Dispatch #1: Liberal Arts — Unreliable. Disloyal. A Problem.
Inside Russia's War on Independent Thought in Academia
Hello friends. Glad you’re here.
Welcome to the Dispatch — a newsletter about the state of higher education in Russia. Brought to you by Molnia, a non-profit dedicated to protecting students’ rights, this newsletter tracks the Russian state’s tightening grip on academia.
My name is Rita, I’m a student and a teacher in a regional Russian university. By day, I write my dissertation; at night I grade student papers. I attend university staff meetings, then go home and quietly delete sentences from my thesis that suddenly feel too dangerous to keep. Welcome to the world of Russian academia.
Every month you’ll receive a letter, written by me, from inside the belly of the beast.
This month, we’ll be talking about liberal arts, a field that’s currently in free fall (and dragging myself and my colleagues down with it). Right now, Russian social sciences and humanities are facing what is likely their deepest crisis in modern history. Many topics are fully off-limits. A whole new vocabulary has emerged as authors scramble to avoid prosecution. And we, the scholars, second-guess our every word. How might the university administration — or the state — read this? Does it make us sound unreliable? Disloyal? Problematic?
The Crackdown, Annotated
It’s hard to pinpoint exactly when the Russian state’s chokehold on independent thought began — a grip that has since led to the closure of scores of independent media outlets, NGOs, and liberal academic institutions. But one pivotal moment was the introduction of anti-extremist legislation in 2002, passed in the context of the Chechen wars and rising nationalist tensions, and ostensibly aimed at curbing violent extremism. Back then, the state defined ‘extremism’ as acts perpetrated by civic and religious organisations aimed at violently overthrowing the constitutional order — a seemingly high bar to cross. However, the legislation included a list of actions deemed extremist by default, regardless of whether they posed any actual threat to the public order. As someone with a legal background, I could have told you then that this kind of language would open the door to arbitrary persecution. And so it did — since then, scores of religious organizations, individual journalists, human rights groups, opposition figures, and many other ‘disloyal’ entities have been labeled extremist.
By 2026, the definition of ‘extremism’ had expanded to encompass over 5,000 entities listed on the official extremist register maintained by the Ministry of Justice — among them the social media platforms Instagram and Facebook, and the entire LGBTQ+ community. Meanwhile, in September 2025, a new law came into force: people can now be prosecuted for simply viewing banned materials online, even accidentally. The law was first applied in the case of 20-year-old Sergey Glukhikh who stumbled upon information about a Ukrainian military unit while browsing the internet on his commute. His lawyer reported that an unnamed telecom provider had passed the defendant’s browsing history to the FSB — Russia’s Federal Security Service. Whether someone is seeking information for artistic, research, or scientific purposes is irrelevant. And just like that, entire areas of research became not merely marginalized, but dangerous.
The designation of the entire LGBTQ+ community as ‘extremist’ — combined with the state’s declared turn toward traditional, conservative values — has put gender and queer studies directly in the crosshairs. And it’s not only the social sciences: between 2021 and 2024, the volume of academic publications on trans medicine dropped by 68%. Russia got there before Trump.
Meanwhile, certain misogynist ‘research’ projects are actively encouraged. In 2023, five male authors set out to answer the pressing question of why modern Russian women don’t want to have children. The culprit, unsurprisingly, turned out to be Western gender ideology. The paper’s keywords included the phrases ‘feminism as a form of Satanism’ and ‘Europe and the destruction of Russians.’ The authors also managed to identify humanity’s first feminist — Lilith, a demoness from Jewish mythology.
But let’s return to 2006, when new restrictions on NGOs and civic organizations first came into force. The state gained the right to deny registration to any NGO whose charter was deemed ‘inconsistent with the Constitution’ — another example of language that can mean almost anything.
‘Foreign’ NGOs were required to file quarterly reports with state authorities and notify them of upcoming projects at least a month in advance. Human rights watchdogs observed at the time that police raids, tax audits, and criminal cases were being opened in disproportionate numbers against organizations with activist or political profiles.
One example in particular stands out. Memorial, one of Russia’s most prominent human rights organizations, a Nobel peace prize laureate dedicated to documenting Soviet-era repressions spent nearly two years under administrative inspection following the NGO law changes, before being forcibly liquidated in 2021. And just a few weeks ago, the entire so-called ‘social movement’ ‘Memorial’ was recognized as extremist by the Supreme Court. Once again, the state used its favorite prosecution tool: assigning an entity a vaguely threatening label, then shutting it down. In this case, a group of researchers who spend their lives shedding light on important historical archives — recast as a supposedly harmful ‘social movement.’
