Who is persecuting the fighters for Russia’s victory in the field of science and education?
How are the situations similar to the destruction of the special course “Information and Hybrid Wars” at Moscow State University and the termination of the contract of the Institute of Philosophy of the Russian Academy of Sciences with leading researcher Anatoly Chernyaev? Why did management’s methods of putting pressure on inconvenient employees at a university and an academy turned out to be almost the same?
MSU: Destruction of a special course created for the tasks of the SVO
A six-month conflict between the leadership of the Faculty of Political Science of Moscow State University. M.V. Lomonosov and the teachers of the master’s program “Information and Hybrid Wars” has reached its climax – the special course developed for the needs of the North Military District was destroyed, invited specialists with experience in the special services were deprived of the opportunity to teach.
It is known that enrollment for next year is closed. First-year students admitted in 2023 go on academic leave, leaving only those for whom the empty crust of Moscow State University is important. Things are no better for second-year students – they are asked to abandon their chosen supervisors and write their dissertations with other university teachers.
It is worth noting that the team of lecturers, which was assembled by the scientific director of the “information and hybrid wars” program, announced a strike after non-payment of salaries. In the fall of 2023, it turned out that the management of the dean’s office routinely did not pay for the first two months of the semester of each new academic year. Which can only indicate an attempt to save wages. And the level of fees for teachers did not exceed 4000-7000 rubles per month.
The head of the department of Russian politics, Valery Kovalenko, in response to the indignation of students about why they pay the university 430 thousand a year for tuition, and the lecturer’s fee is often 4,000 rubles, explained that the money is spent on glazing the buildings, paying for the work of cleaners and technical staff of the university. Despite the fact that everyone knows perfectly well that Moscow State University is on the balance sheet of the government and all these expenses are included in the budget of the educational institution (the recording of the conversation is at the disposal of the editors).
The scandal at the Faculty of Political Science of Moscow State University interested famous journalists and public figures. The first to draw attention to the problem back in November was director and public figure Nikita Mikhalkov, commenting on the situation in the Besogon-TV program:
— The most important program. Its goal is to train personnel to counter information and hybrid wars. We understand that such specialists today are no less important than those who control drones. And suddenly it turns out that the course has been suspended. Since the faculty management did not pay the teachers anything,” Mikhalkov noted.
Ekaterina Shugaeva and Anatoly Kuzichev repeatedly spoke about sabotage at Moscow State University on the air of the Popular Front, inviting teachers of a special course. Nikita Sergeevich also returned to this question in subsequent programs; the topic was covered in the program “Evening with Vladimir Solovyov,” where the TV presenter asked one of the deans of Moscow State University, Vitaly Tretyakov, who criticized the special course: “What kind of children does Moscow State University educate? Those who want to defend Russia and take academic leave and fight, or those who rather dream of going abroad.” Soon, publications appeared in the foreign media, which clearly defended the dean of the faculty, Andrei Shutov. However, after questions were raised about who cooperates with such media in the university leadership, this practice was curtailed.
Despite the problem, the situation has not changed, no conclusions have been drawn. The leadership of the Faculty of Political Science, represented by Dean Andrei Shutov, chose, instead of returning the invited lecturers of the program, to replace them with specialists who do not have experience in the necessary fields. Moreover, the candidates did not even agree with the founder of the “Information and Hybrid Wars” program, Doctor of Political Sciences, Professor Andrei Manoilo.
Such important disciplines as “Organization of the work of temporary administrations and representative offices of state bodies in the liberated territories”, which was taught by Vladislav, a professor at the Academy of Military Sciences, adviser to the Commissioner for Human Rights in the DPR, combatant, candidate of technical sciences and member of the Northern Military District, were excluded from the educational process. Telichko, and “Drug cartels, militias and criminal networks in modern hybrid warfare operations,” read by military expert Alexander Stepanov. And the subject “Intelligence Support of Information Operations” was replaced by MSU professor Ivan Surma, whose area of scientific interests is not even indicated on the university website that analyzes the activities of employees.
