S

VETLANA

G. I

L

’

INSKAYA

Freedom and Humanities and Social
Sciences Education in Russia: Problems
and Prospects

This article presents a retrospective analysis of the evolution of the
Russian humanities and social sciences education system, highlighting
issues that the current system has faced during the country’s repeated
transformations in the twentieth century, especially in the 1990s.

Nowadays Soviet art is stronger than all the rockets.

—The technologist Petukhov, from a comic song by Yurii Vizbor

The Great Soviet Encyclopedia defines humanities and social sciences
education as the body of knowledge in social sciences (philosophy, history,
philology, law, economics, art criticism, etc.) and the practical skills and
abilities associated with them, and additionally as the most important means
of forming a worldview, which plays an enormous role in a person’s general
development, and in his intellectual, moral, ideological, and political
maturation. While today we generally agree with this source’s definition,
much about this issue was not so unequivocal over the past fifty to eighty

196

English translation

q 2015 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC, from the Russian text,

“Svoboda i gumanitarnoe obrazovanie v Rossii: problemy i perspektivy.” This is a
revised version of the original article “Gumanitarnoe obrazovanie kak faktor
formirovaniia grazhdanskoi identichnosti,” Politiko-filosofkii ezhegodnik, 2010,
no. 3, pp. 145 – 69. Published with the author’s permission.

Svetlana G. Il’inskaya, candidate of political science, associate professor, and

senior researcher at the Institute of Philosophy, Russian Academy of Sciences.

Translated by Brad Damare´.

Russian Studies in Philosophy, vol. 53, no. 3, 2015, pp. 196–217.

q 2015 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC
ISSN: 1061-1967 (print)/ISSN 1558-0431 (online)
DOI:

10.1080/10611967.2015.1123043

years.

1

Disciplines like political science, sociology, and psychology

enlarged the possibilities for scientific classifications and became established
and closely associated with knowledge in the social sciences. Along with
straightforward adoptions taken from the West (especially in the library),
domestic disciplines based on other foundations began to appear (in general,
these were classifications by scholars, specialists in the philosophy of
science, Vyacheslav Stepin, Vitaly Gorokhov, Alexander Nikiforov, Mikhail
Rozov, and others.)

2

In Russian science today, people are most frequently

discussing knowledge and education in humanities and social sciences.

3

A general humanities and social sciences education was provided in the

USSR, and is provided in Russia today, as part of general education at the
secondary school level, where, along with the natural sciences, students
also study native and foreign languages, literature, history, social studies
(previously called social sciences), the arts, among other courses. Both in the
Soviet Union and in contemporary Russia, subjects in the humanities and
social sciences are also taught at professional, technical, and secondary schools
for specialized education, regardless of their type. At a higher level, university
students of any area of study receive this knowledge while studying social
sciences and other social and economic disciplines. Special humanities and
social sciences education in philosophy, history, political science, sociology,
psychology, philology, economics, jurisprudence, pedagogy, art history and
criticism, different areas in the arts, and others, generally takes place in Russia
in universities and in a number of different sectors of higher education and
areas of specialization, as well as in specialized postsecondary institutions.

Toward a history of the issue

The development of humanities and social sciences education in Russia first
underwent radical changes after the October 1917 revolution, when
Marxism-Leninism became its ideological and methodological foundation,
and the repertoire of humanities and social sciences education gradually
came to include “Fundamentals of Marxist-Leninist aesthetics,” “Scientific
atheism,” “Political economy,” “Scientific communism,” “History of the
Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU),” “Marxist-Leninist
philosophy,” “Dialectical materialism,” and so forth.

In 1922, many representatives of the old philosophical elite (Nikolai

Berdyaev, Sergei Bulgakov, Boris Vysheslavtsev, Vasily Zenkovsky, Ivan
Ilyin, Pitirim Sorokin, and others) were expelled from the country as
“especially active counterrevolutionary elements.” Actions like this struck
a blow not only at domestic philosophy, but also at law, sociology, culture

VOLUME 53, NO. 3, 2015 197

studies, and economics. Any research in conflict with the party’s “general
line” was consigned to oblivion, as were its authors. Sorokin, whose theory
of social stratification rebutted the prospects for building a classless society,
was lucky in being able to continue his research in the United States, while
the Soviet economist Nikolai Kondratiev, who developed the idea of long
waves (cycles of market conditions) that absolutely did not fit into the myth
of capitalism’s impending collapse as understood in the theory of social
change and indirectly contradicted it, paid for the originality of his scientific
contributions with his life.

After the CPSU’s condemnation of the cult of Stalin in 1956, rigid

ideological control over the social and humanities and social sciences
gradually weakened, opening up some new possibilities for development of
thought in these disciplines.

The impossibility of debate on sensitive current issues provoked an

appeal to eternal topics. Isolated from the pressing problems of life,
humanities and social sciences education in the Soviet Union, when not
connected to maintaining the existing political regime, was forced to
specialize in fundamental and universal knowledge. Only specific topics
considered politically unsafe were removed from open debate by the Soviet
nomenklatura. In all remaining areas, scientific curiosity was encouraged,
and the historians Yuri Perepelkin, Moisei Rizhskii, and Natan Eidelman
enjoyed enormous print runs. This indirectly contributed to the fact that the
Soviet intelligentsia acquired, along with erudition, a certain critical
potential that eventually led to transformation in the system. After all, if one
learned to think and investigate the social structure of different societies,
even if only ancient societies, one would not accept official propaganda
uncritically. Besides, many humanists were graduates of the Soviet period,
and because of that period’s “nonmosaic”

4

type of thinking, were much in

demand both outside the transformed government and in the labor market
within the country: the philosophy department at Moscow State University
gave postreform Russia no fewer effective businessmen and managers than
Bauman Moscow State Technical University.

Russian educational policy became much more flexible in the liberal

1990s, which saw the active creation of classes with humanist inclinations,
and also specialized high schools, grammar schools, language schools, and
other educational institutions (however, this trend was more characteristic
of the late Soviet period). School curricula includes such subjects as civics,
economic fundamentals, and many others. A significant number of new
humanities and social science institutes of higher education appear: the
State Academic University for the Humanities, the Russian State University
for the Humanities, and others; they include Russian – Western partnerships

198 RUSSIAN STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY

(the Russian – British Moscow School of Social and Economic Sciences, the
International University in Moscow, etc.), new academic disciplines appear
in higher education (sociology, political science, culture studies, religious
studies, ethics, esthetics, etc.), and the teaching of philosophy courses is
substantially modified and expanded.

