Read the original transcript of the event here.

Editor's Note: In the Russian language, the subject of this conversation is referred to as prosvetitelskaya deyatelnost' (from prosveshchenie, or "enlightenment"). It comprises a wide range of activities aimed at educating the public in natural sciences, social sciences, or humanities, and takes different forms, from public lectures and podcasts to popular science publications. This expression was translated as "informal educational activities" or "educational outreach" throughout the transcript to differentiate it from activities and organizations in the field of formal education.

SERGEY PARKHOMENKO: Good evening, dear friends! This is a discussion organized at the Kennan Institute, one of the oldest and most respected American institutions, which has been studying relations between Russia and other former Soviet countries and the United States for many decades. Today we are discussing science and education. My name is Sergey Parkhomenko. I will be the host of this discussion, and there are three great experts with us, whom I will introduce when they speak.

Here is the starting point of the discussion. At the beginning of June this year, an important piece of legislation came into force, namely, the amendments to the Russian education law. These amendments were adopted in the early spring of 2021. They were accompanied by a rather heated debate, such that at some point these amendments to the education law came to be known as the law on the prohibition of education. For indeed, the bulk of the legislation was devoted to some new rules that different people and organizations engaged in various educational projects must comply with.

But these amendments are actually much larger and broader in scope. Part of this story is about informal educational outreach—that is, about all sorts of projects related to the promotion of scientific and educational ideas on behalf of organizations that are not educational organizations per se; that is, they are not professional institutions, universities, schools, and the like. There are also quite a number of details that concern the formal educational field as such and regulate how formal educational organizations should communicate with the outside world, build scientific relationships, conduct exchanges, collaborations, joint scientific projects, and so on. This second part of the act was noticed a little less, but it is also important. Now that it has gone into effect, all these things are operational. And we are going to try to discuss how this part of the legislation affects, or might affect, or soon will affect, if it does, life around us.…

Now let us proceed to the actual discussion. I would like to start with Mikhail Gelfand. It seems to me that he is capable of setting the right tone for our discussion because he is not only a scientist but also the leader of one of the most reputable and well-known scientific publications in Russia. He is one of the founders and the deputy editor-in-chief of the well-known newspaper Troitsky Variant. Everyone interested in education and science sooner or later gets to this newspaper and becomes a reader. Mikhail Gelfand is also a Russian biologist and mathematician. Frankly, I don’t remember which of his dissertations, for the candidate and doctor of sciences degree, is in which field, but he has two. Bioinformatics is his primary research area.

It is particularly important to me that he is one of the founders—and I am very proud to be one of the founders as well—of the free network community called Dissernet. Since 2013, Dissernet has been searching for and exposing fabrications and fraud in the dissertations and scientific publications of Russian scientists, and not only scientists but also in dissertations of political actors, public officials, other well-known people, and, what is especially important, education officials, who also like to fabricate things. Until 2016, Mikhail Gelfand was a member of the public council under the Ministry of Education and Science. Until last year he was also a member of the Commission for Countering the Falsification of Scientific Research. Currently he is a member of the Popularization of Science Committee of the Russian Academy of Sciences….

Mikhail, what do you think about this law? Where does it come from, and what consequences, if any, will it have? More generally, what do we all need to know about the new situation in Russian science and education as a result of this law? How new is it, to begin with?

MIKHAIL GELFAND: The last time I was asked this question, which was during Irina Shikhman’s podcast, I warned her they would have to bleep my answer. But they didn’t, and they even used my words in the opening sequence. Now it has gone viral, maybe not exactly a meme, but still something that people see and refer to.

I have a poor opinion of this law. It is clear that the law is unlikely to be used against biologists or mathematicians. It is, of course, primarily aimed at people involved in the humanities and social sciences, such as historians, sociologists, and social anthropologists. And it seems they will be the first real victims. The law follows a traditional template. It is absolutely incoherent. These amendments are absolutely inarticulate, limitless, and vacuous. They were snuck in “under a false flag,” as in the title of Vladimir Lenin’s essay, which I learned by heart at university. Because these are amendments on educational outreach that were introduced into the law on formal education.

They begin by stating that educational outreach is not education. It is like provisions on sewage snuck into a law on water supply, where the first point is that sewage water is not drinking water. Or vice versa, it makes no difference. And all the time they were saying: “Don’t you worry, we need to give some basic definitions. This is a framework law, and then there will be bylaws to improve it, or maybe not improve it but make it more specific.”

The first draft of such a bylaw was released by the Ministry of Education and Science in the spring, and it was terrible. It provoked quite an explosive, violent reaction, such that it had to be withdrawn. It got, if I am not mistaken, 25,000 dislikes on gov.ru, which is a lot. I suspect this might be a record. The good side of this story, which came as a surprise to the people who actually engage in informal educational activities, is that the discussion of these amendments has shown that their work is indeed needed. Because the community of educators has been continually debating whether anyone needs what we do or if the same five hundred people take turns attending all our lectures, just as some people go to the conservatory again and again to listen to different renditions of Mozart’s Symphony No. 40. It turned out that [our work] was needed, because astrophysicist Sergey Popov wrote a petition and put it on change.org. And the community then said that if it got 10,000 signatures, that wouldn’t be shameful at all, and 20,000 would be simply awesome. As it happened, there were 300,000 signatures, three–zero–zero. It turned out that what we do really interests people and they are ready to defend it.

There was also a much harsher text, a strictly professional take published in the Troitsky Variant, the newspaper you have mentioned. This piece was initiated by our editor-in-chief, Boris Shtern, also an astrophysicist. There was a professional requirement for signatures this time: it was signed by people who were either professionally engaged in science or professionally engaged in educational outreach. It stated that we simply would not comply with this law. But I will say right away, so that we are not all declared some kind of agents here—that’s inevitable, but I hope it will at least not happen tomorrow—that there are different ways to not comply with the law. You can forgo writing reports and lecture plans and sending them to the people in charge, or you can stop delivering those lectures. Here I deny calling for direct disobedience. But still.

I have already mentioned the goal. And getting back to the point, from which I deviated a little, this law and its entire history are very similar to the foreign agents law. Because when it was adopted, they were also saying: “No harm done. You will only need to submit a couple of extra documents, but it’s not as if your arms will fall off, and the government must know what is going on in the country.” And then it turned out that one would have to submit not two documents but two hundred, and not just once a year but every quarter, and the criteria are vague. Gradually it got to the point that an individual person can be declared a foreign agent media outlet, which is completely absurd.

