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Find opportunities that are right for you to continue your education outside your home country.
© 2024 Freedom Degree
Freedom Degree, Inc. is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization. © 2024 | Powered by Strapi
Sep 23, 2024
Interview with Victor Gorbatov
“Free University” ("Svobodny") was founded in 2020 by a group of former professors of the Higher School of Economics (HSE). The academics were fired from "Vyshka" because of disagreements with the administration, primarily their political stance and unwillingness to accept censorship in education.
In 2024, we can confidently say that the project has become the largest alternative educational platform on the Russian language. "Svobodny" still considers academic freedom and independence to be its main values.
Hello, Vladimir. Yes, that's right, I am a co-founder of "Free University", I have no other affiliation. Besides, I am an independent researcher, logician, critical thinking trainer.
I work not only in academic education, but also in informal education - I am engaged in popularization of logical science and soft skills training. I really enjoy doing all this. In general, I have been teaching logic for over 25 years. Once I was a professor at the Higher School of Economics, and now I have been teaching at "Svobodny" for five years.
You know, in 2020, it all looked like a gamble. Several people who were fired from the Higher School of Economics thought: why do we need an administration, why do we need a certain Kuzminov? For those students who do not want to part with us, we can offer our own courses. I want to say that there was really big inspiration, there was enthusiasm, it was great. Why not? It can't get any worse. Let's give it a try!
To be honest, we realized that the project could quickly take off and quickly fade away, like many other similar initiatives. All circumstances and actions of the Russian authorities seemed to lead to the fact that we should have closed down a million times already. But no, the “Free University” has already entered its fifth year and is holding its ninth enrollment. There are not fewer courses - there are more courses, and more students. During the first enrollment, we thought that all of this was happening because of a huge publicity campaign, i.e. our dismissal from Vyshka. But no, it turned out that people are interested in our courses, someone really needs them.
We received hundreds of applications, I think 500 or even 600, for my and Yulia's course on the logic of argumentation, and it was an amazing competition, you know? We had to spend a lot of time sorting through these applications, writing reply letters to everyone. For those who we couldn't accept for the first stream, we tried to suggest other free options and courses to help people gain knowledge.
It was very valuable for us to have the feeling that there are applicants interested in knowledge, and on the other side there are professors who are ready to give this good knowledge for free, to share their skills. That's all, and there is no need for any administrative layer. It's not about personal interests at all, it's about the fact that we can help each other, we can do independent education together. Our courses are just a confirmation of the fact that this is possible.
It's important to say that at "Free", the co-founders don't turn into bronze supervisory figures. That is not the case at all. At the moment I am the head of the Philosophy and Religious Studies Department. I'm a member of the Academic Council. By the way, don't let the words “faculties, schools, workshops” scare you - each division decides how to call itself independently, that's why there is such a pluralism of names. Somewhere the collegial spirit, the spirit of free cooperation prevails - there colleagues prefer to call themselves a workshop, a corporation in the medieval sense; somewhere a more academic spirit flourishes - there people prefer to call themselves a faculty.
But in general, in "Free" everything is decided directly at the level of these divisions. The main self-administration remains there. Of course, the project also needs to be administered somehow, you're right. Let me tell you something that has been an eye-opener for me.
We really all came out of big, well-known universities and we are used to very bureaucratic administration, to all these gears of administrative work. The year 2020 is coming up. We have some of the first divisions emerging. We began to notice with surprise how we were being let go of these very perceptions. Who says we even need a unified grading scale, need a final exam? Actually, we have authored courses: someone wants to give exams, and other professors don't. And we came up with this very simple, crystal clear idea: why carry around a whole bunch of unnecessary goals and restrictions, a whole suitcase of official procedures from big universities?
We are a very different type of organization. We just don't need all the things that public universities spend resources and time on, and keep a huge administrative staff. We have minimal administrative tasks, 90% of the issues are solved at the level of initiative and self-management: if you want - decide - do. To organize the enrollment requires one manager who processes applications, distributes them to professors, and then they work with students.
