In 2025, the Russian government asserted its ideology, sought enemies in the West, and tried to create an alternative to globalization.
Dmitry Dubrovsky
Photo: In 2025, it became clear that the educational and research agenda was increasingly being subordinated to a political course aimed at isolating Russia from leading global centers. Photo by Li Zhang on Unsplash
Academia is a very conservative and slow-to-change institution. It is difficult to modernize it. It is equally difficult to completely eradicate what has become ingrained in educational and research practices. In this sense, only in 2025 did it become apparent to what extent the beginning of the full-scale aggression against Ukraine had impacted Russian science and higher education.
Above all else, this year marked the beginning stages of construction on a model that closely resembles the Soviet one. It is now the leading model for a country that was once interested in competition and integration into American and European educational networks and scientific projects.
The Rhizome of Ideology and “National Science”
The Foundations of Russian Statehood course, which was hastily introduced in 2023, continued the narrative of a “besieged camp of people defending traditional values.” As one Russian professor sarcastically noted, today it is being implemented as a multi-level marketing product.
Despite the discussions, no departments, specialized institutes, or even subdivisions for implementing this obviously ideological product have emerged in Russian universities. Moreover, the main developers are not academic institutions, but rather Kremlin “think tanks,” headed by Andrey Polosin, a man with not a single publication in a foreign journal. According to Dissernet, his candidate’s dissertation in psychology contains instances of unattributed citations, and his doctoral degree is in political science.
At the same time, in the absence of strict, Soviet-style double control, the actual practice of teaching this course has led many teachers to deliberately downplay its overarching propaganda message, using it to teach something more akin to a general political history of Russia.
Russian humanitarian and social sciences, however, are being subjected to “decolonization” in a completely predictable way: declaring the need to establish a “national science.” According to the latest ideas, we should create a “nationally oriented political science” and “nationally oriented theories of international relations” alongside the longstanding “patriotic version” of Russian history, which includes outright falsifications, such as the “feat of Panfilov’s 28 men.”
However, such attempts are generally characterized by a campaign-like approach, and this is quite noticeable. Much of Russian social and humanitarian scholarship is engaged in quiet sabotage of this ideological pressure. This sabotage is sometimes successful, sometimes not.
Academia as a Target of Ideological Purges
Higher education and the humanities and social sciences are particularly affected by the increasing pressure on “foreign agents” in Russian academia.
“Foreign Agents.” Since all repression against “foreign agents” is explained by the “toxic influence of the West,” in Russian academia, it is framed as “protecting students.” Consistent with this narrative of protection, in April 2025 Putin signed a law according to which individuals and organizations that hold the status of foreign agents cannot engage in educational and enlightenment activities.
Thus, all academics who had received this status (more than 70 by the end of 2025), as well as a number of public organizations engaged in educational activities, primarily in the field of human rights, lost the ability to do their work legally. As a result, this law not only affected the “foreign agents” themselves, but also significantly limited the ability of researchers to communicate with partners abroad.
This was facilitated, in particular, by the expanded list of activities punishable by classification as a “foreign agent” included in that same law, primarily involving the provision of various types of data on the Russian economy and security issues. This restriction has affected the activities of researchers working on these topics.
Finally, the law included new requirements for the distribution of materials produced by “foreign agents,” including specific requirements for being sold in bookstores. In fact, the state is doing its utmost to prohibit sales of these materials entirely, exerting pressure on bookstores to do so. Bookstores that continued to sell books by “foreign agents” after September 1, 2025—the date the new rules came into effect—were, among other measures, deprived of tax benefits.
As for libraries, since way back in 2024 (and, according to colleagues, even earlier), they have been implementing a special archival system for publications by foreign agents, which are made available upon presentation of a passport and stored separately. The list of “foreign agents” is updated regularly in line with the Ministry of Justice website.
“Undesirable Organizations.” In 2025, educational and research organizations were actively added to the list of “undesirable organizations.”
Among those deemed undesirable were the prestigious Yale University and Brigham Young University (associated with the Mormons).
Well-known international scientific societies and research institutions have likewise become undesirable in Russia. In June, the Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies (ASEEES), as well as the Institute for Human Sciences in Vienna (IWM), were declared “undesirable.” Earlier that year, the Institute for Independent Philosophy, organized in Paris by Yulia Sineokaya, a corresponding member of the Russian Academy of Sciences in the social sciences department, was also declared an “undesirable organization.”
