For the past several years, Saint Petersburg State University (SPBU) has been closing programs in and firing teaching staff from its Faculty of Liberal Arts and Sciences, also known as Smolny College. In fall of 2022, the university renamed the program and removed several subjects from its curriculum.
Smolny’s students have been fighting against these changes. They have been writing open letters, contacting the university’s virtual reception desk, and informing other students about what has been going on with their department, asking them to help.
Groza spoke with Smolny students and graduates about how this situation is affecting their education, how the Save Smolny campaign came about, and how they are fighting to preserve their faculty.
In October 2022 it came to light that SPBU will no longer admit new students to the Liberal Arts and Sciences Bachelor’s program. In November of the same year, the SPBU website published its list of available programs for the 2023-2024 academic year, which contained a program called Arts and Humanities in place of the Liberal Arts and Sciences one.
Along with the name change, the faculty’s curriculum will be revised. According to the plan of the SPBU administration, students will now only get to choose courses starting from their third year; there will be a lot more compulsory subjects and large-lecture courses; and two subjects that students consider particularly important (Writing as Thinking, and Humanities) will not be taught at all.
Though SPBU’s administration has promised that the changes will only affect prospective students, not current ones, the latter are not convinced. «It’s one thing on paper, but another in reality,» says Arina, a student of the faculty. «No one knows what it’s actually going to be like. Truth be told, I applied to a university with a lot of esteemed lecturers who are now all gone.»
«Smolny has always been a home to a community of like minded people,» Arina says. «On February 24, [the day the war in Ukraine began] we all lost our bearings as it was, but when the SPBU administration started pressing down on us, it felt like the rug was completely pulled from under our feet. You’ve just found this amazing environment that feels so safe, and they immediately start tearing it down.»
Since 2021, the faculty has been under constant review for compliance with Russian educational standards. Some of its lecturers and professors have been fired, while its curriculum underwent significant changes. That year, Russia’s Prosecutor General’s Office declared Bard College to be an «undesirable organization,» which led to the faculty being investigated regarding its cooperation with «destructive» foreign NGOs. As a result, Smolny was forced to sever all ties with Bard College.
In May 2021, SPBU’s administration claimed that some of the courses are «ideologized in accordance with the worst Western stereotypes.» Because of this, some of Smolny’s staff left the faculty. Ilya Kalinin, a lecturer who had previously taught History of Culture at Smolny, told Groza that he left his position this past summer because several of his courses were shut down as a result of government inspections. This year, a collection of former scholars from Smolny who left Russia created the online educational project Smolny Beyond Borders.
In 2022, SPBU did not renew the contracts of professors Zhanna Chernova and Viktor Kaplun. The university did not provide any explanation, and the students only found out about this when the semester had already begun. Philosophy professor Denis Skopin was fired for participating in a peaceful protest against mobilization, with the university calling his actions «immoral.»
«I remember that moment: the storm clouds had started to gather and everything got a whole lot darker. You walk out into the garden, but the air there feels so heavy. There is no more laughter, it has been replaced by constant conversations about how that person was fired, that one left, what to do, whether to take a gap year, and so on.» Arina says.
Students point out that the pressure on lecturers and professors has had a strong impact on the quality of education. New faculty members who are being brought in by SPBU to replace those fired are unable to quickly integrate into the department because it functions unlike any other faculty. Smolny student Anastasia specifies that the only person to be outright fired was Skopin, while the rest undergo «various other metamorphoses, such as their employment contracts not being renewed.» (Tenure is not common in Russia, and most scholars have to renew their employment contracts after a certain period of time. This has been used by university management to fire undesirable educators without any repercussions, as it is perfectly legal for a university to simply not renew such a contract — Ed.)
«All these changes are being made by people somewhere far away, making you feel small. You can do nothing while they shut down [all cooperation with] Bard and take away your second [US] diploma. We couldn’t just sit on our hands,» says Anastasia. «We knew we had to do something when we heard about the plans to change our curriculum. That was the starting point of our campaign.»
In response to the upcoming reforms, students began fighting to preserve their faculty. In the spring of 2022, Smolny students came up with a flashmob: students, graduates, and anyone associated with Smolny were telling personal stories about their time at the faculty on social media and using the hashtag #save_smolny. This hashtag led to the creation of the Save Smolny movement.