That is what we are seeing at an early stage now. A framework law was adopted, a bylaw was adopted, which we managed to fight off, specifically about educational outreach, and now an instruction has been adopted. There was also a provision stipulating that all scientific and educational institutions must fully inform, in great detail, the right people—it was not specified who exactly, as far as I remember—about their international contacts. And now, just the other day, an instruction came out on whom and how to inform that is much stricter than the old system.

The state has the right to know about the contacts of an organization that relies on state money. I am not arguing with that. But the degree of detail required, as well as the specificity of these requirements, is quite grim. And this is accompanied by the words “No harm done, there will be two extra documents.” And someone even said it was not as bad as it could have been. But the process is only in its infancy. What we are observing is simply an early stage of the same process, and my predictions are rather bleak in that sense. We are just like that frog put in hot water, they will keep boiling us, but will do so little by little, so that at no particular moment will it be possible to say: that’s enough, guys, we are done. Because just as in Russian life in general, every subsequent deterioration is only slightly worse than the previous one, but not so much as to cause too much of a fuss.

SERGEY PARKHOMENKO: Mikhail, thank you very much. I think those were the perfectly sized opening remarks. Ten minutes, which is exactly what I had in mind. And now I would like to give the floor to our next speaker. This is the wonderful Olga Solomina, whom I have only just met, unlike our two other participants.

Olga Solomina is a corresponding member of the Russian Academy of Sciences, director of the Institute of Geography of the Russian Academy of Sciences, professor at the Higher School of Economics, and a well-known Russian expert on climate and glaciology, if I understand correctly. In this capacity, in 2007, Dr. Solomina became a laureate of the Nobel Peace Prize as part of a large group of climate change experts. In addition, it is very important to me that she is one of the founders and, perhaps, among the most active members of one organization that I personally follow very closely, and I would advise you to do the same. This amazing group is called the July 1 Club.

This is an informal association of people who are directly connected to the Russian Academy of Sciences. They are academicians, corresponding members, or professors at the Russian Academy of Sciences. This community was created in 2013, when, unfortunately, a rather controversial—many called it confiscation-focused—reform of the academy took place. And those people who did not want to agree with this reform and the various solutions proposed as part of it created the July 1 Club on July 1, 2013. To this day it remains a community that actively, vocally, and, I would say, at times quite bravely speaks out about various events and circumstances related to Russian science and education, which is generally not typical of the scientific community. As one knows, a scientist wants peace above all, a scientist wants to be left alone and undistracted from scientific endeavors. But here it is not the case at all. Quite often you would hear some very important words and very correct and timely assessments from the July 1 Club. And Olga Solomina plays a prominent role in this club, as reported by various people with whom I discussed this.

Olga Nikolaevna, you have the floor. The question is the same. How do you feel about this legislative act? In your opinion, what are the likely consequences of this act, bearing in mind that you are both a scientist and a teacher? You are engaged in both conducting science and teaching science, so you see the issue from two different perspectives. Please, the floor is yours.

OLGA SOLOMINA: Thank you very much, Sergey, for such a flattering introduction. It is not an easy task—in fact, it is a rather difficult one—to say anything about the matter after Mikhail, because he basically said everything. The feeling is that everyone is extremely tired of the increasing power of these various laws. And it is already an endless stream, from which it is difficult to single out this particular law that came into force on June 1. I looked it up today. So many incredible things have happened since then, and so much is awaiting us in connection with the new legislation.... Let me try to focus. Today I looked at the comments regarding this law once again to refresh my memory.

First, I haven’t seen a single case of legal enforcement here. The law came into force on June 1. Of course, I understand that everyone has been busy with other things, but we haven’t been given a single example yet. But it will probably be given; otherwise why would they adopt that law? What makes me especially sad about this case … these laws do not even surprise me, and in a way they do not even upset me anymore, because the context is clear. All of this is more or less clear to everyone. But there was a sociological poll, a statistical survey, maybe a week after this law was adopted. “Do you know anything about this law? How do you feel about it?” The results fell into three roughly equal groups. A third [of respondents] had not heard anything, did not know anything, and did not want to know. A third believed that this act introduces censorship and is a disgrace. And a third believed that it is normal and that it is part of the fight for the image of Russia and against the enemies of the motherland. And these figures are not even too bad, as far as I understand it. If we are talking about society … you are saying these are not the same fifty people who also listen to Mozart, but on a national scale they are indeed the same fifty people. Therefore, of course, it is very difficult to appeal to society here, because for society as a whole, it seems to me, this is all secondary, of secondary importance. Educational outreach, is it even needed at all?

We also received that instruction on how we must react, how we must inform about our international contacts. But all these documents have the same amazing property: they have no boundaries. First of all, they are all written in the same legal language. I, for one, simply fail to understand most of the papers we get from the ministry; their substance is incomprehensible to me. They usually describe everything in one paragraph, which is about half a page long and consists of one sentence with a chain of gerunds. Naturally, we have a trained lawyer at the institute and a specially trained person who understands these texts and explains them. These laws are of the same type, the same sort. You see, it is useless even to read them, because you wouldn’t be able to disentangle yourself from them, they are a sticky mess. We receive several missives a day, and interestingly, they tend to have “no reply required” written at the end. You see? This is just a decree of sorts, the context in which you live. “Well, we have warned you.” This is what I am concerned about as an administrator.

I am in charge of the Institute of Geography, while at the Higher School of Economics I am just the academic supervisor, so they have other people responsible for the educational process. My institute employs three hundred people. We have, for example, a department of social and economic geography, a department of political geography—we have a group that studies unrecognized states, for instance. I agree that they will be the first to be subjected to censorship because, for example, they conduct opinion polls and talk to citizens. And a citizen might think something bad when asked about how they feel about this or that. So we must also protect our colleagues in their professional activities.

In addition, we have had an evening club at the institute for many years. We have a nice old grand piano and a wonderful assembly hall, so we hold musical nights—speaking of Mozart—and lectures about art, and bring together interesting people. But now my question is, when I announce the next lecture, will I have to get its plan approved somewhere first, or what? Or is it still allowed to talk about a new exhibition?

You may find it funny, but I sympathize with the administrators of educational and scientific institutions for obvious reasons, because they have to make such decisions every day. And it is clear that there is already internal censorship. We all lived in the old [Soviet] days, and we all understand how it used to be. We lived in socialist times as if in a strange dream, agreeing to play a game, where they know that we know. This is how we used to live. I understand that we are moving in this direction at best. And so what can we do? We will be submitting reports. We are, of course, trying to defend every frontier as best we can, but, of course, we will be losing ground. There is nothing to be done, I don’t see any tools that would be effective against this.

