or are planning on leaving the country,while the remaining 80% act like nothing’s happening.
A lot of people left immediately after the start of the war. Some left after the mobilization was declared. Most of those who left were young, highly skilled, or both.. But since quality of education is not a concern for Russian universities, this mass departure didn’t cause any major issues. People who could leave but chose not to, did so for various reasons, such as their political beliefs. At the same time, I personally know about a dozen people who made the decision to flee the country during the last month.
Too little time has passed to determine the number of people who left Russia to escape the mobilization. However, that number is insignificant when compared to the number of people who stayed. Therefore, I don’t think Russian universities are experiencing labor shortage.
Additionally, universities only had a single round of admissions last summer. Consequently, many universities, especially the most prestigious ones, saw a drop in the number of students.. As a result, the staff’s workload also decreased slightly.
The teaching time was redistributed, new professors were recruited to replace the ones that left. After all, college administrators can always solve staffing issues by employing PhD and Master’s students.
We don’t have a problem with the quantity of educators, but with their quality. This problem was there even before the war. Crises such as the COVID-19 pandemic and the war just exacerbated the issues, dealing a crushing blow to Russian academia.
Russian academia has been deteriorating for a long time, mostly because of political repression and Russia generally is not the most comfortable of places. But this departure of a significant number of specialists feels especially bad.
I rarely have casual conversations about science nowadays. Five years ago I could discuss my research with colleagues from MIPT. Such conversations don’t happen anymore, since those people have all left.
The mass migration of young people will be devastating, since it’s just not very efficient to do research by yourself. Without collaboration with your colleagues and a diverse working environment there is no one to discuss or share your findings with. Of course, you can write an article and discuss it remotely, but this is not as productive as collaborating in person.
One thing we can learn from Soviet science is in-person collaboration. People who had different perspectives or areas of expertise worked together and shared knowledge. This has changed, with most researchers either leving or work remotely.
Scopus is not completely gone yet. A few days ago, I had the pleasure of getting into the Scopus database from an MIPT computer and everything was fine. MIPT was previously subscribed to Scopus, and that subscription is still active. Perhaps we won’t l be able to extend the subscription in the future.
We have lost the opportunities to work with scientists from other countries. Previously, universities developed programs for joint training and academic mobility. Now this is no longer possible, everything in Russia has closed down. As far as I know, MIPT, Moscow State University, and the Higher School of Economics stopped all cooperation with American and European universities.
However, some academic contacts still remain. People go to international conferences, write articles for foreign journals. There were cases of Russian scientists being denied publication, but this is not at all a widespread phenomenon.
I have submitted several articles to international scientific journals over the past six months, which are being reviewed right now. When I communicated with the editors, I didn’t get the feeling that they didn’t want to publish my work specifically because I am Russian. That being said, I do know some scientists who have been denied publication because they were Russians. But these were isolated cases.
The situation with scientific conferences is far more peculiar. The International Congress of Mathematicians was supposed to be held in St. Petersburg, but it was canceled. Its sessions took place online, while the General Assembly meeting was held in Helsinki. Foreigners physically coming to Russia to participate in a conference is also impossible at the time being, so they participate remotely. This summer, I was at an online conference where several of my colleagues from abroad gave presentations via Zoom.
It has become rarer for Russian scientists to be invited to conferences abroad, although I have no exact figures. For example, I have recently been invited to Brazil. Although, the people who invited me are familiar with my political views. Perhaps they invited me because they knew that I wouldn’t speak in support of the war. Whether I will make it to Brazil remains a question. I expect that I will have to engage in some tense conversations.
I have also had arguments with several colleagues from abroad. In particular, a colleague from the Czech Republic told me to «eat potatoes» on Facebook in March 2022. After a short altercation, we banned each other.
Academic dialogue on a personal level is threatened, but it still exists. This concerns primarily the fundamental sciences, such as physics or mathematics. One simply can’t do any meaningful research in these fields in isolation from the rest of the world. Mathematics and physics are universal. You simply can’t publish your findings in anything other than English if you want other scientists to read it.
Of course, there are some stubborn people who are very happy that they no longer have to publish in Western journals. But they mostly either work for the government or are delusional.
One of the consequences of the isolation of Russian academia is that scientists will once again stop referencing Russian scholarly articles.