Let us focus specifically on certain disciplines of humanities and social

sciences. Turning to philosophy, we should note the specifics of its
development in the Soviet Union: generally, it could only develop as a
history of philosophy. However, the lacunae in research due to ideological
reasons has been completely eliminated over the past twenty-five years.
This applies to Byzantine philosophy, medieval religious philosophy,
certain Western thinkers who were branded with the cliche´ of
anticommunist, and others. But this, of course, primarily applies to Russian
Silver Age religious philosophy, which triumphantly returned from
emigration and in a sense changed the philosophical landscape, not only
the concept of Russian philosophy in itself, but also the place of Russian
philosophy as a whole within the philosophical sciences.

After the dissolution of the Soviet Union, a dramatic process of

reevaluation and revision of the fundamental position of Soviet psychology
began to take place (especially in its methodological foundations, which
dated back to Marxism). Its main premise came under criticism: the position
that Marxism was the sole theoretical basis for psychology.

5

In Russia’s

new historical circumstances, in the wake of enthusiasm and under
conditions of ideological freedom, and in a period when the creators of
scientific theories could no longer enter into dialogue with their critics, the
attack on Soviet psychology was launched. There was a sharp reversal from
the indisputable priority of everything created in the Soviet period to,
essentially, the rejection of its significance.

6

One of the features of post-Soviet psychology is its gradual

rapprochement with the practice and changes in the applied sciences,
which represent a concrete interest for different types of social activity. The
historic gap between Russian and Western varieties of psychotherapy
forced the Russian system of training to realize that it was unnecessary to
repeat the whole history of psychotherapy; they could adopt what was
already well established. The consequence of this situation in Russian
psychotherapy education was unique: its advantage consisted of the ability
to choose from among schools and trends, but the disadvantage was the
shortage of knowledge about basic or classical psychotherapy.

7

At the same

time, Elena Fantalova, for example, came to the conclusion in the course of
her practice that the majority of approaches and psychotechnics from the
Western and American practice of psychology could not be transplanted

VOLUME 53, NO. 3, 2015 199

into “our Russian, deeply specific mental and spiritual ground” without first
being adapted to the Russian mentality. She urged the field, without writing
off all the existing positive foreign experience, to consider also the purely
domestic, Russian methods of practical psychology connected with the
demands of the “inner worlds” of fellow countrymen “in our difficult,
troubled times.”

8

The researcher emphasized the uniqueness of the “inner

demands” of the domestic client, and in connection with this, the specificity
of the psychologist – client interaction. Many other Russian psychothera-
pists also spoke about the need for finding their own path for developing
domestic traditions of psychological aid, for example, in line with the
Slavic spiritual culture native to our country, or in line with Orthodox
psychotherapy, which is currently resurgent in Russia. According to these,
a truly unique system of healing the soul developed in the bosom of the
Russian Orthodox Church, which over the course of centuries had
habitually concerned itself with the spiritual health of the human being and
his morality, and this system should be adopted by Russian psychologists
and psychotherapists.

9

In the meantime, the Western experience still needs

a critical reevaluation.

10

The Russian system of training economists and sociologists, who have

developed along several different schemes, drew the greatest benefit from
the era of changes. Sociology generally did not exist as a science in the
Soviet Union, and research in some of its trends was carried out only
between the 1920s and 1930s, and the 1960s and 1980s. Nevertheless, the
eve of perestroika saw the formation of a body of native scholars who came
from philosophy, history, economics, and other areas of knowledge that not
only borrowed from Western developments, but also advanced sociology
as a domestic science: Vladimir Iadov, Andrei Zdravomyslov, Tatyana
Zaslavskaya, Leokadia Drobizheva, and Nikolai Lapin, and the Russian-
British researcher Teodor Shanin also joined their ranks.

The absence of a market sector in the Soviet Union had a substantial

impact on the development both of theoretical economics and of the
education system for future economist and planners. The estrangement
from Western science was expressed in critical, or in the best case,
condescending attitudes even toward the most well-known works, in
declarations of the absolute superiority of the Soviet school. The standard
method was the identification of Western and bourgeois science and its
perception as a servant of the exploiting class. The primary negative
consequence of this isolation was the lack of healthy scientific competition.
Of course, Western science also suffered from this ideological
confrontation, as it had no conditions for objectively studying the Soviet
experience. However, by the late 1950s this mutual alienation in economics

200 RUSSIAN STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY

was already shifting toward “building bridges.” This process took place
in the least ideological areas, where the application of mathematical
methodologies, systems analysis, and information science were practiced.
These Western scholars, who came to understand the insufficiency of
market mechanisms for harmonizing regional development, studied the
Soviet experience of planning, economic assimilation of new regions and
formation of territorial and industrial clusters, and of social protectionism.

11

Western textbooks were actively translated and implemented in the
education process during the 1990s, from Paul Heyne’s popular Economics
[sic; The Economic Way of Thinking ] to the fundamental work of the same
name by Stanley Fischer, Rudiger Dornbusch, and Richard Schmalensee,
or Takashi Negishi’s History of Economic Theory. Literally one decade
later saw domestic textbooks on micro and macroeconomics, regional
economics, finance, and many other economic disciplines. Critical
reflection on our own experience proceeded at a rapid pace. In 2000 the
late academician Dmitrii L_’vov published his fundamental work, Put’ v
XXI vek: strategicheskie problemy i perspectivy rossisskoi ekonomiki [Path
to the Twenty-First Century: Strategic Problems and Prospects for the
Russian Economy], which included a critical reassessment of the foremost
Western developments in economics, an impartial analysis of the Russian
reforms, and his own strategy for economic development. Today L_’vov’s
student Sergei Glazyev has provided an authentic plan for getting out of the
crisis,

12

and given the confrontation with the West, exacerbated by the

Ukrainian crisis, it seems the political elite is starting to listen to him.

Of all the humanities and social sciences, the period of liberalization

affected history in the most multifaceted way (especially national history),
as both a science and an academic discipline. The joke that Russia is a
country “with an unpredictable past” is not without bitter meaning.
Certainly the history of our country in the twentieth century alone has been
rewritten a number of times. Soon after the October Revolution, the whole
imperial period of development was painted in dark tones. However,
beginning in the 1930s, many events and key figures in Russian history
were rehabilitated (Suvorov, Peter I, and others) under the policy for
forming a unified, civic Soviet nation.