SERGEY PARKHOMENKO: Thank you, Olga. Thank you very much…. The third participant in our conversation is Egor Bykovsky. He is my colleague in the sense that he is a journalist like me, and he is also a very old friend of mine and a companion in many projects. We used to publish Itogi magazine together and before that worked for Nezavisimaya Gazeta newspaper.

Egor has worked for several of Russia’s most important popular science and educational media outlets of the last few decades. If anyone is an educator, it’s him. Suffice it to recall that for many years he headed the electronic part and the website of the Vokrug Sveta magazine, the oldest Russian educational periodical. He headed the science section of Russia’s largest state news agency, TASS, and was editor-in-chief of the Science in Focus journal, the Russian version of the well-known, highly reputable, and globally popular British science and technology magazine Science Focus, which is published by the BBC.

Today he is editor-in-chief of the popular science e-magazine Naked Science, which is known to everyone who wants to understand contemporary science and especially those who want their children to understand it, because it is a great source for science-themed conversations with children of different ages. So if anyone is an educator here, it’s Egor Bykovsky. I am happy to give him the floor so that he can tell us how he feels about the law that was adopted for him and about him, so to speak, and with the understanding that we have such a person here in Russia.

EGOR BYKOVSKY: Thank you very much for your kind words, Sergey. I will first run through the particulars, and then I will voice some general thoughts about the law that my co-panelists have not yet expressed. Speaking of particulars, I am concerned about the same things that Mikhail and Olga have talked about. The very placement of informal educational outreach activities in the education law is very strange and—to put it bluntly—stupid, since the law deals with formal education, which is already regulated and subject to licensing. In the meantime, educational outreach constitutes informal education. This law is not the place for it.

The Ministry of Education, which is not directly related to the work of scientists, is invited to regulate educational outreach as informal education, which is conducted to a large extent by scientists. Their activities fall under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Science and Higher Education, but I personally did not hear much of its input in the debate about this bill. It is unclear why. They were reluctant, apparently, to meddle in these matters. And the Ministry of Education, in turn, does not see any problem with the bill because they work in the field of formal education, which is already subject to licensing and supervision, and their occupation simply prevents them from knowing any other forms of life.

What is strange is that there are already norms in the Russian legal field that regulate educational outreach. Such provisions exist, for instance, in the law on the Russian Academy of Sciences. It was charged with “mobilizing science.” There was also a Strategy for Scientific and Technological Development that was meant to create a system of public communication for science and ensure its dialogue with society. They are doing it and aren’t bad at it. In the meantime, the new education law in this small part—they only added a page—directly contradicts what the scholars are required to do by the existing provisions. So it’s complete nonsense and balderdash.

When we start talking about the bill, we are getting deep into the particulars. Whom this law hinders. It prevents volunteers from engaging in outreach, because they will not deal with the paperwork. It hinders all sorts of people. It hinders the scientists because they are also required to submit some paperwork. It hinders the university libraries. Say you want to buy a book for a university library, [now you can only do that] after getting it approved by the federal executive body. The same applies to international roundtables and conferences. But these are all particulars, my dear friends. At some point, I sat down and thought about this law as a whole. And here is what I realized: this is the most monumental among the Russian laws I know from the past decades. It is approaching the Constitution in scope, because only the Constitution contains provisions that apply to each and every person and lists the rights and obligations of every person without exception. The law itself is small, only a page. I excerpted just a few lines. In a moment I will read it, and you will see what I am talking about.

First of all, for the first time in my lifetime—maybe there was something like that before the 1917 revolution—the law introduces the notion of educational outreach. What is that? Listen to me carefully. It is only three lines. Educational outreach activities are activities taking place outside of educational programs and aimed at disseminating knowledge, experience, forming abilities, skills, values, and competencies, as well as at satisfying the educational needs and interests of an individual. That is, it is aimed at everything that happens in any person’s life.

Moving on to the next point. Who carries out the educational outreach activities? Government bodies, other agencies, local government bodies, as well as legal entities, individual entrepreneurs, and physical persons. That is, absolutely everyone who lives on the territory of the Russian Federation. And finally, the third point, which is the best one. We learned what educational outreach activities are. They constitute human life activities as such, because any person has some educational interests in the course of their lifetime. I bring my son’s classmates together and tell them about white rhinos, for instance. Not just that, I tell them about many things. This means I engage in educational outreach. My wife tells me how she cooks cutlets. This is certainly educational outreach under this law. You and I are now engaging in educational outreach, because we tell each other things we haven’t heard before.

So the third point. Procedure, conditions, and form of educational outreach, as well as the procedure for exercising control over it—in other words, over any human activity—are established by the Government of the Russian Federation. That’s it. They made a law that governs our lives, any person’s life, completely from A to Z. Not just volunteers’, scientists’, or journalists’ lives—everyone’s. Everyone who lives and sometimes talks to anyone. You see what this is about? That is why I am very concerned about this law, because it can be arbitrarily applied to absolutely anyone.

I don’t like such laws, because why is a law needed? It sets the terms and the boundaries. For instance, I got distracted for two days from my job as chief editor of a magazine [while serving] as a member of the Novokosino district electoral commission. I filed complaints and even tried to initiate a criminal case against one of the chairmen of the local commissions for fraud. I know that when a person has committed fraud, the law describes what fraud is. There is a term that describes a specific fact. And this law describes that my life must be regulated by the government entirely when I am saying words with my mouth, that it must be regulated by the Government of the Russian Federation. I find this concerning, as all of me, whatever I do, fits within these boundaries. You see what I mean? That is why I don’t like this law. I don’t like it in its entirety, completely, absolutely, and without exemption.

SERGEY PARKHOMENKO: Thank you, Egor. This is undoubtedly a journalist’s view that zooms out from the problem and tries to see how it affects our life as a whole. Thank you so much for the three introductory statements. We have plenty of time. And I hope there will be questions….

But take a look indeed: our discussion has to some extent reproduced the course of the debate that took place around the law itself, when it was about to be passed. Since these are amendments on educational outreach, which very quickly came to be called amendments on the prohibition of educational outreach, everyone focused on this—on lectures, book publishing, and the popular science press, as they clearly constitute educational outreach. And this was on the surface, in plain view. It was done in a particularly outrageous, particularly crude way, I would say. But there is something else there. That something is international scientific contact.

