Driving Russia Back to Communism

Are President Bush's policies pushing us back into a cold war? Being aggressive with our foreign policy pushes other nations into getting much more defensive and worried about who we will invade next. Russia is no exception.

With the US threatening to establish missiles in Europe, along the Russian frontier, and our invasion of other nations (Afghanistan and Iraq) in their backyard, a lot of leaders in Russia must be getting some goose bumps about the future direction of America. One has to acknowledge that the US is looking more and more like an aggressor nation who wants to export its brand of government around the world.

From Boing Boing...

Late last year, the European University at St. Petersburg in Russia launched a project to study how elections in Russia could be protected from rigging. That line of inquiry pissed off Russian President Vladimir Putin. Feeling the Kremlin's thumb, the university's academic council killed the project on January 31. Yet just two weeks later, the St. Petersburg court shut down the school as a "fire risk." Coincidence? Unlikely.

And now today, it's come out that the university has lost its license to operate. The Rector of the school says that if it isn't granted a new license within a month, the institution will be closed for good. A dear friend of mine, who emigrated from Russia in the 1980s, comments that this whole situation "is becoming so reminiscent of the old Soviet Union." From a February 11 article in The Guardian:

"It's clear this was politically motivated. We are observing a change in the political regime in Russia from uthoritarianism to totalitarianism. What happened here is one example among many," Maxim Reznik, leader of St Petersburg's opposition Yabloko party told the Guardian.

He added: "This hasn't got anything to do with fire risk. The
university was carrying out important work in connection with election monitoring. Now it's being punished for it."

Putin has launched frequent attacks on non-governmental organisations, human rights groups and Russia's small reformist opposition - accusing them of being tools of the west and traitors to their own country.

But the Kremlin has largely ignored the higher education sector, allowing Russian academics a relative degree of freedom and autonomy over teaching, student selection and research. Universities no longer appear to be an exception.