Well, I mean, the formal side and administration is important, of course. But not in an absolute sense, but in relation to specific goals. We are neither a public nor a for-profit university. You wouldn't believe how easy it makes life!
Indeed, the circumstances in which we are forced to exist are changing, and so are we. The period of the pandemic helped us a lot, by the way. We were all getting used to online communication, including online education, willy-nilly.
Then a very important point was February 24, 2022, the beginning of a full-scale war. A significant part of the faculty and students found themselves outside of Russia, a large exodus began. All of this had a big impact on “Svobodny”, first of all - on our sense of self-perception, on our understanding of own tasks.
At that moment it became clear that our main goal was not just to prove to the official bureaucrats that we ourselves were capable of doing independent education. We now have a much more responsible task: to preserve the very possibility of free, independent, uncensored knowledge without state propaganda in such a difficult historical period. There were many difficulties and contradictions along the way. But I can say that we coped and passed this milestone, even multiplied our efforts.
Then, in 2023, we received a decree recognizing the university as an “undesirable organization”. This was another new stage. We had to, first of all, revise the university's admission procedures. To take responsibility for those people who were potentially at risk because of their cooperation with us. We developed certain security measures, opened up the possibility of anonymous participation in our courses for students and for our stuff
Once again, many people had a familiar feeling: “Well, that's it - finita la commedia, this decision of the prosecutor's office will bury our project”. Nothing of the sort! In the spring of 2023, we already had a new enrollment. Surprisingly, the number of students who dropped our courses was not that noticeable. And by the fall, we had already learned to work well in the new, anonymous environment and realized that we still had a large flow of applicants coming to us.
In general, a lot of things were changing. You can't say that it was a gradual and purely quantitative growth: more students, more professors. No, first of all, there have been waves. Some days a little more, some days a little less, due to external circumstances. There were also serious internal contradictions and various processes that divided us, but we were able to find compromises with each other within "Svobodny".
It helped us a lot that there was never supposed to be a rigid hierarchy and structure in the project. Everyone understands that in general we are all equals here and we need to reach an agreement. This is how some important practices are developed. Sometimes ironic, sometimes empathic responses to toxic communication. Both students and professors have learned to listen to each other more, to be more tolerant of each other, to realize how different we really are.
It cannot be said that we at the "Free University" are united by one political ideology. Oh, believe me, there is a huge, very wide range of different political views! We are united by the fact that we do not accept dictatorship and aggressive war unleashed by Russia, but otherwise, in the political spectrum we have literally all colors, except for brown.
The very quantitative growth of the university has become more of a problem and a challenge for us. You know, there is an important boundary, Dunbar's number. It describes the optimal number of people in a group at which the group can still maintain strong horizontal ties. When we know each other personally, even if we don't know each other closely, we have a strong bond, we feel like one social organism.
We felt this in our experience. As soon as the number of exceeded 150-200, we started to have serious qualitative changes. You won't believe it, communication in general falls apart, there is much more misunderstanding, and we have to deal with it. The main threat is that we stop feeling each other. After all, we don't have a formal organization where everyone is assigned some kind of cell. Thank heavens, now we have more or less overcome these difficulties.
If we talk about qualitative growth, it consists in the fact that our faculties, workshops and schools have really crystallized, where there is a stable core of professors who have worked together. That is, people who have known each other for several years and have done several projects together.
Also, we have a great community of students. There is no such thing as students coming in, sitting in the course, waving goodbye and saying “have a nice day”. On the contrary, statistics show that about 50% of every next enrollment are people who have taken courses with us before, and 50% are new. I think that's a very good proportion. Again, our student community is rather informal. Somewhere a book club, somewhere a self-help group, somewhere just an online smoker to talk about important topics. It's exactly what we expect from a normal horizontal community, such small, situational centers of gravity.