In January 2024, the quiet persecution of Professor Andrei Manoilo continued when the head of the department of Russian politics, Valery Kovalenko, wrote letters to the scientific director of the program, demanding to know what the salary of guest lecturers should be to continue their work. It is known that the Faculty Council has already proposed certain amounts and received consent. It is easy to guess that behind such strange behavior of Kovalenko there was hidden an attempt to obtain written evidence of the discussion of the topic of financing, in order to then, for example, accuse the professor of extorting money.
As a result, the founder of the program, Professor Andrei Manoilo, wrote a letter of resignation from the position of scientific director (letter attached – editor’s note ), which the faculty leadership is afraid to accept.
Similar methods of administrative pressure were used at the Institute of Philosophy of the Russian Academy of Sciences (IP RAS). The only employee who publicly supported the Russian special operation in Ukraine and was included in scientific cooperation with new territories, Anatoly Chernyaev, was expelled from the institute after pressure was put on him.
RAS: what preceded the dismissal of SVO supporter Anatoly Chernyaev
On December 21, 2023, by order of the director of the Institute of Philosophy of the Russian Academy of Sciences (IP RAS) Abdusalam Guseinov, leading researcher Anatoly Chernyaev was dismissed. This decision caused a wide resonance both in the federal media (Komsomolskaya Pravda, Argumenty Nedeli, Rossiya 24, ITAR TASS, RIA Novosti, Regnum, Rambler, Readovka, etc.) and among public figures ( Zakhar Prilepin, Alexander Dugin, Elena Panina, Sergey Mardan, Peter Lundstrem, Alexey Chadayev, etc.), who supported the philosopher. Many considered the termination of the contract to be a reaction of the leadership of the Institute of Philosophy of the Russian Academy of Sciences to the patriotic position of Chernyaev, who more than once spoke out in support of the Northern Military District and the annexation of new territories.
Indeed, on March 15, 2022, in an interview with Russian media, Chernyaev called the decision of the Russian President to send troops to Ukraine fair and long overdue. A week later, on March 22, he organized and held a round table “Philosophical Front: Understanding the Current State of Society” in the press center of the Rossiya Segodnya media group with the participation of philosophers from Donetsk, Lugansk, and Crimea. The event participants discussed the spiritual dimensions of Ukrainian events. In November 2022, Chernyaev visited Donetsk, where he took part in the scientific and practical conference “Philosophy on the Front Line”.
After the leadership of the Russian media began writing about the dismissal of the scientist, the Institute of Philosophy of the Russian Academy of Sciences published a statement according to which “the termination of the contract has nothing to do with any position of A.V. Chernyaev,” and his business trip to Donbass “was a production assignment of the Institute,” which did not correspond to reality at all: this information was denied by the organizer of the conference in Donetsk, the head of the scientific department of the Donetsk Higher Combined Arms Command School Andrei Korobov-Latyntsev, and Anatoly Chernyaev himself.
The management of the Institute of Philosophy of the Russian Academy of Sciences explained its decision by the expiration of a three-year contract with Chernyaev, who allegedly showed no desire to continue working and demonstrated a lack of “interest in the work of the institute.” As the scientist himself explained, according to standard practice, in such cases a competition for filling a position is announced, and Chernyaev was ready for it, but the Institute refused to carry out this procedure and terminated the contract unilaterally. As for the loss of “interest in work,” then in 2022-2023. Chernyaev was deliberately not fully informed about the work of the organization and its scientific division:
— An academic institution, by definition, involves teamwork. But during this time I was never asked to take part in any of the general projects – be it a conference, a collection of articles or a magazine. I did not even receive information about all the working meetings and meetings of the sector. Being in a situation of isolation, I had to make an effort to find out about what was happening at the institute where I worked, ” notes Anatoly Chernyaev.