In the subsequent Soviet years, a much more balanced approach was

practiced in the teaching of history, although the practice of suppressing
facts unfavorable to the regime and of preserving ideological interpretations
was obligatory. An almost revolutionary consciousness was attributed to
certain historical Figures (Sten_’ka Razin, Emelian Pugachev), while the
acts of others (General Ermolov, Stolypin, and others) were covered up or
slandered. World history was interpreted in accordance with theories of

VOLUME 53, NO. 3, 2015 201

changing social formations and class struggle. We should note, in fairness,
that this trend was characteristic not just in the Soviet Union, but also in the
system opposed to it. The progressivist interpretation of Western history
differs only in that liberal democracy rather than communism is seen as the
crowning development of human society. According to Michael Parenti,
in the 1980s United States,

School texts at the elementary, high-school, and even college levels
seldom give but passing mention to the history of labor struggle and the
role of American corporations in the exploitation and maldevelopment of
the Third World. Almost nothing is said of the struggles of indigenous
Americans (or Native American “Indians”), indentured servants, small
farmers, and Latino, Asian, Middle Eastern, and European immigrants.
The history of resistance to slavery, racism, and U.S. expansionist wars
goes largely untaught in our classrooms. But everyone learns by heart
that we should blame the Cold War on the Soviet Union. Teaching about
the “evils of communism” is required by law in many states.

. . . In

academia, politically radical faculty, and even students, have suffered
politically motivated negative evaluations and loss of stipends, grants,
and jobs.

13

The “new” (to use Hannah Arendt’s term) despotism in the West, unlike the
“old” in the East, stills prioritizes economic methods for establishing
control over human behavior.

The difference in methods determines the different forms of resistance
and the degree of their effectiveness. It is absolutely impossible to
imagine that the “new despotism” would collapse from transparency
[glasnost’ ], from bringing the public’s attention to, for example, the
genocide of Oklahoma’s Native Americans over oil production, or
the increasing of U.S. territory through the most shameless aggression
against Mexico and its subsequent partitioning. “Transparency” would
not work there, because all these facts have long been ‘available,’ but are
either not “perceived” by the vast majority, or “perceived” as regrettable
but “natural” facts of history that you cannot change.

At the same time, the Soviet Union “brought to light the facts of Stalinist
(and later) atrocities that one also ‘cannot change,’ and they were
‘perceived’ by millions of people who, in a few years, turned into a
politically concerned reading public, and that public was ready to act in
order to change the regime.”

14

The author of this article graduated high school in 1991, not long after

the Soviet Union disappeared from the political map of the world. New
textbooks had not yet been written, and the history teacher no longer knew

202 RUSSIAN STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY

what to tell the students in their lessons or how to teach them history

. . . .

The newspapers were splattered with revelatory and simply scandalous
articles. It was a terrible blow in worldview for the consciousness of the
Soviet citizen, who was accustomed to believing the printed word.
Textbooks published in the 1990s, especially about recent history, mostly
demonstrated a negative attitude toward our history; some were written
hastily, often presenting children with ideas that have still not “settled.”

In the 2000s, simultaneous with the stabilization of Russia’s political

system, a sort of reverse “patriotic” trend has become apparent:
a Commission was established under the President of the Russian
Federation to counter attempts at falsifying history to the detriment of
Russian interests, and textbooks that were published with the support of
Western funding (for example, the Soros Foundation, through the “Renewal
of Humanities Education in Russia” program) or written by authors too
critical toward some aspects of national history (for example, Igor
Dolutsky’s book on twentieth-century Russian history) have been excluded
from the list of recommended school books.

Under the leadership of academician Alexander Chubaryan a number of

projects have been launched for the preparation and implementation of
innovative teaching programs to give high school seniors and first-year
college students and introduction to history as a discipline that has its own
research methods for obtaining objective information about the past, and
that allows us to detect the laws of social, state, and individual
development.

15

In the 2010s the general public already realizes that it is impossible to

teach national history without ideological interpretations, because the main
task of a school’s history course is to raise citizens and patriots. National
history (especially as a course in school) a priori must be “good.” The
turning point in this issue was the cycle of books by the now Minister of
Culture Vladimir Medinsky, Myths About Russia, in which he debunks
entrenched stereotypes about Russian laziness, drunkenness, incapacity for
democracy, and so forth (in fact this kind of work, albeit in a more balanced
way, had begun in the 1990s under the “old school’ historians Vadim
Kozhinov and Igor Froianov, but it had gone unnoticed.) Other historians
who supported the new trend included Natalya Narochnitskaya, Alexander
Barsenkov, and others. As a natural result of the public debate, the
government ordered the preparation of a single school textbook for history,
in which even the most unflattering pages of Russian history would be
subject to balanced assessment.

In the political sciences the need for students in higher education to

begin with methodology has existed for the last fifteen years at minimum,

VOLUME 53, NO. 3, 2015 203

and this has directly affected the quality of many Russian textbooks for
higher education.

16

I begin my first lecture on political science for first-year

students with an explanation that this is a multiparadigmatic discipline, and
I cite examples of interpretations of the basic political categories given from
the perspective of different methodological approaches, but at the end of the
lecture someone in the audience always asks me, “Well, okay, but what are
things really like?” I tell them honestly that I do not know, that it is difficult
to talk about objective truth in the humanities and social sciences, and we
can only put forth a more or less well-reasoned point of view, working with
one or another paradigm (and being aware of this). The most nitpicky
students are not far behind, “Then tell us, what do you think?”

Political science existed in the Soviet Union as well, though without

being institutionalized as a separate academic discipline. In 2008 a
collection of works by the leading Russian political scientists was issued to
celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of political science in Russia.

17

Beginning in 1955, the Soviet Association of Political (State) Sciences

operated at the Soviet Academy of Sciences. The specific features of the
development of Russian political science appeared in the efforts toward
detailed work in such categories as government, political power, political
systems, and political ideology, while the other major categories (political
processes, political institutions, political culture, the political elite, and
others) did not interest Russian political scientists. The reason was simple:
political subjects such as spontaneous human activity “did not exist” in this
country; only the relationship of state politics to the citizenry was
recognized as an object of study. Institutes of government and law carried
out political science research. During the period of rapid development at the
end of the twentieth century, Russian political science primarily developed
through borrowings from Western groundwork.

