Authors

Petr Torkanovskiy¹;  ¹ King's College London, UK

Discussion

Students and academic researchers are traditionally considered one of the most active political actors confronting authoritarianism and particularly political censorship in authoritarian regimes. In various historical contexts, groups of researchers who could not find a place in academia due to censorship and political persecution established alternative, non-institutionalised projects to maintain their research activity and discuss sensitive topics. Social scientists and philosophers, given the inherently politicised nature of their disciplines, have often taken the lead in initiating such projects. This was the case of the Czechoslovak Republic after the 1968 Soviet military intervention, Poland in the late 1970s, modern Turkey, and more recently – the case of Russia. Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine pushed Russian-speaking scholars to self-organise, leading to the emergence of various informal, non-institutionalised grassroots online projects dedicated to research and education (termed “para-academic” projects). The primary objectives of these initiatives were to propagate research covering topics that the Russian authorities may consider “inappropriate” (e.g. academic freedom or gender studies) and to support anti-war Russian-speaking scholars who fled the country and needed to find academic positions abroad.

After more than two years of the full-scale invasion, many participants of these projects have left Russia and put great effort into integrating into the new academic contexts. Does the sense of solidarity and resistance against the common enemy that initially inspired and brought together the participants of para-academic networks still persist in these communities? How do members of these communities perceive their future and their position in a broader academic landscape? What are the defining features of the Russian para-academic projects that distinguish them from analogous projects in other regions? In my presentation, I will address these questions based on in-depth interviews with Russian-speaking participants of the para-academic projects. I will conclude by providing my own perspective on the future of Russian-language para-academic projects and their role in knowledge production and dissemination in Russian social sciences and philosophy in general.