News and Opinions
How do the political scientists who wrote the country’s alternative Constitution see Russia after Putin?
July, 2 - Artemy Magun discusses IGREC's draft of the new Constitution of the Russian Federation
Russian Constitution in the Global Context
June, 27 – 9:30 am CET, Workshop of the Institute for Global Reconstitution
Faculty of Non-Liberal Arts: How educational programs dispersed in Russia are being revived in exile
May, 28 - An article in The Insider (in Russian)
Vladimir Voevodsky on the role of different kinds of mathematical knowledge in social practices
May, 21 – Andrei Rodin’s talk at the conference ‘Bridge the Gap‘ at the University of the Balearic Islands
Public Events
Contemporary Philosophy at the Crossroads with Nihilism
June, 28, 2024, 7:30 pm – Book Launch with Artemy...
Evgeny Yufit: Exploring a Necrorealist Archive
June 14, 2024, A Screening in the UCL. Presented by...
Russia’s Casus Belli: Memory Politics or Political Propaganda?
June, 8, 2024, 5:00 pm – 6:30 pm Lecture by...
Historical Past and Contemporary Propaganda in the Global Context
June, 7 - 8, 2024 (Center for Comparative Research on...
Summer 2024 Courses
Archive
Faculty
About
A group of former Smolny College faculty with the support of Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, NY, and Bard College Berlin (BCB) established Smolny Beyond Borders (SBB) in November 2022, a liberal arts initiative that continues and builds upon the legacy of Smolny College (formerly a joint program of St. Petersburg State University and Bard College), the longest-running dual degree program between any Russian and American institution.
Smolny Beyond Borders aims to recreate Smolny institutionally, but independently of St.Petersburg State, and establish not only a structure of support for the faculty who left Russia, but provide opportunities to attract, teach, and recruit new students and to sustain the successful practices formerly recognized at Smonly College to build the Russia of the future. The program will provide multi-level educational and research opportunities to equip the next generation of students and faculty with the tools to rebuild and promote a different trajectory for Russia that holds the country responsible as part of the global community.
About Smolny College
Smolny College was a long-term collaboration between St. Petersburg State University and Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York. After its founding in 1997, it became both the largest liberal arts program in Russia and the most robust Russian-American partnership in the higher education sphere. In the summer of 2021, the Prosecutor’s Office of the Russian Federation declared that Bard College is an undesirable organization, the first college or university to be so named. This began the dismantling of Smolny, which has since undergone the loss of faculty and curricular changes that have rejected the very idea of liberal arts and sciences education.
The Gagarin Center for the Study of Civil Society and Human Rights (Gagarin Center at Bard College) allows Russian scholars forced to leave Russia as a result of the war on Ukraine, and risks of political persecution, continue to pursue research and educational activities focused on contemporary social, economic, and human rights issues in Russia. Previously, the Gagarin Center, supported by the Gagarin Trust, was a core component of Smolny College. The Center and its fellows offered courses, prepared research on vital issues, offered public programming, and served as a venue for the critical exchange of ideas.