Undoing Bologna: Russia’s Conservative Turn in Higher Education with Dmitry Dubrovsky

Alex Usher: Hi everyone. I'm Alex Usher, and this is The World of Higher Education Podcast.
One of the consequences of Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine has been a vast reconfiguring of Russia's academic and intellectual life. Universities, thought of as a potential hotbed of opposition since the white ribbon movement of 2011, came under intense control and its personnel placed under even greater scrutiny.
Many faculty fled. Connections with international partners in the West were severed. And then to top it off, the Russian government announced that it would abandon the three degree bachelor's, master's doctoral system introduced when the country joined the Bologna Process 20 years earlier.
All this has combined to create what some have called a slow motion collapse in Russian higher education. But to understand what's been happening in Russian University since February 2022, you really need to go back to the dawn of the Putin era in January 2000, and understand how ideological control of institutions has come to rest squarely inside the Kremlin.
Joining the podcast today is Dmitry Dubrovsky He's a scholar at the Institute for International Studies at Charles University in Prague, where he has taught ever since being designated as a foreign agent by the Putin regime in early 2022. And he writes primarily about the politics of academic freedom and civil society in Russia.
He's with us today to talk about this slow motion collapse, the internal governance of Russian institutions, and how the country might one day be put back on a track to integration with European academia. Over to Dmitry
Dmitry, I wanna take us back to the year 2000. Vladimir Putin is the new President of the Russian Federation. What was the state of the higher education sector at the time and how did Putin approach the sector? How did he view higher education as an instrument of state policy?
Dmitry Dubrovsky: Well, the legacy of nineties, Putin faced the, the serious challenge actually. What it have that serious problem of the underfunding and fragmented higher education. With the very uh, at the same time, the scholars eager to join the European system. There was uh, a lot of the attempt in the nineties, but there again, so the biggest problem was the lack of finance, a lack of international mechanism, international tools to join the European system of the higher education in science.
And uh, that is why the Putin sees, first and foremost, to the higher education science as a tool to join Europe. To become the member of the European family, to become the prominent member of the global market of ideas. And that is why Russia joined Balogna process in 2003 and they actively pushed internationalization.
Alex Usher: And, and so in that sense it probably, it's not that different from most other countries in the former socialist block, Poland or, or Romania. The idea that internationalization would bring about an improvement of, of higher education. Is that about right?
Dmitry Dubrovsky: It is right with this very important difference, we believe it was small, but it become a very serious issue in the very end. I think that all was, always in the, let's say the world of the higher education and science, always, everywhere we do exist, exist the people who would believe that our system as much advanced. We, our science is that, I mean top on the top, crème de la crème. The problem with the late Soviet Union in Russian Federation, that was the substantial amount of people who survived their collapse of Soviet Union, believing that Russian and Soviet science is the most advanced in the world. For the some sense, for the different directions in the different disciplines, it could be true, but for the mo, most of the, for, for example, humanities, the social sciences, that wasn't true.
And for the late nineties especially, it was the substantial amount of people who had been seriously disappointed of the result of the democratic reforms and seriously disappointed of the result of democratic rulers, democratic rules in the country and in and the higher education science as well.
Alex Usher: Okay. Now, Putin was president until 2008, and then he switched places for four years with Prime Minister Medvedev, and he returns to power as President in 2012. And it's a, you know, as you say, it's a different Putin. It's a much more authoritarian Putin. How did his approach to higher education change? If you had this, you know, Putin, you know, 1.0 in, in the year 2000 and 2.0 around 2012, how how does it change? How does he try to exert greater control over the system?
Dmitry Dubrovsky: Important to say before the, the Putin came back to power, it was very important time, especially in the  Medvedev time when uh, their policy, more or less, 2007, 2008, mostly the Medvedev, Medvedev term. It was the very serious time of the reforms of the Russian higher education. And these reforms mostly intended to improve the quality of higher education in its international recognition. And that was the time of so-called managerialist modernization. Toward the beginning, it was the idea we should select the flagship universities, which will run, which will drive the other universities ahead of the, you know, bright future of the higher education
Alex Usher: Eventually, eventually, that becomes the 5-100 Project.