Back in the USSR, there was a very real wall between Soviet and Western researchers. Western scientists could read articles by the Soviets, but didn’t have to cite the original authors, often choosing to claim their counterparts’ ideas as their own without suffering any repercussions. Lack of communication was the reason for this plagiarism. After all, the Soviet scientist who had been plagiarized couldn’t come to a Western conference and confront those who stole his work. When international communication became the norm , such cases became far less frequent.
Actual scientific papers are not censored per se, but if you publish the wrong things, you might end up in prison.
After the start of the war, at least two more scientists have been detained. They were Anatoly Maslov, the chief researcher at the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences and Dmitry Kolker, a professor at Novosibirsk State University. Kolder died shortly after his arrest, since, per his relatives, he had been suffering from terminal cancer at the time of his detention.
It turns out that research papers can contain classified information that isn’t supposed to be published. And no one knows what can or cannot be published, because the data on what information is secret is itself classified. In the STEM field, scientists sometimes must provide a document from their university that proves their article does not contain classified information in order to be published. But that’s not really censorship, just moronic bureaucracy.
The situation is more complicated when it comes to humanities, which have real censorship. For example, my lawyer colleague was not able to defend his doctoral thesis in Russia, because in it he proves that elections in Russia are unconstitutional, while dissertation councils are full of people who believe that everything’s great in Russia.
It’s possible to fight for our freedom, but nobody does anything because academia is just as atomized as the larger society. Students and teachers from different faculties, departments, or universities consider each other enemies.
The only way to protect our common interests, such as academic freedom, self-governance, and freedom from censorship, is to unite. If you were unlawfully fired or expelled, you can stand up for yourself in a court of law, and if the decision was unjust, chances are you’ll win. But that won’t save you from being fired or expelled again, and it won’t change academia as a whole.
We at the University Solidarity union have been fighting since 2013. We’ve achieved some success in several universities, such as MIPT, Moscow State University (MSU), Ural Federal University, but that’s not enough. We didn’t get to introduce rector elections to MIPT and MSU, but at least we managed to force MIPT to publish the results of academic council meetings. For a time, we even managed to hold back some censorship policies.
Right now it might be possible to fight for the right of students and staff to freely express their views on the war, regardless of whether they oppose it or not. Unfortunately, nobody wants to take up this cause, as in an atomized society such as ours, everybody sees everyone else as a potential enemy.
When the mobilization begun [the union] organized a number of events where members of the academia could get legal advice. For example, we had a stream with [the human rights organizations] Department One and Free Student Media Centre.
From the beginning of the war, we understood that dialogue with either the Ministry of Education or the Russian government in general is pointless. We still help members of our union and all those who ask for help in protecting their rights at their workplace, we still do what we always did, which is negotiating with universities on behalf of union members. Recently, we’ve opened a new pervichka (primary union organization — a branch of a larger union that’s dedicated to protecting members of one specific company) in the Russian Foreign Trade Academy.
Our union’s ultimate mission is to work towards designing a university of the future. We aren’t only concerned with today’s problems, but also with where Russian education as a whole is headed. My personal opinion is that there’s no chance of bringing our vision to life while this government remains in power. But, all dictators eventually die, and even our Constitution mentions that change of power is a thing.
We’re also trying to come up with policies that would make a university of the future possible. I’m personally interested in how to best select candidates for teaching positions at universities and how to set up employment contracts for such positions. Recently, the Constitutional Court of Russia decided that one year contracts are bad and that contracts should last for at least three years. It’s still not clear how exactly they came up with that number.
We already have a draft of a law that would regulate the selection process and the signing of contracts. We believe that a person should only have to pass an exam for a teaching job once, maybe twice in their life, after which, they should get tenure. There might be a one-year probation period implemented, but after that it should be either tenure or dismissal. The staff has to confirm their qualification once every few years anyway, so there remains a possibility for universities to ensure higher quality of education and further development of their staff members’ skills by raising the bar in such performance reviews.
Our draft is ready, but I don’t expect the ministry officials to be able to read it. Not because we’re hiding the documents from them, but because it’s too complicated of a text for them to comprehend. Hopefully, one day we’ll have a chance to implement our draft. Our demands can wait for a few years anyway.
