60. For an overall highly critical assessment of the HSE, see Anton Oleinik, “Underperformance v teorii i universitetskoi praktike,” Sotsiologiya nauki i tekhnologii 2, no. 3 (2011): 68–78, http://institutional.narod.ru/papers/oleinik.pdf, accessed September 7, 2021.
61. See Svetlana Pavlova, “Sam sebya uvolil? VShE proshchaetsya s ‘nepravil’nymi’ prepodavatelyami,” svoboda.org, June 14, 2019, https://www.svoboda.org/a/29999440.html, accessed September 7, 2021; Evgeny Sen’shin, “V takikh usloviyakh ni odna nauka normal’no sushchestvovat’ ne mozhet,” znak.com, June 25, 2019, https://www.znak.com/2019-06-25/izvestnyy_politolog_rasskazal_chto_segodnya_ugrozhaet_gumanitarnymi_naukami_v_rossii, accessed September 7, 2021.
62. For a critical account, see Margarita Zavadskaya, “Academic Unfreedom,” ridl.io, July 11, 2019, https://www.ridl.io/en/academic-unfreedom/, accessed September 7, 2021.
63. See Sasha Shvedchenko, “Kto takoi Egor Zhukov i pochemu vse o nem govoryat,” mel.fm, December 7, 2019, https://mel.fm/povestka_dnya/3680759-egor_zhukov, accessed September 7, 2021.
64. See Nikol’skaya, “Rassledovanie RBK.”
65. The official title is “The Project of Increasing Competitiveness of Leading Russian Universities among Leading Global Scientific-Educational Centers.” Hereafter, I use materials from the official website of the project, www.5top100.ru, accessed September 7, 2021.
66. See Sergei Guriev, Dmitry Livanov, Konstantin Severinov, “Shest’ mifov Akademii nauk,” polit.ru, December 14, 2009, http://polit.ru/article/2009/12/14/6mifov/, accessed September 7, 2021.
67. See Strategiya–2020.
68. Experts differ in their assessments of the motives, mechanisms, and outcomes of these actions. For a polemic, see Natalia Forrat, “The Political Economy of Russian Higher Education: Why Does Putin Support Research Universities?” Post-Soviet Affairs 32, no. 4 (2016): 299–337; Igor Chirikov, “Do Russian Universities Have a Secret Mission: A Response to Forrat,” Post-Soviet Affairs 32, no. 4 (2016): 338–344; Natalia Forrat, “A Response to Igor Chirikov,” Post-Soviet Affairs 32, no. 4 (2016): 345–349.
69. For some critical analyses, see Mikhail Sokolov, Vladimir Volokhonskii, “Politicheskaya ekonomiya rossiiskogo vuza,” Otechestvennye zapiski, no. 4 (2013), http://www.strana-oz.ru/2013/4/politicheskaya-ekonomiya-rossiyskogo-vuza, accessed September 7, 2021; Mikhail Sokolov, Kirill Titaev, “Provintsial’naya i tuzemnaya nauka,” Antropologicheskii forum, no. 19 (2013): 239–275; Serghei Golunov, The Elephant in the Room: Corruption and Cheating in Russian Universities (Stuttgart: Ibidem-Verlag, 2014). For a detailed treatment of the involvement of Russian universities in production of fake dissertations and other instances of academic dishonesty collected by the Dissernet community of scholars and experts, see “Disseropediya rossiiskikh vuzov: rossiiskie vuzy pod lupoi Disserneta,” dissernet.org, http://rosvuz.dissernet.org/, accessed September 7, 2021.
70. On the Chinese experience, see Guanzi Shen, “Building World-Class Universities in China: From the View of National Strategies,” Global University Network for Innovation, May 30, 2018, www.guninetwork.org/articles/building-world-class-universities-china-view-national-strategies, accessed September 7, 2021.
71. For a highly critical account of the School of Advanced Studies, see Natalia Savelyeva, “How ‘Love What You Do’ Went Wrong in an ‘Academic Sweatshop’ in Siberia,” Opendemocracy.net, March 13, 2020, https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/odr/how-love-what-you-do-went-wrong-in-an-academic-sweatshop-in-siberia/, accessed September 7, 2021. For self-presentation by the school, see its official website, https://sas.utmn.ru/ru/, accessed September 7, 2021.
72. In 2019, the number of Russian universities listed in the Times Higher Education ranking tables was thirty-nine, compared to two in 2012. In the QS World University Rankings, there were thirty-six (compared to fourteen in 2012), and in the ARWU (Academic Ranking of World Universities, also known as the Shanghai ranking) there were sixteen universities (compared to two in 2012). See https://www.5top100.ru/rankings/, accessed September 7, 2021.
73. See Igor Chirikov, Does Conflict of Interest Distort Global University Rankings? Research & Occasional Paper Series CSHE 5:2021 (Berkeley: Berkeley Center for Studies in Higher Education, 2021), https://escholarship.org/uc/item/8hk672nh, accessed September 7, 2021.
74. Programma Prioritet 2030, https://minobrnauki.gov.ru/action/priority2030/, accessed February 18, 2022.
75. See Paul J. DiMaggio, Walter W. Powell, “The ‘Iron Cage’ Revisited: Institutional Isomorphism and Collective Rationality in Organizational Analysis,” American Sociological Review 48, no. 2 (1983): 149.
76. Ibid.
77. See Andrei Shleifer, Daniel Treisman, “A Normal Country,” Foreign Affairs 83, no. 2 (2004): 20–38.
78. See chapter 3 of this book.
79. For a critical account, see Sergei Medvedev, The Return of the Russian Leviathan (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2019).
Chapter 7
1. According to Levada-Center mass surveys, the Soviet-style political and economic system is perceived by many Russians as the only relevant and desirable alternative to the status quo. In January 2016, 37 percent of all respondents in a nationwide survey (N = 1600) opted for the Soviet system as the best model, 23 percent supported the status quo, and 13 percent choose Western-style democracy. At the same time, 52 percent of the respondents in this survey preferred a planned economy over the market and private property. See “Predpochtitel’nye modeli politicheskoi i ekonomicheskoi sistem,” Levada-Center, February 17, 2016, https://www.levada.ru/2016/02/17/predpochtitelnye-modeli-ekonomicheskoj-i-politicheskoj-sistem/, accessed September 7, 2021.