Dmitry Dubrovsky: 500, 2020, meaning at least five Russian universities should be listed in the world rankings, universities to 2020. And that was the very interesting time because it was the the time of the serious transformation of the social cultural landscape within the Russian higher education. Because the, the so-called effective manager came into the system of higher education. It was the time when the higher education become the serious investment, they, they receive the serious donation, serious investment from the state. And that's become very attractive, first and foremost for the new managers and new managerial approach to the higher education and science.
And that is the interesting time when the internationalization went hand to hand with serious growing of the managerial, managerial control of the Russian universities. And that is the time, even before the Putin came to power, the higher education become the very interesting tool for the demonstration of the effectiveness of the Russian politics and become the, the Russia already started to, to check whether it's possible to use the higher Russian, higher education, the, the soft power, creating the, the or continuing to support the Russian universities in their former Soviet countries like Armenia, Azerbaijan, Tajikistan and and so on.
And this is, that is the time before the Putin came to power. When the Putin came to power, the situation changed dramatically because it I'm calling it conservative shift. That was not a conservative shift in the politics. It was a conservative shift in the higher education and science. Mostly concerned with the serious change of the politics within the country.
Alex Usher: And, and some of that has to do, like, I remember at the time there was a lot of crackdown on foreign organizations. So a lot of the international cooperation became tougher. There were attacks on Soros. In social sciences and humanities, there was a, crackdown on things like gender studies and spaces for LGBTQ students.
And I, you know, uh, Masha Gassen wrote about that in, in her book, The Future Is History. Why did that happen at that time? Like what was it about Putin that, that he said, this is, this is an area that I want to control in a much more, as you say, and push it in a more conservative direction.
Dmitry Dubrovsky: Well, first and foremost let me remind you, that was the protest of the 2011, 2012.
Alex Usher: Right.
Dmitry Dubrovsky: That was the time of the white ribbon, I might say, situation or action, which was very close to the revolution, but this revolution never happened. We failed actually, 'cause I also was a member of this movement. We failed. And there, the very important participation of scholars and students in this event made the higher education in the field of the special control from the, from the security service, from the political apparatus, first.
And second, they truly believe that their control under the system of education will return them their, their legitimacy and let's say the symbolical power in this society.
Alex Usher: Oh, okay.
Dmitry Dubrovsky: Just, well, again, so they're more or less Soviet people. They truly believe, oh, that's how the Soviet Union ruled. Soviet Union ruled because of control. They, in particular, the higher education and the political control, ideological control, it was true in a certain way, right? So that's how the Soviet Union restored or reconfigure all this its power through the, in particular, in the, through the system of higher education through the university.
And that is uh, that is how the Putin belief that that would be possible to restore and strengthen his government, which was in a certain way, undermined the event of the 2011, 2012.
Alex Usher: Right. And so we've been talking, I guess, I mean, the way we've been framing this has been a relationship between institutions and the government, but the government changed the way institutions were run a couple of times, right? So, so how has the exercise of power within Russian universities changed? And has the process, I'm, I'm pretty sure there's been a change in the process of selecting university leaders. How has that changed Putin's ability to control universities?
Dmitry Dubrovsky: Well, the specificity of the, of the Russian universities in general always been, in nineties it was absolutely enormous amount of democracy. Seriously, that was I mean there was absolute no money in it, so it was the extremely poor, but at the same time it was the let's say the poor democracy and the certain in, in the way that's it was the numerous selections and the whole, the system of the levels of the university, of the university government was very active self governance. It was a very active you know, political struggle to that people are, were fighting for the position of Dean and they were competing each other on the position of rector. So that was the numerous even chair. So that's almost every position administrative position within the Russian University could be could be elected. So they could be, have this, this, this system of election.
