History of own composition. For and against Medinsky's dissertation. How critics of V. Medinsky's dissertation flogged themselves Ivan Babitsky biography

October 21st, 2016 , 11:22 am

When viewers in The Government Inspector heard about a non-commissioned officer's wife who whipped herself, it sounded very funny, of course, in a satirical sense, because what normal person would whip himself? However, in life this happens all the time. A vivid example of this is the attempt to "flog" Minister of Culture V. Medinsky for his dissertation, which led to the fact that the initiators of this event flogged themselves. True, they did not notice this in their ardent desire to insult and humiliate the minister. But nothing. They will soon feel. Proof of this is the brilliant analysis of their criticism by Doctor of Historical Sciences K. A. Averyanov, which is offered below.
But before that, I would like to point out a few things.

1) The motives of the critics. They are vile, low, nasty. What is clear from the offensive epithets, which are categorically unacceptable in the scientific community and already betray the authors of the criticism with their heads. But the desire to shit the other was so strong that even after the minister failed to catch the plagiarism, the search for compromising evidence continued, despite Dissernet's instructions, in the context of his "professional ignorance." Which of them is really ignorant, you will see for yourself.

2) The fussy fuss of the initiator of criticism of it is not clear who in the scientific world I.F. Babitsky is striking, who, having neither a historical education, nor a scientific degree in this field, nor scientific works, is trying to impudently climb on a specialist, knowingly accusing him of unprofessionalism and incompetence . At the same time, I would not be surprised that Medinsky has certain semantic "linings". As, however, in almost any work. But to cling to them without evaluating the work as a whole is not solid somehow.

3) It's cool how the publications behaved when it turned out that the review of the doctor of historical sciences would be critical, but not at the address of the minister, but quite the opposite. They refused to publish all this. The position of the author of the interview looks somewhat decent. He nevertheless published the text, although it is felt that he would like to hear something completely different. However, what this is connected with: he is for the truth or just crushed the toad (so much time was spent, but he collected not that), it is not clear.

4) According to Denmark as Scandinavia. Still more difficult. So even in the 17th century. part of Sweden (the province of Scania) belonged to Denmark, and Denmark itself until 1814, together with Norway, was one country.

5) Naturally, neither of them consider themselves wrong. However, I will make one more point. corporate ethics. In the scientific community, it is quite powerful and is based on the fact that there can be many opinions, anyone can make mistakes, but it is incorrect to drown him for this. Based on this, it is not worth insisting that one of the two, either Medinsky is a deceiver or Babitsky is a slanderer.

And look at the rest

Please, we have a representative of the applicants. Who from applicants? Babitsky? I don't see anyone. If not, then, please, members of the presidium, what are the substantive questions? And, well, there is, yes [representative of the applicants]? [Turning to Babitsky] First formulate two or three questions, and then the members of the VAK will formulate their own.

Babitsky:<...>Is it still Vladimir Rostislavovich that during the time of Ivan the Terrible theological books in Rus' were written in Russian, that the Protestants at the same time had Holy Scripture in Latin, that Ivan the Terrible had a doctor - a Belgian by nationality [these remarks were stated in the April statement against Medinsky]? Question two. The author's abstract has been published on the VAK website. It lists five monographs in the "publications" section on the topic of the dissertation. Do these monographs exist, have they ever been published? If not, where did they come from? Third question.<...>The part of the bibliography of the thesis, which lists the books of foreign scientists, literally coincides with the bibliography from the edition of almost a century ago, and posted on the site vostlit.info, and with the same recognition errors that are on this site. At the same time, there are no references to books in the dissertation text itself, they are only in the bibliography.

Filippov: I will answer the second question related to the five monographs, whether they exist or not. We discussed this issue, and it was confirmed that in the final version of the abstract, which is in the personal file, there are no such violations. So the second question is removed.<...>

Medinsky: Let me start, dear colleagues, with the first question. Constantly, that Medinsky does not know the difference between Russian, Latin, Church Slavonic. The following was written in the dissertation: as you know, many Orthodox believers had church books written in Russian, so it was easy to understand their content. The situation is different for Catholics and Protestants, whose Holy Scripture was written in Latin, which the believers did not know. We are talking about the young years of Tsar Ivan the Terrible. Further on, his colleague Babitsky, as a philologist - apparently, this hurt him - writes: “You don’t need to be a historian to appreciate the degree of ignorance of Medinsky, which is almost improbable for a humanist. In one sentence, he was able to show that he knew nothing about the Church Slavonic language, knew nothing about the existence of Luther and his translation [of the Bible] into German».

Every graduate of the philological faculty should know that any language changes over time. New words appear: some come, others go into the past. Probably, linguists will confirm that the Russian language of the 16th century and Church Slavonic at that time were practically the same and were characterized by the unity of linguistic norms, differed in the pronunciation of several letters and in certain nuances of spelling. You probably know that literally “u” was read “piece”, from here we don’t go to later cookbooks, but shti. Or there is a disagreement between the Church Slavonic "city", which gradually turned into a "city", and so on. It is no coincidence that linguists call the Russian language of the era of Ivan the Terrible "an exodus of Church Slavonic." Since the language of church services is more conservative, over time the difference between it and colloquial became more noticeable, which can be seen when comparing the modern Russian language and the 19th century Bible text. Regarding Luther's translation of the Bible,<...>it was published in 1534. The next one is 12 years later, respectively, in 1546. We understand how miserable circulations were, how inert was the thinking of the parishioners. And it is hardly possible to say that after the first translation, the German language spread at lightning speed in all the churches and churches of Central Europe. Well, what are we talking about? Naturally, during the time of the young Ivan the Terrible, services were mostly in Latin. The parishioners understood them worse than the parishioners in their native language in Russia. This is about the first question. As for the monograph, they answered. I took one of the monographs with me.

Babitsky: Excuse me, but the Belgian doctor is very interesting.

Medinsky: Ivan Fyodorovich, I didn't interrupt you. Here is one of the monographs I took at home. Big. 2011. I won't give you.

(Unintelligible.)

Filippov: Ivan Fyodorovich, if you interrupt again, I will remove you. Do you understand everything? If you stop answering again, I'll delete you.

Medinsky: As for the [third] question, I carefully wrote you down, I did not really understand what you mean. I don't know, do you understand? Maybe you can help me comment? I'm just confused about the wording.

Filippov: Let's have a third question. Ivan Fedorovich, now I ask you to repeat, to formulate your third question, what you tried to do. Please, you have the opportunity, just don't interrupt people. Please.

Babitsky: I'm sorry. I interrupted you because, after all, my question was not fully answered. As for the third question, it was like this: a fairly large part of the dissertation bibliography, which is printed at the end of the dissertation, completely coincides with the bibliography of one edition of the twenties of the last century, posted on the vostlit.info website. This part of the bibliography completely matches the way it is transmitted on this site with all the recognition errors. At the same time, there are no references to those books that are listed in this piece of bibliography in the dissertation itself.

Filippov: What is the violation?

Babitsky: How can Vladimir Rostislavovich explain that books to which he does not refer appear in the bibliography, and even in the same order and with the same errors with which they are presented on the website of the notorious vostlit.info?

Filippov: We do not have a normative decision that one cannot list works that are not mentioned in the text in the bibliography. I answer you as the chairman of the VAK. Therefore, the third question is also removed. Thank you.

(Noise in the hall.)

Filippov: I just explained that there is no such ban, colleagues.

Employee of the Institute of Russian History of the Russian Academy of Sciences Konstantin Averyanov [Medinsky]: Wait a minute.

Filippov: Wait, who are you?

Averyanov: My name is Konstantin Alexandrovich Averyanov, Doctor of Historical Sciences, I work at the Institute of Russian History of the Russian Academy of Sciences, a leading researcher.

Unknown: Excuse me, what is your capacity? [The meeting of the VAK Presidium is held behind closed doors, you cannot get to it without being a member of the Presidium or an invited expert.]

Filippov: Do not hurry. Due to the acuteness of the topic, we asked several specialists, historians, to come, so that we could answer questions more competently. Here we have Academician [Alexander] Chubaryan.