The Scarlet Letter
In 2012, Russian legislation introduced the term ‘foreign agent’ — a label that, despite what state propaganda suggests, works quite differently from the American FARA law it supposedly mirrors. Under FARA, prosecutors must demonstrate a substantive connection to a foreign government before sanctions can be applied. In Russia, there is no real burden of proof: almost anyone can be designated a foreign agent by unilateral state decision, no court process required.
The consequences are significant. Foreign agents must submit financial reports to state authorities, label every post and publication with a disclaimer of their status, and are barred from managing their own property or running for public office. In practice, the designation functions less as a transparency measure and more as a scarlet letter — one that makes it nearly impossible to operate as a journalist, researcher, or civic activist.
Stat of the month: 48
As of April 2026, the foreign agent registry includes at least 48 social scientists — many of whom used to work as university lecturers. And, as of September 2025, foreign agents have been barred from teaching at any state university. In practice, this means their academic careers in Russia are over.
Guilt by Association
The effects of the ‘foreign agent’ law are felt well beyond its direct targets. Imagine being a PhD student unable to cite your field’s foundational texts because the scholar who wrote them has been deemed a foreign agent. For Russian researchers, this is a reality. Ivan Kurilla, one of Russia’s most prominent American Studies scholars, is on the list. Try writing a dissertation on Russian-American relations without citing him. Citations drawn from foreign agents are still, technically, legal —but informal directives and institutional pressure have turned using them into a career risk. Sociologist (and foreign agent) Viktor Vakhshtain tracked this shift by looking at citations of his own work, which dropped sharply after he was assigned this new status. Even more strikingly, some of his academic publications were retroactively reclassified as fiction, which had the effect of lowering his citation statistics for previous years as well. Meanwhile, in 2024, university admins began prohibiting any reference to foreign agent sources, including foreign agent media outlets, in entrance exams for journalism majors. In other words, the next generation of journalists is being taught to self-censor before they’ve ever published a word.
In 2015, under the guise of protecting Russian citizens’ rights, the state introduced a new tool for pressuring institutions that work with foreign organizations. Designate a foreign group as ‘undesirable,’ and its Russian partners face criminal liability for any cooperation — effectively ending the relationship.
For example, Bard College, a prominent New York liberal arts university, was named ‘undesirable’ by the Russian state in 2021. Soon after, Bard’s partnership with St. Petersburg State University’s Liberal Arts department was terminated, and its students lost the ability to graduate with a joint Russian-American degree.
As of 2026, the list of undesirable organizations includes scholarship programs, such as Germany’s DAAD, research centres like the Centre for Independent Social Research in Berlin, and numerous universities. Yale made the list after the Russian Prosecutor General’s office concluded it trains ‘opposition leaders of foreign states.’ The British Council, which administers the IELTS English language exam, made the cut as well.
One of my students had actually been planning on taking the IELTS exam. British Council centers in Russia shut down after the 2022 invasion of Ukraine, so she knew she’d have to travel abroad to take the exam — now she also needs to figure out how to pay for the exam without getting into trouble. And she’s not just being paranoid: last year, a private language school in Yaroslavl was fined for ‘participating in the activities of an undesirable organization.’ Their misdeed was to include a link to the British Council on their website.
Since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, repression has only intensified — every tool in the Russian state’s authoritarian arsenal is being deployed. Over the past four years, the number of students expelled from universities for political reasons was six times that of the previous four-year period, before the full-scale invasion. University faculty and students have been prosecuted under the administrative offense of ‘discrediting the army’ — which, in practice, can mean any statement calling for peace or criticizing the war. Faculty have faced such charges 77 times; students, 106. The message is clear: speak up, and you’re out.
Russian Academia, Erased
In late 2025, a university especially dear to me was shut down. The Moscow School of Social and Economic Sciences — known as Shaninka — was a private institution offering degrees across the liberal arts: creative industries management, world politics, contemporary social theory, cultural heritage. I had always dreamed of being part of it, first as a student, later as a researcher. The library-based learning, the flat non-hierarchical structure, the emphasis on independent study, the individualized curricula — all of it spoke to me. This wasn’t a place people went to just to get a degree. Students came to Shaninka for real community, intellectual depth, and serious research. The numbers tell you something about what it was: in 2023, scholarship students averaged 97.8 out of 100 on Russia’s equivalent of the SAT, and fee-paying students averaged 81.1. Neither Moscow State University nor St. Petersburg State University could say the same.