When Putin he has the power, especially in the, in the time of the managerial uh, reforms it was the kind of exchange, it was the pressure to the, especially for the, these flagship five hundred, 2020 uh, project to change, to correct their university charter and to replace the election to their assignment from the government.
Official point, official explanation was very simple. Oh, we, you will have the, so many you know, the state budget. You, we have additional control under state budget. Therefore we should assign the rector but not elected elected this position. And till now, honestly, substantial amount of the Russian rectors are still elected. But the, in Russian, in Putin's Russia election is not elections a normal understanding of it. That that's why the ministry is proposing the candidacy and the people watching. And this is more or less looks like the, you know, the election of the Putin.
Alex Usher: Right. We're gonna take a short break. We'll be right back.
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Alex Usher: And we're back. Dmitry in the early days of the 2022 Invasion of Ukraine, I think one thing that surprised a lot of people in the West, it just seemed to come out of the blue, was a letter in support of the invasion that was signed by, I've forgotten the number, there's several hundred university rectors. Why was, why did they do that? I mean, presumably they were ordered to do it by Putin, but why did Putin think that particularly would be legitimizing?
Dmitry Dubrovsky: Again there, the post Soviet societies, they have a very high trust into their higher education science. And the leaders of the higher education should officially support the so-called hard decision about the war. But what is important to remember, this is unfortunately some of the colleagues of our colleagues in, in the world, they, I'm afraid forgot about this simple fact, that I already mentioned — most of these rectors never being democratically elected. So they are not representing the voices of the Russian scholars or lecturers, the faculty members. They are mostly representing the vision of the presidential administration to collect the nu number of names into the list of support and then move to this shameful uh, shameful document.
And of course, previously, well then I already mentioned it, but let me uh, repeat it again. So, because they're the foreign agent law in 2015, so that was the, it was the beginning of the anti-Western paranoia for the very long time. It was the beginning of the, of the idea of to to search the, let's say the American groups of influence of the, the, they cut their connections with the international centers to declare the, Central European University, for example as a undesirable organization and or Bard College of New York undesirable organization.
So that is the, the long story of the fear and anxiety to send to the leaders of the higher education. And of course, that was the direct blackmail because if you, and this is, you know, this is the very serious burden, if you decided not to sign it, okay, so this your choice, but think about your faculty members.
Think about the group of the team, team of the colleagues you have collected. You are, you're invited. They will be probably fired soon.
Alex Usher: What changed on university campuses after the invasion? I mean, I, I would imagine obviously you'd be, you know, if I were the government of, if I were in Putin's position, I would be worried about student unrest. So, uh, you know, what, what happened in terms of surveillance on campus and how did faculty react?
I mean, you, you, you were a faculty member at the time and, and you're one of many, I think who, who left fairly quickly after the invasion, like how big a brain drain was there after this.
Dmitry Dubrovsky: Well, not so big for different reason. Just imagine so, well, that's the, the academics, they cannot move like other people. They, they should move, have in mind of any possible way to continue working. But that's not the case for the substantial amount of people. So there isn't simply no place to, to be settled very soon, very quickly, at least.
So that's. Well, my, my personal story was different because I was just coincident, I have an invitation, I've got the invitation to spend the, the time in, in fellowship. In the, the long story short, I was quickly relocated from St. Petersburg, my home city to Prague, but for a substantial amount of the people that left, and uh, when it come to institutional surveillance, yes, that was the, it looks like the Russia prepared to war approximately two years before, because the two years before, 2020, already, they started to introduce the, for example, special Vice Rector responsible for the youth, literally just for the, for the surveillance to, to control their loyalty.
At the same time, it was established the special institutions with a long actually very long title. So these departments within the Russian universities called promoting the civil consciousness uh, preventing extremism and, and inter uh, interethnic relations. But in, in the nutshell, this is the institutions embodied in the higher education to control and discipline Russian students and scholars because they, in reality of what they're doing, they're searching the social network, looking for the, let's say, the betrayal behavior of this of the Russian scholars and students and reporting into the, to the security service and, and police department.