Averyanov: Thank you. You know that I have carefully read the statement of three comrades, including Ivan Fyodorovich Babitsky, and I can say the following. He says in his statement that the dissertation allegedly took a bibliography from a book prepared by Ivan Ivanovich Polosin - these are the works of Heinrich Staden. By the way, the applicants say that the author of the dissertation is not familiar with the book about Staden, published by Polosin. You see, there's just nothing to say. I would like to show you the review of the dissertation [on these points of the statement].

Filippov: Thank you. We will not have time to read, of course. Please, now members of the VAK presidium, what questions do you have? Sergei Vladimirovich, please.

“We are moving from a narrow historical field to adjacent fields”

Scientific director of the State Archives Sergey Mironenko: Explain how archival references ended up in your work, how did you get them? Materials of the Russian state archive ancient acts [the VAK expert council concluded earlier that Medinsky did not personally visit the archives].

Medinsky: At that time I was a deputy of the State Duma. Therefore, I have a large and wide circle of familiar historians, comrades, assistants with whom I consulted on the content of the dissertation<...>. I understand that you are this case act not out of resentment [after the conflict with Medinsky Mironenko, the post of head of the State Archives], but solely out of love for science [tells about reviewing and discussing his books about the Great Patriotic War and that he received materials from the scientific director of the Russian Military Historical Society Mikhail Myagkov , main researcher Institute of Russian History Vladimir Lavrov]. He specifically requested materials, references, including archival ones. And it's normal practice.<...>which is being used. By the way, I could briefly answer that I looked at some materials on the Internet. I realized at that moment how difficult it is in principle to work with archives and archival materials- inconvenient, laborious, time-consuming. Having already become a minister, I now pay special attention to the problems of digitization. In particular, we are initiating the project “National digital library”, which significantly improves the use of library resources throughout the country, not just one of the libraries.<...>

Filippov: Thank you. Please, more questions to the members of the presidium.

Unknown: It seems to me that your work is in a very problematic field associated with the dichotomy of memory and history. I think social scientists here are aware of these discussions - these are two forms of historical representation, each of which is necessary for us to fit into the temporal frame of time. But each of them has its own specifics and its own characteristics. You work, as far as I understand, with a very subtle matter of collective memory. At the same time, according to the leading world historians, this work, in order to be involved in historical science, needs certain critical procedures, objectifications, and so on. You have the title of your work “The problem of objectivity”, that is, you are just dealing with these problems. Could you literally tell in a few words what methods you use in your work in order to involve these procedures and this very subtle material of historical memory in an objective field historical science.

Medinsky: The question is difficult. Such a problem exists. Perhaps I would refer you to a large publication, which is about this topic, I made it in Rossiyskaya Gazeta in July of this year. Of course, when we talk about memory, and even more so about collective memory, we inevitably move from a narrow historical field into adjacent fields, into the field of perception of this fact. Speaking in a very simple way, it’s somehow not even very dexterous for me to speak at the presidium of the Higher Attestation Commission at the level of how I try to explain this to students. There are about 50 people here. We will have an intangible cultural object as an audio recording of our meeting. But each of those present here will come out with their own idea of ​​what happened here: how it sounded, who said what, and simply on the basis of their own personalized impression, they will form their own opinion about what happened. No one will reread the transcript. I'll tell you a secret, no journalist will read the transcript. Here they are all gathered there, but not one of them will read anything, even if you give it to him. At best, he will ask one of those present here and through his own, pre-prepared subjective attitude towards you, towards science, towards Sergey Vladimirovich Mironenko , he will receive information from me, pass it through himself and throw it into the press. Thus, the final recipient of these facts will become the third one, completely cut off from the reality of what is happening.

<...>Do we really think that the chronicler was absolutely objective? Probably not. This is a very subtle and very important matter that needs a very reverent attitude. I am very grateful to you that you drew attention to this, since the endless dispute of historians, social scientists, political scientists, applied political scientists on the topic of what is more important - a fact or its reflection, or a collective myth and idea recreated on its basis - these are realities. We must understand the first, and the second, and the third in our work.

Filippov: Thank you. Please, Professor Auzan Alexander Alexandrovich.

“How many tanks were knocked out, almost now it’s impossible to find out”

Auzan: I will continue this methodological question. I completely agree that mythologization and such distortions are taking place. Tell me, do you think that this [the study of the origin of myths] is the subject of historical sciences? Or all the same political sciences, philosophical, psychology? What, from your point of view, underlies objectivity in history, in a historical perspective - a fact or an ongoing process of diffraction, mythological distortion?

Medinsky: You have a question, answering which is very easy to fall into a logical trap. Of course, the facts. Here, my highly respected colleague Sergei Vladimirovich [Mironenko] and I have repeatedly argued publicly about known fact, the presence or absence of the fact of the battle of the Panfilov heroes in the fall of 1941. This fact is difficult to verify, especially in detail. Opinions on this topic are endless. How many tanks were knocked out, practically now it is impossible to find out. There is the position of the main district prosecutor's office, there is the position of the investigation, there is the position of the "Red Star", there is the position of Kumanev, who talked with some participants in the battle, and so on. The fact was, but very complex, it is the subject of study of historical science.

And now, attention, a question. This article [in Krasnaya Zvezda about the Panfilovites], which certainly legitimizes this fact and [pause] greatly altered it, was published in a circulation of, in my opinion, a million copies, or five million copies in the form of a booklet. An article about a fact that she heavily rewrote. I saw several copies of such a book in the museum, in our museum of the Great Patriotic War on Poklonnaya Gora, in several places pierced by bullets. What does this mean? That her soldiers put [the book; apparently, it is understood that to the heart] before the battle and went into battle with her. What an emotional upsurge this article caused, probably, incorrectly describing the fact, what a change in consciousness it caused and, perhaps, partly a change in real historical events. Is this a fact or not? Does an idea that seizes a mass become a material force or not? Probably becomes. Therefore, of course, the fact is above all, but we must also take into account how this fact acquires an intangible resource and how this resource then affects the fact and our lives.

Filippov: Colleagues, if possible, let's have two more questions and we'll conclude. We still have a lot to do.

Head of the Center for the History of Private Life and Everyday Life at the Institute of World History Russian Academy Sciences (RAS) Igor Danilevsky: Did I understand you correctly: you formulate the problem of objectivity historical sources but you don't solve it?

Present: What, someone solved it? And can it be solved?

Danilevsky: It is possible, therefore [it is] history and science, not theology.

Medinsky: We are already hitting the sphere of philosophical discussion. It seems to me that the problem of objectivity cannot be solved.<...>

Filippov: Come on, Nikolai Nikolaevich Kazansky, a question.

“I do not in any way deny the presence of flaws and errors”

Director of the Institute for Linguistic Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences Nikolai Kazansky:<...>There are a lot of inaccuracies in the work. For example, among the methods you list the method of prosopography. I'm afraid I'm the only one here who works with prosopographies. Let me explain that this is just a phone book, where instead of phone numbers, references are given to sources in which this or that person is mentioned. Therefore, the method of prosopography as such cannot exist. These kind of small annoying things are really present.

Medinsky: I do not in any way deny the presence of flaws and errors that are sure to be in any work. I would really appreciate it if you could help me fix them. I will prepare a book. Thanks a lot.

Filippov: Sit down please.<...>Indeed, the problem of objectivity in the coverage of Russian history is a complex topic, which is why there is such attention, such a discussion, and we have invited a number of specialists, among them Academician Chubaryan Alexander Oganovich. Alexander Oganovich, if I may, to the podium, what is your opinion.<...>

“Are we going to cancel these dissertations, or what?”

Chubaryan: Thank you, Vladimir Mikhailovich [Filippov], for inviting me. I emphasize this because already during the meeting<...>I got a call from a correspondent of a well-known newspaper and said: “For what reason are you in the hall?” That is, you see, we have been in a strange situation in recent months. At the institute, we conduct a constant and daily review of the Internet: the impression that everything has already been decided for the country, it remains only to decide how to work with Latin sources in the 15th century. Such a glow! On Saturday and Sunday, Vladimir Mikhailovich, six academicians who have nothing to do with the humanities called me and said: “What is happening there? We don't understand what it is." When I told our chief physicist in the country [head of the Russian Academy of Sciences Alexander Sergeev] that there was a discussion of the question [of] what is scientific and not scientific in history, he said: “In our country, even in physics, we now do not know what is scientific and what not scientific." This is a big problem.