18

Because of that, one of

the most important tasks that Russian political theory faces is the
reassessment of a considerable number of concepts as they relate to the
Russian reality, because the simple transfer of their liberal content leads to
the portrayal of our country as an “abyss of authoritarianism”: by Western
standards we are simply doomed to remain non-civic and undemocratic.
We cannot ignore the fact that many categories of classical Western
political science are irrelevant to social and political processes in the non-
Western world.

Similar work on reassessment has been carried out in other countries

under secondary modernization: as an example we can look to the fate of
“civil society” as a concept.

19

An authentic reassessment of the idea of

“civil society” is occurring in today’s Russia, as well. In contrast to the
hypothesis of eternal Russian authoritarianism, monographs are being

204 RUSSIAN STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY

published

20

and dissertations defended

21

that carefully single out those

moments of Russian history when “proto-civic” trends carried real political
weight.

Of course, a great deal depends on the specific educational institution

and the specific teacher of political science: often in today’s Russia (as well
as in the United States

22

) political science courses introduce “symbolic”

political systems of governance rather than “real” ones. The major problem
today is the employment of political science majors in connection with the
declining quality of elections, the notorious predictability of their results,
and the falling demand for political consulting. In the distribution of
political science majors in the workforce, the Soviet version remains: they
are employed as social science teachers.

23

The deformation of the education system

The Russian liberal revolution, along with its unquestionable advantages,
like the possibility of public thought and free creation in the humanities far
beyond the limits of Marxist-Leninist dogma, also had a number of negative
consequences in the field of education, which took some time to recognize.
The “wild” capitalism of the 1990s inflicted such serious damage on the
system of training specialists in humanities and social sciences that in many
respects it has still not recovered.

Let us discuss this in more detail. The first blow was the destruction of

public morality, most negatively manifested in high schools, universities,
and academic councils. In the Soviet Union public morality was one of the
most significant instruments of social control, although there were also
more severe measures, like the threat of expulsion from the Komsomol

*

or

the virtual impossibility of obtaining a higher education or a successful
professional career.

Morality, in my opinion, is one of the constitutive institutions of

public life, without which the fabric of sociality would unravel. This
applies particularly in Russia where the severity of the law has generally
been balanced by its optional execution and selective sanctions. In the
late 1980s and early 90s, public morality was “abolished” in our country.
The earlier version (the moral codex of communism’s builder) was
discredited and derided, and the new version became, in the words of

*Komsomol was a political youth organization in the Soviet Union. The name

comes from the first syllables of the three Russian words meaning Communist
Union of Youth. – Ed.

VOLUME 53, NO. 3, 2015 205

academician Abdusalam Guseinov, a “totalitarianism of the dollar.” The
“New Russians” were unaware of their responsibility toward society and
did not understand that even a very rich person cannot live happily
among poor and miserable fellow citizens. The country saw a whole
generation of amoral and asocial people grow up, as child abandonment,
domestic alcoholism, and public indifference became overwhelming
problems. Yet these troubles have not yet reached “rock bottom.” When
the generation of Soviet people who actively instilled the norms of public
morality become an absolute minority or even leave the stage of history,
there is a danger that the social fabric of Russian society will rupture.

At the present time, our society is seeking alternative sources of public

morality, including religious ones. In many of my earlier publications I
have expressed wariness of the Russian government’s recent policy aimed
at strengthening the position of traditional religions, and of various
symbolic gestures in support of ethnocentric thinking. However, I do not
rule out that this could be the salvation of the drowning Russian state!
Public morality is not the kind of institution that can be implanted in a short
time period. The destruction of nonreligious Soviet morality inevitably
entailed the need to appeal to something else, to some “profound” or
“innate” identities that, incidentally, are in serious conflict with liberal
democratic “religion of human rights.”

24

Every regime needs “pillars,” an unreflexive setup borrowed from the

matrix of values traditional for a given society; with its sacrifices in the
name of a greater cause, its opposition to moneymaking, and its disdain for
material well-being, Soviet morality correlated well with Orthodox ethics
traditional to Russia. These were vastly different from Protestant ethics,
which Max Weber called “in the spirit of capitalism.”

The new atmosphere was destructive for thought in human sciences.

In a society where actions are justified because they generate income, and
where laws are passed to legalize the embezzlement of public wealth,
there are no prospects for knowledge in humanities and social sciences.
The only exceptions were economics and law, which became
exceptionally popular areas of specialization for college students in the
1990s. Law and economics departments were choking on the influx of
students hoping to study there, and the early 2000s saw the professions of
psychologist, political scientist, and sociologist becoming prestigious:
students are eager to acquire the kind of education they expect to bring
the most future revenue. During this period, the other humanities and
social sciences departments (except philology, which teaches the foreign
languages) could not boast of high competitiveness and acquired students
through negative selection(those with no prospects for admission to more

206 RUSSIAN STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY

prestigious majors, those who just wanted some kind of higher education
diploma to avoid having to serve in the military under universal
conscription, and so forth.

The “shock therapy”

26

carried out during the first stage of market

reforms created acute social differentiation, the second serious blow to the
whole humanities and social sciences bloc.

In the Soviet Union, where social inequality was rigidly regulated, the

status of teachers and school authorities retained a sufficiently high level.
Despite low incomes, researchers and instructors in higher education were
recognized as the intellectual elite. In the 1990s an enormous social divide
appeared in Russian society. Poverty-level wages, long pay delays, galloping
inflation, and the disappearance of the former regulators of public life led to a
rapid drop in the status of teachers and, later, of instructors and researchers.

I consider teaching in the Soviet school to have been very high quality

and comprehensive. Physics, mathematics, chemistry, and many other
subjects covered topics that in the West are taught only in specialized higher
education. This was not so unambiguous in humanities and social sciences,
but literature and history were taught thoroughly and broadly. With the
degradation of schools in the 1990s, the quality of higher education steadily
declined as well. Students with the lowest grades in classes and departments
are no longer the “crony” admits (applicants admitted through their parents’
connections or bribes); now the lowest-graded students are those who
matriculated thanks to their own knowledge. If, earlier, the ignorant
students gradually rose to the class level, now talented and well-prepared
children are beginning to degrade to the general level. Gradually, especially
as the old Soviet professors depart, the practice of buying tests and
examinations has become widespread. In humanities and social science
departments and institutes of higher education this occurs with much
greater ease than in engineering, natural sciences, and medicine, because
the subjects are “less specific.” Presently, this has led to a situation where
insufficiently qualified specialists in humanities and social sciences are
often behind the teaching departments.