If one takes a closer look at what went on before that, then a universal mechanism for any contacts in, say, education, contacts between Russian education and various educational institutions outside Russia—in Europe, the United States, Southeast Asia, anywhere—always ultimately boils down to the relationship between two universities. At this end there is our university, at the other end there is their university, and they agree on something between themselves: student or faculty exchanges, joint scientific programs, research, conferences and so on. But there always needs to be at this end, here in Russia, an institution that takes the initiative, that says we want to do this or that together with Oxford or Stanford or someone else. But suddenly it turns out that according to this law, you may be held liable for it. And that gives rise to a lot of work, a lot of different concerns and suspicions. You need to present evidence that you are who you say you are and that your task is exactly what you say it is, nothing more, and that you simply want to arrange this exchange program.

And here is the question that I have in this regard. Do you think that this law not only complicates the procedure but above all discourages engagement in exchanges, in arranging contacts between Russian and foreign education systems? That it primarily creates a certain feeling [of dread] in a Russian administrator, and then a professor, a teacher, a faculty member, who are all employees. They are public employees, if it is a public institution, or private employees, employees of a private company, if it is a private university, a non-state educational institution. Is this what is happening? It’s hard for me to step into their shoes. I have never been in this position, I have never taught anything and I have never been a manager of any educational projects. I have an outsider’s perspective. But it seems to me that this is the case. What do you think about it? Mikhail, shall we start with you or with Olga?

OLGA SOLOMINA: Yes, I want to say a few words. Because for us this is very relevant now. In fact, the reality is absolutely schizophrenic here. Because a document, a restrictive and rather scary but also a slightly ridiculous one, came to us from FASO once, where it was written that every foreigner who enters your institution—

SERGEY PARKHOMENKO: Olga, we need to explain to our listeners what FASO is. Not everyone knows this word.

OLGA SOLOMINA: Federal Agency for Scientific Organizations. There was an intermediary stage between the Russian Academy of Sciences and the ministry, when the institutes of the Russian Academy of Sciences were transferred to the Federal Agency for Scientific Organizations. And the academy, as a matter of fact, was deprived ... The academy was like a head. The head was cut off, the institutes were handed over to the federal agency with the following justification: you should now deal only with science and no longer with any housekeeping matters. I must say that from exactly that moment, the directors and administrators of research institutes had to stop doing science and deal only with economic matters, paperwork and red tape.

And that’s when, maybe four or five years ago, an instruction arrived on the new procedure for hosting foreigners: there had to be specially equipped rooms where we would meet them, and special people to accompany them. The instruction very nearly demanded that we take away all their data storage devices, such as pen drives, so that they wouldn’t record anything on their computers. Then FASO was replaced by the ministry, and if I remember correctly, one of the first papers from the ministry disavowed this previous paper from FASO and stated that we didn’t have to greet foreigners in such a manner, that it was inappropriate. And now, as Mikhail has correctly said, we have recently received another paper, according to which we ought to inform the relevant organizations about all foreigners. Although these rules are not as tough, they still constitute accounting and control.

Why do I say that this is a schizophrenic story? Because the same ministry makes it our duty to publish articles in high-ranking international journals. I, for one, very much agree with that; at least in our field it is very important that we meet international standards. It is not easy, but we are doing our best. But how can we publish our articles in international journals [under such circumstances]? There are usually many foreign co-authors there. Let me once again use our research field, where there is rarely just one author, as an example. These high-tech research areas require a large team: someone to collect samples in the field, another to analyze them in the lab, a third person to do something else, and so on. This usually turns out to be a large international team, and the article would be published in an international journal.

So now they talk about bringing back the certificate of appraisal. Do you know what that is? It is a document that certifies that your articles contain no information that would be new and important to humanity, and so you can publish abroad. Or in Russia, as this applies even to Russian-language articles. I know some institutes where such documents already exist, and they were the norm in Soviet times. I see we are going back on the same old track again, but in Soviet times, there was an Iron Curtain. We did not have much chance to publish anywhere, while now it is a normal thing to do. So it is required of us [to publish internationally], but at the same time the same agency—maybe not the same one, but a parallel one—demands that we limit our [international] contacts, or at least put them under control. Any spontaneity will, of course, disappear. I think this will have a very serious impact on our lives in the future, if they insist on such new rules.

Let me bring up our experience once again. We got the so-called megagrant this year, and it is 90 million rubles, so we were happy. This is the first investment of such size in the history of our institute. It is for us to set up a new glaciochemistry lab. A very famous French professor arrived just a few days ago. But how are we going to live in this new reality? I don’t know. We are not taking any special steps yet. He is holding seminars with us. We are telling him about our work, he is telling us about his work. But of course, I am feeling some trepidation, as it is almost impossible to properly regulate it, because according to the megagrant conditions, the research team is to include several postgraduate students, he is to write joint papers with our researchers, and so on. We will get new interesting research equipment that we will install together, then we will use it to analyze ice from the glacial core. And I don’t understand which part of this activity is still legal and which is already illegal or will be illegal tomorrow. So of course, we are concerned that this could seriously affect our lives.

SERGEY PARKHOMENKO: Thank you very much. This shift was indeed very important to me, because I focus on educational matters, such as student and faculty exchanges, but Olga has brought up the actual research exchange. This is already the third topic, and it seems to be a very important one, maybe the most important in what we are discussing, because it is about the relationship between Russian science and the world research community. I don’t think we need to debate the idea that no national science can exist in isolation because it is very obvious and natural to us all here. Mikhail, please, it’s your turn now.

MIKHAIL GELFAND: I will pick up on what Egor said: that the framing of these laws is remarkable. There would be a long enumeration, and then the words “and others.” Or as in the document that Olga was talking about: to inform about the persons—this is almost a quote, close to the original—to inform about the persons leaving the country, including those who carry state secrets. That is like “to inform about pieces of furniture, including stools.” Yes, this thing has no boundaries. And it is clear what will happen. On the one hand, there will be such an incredible flow of paperwork that the ministry that is to collect these papers will simply be inundated with them because, thank god, there are a lot of contacts. And it is clear that they will just lie around, simply because nothing useful can be done with them. But it will be possible in each specific case to selectively pick any document from the right folder or the right drawer and present it to law enforcement. So in a direct analogy with the law on foreign agents, this will be such a tool where everyone is guilty and we punish the one who we find it useful to punish at this moment. And that is how it will most likely work.

