Statement by Yabloko Chairman, 23.12.2025

Photo by Yevgeny Odinokov, RIA Novosti

Rosobrnadzor [the Federal Service for Supervision in Education and Science] has suspended the licence of the Moscow School of Social and Economic Sciences. Prior to this, the supervisory authorities had banned the university from admitting students. The campaign against Professor Shanin’s university has been going on for almost ten years: the university has been stripped of accreditation, criminal cases have been opened against the rector and staff, and lecturers have been declared “foreign agents”.

The Moscow School of Social and Economic Sciences was founded in 1995 by British sociologist and Professor at the University of Manchester Teodor Shanin, and quickly became one of Russia’s finest humanities universities. For this, Shanin was awarded a medal by the Ministry of Education of the Russian Federation as an “Honoured Worker in Higher Professional Education”.

The Moscow School of Social and Economic Sciences brought world-class educational standards to Russia. For three decades it taught its students the ability to think, question, and analyse. The university was one of the last islands of freedom and autonomy, where, free from censorship and ideological clichés, scholars and students could exchange knowledge and engage in genuine academic work.

The elimination of independent universities, the imposition of state ideology and uniformity in the education system are depriving our country of a future and destroying humanities education in Russia. We are convinced that university autonomy, academic freedoms and openness to the world, and international educational and scholarly exchanges are in the vital interests of Russia and its citizens.

The Yabloko Party expresses its support for the lecturers, students and graduates of the Moscow School of Social and Economic Sciences. We demand an end to the persecution of the university and the restoration of its licence and accreditation.

Nikolai Rybakov,

Yabloko Chairman