Rethinking the impacts of red globalization: the Soviety legacy of deconstruction in Georgian and Ukrainian higher education

Abstract

Following World War II, the Soviets laboured across Eurasia to deconstruct the western idea and model of the university. They turned universities into 'knowledge factories' by obliterating the Humboldtian principles of 'freedom to teach' and 'freedom to learn', instituting censorship, disrupting academic succession rites to prioritize recruitment of loyal professionals with proletarian credentials, establishing 'one-man management' and 'army uniformity', eradicating creativity and purging dissenters, regimenting student activities, and encouraging snitching. To destroy the western model, the Soviets broke down many universities into small specialized institutes reporting to specific industries. The specialized institutes were easier to control, their staff and students easily deployed to spread Marxism-Leninism in the labor silos of the planned economy. To prop up all of these developments, anti-western rhetoric was essential - it enabled the obliteration of the value of the university as an institution of autonomy and academic freedom in higher learning. Moreover, it made it possible to attract support from authoritarian regimes worldwide, many of whom became 'brotherly states' over time. Russification became a key instrument for many Soviet professors to seed 'sustainable international friendship' and serve the global mission of the 'great Russian culture' and 'socialist motherland'. The Soviet deconstruction strategy was promoted both in the west and in the east. Given that the Soviet quasi-academic practices are impacting the course of global neoliberalism, it is worth re-discovering the historical legacies of red globalization in higher education. This presentation will delve into the conceptual framework as well as share some preliminary results from questionnaires in Georgia and Ukraine – the two countries where resistance to the Soviet legacy has been quite prominent over the last decade or so.