You have listed the types of exchanges. There are also school student exchanges. There are wonderful schools that have contacts with other schools abroad. And it is probably a complete anathema too now. As a matter of fact, many schools have such contacts, maybe personal, maybe electronic. Obviously, it will be easier for any sane school principal to just stop everything than to be under the sword of Damocles all the time. I know what this resembles. I am reading, following your tip, Sergey, the Proceedings of the Higher School of the KGB. You showed me a website once where it can be downloaded. I read it every once in a while before I go to sleep, to sleep better.

SERGEY PARKHOMENKO: Let’s not scare the listeners, and explain what it is. We are talking about a professional, agency-specific periodical of the Soviet KGB from, I believe, the 1970s and 1980s.

MIKHAIL GELFAND: No, it ends in the 1990s.

SERGEY PARKHOMENKO: It is available on a popular science website of one of the Baltic countries. Latvia, I think, or maybe another one.

MIKHAIL GELFAND: I think Latvia, yes.

SERGEY PARKHOMENKO: An amazing, an absolutely incredibly fascinating read.

MIKHAIL GELFAND: Occasionally more fascinating, occasionally less. Articles about the Marxist-Leninist teaching as it applies to intelligence work are not so fun. But from time to time there were articles about the lack of control. That, unfortunately, contacts of Russian citizens engaged in ... This was mainly about the economy, but about technology too. That unsupervised contacts of Russian citizens were a source of leakage of information important to the state. And they suggest all sorts of measures very similar, in fact, to what is now prescribed: exercise stricter control, instruct, request reports about contacts, and so on. Specific colonels who also held a degree in, say, history or pedagogy, wrote these articles. And [what we see now] is very similar. It is stylistically similar, and it is already even more similar in terms of substance. That is, this has been revived. Yes, there was a lot going on in the ’90s, but we didn’t observe it on such a mass scale. And now it blooms and takes the shape of this bill. This is an observation. There is not even any conclusion to be drawn from it except for the ones that are so obvious that I find it awkward to voice them.

Another thing we have left out, though I want to talk about it: the government’s attention to educational outreach did not actually begin at the moment when this law was adopted. Some time before that, the Russian president met with the people engaged in educational outreach, and there were several worthy people there, and some less worthy people too, as it happens. And the worthy people hoped to convey the message of light and reason during this meeting. We don’t know how it happened, but I have a feeling that attention to this area began with that meeting. It took place six months or a year before the discussion of this law and its publication.

We are discussing now that this will bump off all educational outreach and will bump off some small public lecture programs in the regions that simply will not be able to find another place. For instance, a library where they held their lectures will simply close its doors to them, so as not to get involved. The library director used to allow it, and then he or she will stop allowing it. [This could happen] in a city like Ulyanovsk, where I gave a lecture a few years ago.

In fact, there is also a very large stream of what one can call state-led educational outreach efforts. There is a festival Nauka 0+, which is very pompous. Some parts of it are good, some not so much, but in any case it is a nationwide event with venues at all major universities and crowds of people at the Moscow University, which, as always, is at the forefront of it all. Suddenly the Knowledge Society [Znanie] came back to life, was reanimated, while during the past few years it got by largely by publishing a bulletin that to a noticeable extent consisted of reprints from the Troitsky Variant, which were sometimes properly attributed and sometimes not. When they failed to properly attribute, we would make a fuss and they would apologize.

And now the Knowledge Society has been reanimated, has come out of a coma, and got itself a board consisting of various people of [questionable] repute, such as former minister [of culture Vladimir] Medinsky, and several worthy people who still, apparently, hope to accomplish something good. This is always the case. The situation in which we live now resembles the Soviet period of the Thaw, when people joined the Communist Party in order to improve it from the inside. That happened. My grandmother joined the party in the wake of the 20th Congress [of the Soviet Communist Party] and the Thaw. One of my grandmothers. And therefore, one cannot actually say that educational outreach has stopped or will stop. It will stop its most lively, small—or not so small, medium-sized—private initiatives promoted by certain people who are interested in it, who care about it and know how to do it. And it will turn into a large state Knowledge Society with lecturers. I have already received three offers from this society to give a lecture somewhere or to participate in some other way. And every time I said that I would consider when they fired Medinsky. Or something along those lines.

SERGEY PARKHOMENKO: Let’s also not forget the Russian Geographical Society … Let me give a wave to Olga here. She should be particularly interested in it. It is a substitute [for real enlightenment], exactly like Znanie.  

MIKHAIL GELFAND: This is a bit different. There is also the Russian Historical Society, and the Russian Military Historical Society with the same Medinsky….

There is a bit of a difference here because this society covered its geography by organizing conventions once a year and maybe handing out some moderate grants. In the meantime, the Knowledge Society aspires to cover with its bulk all of the educational outreach efforts in their entirety. And all the people, many of the people I know and myself too, we have received invitations from them. Even though we have publicly stated that we do not intend to have any association with this shit. So what awaits us is not a halt in educational outreach but its reformatting.

SERGEY PARKHOMENKO: Okay, that is indeed a very important point. Egor?

EGOR BYKOVSKY: I wanted to say that I agree with Mikhail to a certain extent, but not quite. It seems to me that the situation with this law is not about common friends, not about the Knowledge Society, but about common enemies. A law always has an addressee, any law in the country does. In Russia, they are often very specific legal entities against which umbrella laws are passed. Imagine I am sitting at my dacha and I am plagued by ants. Instead of going to talk to the ants and come to a solution, I got a thermite bomb out of my pocket and threw it into the garden. It not only killed the ants, it also flattened a duck against the fence, hit a beaver, and everyone else too. And I am sitting and thinking: “God, what have I done?” I didn’t actually mean to do that. And that is why I think that important international cooperation will be fine, but the addressees of this law won’t be fine at all.

I can, of course, be mistaken, as these are just my observations. But this law was conceived right after a well-known billionaire [Boris Zimin] paid for a plane to [transfer] a well-known politician [Alexei Navalny, to Germany for treatment]. And the wheels began to turn, despite a massive outcry from the Russian Academy of Sciences, despite the 300,000 signatures, and a five-page assessment report written by the Duma’s Committee for Education and Science. If we distill these assessments, they come down to: “Are you insane?” Nevertheless, despite all this, the law passed through the Duma without much trouble. This means that the addressees were targeted, they exist, but they are clearly not everyone who lives in the garden. It will be bad for the addressees, whether it’s just one or several. I think that their story in Russia is over. Everyone else will face no repercussions for now.

MIKHAIL GELFAND: Until they become the addressees. The foreign agents law also had some specific addressees, but then it turned out to be a very convenient stick that could be used to bump off anyone, including some unfortunate bloggers.