I would like to say a few words about the remarks of Igor Nikolaevich Danilevsky. Our colleague, highly respected, one of the best specialists in history. You know, science is a complicated thing, pardon the banality. I was in Hamburg last year for a conference called Cognitive Science and the Interpretation of History. There were a lot of people there, the Germans and the Chinese were in charge, and they were based on objective things. The interpretation of history is not only facts, but it turns out that it is also a combination of certain brain cells, which, they believe, are different for everyone. So this is also an interesting problem.<...>I had a very good colleague of mine, the largest English specialist in the history of Russia, who wrote ten books, who had a catchphrase in the first book: "There are as many stories as there are historians." Because all these facts, he said, are passed through the head, but that's another question. I am present here, although I see the costs, Vladimir Mikhailovich: tomorrow the media will arrange an interrogation for me, as if I am to blame for this whole affair.<...>

It seems to me that we are about to set a dangerous precedent. There is a legal field. It has been strengthened in recent years by those, including those present here, who raised the issue of plagiarism, and for this we thank them. Now the situation is different than it was six years ago. Now each dissertation, as you know, is checked for plagiarism and posted on the site for a month. This is a legal field, everything else is not a matter of objectivity, Vladimir Mikhailovich, but of subjectivity.

I think that it is impossible to create a precedent.<...>[You can't] go back six years to work that has gone through the necessary procedures. I agree with many who were critical of the texts, and I told the dissertation student that it is not very correctly stated about the objectivity of national interests. But my principled position is: there is no need for new bans, no need for new censorship. Scientist, creator of a picture, film [reference to "Matilda" by Alexei Uchitel],<...>it is not necessary that they have any infringement of their right to expression, to artistic and historical expression.<...>

I was present at the discussion when the old minister was Livanov, there were proposals to cancel the statute of limitations [for revising dissertations]. Now, in my opinion, it is ten years, 20 is proposed. Do you know what will happen with this precedent of ours? 20 years ago it was impossible to write a dissertation without writing on it that the methodology is the methodology of Marxism-Leninism.

Unknown: 30 years is impossible, 20 years is possible.

Chubaryan: So, we will cancel these dissertations, or what? Can you imagine where we are going? Here someone said that we are opening Pandora's box. But, Vladimir Mikhailovich, I think that the discussion that took place in the country and took the leading place was useful in the sense that it should draw our attention to the quality of dissertations in the humanities.<...>This means that we need to increase the requirements for the dissertation council, this means that we need to pay more attention to expert councils.<...>

As for the very essence [of Medinsky's dissertation], this is a complex problem. Last year I was in Vienna at a conference on this issue. The main character was Comrade Herberstein [an Austrian diplomat who worked in Russia; the first compiled a work on Russia ("Notes on Muscovy)]. I thought everyone understood everything. But such disputes are highly politicized and highly ideological. I even had to come up with some objection, whether it was true about our Muscovy, whether there were distortions there. There is a point of view that Herberstein is the father of Russophobia. What I want to say is that the political context is still present, no matter how you want it. I head a commission [of historians] with Latvia, with Lithuania, with Poland. I was just in Riga about this: difficult situations arise in the interpretation of history.

Selected quotes from the discussion in the Novaya Gazeta article.

On October 4, the Dissertation Council of the Ural Federal University will consider an application for the deprivation of the Minister of Culture Vladimir Medinsky of the degree of Doctor of Historical Sciences. This demand was made by historians Vyacheslav Kozlyakov and Konstantin Yerusalimsky - they consider the minister's dissertation "Problems of objectivity in covering Russian history in the second half of the 15th-17th centuries" to be unscientific. The co-author of the application, an expert of Dissernet, IVAN BABITSKY, told the correspondent of Kommersant ALEXANDER CHERNYKH about the scientific community's claims to the minister's dissertation.

- How did this story begin with the statement about the deprivation of the minister's academic degree? Was it an initiative of "Dissernet"?

- "Dissernet", of course, checked all the dissertations of Vladimir Medinsky - both in history and in political science. But the specific doctoral dissertation “Problems of objectivity in the coverage of Russian history in the second half of the 15th-17th centuries” - the only one that was not covered by the statute of limitations for filing an application for deprivation of a degree - was discussed by historians long before the emergence of “Dissernet”. There are quite a few incorrect borrowings in it, but its very content is a well-known incident - scientists understood that there was no scientific value there. The problem is that the Russian scientific community is not used to persecuting pseudoscience. They are not accustomed to the idea that a bad dissertation can be applied for verification. And Dissernet has long wanted the scientists themselves to start conducting such examinations. Precisely in order to cleanse science from charlatans. Everything worked out here - both the obvious incident with the work, and the statute of limitations allows you to deprive the author of his degree. So we began to discuss this situation and found two well-known historians who agreed to apply. Vyacheslav Kozlyakov and Konstantin Yerusalimsky are both Doctors of Science and both experts on exactly the period referred to in Medinsky's dissertation. So here it will no longer be possible to say: who are they, on what basis do they criticize someone else's work. This is the first such experiment on the interaction of scientific communities and "Dissernet" on the deprivation of a degree for dishonest work. We share our experience in organizing this process, and they conduct an examination.

- You are listed as the third applicant.

My own specialty is related to this, I defended myself in the late Renaissance of the 16th century. Medinsky's dissertation was written based on the recollections of Europeans who came to Russia at that time. Many of the sources he refers to are in Latin, so I can appreciate them with my knowledge. Yes, I am a philologist, not a historian. But the degree of ignorance of Vladimir Medinsky in these matters is so great that even a non-specialist understands the claims to the work.

- List some of the most striking examples?

We will soon publish a statement with detailed comments. For now, it must be emphasized right away: before defending his dissertation, Vladimir Medinsky never called himself a historian. He said “I am a journalist”, “I write non-fiction” and did not pretend to be engaged in academic science. And he retrained as a historian six months before his defense - around the same time all his “scientific” articles were published. As a historian, he is incredibly incompetent. He has a quote about the era of Ivan the Terrible, where he says that, they say, in Rus' all theological books were published in Russian, while among Catholics and Protestants - only in Latin. And from this he concludes that the Russian people knew the content of theological books, while in the West they did not. But after all, everyone knows about the existence of the Church Slavonic language, and everyone remembers that the Protestants just translated the Bible into other languages, Luther himself translated into German. But the Minister does not understand this. The only thing that saves him is that dissertations, unlike books, are usually not read by anyone. If you read it thoughtfully, then on every second page you can find something funny. There have never been two opinions: Medinsky's dissertation for all historians is a pure anecdote. Even when someone tried to defend him, he pointed out, conditionally, that he was a patriot and it was necessary to protect him from the liberals.

Photo: From personal archive Ivan Babitsky

In general, when his text is analyzed by professional historians, this should even flatter him. This creates the false impression that he has a really significant dissertation, since it receives such attention. But that's not the case at all.

Here's another example. The dissertation is based on foreign sources - and it would be logical to assume the existence of foreign scientific works on them. Everything that Mr. Medinsky writes about has already been the subject of research by German, Italian, and French historians. But he does not mention any foreign scientific work on this topic. There is no confirmation that he even read a line in a historical work in another language. And the very texts of foreigners, on which he relies, he read them in Russian editions of the 19th century, which do not meet modern criteria for scientific translation.

How did he manage to defend himself then?

It must be remembered that he defended himself in the dissident council of the Russian State Social University, which, under the rector Vasily Zhukov, became a real factory of dissertations. Medinsky's supervisor was Rector Zhukov, Doctor of Historical Sciences, a specialist in the history of the CPSU. So this story looks unscrupulous both at the level of the dissertation and at the level of defense.

If the minister defended his dissertation at a Moscow university, then why will your application be considered in Yekaterinburg?

That discouncil in the RSSU has already been closed, and according to the law, any other council can consider an appeal. Of course, it would be more logical to deal with Moscow, but for some reason the VAK chose Yekaterinburg. I don't know why it was done. Naturally, the thought immediately arises that they simply do not want special attention to this story, so that there are fewer Moscow journalists, for example. But this, of course, is only a general consideration, and we do not know who exactly made the decision to consider the application in Yekaterinburg.

