Getting a job - and an education - in the new Russia

Translated from barabanch (original is here):

A young lady came to interview for a job with a friend of mine.
She's a "Young Russia" activist.

Under "Professional Accomplishments" [on her resume] the one and only line read "Participated in the inauguration of Dmitry Anatol'evich Medvedev."

A couple of comments on the post:

by avdeev [my translation, punctuation as in original]:

it's funny, but things like that have been happening for awhile
for example at RGGU they accept [United Russia] party members into the graduate programs, and it's harder for people who haven't been vetted by the office to get in [...]

a couple of my friends were advised by the academic department that before turning in their grad school applications they should pay a visit to the [local United Russia] office, that it would be more correct and predictable to do so

at the office it was suggested that they write an essay about how much I love the motherland, i.e. [United Russia], and how much I want to join the party, well they told [United Russia] to go you-know-where and they submitted their applications anyway, we'll see what happens in September

by el_cambio:

You don't understand.

[quoting from here, which also seems to have been quoted from a transcript of some kind:] Speaking at [a panel discussion on "the new Russian elite" at the "Strategy-2020 Forum"], Vladislav Surkov called on the participants in the discussion to "determine what the Russian elite is." In response to this, producer Andrei Fomin suggested compiling a "list of the elite," and the Andrei Korkunov, general director of the Odintsovo candy factory, noted that such a list already exists, and pointed out the list of participants in the presidential inauguration in the Kremlin.

Medvedev promises "merciless battle" against xenophobia

I've translated this text from NTV's website:

Medvedev: The Entire State Apparatus [госмашина] Will Fight Xenophobia
Oct. 1, 2007

Thousands of former students from Asia, Africa, Latin America and Europe who studied in our institutes and universities during the Soviet era gathered in Moscow today. The Second World Forum of Foreign Graduates of Domestic Institutions of Higher Learning [Второй Всемирный форум иностранных выпускников отечественных вузов] opened in the Hall of Columns of the House of Unions. The participants were welcomed by Dmitrii Medvedev.

The First Deputy Prime Minister spoke about the contemporary higher school of Russia, which prepares specialists who are in demand on the world labor market. This is the main task of the national project titled "Education."

Dmitrii Medvedev, First Deputy Prime Minister of the Russian Federation: "The most important task is to adapt our domestic higher school to the demands of an innovative economy, to prepare modern, qualified specialists, competitive specialists, who will be in demand on the global labor market.

In order to do this, in part, we have established business schools in Moscow and St. Petersburg. We hope that these will be world-class business schools. Such an education had not been available in Russia, not to speak of the Soviet Union. We have also established two new federal universities, large universities, which have united a number of smaller institutions of higher learning. These are the Siberian and Southern Federal Universities."

According to NTV's sources, Medvedev also touched on the question of the security of foreign students in Russia. According to the First Deputy Prime Minister, "we are openly looking at a problem which many countries have confronted in recent times, including the problem of xenophobia. Have no doubt: the entire state machine will battle this evil mercilessly," said Medvedev.

The rhetoric is in keeping with Medvedev's image as the more "liberal" of the erstwhile contenders for the office of President in 2008 and is somewhat interesting, though of course actions speak louder than words.

What is more interesting is the brilliant idea of having an alumni conference for foreign graduates of Soviet and Russian universities. This is a network which includes many people who have become leaders in their native countries and is a great way for Russia to perform outreach to some of the former Soviet satellites. It looks like the whoever thought of this may have taken a page from the book of the US State Department, which long ago began requiring contractors who organize exchange programs for students to come to the US to include a back-end alumni component. On the other hand, this World Forum looks a bit more top-down than, for example, the self-organized association of Muskie Fellowship Alumni.

New (and new-ish) blogs

I wanted to call everyone's attention to a new project which promises periodic posts of translations from the Russian press about higher education issues: The VUZ Blog.

And an old-school analyst is now using new media: "Window on Eurasia" is written by Paul Goble, who is something of a legend in the Russia-watching community for his early sensitivity to Soviet nationalities issues and for his outspoken-ness. Apparently this used to be an email publication, but it's now available in blog form. Anyone interested in the discussion here about Russian national identity will appreciate this post of Goble's from earlier this year.