EGOR BYKOVSKY: I was just trying to answer Sergey’s question about the targets of this law. I don’t think it was a stone cast against the international cooperation of universities. It’s out of stupidity and ignorance that they hit everyone, and not only universities but every single person, but it will come in handy.

MIKHAIL GELFAND: Let’s not overestimate the stupidity and ignorance of [Russian] MPs.

SERGEY PARKHOMENKO: Yes, I probably don’t agree with that either. It seems to me that, judging by the documents that are sent to different Russian universities with the requirement to report this and that, to conduct a poll among students and learn what they think, and so on … We know of several such recent scandals, widely discussed in the Russian media, about how the university authorities were asked to essentially keep tabs on students [and their views] on a very wide range of issues, often unrelated to their studies. So I wouldn’t say that someone doesn’t understand or misunderstands something, hits something by accident, and so on. In my opinion, the task was exactly this.

We have half an hour left, and amazingly, we have questions. I was a little worried.

MIKHAIL GELFAND: But let me briefly respond to what Egor said.

SERGEY PARKHOMENKO: Sure, Mikhail, and then we will move on to the questions. We’ve got some, and a couple of them are rather creative.

MIKHAIL GELFAND: I’ll be quick. Look, there are two things here. Perhaps there was indeed a specific addressee. That it is not allowed to report on the activities of he-who-cannot-be-named, namely, Alexei—I do not remember the patronymic—Navalny. This type of educational outreach is out. But first of all, the timing doesn’t exactly work out. The law has gone into effect now, while the talk about how the state should keep a closer eye on educational outreach began earlier. This is consideration number one.

But yes, of course, the goal of this law is not to crush everyone, so that the Knowledge Society would have no competitors. Then it would have been a bill on the Knowledge Society. But it is, as it were, part of the same mechanism. You are bashing something, and next to its ruins you are simultaneously building something big and beautiful to serve as some sort of alternative. You will now say that this is a misfortune and there will be no educational outreach, and they will respond: “Why ever not? Here is the Knowledge Society.” That is the second point. And the third point is what I was talking about: there will be overzealous people at the local level. Not only did you throw a thermite bomb, but your neighbors picked up the unburned pieces and rushed to kill the fish in their respective ponds. Imagine a colonel in some region who simply needs to score points and has been scoring them by prosecuting foreign agents.

SERGEY PARKHOMENKO: This is most important. The principal thing is that it triggers reverberations.  

MIKHAIL GELFAND: Therefore, in this case, [it doesn’t make much sense to] seriously meditate on the intentions of the authors. There is a nominal author—Senator Klimov, who wrote it. In any speech about this law I always repeat that he is a coward and a waste of space, because he refuses to participate in a debate with me. Like [in the Soviet cartoon], “Leopold, come out,” I always say “Senator Klimov, come out.” It’s a mantra, so I am saying it for the record. But he’s not actually a complete dimwit. And he understood well what he was writing with his own hands. We still won’t figure out the original intentions, whose neurons got into a twist. And we have already discussed the consequences. They are more or less clear. Dixi.

SERGEY PARKHOMENKO: Thank you. Let’s move on to the questions, because I asked for them in fear that there wouldn’t be any. But we’ve got them and certainly cannot leave them unanswered now. I think one question is formulated in an interesting way, so I will start with it. This is a question from Elizabeth Wood, professor of Russian history at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She asks: “Is there a possibility for an Italian strike of educators and administrators? What if you swamped regulators with applications for every little thing, including the above-mentioned exhibitions and concerts, what if you drowned them in paperwork, like they drown you?” Yes, Mikhail, go ahead.

MIKHAIL GELFAND: Nothing will happen. They will pile up the paperwork. If necessary, they will hire two hundred additional clerks to stamp and file it. And since we are talking about it, this law contains a straightforward lie. It says that its implementation does not require additional budget funds. In fact, it does, because at the very least they will have to hire people to do this work. This already means spending from the budget. The explanatory note is simply lying.

Nothing will happen. One cannot defeat them with an Italian-style strike, because they are not obliged to react in any way. They will just file our paperwork away. The idea of a boycott was discussed, which also won’t work because, first, there will always be strikebreakers. There is a group of very talented and popular science communicators and outstanding scientists who get on well with government agencies, and they won’t find it a burden. At least in the natural sciences. So, I am afraid that neither [an Italian-style strike nor a boycott] will work.

SERGEY PARKHOMENKO: Understood. Olga, do you have anything to add in response to this provocative question?

OLGA SOLOMINA: I don’t think they’d even notice [a strike]. Even if we organized it, they are not that interested in us. They are interested in us only from an applied standpoint and [not interested in] what we are doing, as long as we are not making missiles, and we are not really making missiles all that much anymore. So to them we’re like those ants [that Egor mentioned earlier].

EGOR BYKOVSKY: The regulators don’t care if there will be a lecture at the next club meeting about neuronal activity in the nucleus accumbens. Maybe there won’t be, so what.

SERGEY PARKHOMENKO: A more serious question is asked by Georgy Kurakin, a member of the Royal Society of Biology, as he signed his message, and a member of the Elements community. He writes: “As for international cooperation, as far as I know, no special bylaws have been adopted regarding it.” And then he asks how things are in this area. I would reformulate the second half of his question and ask: Does this mean that this law, which formally went into effect on June 1, is not really in force but is just lying there dormant, awaiting its fate? Or is it really functioning?

MIKHAIL GELFAND: The bylaw has just been published. That’s exactly what we have discussed, namely, registration and notification about absolutely all international contacts. You bumped into one another in the loo and had a chat, that counts as a contact.

SERGEY PARKHOMENKO: So in reality, this has indeed begun?

MIKHAIL GELFAND: It was the previous week; [this development is] very fresh.

SERGEY PARKHOMENKO: And another question…. This question is from the science editor of the [television channel] Science, Ivan Semenov, who apparently knows Mikhail Gelfand and sends him all sorts of greetings here, but I will not read them out. He’s asking quite a practical question. He asks: “The fact that we on educational television still solve all our problems exclusively inside the editorial office and get to decide how and about what we should do the programs. Does that mean that the law does not work in principle or that they simply haven’t figured out how to get to us yet?” Egor, maybe you as a practicing journalist have something to say about this. Do you feel any direct consequences of this law in the editorial process, so to speak? Yes, please.