The place of literature in the public consciousness is occupied by history. Both the writer Akunin and the statesman Medinsky felt this challenge of the time, and each responded to it. Did academic historians feel it?

On Saturday, October 1, Russian Minister of Culture Vladimir Medinsky gave an open lecture at the State Historical Museum on the topic "Ivan IV in the legends of foreigners XVI–XVII centuries: assertion of stereotypes”.

According to Medinsky, the lecture is based on part of the text of his doctoral dissertation.

On one of the first slides, the lecturer demonstrates the famous painting by Ilya Repin and asks the audience what it is called.

The lone remark "Ivan the Terrible and his son Ivan" drowns in the chorus, answering: "Ivan the Terrible is killing his son." The desired effect is achieved - on such simple example we see how widespread negative stereotypes are about the famous king.

The essence of the speech boiled down to the fact that to this day the ideas about Russia as a country of slaves and tyrants, demanding liberation through foreign intervention, developed in the writings of foreigners about the reign of Ivan the Terrible, the peak of publication of which fell on the era when our country was going through the Time of Troubles accompanied by foreign interventions.

At the end of the speech, traditional questions followed, to which the lecturer gave detailed answers with obvious pleasure, and everyone was already preparing to disperse when it was heard from the hall:

“On October 4, a meeting of the dissertation council at the Ural Federal University will be held in Yekaterinburg, at which the issue of depriving you of your doctorate in history will be considered. What do you think about it?"

From Medinsky's first reaction, it was clear that the question was hardly staged in advance. However, he was not taken aback and replied that he did not see any problem in this, academic degree for him it is not an end in itself, but in general he is confident in his dissertation and is not afraid of criticism.

This question put everything in its place - the lecture became a kind of answer to Medinsky's critics on the eve of the consideration of his doctoral dissertation, defended back in 2011, by a specially appointed academic council. A noticeable interest in the event (the spacious hall was full, the press was present) was clearly fueled by the scandal.

Even in assessing the choice of a place for a second discussion of Medinsky's dissertation, the opinions of observers differed.

Some believe that the scandalous meeting is being removed from the eyes of the federal press and the interested public, others believe that in Yekaterinburg, known for its liberalism, the pressure of the power vertical on scientists is less noticeable than in Moscow.

The public, entrenched in opposing political trenches, sees the conflict as follows.

Liberals think that another official bought himself a dissertation and the corresponding "crust", and since the level of such commercial "research" is traditionally low, he also stained himself with plagiarism - that is, "incorrect borrowing" - from the works of real scientists.

Patriots, on the other hand, believe that the liberal public took up arms against Medinsky's dissertation, which is "crippled" by the fact that a Russian patriot has been appointed to the post of Minister of Culture for once.

As you probably already guessed, both are wrong.

I will quote here one of the initiators of the deprivation of the Medina degree, Ph.D. Ivan Babitsky:

"We state that the work of Medinsky with a probability of 99.95% was written by him."

This is an important detail that gives us the whole perspective of considering the problem.

It allows you to understand the true motives that prompted Medinsky to write his work - this is not obtaining an academic degree at any cost, that is, solving purely personal problems, but a really lively, I would even say gambling, interest in the declared topic.

This interest cannot be overlooked. During his Saturday lecture, Medinsky sought to show the audience that the texts and events of the early modern era are not “traditions of the deep antiquity”, for which he was constantly transferred to the present.

The Western invasions of the Middle East, an airliner shot down in the sky over the Donbass and other current topics of our day were mentioned at the place.

Believe me, I have seen lectures given by officials, politicians, or even scientists on formal necessity and orders - the speech of the Minister of Culture was the least like them.

This reservation is specifically addressed to those who are superficially familiar with the history of the conflict, since the initiators and supporters of the deprivation of the Medina title of Doctor of Historical Sciences themselves today have focused their criticism on something completely different.

Claims to Medinsky's dissertation fall into three main groups. First, these are claims of a factual nature, questions to the general scientific erudition of the author and the adequacy of certain formulations he uses.

I would not like to participate in the discussion of whether Piccolomini is an Italian or a German humanist (I would be quite satisfied with the definition of "Roman" - so the imperial wolves would be fed and the papal sheep would be safe).

Or, for example, to argue about whether the Muscovite soldiers could run or they were supposed to jump (especially since, as one of the critics of Medinsky's work showed, in the original source they do neither).

The second portion of criticism concerns formal questions that are extremely important in the defense of dissertations (sometimes it may seem that some councils are generally only interested in them).

In my opinion, the most obvious example of remarks of this kind is really not the most successful title of the work, which does not correspond to its content.

However, the blame for this, as well as most other similar shortcomings, lies entirely with Medinsky's scientific adviser, the secretary of the dissertation council in which he defended himself, with his official opponents and reviewers, and with the members of the council as a whole.

How all this outwardly powerful scientific qualification mechanism could so frankly disregard the manuscript entrusted to them by not the last person in the country, I, frankly, cannot explain.

This is where it would be worthwhile to raise questions about scientific competence and service compliance.

The people who advised Medinsky to transform his historical journalism into a dissertation strongly framed him, without striking a finger in order to give the text the necessary formal features.

It is on this side of the matter that the emphasis was justifiably placed in a statement sent to the Ministry of Education and Science signed by Doctor of Historical Sciences. V. N. Kozlyakova, Doctor of History K. Yu. Yerusalimsky and PhD I. F. Babitsky.

To be honest, I personally did not find the text of this statement to be well structured, and the argumentation itself is not always successful, but this is only my own very subjective assessment.

In the introduction to Saturday's lecture, Vladimir Medinsky himself said that he was asked to make it as scientific as possible, but he nevertheless promised not to overload the audience. It is doubts about the degree of scientific content of the minister's dissertation that constitute the third block of accusations against his work.

Let's start with a few quotes.

The author shows that in domestic and foreign historiography, and after it in public opinion, stable ideas have developed about Ivan IV as a model tyrant and mediocre ruler, who, having removed wise advisers and assistants from himself, destroyed all the good undertakings of the beginning of his reign by his actions. and led Russia to the deepest crisis.

According to the author, such an assessment of the activities of Ivan the Terrible, on the one hand, is one-sided and does not take into account the specific conditions in which Ivan had to act, and on the other hand, it was initially politicized and ideologized, being created and consistently developed in conditions of acute political struggle, characteristic of Russia XIX V.

Meanwhile, as the author proves, a comprehensive approach to the domestic and foreign policy of Ivan IV and his "government", taking into account the difficult conditions in which they had to act, allows us to assert that a hypercritical view of the activities of the first Russian tsar seriously distorts historical reality.

No, this is not a review of the works of Vladimir Medinsky, this is an annotation to an article by Doctor of Historical Sciences, a specialist in the era of Ivan the Terrible, professor of Belgorod University V. V. Pensky.

And here is what this researcher writes about the role played by the work of the imperial diplomat Herberstein, whom Medinsky so non-academically calls a "forger".

“And is it a coincidence that it was at this time (in the midst of the Kazan War - A.V.) that the “Notes on Muscovy” by the imperial diplomat S. Herberstein, who had repeatedly visited Russia under Basil III and laid the foundations of the "black legend" about Muscovy as a "country of slaves, a country of masters" under the rule of a tyrant?

I hope that from these fragments one can form an opinion about the views of such an authoritative specialist as V.V. Penskaya on the era of Ivan the Terrible and on the assessment of Russian statehood as a whole.

And now another quote:

"... the fulfillment of the idea of" a comprehensive study of the entire complex of works of foreigners about the Russian state XVI–XVII centuries. I find it clearly unsatisfactory.

The author has a very weak understanding of the method of working with sources, and this circumstance alone devalues ​​his conclusions as built on a very shaky foundation, not to mention everything else.

This is from V. Pensky's review of V. Medinsky's dissertation. As you can see, the point here is not at all an ideological rejection of the minister's position. The problem is different.

It is even more sharply indicated in the review of another well-known specialist in Russian history of early modernism, Ph.D. Alexey Lobin:

“Medinsky evaluates the source from the standpoint of his own ideas about the era and passes off his subjective assessments as objectivism.