More on MGU SotsFak - in Russian

I've already written way too much about the turbulence at the MGU Sociology Department. Russian website RuleofLaw.ru (which I found thanks to Robert Amsterdam's blog) has a long and apparently original post interviewing some of the students involved.

Oleg Ivanov [RUS] has the very latest info, including news of two press conferences related to the scandal on Thursday.

More on the MGU scandal - from Chronicle of Higher Education & Vedomosti

The uprising in the MGU Sociology Department continues. You may recall Sean's post, my post with comments from a recent MGU alum, and Sean's follow-up - as well as LR's coverage (on Publius Pundit, too) - of the story. Bryon MacWilliams' latest from Moscow adds some additional flavor to the story and the people involved:

Chronicle of Higher Education, March 30, 2007
Protest at a Russian University Attracts International Attention [$]
By BRYON MACWILLIAMS - Moscow

An unprecedented campaign by students at Moscow State University to influence the conditions and curricula in the sociology department has been marked by arrests and accusations that the student activists are "paid provocateurs" and "extremists."

Police have detained students twice since late February, when activists, calling themselves the OD Group, first demanded changes in the department, whose standards they say fall well short of the reputation of an institution regarded as the best all-around university in Russia. The department enrolls about 2,000 students in 13 divisions.

The demands of the students, whose campaign has gained support from scholars in Russia and Europe, range from an affordable cafe and more classroom space to an overhaul of curricula they say are outdated and too heavy on theory over practice.

The increasingly public protest, uncommon in its tenacity and audacity, is a rare form of expression in a university that is typically unreceptive to student input and criticism, outside observers say.

The university's rector, Viktor A. Sadovnichy, took the unusual step this month of creating a special commission to investigate the merits of the complaints. Yevgenia Zaitseva, the university's spokeswoman, would not say when the commission, which does not count sociologists among its members, is expected to render its findings.

Last week six students were temporarily detained by police while distributing fliers outside the university library. They and others said they feared reprisal from Vladimir I. Dobrenkov, who has been dean of the sociology department since its inception in 1989.

Mr. Dobrenkov refused to be interviewed by telephone. In public, however, he has called the student activists an "extremist group" that is financed by "the money of teachers who have been fired." He also says they are too few to represent such a large student body.

Oleg Zhuravlyov, who is in his third year at Moscow State, said that while some former teachers have voiced their support, they have no role in the OD Group, which he claims has several dozen members. He said they pooled their money to pay for a Web site and to print fliers.

"The thing that makes our blood boil is the irony that, in the country's best university, in the sociology department, there is no sociology," he said. "At one point it just became so unpleasant, so unbearable, and we understood that professors are afraid and that we were going to need to be the ones to do something about it."

Students began to organize last year after the dean's office refused to provide a cheaper alternative to a cafe that charged restaurant prices, including tea for $2.70 ­ - seven times higher than the university's average price.

They also say that class schedules are inconvenient because much of its space is occupied by the military or private business; existing lecture halls are in disrepair and have poor ventilation; foreign professors are rarely invited to speak; professors rarely conduct research; too many freshman are admitted each year; and the department does not have a library.

Internet Petition

An Internet petition started by the group has won the support of scholars throughout Europe, but primarily that of Russian sociologists at state universities, scientific journals, professional organizations, and the Institute of Sociology of the Russian Academy of Sciences.

Vladimir Yadov, dean of the sociology department at the State University of Human Sciences, in Moscow, called upon Mr. Sadovnichy, the rector, to intervene. He said the administration of Mr. Dobrenkov was "an intolerable regime of a closed institution" that "disgraces not only the leadership of the department, but the reputation of Moscow State University ­ - the pride of Russia."

Some academic observers say the situation at Moscow State demonstrates how a refusal to listen to students can backfire.

"When you have a structure that is run more or less in an authoritarian way, and the perception there is that democracy is not that important, that students really only care about getting their diplomas ... ," said Andrei Kortunov, president of the New Eurasia Foundation, in Moscow, who has long been involved in higher education, "then you run the risk of sudden unexpected explosions of student activism."

Vedomosti also has a recent story about this, which makes it sound like the students' lack of access to a subsidized cafeteria was the genesis of the problem:

Политэкономия: Студенческая весна На социологическом факультете МГУ работало дорогое, недоступное рядовым студентам кафе. Студенты выразили свой протест. Протестные настроения были пресечены силовым образом. Студенчество приступило к самоорганизации — была создана OD Group. Далее

In this piece, Kolesnikov mentions the 1968 student unrest in Paris a couple of times (he notes that the riots back then are sometimes said to have started because someone wasn't allowed to enter a women's dorm), but I don't think we're headed there yet.

