Center for European Studies

Keene-Flint 005

Elena Aydarova, Auburn University

Russia is often described as an authoritarian country under President Putin’s control. Yet this perception obscures policy activities of those who work under the shadows of powerful leaders and public institutions. Focusing on a recent wave of educational reforms in Russia, Aydarova will share a story of how a small group of Russian academics orchestrated a set of reforms using the President and the Ministry of Education as the mouthpieces to justify their pursuits. The transformations pursued, however, capture the inner-workings of authoritarianism not only in the way that reforms are introduced but also in the futures that they seek to engineer. Drawing on the work of an obscure Soviet philosopher Shchedrovitsky, Russian reformers reoriented the country’s educational system away from its commitments to equity towards service to the corporate sector. While some aspects of this story are uniquely Russian, reformers’ positions in global policy networks demonstrate the relevance of this account for other parts of the world.

With support from the College of Education and Center for the Humanities and the Public Sphere.