And this uh, currently that's almost each subject of Russian Federation had such one department for the whole the subject to report such kind of improper behavior.
Alex Usher: After that Rector's letter Russia was suspended from the Bologna Process, and in retaliation, Putin announced a return to the pre Bologna system. So we're getting rid of the, you know, the bachelor's, master's, PhD. We're bringing back the, the second PhD that, that used to be there in the Russian system. How is this process unfolding? How easy is it to undo Bologna?
Dmitry Dubrovsky: That's a good question. Indeed, I don't think the, the Russia is really supposed to do Balogna even, and the Russia is not going to, to make a reverse plan. I mean, that's is certainly not idea to, to recreate the Soviet path, no. Honestly, so my impression of this from the one side, this is the direct pressure to the ministry of Higher Education and to the, to the bureaucrats within the ministry to change dramatically the whole the system, which has been created for 20 up years.
And this system cannot be reversed in the second, and it cannot stop. I mean, even legally, if you already hired their, the students invite the students to, to study this particular subject, follow this program, you should stop it. It is five years, I mean, four years, at least. In four years you can change it, but certainly not for the, for the moment.
And secondly, so I'm always thinking that is the, this is the certain, for me, it sounds like the idea of the, mimicking an emulation from the Soviet post-Soviet bureaucratic um, circles in the higher education because it looks like, because I'm, following the, what's going on in the, of course, uh, in the Russian higher education in the statement of the Minister of Education. And they try, they always try to explain what would be different, but they can't. They have literally no clue what, what they should do. They officially should have the kind of different, that is not Balogna system anymore, it's proved to be ineffective, but now we will have the, something which will collect the best achievement of the Russian system of higher education, at the God sake, what, what are you talking about? What are you talking about? So that's absolutely impossible. What they mean and they trying to rather, rather sabotage it from my perspective, rather to just to move something substantial.
Alex Usher: Looking ahead what do you think a post Putin higher education system in Russia might look like? Is there a path back uh, into the European higher education space, and what does it take to undo the damage that's been done since 2012?
Dmitry Dubrovsky: Uh, This is a good question. Currently we have the, the situation, what I would call the fourth deglobalization. So we literally went back to the situation before the 2003. It doesn't mean, I mean, substantial amount of the faculty members who currently working in Russian system of higher education and science, they went through the Western institutions, they've got the, the western degrees. And that is there's still this substantial, substantial capacity the the Russian system has. At the same time their fate of the Russian system is of course that's very difficult, it is very difficult to predict because it's the, the very seriously tied with the fate of Russian Federation in general. From the political perspective, if we will have the decreasing of the, of the sanctions and the, somehow the end of the war, and maybe that's more or less come back to the, what we would call normalcy. So this is also very disputable, what we would call normalcy in the moment. But I would say that that will be rather close to the situation of the Cold War and rather close to the, to the seventies after second half of seventies.
If I could compare to the, the, the situation more or less the, but, but, but they're very serious restrictions because there is this already serious sanctions imposed, substantial amount of the institutions in countries in impose their academic sanction, academic boycotts. They, they have the, the substantial sanctions, which is seriously restricted the, the Russia against the development of the, the visible contacts or academic exchange with the European countries. And Russia is turning to the other countries, Russia is turning to the alternative globalization. Russia is moving to the, join the China, Iran, South Africa and Brazil into within the frame of the so-called BRICS Corporation.
Alex Usher: Yep. Well, Dmitry thank you so much for being with us today. It just remains for me to thank our excellent producers, Sam Pufek and Tiffany MacLennan, you, our readers and listeners for joining us. If you have any questions or comments on this week's episode or suggestions for future ones, please don't hesitate to get in touch at podcast@higheredstrategy.com.
Join us next week when our guest will be Joshua Travis Brown from John Hopkins University's School of Education. He'll be joining us to talk about his fascinating new book from Oxford University Press, entitled, Capitalizing On College, How Higher Education Went from Mission-Driven to Margin Obsessed. Bye for now.