My translation of what I thought were the best parts of Kolesnikov's piece:

However, the conflict is obviously not being politicized by the students, who seem inclined to civil self-organization. At a recent faculty meeting, the department chair [dekan, in this case the head of the Sociology Dept.] stated that "political forces of a pro-Western orientation"* stand behind the student unrest, and that these forces are "fine-tuning color-revolution techniques for seizing power." He is seconded by the leaders of political Orthodoxy from the Union of Orthodox Citizens (SPG): "There can be no doubt that serious forces stand behind the actions of these radical youths, forces that are interested in an orange revolution in the main Russian university on the eve of the parliamentary and presidential elections."

It turns out that the students' actions are aimed at "forcing out Orthodox, nationally oriented ideology from MGU...[and] inculcating aggressively secular liberal ideas under the guise of scientific worldliness and objectivism."** The political Orthodox call on all good people to "speak out against the subversive activities" of the students, "which are a threat to the national interest."

Apparently, the young simpletons from the "Nashi" movement can walk around the capital on the government's tab, scaring the masses with tales of Western intervention, but the students of the Sociology Department are prevented from defending their social rights, in which there is no politics whatsoever. Clearly, the politicization of the conflict is a means of defense against the students.

But why conceal such managerial incompetence, manifested at the very least by the fact that an intradepartmental squabble has turned into national news and led to accusations of revolutionary and even "subversive" activity? And where is this special-services slang coming from in the rhetoric of a department chair and his defenders, the politicized Orthodox doing battle with "liberal thought"?

* To be honest, I was wondering how OD Group got that prime NY Times coverage. They must be in on the conspiracy.
** Interesting how much this quote resembles what one might hear on a US college campus during a skirmish in the "culture wars."


Additional Russian-language links on this topic:

A blogger posts an article she wrote for something called "Levyi Avangard" "long, long ago" when the scandal was just getting started, and is now perhaps of "historical interest."

Blog of a professor (I think), Oleg Ivanov, who appears to be allied with the students, though not formally. He is posting lots of material, including university documents, about the developing situation. This post of his I liked enough to translate:

I've just heard about several situations where Sociology Department professors have been trying to convince their students to "show their position as citizens" and openly speak out on the internet against the OD Group. They are promising the administration's loyalty. No comment.

More on the Russian Academy of Sciences Story

Succinct piece in today's WaPo about the latest developments in this story, which was covered here (second part of the post) earlier as well as by Sean. ITAR-TASS also covered yesterday's news, and the IHT's Russian Press Review blurbs a Kommersant piece on the story. I guess now the ball is in the government's court - and the only way this story will become a true scandal is if they try to override the near-unanimous opinion of the Akademiki. Given the Russian government's propensity for engaging in PR self-destruction, it seems like a possibility.

Russian Academy of Sciences Rejects Demand to Give Up Autonomy
By Peter Finn
Washington Post Foreign Service

Thursday, March 29, 2007; Page A12
MOSCOW, March 28 -- The Russian Academy of Sciences, the historic home of Russia's brightest scientific minds, on Wednesday rejected a government demand that it cede more control to the state, and instead adopted a charter that preserves its centuries-old autonomy.

The almost unanimous decision by the academy's general assembly sets up a potential clash with the government, which had told the academy to adopt a charter written by officials in the Education and Science Ministry.

The government wants to place the academy, which was founded by Peter the Great in 1724, under the management of a supervisory board on which a majority of members would be appointed by parliament and the presidential administration.

To be valid, the new charter must be approved by the government. There was no immediate word on how it planned to respond.

Academy members rejected the government's plan as a threat to independent scientific research and called it part of a broader trend of increasing official control over critical parts of Russian society. Some academy members have suggested that the government's plan may be driven by the desire of some bureaucrats to gain control of the academy's rich property portfolio.

"We will not agree to the supervisory council on any conditions," the academy's president, Yuri Osipov, told journalists after Wednesday's vote. "This goes against the spirit of science and traditions of science, and not only Russian science."

The academy has about 1,000 senior members. Wednesday's vote in Moscow was unanimous but for one abstention, members said after the meeting.