EGOR BYKOVSKY: We don’t feel them at all, and if any of my colleagues felt it, I would probably know. But this does not mean that we will not feel them after some time, when they finally decide to get to popular science publications. So far, I think they haven’t gotten their hands on anyone yet. With a few exceptions. I don’t really know about such cases.

OLGA SOLOMINA: I have a feeling that we may provoke them to action with our mantras. They are waiting and they understand that we’re ready.

MIKHAIL GELFAND: I think there have already been some indirect cases where clubs were shut down and lectures were canceled solely to be on the safe side. I don’t remember the details, but something of this sort has already come up on my Facebook feed. Not in Moscow, but somewhere on the periphery. People are frankly afraid to get involved. Just in case.

OLGA SOLOMINA: May I ask our audience about bloggers and educational outreach on the internet? How are they going to catch and regulate it? It’s one thing when you deliver a lecture and fail to report, and it’s another thing when … A blogger is a professional, [engaged in a] practical activity. How is it going to be regulated? I’d be interested to learn what you think.

SERGEY PARKHOMENKO: Having in mind also, for example, video bloggers, whom we see a lot on YouTube. This is a very trendy activity, and it attracts large audiences. This means that it is very well monetized. This means that people are happy to do it and even turn it into their profession. So Olga’s question is not an idle one. Egor, you started answering.

EGOR BYKOVSKY: How are bloggers labeled as foreign agent media? The same applies here. I see the following algorithm. It’s enough to target ten people. If we’re talking about video bloggers, then [it’s enough to get the] ten most popular ones and say that there is a law, so let’s come to a mutually beneficial arrangement. Or if we really don’t like you, then you stop doing it. There is a law. They haven’t gotten to anyone yet, as far as I know. But there is a law that allows them to do it and get to anyone they choose. There is no need to control all bloggers, because 95 percent of them have a small audience. We are only interested in the top twenty or thirty, ones that millions of people listen to.

SERGEY PARKHOMENKO: Here’s another question. Unfortunately, despite my endless pleas, the author did not provide a name, but I will read this question nevertheless. It’s interesting and I think it’s quite appropriate. “What can consumers of educational outreach, that is, society, do to support educators at this stage, when amendments have been adopted, and signatures [on petitions] have not helped? The support for NGOs and independent journalists, who are also under pressure from the state, is largely expressed in subscriptions, donations and volunteering.” Indeed, we see a direct relationship: as soon as someone gets pressured very hard, the flow of donations and of support in general increases, and many people already have a knee-jerk reaction: if they want to help, but it’s unclear how, then they should send a little money. And we see the result — this is now a comment from me. So the support for NGOs and independent journalists, who are also under pressure from the state, is largely expressed in subscriptions, donations and volunteering. So how can one help scientists and science communicators—in the same way or in some different manner?...

MIKHAIL GELFAND: First, in the same way, of course. People who are professionally engaged in educational outreach—not me, I give lectures for my own pleasure and donate my honoraria, to Troitsky Variant usually. I simply ask the organizers to transfer [my honorarium] there directly, in order not to worry about taxes.

First, in the same way: subscribing to these blogs, adding likes, increasing the number of YouTube views. I do not know how it is supposed to be done in the modern world, but there are means of support, both material and purely emotional. Going to those lectures. When the real massacre begins, when some real obstacles get created, going to a lecture whenever possible, even if it is not included in the register of the Knowledge Society.  

And there is also an extreme option, which I probably do not advise for others but I myself use from time to time. It is to publicly shame the people who, from your point of view, are the “strikebreakers” and do something outrageous. [This serves to] preserve the unity of this community by means of public opinion that in a sense exerts pressure from the outside. There are very different groups [in this community], very different people, and it’s not good to mix political beliefs and scientific results, but nevertheless, if some person suddenly sells out in an obvious way, it’s generally good if they lose some subscriptions as a result. That is, I would drag some moral pressure into this as a way to ensure that members of the community behave decently. But this is harsh advice. I am not sure that it is universally applicable. I am not even sure that it’s good. In any case, this is a thing that everyone can consider for themselves.

SERGEY PARKHOMENKO: Thank you so much. We don’t have much time left, but we still have some.

MIKHAIL GELFAND: Maybe someone else wants to say something? Because I don’t think I said everything. I am not sure I’ve exhausted the topic. It is a really profound one.

SERGEY PARKHOMENKO: I would like to ask Olga a very specific thing about the July 1 Club, which I myself appreciate very much and consider to be an astonishing and extremely important public institution in Russia today. In your opinion, to what extent has the Russian Academy of Sciences preserved its resources in this process? How many members does the July 1 Club have today? A little more than a hundred, as I understand it?

OLGA SOLOMINA: Already more, about 250 now.

SERGEY PARKHOMENKO: Yes, the number keeps increasing, I must say. It’s not as if on July 1, 2013, some people came together, and that’s it. No, it makes me very happy that their number is growing and new people are joining in. But of course, there are many more academicians. And the question is not only about the number. There are many world-class stars among the members of the Russian Academy of Sciences, there are people whose opinion matters. I think a more accurate question is: In your opinion, is there a resource here? Can [their] voices sound louder? Are there any resources in terms of corporate solidarity? And so on. Thanks.

OLGA SOLOMINA: First, I want to say that I also really appreciate the July 1 Club. When people ask about internal resources, when the scientific community gets attacked or some other kind of trouble happens, I want to say that this community, which has existed for eight years, is very supportive, incredibly so. It’s more like a company of friends now. Not all three hundred, of course. This is a society that has no charter, no chairperson, no secretary, and no rules. Well, there is a very small number of rules for interaction. But of course, the academy has a resource. And I must say that if we are talking about this law today, it is one of the few laws against which the Presidium of the Russian Academy of Sciences has spoken up. The Presidium! This means that it is just so unbelievable that even at the level of the academic establishment, there are people who are ready [to oppose it]. When things go too far, then they object.

But here’s the problem with the July 1 Club. We mostly come out with protest letters, although an extraordinary variety of political opinions is present inside the club. That is, we have leftists and rightists, communists, advocates of a strong state, we have all kinds of people. Therefore, reaching consensus even on some seemingly simple statement [is difficult]. Well, perhaps with the exception of the statement about the closure of the Russian Foundation for Basic Research. That statement was adopted instantly and without hesitation. All the others always cause a rather lengthy and heated debate. I would say that it is not a very effective system from an operational standpoint. [Making it more effective would] require, first, that there be no veto. If one of the three hundred people says, “No, we will not adopt this [statement],” we do not adopt it. If we set a deadline—we discuss this text today, tomorrow, the day after tomorrow—sometimes we get bogged down in amendments. Those are often along the lines of “I don’t like this from the stylistic perspective.” But then too, there may emerge a consensus feeling that the statement should not be adopted.

