No exchanges, halted research: this is how the UvA experiences the frozen relations with Russia
In early March, the umbrella organisation Universities of the Netherlands decided to freeze all cooperation with Russian knowledge institutions due to the Russian attack on Ukraine. What consequences does this decision have for UvA students and researchers?
The worst part, professor of Slavic literature Ellen Rutten says, is that students still cannot go on exchange. Whereas the corona crisis prevented exchanges from taking place for some time, students are now unable to travel to Russia and the Ukraine because of the war. ‘For future students, we are exploring alternative routes, for example by cooperating with the Baltic States,’ says Rutten. ‘But for current students that is no longer possible. We have created alternative subjects for them.’
In early March, the umbrella organisation Universities of the Netherlands decided to freeze all cooperation with educational and knowledge institutions from Russia and Belarus - a direct result of the Russian attack on Ukraine. The UvA followed this decision, which has consequences for students and researchers at the UvA. Exchanges with Russia, Belarus and Ukraine have been discontinued and the activities of the Netherlands Institute in St. Petersburg, a knowledge institute for Russian Studies of which the UvA is the coordinator and which stimulates education and research in Russia and the Netherlands, have been frozen indefinitely. Researchers can also no longer attend conferences organised by Russian knowledge institutes.
In the case of Slavic literature, it has no direct consequences for research projects: there were no research collaborations that had to be terminated acutely after the beginning of March, says Rutten. Earlier contacts with the prestigious Higher School of Economics in Moscow had already been halted since 2019 due to questionable actions against Russian researchers by the Russian government.
No book tour
However, as editor-in-chief of the academic Elsevier magazine Russian Literature, Rutten has decided to stop cooperating with Russian knowledge institutions and only to work with Russian scientists who publish in a personal capacity. Rutten herself was going to do a book tour in Russia with a book she had written that was translated into Russian. ‘That is of course a minor inconvenience. It is much more annoying for the students who see their foreign trip ruined.’
There were already few formal collaborations between Russian knowledge institutions and the UvA, especially when compared to collaborations with other countries, says Professor of East European Studies Michael Kemper. Russian collaborations with the West have often been funded with Western money in recent decades, he says, because Russia itself has no interest in funding international research.
Bureaucracy and corruption
‘When a Russian scientist wants to formally cooperate with a Dutch university, he ends up in an overwhelming bureaucratic procedure in Russia. Corruption also plays a role – before the research money reaches the researcher, money has often already been taken from the research at various levels. In Russia, this is done in private and never recorded on paper. Not very attractive for the Russian scientist.’
According to Kemper, Russian scientists prefer to cooperate informally with the West by writing articles together and attending conferences. This is still possible, says Rutten: at the Faculty of Humanities, there are many individual contacts with Russian scientists in St. Petersburg, Moscow and provincial towns.
Yet something has changed since the war with Ukraine. Kemper: ‘There are friendships which are still as cordial as ten years ago, and there are other contacts which have stopped. A Russian scientist working with the West is now in danger. Russia already puts so much pressure on the staff of Russian universities that such cooperation is already hampered anyway. Of course, we know from our colleagues in Russia who is ashamed of Putin and who is in favor of his policies. We don’t talk about it, because we do not want the Russian Federal Security Service to overhear what you say on the phone to a colleague. There is a kind of self-censorship at work, you don't want to make your colleagues a target.’
Kemper believes it is important that the university is consistent about its relationship with Russia. ‘It’s not about punishing Russian colleagues, but putting forward a clear position. You can't work with Russians who support this war.’ Kemper himself withdrew as honorary editor of a Russian historical magazine. Kemper: ‘It’s not a formal collaboration between the UvA and the university in Moscow, but it’s a way of saying that I'm against the Russian war on principle.’
Entanglement
One UvA institute that does have formal collaborations with Russian knowledge institutes is the Institute for Informatics (IvI). Professor Peter Sloot (Complex Adaptive Systems) has been working for some 22 years with universities in Moscow and Tomsk, among others. In recent years, Sloot has worked with Russian scientists on a system that helps doctors to choose the right medication for HIV patients and on computer simulations of blood flows, used in research into vascular diseases.
‘Our research field is multi- and interdisciplinary, we have always tried to get as many smart people together as possible,’ he says. ‘Then you can really do in-depth research a long time. Around 2000, we first came into contact with Russian scientists who turned out to have a lot of expertise in this field and who were very enthusiastic about doing such research.’
Sloot now sees his contacts with the Russians as a kind of marriage, but with a contract: you build up a relationship and invest on both sides. ‘By now they are good friends, with whom we have done a lot: we have set up a joint master’s programme, delivered fifteen PhD students, set up a joint scientific journal and organised conferences. There is enormous entanglement. The fact that the cooperation with Russian knowledge institutions is being frozen causes a huge shockwave for us, for everyone.’
Isolation
Meanwhile, the IvI is feverishly trying to find solutions to keep the research projects going. ‘The most important thing is for young Russian scientists to keep in touch with the outside world,’ says Sloot. ‘You can now see that the old clan around Putin is trying to reorganise science in Russia. They want scientists to publish in Russian only, for example, and no longer internationally, and to be judged by Russians and not by the international community.’
This is a dangerous movement, according to Sloot. ‘If this isolation continues, young Russian scientists will end up in a North Korea-like situation. It also means that the quality of research will suffer, not only on the part of the Russians but also in the Netherlands. It is an exchange of knowledge. It is certainly not the case that we have brought science to Russia like missionaries.’
To maintain scientific cooperation, Sloot now wants to organise a seminar with young scientists from Ukrainian, Dutch and Russian universities. ‘The Russian scientists will be there in a personal capacity, not on behalf of the university. We want a more humane world, and this is also terrible for well-meaning Russians. But we can no longer support the Russian universities. After all they are funded by the government.’
Not cutting the relationships
According to IvI director Alfons Hoekstra, the Faculty of Science often works together with Russia, although the number of cooperations is relatively small. In contrast to Faculty of Humanities, part of the IvI projects were also financed from Russia. Hoekstra is also involved in a European project with a Russian partner from Moscow, who is also a friend of Hoekstra. ‘We had to let him know that he would no longer be welcome at the project meeting in April,’ he says. ‘It’s a difficult message, but he was very understanding, he completely understands that we have to do this.’
Hoekstra does not yet see any retreat from the Russian side regarding the research projects, although this is difficult to predict at this stage. ‘However, there are stories of young Russian scientists from Moscow who have fled. ‘Those are personal tragedies, but they pale into insignificance compared to what is happening in Ukraine’. Occasionally, Ukrainian scientists who have fled knock on the faculty's door. ‘We must offer them help. The faculty is already working hard on this.’
Furthermore, it is up to individual scientists to decide whether they still want to publish together with the Russians, Hoekstra says. Institutionally the directive is crystal clear, but on a personal level it is a grey area. He himself would keep the contacts with Russians warm. ‘Closing all contacts does not seem healthy to me.’