The academy did agree that in the future the president of the body, who is elected by its senior members, will be ratified by the president of Russia. Senior officials at the academy said Kremlin officials had assured them that their choice, made by secret ballot, would not be rejected.

The self-governing institution's senior members oversee a $1.2 billion budget, 400 research institutes and 200,000 researchers and other staff members across Russia.
Government officials said the academy needs new management to better integrate it into the modern economy, and they have said the academy could extract more revenue from its property.

Hullabaloo at MGU

Sean has a post covering the student protests at MGU; also covered by LR at her blog and on Publius Pundit. I emailed the NYT article to an acquaintance of mine who is a recent MGU graduate and received the following email in response:

Unfortunately, this is the terrible tendency in the Moscow State University. I can only imagine what happens in other universities that are not as sophisticated as this one. I also noticed that growing trend during my studies there and was really shocked by the level of prejudiced stupidity some professors had. The level of education has indeed significantly deteriorated because of such people. In my opinion it also adequately represents how complexed and nationalistic the society becomes. After all, academia is considered to be the best part of that society, at least the most enlightened one. Instead we see that even academia has a vast number of narrow-minded and not smart people. Unfortunately, I am not as idealistic about my alma mater as I used to be.

So, there you have it, straight from a disappointed alum. A comment at Publius Pundit "wonders what their alumni association thinks of this." One problem is that the sense of alumni cohesion, painstakingly created at great expense by US universities (with the hope of even greater financial returns to the university), is not as prevalent among Russian graduates, even of top institutions. Sure, people from MGU are proud of having gone there and feel some more loyalty towards each other than to MGIMO grads, for example, and there are informal alumni organizations and networks, often based around specific academic departments and linked to from the University's official website. But these don't seem to be affiliated with the university per se, and based on their website map it doesn't appear that the university has a development office or office of alumni affairs that outraged alumni could call.

Even if there were somewhere to call, MGU alumni don't have the same leverage that many alumni of US universities have over their alma mater - namely, the power of the donation dollar. Yes, if a scandal like this happened at a major US university, alums would be burning up the phone lines and threatening to withhold contributions - or at least demanding to know the story - and the administration would respond by bending over backwards to convince the alumni that all is well. Witness the alumni-oriented speaking tour and other reassurances by Duke University's President Brodhead in light of the "lacrosse scandal" that rocked the university last year - a major goal of which had to be PR damage control to keep those alumni donations flowing. Since MGU is state-funded, it doesn't have the same kind of incentives to engage in alumni relations.

While there's no direct link, I can't help but see some thematic relationship between the scandal at MGU and the dispute over the future direction of the Russian Academy of Sciences:

Russia Seeks More Control At Academy Of Sciences
By Peter Finn, Washington Post

Tuesday, March 13, 2007; Page A01 MOSCOW --

[...] Government officials describe their efforts to give the academy a new basic charter as necessary to inject some efficiency into an academic cocoon run by an aging club of researchers too removed from the modern economy. "The new charter should create a competitive environment, and it should cover new mechanisms of state and public control over the academy," Dmitry Livanov, a deputy minister at the Ministry of Education and Science, said in a telephone interview.

Some independent analysts agree that the academy has let itself slide into lethargy in recent years. Older members, they say, tend to cling to posts as sinecures; many younger ones have gone abroad in search of better pay and opportunities. The organization has often been slow to commercialize its scientific discoveries.

"The academy needs reform," said Alexander Shatilov, deputy director of the Center for Current Politics in Russia. "The question is whether it needs the kind of reform the government wants."

The issue will come to a head this month at the academy's annual general assembly, when its 1,250 full and corresponding members vote on a new charter. The document they have drawn up incorporates few of the elements demanded by the government.

The fateful RAS assembly is next Monday. Robert Amsterdam's blog has also written about the upcoming showdown. I'm not saying there's a concrete relationship between these two higher-education-related scandals, of course; just that both of these situations are evidence of a lack of reform in higher education and academics over the past 15 years, and of the fact that the old guard has perhaps finally grown unsustainably out of touch - and of course the government would like to step into that vacuum, whether it's really there or not. The bribes to get into MGU have grown, I'm sure, as Russia's richest have become richer; maybe now the students are going to start demanding some customer service - in the form of better professors - for their money.