Russian academics signed an anti-war letter four years ago. Now the FSB is questioning them again, and universities are refusing to renew some of their contracts.
Source: T-invariant
The FSB and administrators at universities and research institutes are pressuring scholars who signed an anti-war letter in 2022, as well as employees whose names appeared in a leaked database of Smart Voting users, according to T-invariant.
University and research institute employees across Russia told the outlet that scholars are being summoned for questioning or having their employment contracts go unrenewed.
One scholar in the Urals said an FSB officer assigned to his university summoned him to a meeting because he had signed the letter. The officer asked what he thought about the war in 2022 and what he thinks about it now. The scholar said his signature had caused him no problems in the four years since he signed the letter and that removing it now would be pointless — the officer showed him a printout of a spring 2022 archived copy of the webpage containing the letter.
An employee at a Siberian research institute was summoned for questioning by an FSB representative following a request from Moscow. He asked where she had gotten the link to the letter and whom she had forwarded it to.
According to T-invariant, pressure on scholars over their opposition views is especially widespread at St. Petersburg State University. Oleg Shaidulin, who formerly headed the political department at the local Center E anti-extremism unit, serves as deputy to the university’s vice rector for security.
Several former St. Petersburg State University employees said their immediate supervisors told them their contracts had not been renewed because they were on a blacklist. A former employee of one of the university’s IT departments called the system a “traffic light”: Employees are placed on yellow or red lists. She was put on an internal list of employees deemed “politically unreliable” because she had registered on the Smart Voting website.
Employees can get off the St. Petersburg State University blacklist by donating to the Defenders of the Fatherland Foundation, which supports Russian military personnel, or becoming lecturers for the pro-government Znanie Society.
One T-invariant source said HSE University in St. Petersburg and the European University at St. Petersburg had also refused to renew employees’ contracts.
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