It's also probably worth saying that initially there were two opposing tendencies in “Svobodniy”. One trend is very anarchic: zero rules, zero conventions, absolutely free, creative, extremely individual courses. No institutionalization at all, simply put.
But there was another tendency, a desire to create some institutionalization, to consolidate certain processes. Maybe informally, but still uniformly, according to basic agreements. There was this tension between the two tendencies, and it probably still exists.
However, the confrontation between the two “parties” described above was not destructive. Thanks to the fact that during these 4 years we learned to negotiate perfectly well, we eventually found such a variant of “soft institutionalization”, which both allows us to work steadily and at the same time leaves each faculty member as much freedom as he/she needs. We found a compromise and we were not torn into two halves.
Professors are volunteers. It has been that way from the beginning, and it remains that way. It's our model of operation. Is that a good thing? I don't think it's a good thing. It would be good if instructors were paid for their work. Do we manage at least sometimes to find some funds and raise money? We do. Usually these are short-term grants. We don't have any rich oligarchs who would steadily fund us and we don't have a single, stable donor for long-term grants. We try to look for support like all the others. Sometimes we manage to find it, but I'll be honest, it doesn't even come close to covering the financial needs of our faculty. This is a pain, because many professors after moving outside the Russian Federation are looking for housing, permanent jobs, in general, they are in limbo.
Funding would certainly help. But this is a question of wording. So as not to devalue, we can put it differently. There is a perception among lawyers that even highly paid professionals from very respectable law firms can work pro bono, i.e. for the public good, for some part of their hours. I like that formulation. I see colleagues around me who can truly be called professionals. They are much bigger professionals than I am, for example. And you know, they don't feel bad about giving their high class, their skills, their knowledge, their expertise to students, sharing it for the common good.
Yes, we have a wonderful publishing house, which is also run by a great professional in his field - Vladimir Kharitonov. What is the work of the publishing house? First of all, it is our almanac, the "Palladium" magazine. Its eleventh issue has recently been published. Imagine, we manage to make from 4 to 6 issues a year!
These are themed issues. For each issue, we find a guest editor, who recruits a pool of articles. There are regular columns, for example, “Chronicles of Free University”, which is written by Elena Lukyanova: these are important excerpts, some quotes from academic stuff, significant events from our life.
There was also a collection devoted to our last year's conference in Greece “Language and Freedom”. By the way, it's great that we managed to organize such an international conference for the first time, a real, offline conference. Although it is modest by the standards of academic conferences, it was still a big event for us.
In addition to the publication of the journal, our publishing activities also include the periodic publication of monographs. For example, a collective book devoted to elections in Russia has recently been published. All of this is available on our website absolutely free of charge, you can download and read it.
I am aware that not everything is perfect at "Free". There are unsuccessful courses. There are times when some expert, a well-known person, comes and it turns out that teaching is not really his thing.
It happens that a very “deliciously” announced course attracts a lot of interested people, but the content turns out to be weak. Even I can imagine a hypothetical situation where at some point I read my course in a poor, lazy, low-quality way. Then tell me about what went wrong. After all, it happens to everyone.
Unfortunately, there are failures in the communication process. There are times when some applicants do not receive reply letters. This is our pain, we try to work with it. In general, there are enough problems. But what distinguishes us, let's say, from a typical Russian state university? We do not sweep problems under the carpet, but try to solve them to the best of our ability. We care.
Now there are many more such initiatives, which I absolutely welcome. There are so many wonderful colleagues with whom we maintain good relations. These include "Bazaleti", "Smolny Without Borders", and the "Ark Without Borders" school. And a whole range of others, which there is simply not enough time to list.
I will say more. This year, and partly last year, we have had one qualitative effect in “Svobodny” for the first time. People who came to us as listeners, students, gradually began to offer courses themselves. Because they are qualified specialists, they have a good academic level, many of them are candidates of science or PhDs. I can list 4 or 5 people that I know personally, but in general there are more, of course. They were students, and now they offer their own courses and run them very successfully
What can I say about the future of such projects?