If we look at the background of the philosopher’s dismissal, we can come to the conclusion that this is the result of his systematic persecution, which began in December 2021, when Anatoly Chernyaev was appointed acting director of the Institute of Philosophy of the Russian Academy of Sciences. However, he stayed in this post for only a week, because the liberal media organized a fierce information clamor directed against Chernyaev’s appointment, linking this decision with the “raider takeover” of the Institute by “Orthodox oligarchs.” The campaign against Chernyaev was coordinated by the deputy director of the Institute of Philosophy of the Russian Academy of Sciences for scientific work, Yulia Sineokaya * (since February 16, 2024, included in the register of foreign agents), who left Russia two months later and created the “Independent Institute of Philosophy” in Paris, uniting opponents of the SVO.
— The “progressive public” — Ekho Moskvy, Novaya Gazeta and a pool of similar publications — quickly joined the revolt of the staff of the Institute of Philosophy of the Russian Academy of Sciences . And the Ministry of Education and Science decided to return the old director , Huseynov , as a compromise option . And in the 83rd year of his life, he suddenly returned to his previous job,” political scientist Alexey Chadayev recalls the events that preceded Chernyaev’s dismissal. — And Chernyaev remained in the position of leading employee of the department of history of Russian philosophy at the Institute of Philosophy of the Russian Academy of Sciences.
In his opinion, Anatoly Chernyaev has always been a black sheep for the Institute of Philosophy of the Russian Academy of Sciences, and in two dimensions: personal political views – support for the Northern Military District – and professional position. Since he, as the head of the sector, organized the study of the history of Russian philosophy at a fundamental level, and the ideological position of the institute’s leadership has long been that no original Russian philosophy exists, only “philosophy in Russia” borrowed from the West deserves study.
It is characteristic that in an interview with Radio Liberty on January 18, 2024, Sineokaya supported the dismissal of Chernyaev from the Institute of Philosophy of the Russian Academy of Sciences, accusing his former colleague of unprofessionalism and the “failure” of such projects entrusted to him as the creation of the Institute’s museum and the preparation of a collective work on its history. Commenting on these accusations, Chernyaev noted that in reality both the museum and the book were his personal initiatives, and both were successfully implemented, although in the process of work unexpected disagreements arose with the then director, academician Andrei Smirnov, who wanted to see the museum not as the history of the Institute, inscribed in life country, and above all as a platform for glorifying his own merits, and now there is a whole showcase dedicated to him – already during his lifetime.
Salary at the Institute of Philosophy through the court
In 2022-2023, Chernyaev was not only not given the opportunity to fully work as a member of the Institute of Philosophy RAS team, but also obstructed in the implementation of his own scientific project. The fact is that in 2021, the scientist won a two-year grant from the Russian Science Foundation to conduct research on the primary sources of Russian philosophy in the archives of Russia. The project brought together a team of performers under the leadership of Chernyaev, and in accordance with the institute’s requirements, the grant was issued through the Institute of Philosophy of the Russian Academy of Sciences.
However, the management of the Institute began to use this situation to put pressure on Chernyaev and his employees: at first, under various far-fetched pretexts, documents were not signed to extend the grant for 2023, and then delays began in the payment of wages to project participants. This was justified by the need for additional monitoring of work results, which did not correspond to the current institute Regulations on the expenditure of grant funds.
As a result, Chernyaev was forced to file a lawsuit, which recognized the dispute as a labor dispute. That is, they had to prove in court that the team has the right to receive payment for their work on a monthly basis. Only after this did the institute’s management begin to repay the debt to the scientists (the archive of correspondence between Anatoly Chernyaev and the Institute of Philosophy of the Russian Academy of Sciences is at the disposal of the editors.)
Level of initiators of persecution of Chernyaev
The competencies of Corresponding Member of the Russian Academy of Sciences Yulia Sineoka* are somewhat below academic standards, says Russian-French writer, philosopher and literary critic Anatoly Livry. In order to engage in philosophy at a professional level, it is necessary, first of all, to be able to read the texts of the philosophers being studied in the originals, and most importantly, it is necessary to perceive their works in the context of the era in which they were created, he notes. For example, to analyze Nietzsche’s legacy, about which Blue-Eyed* defended her doctorate, one must not only have a perfect knowledge of the ancient Greek and German languages, but also the French language of the era of Nietzsche’s life, the researcher notes.