That is, instead of analyzing the texts of works XV–XVII centuries, their lists and editions, revealing textual borrowings, sources of information, political views of authors, ideological components, etc., the dissertator argues with amateurish ease that the notes of such and such a traveler “do not carry a negative connotation” in relation to Russia, and this one has a solid negative, that one is lying, and this one is exaggerating.

This approach is a clear evidence of Medinsky's naive ideas about the criticism of a historical source.

As you can see, there is no politicization in the assessments of Medinsky's work here either. The main complaint of professional historians against the minister is his unprofessionalism as a researcher.

A scientist can make mistakes, but he must make mistakes "correctly", while observing all the methodological procedures of the study. In the same way, reliable research results can only be of scientific value if they are obtained in accordance with these procedures.

To the layman, such a formulation may seem absurd, but this is exactly the case, and that is why scientific knowledge, which is not accessible to everyone, has such a high price.

However, in addition to the method scientific knowledge There is a second important feature.

The famous St. Petersburg archaeologist, theorist and historian of science (known, by the way, for his very liberal views) L. S. Klein in the first volume of his "History of Archaeological Thought" says that science has two main features: "scientific task (problem) and scientific approach (method)".

And if I have nothing to add to the assessments of the scientific nature of Medinsky's approach, then I would like to speculate about the scientific task that he sets for himself.

Does the problem posed by Medinsky exist?

Which day the entire Russian-speaking Internet is discussing new clip Robbie Williams - who sang about the defiant luxury of the Russian oligarchs. Party like a Russian - calls Williams, against the background of a luxurious library, devouring buckwheat, surrounded by ballerinas, marching to the beat of drums.

As the saying goes, “the artist sees it this way”, but in clarifying how exactly “this is how”, spears are broken on Russian Facebook.

Writer Zakhar Prilepin

On the portal of Radio Liberty published great interview with I. Babitsky, philologist, volunteer and activist of Dissernet. “I lived outside of Russia for seven years, I wanted to return. For me, a natural view of emigration is that when life is good enough in the usual place, where I was born and raised, it will be worse in emigration. Even according to the literary experience of the early twentieth century, post-revolutionary, one cannot say that it is always better abroad than at home, it often happens the other way around ... ”(I. Babitsky).

On December 5, 2011, Ivan Babitsky, a young philologist and novelist who had just returned to Russia after studying and working in Europe, read on Facebook about a protest rally against fraud in the Duma elections held the day before, decided to go to Chistye Prudy, where the action took place, and was arrested.

The rally turned out to be the first in a series of demonstrations that resulted in a mass protest movement that changed the course political history in Russia and predetermined the onset of reaction.

Five years later, 37-year-old Babitsky, a Dissernet expert who is fighting to annul the degree of Minister of Culture Vladimir Medinsky, recalls December 2011 as a missed chance to change the government, which, according to some reports, turned out to be in a state of panic and therefore, having coped with protests, began to "tighten the screws" in order to never allow this to happen again.

Ivan, the grandson of Soviet dissident Konstantin Babitsky, one of the eight who took to Red Square to protest against the entry of troops into Czechoslovakia in 1968, jokingly describes the confrontation with Medinsky (who once said that his father, a retired colonel, "passed Czechoslovakia-68") as a vendetta.

Outside of this anecdote, Ivan Babitsky does not want to talk about the protests in terms of "the native Moscow intelligentsia is against the government." He himself graduated from the department of classical philology of the philological faculty of Moscow State University in 2004, spent several years mostly abroad: he studied in France, defended his thesis in Florence. His academic career ended at the Humboldt University in Berlin, and in the summer of 2011 he returned to Moscow for good. In a conversation with Radio Liberty, he tells why he returned, tries to understand the reasons for the defeat of the Moscow "snow revolution", discusses the consequences of the reaction, explains why he went into the "Dissernet" niche, and predicts what will happen next:

– The topic of my dissertation is the influence of Latin authors on the literary theory of the Pleiades. This specialization was well suited to my work in Dissernet: the study of the Renaissance literature of the 16th century consists largely in the search for hidden sources, since then the generally accepted literary manner was to borrow from other people's texts without indicating the source or with incorrect and incomplete indications. Approximately the same thing that they do in modern Russian dissertations out of bad considerations.

– Why did you finish your academic activities by the summer of 2011?

- With my specialty, I had to emigrate - it is difficult and not very meaningful to deal with this topic in Russia. The potential audience is not here, there are no good libraries on the topic.

– But why did you decide to return to Russia?

- For seven years I lived outside of Russia, I wanted to return. For me, a natural view of emigration is that when life is good enough in the usual place, where I was born and raised, it will be worse in emigration. Even according to the literary experience of the early twentieth century, post-revolutionary, one cannot say that it is always better abroad than at home, more often the opposite is true. Emigration, in my opinion, is a solution for people who are not very happy here.

– Do you feel good in Moscow?

– I felt good both in Moscow and abroad. I have never had a situation of trouble in Moscow and still do not.

- I can’t say that it was important for me to be there, but nothing prevented me, I came. This is partly a coincidence, I guess. No one realized at that moment that something big was about to begin. Everyone saw information on Facebook that there would be a gathering about the elections. My attitude to politics was as follows: I really did not like what was happening, but I did not seriously think that there could be major public discontent. It seemed to me that 86% (Putin's support. - RS), as they are now called, do exist. Then there was less discontent and more contentment than now, so politics seemed like a matter of the distant future. I did not think that in 2011 there could be such a thing. I didn't think this until December 5th. And on the 6th I realized that this is something new.

- You can say that.

- You have been detained. Was it the first time for you?

- Tell me.

“There is nothing particularly interesting to say here. It was the usual, as I now understand, detention at a rally. They take you by the arms and put you in a paddy wagon.

– Did you do something or just not standing there?

- Rather, he was not standing like that - too close to the people who were detaining. He didn't throw Molotov cocktails.

Did they shout something incendiary?

- No. I observed rather than demonstrated. I think the reason for the detention was age and position in the front row at the cordon. What really differed from the following cases, when I was detained at rallies, was the complete unpreparedness of the system at that moment. The courts were full. We were kept in the department overnight. The next day, the court did not have time to consider all the cases, although it took the judge five minutes for each. Then my neighbors in the department were taken there to spend the second night. I left the court without a passport, taking advantage of the mess, and went home.

Did they just pick up and leave?

- In the evening, when it became clear that they would no longer judge and they wanted to keep the second night in the department, yes, I just left the court.

– Without consequences, you were not later accused of escaping?

- No. Why blame him for running away? I am not an expert, but, in my opinion, they had no right: there is no legal provision for the situation that you were brought to court, handed over, and then returned to the department. At the time of transfer to the court, the detention ends.

- Night in the department ... Was it sad or fun? Are there beautiful Moscow people around?

No, in the sense you probably mean. People were completely different, some from Moscow, some not, almost no one had a hipster look, people from different social groups. By the way, this surprised me a little - before that it seemed to me that political discontent was concentrated in some narrow circles. It wasn't particularly sad, or especially funny, just domestic inconveniences. I was lucky, I got up very late that day and could just not sleep at night.

- Is the room not very suitable for sleeping?

– We were kept in the hall with some benches, but, of course, no beds were provided. Those who slept were uncomfortable.

- The next five turbulent months, from December 5 to May 6, are a time of continuous protests, a feeling that you can influence politics. There was something victorious about the movement. Did you participate in it, were you captured?

“At some point, it was pretty intense. But for me, it was all internal conflict. After the first two rallies in 2011, when everyone left for the New Year holidays, it became clear that this was a loss of pace. Later, when a large rally was organized in early February, there was a controversy about whether to coordinate the procession, they tried not to let him into the center. I created on Facebook a group for supporters of the procession along an initially uncoordinated route. More than 2 thousand people signed up for the procession, but when the mayor's office approved Yakimanka, most of them lost their enthusiasm.

- When did something change in your attitude towards the protests?