Currently, the movement exists as a Telegram channel. It publishes news regarding changes to the faculty and its staff, advice to students, and information on ways to help.
Anastasia and Maria are students of the faculty who are part of Save Smolny. According to them, this grassroots movement doesn’t really have a designated leader, instead encompassing all of the faculty’s students.
«It’s very important that our actions are transparent. Everyone in the faculty knows what we are doing. We stay in constant communication with the university administration,» says Maria, a student of the faculty and a Save Smolny activist.
According to the students, the movement has the following goals
The news about the termination of the Faculty of Liberal Arts and Sciences prompted numerous questions from students and their parents. How will the new study program be organized? Will current students be affected by the changes? Which exact parts of the curriculum did not match the government requirements? Another task of the Save Smolny team is to seek answers to thesequestions.
«There were cases when students received calls from their mothers asking, ‘So, are you getting shut down? Drop out then, let’s flee to Georgia!’ We want to prevent situations where someone’s mom calls them in a state of panic after reading some news about the closing of the faculty. We want parents like her to know what is really going on. So our task is to explain it to them,» Anastasia says.
In addition, Save Smolny interacts with the administration of the university. Its members write open letters, address the university’s virtual reception desk, and participate in the meetings of the Student Council.
Students wrote two open letters to protest the replacement of their lecturers. The first one was addressed to Dmitry Medvedev, the Head of SPBU’s Board of Trustees and Deputy Chairman of the Security Council of the Russian Federation. In this letter, students asked Medvedev to clarify why staff members Zhanna Chernova and Viktor Kaplun weren’t offered the opportunity to extend their contracts with SPBU. The letter states that the professors were substituted after the semester had already begun, and that students were compelled to accept this without an explanation. Neither students nor professors were aware of the reasoning behind these actions. The letter was signed by 503 people. Medvedev didn’t reply, however, according to students from Save Smolny, the letter was forwarded to Valery Falkov, the Minister of Science and Higher Education of the Russian Federation.
The second letter on the same subject was addressed to Nikolai Kropachev, SPBU’s Rector, and was signed by 406 people. In this letter, students asked not only for an explanation regarding the termination of their lecturers’ contracts, but also for a meeting between Smolny students and the university administration.
According to SPBU students, the reply from the university was quite formal. Marina Lavrikova, the Vice-Rector for Academic Activities and Teaching Methods, reported that the Rector met with the student who handed the letter to the administration. Save Smolny wrote that the aforementioned student received answers to some of their questions, but, as of now, these answers weren’t publicized. The Save Smolny post on the matter expressed the opinion that despite the formal willingness of the administration to reach out and cooperate with the students, this willingness didn’t translate to any actions that were aimed towards coming up with a solution.
According to Smolny students, the administration of their faculty itself is very approachable, in contrast with their counterparts from the wider SPBU. Students point out that all questions and decisions are discussed openly, and that students can always count on their faculty to have their backs.
In October 2022, students of Smolny organized a farewell ceremony for Denis Skopin, a lecturer who was fired from the faculty for participating in a peaceful anti-mobilization protest.
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Skopin’s now almost former students came up with the idea for the meeting. It took place on the day when Skopin was scheduled to come to campus in order to finalize the paperwork for his termination. Anastasia from Save Smolny says that the meeting was supposed to happen after that day’s classes, but SPBU had them canceled.
The students came to say goodbye to their teacher anyway.
Save Smolny writes «kind letters» to their professors and lecturers with words of encouragement. Arina says that Smolny has a well-established system of mutual support. Students write to both the fired and the remaining staff members, who respond with similar letters. «This is sort of like our Battle of Hogwarts,» Arina says.
«I constantly think that as children who grew up in Saint Petersburg, we were fed with tons of stories about the Siege of Leningrad. About children who would attend classes despite the cold and the hunger because that was their way of showing resistance,» Arina shares. «Now, every time I am heading to the university, I also think of it as my way of resisting: to attend classes, to study as hard as possible, to seize every opportunity to learn from the educators that might be gone soon. Because I should cherish and try to save as much as I can from this knowledge and this mindset. To preserve Smolny within me, at the very least.»