The point I am driving at is that there is a resource, of course, and the people are absolutely wonderful and very diverse. But the trouble lies exactly in this diversity, just as in many other social movements. There is a shared view that the July 1 Club is about science—about science, about the academy and its institutes, about education and about educational outreach, too, but not about politics. And there were several such instances when we almost came off the rails. But still, the club maintains this line, so there should be no illusions that the club will take some radical position regarding this or that political process.

But the people in the club are very decent and very worthy, I think. And if something really touches them to the core, then of course, they cannot remain silent. In fact, this club is made up, it seems to me, of academy members with a volatile psyche. When the academy was treated in such a [deplorable] way, they responded by saying: “No way, we can’t allow this.” And maybe many less temperamental people also thought so, but they did not form a club and did not join the club. And now the club already has some history. And it seems to me that almost the academy’s entire resource has already been drawn down, that people who wanted to join have actually joined. This is my feeling.

SERGEY PARKHOMENKO: Still I am very happy that we’ve had a detailed conversation here about the club. I do think it is much less known than it deserves. Those who listen to us from outside Russia may not have known about this wonderful community of Russian scientists, comprising some of the most prominent scholars who have achieved great success in their research careers. So I hope they will now pay more attention to this phenomenon and will follow the work of the July 1 Club, its publications and statements. In my opinion, it is extremely important.

There’s another question that came through Facebook in a pretty tricky way, but luckily, I noticed it. It comes from Ilya Levin. I think this name is familiar to many who follow Russian-American humanitarian and civic relations. He worked at the U.S. embassy in Moscow sometime in the ’90s and was responsible for what is called civic diplomacy, that is, people-to-people contacts, including in science. He is asking a rather professional question that I find very relevant today. How might these amendments to the education law affect the willingness of Russian scientists and graduate students to participate in Fulbright and other exchange programs? These programs are often a starting point for a scientific career, from which a scientist receives an additional significant boost. What is the future of such programs? In your opinion, to what extent are they capable of surviving in this situation, or will they have to be replaced by something else? We don’t have much time left, maybe five or six minutes, but nonetheless let’s try to touch on this topic.

MIKHAIL GELFAND: [These amendments] will affect [the exchange programs] badly. There have been precedents. The British Council, which worked precisely in the field of people-to-people contacts, was “sawed out” from the Russian reality. Gradually, all the others will be, too.

SERGEY PARKHOMENKO: Let me translate for those who are not native speakers of Russian: “sawed out” means “removed.”

MIKHAIL GELFAND: Apologies, yes. While agreeing to participate in today’s discussion, I have seriously wondered whether the Kennan Institute would be declared, say, an undesirable organization in the near future and whether it would turn out in hindsight that I had participated in the activities of an undesirable organization. Of course, everyone will wonder about such a thing. But another thing is also true. Such laws very much contribute to young people getting the hell out of here. This I should also probably translate: “getting the hell out” as in leaving Russia. Simply because it’s getting disgusting to be here. I have students who were satisfied with their scientific endeavors and even their finances, but they simply said they couldn’t live here.

OLGA SOLOMINA: I’d like to mention that I myself have been in the United States on a Fulbright. It was a very useful endeavor, and it elevates one’s professional profile considerably. Of course, I think that if things keep moving in that direction, many will be afraid to submit an application. And this is certainly very sad. Very much so.

MIKHAIL GELFAND: And there is a flip side that, on the other hand, people will consider these programs as a stepping-stone to emigration, which completely contradicts the original idea.

SERGEY PARKHOMENKO: Usually all these programs are accompanied by a mandatory return condition and are meant to train a specialist and encourage that specialist to return to their homeland later. There are visa restrictions related to that, and so on. So their goal is indeed not to get people out of the country or to stimulate brain drain, contrary to what Russian senators and the initiators of various amendments to the education law like to say. They just don’t know how it’s organized and don’t understand how it works.

But I have discussed this matter with those who are engaged in this kind of exchange programs on the other side. Of course, they are very worried about this and say they are losing the support of their Russian counterparts, the Russian educational community. Because quite often it was a professor who encouraged their student to apply for scholarships. Academics suggested this and believed that they were supposed to create conditions for their students to continue their scientific careers in such a way. Today, apparently, it becomes simply dangerous and begins to be interpreted as some kind of disloyalty and so on. That is a fact.

MIKHAIL GELFAND: Can I have half a minute? There is one thing I wanted to bring up. It was only briefly mentioned in the conversation, which I don’t find fair. You mentioned that scientists don’t want to do anything other than science. In fact, it turns out not to be so in the Russian reality. Two years ago there was an example of solidarity on a professional basis, when very different people—animators, historians, others—made statements about the Moscow case of 2019. There was a whole wave, and it was very instructive and very good when people began to go beyond their purely professional interests and speak out on behalf of their professional guild on matters of public importance.

SERGEY PARKHOMENKO: Let me clarify: the Moscow case of 2019 refers to the persecution of people who participated in protests related to the Moscow City Duma elections. Different people got into a lot of trouble then.

MIKHAIL GELFAND: Apologies, yes. So the fact is that the scientific community was the first professional community to issue a statement on behalf of the guild. [They did it] so early that it was simply forgotten. It was ahead of everyone else by a month and is not seen as part of the overall wave for that reason. In fact, in the Russian reality it turns out that scientists are nevertheless the vanguard of humanity and most strongly react to what’s going on. This is a peculiar sociological fact that I would like to note in conclusion.

SERGEY PARKHOMENKO: A great final point. It couldn’t be better. Actually, our time here has come to an end, and I am very glad that our discussion was so lively and human. It was certainly not boring. I am very grateful to all three of you. I am also grateful in advance to the group of experts to whom we will send questions on the same topics. I will try to formulate them so that they follow from our conversation today. This will be a continuation of our project, which is called The Rule of Ignorance. This project should combine this discussion with the opinions collected on this topic from various experts.

Of course, I am also grateful to our viewers, including those who asked questions. I am very glad that we had questions and had a lively reaction [to the conversation]. Thank you all! And we are inviting you to new discussions, debates, conversations, and meetings organized by the Kennan Institute, which tends to bring together wonderful speakers and wonderful experts on different topics. My name is Sergey Parkhomenko. I was the moderator of this discussion. Thank you all very much. Have a nice day! Good-bye!