- The feeling of victory, the possibility of changing something disappeared gradually. But I quickly began to think that everything looked bad. In December - the first Bolotnaya, Sakharov Avenue - it still seemed that there were many opportunities. But at that time, apparently, I correctly assessed the situation: I believed that almost everything could be achieved before the presidential elections. It seemed to me extremely stupid to coordinate rallies and marches, because it became clear that the Kremlin was not ready for what was happening and was confused, that the authorities would not take active steps before the presidential elections. In February, I tried to get some kind of intransigence from the protest public. I still think that that moment of confusion and weakness of power, like in war, could either be used immediately or not used at all. And the May 6 rally (which was dispersed and marked the beginning of the persecution of activists. - RS) was for me just an event from the series "I told you so."

- You are a philologist, a humanist, but here you look like a radical. Do you think it's natural?

– I consider it quite natural precisely because I am a humanist and I know history. For me, there are no abstract philosophical questions - whether one should be a radical or a Tolstoyan. I look at it from the point of view of expediency. The events of 2011-12 are essentially war. There was no scenario in which the protest movement and the Kremlin become partners and resolve disagreement. It was clear that these were two hostile forces in a state of irreconcilable conflict. And if you caught someone by surprise in the war, then this state does not continue indefinitely. If you don't want to hit, don't swing. Why organize a protest at all, provoke repressions, tighten the regime, if you are not going, in fact, to win?

- Those protests were held under the slogans of evolution, without violence. Many said that it is necessary to agree. Based on many performances on those stages, it was impossible to conclude that this was a tough confrontation, on the contrary, it seemed that the authorities indicated that she was wrong, she should change her mind and change, but it seems that there was no talk of demolishing power.

– This situation can be viewed in terms of purely military history, if you like. There are clear principles of warfare, and the term "war" is not necessarily something related to murder or occupation, it is a situation of conflict in which one must impose one's will on the enemy by force, and not diplomatically, that is, the continuation of politics by other means. The position "negotiate with the authorities" is not the rhetoric of war, but of diplomacy, where the authorities are a possible partner. To pretend that this is a common policy in a democratic state, where there are political opponents, but they must somehow agree, is meaningless. Conciliatory rhetoric has often been a desire to protect oneself from persecution or to scare away people who are either not radical enough or partially supportive of power. The "white tape" protest consisted of people who were opponents of the government, and people who wanted to modify the government without being its opponents. The conversation about the evolution of power looked naive to the point of stupidity, because the protest itself began after the "castling" ( announcement of the return of Vladimir Putin to the presidency to replace Dmitry Medvedev. – RS), which buried the idea of ​​evolution. When Putin did not run for a third term, and Medvedev became president, many perceived this as that very evolution: “You see, instead of Putin, we now have Medvedev, who looks more decent, liberal, not from the KGB, says the right words, the next one after him, probably, it will be even more European, and we will have an evolution." And after the “castling” took place in September and it was announced that Putin was returning, it became clear that this was a farce. And it is from here - the mass character of the protest. So the evolutionary rhetoric was belated.

But besides, among those who are called liberals, there is a fairly large group of people who in fact always wanted to be with the Kremlin. They were not satisfied with any particulars in the Kremlin, but most of all they were afraid not that the Putin regime would stand, but that it would fall. The regime that had developed by 2011 was beneficial for many liberals. Moreover, I can’t say to myself that it was unprofitable for me. It has high costs, primarily for the regions, vulnerable groups of the population, but Moscow is fed at the expense of the rest of Russia. Many liberals, one way or another, got their share of the oil rent and lived under Putin in 2011, probably better than they could live with the establishment of democracy, the rule of law and other things. Even now, the likelihood of falling under a criminal case "for a stick" in the Dalniy Department of Internal Affairs in Kazan ( where in 2011 the detainee died after severe abuse. – RS) is not the same for everyone, for someone it is negligible. So my words should not be considered radicalism, in my opinion, this is a sociologically correct assessment. The conditional Ksyusha Sobchak is some kind of sociological phenomenon, it is useless to fight it, you must understand that it exists.

- You are talking about Sobchak, about the Moscow party, which received money from various power structures or structures close to power.

- Even if they received from a clean business, it is still oil money, in the long run.

- Do you have an idea, looking back, that if the demonstrators had behaved differently then, they would have had a chance of success?

– I think that there was no illusory chance for success in December 2011, but during January it was irretrievably lost. I had the full feeling of this on March 5 ( 2012, when Putin's victory in the presidential election was announced. – RS), although there were earlier concerns. There is quite a lot of information, although it is difficult to assess the reliability of each of them, that December 2011 was the moment of maximum unpreparedness of the authorities, their state was close to panic. Therefore, massive, decisive action had a very good chance of success.

- Can you imagine a scenario how the protests of that time could have won?

– Loss of control over public space in Moscow by the authorities. If what was happening on Bolotnaya had taken place, as originally planned, on Revolution Square, if tens of thousands had come to the Kremlin, if the inability of the authorities to control it had become obvious, no one would have been able to do anything with them in mid-December, and there would have been a good chance to a split and loss of control at the very top, someone would run away, someone would hesitate. I think it could have turned out like in Kyiv, and even faster and bloodless - due to panic, the unpreparedness of the authorities. In the first days after December 5, only a thousand people were arrested, and it was no longer clear what to do with them. In those days, by the way, the mood of the Moscow police, as everyone who came into contact with it, was extremely hesitant and cautious, there was no aggressive confrontation between the police and the protesters.

– On the 5th, when it was the fifth anniversary, they discussed on social networks whether the protest was "leaked" or not "leaked". Do you think "leaked"?

- The only thing I usually disagree with in terms of "leaked" is when they strongly criticize those who led the protest then. It was hard to expect anything else from them. The protest was out of luck. More or less radical representatives of it were often completely unpronounceable, like Limonov, and those people who, for lack of others, led the organization of protests, went to the mayor's office - they did not promise anything to anyone initially. I remember there was an article by Akunin, touching in its frankness, where he wrote that he would like Vladimir Putin not to lose power too quickly, so that we could form a civilized path of transition. This approach, of course, was not spoken out loud by everyone, but quite a few of those who had media leverage. As a matter of fact, due to the lack of effective leaders of the protest, a coherent political leadership (and in the first weeks, the same Navalny simply sat in the detention center, besides, he still did not particularly prepare for the role of the leader of the masses), it was actually headed by people who had access to the media. And this is the same group that the regime did not suit then, but which - at least part of it - would not have been even more satisfied if it suddenly ended.

- Akunin was one of the prominent speakers of the theory of "evolution" - that the government should gradually change, bloodshed should not be allowed.

- This rhetoric is too naive to be considered sincere in all cases. I remember very well: some said - why did you coordinate the rally on Bolotnaya Square, others answered - so that they would not give everyone a head. But this rhetoric could have seemed convincing until May 6, 2012, when everyone was hit in the head precisely because of this position. I really don't like it when the supporters of the confrontation in December 2011 are called "radicals". It's not that "revolution" is better than "evolution", but that the government itself is not capable of any way of interacting with the opposition, except for war. She can agree to "evolution" and compromise only if she hopelessly loses, and the winners are afraid to finish her off, as in Poland with " round table". But without losing, she offers only a choice between complete submission and war. So those who then preached evolution, the influence on power were not moderate, but naive: maybe their option is better if it were possible. A moderate victory was impossible, only complete - and after it the power would change and the compromise would be reduced to the co-optation of the old elite.

– After May 2012, how did your attitude to everything that happened change, if it changed?

- The chance was missed, but the regime still has big problems. At that time, oil prices had not yet fallen, but the non-working structure of the economy was clear, where even oil super-profits were not enough to shut everything up. It became clear that the idyll that preceded 2011 would no longer exist. Therefore, I and many of my acquaintances believed that we should wait for the next window of opportunity to open, apparently for some economic reasons. Everyone began to look for other forms of routine protest activity. In 2013, I came to Dissernet, where I was invited by my friend Andrey Zayakin, the inventor of "pehting", who was initially engaged in searching for real estate for deputies abroad, then - dissertations.

- Is this your main occupation? "Dissernet" is a public activity.

- After returning to Moscow, I mainly did language freelance - translations, editing. And when I came to Dissernet, it actually became my main activity.

– Do you miss philology, academic work?

- No, I'm not bored now. But I suppose that at some point I will.

- After the start of "tightening the screws", did you move away from politics and went to Dissernet, because you think this is the most interesting and effective, or is there a different logic here?