Two others were the British Council (resulting in the persecution of teachers who had collaborated with it), the International Baccalaureate educational program, and the International House World Organization (IHWO, Great Britain) network of language education programs.
The grounds for these decisions were anti-war statements made by the organizations, their “Russophobic and anti-Russian ideas and views,” and the “Western values” that they allegedly promoted.
Alternative Globalization (aka Resovietization)
Other structural changes in Russian higher education are also aimed at isolating Russia from “unfriendly countries.”
Russia’s withdrawal from the Bologna Process has significantly worsened the situation in Russian universities. First and foremost, it put an end to academic exchanges with developed European countries. That said, Russian universities are still graduating students who enrolled in programs organized according to the principles of the Bologna Process.
The proposed replacement boasts of being “a system that has absorbed the best features of the national education system.” The pilot project was launched in a number of universities in 2023-24. A full transition is planned for 2027-28.
What is known about the new system is that education will be divided into “basic,” “specialized” higher education, and professional education in the form of postgraduate studies. Strictly speaking, this system differs from the Bologna Process in that, according to statements, basic higher education will be considered complete (implying that a bachelor’s degree was not previously considered a full education allowing for successful employment). Also, graduates of Russian universities will now need to undergo an expensive and lengthy validation procedure to have their higher education recognized in many countries. It seems that the main goal of the new system is not, as proclaimed, a national model superior to the European one, but rather the creation of a serious obstacle for Russian students who dream of continuing their education in the “unfriendly countries” of Europe.
The new admission guidelines for Russian universities have restricted the quota of fee-paying admission spots in specialties where, from the state’s point of view, it is “impractical” to have too many students. In so doing, the state is effectively restricting universities’ ability to earn money and create their own funds, a reality that further increases their dependence on the state.
At the same time, there has been a sharp rise in the significance and role of the “patriotic youth” in Russian universities, through the provision of ever-growing admission quotas for “children of veterans of the special military operation:”
With a total of 900,000 applicants, this already represents three percent of the total number of students. The increase in the number of “patriotically minded” students will undoubtedly influence the ideological climate in Russian universities.
Shifting Directions in Scientific, Technical, and Educational Cooperation
Forced deglobalization (or alternative globalization) is a process that closely resembles a return to Soviet practices of international relations, focused on “friendly countries.”
In fact, in the context of the closure of academic exchange programs with Western universities, even the structure of student exchange programs is very similar to the Soviet model. Students studying in Russia are primarily from Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, China, and India. According to statistics, three-quarters of foreign students (66,000 people in 2025) are from the CIS and Southeast Asia. These students (primarily from China and Vietnam) currently make up about 9 percent of the total number of students in Russia. The most popular fields of study are medical and engineering sciences.
Russian academia’s understanding of the direction and content of scientific and technical cooperation is also shifting at a structural level. In June 2025, a new “Concept of International Scientific and Technical Cooperation” was adopted, which states that:
The current stage of development of international scientific and technical cooperation is characterized by the growing role of science in overcoming international tensions and the consequences of political and economic restrictions imposed on the Russian Federation to hinder its development (including in the field of science and technology).
The wording used throughout the entire document demonstrates how the state is reorienting science and creating a special space for globalization, consisting of “friendly foreign states,” primarily from the post-Soviet space and the countries of the Global South. Within the framework of this policy, educational projects are being developed in these “friendly” countries, and students are being recruited through their state structures.
This development is evidenced, for example, by the Declaration of the 13th BRICS Science, Technology and Innovation Ministerial Meeting, adopted within the BRICS framework in June 2025. In this declaration, countries considered pariahs by the democratic world (including Iran, China, and now Russia) are actively engaging in various networks of scientific and technological cooperation. At the same time, Russia is not abandoning active participation in international publishing activities—this is clear from the text of the concept. However, given the sanctions and boycotts, this is unlikely to be achievable under current conditions.
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In 2025, it became increasingly clear that, in terms of internationalization, the educational and research agenda—both domestic and foreign—was becoming ever-more-subordinate to a political course aimed at isolating Russia from leading global educational and research centers.
The reformist trajectory toward competition and integration into pan-European structures of higher education and scientific cooperation has been replaced by an isolationist and xenophobic search for a “Western threat” in Russian universities, as well as a geopolitically filtered bloc policy in the field of international scientific and educational cooperation.
This shift can quite rightly be described as a move toward the re-Sovietization of policies in the sphere of international scientific, technical, and educational cooperation.
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