I would like to believe that the future is bright. But I have no reason to predict it reliably. On the one hand, strangely enough, the current Russian state works for us. In the sense that it is the government which made it impossible for many people to have a proper educational alternative, so the flow of those wishing to study with us is not weakening. If it were not for this pressing need for independent projects, there would be fewer of them. At least they might look different. With different goals, scope, values.
It is clear that even outside the context of politics, war and repression, there will always remain such democratic educational projects. Very informal, anti-institutional, on the edge of anarchy. I welcome them. But their role on the world education market is not small. I think that when circumstances change, there may no longer be such a great need, for example, for Svobodny. Then it will be replaced by something else.
But personally I rather appreciate small projects. They have more passion, more soul, humanity, inspiration. I think that such a horizontal, informal way of organizing science and education has its own niche.
Just now, I'll talk about a number of limitations that make it a bad idea to sugarcoat the future of such projects.
The first limitation. I strongly believe that real quality education is inseparable from research. Roughly as outlined in the Humboldt University model. A professor is always someone who does his/her own research, otherwise teaching degenerates rather quickly. It is possible to do teaching as a hobby, but it is difficult to advance science in this volunteer way, few people can afford it. So you need support, institutionalization, funding on a whole different level.
The second limitation is accreditation. We live in a world where you get an education in order to have a career perspective. As a rule, you have to have some kind of supporting documents. Education for yourself is a request of a relatively small category of people. It would be absolutely crazy to build big educational projects if you can't give out certificates, state diplomas. You will never grow into something more meaningful. I am aware of that.
The third limitation has to do with systematicity. Good education is not just distinguished by some number of star professors. Good education is, first of all, well-planned and well-grounded, unified, educational programs, which are built on the basis of expected educational results, not on the wishes of some professors. The program should have integrity.
Therefore, loose, horizontal, free forms of organization, like our university, are unlikely to ever reach the highest degree of integrity, systematization. This is what distinguishes high-quality education, the highest rank universities.
Of course! There can't be two opinions. First of all, at the moment we have a lot of things in common. Attitudes towards war, attitudes towards dictatorship. For all the other differences, we have a lot to do together, don't we? Join forces in common projects for the sake of our students, do some joint events, joint conferences, which are always enriching.
And maybe to unite in order to have a dialog with governments of other countries together. When there are many such educational institutions and they have a strong voice, it is easier for them to reach the level of officials. We can try to do our part to make sure that this bloody war ends sooner with the defeat of the Russian dictatorship and that the voice of the Russian independent academic community is heard in the world.
Each such project is a piece of the puzzle and, due to its small size, very specific. Each has its own face, its own angle, its own very strong and bright accent. Such accents can be mutually complementary. For example, the "Free University" has some number of STEM courses: math, physics, but they are mostly basic (although there are more advanced ones). We have nothing on medicine, for example. But some other educational project may have the kind of natural science expertise that we don't have. A kind of circulation of students between these projects could be useful, there is a place for common efforts.
Let me tell you how I see the future of "Free University" and perhaps other similar projects. After all, our future is in talking to Russian-speaking students, mostly those who are in the Russian Federation. Even though the authorities in Russia prohibit this kind of activity for their residents, there is definitely a demand for uncensored education. I think it's a very important task to keep doing such projects for people.
Such projects are in danger of degenerating into purely emigrant gatherings, and this happens very subtly. We must remember that we are working primarily for the future generation of Russian citizens, because the war will be over, Putin will be gone, and we will need reasonable people for change in Russia. These reasonable people will not come out of thin air. They need knowledge, they need connections with each other, they need to feel like like-minded people. So the future of such projects organized by people from Russia, it seems to me, should be connected with Russia.
Let's be honest. There are a lot of nice courses in English in the world. We don't have the task of becoming a world university and competing with Cambridge, it's strange to even put the question that way. We have a completely different task, more local, but no less important.