- "Tightening the screws" seems to me a rather optimistic sign, it indicates a crisis in the regime. Yes, and the twisting is mostly for show - yes, "foreign agents" close some good magazines, but it is far from what we used to call repression in a historical context. Of course, it’s bad that Ildar Dadin was imprisoned, and before that there was the “Bolotnaya case”, but still, the biggest horrors of Russian reality are not related to politics, and they were as they were. The vast majority of people who are in prison in Russia for nothing, are not in prison for politics, but because they came hand in hand. And "tightening the screws" looks more like convulsions of despair than an effective repressive apparatus. Stylistically reminiscent of something a hundred years ago. I helped an English historian collect materials for research about the Siberian exile in the archive, we sorted out documents relating to the first and early second decades of the 20th century, and absolutely modern notes sounded there: how the prisoners decided to stage a play in some the authorities did not forbid the production, but called the peasants and, under the fear of any punishment, forbade them to rent out the barn for the performance.

- You said that there are stylistic similarities with the events of a hundred years ago, do you have an analogy for the end of 2016?

– Historical parallels are a complex thing. But it can be considered a crisis aggravated by the war. For the Russian Empire after 1905, the First World War turned out to be fatal, and the Ukrainian war, coupled with the fall in oil prices, could play a similar role for the current regime. Then the war began in 1914, this time in 2014. That is, the analogy to today is 1916. But the coincidence of numbers, of course, is pure coincidence.

– Dissernet is not a public activity. Events in last years did not lead to the fact that you wanted to be more actively involved in political activities?

- Not good. After May 6, 2012, the degree of direct control over the political life of the country increased - the collective Putin abandoned some of the self-imposed restrictions he voluntarily assumed and paid with the fact that he began to look noticeably worse in the eyes of the world. But after that - what kind of political activity could there be in 2013-14? Elections are not to be taken seriously.

- Nevertheless, Navalny went to the election of the mayor of Moscow, the opposition, including your friend Andrei Zayakin,went to regional elections .

- For want of a better one. But I absolutely do not call for despising these attempts and saying that it is not worth wasting time and effort on this, because after all, the main task of the opposition now is to wait. You can wait, doing nothing at all, or you can wait, doing some small things. The fact is that the regime for its own dismantling works much more efficiently than the entire opposition, in this sense it is even easier to step back and not interfere.

- When Zayakin ran for elections in the Kaluga region, did you help him, did you go to agitate?

- I did not help him, because it was my help that was not really needed, more mobile people were needed. Walking from house to house, agitating to vote - somehow not mine. But, of course, I did not criticize his attempts to be elected, and I will not now, because this activity always brings a positive experience, even if people train and establish horizontal ties. The regime will not change as a result of the elections - it's even ridiculous to discuss it, but when it does not exist, many people will be needed who at least know what an election campaign is.

- Is Dissernet a continuation of protest activity for you?

– We always emphasize that Dissernet is not politicized, that is, it does not happen that it checks dissertations of people from United Russia and does not check dissertations of people from Yabloko. On the contrary, in the last elections, Yabloko withdrew five candidates because we found incorrect dissertations from them. We specifically checked the candidates, including those from Yabloko and PARNAS. So it is impossible to say that Dissernet is at war politically. But since corruption is a condition for the existence of the Putin regime, any anti-corruption activity acquires political meaning. There is no normal public policy in Russia under the current conditions, but the system is based on the principle of "impunity in exchange for loyalty." No wonder it was Navalny who became the main political figure, although formally there was less politics in his activities than other opposition leaders, whom we can respect very much for their political activities, the same Schlosberg. But it is precisely as a politician that Navalny is more effective. The fight against corruption is a form of mass protest activity that is very difficult to suppress directly. The Kremlin has not yet developed a coherent policy that would declare the very fight against corruption a form of political disloyalty, which is ideologically quite difficult to do. And anything that undermines corruption undermines the foundations of the regime. And it was an unexpected discovery that even in the purely academic field that Dissernet deals with, the fight against corruption works quite well.

- "Dissernet" is a very intelligent wrestling. You yourself say that people are in prison, the population is getting poorer. And you are struggling with borrowing in dissertations - this is not a folk type of struggle.

– I cannot say that Dissernet is the main type of opposition struggle. What the Navalny Foundation does is, of course, much more important. But it makes sense that people do what they do best. Naturally, as a person with a specialization in "plagiarism", although this concept is not applicable to the Renaissance, who has the technical skills to search for borrowings from other texts, I ended up in Dissernet more in my place than if I went to Navalny. The Navalny Foundation requires computer skills to work with information. Zayakin, who does a lot for Navalny - a theoretical physicist, partly a mathematician - can write the necessary script to process a large amount of data. It is clear that Leonid Volkov is appropriate there. People with programming experience. And lawyers.

“When demonstrators take to the streets, the government risks being overthrown. When corruption is exposed, the exposed person can be prosecuted and lose some money. When you expose borrowings in dissertations, you are actually saying "ah-ah-ah" and expect people to be ashamed. And it is a shame not in front of all the people, because the people as a whole do not care whether these deputies or officials have a degree or not, but in front of an educated stratum. Are these people afraid of your "ah-ah-ah"? Well lose the degree, and then what?

- The three-year experience of "Dissernet" shows that they do not care at all. The fight against corruption as a whole works to delegitimize power. When people are convicted of fighting, killing, or something like that, this is very serious, but often difficult to prove. And when you convict people of being petty thieves, this politically delegitimizes somewhat more. It is easier to get people's sympathy for Ivan the Terrible than for a petty thief in the role of a ruler.

– Is desacralization taking place?

- It is too. Compared with the last years of the empire, one of the problems of the tsarist regime before the fall was complete desacralization, at some point it had no real supporters left at all. People who could read and write could no longer perceive the regime as deserving of respect, to which Rasputin probably contributed more than severe abuses. People are sensitive to this. Standard Putin's elite, up to the level of some director, lives in the belief that there are clear, common rules of the game for all, for example, that all people in positions take bribes. The rules of the game are such that a person cannot be called a thief or a swindler if he simply does what is customary to do. They are psychologically unprepared. One could say that human rights are being violated, a war is being waged in Georgia, but somehow there was no constant theme that, in fact, crooks and thieves were in power. Many rightly say that the very introduction of the concept of "party of crooks and thieves" into circulation was Navalny's success, a great merit.

- But this is based on a non-handshake, that is, it is assumed that there is a certain group of people with whom one would like to shake hands. You take analogies from the Russian Empire, but let's take from the Soviet experience. Lysenko's times are a completely different construct. Lysenko harassed people, those who refused to shake hands with him fell under the ice rink.

– There is a psychological difference between thieves and bloodsuckers. A politician who suppresses freedoms and lives in a marble villa and has 25 more villas, and a politician who manages to do a little in everyday life - let's say not as modest as it is commonly believed - but for whom the meaning of life is not in villas. During Lysenko's time, there were many people in the Soviet elite who risked their lives, and their almost pure ambition was power. And Putin's elite, from top to bottom, have philistine ideas about success in life, which are difficult to project onto Stalin's. If the USSR seriously thought of itself in opposition to the West, then the desires of the current government, from Putin to the bottom, are of a completely different nature. They are the normal elite of some African country who want to be allowed into the living room in a decent society, and at home they could do what they want.

- Medinsky. Is his dissertation so bad, does it contain so much that contradicts historical science?

- So many. Almost every page has something heaped up. Medinsky has nothing to do with history, in principle he has no historical consciousness, the idea that the world is changing, that in one era there is something, but not in another. Even at the lexical, stylistic level, it is ridiculous when he writes that in the 17th or 16th century Smolensk surrendered after shelling, and some Italian humanist was given poor living space in Moscow. I haven't read his popular books, but I suspect it's the same. Medinsky, even at the level of an 11th grade student in a good school, did not master history. It's like writing a dissertation in theoretical physics. That is, a person wrote a dissertation as best he could, himself, apparently without even using the services of a consultant, and defended it due to the fact that the defense was organized in a specific way. And then read it by accident.