The Russian state education watchdog, Rosobrnadzor, first came for Shaninka in the spring of 2025, banning the school from admitting new students. In November, several of its degree programmes lost accreditation. In December, Rosobrnadzor suspended its educational licence entirely. A prestigious, storied university — gone in a matter of months. Hundreds of students, faculty, and staff left with their careers suddenly in question.
The academic community rallied around Shaninka. When Sergei Zuev, one of the school’s Presidents, was named in a politically motivated sham case, academics, students, alumni, and staff signed an open letter of support: “Given the mounting pressure on Russia’s best humanities universities, what happened to Shaninka looks less like an isolated case and more like a deliberate pattern.”
Shaninka isn’t the only school under threat. In post-Soviet Russia, where most universities are state-built and state-run, truly independent academic institutions were already in the minority. The few independent schools that did exist offered a crucial, disparate point of view, a chance to have a different conversation, a different vision of what education is. Now this remaining oasis of independent thought is being eliminated.
Some independent schools have relocated abroad: Novocollege, a private college in Novosibirsk forced to close in 2024 is planning to reopen in Lithuania. The Liberal Arts department of the St. Petersburg State University — shut down after Bard College was designated undesirable — has moved to Montenegro.
Others stayed, and compromised. The European University at St. Petersburg was forced to demonstrate loyalty to the state by sending humanitarian aid to Russian soldiers in Ukraine. The Higher School of Economics — once one of Russia’s most independent and intellectually open universities — is now disbanding student governance bodies and recruiting students to assemble military drones. More on that in an upcoming letter.
Despite everything, Shaninka has shown remarkable resilience. After its licence was suspended, its researchers kept holding public lectures and presenting their work online, while students organised an academic conference. Fortunately, neither required state permission.
I was especially surprised — and moved — to learn that Shaninka has created a sociology course at St. Tikhon’s Orthodox University of the Humanities, a religious university where basic theology is mandatory for all students. Imagine going from an intro to sociology seminar straight to a class on the Old Testament. Still, I believe the academic community Shaninka has built will survive — whether its classes are held in the center of Moscow, at a religious university, or in a cave. Although I certainly hope it doesn’t come to that.
The Pragmatic State
As if ideological pressure were not enough, Russia’s liberal arts institutions are now facing a threat from another direction: the state’s increasingly utilitarian approach to higher education.
The federal Ministry of Science and Higher Education has announced that, starting in the 2026/2027 academic year, the number of fee-paying spots at universities will be capped. In Russia, universities offer two types of places: state-funded spots, which are free and go to students with the highest entrance exam scores, and fee-paying spots, which students cover themselves. It’s the latter that are now being cut — and humanities programmes are bearing the brunt. Of the 41 fields of study now subject to centralised quotas, 29 are in the humanities. In practice, this means your chances of studying the humanities are now ludicrously slim, even if you’re willing to pay for the privilege.
According to the government, these changes are meant to make higher education more practical and better aligned with the needs of the economy. The Minister of Science and Higher Education said the restrictions would mainly affect students seeking degrees in economics and law, while at the same time acknowledging a shortage of qualified specialists in those very fields. The logic behind these decisions is difficult to follow: rather than improving the quality of education in law and economics, the state is simply reducing the number of people able to study them.
My view is that these changes are largely intended to shorten the time young people spend in education and move them into the labour market more quickly. In Russia, colleges and universities are separate educational tracks. Students can enter college after nine years of schooling to pursue vocational or technical qualifications, while universities admit students who have completed the full eleven years of secondary education and offer bachelor’s and master’s degrees.
So a college graduate enters the workforce after a total of 13 years of schooling, while a university graduate spends a minimum of 17 years studying.
Plus, there’s another relevant distinction between the two tracks: university students are exempt by law from conscription for the duration of their studies; college students do not have the same protection. And once enlisted, these college grads can be pressured into signing a contract with the Ministry of Defence, effectively turning mandatory service into an open-ended commitment that the state can use however it chooses.
✍️ FOOTNOTES
There were moments, writing this, when I felt afraid. But for most of it — turning over everything my colleagues and students have been through — I felt free.
If you’re doing honest work in the humanities right now — in Russia or anywhere that space is shrinking — you’ll know what I mean. It’s a strange, difficult moment. But so many dedicated scholars are still working, still writing, still defending dissertations that matter, still finding ways through. I hope we all get to stay in academia. I hope none of us have to compromise.
If anything in this letter stayed with you, or if you have questions, just write to rita.dispatch@proton.me or reply to this email. I’d love to hear from you.
Until next month, Rita