The third blow was commercialization of education. I should note

another characteristic feature for the Soviet Union: all education, including
higher education, was free of charge. Only the best high school graduates,
selected via competitive entrance exams, went on to institutes of higher
education.

27

Technical and vocational schools served students with weaker

preparation. The introduction of commercial education led to paradoxical
results in conjunction with the Russian mentality, transforming a college
education into a “buying a diploma.” A few Russian institutes of higher
education have decided to dismiss students enrolled in tuition-based

VOLUME 53, NO. 3, 2015 207

programs. Moscow State University, the Moscow State Institute of
International Relations, and other leading educational establishments that
care about their reputation are no exception. Those who under perform
generally try to reenroll in them the following year or transfer to a lower-
ranked university, and still receive a higher education diploma.

In the late 1990s and early 2000s, a large number of departments and

areas of specialization (mostly in the humanities and social sciences) were
opened up around the country, because the children born during the Soviet
Union’s last spike in birth rate had reached college age. In the 1993 – 94
academic year there were 626 institutions of higher education in the
Russian Federation, including 548 state and municipal institutions; in the
2005 – 06 academic year there were 1,068 institutions of higher education,
including 655 state and municipal institutions. The number of students per
10,000 people also rose: from 176 in the 1993 – 94 school year to 495 in
2005 – 06. Overall, the number of students per 10,000 people grew 2.8 times
over ten years; for public and private institutions that growth was 2.45 times
and 15.2 times, respectively.

28

While the market was reacting to the

increase in demand and the process of expanding the system of higher
education proceeded, children of the 1990s “demographic hole” reached
college age. This led to such a decrease in competition for college entry that
higher education became all but universal, especially since dismissing a
significant number of weak students and reducing the number of majors and
departments was actively opposed in the name of maintaining the stability
of the public system of “Russian higher education” and its instructors.
Nevertheless, the Russian Ministry of Education has managed to reduce
somewhat the number of social sciences institutions and regional affiliates
through a system of accreditation and licensing. By 2010, the decline in
demand for humanities and social sciences education due to excessive
“overproduction” in humanities and social sciences became another source
of regulation. A certain revival of domestic industry has led to increased
demand in engineering and technological areas of specialty, which (along
with the gradual departure of Soviet specialists) has increased the prestige
of the natural sciences and engineering.

The commercialization in all areas of public life led to the fact that,

in 1990s Russia, a significant number of politicians, businessmen, and
government officials had an advanced degree or doctorate in one of the
humanities and social science disciplines, simply to increase their prestige and
add a line to their business cards. The Higher Attestation Commission, which
controls the activities of academic councils, is constantly tightening the
requirements for thesis defense procedures and is taking other measures to
“separate the wheat from the chaff,” but only time will tell whether they help.

208 RUSSIAN STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY

Moreover, Russian higher education (again, the humanities and social

sciences above all, which appear less specific to the untrained eye than
medicine, engineering, and others

29

) serves several other functions, unlike

in the West. These are socialization, reduction of unemployment, and so
forth. In addition, higher education is a means of temporarily occupying
young people,

30

who might otherwise risk involvement in the black market

or the criminal environment.

This situation worsened in early 2009 because of the economic crisis,

when students in tuition-based programs had difficulty paying for their
education. Through the media, both the president and rectors of the leading
institutions of higher education asked the Russian teaching corps to place a
moratorium on dismissing students studying in secondary and graduate-
level institutes. In reality, they stopped dismissing not only students unable
to pay tuition, but also underachieving students (citing the fact that these
students received failing or incomplete grades due to their need to work and
study at the same time), in order to avoid “overheating” the labor market.

There is also an irrational demand for “getting a diploma” at any cost,

including among children with weaker abilities, and in institutions where
the quality of teaching is certainly low. Even low-income parents aspire to
“educate” their offspring (including in tuition-based programs), even if it is
evident that their child cannot work in a specialized area, seeing education
as some assurance that their child will eventually escape the fate of social
outsider. The circle closes with the higher education diploma’s decline in
value (the diploma becomes less and less a sign of qualification), and a
growing number of reasonably successful students (who, in the best case
scenario, would have been B students in the Soviet Union) aspire to
graduate studies. (The fact that postgraduate degree earners are not subject
to conscription also motivates young people.) Admission to graduate
studies is increasing, despite the fact that only 6 – 15 percent of students
defend their dissertations, and academic councils have gradually lowered
the requirements for quality of the work submitted.

31

The fourth blow was reforms conducted according to Western standards.
Since 2002 Russia has conducted an experiment by introducing the

Unified State Exam (USE), copying the system of graduation examinations
in the United States, Israel, and other countries. In 2009 that exam became
the main form of certification for high school graduates. Proponents of this
new form of verifying knowledge levels defended and continue to defend
the reforms with many valid arguments. The USE was designed to eliminate
subjectivity in assessment, to limit opportunities for corruption at the
admissions stage, and to ensure equal access to higher education
irrespective of financial position and living distance from university

VOLUME 53, NO. 3, 2015 209

centers. But these goals are achieved at the cost of a sharp decline in the
quality of education. For several years both teachers and university
instructors have unsuccessfully argued to officials that the system of tests,
administered in place of traditional exam questions, is detrimental to
education.

This kind of system, which is typical for American colleges, has long

been the target of criticism in Europe and even in the United States. This
is traditionally considered one reason why the level of American mass
education (except for some elite universities) leaves much to be desired.
This is partly why the United States constantly needs an influx of specialists
from other countries (from Western Europe and the former Soviet republics
to India), where student learning is based on different principles.

32

Testing is focused on primitive answers and standard, uniform, simplistic

responses. They can be applied more or less successfully in the exact
sciences, although even there problems arise. In humanities and social
sciences the introduction of testing means the end of the discipline as such.
Tests on Russian literature and its philosophical depths suggest memorizing
random details, through which the examiner need not verify whether the
student understood the ideas or esthetic nature of the work, simply whether
he has read it.

