Russia’s Institute of Philosophy raided over fraud case tied to Aristotle translation project — the institute had previously been accused of disloyalty to the Kremlin.
Security personnel raided the Institute of Philosophy of the Russian Academy of Sciences as part of a fraud investigation into funds allocated for a translation of Aristotle. The pro-government Telegram channels Zapiski Traditsionalista (“Notes of a Traditionalist”) and AGDChan — the latter linked to philosopher Alexander Dugin — were among the first to report the searches. The post on AGDChan was later deleted, but a copy survives.
Unidentified security personnel — believed to be investigators and officers from the Center for Combating Extremism — arrived to search institute employees and the institute itself as early as May 19, according to the independent science-focused outlet T-invariant. In total, 10 researchers were taken to the Investigative Committee of Russia and interrogated until late in the evening. The outlet noted that the whereabouts of several employees had remained unknown for four days, with no contact from them.
Following the searches, one institute employee was detained: Svetlana Mesyats, listed on the institute’s website as a candidate of sciences and head of the project to prepare a new complete edition of Aristotle’s works.
According to records from the Moscow City Court, Mesyats is charged with fraud committed by an organized group or on a large scale. A hearing on pretrial restrictions was held on May 21. The Telegram channel Philosophy Today claims the case “concerns a reporting error in a state assignment under which the unfortunate Aristotle was to be translated” and that Mesyats was placed under house arrest.
The remaining employees — including the institute’s acting director, 87-year-old Russian Academy of Sciences academician Abdusalam Guseinov — were released after questioning “on their own recognizance,” according to AGDChan. Whether the terms involved a nondisclosure obligation, a travel ban, or a requirement to appear for further questioning is unclear. In a conversation with the independent Russian news outlet Mediazona, Guseinov neither confirmed nor denied reports of the searches and interrogations.
No official statement has been made about the investigative actions at RAS Institute of Philosophy.
Kirill Martynov, editor-in-chief of the independent Russian news outlet Novaya Gazeta Europe, claims the case was triggered by a tip from former RAS Institute of Philosophy director Anatoly Chernyaev, who had been a participant in a public conflict that erupted around the Institute of Philosophy in 2021.
That year, Anatoly Chernyaev was appointed to replace academician Andrei Smirnov, who had led the institute since 2015. Staff members demanded the “strange appointment” be reconsidered, calling Chernyaev “a candidate of sciences with no name in the academic world and no support within the staff.” Chernyaev’s academic supervisor, Abdusalam Guseinov, ultimately became acting head of the institute. Chernyaev was dismissed from the institute in 2023.
The pro-government newspaper Zavtra characterized the conflict as political, claiming Chernyaev had criticized the institute because many of its employees had not supported Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
The 2021 attempt to change the RAS Institute of Philosophy leadership was driven by the “Orthodox oligarch” Konstantin Malofeev, BBC Russia reported. Malofeev’s television channel Tsargrad publicly attacked the institute and criticized its leadership, at one point accusing some researchers of receiving money from Mikhail Khodorkovsky and the Soros Foundation.
In 2024, Olga Zinovyeva — the widow of philosopher and writer Alexander Zinovyev — called for the Institute of Philosophy to be investigated for loyalty to Russian authorities. She appeared alongside Chernyaev at a press conference titled “The Sovereignty of Russian Philosophy,” held at the Russian state news agency TASS.
Zinovyeva described the institute as “the last refuge of scoundrels, traitors, foreign agents, defectors, Russophobes, and extremists who are deceiving our people and the leadership of our country.” Chernyaev accused the institute’s leadership of “LGBTQ+ propaganda,” the destruction of the family institution, and “the very foundations of marital relations.”
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