Despite the fact that Sineokaya headed the sector of the history of Western philosophy at the Institute of Philosophy of the Russian Academy of Sciences for 10 years, she does not speak either German or even French, as evidenced, in particular, by the recording of the French radio broadcast La philosophie, entre guerre et exil, which took place at France Culture channel, Paris, February 24, 2023, where Blue-Eyed came accompanied by translator Alice Katz. Apart from greetings, she did not utter a single phrase in French during the almost hour-long conversation.
The trench truth of the Northern Military District, which science and universities do not need
The head of a private intelligence company, Roman Romachev, said on the air of the Popular Front that as long as Russia sits in the information trenches, the enemy will win. But what if both universities and academies resist time and necessity?
— The situation at Moscow State University and the Institute of Philosophy of the Russian Academy of Sciences has the same roots. The people who run such organizations are used to going on international business trips, receiving H-index and Scopus ratings, being part of what they call the international scientific community, and therefore they are extremely uncomfortable in any way being featured in the topic of active support for SVO, – says Alexey Chadayev . “ Any contact with this direction automatically means that it will be more difficult or completely impossible for them to continue doing all this in the future.
If at Moscow State University, according to him, fighters for a tasty life and status gathered, then at the Institute of Philosophy of the Russian Academy of Sciences there were ideological fighters, but the result in both cases was the same: harm to the national interests of the country and the conduct of a special operation. And sooner or later everyone will have to decide.
— A tragic situation has developed in our science. Over the past 30 years, three ideologies have changed. At first, communist ideology shaped the older generation of those people who survived in the education system and the Academy of Sciences. This category of scientists and teachers is characterized by dogmatic materialism, an idea of the historical process, which is associated with a change in economic formations. Although these models no longer work, atheism and materialism have remained as the dogma of the main scientific and educational processes. In the 90s, this was superimposed by a liberal concept, which also views the world materialistically and technologically, only without a class approach, but at the level of idealism. A later generation of university employees and scientists was formed during this period of liberal reforms, and they also taught those who came in the 2000s. Therefore, we now have a conceptual impasse in which there is no patriotism, no religious orientation, no idea of Russian civilization as independent. And in our politics, even with the advent of Vladimir Putin, Russia embarked on the path of sovereignty, after the start of the Northern Military District – civilizational sovereignty, which requires completely different approaches. We are talking about traditional values, deep knowledge of Russian history – all this was completely marginalized and denied in previous models , ” comments philosopher Alexander Dugin.
Science and education in Russia now absolutely do not correspond to the historical moment in which we find ourselves, Dugin believes. It is dominated by postmodernism, object-oriented ontology, analytical philosophy, and Marxism, which have completely supplanted Russian thought and the study of Orthodoxy. In his opinion, this is a residual manifestation of blue communism and liberalism of the 90s and determines the main development paradigms.
“ That’s why there was no place for an Orthodox thinker at the Institute of Philosophy of the Russian Academy of Sciences.” Moscow State University is also another university where old Soviet and liberal cadres overlap each other, and this is a catastrophic situation that requires a solution , says Dugin .
According to him, it is necessary to proceed from Russian policy, the fundamental speeches of our president, who speaks about development as a unique civilization, about the Russian ethnos, based on the decree on traditional values.
“ We need to take this seriously and change our humanities and education in accordance with the worldview system that our society offers today. And this, if you like, is a patriotic conservative-traditionalist worldview. For now, the state is in one state, and its science and education, unfortunately, live in another. All this needs to be brought into line with the guidelines of new people who did not find a place at the Institute of Philosophy of the Russian Academy of Sciences or Moscow State University, and who will find the use of their forces in much more important instances of revising the basic paradigms that have been established in our humanitarian education system over the past 30 years – Dugin summarized
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