33

The history exam presumes knowledge of names and dates:

given this method, it is impossible to master anything else. If students are
given meaningful questions, they presume the existence of a single answer,
excluding independent evaluation or personal reflections. The new system
minimizes the examiner’s arbitrariness but achieves this through
suppression of students’ individuality. They become cogs in a bureaucratic
machine, built on the site of the education system.

We often hear that the humanities and social sciences are not very

“scientific” in the sense used in physics or mathematics, but this is precisely
why they are important for society. Their study is necessary for the
formation of a worldview, the development of the personality and the
ability to make competent, independent judgments. They are designed to
turn average residents into citizens. The essence of knowledge in
humanities and social sciences is not a set of facts but an understanding of
processes. History classes in every era have been based on the requirements
of state ideology, but even the highly tendentious Soviet textbooks leave
open the possibility of thought and independent conclusions that students
have not always shared with their examiners. The focus of testing kills that
very essence, historical knowledge and its meaning. Facts are memorized
for the tests and later erased from the operative memory of any normal
person as unnecessary junk, relevant only once in life and with no
independent value. High scores on the USE cannot even attest to knowledge

210 RUSSIAN STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY

about the Russian language. Never before have Russian instructors been
faced with the absolute disregard most students show for elementary rules
of reproducing language in writing. What is the reason for this? I think there
is a whole complex of issues, but, primarily, it speaks to the thoughtless
coaching of senior students for the USE. To insert letters in a printed text or
to put a checkmark next to the correct answer are skills far removed from
the actual ability to write or produce text.

34

The introduction of the USE led to an unexpected effect: corruption

descended from the level of higher education to schools and their directors.
This phenomenon can be seen vividly in regions with a “traditional”
mentality. Scandals that remove regional officials from education (for
example, in Adygea) change nothing: today Moscow’s institutions of higher
education are swamped by applicants from republics in the North Caucasus
who all have a perfect score in the subjects needed for admission. Nor have
the reforms eliminated tutoring, which has degenerated into coaching
students for the test.

In 2003 Russia joined the Bologna process, committing to achieving the

member states’ rather extensive goals by 2010. This was done without
taking into account that the Russian system of higher education evolved
relatively independently over the twentieth century, focusing on the needs
of Soviet society, and above all on the country’s rapid modernization. Our
high school programs were designed to give each student a broad general
education, and they would professionalize at the higher education level.
In addition, there are specialized schools and classes in mathematics,
humanities and social sciences, and other fields. The author of this article
graduated from a high school with a specialty in physics and mathematics,
located at the periphery of the Soviet empire (the city of Frunze, now
Bishkek, the capital of Kyrgyzstan). Our education broadly involved
scientific literature, including college textbooks, specialized science
journals, and a significant number of creative (“weekly”) tasks were
assigned. Multiplicity of thought was welcomed: “better to solve the same
problem several ways than to solve several problems the same way.” I
solved most problems on the written exam for matriculation to the
economics department in several ways. A recent Internet search of former
classmates showed that half are now living and working in Moscow
(primarily as high-level banking officials, financiers, accountants, etc.), and
the other half (mostly IT specialists) are scattered around the world in the
United States, Canada, Germany, Israel, and elsewhere. Ironically, it was
the nonstandardized personnel who were in high demand. Now many
schools and upper-division classes are creating specialized programs that
are becoming more prevalent. This raises the following question: if a person

VOLUME 53, NO. 3, 2015 211

is already trained for a specialization, why does he need another four years
in a general program with elements of specialization? The baccalaureate is a
generally unnecessary link in the Russian educational system. Today the
country faces many more widespread challenges (not in driving
development, but in achieving technological breakthroughs) that cannot
be met by borrowing Western educational standards.

Even in Europe, the Bologna process contributes to the improving

management of educational processes while the quality of those processes
deteriorates. In Russia the transition to a two-tiered training led to “curtailed
general higher education with a sharp decrease in specialized professional
training and practice.”

35

Variability, the modular system of instruction

(when a student creates his own assignments and selects mentors to help
him), is not consistent with Russia’s existing distribution of the teaching
load, the organization of work in higher education, or the nature of contact
between instructors and students. And what of the debatable nature of
many issues, and of the coexistence of different, sometimes contradictory
scientific schools and concepts? One needs to be very familiar with the
content of the profession and the essence of qualification and
professionalization requirements, and to understand the subject proposed
for study, in order to create a curriculum on one’s own. Having experienced
both a Russian university and a Western-style master’s program, I clearly
understand that to be prepared for the second type of learning (the “credits”
system, the ability to shape the program according to personal preference),
it takes a mature person with higher education and work experience. This
version would only fit in Russia in professional retraining programs.
In addition, the country already has an enormous number of people with
higher-level diplomas, which creates serious questions about the
competitiveness of the baccalaureate in the labor market.

What are the prospects?

Today, the global humanities and social sciences community is faced with
very difficult tasks. We live in an era when changes occur so rapidly that we
often begin to make sense of them only after the fact. Russian sciences have
the potential for research into the state of contemporary civilization, its
basic values, growth points for new values in different areas of culture, and
an understanding of where modern technology will lead. Culture in the
broadest sense, including both education and lifestyle, is currently gaining
much more significance and may become the determining factor in
competitiveness between states. Therefore, education in humanities and
social sciences can no longer be regarded as merely supplemental to

212 RUSSIAN STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY

education in the natural sciences and engineering; it is taking on a self-
sufficient and decisive role. On this issue I am much more inclined to side
with Ulrich Bek, who believed that postmodern society cannot help but be
reflexive, rather than with Zygmunt Bauman, who suggested that the
education system survives “despite postmodernity.”

36

The reflexive process

requires a firm bearing, that is, consistency and some (even if local, relative)
universality of thought.

The prospects for development of humanities and social sciences

education in Russia cannot be provided in the absence of its own philosophy
on this issue. As mentioned above, many Russian problems in a given area
are specific in nature, therefore their solutions must be specific as well.
Successful development of the country is impossible when its own identity
is being rejected. One cannot even hope for breakthroughs in technology in
the absence of Russia’s own project of development, its own agenda, and a
calm and balanced relationship to its own history. A country like Russia
cannot live without its own philosophy of humanities and social sciences
education, satisfied with uncritical borrowings from Western experience.
This kind of prospect deprives our country of its own sense of existence,
dooming it to ultimate dismemberment and transformation into raw
materials: neither the natural sciences nor engineering can successfully
develop under these conditions, especially since the contemporary West
finds itself in a deep philosophical, economic, and financial crisis and
cannot serve as an example for successful development.