- You took up Medinsky's dissertation, but it turned out that he wrote it himself. And he almost directly rejects the foundations of historical science, saying that it doesn’t matter what the truth was, patriotic, ideological things matter. At this moment, he should not care whether you give him a hand or not, he rejected it, he does what Lysenko did in his time. I'm not drawing parallels, I want to show the principle.

- As far as I can tell, that's not the case. It can radically contradict accepted ideas and common sense. But the position of Medinsky and those like him is not at all that you are just dust underfoot and he is not interested in your opinion. When you say to the conditional Medinsky that he wrote or said complete nonsense, he answers: you are so totalitarian, you cannot tolerate a point of view that differs from yours. Here we commemorated Lysenko, so Medinsky's first reaction to the consideration of his dissertation by "Dissernet" was that this was a denunciation in the spirit of Lysenkoism. Here Putin or his ideologists pronounce invectives against the West. But they don't give a damn what the West thinks of them. Their position: let's be friends, respect each other. But you say what you want, we will say what we want to say. Such is the attitude of the Putin elite towards traditional science, towards education: we encourage the introduction of Orthodoxy in schools, traditional medicine, homeopathy, and so on, and they perceive this as obscurantism, the desire to suppress academic science. The approach of any Putin ideologist is this: come on, we will have everything. This is our traditional, one might say, intellectual approach: you cannot serve God and mammon. You can’t give lectures on theoretical physics in the morning, and make horoscopes in the evening. And their approach is exactly this: let's have an article on physics on the 10th page of the same magazine, and a horoscope on the 20th. Medinsky can be asked: dear, are you for Soviet power Or for the king? And for them there is no such statement of the question. The formula "you can not combine the incompatible" is applicable to us, but not applicable to them.

- That is, pluralism left politics and they brought it into science as a pluralism of fact?

– Not only in science, everywhere. What is the ideology of Medinsky? That everyone should be loved, Ivan the Terrible, Stalin, Nicholas II, I don’t know who is not supposed to be loved there. Now it is indecent to ask the question, probably, to the members of the Communist Party, why are you sometimes communists, then you go to the procession, they simply will not understand the question. Why can't you be a communist and Orthodox? And these people are offended if they extend their hand, but they do not extend their hand in response: we do not prevent you from asserting that Stalin is bad, we are for pluralism. And why don't you allow us to say that Stalin is good? They just do not pretend to remove physics, and leave theology, they say: let's put theology, and let physics be the same.

- But you yourself cite his words that only the national interests of Russia can be criteria. This is a dangerous thing. You say they are proposing to allow everything, but it is they who are proposing to allow everything to themselves, and they can judge others by the criteria of Russia's national interests. It's not all fluffy.

- I said that it should not be mixed. Collective Medinsky, quite sincerely, will not persecute people who doubt the feat of 28 Panfilov's men. The rhetoric of “complete scum”, the story of Gozman and so on is a product of a narrow purpose. In Russia, in the current political reality, there is a lot of ostentatious obscurantism. There are indeed repressions, they imprison people for text messages about the non-secret movement of Russian troops in absolutely peacetime, before that the FSB imprisoned scientists on rather absurd charges of transferring something to foreigners. This is, departmental paranoia, feigned, maybe FSB. But the talk that priests will now come to the institutes, that they will ban Newton's laws, that they will force them to teach the creed in schools, but they will not teach physics, is talk. They will do something for the sake of appearance, shyly stick Stalin in, but in general, historical obscurantism, in which Medinsky specializes, remains rhetoric.

- You quote a phrase from his dissertation: "As you know, the Orthodox had all the church books in Russian, so it was easy to understand their content. The situation is different for Catholics and Protestants, they have sacred scripture in Latin." People who know history will laugh, the vast majority of the Russian population simply will not understand, but what, in fact, is wrong? But okay, this is about Orthodoxy, although the role of Orthodoxy in Russia is now very specific, but when they talk about Stalin, that merits must be remembered, the memory of the millions killed by him is blurred. And this is not just an academic discussion.

- This is a harmful thing, but, of course, this is already a competence and not the level of Medinsky - it is much higher. You can't do anything about it: for the regime - such as it is now - Stalin has been important for a long time. But their ideological logic is simple - to please everyone, to say something pleasant to each group of the population. If we have a part of the population nostalgic for the Soviet era, we need to build a temple for them. It's like an early Christian in an ideological conflict with the Roman state. The Romans had no problem building a temple to every god that someone, somewhere, had. There is some tribe in the Roman Empire, they have a god, you can build a temple for him, why not. The only thing they demanded is that you and their divine emperor make sacrifices. And then the Jews come and say: ugliness, there is only one God, and we will not make sacrifices to yours. There was a mutual misunderstanding.

– For the early Christians and for the Jews, this cultural controversy ended rather badly.

Well, the situation is better now. I do not see that in modern Russia they are trying to persecute even symbolically for an irreconcilable position. The view that everything broadcast by Medinsky is rubbish is also recognized as organic for a large part of the population and legitimized. You can more or less say in any educational institution that homeopathy is bullshit, astrology is bullshit, Stalin is a murderer, and I think you are not threatened with any repression from above, higher than from your own rector. Immediate superiors - maybe, as you're lucky. For us, the legitimization of the cult of Stalin should not even be one of the options. But for the other side, Stalin is not the only and main option, but one of the components of the general approach that any Russian government is good. You can glorify Nicholas II and also fall into the mainstream. You can build the Yeltsin Center. The problem of the obscurantism of the authorities is not in the attack on dissent, but in the erosion of standards - which is what Dissernet is fighting against. When you are allowed to say anything under the guise of science, it infiltrates academic institutions and undermines standards. You can be a good doctor with a degree, or you can be no doctor with the same degree.

- Many of those who took to the streets of Moscow on December 5, 2011, ceased to be interested in politics, hid, someone emigrated. You compare 2014 with 1914, and here, you see, 2017 with the centenary of the revolution, and Putin is already commemorating it. There were rumors of early elections in 2017. But many economists say that for another decade the country can slowly crawl down, and there will be nothing terrible.

“Wherever something collapses, it always turns out that it happened earlier than it was calculated.

– Do you have any idea how this can happen?

- Now the source of all social unrest should be precisely economic difficulties. Now it is because of them that there is indignation - sporadically, disorganized, in different places. What exactly will be the catalyst for large-scale riots is impossible to say. They become large-scale when there are many people affected by the deteriorating economic situation. Then a local protest can suddenly catalyze the process when a situation of uncontrollability arises. On the other hand, in the current situation of a "quasi-cold war" and a shrinking pie, the struggle within the elites is intensifying. When Sechin imprisons Ulyukaev, it is clear that the elite is rapidly losing unity. There will be a conflict within the ruling stratum, and this, in the context of a general crisis, creates a revolutionary situation. It is impossible to fully draw parallels, now times are much more full than a hundred years ago, and the revolution now looks more like in Ukraine than like in 1917.

– Do the Moscow intelligentsia and in general those who left five years ago play any role in this?

- They play, probably - this is a politicized class. You are talking about the intelligentsia - a rather seductive construction, but I don't know how correct it is. When on March 2, 2014 there were spontaneous demonstrations about the seizure of Crimea, several people were detained, whose grandparents were imprisoned during the "Prague Spring". I even had a photograph when Zhenya Lavut and I were sitting in the same paddy wagon, my grandfather and her were participants in the 1968 demonstration. On the same day, the granddaughter of Natalia Gorbanevskaya, the son of Larisa Bogoraz, was there. There is some kind of continuity even in anecdotal form, when the descendants of Soviet dissidents can end up in the same paddy wagon. But I don't think there is still an intelligentsia in the Soviet sense. There is a fairly large stratum of people who are engaged in intellectual work, but at the same time do not have an intellectual class character. Among this stratum, there are quite a few people who support Putin and Krymnash. It is clear that a fairly large part of the liberal public is generated by business. Business people are generally inclined towards liberalism, this is a condition for their normal activity. As I said, in the paddy wagon on December 5 there were different people, not like the intelligentsia, as we imagine it according to the Soviet dissident intelligentsia of the 60s and 70s. But since that time, a politicized opposition community has emerged. This environment supplies volunteers for Navalny, for Dissernet, for election observation. Facebook and December, January, February 2011-2012 is what created this class of people, and it is quite large.