Since Putin Began Expanded Invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Moscow has Radically Increased Repression in Russian Higher Educational Institutions

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Dec. 22 – Over the last decade but mostly in the almost three years since Putin began his expanded invasion of Ukraine, the Russian authorities have dramatically stepped up their repression in their country’s higher educational institutions, not only expelling 86 students and firing 92 instructors but changing rules to allow even  more repression in the future.
    Insider journalist Alyona Lobankova says that until the mid-2010s, expulsions and firings ere rare, both because protests were minimal and because university administrations, being elected rather than appointed, often believed in openness or shared the views of their students (https://theins.ru/obshestvo/277158).
    But after that time, the Putin regime moved to make the heads of these institutions appointed rather than elected, shortened the contracts teachers have and thus made their removal easier, and both tightened the rules governing student behavior and extended those rules to conduct outside of the precincts of the schools, a violation of Russian law but something the Kremlin has insisted on.
    The institutions hardest hit so far, Lobankova says, are the Islamic University in Grozny and St. Petersburg State University. But the repressions are spreading not only in the capitals and in hotspots like Chechnya but across the country, and more students and instructors are likely to suffer in the coming months and years.