Fortunately for Russian humanities and social sciences scholars, the

period of virtual lack of funding and problems with publishing books is
over. At the same time, we cannot be sure that Russian government has
finally realized that without authentic thought in humanities and social
sciences, there is not and cannot be any kind of successful economic
project, nor any options for developmental breakthroughs. Despite
important theoretical achievements in the Russian sciences, there is still
considerable lag in terms of practical implementation for domestic
development.

Between ten and fifteen years ago, the late Alexander Panarin laid out

a genuine ethicocentric model for development as an alternative to the
consumer society.

37

At the same time a whole cluster of scholars and

instructors with a steadily Western-centric orientation has emerged over the
past twenty-five years. For successful development, what we need today is
not to borrow concepts (such as totalitarianism) that are destroying Russian
identity, as we have done through the whole postreform period, but to write
our own textbooks, reassessing the categorical apparatus in relation to
domestic soil and filling it with authentic content.

VOLUME 53, NO. 3, 2015 213

Reforms in the sciences, undertaken after the reforms in education,

imposed Western-style accountability on Russian scholars. Their
effectiveness began to be assessed by the number of citations (including
in international citation indices) and by the additional funding attracted.
Questions were raised after the crisis in Ukraine and the resultant
confrontation between Russia and the West: How will we publish our works
in international journals? Who will cite them? What kinds of resources can
we engage under these circumstances, other than Russian funds and state
procurement? Financial support for humanities and social sciences was
immediately and significantly reduced. For example, when the Ministry of
Education and Science created nationwide government grants in June 2014,
only two projects in political science were supported (devoted to stability in
the North Caucasus and development of the Arctic Shelf) and only one in
sociology, law, and philosophy. Rather than developing authentic criteria
for assessing the effectiveness of domestic science (they required it to fit
into an international system under obviously unfavorable conditions,
instead of formulating their own authentic model for development) the
Ministry cut back on humanities and social sciences research, prioritizing
the natural and applied sciences. However, the role of humanities and social
sciences is more complicated than it seems. Our mistakes over recent
decades in this area and our inability to proclaim our own agenda are
leading to helplessness against the West’s information and propaganda
attacks.

Even a superficial analysis of Russian emigration shows that the Soviet

system of higher education is still well regarded, and the competitiveness of
our compatriots increases precisely because the breadth of their acquired
knowledge. Unlike their Western colleagues, who are “narrow” specialists,
Russians who received less-specialized education are prepared to take on
anything with little difficulty. The universality and well-known methodical
reasoning of the Russian system of education made them competitive.
Today, in the name of “competitiveness,” that universality has been
replaced by “unification,” and methodical reasoning is overridden for “self-
directed students.”

Our higher education has its own problems that need to be solved, though

integration with the European system is not a priority. Before debating the
Bologna agreement “on the whole,” making it easier for trained personnel
to smoothly “flow over” to the West, one has to understand how certain
measures, even with good intentions, affect the existing national education
system, given its specific development in the past and its particular social
role in the present.

214 RUSSIAN STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY

The steady interest of a considerable portion of Russian citizenry on

receiving a higher education cannot be considered simply a whim, a strange
mental feature, or a manifestation of the enigmatic Russian soul. The
“stubborn” Russian craving for higher education has more or less
maintained both the educational system and the social self-identity and
positive social focus of the majority of citizens who had been subjected to
shock therapy. We must not forget that the focus on receiving an education
creates a certain structure of consumption: demand for books, computers,
the Internet, and so forth. It maintains a certain kind of behavior that
prevents the population’s marginalization and the destruction of many
socially significant relationships and norms. In many ways, the steady
desire for higher education has proved salutary for our society. That does
not mean our system of education survived the crisis without negative
consequences, or that the Soviet education system was irreproachable. It is
important to recognize that the measures taken to date will not solve a single
problem in Russian higher education, and many of these measures will, on
the contrary, only aggravate them.

Notes

1. The first edition of the Great Soviet Encyclopedia [Bol’shaia sovetskaia

entsiklopediia] was published from 1926 to 1947, the second from 1950 to 1958,
and the third from 1969 to 1978.

2. See, for example: A.L. Nikiforov, Filosofiia nauki: istoriia i metodologiia

(Moscow: Dom intellektual’noi knigi, 1988); V.S. Stepin, Teoretichesoe znanie
(Moscow: Progress-Traditsiia, 2003); V.S. Stepin, V.G. Gorokhov, and M.A.
Rozov, Filosofiia nauki i tekhniki (Moscow: Gardariki, 1996).

3. The Great Encyclopedic Dictionary [Bol’shoi entsiklopedicheskom slovar’]

(1988) gives the history of humanities and social sciences on p. 320; the social
sciences on p. 466; and on p. 787 it refers to the sciences as “natural, social, human,
and technical.” Humanities are difficult to distinguish from the social sciences,
given that the human being is, in principle, inseparable from society.

4. One person who drew attention to the evolution taking place within the

framework of contemporary thought was Avraam Mol’. In his work Sotsiodinamika
kul’tury (Moscow: Progress, 1973. pp. 43 – 46) he defined the “screen of
knowledge” in a mosaic culture of thought as the unstructured set of information
scraps that the contemporary individual assimilates primarily through mass media.
Because of this he remains on the surface of phenomena, receiving occasional
impressions from facts that more or less influence him, while bringing neither
critical judgment nor mental effort to the process of perception.

5. A.N. Zhdan, Istoriia psikhologii: ot antichnosti k sovremennosti: Uchebnik

dlia studentov psikhologicheskikh fakul’tetov (Moscow: Pedagogicheskoe
obshchestvo Rossii, 1999), p. 420.

6. Ibid., p. 422.

VOLUME 53, NO. 3, 2015 215

7. E.A. Spirkina, “Novaia kontseptsiia obucheniia psikhoterapii,” Psikholo-

gicheskii zhurnal, vol. 1, no. 1, pp. 13 – 14.

8. E.B. Fantalova, Diagnostika i psikhoterapiia vnutrennego konflikta

(Samara: Izdatel’skii dom BAKhRAKh-M, 2001), pp. 79 – 82.

9. M.V. Rozin, “Religiia i psikhoterapiia: vozmozhen li kentavr?” MPTZh,

1994, no. 2, pp. 191 – 200.

10. E.A. Spirkina, “Podgotovka psikhoterapevtov i psikhologov-konsul’tantov

(problem adaptatsii zapadnogo opyta),” Psikhologicheskii zhurnal, 1994, vol. 15,
no. 6, pp. 121 – 27.

11. A.G. Granberg, “Integratsiia v mirovuiu nauku,” Osnovy regional’noi

ekonomiki (Moscow: GU VShE, 2000).

12. S.Iu. Glaz’ev, “Kak ne proigrat’ v voine,” (24 July 2014).

http://worldcrisis.

ru/crisis/1584472

.

13. M. Parenti, Demokratiia dlia nemnogikh (Moscow: Progress, 1990), pp. 68 –

69. [English original: Michael Parenti, Democracy for the Few (Wadsworth,
Cengage Learning, 2011), p. 49.]

14. B.G. Kapustin, Sovremennost’ kak predmet politicheskoi teorii (Moscow:

ROSSPEN, 1998), pp. 241 – 42.

15. The author of this article participated in the preparation of one such

methodologically innovative educational program, Istoriia [History ] for grades
10 – 11 (textbook

þ DVD with recorded video lectures) (Moscow: OLMA-PRESS,

2007). Reissued with amendments and supplements in 2010.

16. See, for example: V.P. Pugachev and A.I. Solov’ev, Vvedenie v politologiiu

(Moscow: Aspekt Press, 2000); Kategorii politicheskoi nauki. Uchebnik (Moscow:
MGIMO (U), ROSSPEN, 2000); A.I. Solov’ev, Politologiia: politicheskaia teoriia,
politiecheskie tekhnologii (Moscow: Aspekt Press, 2006).

17. Rossiisskaia politicheskaia nauka: v 5 t., ed. Iu.S. Pivovarov (Moscow:

ROSSPEN, 2008).

18. O.V. Gaman-Golutvina, B.G. Kapustin, and A.I. Solov’ev, Sovershenstvo-

vanie prepodavaniia politologii. Analiticheskii doklad (Moscow: Logos, 2005),
p. 88.

19. See, for example: R. Patnem, Chtoby demokratiia srabotala. Grazhdanskie

traditsii v sovremennoi Italii (Moscow: Ad Marginem, 1996). In that case, however,
the reassessment was carried out with the participation of “outside experts.”

20. A. Glinchikova, Raskol ili sryv «russkoi Reformatsii»? (Moscow:

Kul’turnaia revoliutsiia, 2008).

21. D.E. Letniakov, Rossisskaia traditsiia obshchestvenno-politicheskogo

uchastiia (XI – nachalo XX vv.). Avtoreferat dissertatsii na soiskanie uchenoi
stepeni kandidata politicheskikh nauk (Moscow, 2009).

22. Parenti, Demokratiia dlia nemnogikh, p. 408.
23. V.A. Kovalev, “Rossisskaia politologiia v usloviiakh involiutsii sistemy

obrazovaniia i sotsial’noi degradatsii,” Mirovaia politika: problem teoreticheskoi
indentifikatsii i sovremennogo razvitiia (Moscow: ROSSPEN, 2006), p. 461.

24. For more on the conflict between group and individual rights, and about

ethnocentric thought, see S.G. Il’inskaia, Tolerantnost’ kak printsip politicheskogo
deistviia: istoriia, teoriia, praktika (Moscow: Praksis, 2007), pp. 160 – 75, 222 – 28;
S.G. Il’inskaia, “Terpimost’ i ukreplenie etnotsentrichnogo soznaniia,” Polis, 2003,
no. 6.

216 RUSSIAN STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY

25. This idea, trivial today, has been postulated by many conservative authors:

Edmund Burke, a critic of the French Revolution, in the 18th century; Joseph
Schumpeter, in his Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy in the twentieth century,
and others.

26. The devaluation of the ruble, which eliminated the savings of tens of

millions of people; the virtual failure of the government to fulfill social guarantees;
the introduction of private ownership, and the distribution of ownership through
mortgaging auctions, when the government used government-backed loans to
transfer virtually all the important economic sectors to people close to the
administration. All this took place against a background of nonpayment of
pensions, social benefits, and wages, and also of mass unemployment.

27. There were quotas for “national cadres”: members of ethnic minorities,

orphans, the disabled, veterans who had just demobilized from the Soviet army, and
other categories.

28. A. Ochkina, “Kontseptsiia izmenilas’?” Levaia politika, 2007, no. 1.
29. Zygmunt Bauman pointedly noted this feature in his Myslit’ sotsiologicheski

[Thinking Sociologically], when he wrote that amateurs would not indulge in
debating the composition of stellar matter, but they see nothing complicated in the
problems of social science.

30. See E.M. Avraamov et al., “Sovremennoe vysshee obrazovanie i perspektivy

vertikal’noi mobil’nosti; M.V. Arapov, “Bum vysshego obrazovaniia v Rossii:
masshtaby, prichiny i sledstviia,” Obshchestvennye nauki i sovremennost’, 2004,
no. 6.

31. This is evident from reading the abstracts sent to the Academic Council,

where the author of this article serves as research secretary.

32. B.Iu. Kagarlitskii, “EGE vmesto istorii.”

http://scepsis.ru/library/id_606.

html

.

33. Students often do not read the work, but rather read a “cheat sheet” for test

preparation.

34. A. Nikolaeva, “Astap Blender kak sofetskii potsient.”

http://www.chaskor.

ru/p.php?id

¼11754@_openstat

.

35. S.I. Plaksii, “Bolonskii protsess v Rossii: pliusy i minusy,” Znanie.

Pominanie. Umenie, 2012, no. 1.

36. Z. Bauman, “Obraznovanie – pri, dlia i nesmotria na postmoderniti,”

Individualizirovannoe obshchestvo (Moscow: Logos, 2002), pp. 155 – 75.

37. Revansh istorii: rossisskaia strategicheskaia initsiativa v XXI veke (1998),

Global’noe politicheskoe prognozirovanie v usloviiakh strategicheskoi nestabil’-
nosti (1999), Iskushenie globalizmom (2000), Pravoslavnaia tsivilizatsiia v
global’nom mire (2000), Narod bez elity (2006), Pravda zheleznogo zanavesa
(2007), and others.

VOLUME 53, NO. 3, 2015 217

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